Shield wall:Kelps are the last stand against corals in tropicalized reefs

Communities inhabiting biogeographic transition zones are shifting in composition as a result of progressive warming and heatwaves. In the marine environment, corals are expanding onto higher latitude reefs historically dominated by temperate kelp forests, initiating a shift towards warm affinity coral-dominated states.publishedVersio

Uncertainty, Decision Science, and Policy Making: A Manifesto for a Research Agenda

The financial crisis of 2008 was unforeseen partly because the academic theories that underpin policy making do not sufficiently account for uncertainty and complexity or learned and evolved human capabilities for managing them. Mainstream theories of decision making tend to be strongly normative and based on wishfully unrealistic “idealized” modeling. In order to develop theories of actual decision making under uncertainty, we need new methodologies that account for how human (sentient) actors often manage uncertain situations “well enough.” Some possibly helpful methodologies, drawing on digital science, focus on the role of emotions in determining people’s choices; others examine how people construct narratives that enable them to act; still others combine qualitative with quantitative data

Zero-Hour Contracts and Stress in UK Domiciliary Care Workers

UK domiciliary care workers play a vital role in maintaining and improving the lives of service users who have a variety of needs. Around 60% of these employees work under zero-hours contracts but, while it is known that conditions such as temporary and shift working can influence employee health and performance, zero-hours have not been widely investigated. This project sought to firstly investigate the stress associated with working as a domiciliary care worker, as well as comparing the experiences of employees contracted to zero hours with those contracted to at least 16 hours per week. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews (15 zero-hour, 14 contracted hours) were conducted in the West Midlands of the UK and analysed using thematic analysis. Across all participants, four predominant stressors were found. Firstly, level of pay for what is a job with high levels of responsibility were poor. Secondly, participants described struggling to maintain an adequate work-life balance due to the varied timings of visits, as well as rude and aggressive behaviour from both service users and their families. Lastly, a lack of peer support and poor care from peers was discussed. However, every respondent described the positive relationships that they develop with service users being a distinct stress-reliever. Zero-hours respondents discussed two further stressors. Power refers to the relationship between employee and management, with respondents describing the balance of power being with management. Uncertainty reflected respondents not having set hours of work or pay, and thus not being able to plan in their personal lives and sometimes not being able to pay bills. Findings suggest that domiciliary care workers are exposed to a range of stressors, with zero-hours adding to these. Further research should look into methods to improve both the job role for workers, and redress the power relationships for those with zero-hours contracts

Non-Gaussian Inflationary Perturbations from the dS/CFT Correspondence

We use the dS/CFT correspondence and bulk gravity to predict the form of the renormalized holographic three-point correlation function of the operator which is dual to the inflaton field perturbation during single-field, slow-roll inflation. Using Maldcaena's formulation of the correspondence, this correlator can be related to the three-point function of the curvature perturbation generated during single-field inflation, and we find exact agreement with previous bulk QFT calculations. This provides a consistency check on existing derivations of the non-Gaussianity from single-field inflation and also yields insight into the nature of the dS/CFT correspondence. As a result of our calculation, we obtain the properly renormalized dS/CFT one-point function, including boundary contributions where derivative interactions are present in the bulk. In principle, our method may be employed to derive the n-point correlators of the inflationary curvature perturbation within the context of (n-1)th-order perturbation theory, rather than nth-order theory as in conventional approaches.Comment: 23 pages, uses iopart.cls. Replaced with version accepted by JCAP; some clarifications in the introduction, and references adde

Shield wall: Kelps are the last stand against corals in tropicalized reefs

Communities inhabiting biogeographic transition zones are shifting in composition as a result of progressive warming and heatwaves. In the marine environment, corals are expanding onto higher latitude reefs historically dominated by temperate kelp forests, initiating a shift towards warm affinity coral-dominated states