Cancellation of siren noise from two-way voice communication inside emergency vehicles

The development of an adaptive filter system, capable of reducing significantly the effect of siren noise within the cab of an emergency vehicle, is described. The system is capable of removing the siren noise picked up by the radio microphone inside the vehicle, without degrading the wanted voice signal, thus allowing the siren to be used at all times.

‘Leger est aprendre mes fort est arendre’: wool, debt, and the dispersal of Pipewell Abbey (1280-1330)

It has long been known that English Cistercian monasteries often sold their wool in advance to foreign merchants in the late thirteenth century. The abbey of Pipewell in Northamptonshire features in a number of such contracts with Cahorsin merchants. This paper looks again at these contracts in the context of over 200 other such agreements found in the governmental records. Why did Pipewell descend into penury over this fifty year period? This case study demonstrates that the promise of ready cash for their most valuable commodity led such abbots to make ambitious agreements – taking on yet more debt to service existing creditors – that would lead to their eventual bankruptcy.

The economic consequences of mortgage debt

Unsurprisingly, a great deal of attention has been paid to the economic consequences of the credit crunch. However, this paper shows that the credit crunch was preceded by a strong build-up of mortgage debt internationally, which, in the long run, could turn out to be more significant than the credit crunch itself. Indeed, the debt build-up suggests that the credit crunch is more likely to reoccur, because highly-indebted households have weaker buffers to withstand unexpected shocks to their incomes or to interest rates. The paper presents a model that can explain the debt build-up and changes to the distribution of debt between existing owners and first-time buyers, which hinders access to home-ownership for the latter, even amongst those households who would be considered as credit-worthy.

Adsorption from aqueous solutions on opened carbon nanotubes: organic compounds speed up delivery of water from inside

We report the results of first systematic studies of organic adsorption from aqueous solutions onto relatively long single walled carbon nanotubes (four tubes, in initial and oxidised forms). Using molecular dynamics simulations (GROMACS package) we discuss the behaviour of tube-water as well as tube-adsorbate systems, for three different adsorbates (benzene, phenol and paracetamol).

Rethinking 'Inside the Visible'

This essay appears in the first book to examine feminist curatorship in the last 40 years. It undertakes an extended reading of Cathy de Zegher's influential exhibition, Inside the Visible, An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art. In, of and From the Feminine (1995) which proposed that modern art should be understood through cyclical shifts involving the constant reinvention of artistic method and identified four key moments in 20th century history to structure its project. The essay analyses Inside the Visible's concept of an elliptical traverse to raise questions about repetitions and recurrences in feminist exhibitions of the early 1980s, the mid 1990s and 2007 asking whether and in what ways questions of feminist curating have been continuously repeated and reinvented. The essay argues that Inside the Visible was a key project in second wave feminism and exemplified debates about women's time, first theorised by Julia Kristeva. It concludes, however, that 'women's time' has had its moment, and new conceptions of feminism and its history are needed if feminist curating is not endlessly to recycle its past. The essay informs a wider collaborative project on the sexual politics of violence, feminism and contemporary art, in collaboration with Edinburgh and one of the editors of this collection.

The long-term stability of a possible aqueous ammonium sulfate ocean inside Titan

We model the thermal evolution of a subsurface ocean of aqueous ammonium sulfate inside Titan using a parameterized convection scheme. The cooling and crystallization of such an ocean depends on its heat flux balance, and is governed by the pressure-dependent melting temperatures at the top and bottom of the ocean. Using recent observations and previous experimental data, we present a nominal model which predicts the thickness of the ocean throughout the evolution of Titan; after 4.5 Ga we expect an aqueous ammonium sulfate ocean 56 km thick, overlain by a thick (176 km) heterogeneous crust of methane clathrate, ice I and ammonium sulfate. Underplating of the crust by ice I will give rise to compositional diapirs that are capable of rising through the crust and providing a mechanism for cryovolcanism at the surface. We have conducted a parameter space survey to account for possible variations in the nominal model, and find that for a wide range of plausible conditions, an ocean of aqueous ammonium sulfate can survive to the present day, which is consistent with the recent observations of Titan's spin state from Cassini radar data [Lorenz, R.D., Stiles, B.W., Kirk, R.L., Allison, M.D., del Marmo, P.P., Iess, L., Lunine, J.I., Ostro, S.J., Hensley, S., 2008. Science 319, 1649–1651].

