Scottish theme towns: have new identities enhanced development?

Three small towns in southwest Scotland have recently been branded as distinct theme towns, based on books, artists and food. This is an attempt to make them more attractive to visitors and thereby improve their economy. The objective of this research is to establish whether the new identities possessed by the towns have enhanced their development. It is argued, using data reviewing the past decade, that they have all developed, albeit at different rates, in terms of the economy and culture. Moreover, it is maintained that social capital has been enhanced and is a factor whose importance has been under-appreciated by planners and observers of this type of process. The relevance of the new identity to the pre-branding identity is also seen as a factor in successful development and ideas of authenticity and heritage are brought to bear on the relationship

The chaotic solar cycle II. Analysis of cosmogenic 10Be data

Context. The variations of solar activity over long time intervals using a solar activity reconstruction based on the cosmogenic radionuclide 10Be measured in polar ice cores are studied. Methods. By applying methods of nonlinear dynamics, the solar activity cycle is studied using solar activity proxies that have been reaching into the past for over 9300 years. The complexity of the system is expressed by several parameters of nonlinear dynamics, such as embedding dimension or false nearest neighbors, and the method of delay coordinates is applied to the time series. We also fit a damped random walk model, which accurately describes the variability of quasars, to the solar 10Be data and investigate the corresponding power spectral distribution. The periods in the data series were searched by the Fourier and wavelet analyses. The solar activity on the long-term scale is found to be on the edge of chaotic behavior. This can explain the observed intermittent period of longer lasting solar activity minima. Filtering the data by eliminating variations below a certain period (the periods of 380 yr and 57 yr were used) yields a far more regular behavior of solar activity. A comparison between the results for the 10Be data with the 14C data shows many similarities. Both cosmogenic isotopes are strongly correlated mutually and with solar activity. Finally, we find that a series of damped random walk models provides a good fit to the 10Be data with a fixed characteristic time scale of 1000 years, which is roughly consistent with the quasi-periods found by the Fourier and wavelet analyses.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

Peri-urbanisation, Social Heterogeneity and Ecological Simplification

Peri-urban development pressure on and near Australian coastlines is resulting in the conversion of agricultural land for rural-residential use. The impact of larger and more diverse human populations upon the ecological assets remaining in agricultural landscapes has consequently become a policy concern. This paper contributes to these policy debates by integrating the results of parallel social and ecological research projects commissioned to improve natural resource management in peri-urbanising regions. The research was undertaken in the case study region of South East Queensland, the region supporting Australia’s most rapid population growth. Our results indicate that both social and ecological communities cross a fragmentation threshold due to peri-urban development whereby they become ecologically simple and socially heterogeneous in a coupling that cedes a poor diagnosis for biodiversity retention.stored soil water, dryland grain cropping, extension, social systems, RD&E, differentiation

High speed sCMOS-based oblique plane microscopy applied to the study of calcium dynamics in cardiac myocytes

blique plane microscopy (OPM) is a form of light sheet microscopy that uses a single high numerical aperture microscope objective for both fluorescence excitation and collection. In this paper, measurements of the relative collection efficiency of OPM are presented. An OPM system incorporating two sCMOS cameras is then introduced that enables single isolated cardiac myocytes to be studied continuously for 22 seconds in two dimensions at 667 frames per second with 960 × 200 pixels and for 30 seconds with 960 × 200 × 20 voxels at 25 volumes per second. In both cases OPM is able to record in two spectral channels, enabling intracellular calcium to be studied via the probe Fluo-4 AM simultaneously with the sarcolemma and transverse tubule network via the membrane dye Cellmask Orange. The OPM system was then applied to determine the spatial origin of spontaneous calcium waves for the first time and to measure the cell transverse tubule structure at their point of origin. Further results are presented to demonstrate that the OPM system can also be used to study calcium spark parameters depending on their relationship to the transverse tubule structure

Longtitudinal electron beam diagnostics via upconversion of THz to visible radiation

Longitudinal electro-optic electron bunch diagnostics has been successfully applied at several accelerators. The electro-optic effect can be seen as an upconversion of the Coulomb field of the relativistic electron bunch (THz radiation) to the visible spectral range, where a variety of standard diagnostic tools are available. Standard techniques to characterise femtosecond optical laser pulses (auto- and cross-correlators) have led to the schemes that can measure electron bunch profiles with femtosecond resolution. These techniques require, however, well synchronized femtosecond laser pulses, in order to obtain the desired temporal resolution. Currently, we are exploring other electro-optic variants which require less advanced laser systems and will be more amenable to beam based longitudinal feedback applications. The first results of one such new scheme will be presented in this paper

Population genetics of trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense: clonality and diversity within and between foci

African trypanosomes are unusual among pathogenic protozoa in that they can undergo their complete morphological life cycle in the tsetse fly vector with mating as a non-obligatory part of this development. Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, which infects humans and livestock in East and Southern Africa, has classically been described as a host-range variant of the non-human infective Trypanosoma brucei that occurs as stable clonal lineages. We have examined T. b. rhodesiense populations from East (Uganda) and Southern (Malawi) Africa using a panel of microsatellite markers, incorporating both spatial and temporal analyses. Our data demonstrate that Ugandan T. b. rhodesiense existed as clonal populations, with a small number of highly related genotypes and substantial linkage disequilibrium between pairs of loci. However, these populations were not stable as the dominant genotypes changed and the genetic diversity also reduced over time. Thus these populations do not conform to one of the criteria for strict clonality, namely stability of predominant genotypes over time, and our results show that, in a period in the mid 1990s, the previously predominant genotypes were not detected but were replaced by a novel clonal population with limited genetic relationship to the original population present between 1970 and 1990. In contrast, the Malawi T. b. rhodesiense population demonstrated significantly greater diversity and evidence for frequent genetic exchange. Therefore, the population genetics of T. b. rhodesiense is more complex than previously described. This has important implications for the spread of the single copy T. b. rhodesiense gene that allows human infectivity, and therefore the epidemiology of the human disease, as well as suggesting that these parasites represent an important organism to study the influence of optional recombination upon population genetic dynamics