Assessment of the impact of government animal welfare policy on farm animal welfare in the UK

The paper presents the method and findings of a Delphi expert survey to assess the impact of UK government farm animal welfare policy, form assurance schemes and major food retailer specifications on the welfare of animals on forms. Two case-study livestock production systems are considered, dairy and cage egg production. The method identifies how well the various standards perform in terms of their effects on a number of key farm animal welfare variables, and provides estimates of the impact of the three types of standard on the welfare of animals on forms, taking account of producer compliance. The study highlights that there remains considerable scope for government policy, together with form assurance schemes, to improve the welfare of form animals by introducing standards that address key factors affecting animal welfare and by increasing compliance of livestock producers. There is a need for more comprehensive, regular and random surveys of on-farm welfare to monitor compliance with welfare standards (legislation and welfare codes) and the welfare of farm animals over time, and a need to collect farm data on the costs of compliance with standards.

A method of weighting indicators in building energy efficiency assessment

This paper identifies the indicators of energy efficiency assessment in residential building in China through a wide literature review. Indicators are derived from three main sources: 1) The existing building assessment methods; 2)The existing Chinese standards and technology codes in building energy efficiency; 3)Academia research. As a result, we proposed an indicator list by refining the indicators in the above sources. Identified indicators are weighted by the group analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. Group AHP method is implemented following key steps: Step 1: Experienced experts are selected to form a group; Step 2: A survey is implemented to collect the individual judgments on the importance of indicators in the group; Step 3: Members’ judgments are synthesized to the group judgments; Step 4: Indicators are weighted by AHP on the group judgments; Step 5: Investigation of consistency estimation shows that the consistency of the judgment matrix is accepted. We believe that the weighted indicators in this paper will provide important references to building energy efficiency assessment.

Stratospheric water vapor and climate: sensitivity to the representation in radiation codes

There has been considerable interest in the climate impact of trends in stratospheric water vapor (SWV). However, the representation of the radiative properties of water vapor under stratospheric conditions remains poorly constrained across different radiation codes. This study examines the sensitivity of a detailed line-by-line (LBL) code, a Malkmus narrow-band model and two broadband GCM radiation codes to a uniform perturbation in SWV in the longwave spectral region. The choice of sampling rate in wave number space (Δν) in the LBL code is shown to be important for calculations of the instantaneous change in heating rate (ΔQ) and the instantaneous longwave radiative forcing (ΔFtrop). ΔQ varies by up to 50% for values of Δν spanning 5 orders of magnitude, and ΔFtrop varies by up to 10%. In the three less detailed codes, ΔQ differs by up to 45% at 100 hPa and 50% at 1 hPa compared to a LBL calculation. This causes differences of up to 70% in the equilibrium fixed dynamical heating temperature change due to the SWV perturbation. The stratosphere-adjusted radiative forcing differs by up to 96% across the less detailed codes. The results highlight an important source of uncertainty in quantifying and modeling the links between SWV trends and climate.

Poetry, parables and codes: translating the letters of Indian soldiers

This chapter examines the role of translation in the work of the Indian Mail Censorship Department in France in the First World War, considering the position of the translator as an intermediary figure, and the implications for the military tasks of censorship and intelligence analysis of operating in this way from a foreign language.

Intercomparison of radiative forcing calculations of stratospheric water vapour and contrails

Seven groups have participated in an intercomparison study of calculations of radiative forcing (RF) due to stratospheric water vapour (SWV) and contrails. A combination of detailed radiative transfer schemes and codes for global-scale calculations have been used, as well as a combination of idealized simulations and more realistic global-scale changes in stratospheric water vapour and contrails. Detailed line-by-line codes agree within about 15 % for longwave (LW) and shortwave (SW) RF, except in one case where the difference is 30 %. Since the LW and SW RF due to contrails and SWV changes are of opposite sign, the differences between the models seen in the individual LW and SW components can be either compensated or strengthened in the net RF, and thus in relative terms uncertainties are much larger for the net RF. Some of the models used for global-scale simulations of changes in SWV and contrails differ substantially in RF from the more detailed radiative transfer schemes. For the global-scale calculations we use a method of weighting the results to calculate a best estimate based on their performance compared to the more detailed radiative transfer schemes in the idealized simulations.

Developing the next-generation climate system models: challenges and achievements

Although climate models have been improving in accuracy and efficiency over the past few decades, it now seems that these incremental improvements may be slowing. As tera/petascale computing becomes massively parallel, our legacy codes are less suitable, and even with the increased resolution that we are now beginning to use, these models cannot represent the multiscale nature of the climate system. This paper argues that it may be time to reconsider the use of adaptive mesh refinement for weather and climate forecasting in order to achieve good scaling and representation of the wide range of spatial scales in the atmosphere and ocean. Furthermore, the challenge of introducing living organisms and human responses into climate system models is only just beginning to be tackled. We do not yet have a clear framework in which to approach the problem, but it is likely to cover such a huge number of different scales and processes that radically different methods may have to be considered. The challenges of multiscale modelling and petascale computing provide an opportunity to consider a fresh approach to numerical modelling of the climate (or Earth) system, which takes advantage of the computational fluid dynamics developments in other fields and brings new perspectives on how to incorporate Earth system processes. This paper reviews some of the current issues in climate (and, by implication, Earth) system modelling, and asks the question whether a new generation of models is needed to tackle these problems.

