GEOCHEMICAL CYCLES OF THE ATMOPHILE ELEMENTS ARSENIC AND ANTIMONY

Atmospheric aerosol samples from coastal and open ocean environments in the North Atlantic were analysed for the atmophile elements arsenic and antimony, and for the marine tracers sodium and magnesium. The aerosol concentrations of sodium and magnesium were similar in both environments, about 2000 ng Na (SCM)ˉ¹ and 320 ng Mg (SCM)ˉ¹. The atmophiles were more concentrated in the coastal aerosol, 0.67 ng As(SCM)ˉ¹ and 0.32 ng Sb (SCM)ˉ¹, than in the open ocean aerosol, 0.07 ng As (SCM)ˉ¹ and 0.086 ng Sb (SCM)ˉ¹, and as continental particles were only observed in the coastal aerosol, this indicates that arsenic and antimony in the marine aerosol are of continental origin. Total deposition fluxes to the North Atlantic were about 1.4 kt yrˉ¹for arsenic and antimony, and about 12 t As yrˉ¹ and 5 t Sb yrˉ¹to the dissolved phase of the English Channel. Coastal deposition was higher than the dissolved element fluxes from the River Tamar. From the above data, steady state models of the arsenic cycle were developed, and an anthropogenic perturbation rate was calibrated for kinetic analysis, to define the most sensitive areas of the geochemical cycle. Air-sea exchange exerts a major control on the atmospheric transport of pollutant arsenic to the sea, variations in river flow exert a minor influence. The major unknown factor in the biogeochemistry of arsenic is the size of the reservoir for low temperature anthropogenic mobilisation, as this has a larger long term effect than industrial pollutant input. Low temperature mobilisation may lead to a serious increase in the atmospheric arsenic burden. The modelling technique was extended to quantify a novel tentative model for antimony, which was subject to limited examination by kinetic analysis. Again, air-sea exchange exerts a major influence on the atmospheric transport of pollutant antimony to the oceans, although river flow exerts a larger influence than for arsenic. Low temperature mobilisation may be even more significant for antimony than for arsenic.School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, East Angli

The impact of accounting disturbances on organizational micro-practices in the schools’ sector in England

Purpose – This paper considers the nature and effect of accounting disturbances on organizational micro-practices in three secondary schools in England. A close application of a developed model of Habermasian colonization provides a framing for both the ways in which accounting is implicated in organizational change and the effect of accounting disturbances on organizational micro-practices. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative field studies at three secondary schools were used to gather empirical detail in the form of interview data and documentary evidence. A total of 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers and bursars. Findings – Accounting disturbances that were constitutive-transactional in nature had the greatest influence on organizational micro-practices. Behavioural responses to accounting disturbances can be organizationally ambiguous, subtle and subject to change over time. Research limitation/implications – More field studies are needed and there is scope to develop a longitudinal perspective to better understand the impact of accounting disturbances over time. Originality/value – By framing the processes of accounting change using a developed model of Habermasian colonization, contributions are provided by illuminating aspects of both the processes of accounting colonization and the impact of accounting on organizational micropractices. The findings also add to prior appreciations of reciprocal colonization, creative transformation of accounting disturbances and how accounting can be enabling

Quantifying the implicit process flow abstraction in SBGN-PD diagrams with Bio-PEPA

For a long time biologists have used visual representations of biochemical networks to gain a quick overview of important structural properties. Recently SBGN, the Systems Biology Graphical Notation, has been developed to standardise the way in which such graphical maps are drawn in order to facilitate the exchange of information. Its qualitative Process Diagrams (SBGN-PD) are based on an implicit Process Flow Abstraction (PFA) that can also be used to construct quantitative representations, which can be used for automated analyses of the system. Here we explicitly describe the PFA that underpins SBGN-PD and define attributes for SBGN-PD glyphs that make it possible to capture the quantitative details of a biochemical reaction network. We implemented SBGNtext2BioPEPA, a tool that demonstrates how such quantitative details can be used to automatically generate working Bio-PEPA code from a textual representation of SBGN-PD that we developed. Bio-PEPA is a process algebra that was designed for implementing quantitative models of concurrent biochemical reaction systems. We use this approach to compute the expected delay between input and output using deterministic and stochastic simulations of the MAPK signal transduction cascade. The scheme developed here is general and can be easily adapted to other output formalisms

