Thresholds of memory: Birch and Hawthorn in the poetry of Robert Burns

Robert Burns’s status as a poet sufficiently close to rural poverty to be able to represent himself as its product, and sufficiently distant from it to be able to manipulate that product, is increasingly being realized. In this essay, Burns’s use of the country lore associated with the birch and hawthorn trees in Scotland and indeed in Europe more generally, is analyzed in terms of its deceptively simple representation of emotion, and the manner in which it acts as a point of access for Burns’s view of the tragic status of being human, caught between the cyclical natural world and our own narratives of being, which demand a linear time ending in a “forever” which on earth can only become loss

Interbasin Water Transfers and Water Scarcity in a Changing World: A Solution or a Pipedream?

The world is increasingly forced to face the challenge of how to ensure access to adequate water resources for expanding populations and economies, whilst maintaining healthy freshwater ecosystems and the vital services they provide. Now the growing impacts of climate change are exacerbating the problem of water scarcity in key regions of the world. One popular way for governments to distribute water more evenly across the landscape is to transfer it from areas with perceived surpluses, to those with shortages.While there is a long history of water transfers from ancient times, as many societies reach the limits of locally renewable water supplies increasingly large quantities of water are being moved over long distances, from one river basin to another. Since the beginning of dam building that marked the last half of the 1900s more that 364 large-scale interbasin water transfer schemes (IBTs) have been established that transfer around 400 km³ of water per year (Shiklomanov 1999). IBTs are now widely touted as the quick fix solution to meeting escalating water demands. One estimate suggests that the total number of largescale water transfer schemes may rise to between 760 and 1 240 by 2020 to transfer up to 800 km³ of water per year (Shiklomanov 1999).The wide range of IBT projects in place, or proposed, has provoked the preparation of this review, including seven case studies from around the globe. It builds on previous assessments and examines the costs and benefits of large scale IBTs. This report assesses related, emerging issues in sustaining water resources and ecosystems, namely the virtual water trade, expanding use of desalination, and climate change adaptation. It is based on WWF's 2007 publication "Pipedreams? Interbasin water transfers and water shortages".The report concludes that while IBTs can potentially solve water supply issues in regions of water shortage - they come with significant costs. Large scale IBTs are typically very high cost, and thus economically risky, and they usually also come with significant social and environmental costs; usually for both the river basin providing and the river basin receiving the water

Viewpoint - Better Management of Hydropower in an Era of Climate Change

Ten years ago the World Commission on Dams (WCD) report established new standards for the sustainable development of water infrastructure, but the hopes many of us had then for a new era of more thoughtful development have been attenuated by the resilience of the hydraulic bureaucracy and the emergence of new influences on the hydropower debate. Particularly important is the impact of climate change as a driver of government policies in favour of hydropower, water storage and inter-basin water transfers. As a former Director of Freshwater for WWF International and now as a researcher on the water-energy nexus, I spent much of the past decade seeking to influence the direction of water infrastructure development, and in this viewpoint I have been asked to reflect on the changes that have occurred, and the opportunities in an era of climate change to reduce the environmental and social impacts of hydropower development while maximising the benefits. Better outcomes are more likely with a renewed focus on limiting the perverse impacts of climate change policies, implementing standards for certification of more sustainable hydropower, building capacities within developing countries, and enhancing management of existing dams

The Scottish Heritage Partnership Immersive Experiences: Policy Report

No abstract available

Delivery of a preliminary clinical evaluation web based short course in Finland

Abnormality detection schemes in radiography have existed in the UK since the 1980s to aid patient triage. Following professional body guidance a PCE (preliminary clinical evaluation) scheme is now recommended where radiographers provide a brief description of imaging findings to the referrer when an immediate definitive report is unavailable. PCE teaching is undertaken in undergraduate radiography programmes in the UK but is limited outside of the UK. To improve PCE knowledge radiographers in Finland undertook a short course using blended learning from a UK university. Pre and post course test banks were used to assess performance

Climatic catastrophes: the international implications of the greenhouse effect and nuclear winter

Human society is threatened by two possible climatic catastrophes of human origin: a slow global scale warming due to increasing concentrations of infrared-absorbing gases, and a sudden but drastic surface cooling due to the smoke and dust which would be generated by a major nuclear war. The slower process is almost certainly taking place now and may be impossible to stop before the end of the twenty-first century. The more sudden catastrophe is at present purely a theoretical possibility, which could be avoided completely by more rational human behaviour. Both are very complex physical phenomena, the magnitude and time-scales of which are at present difficult to quantify accurately but which can only be coped with appropriately by resort to global cooperation on an unprecedented scale. This paper explores the nature and some of the policy implications of these phenomena

Who wrote the Scots Musical Museum? Challenging editorial practice in the presence of authorial absence

James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, published in six parts in Edinburgh over the period 1787-1803, is now inextricably linked to its greatest contributor, the poet, song-writer and song-collector Robert Burns. This lecture builds from Murray Pittock’s recent editorial work on Johnson’s collection, forthcoming in the new multivolume Oxford Edition of Robert Burns, based at the University of Glasgow. The lecture shows that the apparently-innocent question “Who wrote the Scots Musical Museum?” is a complex one, raising very fundamental questions about the nature of authorship and editorship in the necessarily collaborative and social enterprise of song publication, and it raises issues of wide relevance to Scottish cultural studies and the editing of Scottish literary texts. Songs given detailed comment include "The Birks of Aberfeldy" (SMM 113), "McPherson's Farewell" (SMM 114), and "The winter it is past" (SMM 200)