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The Grangemouth oil refinery closure: lessons for ‘just transition’ governance
Get PDFIn November 2023, Petroineos announced the closure of Scotland’s only oil refinery at Grangemouth by 2025. Grangemouth is widely perceived as a ‘litmus test’ for the Scottish Government’s commitment to a ‘just transition’ for workers in the oil and gas industry to steer them on an orderly movement towards suitable employment in green energy production. The announcement came as a shock and disrupted just transition planning developed in Scotland since the late 2010s. Power imbalances between Petroineos and the Scottish Government and the workforce and trade unions demonstrate the difficulties of organising transition in a sector dominated by large multinationals subject to minimal accountability or transparency. This paper demonstrates the value of historically, economically and politically grounded policy analysis for achieving net zero. It assesses the Grangemouth closure announcement, focusing on governance mechanisms, UK, Scottish and local policy coordination, transparency and long-term planning challenges, particularly for net zero, energy policy, renewables and deindustrialisation. This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The critical role of governance for decarbonisation at pace: learning the lessons from SHAPE research’, edited by Sarah Birch, Hilary Graham, Andrew Jordan, Tim O’Riordan, Henry Richards
Lead or follow? Participation decisions in collective development initiatives
Get PDFWhen and how do donors cooperate? While a growing literature emphasizes the importance of donor coordination for aid effectiveness, little is known about when and why donors join forces to advance common causes. We leverage the proliferation of special‐purpose trust funds at multilateral organizations to cast light on this issue. We argue that not only the decision whether to engage but also when to engage—either as “lead donor” or as “follower” after other donors already contributed—carries important (yet overlooked) informational value. We develop expectations about how donors engage with trust funds building on theories of competitive regime creation and bureaucratic politics. We test these expectations using a novel data set of time‐stamped funding commitment decisions by 30 OECD/DAC donors in 190 World Bank trust funds established between 1990 and 2020. We find that a donor is more likely to serve as lead donor if it is engaged in similar sectors as its peers. In addition, a donor is more likely to contribute to a fund already controlled by a group of donors if its own policy preferences are aligned with those of the existing members. The results have important implications for our understanding of donor coordination in an increasingly crowded multilateral development architecture
On field line slippage rates in the solar corona
Get PDFMagnetic reconnection is one of the fundamental dynamical processes in the solar corona. The method of studying reconnection in active region-scale magnetic fields generally depends on non-local methods (i.e. requiring information across the magnetic field under study) of magnetic topology, such as separatrix skeletons and quasi-separatrix layers. The theory of General Magnetic Reconnection is also non-local, in that its measure of the reconnection rate depends on determining the maxima of integrals along field lines. In this work, we complement the above approaches by introducing a local description of magnetic reconnection, that is one in which information about reconnection at a particular location depends only on quantities at that location. This description connects the concept of the field line slippage rate, relative to ideal motion, to the underlying local geometry of the magnetic field characterized in terms of the Lorentz force and field-aligned current density. It is argued that the dominant non-ideal term for the solar corona, discussed in relation to this new description, is mathematically equivalent to the anomalous resistivity employed by many magnetohydrodynamic simulations. However, the general application of this new approach is adaptable to the inclusion of other non-ideal terms, which may arise from turbulence modelling or the inclusion of a generalized Ohm’s law. The approach is illustrated with two examples of coronal magnetic fields related to flux ropes: an analytical model and a nonlinear force-free extrapolation. In terms of the latter, the slippage rate corresponds to the reconnection that would happen if the given (static) force-free equilibrium were the instantaneous form of the magnetic field governed by an Ohm’s law with non-ideal terms
Fundamental causation and candidacy: harnessing explanatory frames to better understand how structural determinants of health inequalities shape disengagement from primary healthcare
Get PDFThis paper aims to better understand how structural determinants of health inequalities shape disengagement from healthcare for vulnerable groups across a range of social conditions. Using a sub-sample (N = 20) from a qualitative interview UK study of those missing from primary-care, it illuminates how structural drivers of health inequalities operate at organisational and practice levels to weaken engagement with primary-care. Finding ways of better analysing and demonstrating the causal chains between structural determinants and patterns of disengagement is important because previous research has shown that practitioner and policy understanding of structural determination, an important precursor for mitigatory action, is not always sufficient, and research on healthcare utilisation can itself be weak in investigating structures of inequality.
