Explain death to very young children

Solo exhibition of 22 paintings at Outpost gallery, Norwich. And launch of Issue Four: Negative Space (2010) by John Russell – limited edition letterpress print published by Stone Canyon Nocturne Press.

Choices, chance and change: luck egalitarianism over time

The family of theories dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism’ represent an attempt to infuse egalitarian thinking with a concern for personal responsibility, arguing that inequalities are just when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, choice, but are unjust when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, luck. In this essay I argue that luck egalitarians should sometimes seek to limit inequalities, even when they have a fully choice-based pedigree (i.e., result only from the choices of agents). I grant that the broad approach is correct but argue that the temporal standpoint from which we judge whether the person can be held responsible, or the extent to which they can be held responsible, should be radically altered. Instead of asking, as Standard (or Static) Luck Egalitarianism seems to, whether or not, or to what extent, a person was responsible for the choice at the time of choosing, and asking the question of responsibility only once, we should ask whether, or to what extent, they are responsible for the choice at the point at which we are seeking to discover whether, or to what extent, the inequality is just, and so the question of responsibility is not settled but constantly under review. Such an approach will differ from Standard Luck Egalitarianism only if responsibility for a choice is not set in stone – if responsibility can weaken then we should not see the boundary between luck and responsibility within a particular action as static. Drawing on Derek Parfit’s illuminating discussions of personal identity, and contemporary literature on moral responsibility, I suggest there are good reasons to think that responsibility can weaken – that we are not necessarily fully responsible for a choice for ever, even if we were fully responsible at the time of choosing. I call the variant of luck egalitarianism that recognises this shift in temporal standpoint and that responsibility can weaken Dynamic Luck Egalitarianism (DLE). In conclusion I offer a preliminary discussion of what kind of policies DLE would support.

An 11,600 year old communal structure from the Neolithic of southern Jordan

The authors present a new type of communal and monumental structure from the earliest Neolithic in western Asia. A complement to the decorated stone pillars erected at Göbekli Tepe in the north, ‘Wadi Faynan 16 Structure O75’ in the southern Levant is a ritualised gathering place of a different kind. It serves to define wider western Asia as an arena of social experiment in the tenth millennium BC, one in which community seems to take precedence over economy.

Cnoc Coig: a Mesolithic shell midden assemblage

Recent work on a sample of the chipped stone from one of the late Mesolithic shell midden sites on the Inner Hebrides island of Oronsay has shown that the assemblage was created using bipolar and platform technologies, with an unexpected element of narrow blade technology shown in cores and core trimming elements, suggesting that there may have been links between this classic ‘Obanian’ assemblage and the more typical Mesolithic narrow blade technology. Findings raise questions about the relationship of settlement on the island to Mesolithic settlement rounds and to the transition to the Neolithic.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000

Interest in attributing the risk of damaging weather-related events to anthropogenic climate change is increasing1. Yet climate models used to study the attribution problem typically do not resolve the weather systems associated with damaging events2 such as the UK floods of October and November 2000. Occurring during the wettest autumn in England and Wales since records began in 17663, 4, these floods damaged nearly 10,000 properties across that region, disrupted services severely, and caused insured losses estimated at £1.3 billion (refs 5, 6). Although the flooding was deemed a ‘wake-up call’ to the impacts of climate change at the time7, such claims are typically supported only by general thermodynamic arguments that suggest increased extreme precipitation under global warming, but fail8, 9 to account fully for the complex hydrometeorology4, 10 associated with flooding. Here we present a multi-step, physically based ‘probabilistic event attribution’ framework showing that it is very likely that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence in England and Wales in autumn 2000. Using publicly volunteered distributed computing11, 12, we generate several thousand seasonal-forecast-resolution climate model simulations of autumn 2000 weather, both under realistic conditions, and under conditions as they might have been had these greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting large-scale warming never occurred. Results are fed into a precipitation-runoff model that is used to simulate severe daily river runoff events in England and Wales (proxy indicators of flood events). The precise magnitude of the anthropogenic contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.

