Laser-driven proton scaling laws and new paths towards energy increase

The past few years have seen remarkable progress in the development of laser-based particle accelerators. The ability to produce ultrabright beams of multi-megaelectronvolt protons routinely has many potential uses from engineering to medicine, but for this potential to be realized substantial improvements in the performances of these devices must be made. Here we show that in the laser-driven accelerator that has been demonstrated experimentally to produce the highest energy protons, scaling laws derived from fluid models and supported by numerical simulations can be used to accurately describe the acceleration of proton beams for a large range of laser and target parameters. This enables us to evaluate the laser parameters needed to produce high-energy and high-quality proton beams of interest for radiography of dense objects or proton therapy of deep-seated tumours.

Shaping the Future of Mental Health Policy and Legislation in Northern Ireland: The Impact of Service User and Professional Social Work Discourses

This paper explores the complex interrelationship between service user and professional social work discourses and provides a critical commentary on their respective contributions to the recent review of mental health policy and legislation in Northern Ireland. The analysis indicates that dominant trends in mental health care, as mediated through service structures and institutional identities, have tended to prioritize the more coercive aspects of the social work role and reinforce existing power inequalities with service users. It is argued that such developments underline the need for a ‘refocusing’ debate in mental health social work to consider how a more appropriate balance can be achieved between its participatory/empowering and regulatory/coercive functions. Whilst highlighting both congruence and dissonance between respective discourses, the paper concludes that opportunities exist within the current change process for service users and social workers to build closer alliances in working together to reconstruct practice, safeguard human rights and develop innovative alternatives to a traditional bio-medical model of treatment.

Area laws and entanglement distillability of thermal states

We study the entanglement distillability properties of thermal states of many-body systems Following the ideas presented in [6, A Ferraro et al., Phys. Rev Lett 100, 080502 (2008)], we first discuss the appearance of bound entanglement in those systems satisfying an entanglement area law Then, we extend these results to other topologies, not necessarily satisfying an entanglement area law We also study whether bound entanglement survives in the macroscopic limit of an infinite number of particles.

Massive MIMO with Non-Ideal Arbitrary Arrays: Hardware Scaling Laws and Circuit-Aware Design

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are cellular networks where the base stations (BSs) are equipped with unconventionally many antennas, deployed on colocated or distributed arrays. Huge spatial degrees-of-freedom are achieved by coherent processing over these massive arrays, which provide strong signal gains, resilience to imperfect channel knowledge, and low interference. This comes at the price of more infrastructure; the hardware cost and circuit power consumption scale linearly/affinely with the number of BS antennas N. Hence, the key to cost-efficient deployment of large arrays is low-cost antenna branches with low circuit power, in contrast to today’s conventional expensive and power-hungry BS antenna branches. Such low-cost transceivers are prone to hardware imperfections, but it has been conjectured that the huge degrees-of-freedom would bring robustness to such imperfections. We prove this claim for a generalized uplink system with multiplicative phasedrifts, additive distortion noise, and noise amplification. Specifically, we derive closed-form expressions for the user rates and a scaling law that shows how fast the hardware imperfections can increase with N while maintaining high rates. The connection between this scaling law and the power consumption of different transceiver circuits is rigorously exemplified. This reveals that one can make the circuit power increase as p N, instead of linearly, by careful circuit-aware system design.

Effects of KCl concentration on accumulation of acyclic sugar alcohols and trehalose in conidia of three entomopathogenic fungi

Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae and Paecilomyces farinosus were grown on Sabouraud Dextrose Agar (SDA) modified with KCl to give a range of water activity (a(w)) from 0.938 to 0.998. Growth of all three species was optimal at 0.983 a(w) and growth occurred over the a(w) range tested. Acyclic sugar alcohol (polyol) and trehalose content of conidia was determined by HPLC and found to vary with species and a(w). Conidia of B. bassiana and P. farinosus were found to contain totals of 1.5% and 2.3% polyols respectively at 0.998 a(w), and double these amounts at <0.950 a(w). Conidia of M. anisopliae contained from 5.7% to 6.8% polyols at each a(w) tested. In conidia of all three species the predominant polyol was mannitol. The lower molecular weight polyols, arabitol and erythritol, were found to accumulate at reduced a(w). Small amounts of glycerol were present in conidia of each species; <15% total polyols. Conidia of B. bassiana and M. anisopliae contained about 0.5% trehalose from 0.970 to 0.998 a(w), but only trace amounts below 0.950 a(w). Conidia of P. farinosus contained 2.1% trehalose at 0.998 a(w) and this decreased to <0.1% below 0.950 a(w). Potential to manipulate the endogenous reserves of conidia of these biological control agents to enhance viability and desiccation tolerance is discussed.

Changing policy and legislation in special and inclusive education: a perspective from Northern Ireland

It is now 15 years since the signing of the 1998 Belfast (or ‘Good Friday’) Peace Agreement which committed all participants to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving differences, and towards a shared and inclusive society defined by the principles of respect for diversity, equality and the interdependence of people. In particular, it committed participants to the protection and vindication of the human rights of all. This is, therefore, a precipitous time to undertake a probing analysis of educational reforms in Northern Ireland associated with provision in the areas of inclusion and special needs education. Consequently, by drawing upon analytical tools and perspectives derived from critical policy analysis, this article, by Ron Smith from the School of Education, Queen’s University Belfast, discusses the policy cycle associated with the proposed legislation entitled Every School a Good School: the way forward for special educational needs and inclusion. It examines how this policy text structures key concepts such as ‘inclusion’, ‘additional educational needs’ and ‘barriers to learning’, and how the proposals attempt to resolve the dilemma of commonality and difference. Conceived under direct rule from Westminster (April 2006), issued for consultation when devolved powers to a Northern Ireland Assembly had been restored, and with the final proposals yet to be made public, this targeted educational strategy tells a fascinating story of the past, present and likely future of special needs education in Northern Ireland. Before offering an account of this work, it is placed within some broader ecological frameworks.

