THE ROLE OF HISTORICAL ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION IN PERCEPTIONS AND MANAGEMENT OF AN URBAN RIVER

Environmental history can be defined as the study of past relationships between people and natural environments. Descriptions of ecosystems prior to their anthropogenic degradation (reference conditions) and their past degradation are increasingly used to set conservation goals. To a much lesser extent environmental history has been used to evaluate past environmental management. This thesis evaluates the potential of historical information to describe an ecosystem’s reference conditions, degradation and recovery and the interrelated social, economic, technological and legislative factors which drove these changes. It also assesses the potential for the dissemination of historical information to influence public perceptions of an ecosystem’s present conditions and their predictions for its future. It uses the River Don as a case study of a system that has been both highly valued and severely degraded by local people over centuries and has seen substantial restoration over recent decades. The key findings are: 1) historical biological records are of limited value in describing historical community composition due to recording biases; 2) historical newspaper articles provide much information on past relationships between people and the river but neglect some important environmental degradation issues; 3) local people’s historical knowledge of the river influence their perceptions in ways which may foster support for its restoration; 4) reading historical rather than current information on the River Don under experimental conditions leads participants to hold more negative views about the river’s current environmental state but does not affect their expectations regarding the river’s future or their intentions to visit it. This research provides further evidence that historical information is valuable for planning environmental restoration but is often limited by sparsity and bias. It indicates that historical knowledge has the potential to foster support for conservation but further research is needed to better understand the relationship between historical knowledge and support for conservation

Intermediate determinism in general probabilistic theories

Quantum theory is indeterministic, but not completely so. When a system is in a pure state there are properties it possesses with certainty, known as actual properties. The actual properties of a quantum system (in a pure state) fully determine the probability of finding the system to have any other property. We call this feature intermediate determinism. In dimensions of at least three, the intermediate determinism of quantum theory is guaranteed by the structure of its lattice of properties. This observation follows from Gleason's theorem, which is why it fails to hold in dimension two. In this work we extend the idea of intermediate determinism from properties to measurements. Under this extension intermediate determinism follows from the structure of quantum effects for separable Hilbert spaces of any dimension, including dimension two. Then, we find necessary and sufficient conditions for a general probabilistic theory to obey intermediate determinism. We show that, although related, both the no-restriction hypothesis and a Gleason-type theorem are neither necessary nor sufficient for intermediate determinism

Gleason-type theorems and general probabilistic theories

The postulates of quantum theory are rather abstract in comparison with those of other physical theories such as special relativity. This thesis considers two tools for investigating this discrepancy and makes a connection between them. The first of these tools, Gleason-type theorems, illustrates the interplay between postulates concerning observables, states and probabilities of measurement outcomes, demonstrating that they need not be entirely independent. Gleason’s original and remarkable result applied to observables described by projection-valued measures; however, the theorem does not hold in dimension two. Busch generalised the idea to observables described by positive operator measures, proving a result which holds for all separable Hilbert spaces. We show that Busch’s assumptions may be weakened without affecting the result. The manner in which we weaken the assumptions brings them closer to Gleason’s original treatment of projection-valued measures. We will then demonstrate the connection between Gleason-type theorems and Cauchy’s functional equation, a connection which yields an alternative proof of Busch’s result. The second tool we consider is the family of general probabilistic theories which offers a means of comparing quantum theory with reasonable alternatives. We identify a general probabilistic theory which reproduces the set of non-local correlations achievable in quantum theory, a property often thought to be particular to quantum theory. Finally, we connect these two tools by determining the class of general probabilistic theories which admit a Gleason-type theorem

Social media and sentiment in bioenergy consultation

Purpose: The push to widen participation in public consultation suggests social media as an additional mechanism through which to engage the public. Bioenergy companies need to build their capacity to communicate in these new media and to monitor the attitudes of the public and opposition organisations towards energy development projects. Design/methodology/approach: This short paper outlines the planning issues bioenergy developments face and the main methods of communication used in the public consultation process in the UK. The potential role of social media in communication with stakeholders is identified. The capacity of sentiment analysis to mine opinions from social media is summarised, and illustrated using a sample of tweets containing the term ‘bioenergy’ Findings: Social media have the potential to improve information flows between stakeholders and developers. Sentiment analysis is a viable methodology, which bioenergy companies should be using to measure public opinion in the consultation process. Preliminary analysis shows promising results. Research limitations/implications: Analysis is preliminary and based on a small dataset. It is intended only to illustrate the potential of sentiment analysis and not to draw general conclusions about the bioenergy sector. Originality/value: Opinion mining, though established in marketing and political analysis, is not yet systematically applied as a planning consultation tool. This is a missed opportunity

Admission patterns of paediatric patients aged 0-4 years diagnosed with respiratory conditions between Emergency Department (ED) and acute paediatrics and its relationship to zero-day admissions.