Detection and attribution of climate change: a regional perspective

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report, published in 2007 came to a more confident assessment of the causes of global temperature change than previous reports and concluded that ‘it is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica.’ Since then, warming over Antarctica has also been attributed to human influence, and further evidence has accumulated attributing a much wider range of climate changes to human activities. Such changes are broadly consistent with theoretical understanding, and climate model simulations, of how the planet is expected to respond. This paper reviews this evidence from a regional perspective to reflect a growing interest in understanding the regional effects of climate change, which can differ markedly across the globe. We set out the methodological basis for detection and attribution and discuss the spatial scales on which it is possible to make robust attribution statements. We review the evidence showing significant human-induced changes in regional temperatures, and for the effects of external forcings on changes in the hydrological cycle, the cryosphere, circulation changes, oceanic changes, and changes in extremes. We then discuss future challenges for the science of attribution. To better assess the pace of change, and to understand more about the regional changes to which societies need to adapt, we will need to refine our understanding of the effects of external forcing and internal variability

The multiple antibiotic resistance (mar) locus and its significance

Chromosomally encoded systems involved in low level resistance of bacteria to different classes of antibiotics (mainly beta-lactams, chloramphenicol, quinolones and tetracycline), disinfectants and in resistance to organic solvents have been the focus of considerable interest in recent years. The multiple antibiotic resistance (mar) locus of Escherichia coli and Salmonella is perhaps the best described system involved in this type of resistance which is induced by MarA, the activator protein encoded by the marRAB locus. The mar-locus is reported to mediate resistance primarily by up-regulating efflux of some antibiotics, disinfectants and organic solvents via the AcrAB-TolC efflux pump and down regulating influx through Outer Membrane Protein F (OmpF). Whilst the level of antibiotic resistance conferred by marRAB is only low level, there are increasing data to suggest that marRAB and related systems are important in clinical antibiotic resistance, possibly as a 'stepping stone' to higher levels of resistance. Other related systems include up-regulation of RobA, SoxS and AcrAB which give rise to a similar resistance phenotype to that conferred by up-regulation of MarA. The aim of this paper is to review the function and significance of the mar-locus and related systems with a particular focus on its implications in veterinary medicine. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

Threats to an ecosystem service: pressures on pollinators

Insect pollinators of crops and wild plants are under threat globally and their decline or loss could have profound economic and environmental consequences. Here, we argue that multiple anthropogenic pressures – including land-use intensification, climate change, and the spread of alien species and diseases – are primarily responsible for insect-pollinator declines. We show that a complex interplay between pressures (eg lack of food sources, diseases, and pesticides) and biological processes (eg species dispersal and interactions) at a range of scales (from genes to ecosystems) underpins the general decline in insect-pollinator populations. Interdisciplinary research on the nature and impacts of these interactions will be needed if human food security and ecosystem function are to be preserved. We highlight key areas that require research focus and outline some practical steps to alleviate the pressures on pollinators and the pollination services they deliver to wild and crop plants.

Non-concordance between genetic profiles of olive oil and fruit: a cautionary note to the use of DNA markers for provenance testing.

To investigate the contribution of paternal alleles to the DNA content of olive oil, genetic analyses of olive DNA samples from fruits, leaves, and oil derived from the same tree (cv. Leccino) were carried out. DNA extracted from maternal tissues--leaves and flesh--from different fruits showed identical genetic profiles using a set of DNA markers. Additional simple sequence repeat (SSR) alleles, not found in the maternal samples, were amplified in the embryos (stone), and they were also detected in DNA extracted from the paste obtained by crushing whole fruits and from the oil pressed from this material. These results demonstrate that the DNA profile obtained from olive oil is likely to represent a composite profile of the maternal alleles juxtaposed with alleles contributed by various pollen donors. Therefore, care needs to be taken in the interpretation of DNA profiles obtained from DNA extracted from oil for resolving provenance and authenticity issues.

Archaeological evidence for a previously unrecognised Roman town near the Sea of Galilee

Fieldwalking in the Ginosar valley recorded an extensive spread of Late Hellenistic, Roman-period and Byzantine ceramics, tesserae, glass shards, and stone vessel fragments. Architectural stonework in modern Migdal, on the hilltop immediately west of this, seems, in part, to derive from the same site, which extended into the area of the present town. This suggests an urban centre immediately adjacent to, but probably separate from, the Roman-period site usually identified asMagdala, providing a context for the first-century boat currently displayed in the Yigdal Allon museum. The settlement may be identified with one of the un-located toponyms of the coast.

Ubiquitous grid resource monitoring

In any wide-area distributed system there is a need to communicate and interact with a range of networked devices and services ranging from computer-based ones (CPU, memory and disk), to network components (hubs, routers, gateways) and specialised data sources (embedded devices, sensors, data-feeds). In order for the ensemble of underlying technologies to provide an environment suitable for virtual organisations to flourish, the resources that comprise the fabric of the Grid must be monitored in a seamless manner that abstracts away from the underlying complexity. Furthermore, as various competing Grid middleware offerings are released and evolve, an independent overarching monitoring service should act as a corner stone that ties these systems together. GridRM is a standards-based approach that is independent of any given middleware and that can utilise legacy and emerging resource-monitoring technologies. The main objective of the project is to produce a standardised and extensible architecture that provides seamless mechanisms to interact with native monitoring agents across heterogeneous resources.