Dual citizenship or dual identity? Does 'transnationalism' supplant 'nationalism' among returning Trinidadians?

In this article we focus on the dual identities of relatively young Trinidadians who have decided to return to the island of their birth, or of their parents, while still in their thirties and forties. Highly-educated professional transnational migrants mostly make tip our sample of 36; 26 possess dual citizenship. We focus on our informants' narratives about their transnational experiences, self-appraisals of their dual identities and how they value dual citizenship. More generally, we ask does transnationalism supplant nationalism among our returning informants? Unsurprisingly, the diverse responses we document do not support the commonly held explanatory relationship between return adaptations, 'national belonging' and the expected dominance of 'transnational belonging'. Family, relations intervene significantly, both to encourage transnationalism and to strengthen nationalism. Feelings of notional belonging often accompany transnationalism. Notably, we view dual citizenship strategically and pragmatically as advantageous to the continuation of transnational practices.

Enabling older people to stay at home: How adaptable are existing properties?

A multiprofessional research project examined in detail the factors that affect the adaptability of existing housing and explored issues relating to the introduction of assistive technology into the existing homes of older people in order to provide them with the opportunity to 'stay put'. The research reported here investigated the feasibility of adapting the existing stock of social housing and the resulting costs and outcomes of introducing assistive technology. This paper outlines that part of the project that examined in detail the adaptability of 82 properties representing a variety of property types to accommodate the needs of seven notional users, characterising the most common range of impairments of older people. The factors that affect a property's adaptability include property type and specific design and construction features. The implications for housing providers, clients and occupational therapists are discussed. The research identified the unique expertise of occupational therapists, spanning the areas of housing, older people and assistive technology, and it introduced methods and tools that can help to determine best housing outcomes as well as cost implications. It is crucial that the profession is proactive in contributing to the development of housing policies that address the needs of an ageing population effectively.

Can adapting the homes of older people and providing assistive technology pay its way?

Background: Adaptations and assistive technology (AT) have an important role in enabling older people to remain in their own homes. Objective: To measure the feasibility and cost of adaptations and AT, and the scope for these to substitute and supplement formal care. Design: Detailed design studies to benchmark the adaptability of 82 properties against the needs of seven notional users. Setting: Social rented housing sector. Main outcome measures: Measures of the adaptability of properties, costs of care, adaptations and AT, and relationships between these costs. Results: The adaptability of properties varies according to many design factors and the needs of occupiers. The most adaptable properties were ground floor flats and bungalows; the least were houses, maisonettes and flats in converted houses. Purpose-built sheltered properties were generally more adaptable than corresponding mainstream properties but the opposite was the case for bungalows. Adaptations and AT can substitute for and supplement formal care, and in most cases the initial investment in adaptations and AT is recouped through subsequently lower care costs within the average life expectancy of a user. Conclusion: Appropriately selected adaptations and AT can make a significant contribution to the provision of living environments which facilitate independence. They can both substitute for traditional formal care services and supplement these services in a cost-effective way.

Expectation versus provision in the management and use of urban open space

This paper discusses the implications of the shifting cultural significance of public open space in urban areas. In particular, it focuses on the increasing dysfunction between people's expectations of that space and its actual provision and management. In doing so, the paper applies Lefebvre's ideas of spatiality to the evident paradigm shift from 'public' to 'private' culture, with its associated commodification of previously public space. While developing the construct of paradigm shift, the paper recognises that the former political notions inherent in the provision of public space remain in evidence. So whereas public parks were formerly seen as spaces of confrontation between the 'rationality' of public order as the 'irrationality' of individual leisure pursuits, they are now increasingly seen, particularly 'out of hours', as the domain of the dispossessed, to be defined and policed as 'dangerous'. Where once people were welcomed into public open spaces as a means of 'educating' them in good, acceptable, leisure practices, therefore, they are now increasingly excluded, but for the same ostensible reasons. Building on survey work undertaken in Reading, Berkshire, the paper illustrates how communities can become separated from 'their' space, leaving them with the overriding impression that they have been 'short-changed' in terms of both the provision and the management of urban open space. Rather than the intimacy of local space for local people, therefore, the paper argues that parks have become externalised places, increasingly responding to commercial definitions of culture and what is 'public'. Central urban open spaces are therefore increasingly becoming sites of stratification, signification of a consumer-constructed citizenship and valorisation of public life as a legitimate element of the market surface of town and city centres.

