South Devon Railway sea wall
The South Devon Railway sea wall is situated on the south coast of Devon in England. A footpath runs alongside the railway between Dawlish Warren and Dawlish, and another footpath forms a continuation to the sea front promenade at Teignmouth. Both these form part of the South West Coast Path.
The South Devon Railway was built to the designs of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and takes a route from Exeter which follows the River Exe to Dawlish Warren, runs beneath the sea cliffs to Teignmouth, and then follows the River Teign to Newton Abbot. It follows tidal waters for about 13 miles, 4 of which are open sea.
The section was opened by the South Devon Railway Company, running from Exeter St Davids railway station to Teignmouth railway station on 30 May 1846 and extended to Newton Abbot railway station on 31 December 1846. It was a broad gauge railway of 7 feet ¼ inch gauge and intended to be worked as an atmospheric railway, although atmospheric trains only ran from 13 September 1847 until 9 September 1848.
The South Devon Railway was amalgamated into the Great Western Railway on 1 February 1876 and the gauge converted to the standard 4 feet 8½ inches after 20 May 1892. A station was opened to serve Dawlish Warren in 1905, all the other stations on the Sea Wall having opened with the line in 1846.
The river comes into view at Turf. The square pond and disturbed ground between the railway and river are the remains of Turf engine house, one of the engine houses used for powering the atmospheric trains. After a short distance the river wall comes alongside the railway at Powderham. After passing the railway then runs between the river and the deer park of Powderham Castle, to Starcross railway station, situated in the middle of Starcross village. Opposite the pier for the ferry to Exmouth is the Starcross engine house.
A little further along the river, the railway crosses the mouth of Cockwood harbour. Near here was the 1,285 feet long Exe Bight Pier, in use from 1869 for about ten years. On the opposite side of the river trains can sometimes be seen near Lympstone Commando railway station.
The river enters the sea at Exmouth while the railway runs behind the sand dunes of Dawlish Warren to reach Dawlish Warren railway station.
On leaving Dawlish Warren the railway comes onto the Sea Wall proper with the walkway alongside, although it quickly enters the short and deep cutting at Langstone Rock. Emerging above the beach, views can be had towards Torbay.
The footpath is level with the railway except for a short section at Sea Lawn where it drops down almost to beach level. This section is impassable at high tide and so walkers need to cross the line on Rockstone Footbridge and return to the sea wall using another footbridge at Coastguard's Cottage. This building was used by the railway during its construction and then sold to the coastguard; their boat house is at the top of the beach next to the footbridge.
Immediately beyond the Coastguard Footbridge are the long platforms of Dawlish railway station with the town seen off to the right from Colonnade Viaduct at the other end of the station.
The line now enters its first tunnel, Kennaway, beneath Lea Mount, beyond which is Coryton beach, the furthest point accessible by the sea wall footpath from Dawlish. The Coryton tunnel leads to the next beach, Shell Cove, accessible by foot only via the shore at very low tide or by a private path from the clifftop. The railway then passes through Phillot Tunnel and Clerk's Tunnel, emerging onto a section of sea wall at Breeches Rock before diving into Parson's Tunnel beneath Hole Head. The last two tunnels are named after the Parson and Clerk Rocks, two stacks in the sea off Hole Head.
Beyond Parson's Tunnel is a short viaduct across Smugglers Lane and then the footpath resumes for the final stretch past Sprey Point to the cutting at Teignmouth Eastcliff. On the landward side of the railway near Sprey Point can be seen the remains of a lime kiln used during the construction of the line.
After passing through Teignmouth railway station the line continues through a cutting to emerge behind the busy Teignmouth Harbour, after which the railway resumes its course alongside the water, the River Teign. The cuttings on both sides of the station were originally tunnels and were opened out between 1879 and 1884.
After going under the Shaldon Bridge and passing a boat yard on the site of Teignmouth gas works, the line follows the river past the small promontories at Flow Point, Red Rock, and Summer House, before passing though two small cuttings and crossing Hackney Marshes near the race course to reach Newton Abbot railway station.
Across the river opposite Summer House can be seen the waterside inn at Coombe Cellars.
Maintenance and the future
|“||Such was the terrific force of the impelled water that along the sea-wall and railway huge coping-stones, probably averaging one ton each, were tossed about like corks...||”|
—Illustrated London News, 1859.
Running parallel to the open sea at the base of cliffs for four miles, the sea wall has always been prone to damage during rough weather. In December 1852 a large landslip from the cliffs east of Teignmouth caused the railway to close for four days, and in 1855 and 1859 the sea broke through the line at Teignmouth. There have been many more closures since, caused both by landslips from the cliffs and breaches by the sea, especially in winter. In 1929, the wall between Dawlish and Dawlish Warren was damaged by a storm on Christmas Eve, and there was partial subsidence of the down line.
In 2010 it was stated in Parliament that "in recent years" around £9 million had been invested on keeping the sea wall safe and the cliff faces stable, and that the ongoing maintenance of the sea walls and the adjoining estuaries was costing Network Rail around £500,000 annually.
In 1936 the GWR surveyed an inland deviation termed the Dawlish Avoiding Line, initially in 1936 proposed progressing 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) inland between Exminster and Bishopsteignton, and a 1937 shorter route ending west of Dawlish. After gaining Parliamentary approval for the required Bill, construction started in Spring 1939, but the advent of World War 2 brought the project to an end. The GWR was nationalised into British Railways on 1 January 1948, and the land sold. The powers of the associated Act of Parliament only lapsed in 1999.
In a Parliamentary debate in 2010, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport reiterated the importance of the line to the economy of South Devon and Cornwall, and confirmed that even if there were to be plans for the building of an alternative inland route in the future, "in our view, it would not be a substitute in any shape or form for the main line along the coast". This is despite the acknowledgement of an inevitable increase in maintenance costs due to rising sea levels.
On the night of 4 February 2014, amid high winds and extremely rough seas, part of the sea wall at Dawlish was breached washing away around 40 metres (130 ft) of the wall and the ballast under the railway immediately behind. The line was closed. Network Rail began repair work and the line reopened on 4 April 2014.
- Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2000). "Western Main Lines: Exeter to Newton Abbot via Dawlish". Midhurst: Middleton Press. p. (unnumbered) caption 77. ISBN 1-901706-49-4.
- Gray, Todd (2003). Lost Devon: Creation, Change and Destruction over 500 Years. Exeter, Devon: The Mint Press. p. 128. ISBN 1-903356-32-6.
- "Dawlish Sea Wall damaged by heavy seas, p.7.". Exeter and Plymouth Gazette. 28 December 1929.
- "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 10 Nov 2010 (pt 0002) Column 138WH". UK Parliament. Retrieved 27 November 2010.
- Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2000). "Western Main Lines: Exeter to Newton Abbot via Dawlish". Midhurst: Middleton Press. p. 4 "Diversions" (unnumbered). ISBN 1-901706-49-4.
- "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 10 Nov 2010 (pt 0002) Column 139WH". UK Parliament. Retrieved 27 November 2010.
- "UK storms destroy railway line and leave thousands without power". BBC Online. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
- "Dawlish's storm-damaged railway line reopens". BBC news. 4 April 2014. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to South Devon Railway sea wall in Dawlish.|
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to South Devon Railway sea wall in Teignmouth.|
- Exeter – Newton Abbot: A Railway History, Peter Kay, Platform 5 Publishing 1991, ISBN 1-872524-42-7
- Records of the South Devon Railway and its successors can be consulted at The National Archives


Inflation is generally controlled by the Central Bank and/or the government. The main policy used is monetary policy – set by Central Banks. However, in theory, there are a variety of tools to control inflation including:
- Monetary policy – Setting interest rates. Higher interest rates reduce demand, leading to lower economic growth and lower inflation
- Control of money supply – Monetarists argue there is a close link between the money supply and inflation, therefore controlling money supply can control inflation.
- Supply-side policies – policies to increase competitiveness and efficiency of the economy, putting downward pressure on long-term costs.
