From active to passive noise :rethinking the radicalism of Japanese noise music

PhD ThesisIn recent years noise has gained theoretical momentum as a concept used to consider the complexity of difference in both culture and art. Despite a great degree of variance between its authors, there is nevertheless a common insistence within noise theory that noise must be thought negatively. Particularly in accounts of Japanese noise music, noise is construed as oppositional to musicality and meaning traditionally understood. This thesis aims to reassess this claim with the argument that the true alterity of Japanese noise music cannot be reduced or essentialised to the categories of negativity and radicalism. It will be argued that the language of this music is predicated on a fundamental absence that makes any essential categorisation impossible. Drawing on twentieth-century continental philosophy, particularly the work of Maurice Blanchot, this thesis will develop an entangled relationship between two different, although fundamentally dependent, languages of noise. Chapter one will lay the theoretical groundwork for these languages by distinguishing between active noise and passive noise. If active noise names the language of negativity and radicalism through which we understand the materiality, sonority and performances of Japanese noise music, then passive noise names the way in which this language is problematised by Blanchot's challenge to atomistic and holistic thinking. Chapter two will demonstrate how an intentionless alterity, which constitutes passivity, accounts for a different idea of transgression than the kind frequently attributed to the erotic and sacrificial activities of Japanese noise music. Chapter three will continue this discussion by exploring Japanese noise music's relationship with death and impossibility. The conclusion will examine Blanchot's idea of community as a possible way of understanding the community centred around Japanese noise music. By way of summary, it will be argued that no unifying principle collectivises either the community or language of this music, because both are fundamentally predicated on an irreconcilable impossibility.AHRC

Reversing insect pollinator decline

Pollination by insects enables the reproduction of flowering plants and is critical to UK agriculture.1 Insect pollinators have declined globally, with implications for food security and wild habitats. This POSTnote summarises the causes for the recent trends, gaps in knowledge and possible strategies for reversing pollinator decline

Predictability in an unpredictable artificial cultural market

In social, economic and cultural situations in which the decisions of individuals are influenced directly by the decisions of others, there appears to be an inherently high level of ex ante unpredictability. In cultural markets such as films, songs and books, well-informed experts routinely make predictions which turn out to be incorrect. We examine the extent to which the existence of social influence may, somewhat paradoxically, increase the extent to which winners can be identified at a very early stage in the process. Once the process of choice has begun, only a very small number of decisions may be necessary to give a reasonable prospect of being able to identify the eventual winner. We illustrate this by an analysis of the music download experiments of Salganik et.al. (2006). We derive a rule for early identification of the eventual winner. Although not perfect, it gives considerable practical success. We validate the rule by applying it to similar data not used in the process of constructing the rule

Pollination services in the UK: how important are honeybees?

Pollination services are known to provide substantial benefits to human populations and agriculture in particular. Although many species are known to provide pollination services, honeybees (Apis mellifera) are often assumed to provide the majority of these services to agriculture. Using data from a range of secondary sources, this study assesses the importance of insect pollinated crops at regional and national scales and investigates the capacity of honeybees to provide optimal pollination services to UK agriculture. The findings indicate that insect pollinated crops have become increasingly important in UK crop agriculture and, as of 2007, accounted for 20% of UK cropland and 19% of total farmgate crop value. Analysis of honeybee hive numbers indicates that current UK populations are only capable of supplying 34% of pollination service demands even under favourable assumptions, falling from 70% in 1984. In spite of this decline, insect pollinated crop yields have risen by an average of 54% since 1984, casting doubt on long held beliefs that honeybees provide the majority of pollination services. Future land use and crop production patterns may further increase the role of pollination services to UK agriculture, highlighting the importance of measures aimed at maintaining both wild and managed species

Quantifying the impact and relevance of scientific research

Qualitative and quantitative methods are being developed to measure the impacts of research on society, but they suffer from serious drawbacks associated with linking a piece of research to its subsequent impacts. We have developed a method to derive impact scores for individual research publications according to their contribution to answering questions of quantified importance to end users of research. To demonstrate the approach, here we evaluate the impacts of research into means of conserving wild bee populations in the UK. For published papers, there is a weak positive correlation between our impact score and the impact factor of the journal. The process identifies publications that provide high quality evidence relating to issues of strong concern. It can also be used to set future research agendas

Bee conservation: inclusive solutions

Conservation Biolog

Susceptibility of faba bean (Vicia faba L.) to heat stress during floral development and anthesis

Experiments were conducted over two years to quantify the response of faba bean (Vicia faba L.) to heat stress. Potted winter faba bean plants (cv. Wizard) were exposed to temperature treatments (18/10; 22/14; 26/18; 30/22; 34/26°C day/night) for five days during floral development and anthesis. Developmental stages of all flowers were scored prior to stress, plants were grown in exclusion from insect pollinators to prevent pollen movement between flowers, and yield was harvested at an individual pod scale, enabling effects of heat stress to be investigated at a high resolution. Susceptibility to stress differed between floral stages, flowers were most affected during initial green-bud stages. Yield and pollen germination of flowers present before stress showed threshold relationships to stress, with lethal temperatures (t50) ~28°C and ~32°C, while whole plant yield showed a linear negative relationship to stress with high plasticity in yield allocation, such that yield lost at lower nodes was partially compensated at higher nodal positions. Faba bean has many beneficial attributes for sustainable modern cropping systems but these results suggest that yield will be limited by projected climate change, necessitating the development of heat tolerant cultivars, or improved resilience by other mechanisms such as earlier flowering times

Quantifying the value of ecosystem services: a case study of honeybee pollination in the UK

There is concern that insect pollinators, such as honey bees, are currently declining in abundance, and are under serious threat from environmental changes such as habitat loss and climate change; the use of pesticides in intensive agriculture, and emerging diseases. This paper aims to evaluate how much public support there would be in preventing further decline to maintain the current number of bee colonies in the UK. The contingent valuation method (CVM) was used to obtain the willingness to pay (WTP) for a theoretical pollinator protection policy. Respondents were asked whether they would be WTP to support such a policy and how much would they pay? Results show that the mean WTP to support the bee protection policy was £1.37/week/household. Based on there being 24.9 million households in the UK, this is equivalent to £1.77 billion per year. This total value can show the importance of maintaining the overall pollination service to policy makers. We compare this total with estimates obtained using a simple market valuation of pollination for the UK