Using remarkability to define coastal flooding thresholds.

Coastal flooding is increasingly common in many areas. However, the degree of inundation and associated disruption depend on local topography as well as the distribution of people, infrastructure and economic activity along the coast. Local measures of flooding that are comparable over large areas are difficult to obtain. Here we use the remarkability of flood events, measured by flood-related posts on social media, to estimate county-specific flood thresholds for shoreline counties along the east coast of the United States. While thresholds in most counties are statistically-indistinguishable from minor flood thresholds of nearby tide gauges, we find evidence that several areas experience noticeable flooding at tide heights lower than existing flood thresholds. These 22 counties include several major cities such as Miami, New York, and Boston, with a total population over 13 million. Our analysis implies that large populations might currently be exposed to nuisance flooding not identified via standard measures

What's the point? The role of punctuation in realising information structure in written English

The main claim of this paper is that punctuation marks, in conjunction with spaces between words, function to provide visual rather than auditory cues for information structure in written English. INFORMATION STRUCTURE is defined here as dividing the flow of discourse into units, each containing a newsworthy element, and in contrast to the Systemic Functional systems of REFERENCE and THEME. A model of how these three systems interact is further supported by evidence from the historical development of reading and modern studies of the process of fluent silent reading. Reading silently does not require physical articulation and so written text is constrained by the saccading eye rather than the need to draw breath. The silent reader uses punctuation marks as a guide in a saccade to focus on the end of a clause which provides a non-arbitrary location for New Information

Editorial: Introduction to special issue of IJLS : Systemic functional linguistics and education

This special issue of the International Journal of Language Studies comprises a selection of papers presented during the 41st International Systemic Functional Congress and X Latin-American Systemic Functional Congress, held in Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina, in April 2014. The theme of the conference was "Systemic Functional Linguistics and Language Education: Novel applications of well-established and evolving lines of enquiry to language education theory and practice". Some of the main fields of the congress were language education and language in education, child language development, language typology, register and genre theory, appraisal theory, discourse analysis, multimodality and multimodal literacy, language and knowledge, and SFL and other language theories. The papers presented in this special issue reveal some of the many relationships between Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Education

Analytical results for how flexibility affects flapping propulsion

Wing or fin flexibility can dramatically affect the performance of flying and swimming animals. Both laboratory experiments and numerical simulations have been used to study these effects, however useful analytical results are notably lacking. Here, we develop a small-amplitude theory to model a flapping wing that pitches passively due to a combination of wing compliance, inertia, and fluid forces. Remarkably, we obtain a class of exact solutions describing the wing’s emergent pitching motions, along with expressions for how thrust and efficiency are modified by compliance. The solutions recover a range of realistic behaviors and shed new light on how flexibility can aid performance, the importance of resonance, and the separate roles played by wing and fluid inertia. Unlike experiments or simulations, these analytical results afford simple, robust estimates for how flexibility affects propulsion and may prove useful even in situations where details of the flapping motion and wing geometry differ

Sustainable Development Goal Disclosures within Australian Superannuation Funds: An Exploratory Study

The financial reporting landscape is continuing to expand with both regulated and voluntary disclosures making their way into various reporting frameworks. This increased attention to disclosures is being pursued by professional bodies, governments, companies and other organisations given the changing demands by stakeholders for sustainability disclosures. The Australian superannuation industry is a compulsory system developed to ensure a comfortable retirement income for members. It is now a trillion-dollar business and therefore, has significant influence on the investment decisions that it makes on behalf of its members. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are increasingly being used as a signal to the market that an organisation is meeting the demands of stakeholders. The objective of this study is exploratory in nature, investigating the types of SDG disclosures made by the largest superannuation funds in Australia. Data was collected through a content analysis of the annual and/or supplementary reports produced by Australian superannuation funds. The findings suggest that Australian superannuation funds currently disclose a minimal level information in accordance with the SDGs in different reporting formats and the SDGs tends to prevail where superannuation managers believe they can have the most impact. Our results have implications for SDG reporting, policy and management practice. Future research that helps explain how managers choose which SDGs to report would be a useful contribution in the context of superannuation

Theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of information need in the context of the impact of new information and communications technologies on the communication of parliamentary information.

This paper discusses critically the theoretical and methodological background to an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) research project designed to investigate the impact of information and communications technologies (ICTs) on the communication of parliamentary and legislative information to the general public or citizen. It sets out the context of the study in terms of the changes in governance, resulling from devolution and, via a wide ranging literature review, describes the ways in which the authors' research approach has developed The design of the project methodology, that of an interactive online interview executed via a roadshow, is also described

An exploration of the effectiveness for the citizen of web-based systems of communicating UK parliamentary and devolved assembly information.

This article reports on an exploratory study, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, which investigated the impact of technology on the communication of parliamentary information to the general public. This study tested the application of a new data collection tool: an interactive, electronically assisted interview that was taken out across the UK as part of a pilot roadshow to organizations such as public libraries, community centers, sheltered accommodation, and universities. Here, members of the public were invited to explore and respond to the Web sites of the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the National Assembly for Wales. During these sessions, online activities were recorded in a data transaction log, while search behavior and verbal responses were coded in a protocol analysis approach. The article provides full details of the results of these interactive interviews. They appear to indicate that the availability of information in readily accessible electronic form is insufficient alone to encourage citizen participation. Other motivators and forms of support are required to encourage and enable people to access, use, and apply that information and to encourage them to use technology to interact with democracy

The impact of new technology on the communication of parliamentary information.

This article discusses the results of an exploratory study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which investigated the impact of technology on the communication of parliamentary information to the general public in the United Kingdom. As Stage 1 of the project, interviews were conducted with representatives of the public information services of the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Stage 2 consisted of interactive, electronically-assisted interviews, delivered in a roadshow environment, where members of the public were given the opportunity to explore, and provide critical feedback on, parliamentary websites