NaviCell: a web-based environment for navigation, curation and maintenance of large molecular interaction maps

Molecular biology knowledge can be systematically represented in a computer-readable form as a comprehensive map of molecular interactions. There exist a number of maps of molecular interactions containing detailed description of various cell mechanisms. It is difficult to explore these large maps, to comment their content and to maintain them. Though there exist several tools addressing these problems individually, the scientific community still lacks an environment that combines these three capabilities together. NaviCell is a web-based environment for exploiting large maps of molecular interactions, created in CellDesigner, allowing their easy exploration, curation and maintenance. NaviCell combines three features: (1) efficient map browsing based on Google Maps engine; (2) semantic zooming for viewing different levels of details or of abstraction of the map and (3) integrated web-based blog for collecting the community feedback. NaviCell can be easily used by experts in the field of molecular biology for studying molecular entities of their interest in the context of signaling pathways and cross-talks between pathways within a global signaling network. NaviCell allows both exploration of detailed molecular mechanisms represented on the map and a more abstract view of the map up to a top-level modular representation. NaviCell facilitates curation, maintenance and updating the comprehensive maps of molecular interactions in an interactive fashion due to an imbedded blogging system. NaviCell provides an easy way to explore large-scale maps of molecular interactions, thanks to the Google Maps and WordPress interfaces, already familiar to many users. Semantic zooming used for navigating geographical maps is adopted for molecular maps in NaviCell, making any level of visualization meaningful to the user. In addition, NaviCell provides a framework for community-based map curation.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, submitte

Correction: A simple method for analyzing data from a randomized trial with a missing binary outcome

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'Thy Native Muse Regard!': The poetics of the sublime in late eighteenth-century Scotland

The aim of this thesis is to uncover the transmission and development of the sublime throughout the work of the late eighteenth-century Scottish poets, James Macpherson, James Beattie, and Robert Burns. By first offering a modern definition of the sublime based on the meeting of the world, the mind, and the word, this thesis shall look to the sublime's idealisation within eighteenth-century British aesthetic thought, noting its contested, and abstract conceptualisation as 'the true sublime'. Chapter One shall be dedicated to acknowledging Scotland's role in shaping this aesthetic before addressing the problematic nature of the aesthetic ideal of a 'true sublime'. The argument shall then be made that following Edmund Burke's landmark treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which successfully offered the late eighteenth-century a clear taxonomy of the sublime with poetry as its highest expression, the subsequent poetry of Macpherson, Beattie, and Burns actualised this philosophical ideal of a 'true sublime' into a working, and examinable practice, a poetics of the sublime. Chapter Two shall discuss the rise of the 'Ossian phenomenon' of the 1760s, with constructive analysis of Macpherson's three sets of Ossian poems: Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760), Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books (1761), and Temora: An Epic Poem in Eight Books. By discussing the development of the poetics of the sublime throughout each set of poems, this thesis shall contend that Ossian marks a pivotal moment in literary history for successfully realising the eighteenth-century's theory of the sublime through its poetic coordination of the classical models of the fragment and the epic paired with its decisively Scottish aspect in imagery and character. Chapter Three shall turn to the proceeding decade and the philosophy and poetry of James Beattie. The chapter shall acknowledge Beattie's position within the philosophical discourses of Marischal college during the Aberdonian Enlightenment before suggesting that his influential poem, The Minstrel (1771, 1774) presents a more substantial model of the sublime than found in such abstract discourses. The chapter shall note the progression in form from Macpherson whilst noting a similar engagement with the Scottish landscapes that inspire the texts. Central to this discussion of Beattie's Minstrel, will be his induction of the 'sublime moment', a crucial development for the poetics of the sublime centred on the subjective and creative experience of the poet. Chapter Four shall examine the work of Scotland's national bard, Robert Burns. In light of such developments from Macpherson and Beattie, this chapter shall note Burns’s position as inheritor of a poetics of the sublime that had been familiarised through its allegiance to the sublimity of Scotland and Scottish poesy. This chapter shall then examine Burns's role as innovator, with his characteristic use of form, language, and a pervading spirit of localism from which he achieves a distinct new 'Vision' of the sublime. The final chapter shall offer a summary of the progression of the poetics of the sublime throughout the work of Macpherson, Beattie, and Burns, whilst looking ahead to the Romantic period and the influential stature of each of these late eighteenth-century Scottish poets and their respective legacies