‘A devotion to the experimental sciences and arts’: the subscription to the great battery at the Royal Institution 1808–9

A significant but neglected theme in the history of British science in the nineteenth century is the funding of institutional research. The subscription to the ‘great battery’ at the Royal Institution in 1808 and 1809 provides the first instance of named individuals prepared to commit themselves to the provision of apparatus to be used for research in the new field of electrochemistry. This paper analyses the subscribers who were deemed to be ‘enlightened’ and whom Humphry Davy subsequently described as ‘a few zealous cultivators and patrons of science’. Using information from the subscription list, a distinction is made between the individual subscriptions pledged and the sums actually paid. In contextualizing the subscription, insights are provided into the Royal Society, the contemporary scientific community and the politics of metropolitan science. The voltaic subscription represents an early example of the repercussions of the nature of research funding for institutional finances and governance

The professionalism of the higher education teacher: what's ICT got to do with it?

HE professionals generally work in an ICT rich environment. There are expectations that the existence of ICT benefits them, their students and the overall learning environment. This paper investigates and debates the complex interplay between two aspects of HE that have witnessed rapid change: the HE teacher’s professional role and the use of ICTs for teaching and learning. This paper reviews writing, research and theory in these areas and draws out key themes. A Masters course run at the Institute of Education, University of London is used as a practical context to evaluate aspects of this debate and assess their contemporary relevance. It establishes the importance of professional learning communities that include ICT ‘enthusiasts’ and an integrated pedagogic approach to ICTs. The paper suggests these factors can be key in enhancing the capacity of the HE teacher to engage positively, collaboratively and critically with the growth of learning technologies

Towards Cogenesis via Asymmetric Freeze-in: The χ\chi Who Came-in from the Cold

In models of freeze-in the dark matter (DM) is decoupled from the visible sector and initially has a depleted number density. The hidden and visible sectors are connected only via a feeble portal interaction by which DM can be produced. Asymmetric freeze-in (AFI) combines this scenario with ideas from asymmetric DM and provides a potential cogenesis mechanism. However, it has been argued that existing AFI models do not produce suitably large particle asymmetries due to cancellations which arises because the mediator state remains in thermal equilibrium. We examine AFI via an out-of-equilibrium mediator and using a simple scalar model show that in this case sizeable asymmetries may be generated.Comment: 18 page

Why do colours look the way they do?

A major part of the mind–body problem is to explain why a given set of physical processes should give rise to perceptual qualities of one sort rather than another. Colour hues are the usual example considered here, and there is a lively debate as to whether the results of colour vision science can provide convincing explanations of why colours actually look the way they do. The internal phenomenological structure of colours is considered here in some detail, and a comparison is drawn with sounds and their synthesis. This paper examines the type of explanation that is needed, and it is concluded that it does not have to be reductive to be effective. What needs to be explained more than anything is why inverted hue scenarios are more intuitive than other sensory inversions: and the issue of physicalism versus dualism is argued to be of only marginal relevance

Precision Unification and Proton Decay in F-Theory GUTs with High Scale Supersymmetry

F-theory GUTs provide a promising UV completion for models with approximate gauge coupling unification, such as the (non-supersymmetric) Standard Model. More specifically, if the superparters have masses well above the TeV scale, the resulting imperfection in unification can be accounted for by the, in principle calculable, classical F-theory correction at the high scale. In this paper we argue for the correct form of the F-theory corrections to unification, including KK mode loop effects. However, the price of compensating the imprecise unification in such High Scale SUSY models with F-theory corrections is that the GUT scale is lowered, potentially leading to a dangerously high proton decay rate from dimension-6 operators. We analyse the possibility of suppressing the decay rate by the localization of $X,Y$ gauge bosons in higher dimensions. While this effect can be very strong for the zero modes, we find that in the simplest models of this type it is difficult to realize a significant suppression for higher modes (Landau levels). Notably, in the absence of substantial suppressions to the proton decay rate, the superpartners must be lighter than 100 TeV to satisfy proton decay constraints. We highlight that multiple correlated signals of proton decay could verify this scenario.Comment: 44 pages. v2: References adde