How covid-19 spreads: Narratives, counter narratives, and social dramas

Copyright 2021 The Authors. This paper offers a critique of UK government policy based on mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (which in turn followed misleading advice from the World Health Organisation) through the lens of policymaking as narrative. Two flawed narratives— “Covid is droplet- not airborne-spread” and “Covid is situationally airborne” (that is, airborne transmission is unusual but may occur during aerosol-generating medical procedures and severe indoor crowding)—quickly became dominant despite no evidence to support them. Two important counter-narratives—“Covid is unequivocally airborne” and “Everyone generates aerosols; everyone is vulnerable”— were sidelined despite strong evidence to support them. Tragic consequences of the flawed policy narrative unfolded as social dramas. For example, droplet precautions became ritualised; care home residents died in their thousands; public masking became a libertarian lightning rod; and healthcare settings became occupational health battlegrounds. In a discussion, we call for bold action to ensure that the science of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is freed from the shackles of historical errors, scientific vested interests, ideological manipulation and policy satisficing. Original article submitted to BMJ Analysis November 2021 (preprint to Authorea).UK Research and Innovation via ESRC and NIHR (ES/V010069/1); Wellcome Trust (WT104830MA)

Thermal effects on atomic friction

We model friction acting on the tip of an atomic force microscope as it is dragged across a surface at non-zero temperatures. We find that stick-slip motion occurs and that the average frictional force follows $|\ln v|^{2/3}$, where $v$ is the tip velocity. This compares well to recent experimental work (Gnecco et al, PRL 84, 1172), permitting the quantitative extraction of all microscopic parameters. We calculate the scaled form of the average frictional force's dependence on both temperature and tip speed as well as the form of the friction-force distribution function.Comment: Accepted for publication, Physical Review Letter

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Hyperfine Structure

Contains reports on four research projects

Transport between edge states in multilayer integer quantum Hall systems: exact treatment of Coulomb interactions and disorder

A set of stacked two-dimensional electron systems in a perpendicular magnetic field exhibits a three-dimensional version of the quantum Hall effect if interlayer tunneling is not too strong. When such a sample is in a quantum Hall plateau, the edge states of each layer combine to form a chiral metal at the sample surface. We study the interplay of interactions and disorder in transport properties of the chiral metal, in the regime of weak interlayer tunneling. Our starting point is a system without interlayer tunneling, in which the only excitations are harmonic collective modes: surface magnetoplasmons. Using bosonization and working perturbatively in the interlayer tunneling amplitude, we express transport properties in terms of the spectrum for these collective modes, treating electron-electron interactions and impurity scattering exactly. We calculte the conductivity as a function of temperature, finding that it increases with increasing temperature as observed in recent experiments. We also calculate the autocorrelation function of mesoscopic conductance fluctuations induced by changes in a magnetic field component perpendicular to the sample surface, and its dependence on temperature. We show that conductance fluctuations are characterised by a dephasing length that varies inversely with temperature.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, minor changes made for publicatio

Tawney and the third way

From the 1920s to the 1950s R. H. Tawney was the most influential socialist thinker in Britain. He articulated an ethical socialism at odds with powerful statist and mechanistic traditions in British socialist thinking. Tawney's work is thus an important antecedent to third way thinking. Tawney's religiously-based critique of the morality of capitalism was combined with a concern for detailed institutional reform, challenging simple dichotomies between public and private ownership. He began a debate about democratizing the enterprise and corporate governance though his efforts fell on stony ground. Conversely, Tawney's moralism informed a whole-hearted condemnation of market forces in tension with both his concern with institutional reform and modern third way thought. Unfortunately, he refused to engage seriously with emergent welfare economics which for many social democrats promised a more nuanced understanding of the limits of market forces. Tawney's legacy is a complex one, whose various elements form a vital part of the intellectual background to current third way thinking

Evidence-Based Priority Setting for Health Care and Research: Tools to Support Policy in Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health in Africa

As part of a series on maternal, neonatal, and child health in sub-Saharan Africa, Igor Rudan and colleagues discuss various priority-setting tools for health care and research that can help develop evidence-based policy

The Japanese model in retrospective : industrial strategies, corporate Japan and the 'hollowing out' of Japanese industry

This article provides a retrospective look at the Japanese model of industrial development. This model combined an institutional approach to production based around the Japanese Firm (Aoki's, J-mode) and strategic state intervention in industry by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). For a long period, the alignment of state and corporate interests appeared to match the wider public interest as the Japanese economy prospered. However, since the early 1990s, the global ambitions of the corporate sector have contributed to a significant 'hollowing out' of Japan's industrial base. As the world today looks for a new direction in economic management, we suggest the Japanese model provides policy-makers with a salutary lesson in tying the wider public interest with those of the corporate sector