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A geography of UK museums
Get PDFMuseums are important centres of heritage, culture, education, and tourism. These diverse institutions operate in different ways, reaching different audiences and managing varied collections. Thanks to a novel database of unprecedented completeness produced by the Mapping Museums project, this study provides a quantitative geography of museums in the UK, showing how about half of the sector had not been surveyed before. The presence of museums is mapped across several attributes, including museum size (estimated as yearly visits) and governance (government-led, independent, or university-led). Firstly, observing a snapshot of the sector in December 2017, we quantify and interpret the spatial distribution of museums, discussing its implications for access to museums, public service provision, resource allocation, and cultural tourism. Then, in a regional analysis, we study their density in relation to the local population, at the regional and Local Authority District scale, providing new evidence of the extent of spatial inequalities in the cultural sector, particularly relevant to a sector in which funding is mostly allocated at the regional level. At the crossing between human geography and museum studies, this inquiry reveals the centres and peripheries of this cultural sphere, providing fresh evidence of the presences and absences that shape cultural life across the UK
Are movies making us smarter? The role of cinematic evolution in the Flynn Effect
Get PDFStandardised IQ tests have charted massive gains over the last century, known as the Flynn Effect. Over the same period, the time society spends with screens has massively increased and the composition of popular Western movies has intensified, e.g. shorter shot durations, closer shots, increasing narrative complexity. In Movies on our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement (2021), James Cutting suggests a potential bidirectional link between the two effects: generational increase in visual processing abilities led to movie makers increasing the demands their movies place on viewer cognition, which in turn has trained societal visual processing capacity. In this commentary we review the empirical evidence for the predicted positive association between screen time and visual processing abilities. The evidence indicates that increasing exposure to intense screen experiences may be associated with faster visual processing, but a potentially decreased ability to use and reason about this information (i.e. reduced executive functions). Further, effects may be dependent on the type of screen experience (e.g. developmental appropriateness of content and content delivery platform such as TikTok) and other environmental considerations (e.g. socioeconomic status, parenting) suggesting that the factors influencing our evolving media/mind niche may be more complex than originally proposed
Scientific perspectives on lunar exploration in Europe
Get PDFThe Moon is a geological history book, preserving information about the history of the Solar System, including the formation and early evolution of the terrestrial planets and their bombardment histories, as well as providing insight into other fundamental Solar System processes. These topics form the basis for science “of the Moon”, but the lunar surface is also a platform for science “on the Moon” and “from the Moon”—including astronomical observations, fundamental physics, and life science investigations. Recently, the Moon has become a destination for technology research and development—in particular for developing in situ resources, human exploration, and habitation, and for its potential use as a waypoint for the human exploration of Mars. This paper, based on recommendations originally proposed in a White Paper for ESA’s SciSpacE strategy, outlines key lunar science questions that may be addressed by future space exploration missions and makes recommendations for the next decades
Comparing narratives on carnivore management in a dryland ecosystem: a case study of state-backed lethal control
No full textThe lethal control of native carnivores as a principal management strategy is not often recommended due to its questionable efficacy and the negative long-term consequences it can have on wildlife populations. Here we use as a case study a region that has incentivised the lethal control of native pumas and culpeo foxes for over 50 years to examine how this policy has effected institutional narratives in the region. We carried out four key informant interviews with institutional actors to establish their approaches and perspectives on carnivore management. We also examined the informational basis for the current legislative approach to predation, and identified topics for discussion surrounding legislation and its formation for decision-makers in the province. We identified a duality where two branches of government have contradictory policies regarding livestock production and carnivore management. All institutions involved in predation management in rural landscapes produced narratives supporting sustainable development and suggested, in varying degrees, that alternatives to lethal control would be positive. A consistent narrative that the current law was not fit for purpose as after 50 years the issue of predation remained supported this call for alternatives strategies. However, interviewees also stated that any modification of the existing law would require demand from livestock producers who generally view carnivores poorly. Furthermore, there is evidence that discussions surrounding management strategies suffer from cultural bias, with rural inhabitants finding themselves marginalised from the decision-making process. We identified a need for empathy regarding the adverse situation of rural inhabitants facing the impacts of predation, and an appreciation of the role that carnivores play within their environments, in order to change the negative discourse surrounding human-carnivore interaction
Stuart Hall, Jacqueline Rose and the politics of the psyche
Get PDFThis article is a report on a lecture given in London by Professor Jacqueline Rose on 11th February 2023, organised by the Stuart Hall Foundation as the 6th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation. The lecture was entitled What is a Subject? Politics and Psyche After Stuart Hall and was responded to by Dr Sharon Numa. In this lecture, Jacqueline Rose identifies a powerful stream of psychoanalytic thought in Stuart Hall’s writings and articulates a contemporary understanding of Hall’s work as reaching out to what she calls ‘some of the most anguished political and cultural realities of our current times.