- Fiscal policy – a higher rate of income tax could reduce spending and inflationary pressures.
- Wage controls. Trying to control wages could, in theory, help to reduce inflationary pressures. However, apart from the 1970s, it has been rarely used.
In a period of rapid economic growth, demand in the economy could be growing faster than its capacity to meet it. This leads to inflationary pressures as firms respond to shortages by putting up the price. We can term this demand-pull inflation. Therefore, reducing the growth of aggregate demand (AD) should reduce inflationary pressures.
The Central bank could increase interest rates. Higher rates make borrowing more expensive and saving more attractive. This should lead to lower growth in consumer spending and investment. See more on higher interest rates
A higher interest rate should also lead to a higher exchange rate, which helps to reduce inflationary pressure by
- Making imports cheaper.
- Reducing demand for exports and
- Increasing incentive for exporters to cut costs.
Interest rates were increased in the late 1980s / 1990 to try and control the rise in inflation
As part of monetary policy, many countries have an inflation target (e.g. UK inflation target of 2%). The argument is that if people believe the inflation target is credible, then it will help to lower inflation expectations. If inflation expectations are low, it becomes easier to control inflation.
Countries have also made Central Bank independent in setting monetary policy. The argument is that an independent Central Bank will be free from political pressures to set low-interest rates before an election.
The government can increase taxes (such as income tax and VAT) and cut spending. This improves the budget situation and helps to reduce demand in the economy.
Both these policies reduce inflation by reducing the growth of Aggregate Demand. If economic growth is rapid, reducing the growth of AD can reduce inflationary pressures without causing a recession.
If a country had high inflation and negative growth, then reducing aggregate demand would be more unpalatable as reducing inflation would lead to lower output and higher unemployment. They could still reduce inflation, but, it would be much more damaging to the economy.
Other Policies to Reduce Inflation
If inflation is caused by wage inflation (e.g. powerful unions bargaining for higher real wages), then limiting wage growth can help to moderate inflation. Lower wage growth helps to reduce cost-push inflation and helps to moderate demand-pull inflation.
However, as the UK discovered in the 1970s, it can be difficult to control inflation through incomes policies, especially if the unions are powerful.
Monetarism seeks to control inflation by controlling the money supply. Monetarists believe there is a strong link between the money supply and inflation. If you can control the growth of the money supply, then you should be able to bring inflation under control. Monetarists would stress policies such as:
- Higher interest rates (tightening monetary policy)
- Reducing budget deficit (deflationary fiscal policy)
- Control of money being created by the government
However, in practice, the link between money supply and inflation is less strong.
Supply Side Policies
Often inflation is caused by persistent uncompetitiveness and rising costs. Supply-side policies may enable the economy to become more competitive and help to moderate inflationary pressures. For example, more flexible labour markets may help reduce inflationary pressure.
However, supply-side policies can take a long time, and cannot deal with inflation caused by rising demand.
Ways To Reduce Hyperinflation – change currency
In a period of hyperinflation, conventional policies may be unsuitable. Expectations of future inflation may be hard to change. When people have lost confidence in a currency, it may be necessary to introduce a new currency or use another like the dollar (e.g. Zimbabwe hyperinflation).
Ways to Reduce Cost-Push Inflation
Cost-push inflation (e.g. rising oil prices can lead to inflation and lower growth. This is the worst of both worlds and is more difficult to control without leading to lower growth.


from the California Institute of Technology, with support from the
National Science Foundation (NSF), have developed conditional small
RNA molecules that could treat
cancer cells without causing negative side effects.
is a personal disease that varies with each case and is based on
one's own environmental and genetic factors. It is normally treated
with chemotherapy, which consists of giving patients one or more
types of drugs in hopes of this diagnosing and treating cancer cells.
The problem with chemotherapy is that it is not selective enough, in
that taking a drug which kills fast-growing tumor cells will also
kill cells in the hair follicle, due to the fact that cells in the
hair follicle are fast-growing as well. This is what leads to hair
loss while going through chemotherapy treatments.
now, Niles Pierce, co-author of this study, along with his team, have
created the conditional small RNA molecules to separate the diagnosis
steps by utilizing characteristics found in our DNA and RNA.
This will help target cancer cells only, and leave unaffected cells
molecules are able to detect a mutation within a cancer cell, and
then change conformation to activate a therapeutic response in the
cancer cell, while remaining inactive in cells that lack the cancer
mutation," said Pierce.
performs certain tasks in a cell, such as playing the messenger role
and switching to communicate and watch over which genes are expressed
in a cell "at any given time." By performing such tasks,
RNA help to keep cells alive and healthy.
RNAs, which are a particular class of RNAs, are what Pierce and his
team are relying on for their new treatment. Small RNAs are less than
30 base pairs in length, where an average gene is thousands of base
pairs long. In this study, two types of small RNAs are used because
they are involved in many processes "that maintain life,"
and they structurally mimic small
processes that naturally occur within our cells. The first
small RNA opens up if there is a cancer mutation. If there is, a
hidden signal is exposed within the small RNA. After it opens, the
second small RNA attaches to it and triggers a chain reaction where
RNA molecules continuously come together to form a longer chain. The
longer the chain, the better because longer chains "trick"
cells into thinking they're being attacked by a virus, and it causes
cancer cells to self-destruct.
decoupling diagnosis and treatment, we can create molecules that are
both highly selective and highly effective in killing
cancer cells," said Pierce. "Conceptually, small
conditional RNAs have the potential to transform cancer treatment
because they can change what we can expect from a molecule. Many
years of work remain to establish whether this conceptual promise can
be realized in human patients."
study was published in Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.


New Paradigm for Forests that embraces wildfire and beetles
We need a new paradigm for our forests and natural ecological agents like wildfire, beetles, and other factors which influence forest ecosystems.
Unfortunately, far too many forest managers still display a lack of ecological understanding and a hostile attitude towards natural forest processes like beetle kill or wildfire. Dead trees do not indicate an “unhealthy” forest. Indeed, dead trees are critical to future forest ecosystems and a sign that our forests are actually ecologically healthy because the natural ecological processes that work to maintain forest integrity like beetles and wildfire are intact.
What we see today is an expansion of the acreage of trees killed by either pine beetle and/or wildfire. Both of these factors are native components of our forest ecosystems and a natural response to changing climatic conditions. And indeed, our forests are adapted to them. They are compensatory sources of mortality that bring forests back into alignment with the available moisture, nutrients and other limiting resources.
These changes in forest response are at least partially symptomatic of human-caused climatic change. In other words, we are treating the symptoms instead of treating the ultimate cause of these changes.
That the acreage affected is larger than in the recent past does not necessarily mean our forests are unnatural, out of balance or, dare I use the term, “sick.” These ecological processes can be thought of like wolves to a deer herd. They are thinning our forests, bringing them into balance with the available nutrients, moisture and space now dictated by a warming climate. (Bear in mind that we don’t have to spend money to fight fires or beetle outbreaks—that is a mistaken effort to thwart natural thinning processes). These ecological processes are restoring our forests—and doing the restoration at absolutely no cost to taxpayers.
It’s important to point out that even in the more severe beetle events, many trees survive to go on to form the next generation of forest. And even though the acreage of forest burned has expanded, the percentage of stand replacement blazes is still a small. For instance, one recent analysis of the 2012 fires in Idaho that charred 1.75 million acres of the state’s forests found only 13 percent of the tree-covered lands was severely burned. The vast majority of acreage burned were classified as low severity.
Indeed, there are some ecologists who insist we do not have enough large stand replacement blazes or what are called severe fires. The snag forests that result from such forests are temporally rare and spatially infrequent and critical to many wildlife species. We may need more of them.
We have seen these kinds of episodic natural forest thinning events in the past. If you review paleo ecology of forests in the Rockies, there are many examples of warmer climatic periods where conditions were as warm as or even warmer than at present. It was during the Medieval Warm Spell when the Anasazi Indians abandoned their pueblos in the Southwest due to massive drought and the Vikings were able to colonize Greenland due to High Arctic Warming.
