Rifting and Mafic Magmatism in the Hebridean Basins

Acknowledgements and Funding Research in the BPIP was supported by NERC grant GR9/1581, and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. H. Rollinson and E. Gazel are thanked for helpful and constructive criticisms, particularly of the modelling aspects of the paper, and T. Rooney is thanked for invaluable scientific and editorial assistance.Peer reviewedPostprin

Sexual violence in post-conflict Sierra Leone: Obstacles to prevention responses

Although the high prevalence of sexual violence during the decade-long armed conflict in Sierra Leone has been investigated and reported on extensively, very little is known about the nature and extent of sexual violence during Sierra Leone’s post-conflict transition. The purpose of this paper was to explore narratives about the problem of sexual violence and obstacles to prevention efforts in the aftermath of war in Sierra Leone. Using a qualitative research approach, this study examines gender norms and pressures that shape gender roles, rights, responsibilities and sexual relationships in post-conflict situations. Evidence on the nature and extent of sexual violence and challenges and barriers to prevention responses were elicited through the in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with both men and women as well as key informant interviews with community leaders and service providers. Findings indicate the widespread occurrence of sexual violence that continues even in the aftermath of hostilities in Sierra Leone. The changes in economic, cultural and geopolitical spheres as well as gender inequalities in education, social and economic domains as a result of the conflict have evidently disempowered women and girls with a profound impact on their sexual and reproductive health/rights. Adequate attention should be given to the design and implementation of responses to sexual violence given the gendered nature of such violence and post-conflict contexts.Keywords: Sexual violence; post-conflict; Sierra Leone; gender; wome

A representation of the natural numbers by means of cycle-numbers, with consequences in number theory

In this paper we give rules for creating a number triangle T in a manner analogous to that for producing Pascal’s arithmetic triangle; but all of its elements belong to {0, 1}, and cycling of its rows is involved in the creation. The method of construction of any one row of T from its preceding rows will be defined, and that, together with starting and boundary conditions, will suffice to define the whole triangle, by sequential continuation. We shall use this triangle in order to define the so-called cycle-numbers, which can be mapped to the natural numbers. T will be called the ‘cyclenumber triangle’. First we shall give some theorems about relationships between the cyclenumbers and the natural numbers, and discuss the cycling of patterns within the triangle’s rows and diagonals. We then begin a study of figures (i.e. (0,1)patterns, found on lines, triangles and squares, etc.) within T. In particular, we shall seek relationships which tell us something about the prime numbers. For our later studies, we turn the triangle onto its side and work with a doubly-infinite matrix C. We shall find that a great deal of cycling of figures occurs within T and C, and we exploit this fact whenever we can. The phenomenon of cycling patterns leads us to muse upon a ‘music of the integers’, indeed a ‘symphony of the integers’, being played out on the cycle-number triangle or on C. Like Pythagoras and his ‘music of the spheres’, we may well be the only persons capable of hearing it! Keywords: cycle-number triangle, cycle-number, prime cycle-number

Evaluating Sequence Discovery Systems in an Abstraction-aware Manner

Activity discovery is a challenging machine learning problem where we seek to uncover new or altered behavioural patterns in sensor data. In this paper we motivate and introduce a novel approach to evaluating activity discovery systems. Pre-annotated ground truths, often used to evaluate the performance of such systems on existing datasets, may exist at different levels of abstraction to the output of the output produced by the system. We propose a method for detecting and dealing with this situation, allowing for useful ground truth comparisons. This work has applications for activity discovery, and also for related fields. For example, it could be used to evaluate systems intended for anomaly detection, intrusion detection, automated music transcription and potentially other applications

Tackling the Interleaving Problem in Activity Discovery

Activity discovery (AD) is the unsupervised process of discovering activities in data produced from streaming sensor networks that are recording the actions of human subjects. One major challenge for AD systems is interleaving, the tendency for people to carry out multiple activities at a time a parallel. Following on from our previous work, we continue to investigate AD in interleaved datasets, with a view towards progressing the state-of-the-art for AD

Modelling Interleaved Activities using Language Models

We propose a new approach to activity discovery, based on the neural language modelling of streaming sensor events. Our approach proceeds in multiple stages: we build binary links between activities using probability distributions generated by a neural language model trained on the dataset, and combine the binary links to produce complex activities. We then use the activities as sensor events, allowing us to build complex hierarchies of activities. We put an emphasis on dealing with interleaving, which represents a major challenge for many existing activity discovery systems. The system is tested on a realistic dataset, demonstrating it as a promising solution to the activity discovery problem

End-functionalized glycopolymers as mimetics of chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans

Glycosaminoglycans are sulfated polysaccharides that play important roles in fundamental biological processes, such as cell division, viral invasion, cancer and neuroregeneration. The multivalent presentation of multiple glycosaminoglycan chains on proteoglycan scaffolds may profoundly influence their interactions with proteins and subsequent biological activity. However, the importance of this multivalent architecture remains largely unexplored, and few synthetic mimics exist for probing and manipulating glycosaminoglycan activity. Here, we describe a new class of end-functionalized ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) polymers that mimic the native-like, multivalent architecture found on chondroitin sulfate (CS) proteoglycans. We demonstrate that these glycopolymers can be readily integrated with microarray and surface plasmon resonance technology platforms, where they retain the ability to interact selectively with proteins. ROMP-based glycopolymers are part of a growing arsenal of chemical tools for probing the functions of glycosaminoglycans and for studying their interactions with proteins

The impact of spatial wind variations on freshwater transport by the Alaska Coastal Current

The Alaska Coastal Current (ACC) is located in a region with prevailing downwelling-favorable winds, flows over a long stretch of coastline (over 2000 km), and is driven by multiple sources of freshwater discharge totaling 24000 m3 s–1 along its length. Using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) we attempt to determine how spatially variable winds affect the downstream transport of freshwater along a long coastline with nearly continuous sources of freshwater. The model domain represents a fraction of the ACC region and periodic boundary conditions are applied to allow propagation of the buoyant flow from upstream. The model is forced by multiple freshwater sources in the central part of the domain and by both constant and spatially-varying, predominantly downwelling-favorable, winds. Freshwater flux gain in the coastal current (as opposed to spreading offshore) is calculated by taking a 30-day averaged difference between freshwater fluxes at the downstream and upstream edges of the buoyancy forcing region. Model runs are split into two categories: relatively high gains (50 – 60% of total discharge) were observed under moderate wind stress (∼0.05 Pa) or no wind conditions while lower gains (35– 45%) were observed under light average wind stresses (∼0.025 Pa), especially when wind varied alongshore. The offshore freshwater transport is eddy-driven and is enhanced in the areas of converging wind forcing. Eddy generation is associated with the wind-induced deepening of the buoyant layer near the coast. When the surface boundary layer is thin under light wind conditions, this deepening translates into enhanced vertical shear of the alongshore current through the thermal wind balance. Reversal of alongshore wind to upwelling-favorable wind effectively blocks the downstream freshwater transport and spreads the buoyant layer offshore