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‘The more traumatic inquests stick with you forever. But you can remember them all’: How witnesses experience the inquest process
Get PDFThis report is one of a series of Research Findings papers produced by the Voicing Loss project, which examined the role of bereaved people in coroners’ investigations and inquests. Voicing Loss was conducted by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, in partnership with the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant reference ES/V002732/1), and ran from May 2021 to May 2024
Research context and methodology: The Voicing Loss project on the role of bereaved people in the coronial proces
Get PDFThis paper sets out the context and methodology of the Voicing Loss project, which examined the role of bereaved people in coroners’ investigations and inquests. Voicing Loss was conducted by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, in partnership with the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant reference ES/ V002732/1), and ran from May 2021 to May 2024
Voicing Loss - Policy Brief No. 2: Locating bereaved people within the coronial process
Get PDFThe Voicing Loss project explored the role of bereaved people in coroners’ investigations and inquests. The project involved interviews with 89 people who had experience of the coroner service following the death of someone they were close to, as well as interviews with coronial professionals and witnesses. This is the second of two Policy Briefs based on the study findings, intended for those involved in coronial policy-making and leadership
Chemical pollution in water: Scalable and intersectional opportunities for the analytical and social sciences
Get PDFMany anthropogenic chemicals now exist in our environment, but we still have insufficient information about their risks or impacts. There is an urgent need to increase the scale of capability to assess this planetary crisis. Here, we focus on important opportunities for cooperative and intersectional analytical and social science solutions
Metamorphic history of the Precambrian lower cratonic crust from U-Pb dating of granulite xenoliths (Anabar province, Siberia)
Get PDFGarnet granulite xenoliths from the Nurbinskaya diatreme in the central part of the Archean Anabar province in Siberia are fragments of the local lower crust that experienced multiple metamorphic events in the Paleoproterozoic and reheating events in the Mesoproterozoic and later. This study addresses the timing of metamorphic transformations, and constrains the cooling rate and the time of stabilization of the lower crust. The observed metamorphic mineral assemblage of garnet, clinopyroxene, plagioclase, amphibole, rutile and ilmenite was formed at ~800°C, 1.1-1.2 GPa under water-undersaturated conditions at ~1.88 Ga. However, the mineral assemblage is not well equilibrated and retains evidence of earlier and subsequent metamorphic stages. Late titanite formed in response to hydrous fluid influx according to phase equilibria modeling. U-Pb dating shows two events of titanite formation at 1850 ±5 Ma and at 1788±2 Ma. After deformation, which led to the porphyroclastic rock textures, the granulites underwent near-isobaric cooling. The cooling rate was higher than ~6°C/Myr, to retain the garnet compositional zoning. Rutile ages are discordant, with 207Pb/206Pb dates ranging from 1.43 to 1.53 Ga. However, rutile may have responded to earlier thermal pulses, and was also reset later, so it does not record the stabilization of the crust. Crustal stabilization after Paleoproterozoic orogenic events may have occurred shortly after titanite formation
Do corruption experiences promote emigration? Observational and experimental evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
Get PDFHow does corruption influence emigration decisions? Previous research has focused on the relationship between individuals’ perceptions of corruption and their desire to emigrate internationally. In this paper, we argue that personal experiences of corruption affect the desire to emigrate even more strongly than perceptions to escape from extortion and demands for bribes. To explore the relationship between corruption experiences and emigration, we analyze three sources of data: the Local Governance Performance Index 2019 survey, Round 7 of Afrobarometer, and an original survey experiment. We use Afrobarometer to model the effect of different types of corruption experiences on both emigration intentions and specific emigration plans. We conduct a vignette experiment in Kenya in which respondents rate the desirability of emigration for a hypothetical countryman with varying experiences of corruption. We analyze the LPGI to explore how local-level experiences of corruption affect community leaders’ assessment of the desirability of emigration. We find that personal experiences of corruption are a strong push factor for migration and that this relationship does not vary with education levels. Our study extends the literature by focussing on how personal experiences of corruption shape migration