During this warm spell, large wildfires and beetle expansion occurred throughout the West. And contrary to popular myth that ponderosa pine never experience stand replacement burns, during this warm period, even low elevation ponderosa pine forests experienced significant stand replacement blazes. The forests of this period were “restored” by these natural thinning agents to the carrying capacity dictated by the new climatic conditions.
Since that time, cooler, moister climatic conditions combined with forest mismanagement (logging of large fire resistant trees, overgrazing of vegetation, fire suppression, forest fragmentation, etc.) have allowed forest density to increase. Despite these human-caused issues, the forests are perfectly capable of restoration without more human interference.
Our forests are now responding to human-caused climatic change, which is creating warmer, drier conditions. These conditions are promoting expansion of natural thinning agents like beetles and wildfires. However, instead of viewing these as “negative” factors that we must “save” the forest from, we should see them as critical to forest ecosystem integrity. Fires and beetles are far superior at “restoring” forests than foresters and loggers. They, like wolves do to deer, pick the most vulnerable individuals and remove them from the population. The end result is a stronger, healthier forest (or deer herd).
Furthermore, logging is not benign. Logging creates “unhealthy” forests. It is virtually impossible to log without significant ecological impacts. For one thing, logging removes biomass—the live and dead trees which are the biological legacy or biological capital that is invested in the next generation of forests. Dead trees are also important for many wildlife species with one estimate suggesting that two-thirds of all vertebrate wildlife species rely upon dead trees/down wood at some point in their lives. Dead trees are also critical to aquatic ecosystems, providing both structures to streams as well as nutrients.
Suggesting that we need to log our forests to fix them is both self-serving to the timber industry as well as the federal land management agencies whose budgets depend on getting the cut out. Be wary of any prescriptions that suggest we need to log our forests to “restore” them.
What we need to do is leave our forests alone to self-restore and self-regenerate themselves. To make human communities comfortable with such a prescription the Forest Service should emphasize reducing the flammability of homes and removal of flammable materials, including trees near homes.
When I see the dead trees from beetle kill or wildfires I’m thankful that our forests are still healthy and actively being restored by natural processes. It’s time for our federal agencies to adopt a similar viewpoint.
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and former hunting guide with a degree in wildlife biology
6 Responses to New Paradigm for Forests that embraces wildfire and beetles
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I LOVE this article and the ideology. This is right in time what I have always felt.
Thank you! Well done.
My nearby beetle killed forest is now opening up everywhere with new meadows and a lot of choke cherry bushes, dogwood, and other edibles. This area used to be full of aspens. I can tell because the dead timber on the forest floor is old, maybe 200 year old, aspen. Aspens are now regenerating. I’ve found wikiups around here that were made of 400 year old aspen where there are now no aspens, just doug firs. These less dense forests will be good for wildlife, and for grizzly bears who are adapted to foraging in open meadow areas. A lot of the logged open areas are filling in with more invasives than the areas with left downed timber. From my observations over these last years, I’d have to agree with the article.
The way I see it, Mother Nature finally lost her patience with us humans going about forest management the wrong way , and She sent in the bugs and fires to remedy that. Next comes the scolding, if we will only listen.
Great Article! How much have our forests evolved with both the Fires and the Pine Beetles! Do Soooo Agree!
A welcome broadening of the dialogue about the nature and nurture of healthy forests. Unfortunately, you neglected to mention pathogens, which are at least as numerous as insects, and contribute significantly to the processes of change that insects promote, though usually (though not always) far less dramatically.
The sound of sanity. Thanks George.


FIDIC for PRACTITIONERS
Legal System and News
The Use of FIDIC in a legal context
Legal systems are different. However, a contract becomes embedded in or, if the phrase be permitted, is naturalised by the agreed proper law, so that, for better or worse, its existence and its future are determined by this legal system and none other (F.A. Mann, The proper law in the conflict of laws, 46 Int’l & Comp. L. Q. 437 (1987)). As a result FIDIC based contracts are also somehow embedded in law. The European Regulation Rome I does not preclude the parties from incorporating by reference into their contract a non-State body of law or an international convention. However, in principle choice is still limited to a “law” in the traditional formal sense of a State or EU legislative act.
The law will decide whether there is a contract and whether it is enforceable. Contract law can be divided into two distinct classes. The larger class consists of "default" rules that parties can contract around by prior agreement, while the smaller, but important, class consists of "immutable" rules that parties cannot change by contractual agreement. Default rules fill the gaps in incomplete contracts; they govern unless the parties contract around them. Immutable rules cannot be contracted around; they govern even if the parties attempt to contract around them (Ayres and Gertner, Filling Gaps in Incomplete Contracts: An Economic Theory of Default Rules, (1989). Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 1545).
Hence, FIDIC forms of contract become in force because there is the law. Also FIDIC forms of contract have to be construed in light of and in accordance with the proper law of the contract. In any case, culture and local practise may influence heavily the use and understanding of FIDIC based contracts. In some countries it is more important to avoid losing face rather than to pursue a claim at court (Korea, Japan). In others the mere fact that a contract has the nature of a locatio conductio operis results in a decennial guarantee for the stability of the building (France, Qatar, Malta). In each case English words as used by FIDIC will not be perceived as a crystal, transparent and unchanged, rather as the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
FIDIC contracts also do not prevent contractors and employers from relying on legal claims such as quantum meruit claims, misrepresentation claims or complementary conditions precedent of a claim, for instance in the laws of Egypyt, Qatar and the UAE regarding the excess in quantities.
FIDIC forms of contract provide a contractual machinery for the handling of claims and disputes (see Sub-Clauses 20.1, 20.2, 20.3, 20.4 et seq. FIDIC 1999 or Sub-Clauses 20.2, 21.1 et seq. FIDIC 2017). They are traditionally aimed at the early resolution of disputes and dispute avoidance. Dispute avoidance and dispute resolution activities involve legal work. Compliance with jurisdiction clauses, natural justice and other relevant legal principles is a core element of successful dispute management and handling. Additional softkills like charisma and ability to establish an atmosphere of mutual trust are necessary and helpful.
Nestor trainers have gained experience throughout the world as counsels, arbitrators, adjudicators, trainers, contratc experts, contract managers and designers. Hence they are not only experienced in the use of FIDIC contracts. Rather they also know that the forms though applied throughout the world have to be explained against the local context in which they are applied. Nestor trainers exchange experiences among themselves for the benefit of trainings and share their knowledge with course attendees. Also Nestor trainers come from different countries and have enjoyed different education.
The governing law of the Contract always prevails if it is mandatory or compulsory. Other law may apply by default and provide a kind of underlying framework. Sometimes legislators make users aware of the mandatory nature of legal provisions by stating that the parties are not permitted to deviate form it and that any agreement to th oposite may not be valid and enforceable. Unfortunately legislators are under no duty to to warn users. The very nature of the provision may make it anyway mandatory. For instance French courts have held that the subcontractor´s direct claims aginst the employer belong to the French public order if the Works are to be executed in France.
Also the concept of the decennial liability in respect of the structural stability of a building may have this nature, as it is the case in France, various north African and middle east jurisdictions (like the Philippens and Indonesia). This decennial liability feature may involve further investigations on insurance issues and the joint insurance required by consultant engineers and contractors. In some countries it is mandatory to provide insurance in regard to the joint and several decennial liability of contractors and consultants (for instance in France and Egypt).
It is obviously important to understand how mandatory law interferes with FIDIC forms of Contract and whether there is a risk of contradictions. However, in most cases it is sufficient to understand the underlying policies and concepts in order to avoid misunderstandings and unnecessary change to the FIDIC wording.
However in most case legislators confine themselves to providing a legal framework including default rules which shall apply in case of gaps or as a legal Leitmotiv. These provisions do apply albeit neither party have thought about it. In other words, if they had been aware of it they might have excluded or replaced it either in parts or in full. It is a frequent mistake to save costs for a legal research. It may bring to light that additional time bars, limitation rules and claims provisions do exist.