The time-course of morphological constraints: a study of plurals inside derived words

The avoidance of regular but not irregular plurals inside compounds (e.g. *rats eater vs. mice eater) has been one of the most widely studied morphological phenomena in the psycholinguistics literature. To examine whether the constraints that are responsible for this contrast have any general significance beyond compounding, we investigated derived word forms containing regular and irregular plurals in two experiments. Experiment 1 was an offline acceptability judgment task, and experiment 2 measured eye movements during reading derived words containing regular and irregular plurals and uninflected base nouns. The results from both experiments show that the constraint against regular plurals inside compounds generalizes to derived words. We argue that this constraint cannot be reduced to phonological properties, but is instead morphological in nature. The eye-movement data provide detailed information on the time-course of processing derived word forms indicating that early stages of processing are affected by a general constraint that disallows inflected words from feeding derivational processes, and that the more specific constraint against regular plurals comes in at a subsequent later stage of processing. We argue that these results are consistent with stage-based models of language processing.

Inside the black box: unravelling the development viability appraisal process

Over the last decade issues related to the financial viability of development have become increasingly important to the English planning system. As part of a wider shift towards the compartmentalisation of planning tasks, expert consultants are required to quantify, in an attempt to rationalise, planning decisions in terms of economic ‘viability’. Often with a particular focus on planning obligations, the results of development viability modelling have emerged as a key part of the evidence base used in site-specific negotiations and in planning policy formation. Focussing on the role of clients and other stakeholders, this paper investigates how development viability is tested in practice. It draws together literature on the role of calculative practices in policy formation, client feedback and influence in real estate appraisals and stakeholder engagement and consultation in the planning literature to critically evaluate the role of clients and other interest groups in influencing the production and use of development viability appraisal models. The paper draws upon semi-structured interviews with the main producers of development viability appraisals to conclude that, whilst appraisals have the potential to be biased by client and stakeholder interests, there are important controlling influences on potential opportunistic behaviour. One such control is local authorities’ weak understanding of development viability appraisal techniques which limits their capacity to question the outputs of appraisal models. However, this also is of concern given that viability is now a central feature of the town planning system.

Chaos of Wolbachia Sequences Inside the Compact Fig Syconia of Ficus benjamina (Ficus: Moraceae)

Figs and fig wasps form a peculiar closed community in which the Ficus tree provides a compact syconium (inflorescence) habitat for the lives of a complex assemblage of Chalcidoid insects. These diverse fig wasp species have intimate ecological relationships within the closed world of the fig syconia. Previous surveys of Wolbachia, maternally inherited endosymbiotic bacteria that infect vast numbers of arthropod hosts, showed that fig wasps have some of the highest known incidences of Wolbachia amongst all insects. We ask whether the evolutionary patterns of Wolbachia sequences in this closed syconium community are different from those in the outside world. In the present study, we sampled all 17 fig wasp species living on Ficus benjamina, covering 4 families, 6 subfamilies, and 8 genera of wasps. We made a thorough survey of Wolbachia infection patterns and studied evolutionary patterns in wsp (Wolbachia Surface Protein) sequences. We find evidence for high infection incidences, frequent recombination between Wolbachia strains, and considerable horizontal transfer, suggesting rapid evolution of Wolbachia sequences within the syconium community. Though the fig wasps have relatively limited contact with outside world, Wolbachia may be introduced to the syconium community via horizontal transmission by fig wasps species that have winged males and visit the syconia earlier.

The effects of corporate social performance on the cost of corporate debt and credit ratings

This study investigates the differential impact that various dimensions of corporate social performance have on the pricing of corporate debt as well as the assessment of the credit quality of specific bond issues. The empirical analysis, based on an extensive longitudinal data set, suggests that overall, good performance is rewarded and corporate social transgressions are penalized through lower and higher corporate bond yield spreads, respectively. Similar conclusions can be drawn when focusing on either the bond rating assigned to a specific debt issue or the probability of it being considered to be an asset of speculative grade.