Towards equity and justice in ocean sciences

The global scientific community is currently going through a self-reckoning in which it is questioning and re-examining its existing practices, many of which are based on colonial and neo-colonial perceptions. This is particularly acute for the ocean research community, where unequal and unbalanced international collaborations have been rife. Consequently, numerous discussions and calls have been made to change the current status quo by developing guidelines and frameworks addressing the key issues plaguing our community. Here, we provide an overview of the key topics and issues that the scientific community has debated over the last three to four years, with an emphasis on ocean research, coupled with actions per stakeholder groups (research community, institutions, funding agencies, and publishers). We also outline some key discussions that are currently missing and suggest a path forward to tackle these gaps. We hope this contribution will further accelerate efforts to bring more equity and justice into ocean sciences

Values congruence on CSR and its impact on corporate reputation

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is increasingly accepted by decision makers and implemented in businesses, because it is beneficial to an organization’s profit and influence and also the perceptions and commitment of its stakeholders. Therefore, doing CSR is largely related to building a good reputation. Although the individual values of managers is more and more regarded as a driver CSR, and as the congruence between corporate values and employee values is known to impact CSR activities, the link between individual values and Corporate Reputation (CR) is an understudied topic. The purpose of this article is to propose how to investigate this issue in a higher education context. Exploring, a) to what extent university top managers and middle managers values concur in respect of CSR, and b) how this might impact on the CR which is perceived by other stakeholders are its chief focus. The proposed study is to be based on two case study universities, one in the UK and one in China. Both semi-structured interviews and surveys are proposed, representing a mixed methods approach to a complex problem. This study will benefit university top management in its CSR decision making

The significance of 'the visit' in an English category-B prison: Views from prisoners, prisoners' families and prison staff

A number of claims have been made regarding the importance of prisoners staying in touch with their family through prison visits, firstly from a humanitarian perspective of enabling family members to see each other, but also regarding the impact of maintaining family ties for successful rehabilitation, reintegration into society and reduced re-offending. This growing evidence base has resulted in increased support by the Prison Service for encouraging the family unit to remain intact during a prisoner’s incarceration. Despite its importance however, there has been a distinct lack of research examining the dynamics of families visiting relatives in prison. This paper explores perceptions of the same event – the visit – from the families’, prisoners’ and prison staffs' viewpoints in a category-B local prison in England. Qualitative data was collected with 30 prisoners’ families, 16 prisoners and 14 prison staff, as part of a broader evaluation of the visitors’ centre. The findings suggest that the three parties frame their perspective of visiting very differently. Prisoners’ families often see visits as an emotional minefield fraught with practical difficulties. Prisoners can view the visit as the highlight of their time in prison and often have many complaints about how visits are handled. Finally, prison staff see visits as potential security breaches and a major organisational operation. The paper addresses the current gap in our understanding of the prison visit and has implications for the Prison Service and wider social policy

Experimental Observation of a Minority Electron Mobility Enhancement in degenerately doped p-Type GaAs

The variation of minority electron mobility with doping density in p+-GaAs has been measured with the zero-field time-of-flight technique. The results from a series of nine GaAs films doped between 1 X lOI and 8 X 10” cmm3 show the mobility decreasing from 1950 cm2 V-’ s-l at 1 X 10” cmm3 to 1370 cm2 V-l s-l at 9X 10” cmB3. For the doping range 9 x 1018-8x 1019 cme3, the decreasing trend in mobility is reversed. The measured mobility of 3710 cm2 V-’ s-l at 8 X 10” cmp3 is about three times higher than the measured value at 9 X 1018 cmm3. These results confirm and extend recent transistor-based measurements and are in accord with recent theoretical predictions that attribute the increase in minority electron mobility in p+-GaAs to reductions in plasmon and carrier-carrier scattering at high hole densities

Reflection Anistropy Spectroscopy Study of the Near Surface Electric Field in Low-Temperature Grown GaAs (001)

We have evaluated an ‘‘effective depletion width’’ of =\u3c 45 Å and the sign (n-type/upward band bending) of the near surface electric field in low-temperature grown GaAs ~001! using the optical method of reflection anisotropy spectroscopy in the vicinity of the spin-orbit split E1 , E1 + Delta1 optical features. Our results provide evidence that surface Fermi level pinning occurs for air exposed (001) surfaces of undoped low temperature grown GaAs

Expansions for the Bollobas-Riordan polynomial of separable ribbon graphs

We define 2-decompositions of ribbon graphs, which generalise 2-sums and tensor products of graphs. We give formulae for the Bollobas-Riordan polynomial of such a 2-decomposition, and derive the classical Brylawski formula for the Tutte polynomial of a tensor product as a (very) special case. This study was initially motivated from knot theory, and we include an application of our formulae to mutation in knot diagrams.Comment: Version 2 has minor changes. To appear in Annals of Combinatoric

Spanning Trees on Lattices and Integration Identities

For a lattice $\Lambda$ with $n$ vertices and dimension $d$ equal or higher than two, the number of spanning trees $N_{ST}(\Lambda)$ grows asymptotically as $\exp(n z_\Lambda)$ in the thermodynamic limit. We present exact integral expressions for the asymptotic growth constant $z_\Lambda$ for spanning trees on several lattices. By taking different unit cells in the calculation, many integration identities can be obtained. We also give $z_{\Lambda (p)}$ on the homeomorphic expansion of $k$-regular lattices with $p$ vertices inserted on each edge.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

The influence of cosmic rays in the circumnuclear molecular gas of NGC1068

We surveyed the circumnuclear disk of the Seyfert galaxy NGC1068 between the frequencies 86.2 GHz and 115.6 GHz, and identified 17 different molecules. Using a time and depth dependent chemical model we reproduced the observational results, and show that the column densities of most of the species are better reproduced if the molecular gas is heavily pervaded by a high cosmic ray ionization rate of about 1000 times that of the Milky Way. We discuss how molecules in the NGC1068 nucleus may be influenced by this external radiation, as well as by UV radiation fields.Comment: 6 pages. Conference proceeding for the workshop on "Cosmic-ray induced phenomenology in star-forming environments" held in Sant Cugat, Spain, on April 16-19, 201