Though in daily engineering practice the sound knowledge of the law is not required, good skills in understanding the standard form of Contract in use and an ability to apply consruction law related general rules are a key to success. For instance Employers may find it strange to read that Sub-Clause 2.5 1999 FIDIC Red Book/Yellow Book and respectively Sub-Clause 20.2 of the 2017 Red Book / Yellow Book provides for a time bar. Therefore, at least in common law jurisdictions Employers may wish to know more about the 2015 Privy Council decision involving a case from Trinidad and Tobago.
Legal Terms (Faux Amis)
Legal terms must be precise in order to avoid the need to interpret the same. Frequently they are borrowed from the colloquial language. Thus a term may be understood differently depending on the context and the time on when it is used and was borrowed. Sometimes in a legal environment terms are used which may have different meanings in different jurisdictions. For instance the term Force Majeure has different meanings in England and in France. The connotation Taking-Over may be misleading in Civil Law jurisdictions where the law requires an act of acceptance by the employer. Training on the correct use of terms is therefore a cornerstone of international construction business.
Dispute Avoidance and Dispute Resolution mechanisms are closely linked to legal concepts. FIDIC forms of Contract provide for a two tier process: Adjudication - Arbitration. Disputes shall be referred to a Dispute Adjudication Board (DAB) or since 2017 to a Dispute Avoidance and Adjudication Board (DAAB) and subsequently before an arbitral tribunal may have jurisdiction to hear the case. Though this goes frequently without problems sometimes users face the issue that this particular FIDIC approach will be questioned as either being unnecessary, too expensive, or illegal, etc. FIDIC trainings will help users to understand that DABs or DAABs are first of all contractual aminals which shall help to avoid disputes and that referrals of disputes to the DAB should be last resort. Second FIDIC trainings will also demonstrate the advantages of DABs if properly implemented and used. In principle the proper use of DABs should be allowed in any legal environment worldwide provided that it is not misused as cheap arbitration and that subsequent access to either arbitration or the courts is allowed.
DAB or DAAB clauses are usually combined with the right to refer the dispute subsequently to arbitration. This helps to derogate the jurisdiction of state courts. On the other hand, DABs and DAABs operate totally independent and less formal than arbitration penals. At the same time they provide high value for money by giving way to discussions between those people who work on site and know the project very well.
Author: Dr. Götz-Sebastian Hök


Over the last five years cloud computing systems have evolved to be the home to more than racks of servers. The need for specialized resources to for various classes of customers has driven vendors to add GPU server configurations as a relatively standard offering. The rise of Deep Learning has seen the addition of special hardware to accelerate both the training and inference phases of machine learning. This include the Google Tensor Processing hardware in the Google cloud and the FPGA arrays on Microsoft’s Azure. Quantum computing has now moved from theory to reality. Rigetti, IBM, D-Wave and Alibaba now all now have live quantum computing services in the cloud. Google and Microsoft will follow soon. In the paragraphs that follow we will dive a bit deeper into several of these services with illustrations of how they can be programmed and used. In this article we will look at two different systems: the IBM-Q quantum computer and it software stack qiskit and the Microsoft Q# quantum software platform. We could have discussed Rigetti which is similar to IBM and D-Wave but it is sufficiently different from the others to consider it elsewhere. We don’t have enough information about Alibaba’s quantum project to discuss it.
The Most Basic Math
As our emphasis here will be on showing you what quantum programs look like, we will not go into the physics and quantum theory behind it, but it helps to have some background. This will be the shallowest of introductions. (You will learn just enough to impress people at a party as long as that party is not a gathering of scientists.) If you already know this stuff or you only want to see what the code looks like skip this section completely.
There are many good books that give excellent introductions to quantum computing. (My favorite is “Quantum Computing: A Gentle Introduction” by Rieffel and Polak.) We must begin with qubits: the basic unit of quantum information. The standard misconception is that it is a probabilistic version of a binary digit (bit). In fact, it is a two-dimensional object which is described as a complex linear combination of two basis vectors |0> and |1> defined as
Using this basis, any qubit |Ψ> can be described as a linear combination (called a superposition) of these basis vectors
where α and β are complex numbers whose square norms add up to 1. Because they are complex this means the real dimension of the space is 4 but then the vector is projected to complex projective space so that two qubit representatives |Ψ> and |г> are the same qubit if there is a complex number c such that
A slightly less algebraic representation is to see the qubit |Ψ> as projected onto the sphere shown on the right where |Ψ> is defined by two angles where
Qubits are strange things that live in a world where we cannot know what the parameters α and β are unless we attempt to measure the qubit. Measurement can be thought of as projecting the qubit onto a special set of basis vectors and each device has its own set of basis vectors. Here we will assume all our measurements are with respect to the standard basis |0> and |1>. Measuring a qubit changes it and results in a classic bit 0 or 1. However, the probability that it is a 0 is || α ||2 and the probability we get a 1 is || β ||2. After a qubit has been measured it is projected into one of the basis vectors |0> and |1>.
Basic Qubit Operators
In addition to measurement, there are a number of operators that can transform qubits without doing too much damage to them. (As we shall see, in the real world, qubits are fragile. If you apply too many transformations, you can cause it to decohere: and it is no longer usable. But this depends upon the physical mechanism used to render the qubit.) The basic transformation on a single qubit can all be represented by 2×2 unitary matrices, but it is easy to just describe what the do to the basis vectors and extend that in the obvious way to linear combinations.
- X is the “not” transform. It takes |0> to |1> and |1> to |0>. By linearity then X applied to any qubit is
- H the Hadamard transform takes |0> to 1/√2(|0> + |1>) and |1> to 1/√2(|0> – |1>). This transform is used often in quantum programs to take an initial state such as |0> to a known mixed state (called superposition).
Quantum computing gets interesting when multiple qubits interact. The way we describe the state space of two qubits is with the tensor product. For two qubits we can describe the state of the system in terms of the basis that is just the tensor product of 1-qubit basis:
So that any state of the 2-qubit system can be describe as a linear combination of the form
For three qubits the eight basis elements are |000> through |111>. The real dimension of this 3 qubit space is 23= 8. There are deep mathematical reasons for why the tensor product is the correct formulation rather than the direct sum of vector spaces as in classical mechanics, but the result is profound. The real dimension of an n-qubit system is 2n. When n = 50 the amount of standard computer memory required to store a single qubit is 8*250 = 16 petabytes (assuming 2 8-byte floating point values per complex coefficient). Hence there are limits to the size of a quantum systems we can simulate on a classical computer. We now have functional quantum computers with 20 qubits and we can simulate 32 qubits, but it may take 50 qubits or more to establish the more promising advantages of quantum computing.
For two qubits there is a standard operation is often used. It is the
- Cnot Controlled Not. This operation is so called because it can be thought of as using the first qubit (left most) in a pair to change the value of the second. More specifically, if the first bit of the pair is 0 then the result is the identity op:
Cnot(|0x>) = |0x>. If the first bit is one then the second bit is flipped (not-ed):
Cnot(|10>) = |11>, Cnot(|11>) = |10>.
One of the most interesting things we can do with these operations is to apply the H operator to the first qubit and then Cnot to the result. In tensor product terms applying an operation H to the first qubit by not the other is to apply the operator H⊗Id to the pair, where Id is the identity operator. We can now compute Cnot(H⊗Id)(|0>|0>) as
The result B =1/√2(|00> + |11>) is called a Bell state and it has some remarkable properties. First it is not the product of two 1-qubit vectors. (Some easy algebra can prove this claim.) Consequently B is a qubit pair that is not the simple the co-occurrence of two independent entities. The pair is said to be entangled. Information we can derive from the first qubit can tell us about the second. If we measure the first qubit of the pair we get 0 or 1 with equal likelihood. But if it is 0 then M(B) is transformed to |00>. If we get 1 M(B) becomes |11> . If it is |00>, measuring the second bit will give 0 with 100% certainty. If it is |11>, we will get 1 for the second bit. As this is true even if the two qubits are physically separated after they have been entangled, the fact that measurement of one qubit determines the result of measuring the second leads to amusing arguments about action at a distance and quantum teleportation.