We address this deductively by testing a novel combination of Link and Phelan's Fundamental Cause Theory and Dixon-Woods and colleagues' Candidacy framework. Combining elements of these frameworks compensates for identified gaps in each. We demonstrate how Candidacy can be strengthened through incorporating more systematic theorisation of structural processes and that the more abstract arguments of fundamental (structural) causes can be made concrete via Candidacy's focus on inequalities in patients' access to, and utilisation of, healthcare. We also argue that both theories are enhanced by including Metzl and Hansen's concept of ‘structural competency’ as a potential mitigatory mechanism operating between fundamental causes and patient engagement
Narrow linewidth laser based on extended topological interface states in 1D photonic crystals
Get PDFAdvances in 1D topological photonic crystals have enabled robust light-emitting devices through a topological interface state at the cavity center. In this study, a 1D TIS-extended photonic crystal (1D-TISE-PhC) structure both theoretically and experimentally is demonstrated. a linearly dispersive, zero-index 1D photonic crystal is integrated with a four-phase shift (4PS) sampled grating so that photons propagate through the cavity without phase differences, enhancing robustness and extending the TIS. This extension yields a more uniform photon distribution along the laser cavity and mitigates spatial hole burning. This is fabricated and characterized a 1550 nm 1D-TISE-PhC semiconductor laser, achieving stable single-mode operation from 60 to 420 mA, with a side-mode suppression ratio of 50 dB. The device exhibited a linewidth narrowing effect, with the narrowest Lorentzian linewidth of 126 kHz and a typical linewidth of 150 kHz, nearly an order of magnitude lower than conventional distributed feedback Bragg lasers. Using reconstruction equivalent-chirp technology with the 4PS grating allowed precise wavelength control in laser arrays, with a spacing of 0.796 nm ± 0.003 nm. This results confirm that the TIS remains intact in the TISE cavity, preserving topological protection and demonstrating improved design simplicity and fabrication tolerance for high-power, narrow-linewidth semiconductor lasers
Comparison of serum microRNA in healthy horses and horses with moderate to severe mitral valve regurgitation using a commercially available canine cardiac panel
Get PDFBackground:
MicroRNA (miRNA) has previously been used as a biomarker for cardiac disease in humans and dogs, however, studies in horses are not yet available.
Objectives:
To determine if adult horses with moderate or severe mitral valve regurgitation have a different serum miRNA expression profile compared to healthy controls.
Study design:
Retrospective cross-sectional.
Methods:
Serum samples from 77 adult horses with moderate or severe mitral valve regurgitation and 77 healthy control horses were analysed using a commercial cardiac disease-specific miRNA panel previously used in dogs.
Results:
The commercial canine cardiac miRNA panel had low discriminatory power as a biomarker for mitral valve regurgitation in adult horses. Sensitivity was 0.58 (95% Cl: 0.47–0.69) and specificity 0.57 (95% Cl: 0.46–0.68).
Main limitations:
Clinical data were extracted retrospectively and currently there is no well-established criteria for grading mitral regurgitation in horses; there were few severe mitral regurgitation cases and the pathogenesis of mitral regurgitation was not considered. Controls were not matched by age, breed or sex. An assay developed for use in dogs was used.
Conclusion:
Despite strong miRNA conservation across species, the commercially available canine cardiac miRNA panel failed as biomarker for mitral valve regurgitation in adult horses. Further research is needed to determine if an equine specific panel can be developed that performs better as biomarker for cardiac disease in horses
Defining marine rewilding can help guide theory and practice in marine conservation
Get PDFPublic concern over global climate change and biodiversity loss has accelerated international efforts to restore natural ecosystems through nature-based solutions. Rewilding is a growing conservation approach encompassing the recovery of ecological and trophic complexity through interventions such as habitat restoration and/or species reintroduction. Here we explore the nascent efforts of marine rewilding using a systems thinking methodology to inform a systematic review and iterative thematic analysis. Marine rewilding involves a diverse range of interventions, showing similarities in ecological principles with terrestrial rewilding, yet it diverges from terrestrial rewilding in the scale of initiatives, predictability of outcomes, and the prominence of social inclusion. To make progress in offering unifying concepts, we propose a definition for marine rewilding: a systemic process requiring deliberate human intervention that involves community participation and ocean stewardship to regenerate degraded marine ecosystems
Primordial neon and the deep mantle origin of kimberlites
Get PDFThe genesis of kimberlites is unclear despite the economic and scientific interest surrounding these diamond-bearing magmas. One critical question is whether they tap ancient, deep mantle domains or the shallow convecting mantle with partial melting triggered by plumes or plate tectonics. To address this question, we report the He-Ne-Ar isotopic compositions of magmatic fluids trapped in olivine from kimberlites worldwide. The kimberlites which have been least affected by addition of deeply subducted or metasomatic components have Ne isotopes less nucleogenic than the upper mantle, hence requiring a deep-mantle origin. This is corroborated by previous evidence of small negative W isotope anomalies and kimberlite location along age-progressive hot-spot tracks. The lack of strong primordial He isotope signatures indicates overprinting by lithospheric and crustal components, which suggests that Ne isotopes are more robust tracers of deep-mantle contributions in intraplate continental magmas. The most geochemically depleted kimberlites may preserve deep remnants of early-Earth heterogeneities
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