Terrorism Laws and Legal Accountability

This chapter explores the extent to which courts can contribute to the countering of terrorism. It suggests that the contribution will depend on the type of actor the courts are attempting to hold to account as well as on the powers that are conferred on courts by national and international legal regimes. It concludes that courts are most legitimate and effective in relation to terrorist suspects and law enforcers, but less so in relation to counter-terrorism operatives and law-makers.

Agitating for a design and regeneration agenda in a postconflict city: the case of Belfast

Introduction

Belfast has been a focus of academic attention for the last forty years with most interest centred on various aspects of ‘the Troubles’. Where there has been interest in the built environment, it has largely been about how the ‘security situation’ impacted directly on architecture and on the design and layout of social housing. This paper seeks to go beyond this to explore how the political- administrative culture of ‘the Troubles’ interacted with ‘normal’ market forces to shape the central area of the city, and to consider the responses of a recently formed activist group, known as the Forum for Alternative Belfast (hereafter referred to as the Forum). The paper is written by three of the directors of the Forum.1 Moreover, the empirical research presented here was undertaken by the Forum as part of a campaign to address issues relating to the design, layout and quality of Belfast’s built environment. In the longstanding tradition of participant observation working within an action-research paradigm, the participants have attempted to offer an account that is evidentially and purposefully selfcritical and reflective. It is of course recognised that while this approach offers many positive attributes, such as phenomenological access through immersion in the project, it also has the potential to bring compromise on research detachment and objectivity.2 To address the latter, the authors have attempted
to avoid polemical argument, and to support claims with primary or secondary research evidence. The authors also acknowledge that action-research has a chequered history; however, they would argue
that their approach is faithful to a concept that sees ‘research’ defined as understanding and ‘action’ defined as seeking change. The Forum’s very purpose is to seek change, but to do this requires evidence, collaboration and demonstration. And in this sense, it is a learning process for all participants, including the research activists, government officials, community organisations and students. The authors also recognise the complexity of factors that affect urban management and change, particularly in a city such as Belfast, which has had to cope with political violence for over thirty years. And they appreciate that in the context of conflict, governance is skewed to cope with political realities. Hamdi reminds us, however, that in practice there is an ‘important dialectic between top-down planning, with its formal and designed laws and structures, and bottom-up selforganizing collectivism—those “quantum and emergent systems” which Jane Jacobs argued long ago give cities their life and order.’3

Modulated wave packets and envelope solitary structures in complex plasmas

A theoretical study is presented of the nonlinear amplitude modulation of waves propagating in unmagnetized plasmas contaminated by charged dust particles. Distinct well-known dusty plasma modes are explicitly considered, namely, the dust-acoustic wave, the dust-ion acoustic wave, and transverse dust-lattice waves. Using a multiple-scale technique, a nonlinear Schrodinger-type equation is derived, describing the evolution of the wave amplitude. A stability analysis reveals the possibility for modulational instability to occur, possibly leading to the formation of different types of envelope-localized excitations (solitary waves), under conditions which depend on the wave dispersion laws and intrinsic dusty plasma parameters.

Structural and Molecular Biology of Type I Galactosemia: Disease-associated Mutations

Type I galactosemia results from reduced galactose 1-phosphate uridylyltransferase (GALT) activity. Signs of disease include damage to the eyes, brain, liver, and ovaries. However, the exact nature and severity of the pathology depends on the mutation(s) in the patient's genes and his/her environment. Considerable enzymological and structural knowledge has been accumulated and this provides a basis to explain, at a biochemical level, impairment in the enzyme in the more than 230 disease-associated variants, which have been described. The most common variant, Q188R, occurs close to the active site and the dimer interface. The substitution probably disrupts both UDP-sugar binding and homodimer stability. Other alterations, for example K285N, occur close to the surface of the enzyme and most likely affect the folding and stability of the enzyme. There are a number of unanswered questions in the field, which require resolution. These include the possibility that the main enzymes of galactose metabolism form a supramolecular complex and the need for a high resolution crystal structure of human GALT. (C) 2011 IUBMB IUBMB Life, 63(11): 949-954, 2011

Reconceptualising Penality: A comparative perspective on punitiveness in Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand

Drastic increases in the use of imprisonment; the introduction of ‘three strikes’ laws and mandatory sentences; restrictions on parole - all of these developments appear to signify a new, harsher era or ‘punitive turn’. Yet these features of criminal justice are not universally present in all Western countries. Drawing on empirical data, Hamilton examines the prevalence of harsher penal policies in Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand, thereby demonstrating the utility of viewing criminal justice from the perspective of smaller jurisdictions.

This highly innovative book is thoroughly critical of the way in which punitiveness is currently measured by leading criminologists. It is essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, penology, criminal justice and socio-legal studies, as well as criminal lawyers and practitioners.