Wave activity for large-amplitude disturbances described by the primitive equations on the sphere

Pseudomomentum and pseudoenergy are both measures of wave activity for disturbances in a fluid, relative to a notional background state. Together they give information on the propagation, growth, and decay of disturbances. Wave activity conservation laws are most readily derived for the primitive equations on the sphere by using isentropic coordinates. However, the intersection of isentropic surfaces with the ground (and associated potential temperature anomalies) is a crucial aspect of baroclinic wave evolution. A new expression is derived for pseudoenergy that is valid for large-amplitude disturbances spanning isentropic layers that may intersect the ground. The pseudoenergy of small-amplitude disturbances is also obtained by linearizing about a zonally symmetric background state. The new expression generalizes previous pseudoenergy results for quasigeostrophic disturbances on the β plane and complements existing large-amplitude results for pseudomomentum. The pseudomomentum and pseudoenergy diagnostics are applied to an extended winter from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Re-Analysis data. The time series identify distinct phenomena such as a baroclinic wave life cycle where the wave activity in boundary potential temperature saturates nonlinearly almost two days before the peak in wave activity near the tropopause. The coherent zonal propagation speed of disturbances at tropopause level, including distinct eastward, westward, and stationary phases, is shown to be dictated by the ratio of total hemispheric pseudoenergy to pseudomomentum. Variations in the lower-boundary contribution to pseudoenergy dominate changes in propagation speed; phases of westward progression are associated with stronger boundary potential temperature perturbations.

Available potential energy density for a multicomponent Boussinesq fluid with arbitrary nonlinear equation of state

In this paper, the concept of available potential energy (APE) density is extended to a multicomponent Boussinesq fluid with a nonlinear equation of state. As shown by previous studies, the APE density is naturally interpreted as the work against buoyancy forces that a parcel needs to perform to move from a notional reference position at which its buoyancy vanishes to its actual position; because buoyancy can be defined relative to an arbitrary reference state, so can APE density. The concept of APE density is therefore best viewed as defining a class of locally defined energy quantities, each tied to a different reference state, rather than as a single energy variable. An important result, for which a new proof is given, is that the volume integrated APE density always exceeds Lorenz’s globally defined APE, except when the reference state coincides with Lorenz’s adiabatically re-arranged reference state of minimum potential energy. A parcel reference position is systematically defined as a level of neutral buoyancy (LNB): depending on the nature of the fluid and on how the reference state is defined, a parcel may have one, none, or multiple LNB within the fluid. Multiple LNB are only possible for a multicomponent fluid whose density depends on pressure. When no LNB exists within the fluid, a parcel reference position is assigned at the minimum or maximum geopotential height. The class of APE densities thus defined admits local and global balance equations, which all exhibit a conversion with kinetic energy, a production term by boundary buoyancy fluxes, and a dissipation term by internal diffusive effects. Different reference states alter the partition between APE production and dissipation, but neither affect the net conversion between kinetic energy and APE, nor the difference between APE production and dissipation. We argue that the possibility of constructing APE-like budgets based on reference states other than Lorenz’s reference state is more important than has been previously assumed, and we illustrate the feasibility of doing so in the context of an idealised and realistic oceanic example, using as reference states one with constant density and another one defined as the horizontal mean density field; in the latter case, the resulting APE density is found to be a reasonable approximation of the APE density constructed from Lorenz’s reference state, while being computationally cheaper.

