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Lessons from government venture capital funds to enable transition to a low-carbon economy: the U.K. case
Get PDFEarly-stage small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) cleantech innovation, if properly funded, can initiate disruptive low-carbon reduction impacts across a wide range of sectors to meet climate change net zero requirements. The role of venture capital (VC) finance in successfully commercializing new technologies remains contentious, particularly where socio-environmental returns may well be greater than the economic returns that are the exclusive captures of the investors. This article addresses a pertinent question facing government policymakers: how best to support VC to achieve climate change objectives? It focuses on the supply-side policy, design, and implementation of four U.K. government-backed venture capital funds (GVCFs) at various stages of their development. A systems framework and an absorptive capacity learning lens inform a grounded qualitative methodology, spanning a decade of over 100 in-depth interviews with policymakers, fund managers (private and public), alternative finance providers, and low-carbon finance market experts. A model is developed to assess GVCF learning evolution to address the nascent early-stage precommercialization cleantech venture investment market. This avoids the pitfalls of quantitatively analyzing the investment outcomes of these long-horizon investment funds prior to their completion by providing qualitative process findings that inform policy, practice, and theory in the evolving early-stage low-carbon GVCF
Music, discourse and intuitive technology
Get PDFThis paper proposes that intuitive technologies play a vital role in cognition and cultural reception. The case of music is considered in particular. The perceived temporality of contemporary technology is shown to be an artificial barrier to the acknowledgement of longer-term dynamics.
The increased role of explanatory metaphors from technology is traced across various fields of study. Processes of sense-making – conscious or otherwise – are seen as an informal, unreflected repertory of mechanisms ranging from predictive models to instrumental metaphors. It is suggested that these derive by assimilation and induction from the technological milieu within which the subject develops and operates. The acquisition of these models and metaphors is itself an imaginative process, based on experience ranging from partial expertise to fantastical extrapolation
Residual deficits in reactive strength after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in soccer players
Get PDFContext
Deficits in plyometric abilities are common after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR). Vertical rebound tasks may provide a targeted evaluation of knee function.
Objective
To examine the utility of a vertical hop test for assessing function after ACLR and establishing factors associated with performance.
Design
Cross-sectional study.
Setting
Rehabilitation program.
Patients or Other Participants
Soccer players with a history of ACLR (n = 73) and matched control individuals (n = 195).
Main Outcome Measure(s)
The 10-second vertical hop test provided measures of jump height, the Reactive Strength Index (RSI), and asymmetry. We also examined possible predictors of hop performance, including single-legged vertical drop jump, isokinetic knee-extension strength, and the International Knee Documentation Committee questionnaire score.
Results
Between-limbs differences were identified only for the ACLR group, and asymmetry scores increased in those with a history of ACLR (P < .001) compared with the control group. The single-legged vertical drop jump, RSI, and knee-extension torque were significant predictors of 10-second hop height (R2 = 20.1%) and RSI (R2 = 47.1%).
Conclusions
Vertical hop deficits were present after ACLR, even after participants completed a comprehensive rehabilitation program. This may have been due to reduced knee-extension and reactive strength. Vertical hop tests warrant inclusion as part of the return-to-sport test battery
That obscure object of ontology: Lacan, La femme, lathouse and Her
Get PDFThis chapter examines the “object-disoriented ontology” of Jacques Lacan and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in relation to Spike Jonze’s film, Her (2013), and the recent objectal turn in contemporary philosophy. It argues that the smartphone AI of Jonze’s technofable presents what Lacan calls the “lathouse” (object-cause of desire governed by science) according to a Lacanian “masculine” logic that relies on reference to the beyond, which is equally found in Quentin Meillassoux’s “speculative materialism”. This is critiqued through the dialectical materialism of the Slovene School, which instead situates both subject and object as immanent to a “feminine” logic of contradiction
Valkyrie Love
No full text'Valkyrie Love' is a speculative poem based on Norse mythology by A J Dalton. The poem was published in the Songs of Eretz Poetry Review in Dec 2023. 'Valkyrie Love' is one of a number of Norse poems by A.J. Dalton - others include 'The Final Saga', 'Loki's Lament', 'Viking Winter', 'Odin Wayfarer' and 'The Misery and Mirth of Mjolnir'
Gersonides – translating divinity within the limits of knowledge
No full textGersonides (1288–1344), who is central to this chapter, lived in Orange, a small town in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region which today finds itself part of France. He wrote exclusively in Hebrew, and even now most of his scientific work hasn’t been translated to modern European languages. Although his major contributions to theology and Judaism were often seen as contrary to the majority views, and sometimes even undesirable, his mathematical works remained largely unknown, partially because he wrote exclusively in Hebrew. In this regard we will investigate briefly his world-view, his epistemological method, and finally mention some of his contributions to mathematics. Gersonides’ opus is situated within the intersections of the original language in which he wrote and our changing interpretations of this work as well as between his philosophical theology and mathematics
Psychosocial support after Grenfell: recovery and solidarity with a community in crisis
No full textThe Grenfell Tower fire of June 2017 was the most lethal residential fire in the UK since the Second World War, causing 72 deaths and leaving over 200 families without homes. This research is an auto-ethnographic case study of an innovative psychosocial counselling project that supported survivors, bereaved families and local residents affected by the fire, over a five-year period. My focus is on the way that therapeutic practitioners adapted to working with the Grenfell community in two non-clinical settings: hotels where families were displaced after the disaster, and the Public Inquiry into its causes. Supporting survivors within these spaces called for the development of a new psychosocial intervention that was more flexible, proactive and informal than conventional forms of therapeutic practice.