The number of children presenting to National Health Service (NHS) Emergency Departments (ED) in England is increasing, with a reported 28% increase in presentations in children aged less than 15 years between 1999 and 2010 (Gill et al. 2013). Alongside increased presentation rates, emergency hospital admissions have also increased, with Keeble and Kossarova (2017) reporting a 12% rise between 2005 and 2016, and in particular lasting less than 24-hours, known as zero- day admissions (Gill et al. 2013). Children aged 0-4 years are determined as the most frequently presenting age group at ED (Sands et al. 2011) and a respiratory diagnosis as the second most prevalent condition for this age group (Sands et al. 2011). However, evidence examining why this high conversion rate from presentation to admission exists is scarce. The ability of maintaining such emergency provision is under continuous scrutiny and review. Using a mixed-methodology approach, this work explored common characteristics of the 0-4 year’s patient group who were admitted from ED to acute paediatrics with a respiratory diagnosis. Experiences and knowledge of unplanned admissions from health care professionals working in acute paediatrics were obtained via semi-structured interviews. These findings aided the development of themes which were subsequently converted into quantifiable variables. These variables alongside variables identified through systematic literature review were used to interrogate data of N = 211 children aged 0-4 years old admitted to hospital via the emergency department between March 2017-March 2018 with a respiratory diagnosis. The data was obtained under freedom of information requests, from two district general hospitals in the East Midlands. The minimally used Bayesian method of information analysis (Noyes et al. 2019) was employed to facilitate the synthesis of qualitative and quantitative evidence. This achieved an in depth triangulation of findings and concepts (Dixon-Woods et al. 2005). Overall this work concludes that whilst data analysis in silo did not provide statistical significance of the variables in relation to zero-day admissions, its evaluation in conjunction with the interview transcripts led to a deeper understanding of characteristics contributing to zero-day admissions. This further led to identification of future research of more refined characteristics which will aid in the reduction of short-stay emergency admissions to hospital

Ion mobility-mass spectrometry studies of organic and organometallic complexes and reaction monitoring

Ion mobility (IM) spectrometry is a gas-phase electrophoretic technique in which ions are separated on the basis of their relative mobility in the presence of a weak electric field gradient and a buffer gas. Ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS) has the capability of separating ions based on m/z, size and shape, providing additional structural information compared to using mass spectrometry on its own. In this thesis, IM-MS has been used to investigate organic and organometallic complexes and identify reactants, intermediates and products in reaction mixtures. Collision cross sections (CCS) have been measured for three salen ligands, and their complexes with copper and zinc using travelling-wave ion mobility-mass spectrometry (TWIMS) and drift tube ion mobility-mass spectrometry (DTIMS), allowing a comparative size evaluation of the ligands and complexes. CCS measurements using TWIMS were determined using peptide and TAAH calibration standards with good intra-day and inter-day reproducibility. TWIMS measurements gave significantly larger CCS than DTIMS derived data in helium, indicating that the choice of calibration standards is important in ensuring the accuracy of TWIMS derived CCS measurements. The CCS data obtained from IM-MS measurements have been compared to CCS values obtained from X-ray coordinates and modelled structures. The analysis of small organic and organometallic molecules has been extended to investigations of the potential of IM-MS for reaction monitoring and structural studies of the components of catalytic cycles. Reaction mixtures of an organocatalysed Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction have been monitored using IM-MS and high-field asymmetric waveform ion mobility-mass spectrometry (FAIMS-MS). Reactant, product, catalyst and reaction intermediates, including an intermediate not previously detected, were identified and the catalyst and intermediates monitored over time. An organometallic catalytic cycle using a palladium catalyst has been analysed using IM-MS and the CCS of reactants, intermediates and products have been measured and compared to theoretical CCS calculations. Good agreement was observed between measured and calculated data. Species not amenable to electrospray ionisation were covalently bound to an ionisable tag containing a quaternary ammonium ion allowing the tagged molecules to be detected by IM-MS

An invertible map between Bell non-local and contextuality scenarios

We present an invertible map between correlations in any bipartite Bell scenario and behaviours in an indexed family of contextuality scenarios. The map takes local, quantum and non-signalling correlations to non-contextual, quantum and contextual behaviours, respectively. Consequently, we find that the membership problem of set of quantum behaviours in a contextuality scenario is undecidable and the set cannot be fully realised using finite dimensional quantum systems. Finally, we find that neither this set, nor its closure, can be the limit of any sequence of computable supersets, due to the result MIP*=RE. In particular, the semidefinite programming hierarchies in the literature cannot converge to the quantum set of behaviours nor its closure.Comment: Comments welcome

De los Saltos del Guairá a la Construcción de la Itaipú Binacional: crónica de una pérdida y un progreso

Metadados do Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso: De los Saltos del Guairá a la Construcción de la Itaipú Binacional: crónica de una pérdida y un progreso, pela/o discente: Keren Victoria Oviedo Wright, sob orientação: Karen dos Santos Honório do Centro de Economia e Sociedade, curso de Relações Internacionais – Integração da Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA), no Repositório Institucional da UNILA (RI-UNILA)De los Saltos del Guairá a la Construcción de la Itaipú Binacional: crónica de una pérdida y un progres