I, Daniel Blake (2016): vulnerability, care and citizenship in austerity politics

This article offers a reading of Ken Loach’s 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, a fictionalised account of experiences of the UK welfare system in conditions of austerity. We consider, firstly, the significant challenge the film poses to dominant figurations of welfare recipients under austerity, through a focus on vulnerability to state processes. We follow with a reading of some of the film’s interventions in relation to reciprocity, drawing on the important trajectories of care, community and resistance that the film renders visible through the collective stories of the major characters. Finally, we conclude with reflections on citizenship, subject narratives and alternative imaginaries of ‘deservingness’. Our article offers an ‘against the grain’ reading (hooks, 1996; Wearing, 2013) of the film, highlighting some of the radical possibilities of the more minor moments, character arcs and subject positionalities within the film’s central narrative of Daniel’s experiences in the shadow of the steadily crumbling welfare state

Teaching to resistance and refusal: feminist pedagogical engagements in the UK Higher Education classroom

Critical feminist pedagogies have sought to emphasise the productive capacity of emotion in the classroom—from joy and curiosity to anger, discomfort, and guilt—alongside positioning refusal and resistance as necessary aspects of transformative learning and social justice. In this article, we offer speculative reflections on moments of classroom resistance and refusal within the limits of the broader institutional life of UK Higher Education (HE). Using an anecdotal method, we discuss the complexity of defining, knowing and assessing the meaning—let alone the productivity—of student resistance and refusal. Our reflections point towards the limiting effects of institutional practices on effective and inclusive teaching in the increasingly precarious UK HE context

Ocean shrimp report 1979 season

Statewide Pacific ocean shrimp, Pandalus jordani, landings totaled 2,237.7 mt (4,922,857 lb), down 3,745 mt (8,240,386 lb) from the 1978 catch of 5,983.3 mt (13,163,243 lb). The 1979 landings are the lowest since 1976 when 1,545.5 mt (3,400,191 lb) were landed. Area A (Eureka-Crescent City)landings dropped to 1,842.5 mt (4,053,605 lb) from 5,046.3 mt (11,101,895 lb) landed during the previous season. No landings were made in Area B-1 (Fort Bragg). Only 2.0 mt (4,385 lb) were reported caught in Area B-2 (Bodega Bay). Record landings of 393.1 mt (864,867 lb) were made in Area C (Morro Bay-Avila), surpassing the previous record of 90.4 mt (199,000 lb) landed in 1953. In Area A a record 71 vessels, 34 double-rigged and 37 single-rigged, shrimped during the season. Average catch per hour was a low .15 mt (338 lb) and .22 mt (490 1b) for single-rig and double-rig vessels, respectively. In Area C average catch per hour was .23 mt (508 lb) and .42 mt (924 lb) for single-rig and double-rig vessels, respectively. Area A shrimp catches were dominated by 1-year-old shrimp throughout most of the season. The age composition in Area C shifted predominately from 2-year-old shrimp in May and June to predominately 1-year-old shrimp in July, August, October, and November. Area A was closed for one month from July 15 to August 15 because closure criteria of less than .16 mt (350 lb) per hour for two consecutive weeks was met and year class composition exceeded 70% of 1-year-old shrimp. The season was closed October 14 when the catch per hour criterion was exceeded again. (18pp.

Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes

Males and females are a fundamental aspect of human reproduction, yet procreation is perfectly possible without this division into two sexes. Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm), implying that the male and female sexes only exist in species with gamete dimorphism (anisogamy). Our ancestors were isogamous, meaning that only one gamete size was produced. The question of the evolutionary origin of males and females is then synonymous to asking what evolutionary pressures caused gamete sizes to diverge. Studying the ancestral evolutionary divergence of males and females relies largely on mathematical modelling. Here, we review two classes of models explaining the evolutionary origin of males and females: gamete competition and gamete limitation. These seemingly alternative explanations are not mutually exclusive, but two aspects of a single evolutionary process. Once evolved, anisogamy and the two sexes are evolutionarily very stable. This explains the maintenance of anisogamy in organisms with internal fertilization, which can cause large decreases in both gamete competition and gamete limitation. The ancestral divergence and maintenance of gamete sizes subsequently led to many other differences we now observe between the two sexes, sowing the seeds for what we have becom

On the homomorphism order of labeled posets

Partially ordered sets labeled with k labels (k-posets) and their homomorphisms are examined. We give a representation of directed graphs by k-posets; this provides a new proof of the universality of the homomorphism order of k-posets. This universal order is a distributive lattice. We investigate some other properties, namely the infinite distributivity, the computation of infinite suprema and infima, and the complexity of certain decision problems involving the homomorphism order of k-posets. Sublattices are also examined.Comment: 14 page

Clones with finitely many relative R-classes

For each clone C on a set A there is an associated equivalence relation analogous to Green's R-relation, which relates two operations on A iff each one is a substitution instance of the other using operations from C. We study the clones for which there are only finitely many relative R-classes.Comment: 41 pages; proofs improved, examples adde

Pedagogies of inclusion: a critical exploration of small-group teaching practice in higher education

This paper provides a critical examination of inclusion as a pedagogic principle through a practice-based interrogation of contemporary ‘good practice’ strategies for encouraging inclusion in small-group teaching. It reflects on our experiences of delivering four classroom exercises that are frequently proposed as strategies for increasing inclusion, and borrows insight from critical intersectional feminist pedagogy to interrogate normative discourses of inclusion in HE. We argue that both the terms of inclusion, and the assumption that (verbal) participation is itself a measure of improving inclusion in classroom spaces, require interrogation. This article thus responds to the proliferation of inclusion discourses in contemporary UK HE, by identifying some of the potential pitfalls of measuring inclusion through the limited scope of participatio

Large deviations for a damped telegraph process

In this paper we consider a slight generalization of the damped telegraph process in Di Crescenzo and Martinucci (2010). We prove a large deviation principle for this process and an asymptotic result for its level crossing probabilities (as the level goes to infinity). Finally we compare our results with the analogous well-known results for the standard telegraph process

Additive decomposability of functions over abelian groups

Abelian groups are classified by the existence of certain additive decompositions of group-valued functions of several variables with arity gap 2.Comment: 17 page

Freire re-viewed

The work of Paulo Freire is associated with themes of oppression and liberation, and his critical pedagogy is visionary in its attempts to bring about social transformation. Freire has created a theory of education that embeds these issues within social relations that center around both ideological and material domination. In this review essay, Sue Jackson explores three books: Freire’s final work Pedagogy of Indignation; Cesar Augusto Rossatto’s Engaging Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Possibility, which attempts to engage Freire’s pedagogy of possibility; and C.A. Bowers and Frederique Apffel-Marglin’s edited collection Re-thinking Freire, which asks readers to reconsider Freire’s work in light of globalization and environmental crises. Jackson questions the extent to which Freire’s pedagogical approaches are useful to educators as well as to “the oppressed,” and whether challenges to re-think Freire can lead to new kinds of critical pedagogies