We now have enough of the math required to understand the programs that follow.
The IBM system is real and deployed on the IBM cloud. The core computational components are made up of superconducting Josephson Junctions, capacitors, coupling resonators, and readout resonators. As shown in Figure 1, the induvial qubits are non-linear oscillators. Tuned Superconducting resonator channels are used for readout. Also, the qubits are tied together by additional superconducting channels.
IBM has several deployments each named after one of their research and development Labs. They include:
- IBM-Q Tokyo. 20 qubits available for IBM clients
- IBM-Q Melbourne 14 qubits and available for public use.
- IBM-Q Tenerife 5 qubits available for public use.
- IBM-Q Yorktown 5 qubits available for public use.
Figure 1. A 5-qubit IBM-Q computational unit. Source: IBM-Q website.
In addition, they have a very large simulator in the cloud, IBM-Q QASM_simulator, with 32 qubit capability. There is much more to the architecture of a complete quantum system. Two big challenges. First the qubit devices must be cryogenically cooled and howare how do you connect a system running at 15 millikelvins to a room temperature computing environment and how do you minimize noise to reduce errors. As shown in Figure 2, it takes several thermal layers and superconducting connections to make it happen.
Figure 2. System Architecture of IBM-Q quantum architecture. Source: IBM Research
Signing up to use the IBM-Q pubic systems is extremely easy. Go to the qx community page and sign-up and you can get an access code. The best way to use it is with Python Jupyter so download the most recent Anaconda distribution.
The IBM-Q qiskit software stack is how we program the system. Ali Javadi-Abhari and Jay M. Gambetta have an excellent series of articles on Medium describing it. The current state of the art in the hardware is what they call “noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers (NISQ)”. The software stack is designed to allow researchers to explore several levels of NISQ computing. There are for components.
- Qiskit Terra. This is the core software platform containing all the Python APIs for describing quantum circuits and the interface to submit them to the hardware and simulators. There are many qubit operators in Tera. See this notebook for a good sample.
- Qiskit Aqua. This is the high-level application layer. It contains templates for building advanced applications in areas including chemistry, optimization and AI. (We will discuss this in more depth in part 2 of this article.)
- Qiskit Aer. Qiskit has several different simulators that run in the cloud or locally on your laptop.
The unitary_simulator. The standard operations on a quantum circuit are all unitary operations. The unitary_simulator computes the result of computation and displays the result as a complex unitary matrix.
The statevector_simulator allows you to initialize a mullti-qubit to an arbitray unit combination of the basis vectors and it will do the simulation in terms of the state vectors.
The qasm_simulator provides a detailed device level simulator that takes into account the fact that the hardware is noisy. We will illustrate this simulator below
A Quantum “Hello World” example.
Qiskit is a programming system based on compiling Python down to the basic assembly language of the IBM-Q hardware (or to the format needed by one of the simulators). For a simple “hello world” example we will use the simple demonstration of entanglement describe in the mathematical introduction section above. We start with two qubits in |0> state and apply the H transform to the first and then the controlled not (Cnot) operation to the pair. We next measure the first qubit and then the second. If they have become properly entangle then if the first was measured at a 1 then the second will be a 1. If the first is a 0, then the second will be measured as a zero.
This code is based on the sample by Jay Gambetta and Ismael Faro. Using Jupyter we start by loading the libraries we will use and then load our account information (this was established earlier on the local machine earlier using the IBMQ.save_account(‘…. Key …’) operation. With the account information we can inquire about the backend quantum systems we are allowed to use. There are three: two are hardware and one is the cloud-based qasm-simulator.
In line  we ask for the least busy of machines and it is the 16 qubit system.
The next step is to define the program. We declare an array of 2 qubit registers and 2 classical 1- bit registers. As shown below, we create a circuit consisting these two resources. We apply the H operator to the first qubit and the Cnot to the first and the second. Finally, we measure both.
We have not executed the circuit yet, but we can draw it. There is a standard way quantum circuits are drawn which is similar to a musical score. The registers (both quantum and classical) are drawn has horizontal lines and operators are placed on the lines in temporal order from left to right.
As you can see, the H gate is simply represented as a box. The controlled not consists of a dot on the “control” qubit and a circle on the “controlled” instance. Recall that the value of the control determines what happens to the second qubit. Of course, we can’t know the result until we do the measurement and that is represented with a little dial and a line to the output classical bit.
We next execute our circuit on the ibmq_16_melbourne hardware. We will run it 1000 times so we can get some interesting statistics.
The execute command is a type of “future” call. It returns a placeholder for the result. The actual job will go into a queue and we can monitor the status. When complete we can get the data. The data is always returned from the experiment as a Python dictionary with keys labeled 0x0 for the basis |00>, ox1 for the basis vector |01> and 0x2 for |10> and 0x3 for |11>.
As we can see from the results below, the hardware is indeed noisy. The two bits are corelated 92.1% of the time. We can also plot a histogram to see the results.
Given that we should have created the Bell state 1/√2(|00> + |11>) with our two qubit operations there should be no |01> or |10> components. But the systems are noisy, and the measurements of qubits produce results that defined by probability distributions, the outcome should not surprise us. Even the initial state of the qubit may be |0> with only 99.9% accuracy. That means it is occasionally |1>.
The IBM-Q qasm_simulator can provide a model of the execution at the device level. To use it we extract data about the device we are going to simulate. We can get very low-level details about the device and measured noise characteristics. We can also get the coupling_map that tells us how the individual qubit cells are connected on the chip.
Using this device data we can invoke the simulator. As can be seen below, we get results that are very similar to the actual experiment.
If we had used one of the other simulators we would see only the theoretically perfect results.
Microsoft Q# Quantum Programming Toolkit
Perhaps the greatest challenge when building a quantum computer is designing it so that it is stable in the presence of noise. Qubits that are too fragile will experience decoherence if they are subject to prolonged episodes of noise while they are undergoing the transformations required by a quantum algorithm. The depth of a quantum algorithm is the count of the longest path of operations in the circuit. Based on the intrinsic error characteristics of the devices and the noise there may be a limit of a few tens of thousands in the circuit dept before decoherence is likely. For some algorithms, such as those involving iteration, this limit may make it unusable. One way to solve this is by introducing error correction through massive redundancy.
Microsoft has been taking a different approach to building a qubit, one that, if successful, will yield a much more robust system without as much need for error correction. Called a topological qubit, it Is based on different physics.
Topology is the branch of mathematics that is concerned with the properties of objects that are not changed when they are perturbed or distorted. For example a torus is a 2-dimenional object that cannot be deformed into a sphere without ripping the surface of the torus. But the torus can be deformed into various other shapes, such as the surface of a coffee mug with no such tearing. Or consider points on a 1-D line as beads on a string. We cannot change their order unless we can move them from the one dimensional line to a second dimension and back to the line. This braded structure is a topological constraints that is a global property and therefor very robust. If you can make a qubit from this property it would impervious to minor noise.
In condensed matter physics the 2016 Nobel prize was awarded to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz for their work understanding strange behavior of matter when restricted to thin films. Their discovery demonstrated that the behavior had to do with the topology of 2-D surfaces. A similar discovery had to do with chains of atoms on a thin (1-D) , superconducting wire. The properties of the pair of objects at the ends of the chain were tied to the whole of the chain and not subject to minor local perturbations. Microsoft uses a similar idea to construct their “topological qubits” made from spitting electrons to form “Majorana fermion quasi-particles”. Situated at the opposite end of topological insulators they are highly noise resistant. This implies that one does not need massive redundancy in the number of qubits required for error correction that is needed for many other qubit models.