Barabas's Fall

Early modern play-texts present numerous puzzles for scholars interested in ascertaining how plays were (or may have been) staged. the principal evidence of course for a notional "reconstruction" of practices is the apparatus of stage directions, augmented by indications in the dialogue. in conjunction a joining-of-the-dots is often possible, at least in broad-brush terms. But as is well known, the problem is that stage directions tend to be incomplete, imprecise, inaccurate ­ or missing altogether; more significantly, even when present they offer only slight and indirect evidence of actual stagecraft. Some stage directions are rather more "literary" than "theatrical" in provenance, and in any case to the extent that they do serve the reader (early modern or modern) they cannot be regarded as providing a record of stage practice. After all, words can be no more than imperfect substitutes for (and of another order from) the things they represent. For the most part directions serve as a guide that provides the basis for reasonable interpretation informed by our knowledge of theatre architecture, technology, and comparable play-situations, rather than concrete evidence of actual practice. Quite how some stage business was carried out remains uncertain, leaving the scholar little option but to hypothesize solutions. One such conundrum arises in christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. the scenario in question is hardly an obscure one, but it has not been examined in detail, even by modern editors. the purpose of this essay is to explore what sense might be made of the surviving textual evidence, in combination with our knowledge of theatre architecture and playmaking culture in the late sixteenth century.

Farmers' interest in growing GM crops in the UK, in the context of a range of on-farm coexistence issues

Although no GM crops currently are licensed for commercial production in the UK, as opposition to GM crops by consumers softens, this could change quickly. Although past studies have examined attitudes of UK farmers toward GM technologies in general, there has been little work on the impact of possible coexistence measures on their attitudes toward GM crop production. This could be because the UK Government has not engaged in any public dialogue on the coexistence measures that might be applied on farms. Based on a farm survey, this article examines farmers’ attitudes toward GM technologies and planting intentions for three crops (maize, oilseed rape, and sugar beet) based on a GM availability scenario. The article then nuances this analysis with a review of farmer perceptions of the level of constraint associated with a suite of notional farm-level coexistence measures and issues, based on current European Commission guidelines and practice in other EU Member States.

The slowly evolving background state of the atmosphere

The theory of wave–mean flow interaction requires a partition of the atmospheric flow into a notional background state and perturbations to it. Here, a background state, known as the Modified Lagrangian Mean (MLM), is defined as the zonally symmetric state obtained by requiring that every potential vorticity (PV) contour lying within an isentropic layer encloses the same mass and circulation as in the full flow. For adiabatic and frictionless flow, these two integral properties are time-invariant and the MLM state is a steady solution of the primitive equations. The time dependence in the adiabatic flow is put into the perturbations, which can be described by a wave-activity conservation law that is exact even at large amplitude. Furthermore, the effects of non-conservative processes on wave activity can be calculated from the conservation law. A new method to calculate the MLM state is introduced, where the position of the lower boundary is obtained as part of the solution. The results are illustrated using Northern Hemisphere ERA-Interim data. The MLM state evolves slowly, implying that the net non-conservative effects are weak. Although ‘adiabatic eddy fluxes’ cannot affect the MLM state, the effects of Rossby-wave breaking, PV filamentation and subsequent dissipation result in sharpening of the polar vortex edge and meridional shifts in the MLM zonal flow, both at tropopause level and on the winter stratospheric vortex. The rate of downward migration of wave activity during stratospheric sudden warmings is shown to be given by the vertical scale associated with polar vortex tilt divided by the time-scale for wave dissipation estimated from the wave-activity conservation law. Aspects of troposphere–stratosphere interaction are discussed. The new framework is suitable to examine the climate and its interactions with disturbances, such as midlatitude storm tracks, and makes a clean partition between adiabatic and non-conservative processes.

The persistence of distance: a gravity model of European cross-border real estate development flows

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the scale and drivers of cross-border real estate development in Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe. Design/methodology/approach – Placing cross-border real estate development within the framework of foreign direct investment (FDI), conceptual complexities in characterizing the notional real estate developer are emphasized. Drawing upon a transaction database, this paper proxies cross-border real estate development flows with asset sales by developers. Findings – Much higher levels of market penetration by international real estate developers are found in the less mature markets of Central and Eastern Europe. Analysis suggests a complex range of determinants with physical distance remaining a consistent barrier to cross-border development flows. Originality/value – This analysis adds significant value in terms of understanding cross-border real estate development flows. In this study, a detailed examination of the issues based on a rigorous empirical analysis through gravity modelling is offered. The gravity framework is one of the most confirmed empirical regularities in international economics and commonly applied to trade, FDI, migration, foreign portfolio investment inter alia. This paper assesses the extent to which it provides useful insights into the pattern of cross-border real estate development flows.