Remaking place and securitising space: Urban regeneration and the strategies, tactics and practices of policing in the UK

Urban regeneration programmes in the UK over the past 20 years have increasingly focused on attracting investors, middle-class shoppers and visitors by transforming places and creating new consumption spaces. Ensuring that places are safe and are seen to be safe has taken on greater salience as these flows of income are easily disrupted by changing perceptions of fear and the threat of crime. At the same time, new technologies and policing strategies and tactics have been adopted in a number of regeneration areas which seek to establish control over these new urban spaces. Policing space is increasingly about controlling human actions through design, surveillance technologies and codes of conduct and enforcement. Regeneration agencies and the police now work in partnerships to develop their strategies. At its most extreme, this can lead to the creation of zero-tolerance, or what Smith terms 'revanchist', measures aimed at particular social groups in an effort to sanitise space in the interests of capital accumulation. This paper, drawing on an examination of regeneration practices and processes in one of the UK's fastest-growing urban areas, Reading in Berkshire, assesses policing strategies and tactics in the wake of a major regeneration programme. It documents and discusses the discourses of regeneration that have developed in the town and the ways in which new urban spaces have been secured. It argues that, whilst security concerns have become embedded in institutional discourses and practices, the implementation of security measures has been mediated, in part, by the local socio-political relations in and through which they have been developed.

Transfer across form and modality in implicit and explicit memory

Three experiments examined transfer across form (words/pictures) and modality (visual/ auditory) in written word, auditory word, and pictorial implicit memory tests, as well as on a free recall task. Experiment 1 showed no significant transfer across form on any of the three implicit memory tests,and an asymmetric pattern of transfer across modality. In contrast, the free recall results revealed a very different picture. Experiment 2 further investigated the asymmetric modality effects obtained for the implicit memory measures by employing articulatory suppression and picture naming to control the generation of phonological codes. Finally, Experiment 3 examined the effects of overt word naming and covert picture labelling on transfer between study and test form. The results of the experiments are discussed in relation to Tulving and Schacter's (1990) Perceptual Representation Systems framework and Roediger's (1990) Transfer Appropriate Processing theory.

Direct radiative effect of aerosols emitted by transport from road, shipping and aviation

Aerosols and their precursors are emitted abundantly by transport activities. Transportation constitutes one of the fastest growing activities and its growth is predicted to increase significantly in the future. Previous studies have estimated the aerosol direct radiative forcing from one transport sub-sector, but only one study to our knowledge estimated the range of radiative forcing from the main aerosol components (sulphate, black carbon (BC) and organic carbon) for the whole transportation sector. In this study, we compare results from two different chemical transport models and three radiation codes under different hypothesis of mixing: internal and external mixing using emission inventories for the year 2000. The main results from this study consist of a positive direct radiative forcing for aerosols emitted by road traffic of +20±11 mW m−2 for an externally mixed aerosol, and of +32±13 mW m−2 when BC is internally mixed. These direct radiative forcings are much higher than the previously published estimate of +3±11 mW m−2. For transport activities from shipping, the net direct aerosol radiative forcing is negative. This forcing is dominated by the contribution of the sulphate. For both an external and an internal mixture, the radiative forcing from shipping is estimated at −26±4 mW m−2. These estimates are in very good agreement with the range of a previously published one (from −46 to −13 mW m−2) but with a much narrower range. By contrast, the direct aerosol forcing from aviation is estimated to be small, and in the range −0.9 to +0.3 mW m−2.

Multiple domestications and their taxonomic consequences: the example of Phaseolus vulgaris

The evolutionary history of P. vulgaris is important to those working on its genetic resources, but is not reflected in its infraspecific taxonomy. Genetic isolation of wild populations between and also within Middle and South America has resulted in morphological and molecular differentiation. Populations from northern and southern ends of the range are assigned to different gene pools, though intermediates occur in intervening areas. Chloroplast haplotypes suggest three distinct lineages of wild beans and several intercontinental dispersals. The species was domesticated independently in both Middle and South America, probably several times in Middle America. This, together with further differentiation under human selection, has produced distinct races among domesticated beans. The informal categories of wild versus domesticated, gene pool, and race convey the evolutionary picture more clearly than the formal categories provided by the Codes of Nomenclature for wild or cultivated plants.

Short-term memory and the attentional blink: capacity versus content

When people monitor the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of stimuli for two targets (T1 and T2), they often miss T2 if it falls into a time window of about half a second after T1 onset, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). We found that overall performance in an RSVP task was impaired by a concurrent short-term memory (STM) task and, furthermore, that this effect increased when STM load was higher and when its content was more task relevant. Loading visually defined stimuli and adding articulatory suppression further impaired performance on the RSVP task, but the size of the AB over time (i.e., T1-T2 lag) remained unaffected by load or content. This suggested that at least part of the performance in an RSVP task reflects interference between competing codes within STM, as interference models have held, whereas the AB proper reflects capacity limitations in the transfer to STM, as consolidation models have claimed.

Orthogonal space-time block codes for free-space IM/DD optical links

Use of orthogonal space-time block codes (STBCs) with multiple transmitters and receivers can improve signal quality. However, in optical intensity modulated signals, output of the transmitter is non-negative and hence standard orthogonal STBC schemes need to be modified. A generalised framework for applying orthogonal STBCs for free-space IM/DD optical links is presented.