Using a whole genome co-expression network to inform the functional characterisation of predicted genomic elements from Mycobacterium tuberculosis transcriptomic data
Get PDFA whole genome co-expression network was created using Mycobacterium tuberculosis transcriptomic data from publicly available RNA-sequencing experiments covering a wide variety of experimental conditions. The network includes expressed regions with no formal annotation, including putative short RNAs and untranslated regions of expressed transcripts, along with the protein-coding genes. These unannotated expressed transcripts were among the best-connected members of the module sub-networks, making up more than half of the ‘hub’ elements in modules that include protein-coding genes known to be part of regulatory systems involved in stress response and host adaptation. This dataset provides a valuable resource for investigating the role of non-coding RNA, and conserved hypothetical proteins, in transcriptomic remodelling. Based on their connections to genes with known functional groupings and correlations with replicated host conditions, predicted expressed transcripts can be screened as suitable candidates for further experimental validation
Puberty and risky decision-making in male adolescents
Get PDFPubertal development is a potential trigger for increases in risk-taking behaviours during adolescence. Here, we sought to investigate the relationship between puberty and neural activation during risky decision-making in males using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Forty-seven males aged 12.5–14.5 years completed an fMRI risk-taking task (BART) and reported their tendencies for risky decision-making using a self-report questionnaire. Puberty was assessed through self-reported pubertal status and salivary testosterone levels. Testosterone concentration, but not physical pubertal status, was positively correlated with self-reported risk-taking behaviour, while neither was correlated with BART performance. Across the whole sample, participants had greater activation of the bilateral nucleus accumbens and right caudate on trials when they made a successful risky decision compared to trials when they made a safe choice or when their risky decision was unsuccessful. There was a negative correlation between pubertal stage and brain activation during unsuccessful risky decision-making trials compared within unsuccessful control trials. Males at a lower stage of pubertal development showed increased activation in the left insula, right cingulate cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), right putamen and right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) relative to more pubertally mature males during trials when they chose to take a risk and the balloon popped compared to when they watched the computer make an unsuccessful risky decision. Less pubertally mature males also showed greater activation in brain regions including the dmPFC, right temporal and frontal cortices, right OFC, right hippocampus and occipital cortex in unsuccessful risky trials compared to successful risky trials. These results suggest a puberty-related shift in neural activation within key brain regions when processing outcomes of risky decisions, which may reduce their sensitivity to negative feedback, and in turn contribute to increases in adolescent risk-taking behaviours
Geographical exploration of the underrepresentation of ethnic minority cyclists in England
Get PDFCycling is encouraged as a means of sustainable urban transport, yet its uptake rate is uneven between different ethnic groups. The ethnic minority population in England is underrepresented as cyclists, but the reasons for this are unclear. Through linear regression and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), this research investigates the spatial distribution of the propensity to cycling among the ethnic minority population and the white population across England with the aim to identify the contributing factors toward the discrepancy of cycling rates between both groups and how these factors vary geographically. Results from OLS regression suggest that cycle rates are generally affected most by hilliness, the presence of school-age children, and income, with the presence of school-age children affecting the ethnic minority group and hilliness affecting the white group the most. The use of GWR revealed that income generally reduces cycle rates but has a positive impact in London for both groups. The length of cycleways and the length of 20 mph speed limit roads per unit area were statistically insignificant, but their local coefficients in GWR showed strong regional variations for both groups. The study also found that, with the exception of the level of income, ethnic minority cyclists are less sensitive to contributing factors than the white cyclists
Rational bubbles: too many to be true?
Get PDFIssues that arise in the practical implementation of the Phillips, Wu, and Yu (2011) and Phiilips, Shi, and Yu (2015a) recursive procedures for identifying and dating explosive episodes in time series are considered. It is argued that the use of critical values for right-tailed unit-root tests obtained under the assumption of a drift whose magnitude depends on the sample size and becomes negligible in large samples results in over-rejection of the unit-root hypothesis when, as in many financial time series, the deterministic drift effect is non-negligible relatively to the stochastic trend. In addition, the standard practice of using conventional levels of significance for critical values involved in the algorithms that locate the origination and termination dates of explosive episodes lead to false discoveries of explosiveness with high probability. The magnitude of these difficulties is quantified via simulations using artificial data whose properties reflect closely those of real-world time series such as stock prices and dividends. The findings offer a potential explanation for the relatively large number of apparent explosive episodes that are often reported in applied work. Ways of overcoming the aforementioned difficulties by using bootstrap-based calibration techniques are considered. An empirical example focusing on monthly U.S. data on real stock prices and real dividends is also discussed
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