Of course the above description does not tell us much about the exact nature of their process, but several interesting theory papers exist.
The Q# programming environment.
The first iteration of a quantum computing software platform from Microsoft was based on the F# functional programming language in 2014 and called LIQUi|> (see Wecker and Svore). The current version is based on C# and is nicely embedded in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. You can download it here for Windows 10, Mac and Linux. The installation straightforward. There is also a Python binding but we will look at the Visual Studio version here.
The Q# programming language is designed as a hybrid between quantum operations on qubits and classical procedural programming designed to operate on a digital computer that contains the quantum device as a co-processor. Q# extends C# by introducing a number of new standard types including Qubit, Result (the result of a qubit measurement), unit (indicating an operator returns no result) and several additional operators. A complete description of the operational semantics is defined on the Q# link above. For our purposes here any Java or C# program should be able to follow the code.
There are two standard libraries and a set of research libraries. The standard libraries include
- Prelude: the collection of logic, libraries and runtime specific to a particular quantum computer architecture.
- Cannon: The hardware independent library of primitive operator that can be used as part of quantum algorithm design.
There is also a set of excellent standard libraries that include important topics like amplitude magnification, quantum Fourier Transforms, iterative phase estimation and other topics more advanced than this article can cover. There is also a set of research libraries with a focus on applications in Chemistry and Quantum Chemistry.
Hello World in Microsoft’s Q#
We begin by creating a new C# project with the “file->new->project” menu. If Q# has been correctly installed, you can select “Q# application” from the list of C# configurations and fill in the name for the project. In our case we are using “BellTest” and the system now shows the following.
This is almost exactly what you will find in the introduction when you download the kit. The file called operations.qs contains the main part of our algorithm. We will have two operations, one for initializing a quantum variable and one for the bulk of our algorithm.
The operation Set takes a qubit and a desired value (0 or 1) and sets the qubit to have that value. It does this as follows. First we measure the qubit. Recall that measurement (in the standard basis) returns a 0 or a 1 and (in the standard basis) projects the qubit to either |0> or |1>. If measures 0 and a |1> is desired, we use the Not gate (X) to flip it. If a 1 is measured and 1 is desired no change is made, etc.
The operation BellTest takes an iteration count and an initial value we will use for qubit 1. The code is essentially identical to the example we described for qiskit. We start with an array of 2 qubits. We set qubit 0 to |0> and qubit 1 to |initial> . Next we apply H to qubit 0 and Cnot to the pair as before. We measure qubit 0 and compare it to the measurement of qubit 1. If they agree we increment a counter. If the measurement is 1 we also count that. This process is repeated count time and returns our counter values.
The main program calls BellTest two different ways: once with the initial value for qubit 1 to be 0 and one with the value of qubit 1 to be 1. In the case that both qubits are initialized to 0 we saw from the mathematical introduction that the state after the Cnot should be the Bell state 1/√2(|00> + |11>). Consequently, after the measurements both qubits should always agree: if one is 0 the other is 0 and if one is 1 the other is 1. However if qubit 1 is initialized to 1 the situation is different. Evaluating the state mathematically we get
Hence, we should see that the two qubits never agree when measured. The main program that drives this experiment is
which runs BellTest 1000 times with each configuration of qubit 1. The results are below.
These results agree with the theoretical result. The only probabilistic effect is the count in the number of zeros/ones measured. Unlike the Qasm_simulator, there was no noise introduced into the initialization because the Q# simulator was not modeling a specific hardware configuration.
The near-term future of quantum computers will be as co-processors tightly integrated as cloud services. While IBM is now ready to start selling there systems into private clouds, others like Google and Microsoft will probably stay with a cloud service offering.
This short paper was intended to illustrate two approaches to programming quantum computers. It is certainly not sufficient to begin any serious quantum algorithm development. Fortunately, there is a ton of great tutorial material out there.
There is a great deal of exciting research that remains to be done. Here are a few topics.
- Quantum Compiler Optimzation. Given the problem of qubit decoherence over time, it is essential that quantum algorithms terminate in as few step as possible. This is classic compiler optimization.
- Efficient error correction. If you have a great quantum algorithm that can solve an important problem with 100 qubits, but the error correction requires 1000 qubits, the algorithm may not be runnable on near term machines.
- Breakthrough algorithmic demonstrations. “Quantum supremacy” refers to concrete demonstrations of significant problem solutions on a quantum computer that cannot be duplicated on a classical machine. In some cases this is argued to be algorithms that are “exponentially” faster than the best classical algorithm. However, good quantum algorithms may lead to the discovery of classical algorithms that are quantum inspired. For example, here is one for recommendation systems.
Part 2 of this report will address the application of quantum computing to AI and machine learning. This is both a controversial and fascinating topic.


Very few people get to fly 65,000 feet above Alaska’s glaciers. And even fewer get to fly over ones they share a name with. But on Friday, as pilot Denis Steele flew NASA’s ER-2 aircraft from Palmdale, California, to Fairbanks, Alaska, he snapped a picture of the scenery below – including Steele Glacier in the southwestern corner of Canada’s Yukon territory.
Steele and the ER-2 team, along with NASA scientists, engineers and others, are here in Fairbanks to fly a laser altimeter – MABEL, or Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar – over melting summer sea ice, glaciers and more. It’s a campaign to see what these polar regions will look like with data from ICESat-2, once the satellite launches and starts collecting data about the height of Earth below. Gathering information now allows scientists to get a head start in developing the computer programs scientists will need to analyze ICESat-2’s raw data.
MABEL and other lidar instruments are flying on the ER-2, which provides a high-altitude perspective. In the next three weeks, the plan is to cover melting sea ice, glaciers, vegetation, lakes, and more.
Steele wasn’t the only one looking out of the plane windows on flights north. Kelly Brunt, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, spotted a wildfire in Eastern Washington. The fire, burning in steep terrain, resembled an erupting volcano.
Over the weekend, the team settled into Fairbanks and a hangar at the U.S. Army’s Fort Wainwright, downloading data from the transit flight and ensuring the instruments are ready to fly when the weather allows. Cloudy skies over key sites means the ER-2 won’t fly today (Monday), but the team will check the weather tonight and see if it clears enough to fly the first science flight on Tuesday.
Want to follow MABEL and the ER-2? Check back here, and also check NASA’s flight tracker: http://airbornescience.nasa.gov/tracker/


Before we get into the nitty-gritty of Adobe AIR, it helps to understand a few key terms and break down what it means to be a "cross-operating system runtime" that can run desktop applications.
AIR is, first of all, a runtime engine at its most basic. A runtime engine is simply computer software that other applications need to use in order to run properly; it translates language within a program into machine language, the simple, lowest level language (essentially 0s and 1s) the central processing unit (CPU) can understand. Programs that run on Java, for example, require the Java Virtual Machine runtime engine installed on the computer. Without it, your computer wouldn't be able to make use of the same graphical user interface (GUI) that you're used to using now. A GUI, also known as a human-computer interface, is the combination of windows, icons, text and menus that we can change with a mouse or a keyboard. Even your operating system can be considered the mother of all runtime engines, since every application on your computer depends on the processes of the operating system.
So when Adobe describes AIR as a "cross-operating system runtime," they just mean that AIR is a runtime that can work on any computer, regardless of the operating system. Different operating systems use different languages; a program running on Mac OSX, for instance, won't look the same as the same program running on Windows XP. Applications built with Adobe programs such as Flash or Flex will use the AIR runtime to display -- because AIR comes the with the open-source WebKit HTML renderer, Web-like content can display on the desktop. That's the big difference between something like a Flash player and AIR: While Flash works over the Internet and in your Web browser, applications running off of AIR are based on the desktop and don't necessarily require a browser to work.
Finally, what are the RIAs that Adobe AIR will help build? An RIA is a broad term coined by Adobe that describes a Web application that provides an engaging, connected experience for users. In general, they're meant to provide the best aspects of both desktop applications and Web-based applications and are developed with programs like Adobe Flash or Flex -- Web sites like Flickr or Google Maps are examples -- sites that offer lots of interaction but are located on the Internet. RIAs are easy to use but difficult to program, so many hope the release Adobe AIR will make such development processes smoother.