I draw on my experience of coordinating and delivering this service, alongside interviews with other therapeutic practitioners, situating my analysis within the larger sociopolitical context of the disaster and its aftermath. My findings centre on three key dimensions of the therapeutic framework: Firstly, I discuss the development of culturally responsive practices of engagement within a diverse community setting; secondly, I explore how the counselling service adapted to working within spaces that were open and precarious, lacking the secure boundaries of the conventional therapeutic frame; finally, I examine the way that the service negotiated the ethics of both solidarity and clinical neutrality within a site of political conflict.
These findings demonstrate ways that therapeutic practice can strengthen its engagement with larger social processes of collective suffering and recovery, calling for greater critical reflexivity in relation to issues of power, race and inequality. This case study offers a framework for developing new collaborative therapeutic models that expand the capacities of psychological practitioners to effectively engage with racialised communities, people in crisis and the survivors of structural violence and trauma beyond clinical settings
Electrochemical isothiocyanation of primary amines
No full textIsothiocyanates are ubiquitous building blocks used across the fields. Nevertheless, their classical syntheses very often rely on the use of toxic and expensive reagents. Herein, we report a new practical, mild, high-yielding, and supporting-electrolyte-free electrochemical method for the preparation of aliphatic and aromatic isothiocyanates from amine and carbon disulfide
Just wrong? Or just WEIRD? Investigating the prevalence of moral dumbfounding in non-Western samples
Get PDFMoral dumbfounding occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide a reason for this judgment. Dumbfounded responding may include admitting to not having reasons, or the use of unsupported declarations (“It’s just wrong”) as justification for a judgment. Published evidence for dumbfounding has drawn exclusively on samples of WEIRD backgrounds (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic), and it remains unclear to what extent the phenomenon is generalizable to other populations. Furthermore, the theoretical implications of moral dumbfounding have been disputed in recent years. In three studies we apply a standardized moral dumbfounding task, and show evidence for moral dumbfounding in a Chinese sample (Study 1, N = 165), an Indian sample (Study 2, N = 181), and a mixed sample primarily (but not exclusively) from North Africa and the Middle East (MENA region, Study 3, N = 264). These findings are consistent with a categorization theories of moral judgment
A comparison of the reactivity of the lattice nitrogen in tungsten substituted Co3Mo3N and Ni2Mo3N
Get PDFThe effect of the partial substitution of Mo with W in Co3Mo3N and Ni2Mo3N on ammonia synthesis activity and lattice nitrogen reactivity has been investigated. This is of interest as the coordination environment of lattice N is changed by this process. When tungsten was introduced into the metal nitrides by substitution of Mo atoms, the catalytic performance was observed to have decreased. As expected, Co3Mo3N was reduced to Co6Mo6N under a 3 : 1 ratio of H2/Ar. Co3Mo2.6W0.4N was also shown to lose a large percentage of lattice nitrogen under these conditions. The bulk lattice nitrogen in Ni2Mo3N and Ni2Mo2.8W0.2N was unreactive, demonstrating that substitution with tungsten does not have a significant effect on lattice N reactivity. Computational calculations reveal that the vacancy formation energy for Ni2Mo3N is more endothermic than Co3Mo3N. Furthermore, calculations suggest that the inclusion of W does not have a substantial impact on the surface N vacancy formation energy or the N2 adsorption and activation at the vacancy site