A commentary on climate change, stone decay dynamics and the ‘greening’ of natural stone buildings: new perspectives on ‘deep wetting’

Environmental controls on stone decay processes are rapidly changing as a result of changing climate. UKCP09 projections for the 2020s (2010–2039) indicate that over much of the UK seasonality of precipitation will increase. Summer dryness and winter wetness are both set to increase, the latter linked to projected precipitation increases in autumn and spring months. If so, this could increase the time that stone structures remain wet and possibly the depth of moisture penetration, and it appears that building stone in Northern Ireland has already responded through an increased incidence of algal ‘greening’.This paper highlights the need for understanding the effects of climate change through a series of studies of largely sandstone structures. Current and projected climatic trends are therefore considered to have aesthetic, physical and chemical implications that are not currently built into our models of sandstone decay, especially with respect to the role played by deep-seated wetness on sandstone deterioration and decay progression and the feedbacks associated with, for example surface algal growth. In particular,it is proposed that algal biofilms will aid moisture retention and further facilitate moisture and dissolved salt penetration to depth. Thus, whilst the outer surface of stone may continue to experience frequent wetting and drying associated with individual precipitation events, the latter is less likely to be complete, and the interiors of building blocks may only experience wetting/drying in response to seasonal cycling. A possible consequence of deeper salt penetration could be a delay in the onset of surface deterioration,but more rapid and effective retreat once it commences as decay mechanisms ‘tap into a reservoir of deep salt’.

Exploring the impact of institutional and organizational factors on the reaction of MNCs to the global financial crisis

This paper analyses some of the factors that impact multinational companies' (MNCs) reaction to the global financial crisis. This paper reports the results from a large-scale study of its impact on MNCs in Australia, considering occurrences of site closures, offshoring, outsourcing, labour force reductions, reductions in working hours, salary reductions, and reductions in training and travel. Evidence showed that MNC reactions varied according to certain institutional and organizational effects. For example, MNCs originating from liberal-market economies are more likely to have offshored and outsourced production and reduced employment. The implications for understanding of MNC behaviour are discussed. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Explaining the Coexistence of Large-scale and Small-scale Magnetic Fields in Fully Convective Stars

Despite the lack of a shear-rich tachocline region, low-mass fully convective (FC) stars are capable of generating strong magnetic fields, indicating that a dynamo mechanism fundamentally different from the solar dynamo is at work in these objects. We present a self-consistent three-dimensional model of magnetic field generation in low-mass FC stars. The model utilizes the anelastic magnetohydrodynamic equations to simulate compressible convection in a rotating sphere. A distributed dynamo working in the model spontaneously produces a dipole-dominated surface magnetic field of the observed strength. The interaction of this field with the turbulent convection in outer layers shreds it, producing small-scale fields that carry most of the magnetic flux. The Zeeman–Doppler-Imaging technique applied to synthetic spectropolarimetric data based on our model recovers most of the large-scale field. Our model simultaneously reproduces the morphology and magnitude of the large-scale field as well as the magnitude of the small-scale field observed on low-mass FC stars.

Liberty and individuality: the colony asylum in Scotland and England

This paper analyses the buildings, spaces and interiors of Bangour Village public asylum for the insane, near Edinburgh, and compares these with an English asylum, Whalley, near Preston, of similar early-twentieth-century date. The village asylum, which developed from a European tradition of rendering the poor productive through ‘colonisation’, was more enthusiastically and completely adopted in Scotland than in England, perhaps due to differences in asylum culture within the two jurisdictions. ‘Liberty’ and ‘individuality’, in particular, were highly valued within Scottish asylum discourses, arguably shaping material provision for the insane poor from the scale of the buildings to the quality of the furnishings. The English example shows, by contrast, a greater concern with security and hygiene. These two differing interpretations show a degree of flexibility within the internationalized asylum model which is seldom recognized in the literature.