Divergent sensitivity of primary producers and benthic invertebrates to hydrological alteration in floodplain lakes
Get PDFFloodplain lake ecosystems are hydrologically dynamic and biologically important. Their ecosystem functioning is complex due to the concurrent influence of multiple anthropogenic stressors. Paleolimnological studies focused on a single biotic proxy might lead to biased results, as multiple trophic levels may show different responses to the same driver. In this study, multiple proxies including chlorophyll and carotenoid pigments (indicators of phytoplankton) and chironomids (indicators of invertebrates) were analyzed in a 210Pb dated sediment core from Luhu Lake (Yangtze floodplain, China). Using these indicators, we investigated how different trophic levels respond to external driving forces (i.e., hydrological alteration represented by K/Al ratios and nutrient influxes indicated by TP) in floodplain lakes. Sedimentary pigments showed that algal production increased in Luhu Lake after the 2000s. The chironomid community shifted from a fauna dominated by Microchironomus tener-type to an assemblage characterized by macrophyte-dwelling taxa (e.g., Tanytarsus, Paratanytarsus, Paratanytarsus penicillatus-type) after the 1970s. Finally, nutrient-tolerant taxa (e.g., Microchironomus tabarui-type) increased in abundance after the 1990s. Redundancy analysis and hierarchical partitioning analysis showed that the increases in algal production were mainly correlated with anthropogenic nutrient influxes, followed by hydrological alteration. In contrast, the transition in the chironomid communities were mainly associated with hydrological alteration, followed by food sources. Our study revealed asynchronous responses of phototrophs and benthic invertebrates to hydrological alteration, highlighting the necessity of analyzing multiple trophic levels to obtain a sophisticate understanding of long-term ecosystem evolution in lotic floodplain lakes which are influenced by multiple stressors. These findings will provide valuable information for the sustainable development, as well as the conservation and restoration of floodplain lakes
Extra-terrestrial mantle samples: Rare Earth Element variations and evidence for melt metasomatism in ureilite meteorites
Get PDFUreilites are meteorites derived from the mantle of a reduced differentiated asteroid, the “Ureilite Parent Body” (UPB), which was later disrupted by impact with another solar system body. They have ultramafic compositions dominated mostly by olivine and pigeonite with rare orthopyroxene and augite; aluminous phases are generally absent. Ureilites vary from abundant peridotites to much rarer pyroxenites, and their core olivine compositions range from Fo74 to Fo97 across different samples. The UPB experienced sufficiently high temperatures to undergo silicate partial melting, as shown by depletion in the Light Rare Earth Elements (LREE) in bulk restitic ureilites. Plagioclase and merrillite were probably present in the UPB mantle but have been completely removed during silicate partial melting. Partial melts of the UPB mantle are represented by glassy melt inclusions, igneous clasts in ureilite breccias, cumulus augite in some ureilites, and rare trachyandesitic fragments. These melts are generally intermediate and sub-alkaline in composition, although a few are alkaline. They have more enriched and flatter bulk REE patterns than the restitic ureilites and often show positive Eu anomalies. Glasses (representing melts) in ureilites from this study range from 57 to 79 wt% SiO2. One sample (AhS 22) shows petrographic and geochemical evidence for interaction between magma and the solid UPB mantle by forming metasomatic augite.
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Silicate minerals in ureilites analysed by LA-ICP-MS are generally LREE-depleted, with negative Eu anomalies. Ureilitic olivines have the lowest REE contents and the smallest negative Eu anomalies. Low-Ca pyroxenes have similar patterns with slightly stronger Eu anomalies. Augites have the highest REE contents and the most negative Eu anomalies. Augites show REE disequilibrium with olivine and low-Ca pyroxene, suggesting that they were not part of the restitic assemblage but were added by silicate melts passing through the UPB mantle, i.e. they are metasomatic in origin. We also discuss the size of the original UPB, using silicate minerals as evidence for it being a typical asteroid rather than a planet-sized object
My conflicted thoughts on the UK's assisted dying bill
No full textIt is, thus, with great sadness that I say that I cannot support this assisted dying bill. Not really due to my situation, but because of what it might do to thousands of others. This is part of what it means to operate in a society; sometimes what is good for an individual (me) is potentially terrible when scaled to a population. Hence, I say: fix the welfare state; fix palliative care; define terminal conditions and treatment paths better and come back then. There’s so much that we need to do better and right before we can even start to have this discussion
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