That's what AIR does for you computer applications, but what does it do for developers, businesses and everyone else?


Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been re-started following a programme of repairs to rectify damage caused by an accident last year.
The fault, which caused one tonne of helium to leak into the tunnel that houses the LHC, occurred just nine days after the collider was switched on to much fanfare.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) has spent some 40m Swiss francs (£24m) on repairing the machine following the embarrassing mishap.
What was the accident that shut down the LHC?
The Large Hadron Collider started up on 10 September 2008. Engineers successfully sent proton beams in opposite directions around the 27km-long circular tunnel underground.
But just nine days later, a major accident in the tunnel forced Cern to switch off the machine.
An investigation confirmed that the cause of the accident was an electrical fault in a "soldering joint" linking two of the 1,200 "superconducting" magnets that steer sub-atomic particles around the LHC.
Superconductivity is the property, exhibited by some materials at very low temperatures, of channelling electrical current with zero resistance and very little power loss.
The fault triggered the release of helium within one of the magnets. This caused a pressure increase which lifted several of the superconducting magnets off their supports, breaking the interconnections between them.
This chain of events also triggered numerous magnet "quenches". A quench occurs when part of a magnet heats up, causing its superconducting properties to be lost.
The accident also caused about one tonne of helium to leak out into the tunnel. Liquid helium is used to cool the LHC to its operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F).
LHC project leader Professor Lyn Evans shows how the super-conducting magnet was damaged
What repairs had to be made?
Engineers needed to replace 53 superconducting magnets in all. Some 54 electrical interconnections were fully repaired, while partial repairs were made to another 150 interconnections.
Over 4km of beam tube - the piping which carries sub-atomic particles through the magnets - had to be cleaned following the incident.
Cern also said it would fit a restraining system to some magnets and install hundreds of helium pressure release ports around the machine.
Could the same kind of incident happen again?
Cern officials say they are confident that the re-fit will prevent accidents of the kind that happened in September 2008.
To this end, they have also been upgrading the system which is designed to provide warning of magnet quenches.
Engineers have had to install hundreds of new detectors around the machine.
The incident delayed the LHC's "science run" by more than a year
Among other things, the upgraded quench protection system is expected to improve monitoring of the interconnections between magnets.
Gianluigi Arduini, deputy head of hardware commissioning for the LHC, told BBC News: "It will allow us to constantly monitor the status of the interconnections. If there is any deterioration detected by the system, the powering of the magnets will be automatically stopped, preventing any damage."
Is the LHC in full working order now?
Almost. Since the incident in 2008, engineers have discovered the collider has hundreds to thousands of flawed electrical splices between magnets.
These do not need urgent repair, but they do limit the amount of current which can be safely put into the machine.
Officials have decided to put off repairing all the faulty splices. Instead, when the collider begins circulating proton beams, engineers have been told not to exceed a maximum "safe" limit of five trillion electron volts.
Secondly, tests have uncovered concerns about a number of the magnets themselves. All LHC magnets undergo a "training" process, in which engineers crank up the electrical current until the magnets quench.
After a few iterations, a stable configuration is reached where the magnet can reliably operate at the current it was designed for.
The magnets had been trained to their operating current before being lowered into the LHC tunnel. But once connected underground, some of them were found to have "lost" their training.
When the machine goes into its planned downtime in November 2010, engineers will attempt to re-train some of the magnets and, potentially, replace some proportion of the splices to ready the LHC for a push towards seven trillion electron volts - the LHC's maximum energy.
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Climate Futures has produced a comprehensive 'Climate Atlas' of climate change-induced effects on Australia's wine growing regions.
An assessment of the state-level risks associated with bushfires, floods and coastal inundation, severe storms, heatwaves, earthquakes, landslides and human influenza pandemics in Tasmania.
Climate Futures is working to support critical decisions about future investment in ski resort infrastructure.
Climate Futures for Tasmania is the state government's most important source of climate change projections.
An explanation of the climate modelling downscaling that Climate Futures uses in many of its projects.
This project extends previous research to include greater understanding of potential vegetation change, together with extreme climate conditions associated with high fire danger, and their importance in making decisions about the timing of prescribed burning in the future.
The prescribed burning project investigated the changing opportunities for prescribed burning in Tasmania in the near future and towards the end of the century.
Project to generate the best-available representation of historical weather every hour over Australia covering 1990 to 2015.
Study examined changes in bushfire meteorology and fire danger hazards and risks.


A holographic sensor is a gadget that comprises a 3d image inserted in a savvy fabric that recognizes certain atoms
or metabolites. This discovery is as a rule a chemical interaction that's transduced as a alter in one of the properties of the holographic reflection (as within the Bragg reflector), either refractive file or dispersing between the holographic borders. The specificity of the sensor can be controlled by including atoms
within the polymer film that specifically interatomic with the atoms
of interest.A holographic sensor points to coordinated the sensor component, the transducer and the show in one .gadget for quick perusing of atomic concentrations based in colorful reflections or wavelengths.
High Impact List of Articles
Relevant Topics in General Science


What Is Emphysema And What Causes It?
Emphysema is a sort of problem that influences the alveoli of the lungs. Alveoli is an end design of the lung where lungs and the blood trade oxygen and carbon dioxide, the breathing system. On account of emphysema, the alveoli unusually become kindled, making harm to its walls, and making it challenging to relax.
Because of the harm caused, alveoli become unfit to ingest and breathe out air. Accordingly, the ability to allow air diminishes because of the presence of currently caught air, leaving no space for outside air.
The surface region of the lungs diminishes, prompting less oxygen to arrive at the circulatory system. Such constant illness for the most part happens in individuals who have a propensity for smoking and the ones who are routine taking in aggravations. It is an irreversible condition. Along these lines, emphysema treatment can lessen its signs and side effects.
According to the American Lung Association, practically 4.5 million U.S residents experience emphysema. Everybody is at an equivalent gamble of fostering the infection. The following are a portion of the normal
reasons for emphysema:-
Individuals with age over 65 years are in danger of creating emphysema
The propensity for smoking. It might likewise include smoking tobacco and Maryjane
Individuals living in the most air-contaminated region
Continuous admission of compound exhaust and residue
The affiliation likewise says that smoking is the reason for 480,000 Americans kicking the bucket in a year out of which 80% of them are a result of emphysema. Openness to recycled smoke likewise builds the gamble of creating emphysema.
Individuals who live close to regions that are presented with high contamination, compound exhaust, or lung aggravations are at a more prominent possibility of encountering emphysema.
What Are The Early Signs Of Emphysema?
Emphysema brings down the breathing limit of the lungs given the harm caused to the alveoli. Because of less air consumption, the individual experiencing it gets drained effectively, causing less endurance and breathing issues, particularly while performing active work.
The side effects of emphysema might exist for quite a long time and that too unwittingly sometimes. At first, the early and the most widely recognized indications of emphysema incorporate:-
Moderate side effects of Emphysema
Snugness in the chest or torment
On account of smokers, the inclination of hacking endures for a more drawn-out length and doesn’t go even after the individual stops smoking. Snugness or torment in the chest or coronary illness can result from it, which can be more noticeable while performing actual work.
As emphysema has a place with a kind of COPD, dysfunctions of the genital organs likewise go under the normal issue looked at by emphysema patients.
Numerous men should know about the prescriptions for dealing with such brokenness like Super p force some might attempt to self-sedate themselves with Cenforce 100. In any case, doing so may cause unsafe impacts as the body is going through an alternate well-being complication(Emphysema).
Men with no overall unexpected issues might feel a few results of super p force oral jelly whenever consumed without observing the rules. Men with emphysema consuming Cenforce 100 might encounter a lot of more regrettable secondary effects.
Thusly never self-cure, and consistently observe the specialist’s rules.
What Are The Long-Term Effects Of Emphysema?
Emphysema might prompt a few unexpected issues whenever left untreated. For instance:-
Pneumothorax: Severe emphysema might prompt lung breakdown, which is otherwise called pneumothorax. It happens when the air gets spilled and passes between the lung and chest. In such a circumstance, the spilled air then, at that point, applies tension on the lung’s external surface, making it break down.
This brings down the surface region of the lungs making it challenging to work. This is an intriguing confusion yet serious as it very well may be deadly.
Heart confusions: The ill-advised capability of the lungs will prompt a lessening in the stockpile of oxygenated blood. Thus, the strain on the courses that associate both heart and lungs builds, prompting cor pulmonale.
It is a condition where a piece of the heart grows and debilitates in light of less stock of oxygen to the heart. Thusly, emphysema influences the two lungs and heart.
Bullae: People experiencing emphysema will more often than not foster void spaces inside the lungs known as emphysema bullae. They can be a portion of the size of the lungs and decrease their retaining limit. This decrease in the surface region of the lung will influence your oxygen-retaining limit.
At times, men have hardly any familiarity with the presence of emphysema and just experience its side effects like erection trouble. Men being off-kilter attempt to self-sedate with drugs like Cenforce 100. Doing such without speaking with the specialist will demolish the condition and may try and prompt the above complexities. Along these lines, don’t self-sedate regardless of whether it is Cenforce 100, it tends to be risky. The best method for managing this is to counsel the specialist.
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In a USA Today article today crediting Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) for having “fashioned the modern day” immigration system, immigration advocate Frank Sharry pointed out that Kennedy “laid the groundwork” for the sort of humane immigration reform that he had spent much of his political career fighting for, but never achieved. It’s hard to imagine an immigration bill hitting the Senate floor without Kennedy’s binding support, but the truth is he’s already paved the legislative road for its debut and equipped progressives with the guts and principles to see it through.
Sen. Kennedy kicked off his political career in 1965 with a major overhaul of immigration laws that eradicated ethnically biased immigration quotas that made it nearly impossible for anyone other than Western Europeans to emigrate to the US. “He created Americans,” says Dana Houle of the Daily Kos. After changing the face of immigration, Kennedy spent the next 40 years fighting to change how the nation treated its newcomers. Kennedy helped pass the Refugee Act of 1980 that brought “U.S. law into compliance with the requirements of international law.” He fought with all his might against the harshest provisions proposed in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, described in the Cornell Law Review as the most “the most diverse, divisive and draconian immigration law enacted since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.” In the more recent past, Kennedy cosponsored the DREAM Act to legalize hardworking undocumented students who have lived in the US most of their lives at no fault of their own and the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act of 2005 to improve the lives of immigrant farmworkers.
Many aspects of Kennedy’s original Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act — which died in the Senate in 2007 — “continue to be the model” for comprehensive immigration reform today. With that said, there are some tough lessons to be learned from what went wrong that year. The final negotiated bill was attacked by both the Left and the Right, as both sides could point to major aspects of it that they were unwilling to swallow. Mary Giovagnoli says the immigration bill was “met with lukewarm support from many immigration advocates and was pilloried by those on the Far Right, who turned the Senate’s efforts to find a way out of our immigration mess into a personal vendetta against immigrants.” A small, but vocal minority of restrictionist constituents lit up the phones of Senate staffers who cowered and retreated in electoral fear. Labor was also adamantly opposed to the inclusion of a guest-worker program — something they perceived as a threat to wages, jobs, and immigrant worker rights. Kennedy will be remembered by many as the “master negotiater” and the “stalwart of the Senate.” But in 2007, it wasn’t enough.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is committed to giving immigration reform another shot, and he thinks he stands a good chance at passing it. Much like Kennedy partnered with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on immigration, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will probably be Schumer’s Republican ally. But bipartisanship can’t just be symbolic. They’ll both have to reach out to conservative Democrats and other moderate Republicans — many who even Kennedy was unable to convince — in order to negotiate the votes needed to pass reform. Most importantly, Schumer will have to balance the delicate interests of business, labor, and immigration advocates, along with conservatives’ demands for harsh enforcement, without losing sight of the compassionate solutions that must be brought to immigrant communities across the country. It helps that the climate is a bit different this time around: immigration advocates are better organized, labor is on-board, the president is more engaged, and Latino voters have made clear that anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Congress will render vulnerable nativist candidates obsolete. But if Kennedy were still around, he’d probably advise Schumer not to take any of that for granted.
When the 2007 immigration reform bill didn’t pass, Kennedy announced:
We will endure today’s loss and begin anew to build the kinds of tough, fair, and practical reform worthy of our shared history as immigrants and as Americans. Immigration reforms are always controversial. But Congress was created to muster political will to answer such challenges. Today we didn’t, but tomorrow we will.
While some argue that Kennedy’s death has left a “leadership gap,” the truth is his passing has yielded the floor to new voices who are versed in his political skills and progressive agenda. His notable absence doesn’t mean that his legislative triumphs and moral agenda won’t continue to guide the immigration debate closer to a fair and just solution. It would’ve been easier to reach with him, but it must be achieved without him.


Light from the sun takes approximately 8 minutes to reach us on earth; however, that does not mean that those particular photons are 8 minutes old. The suns light is produced in the center of the sun when massive amounts of energy is released. The sun has a radius of 696,000 km. The distance between the edge of the sun and the earth is 149.6 million km. From this information you would come to the conclusion that it takes less time for a photon to reach the outer surface of the sun than it would to reach the earth. The truth is that it actually takes much longer for a photon to travel from the center of the sun the the edge. This is because as a photon is released it travels through the sun with a lot of stops along the way. A photon can only travel a certain distance inside the sun without being absorbed and released by an atom. As a result, it can take up to millions of years to finally reach the surface of the sun. A cool way to think about this is that the light from the sun can potentially be produced millions of years plus 8 minutes ago.


Beck Surname Popularity in the United States
In this article we'll look at the surname Beck and how popular it is in the United States. We'll also look at the race and ethnic origin of people in the United States who are named Beck.
Beck, like all of the names we have data for, is identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a surname which has more than 100 occurrences in the United States in the Decennial Census survey. The most recent statistics we have for the Beck surname is from the 2010 census data.
Where Does Beck Rank in the Most Common U.S. Names?
According to the data, Beck is ranked #328 in terms of the most common surnames in America.
The Beck surname appeared 93,786 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 31.79 would have the surname Beck.
We can also compare 2010 data for Beck to data from the previous census in 2000. The table below contains all of the statistics for both years in a side-by-side comparison.
|Proportion per 100k||31.79||34.53||-8.26%|
Race and Ethnic Origin of People with the Last Name Beck
We also have some data on the ancestry of people with the surname Beck.
The below race categories are the modified race categories used in the Census Bureau's population estimates program. All people were categorized into six mutually exclusive racial and Hispanic origin groups: "White only", "Black only", "American Indian and Alaskan Native only", "Asian and Pacific Islander only", "Two or More Races", and "Hispanic".
For the most recent 2010 census data, the race/ethnic origin breakdown for Beck was:
- 90.27%, or 84,661 total occurrences, were "Non-Hispanic White Only".
- 4.53%, or 4,249 total occurrences, were "Non-Hispanic Black Only".
- 0.74%, or 694 total occurrences, were "Non-Hispanic Asian and Pacific Islander Only".
- 0.63%, or 591 total occurrences, were "Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaskan Native".
- 1.66%, or 1,557 total occurrences, were "Non-Hispanic of Two or More Races".
- 2.17%, or 2,035 total occurrences, were "Hispanic Origin".
Note: Any fields showing (S) means the data was suppressed for privacy so that the data does not in any way identify any specific individuals.
Since we have data from the previous census in 2000, we can also compare the values to see how the popularity of Beck has changed in the 10 years between the two census surveys.
|Asian and Pacific Islander||0.74%||0.58%||24.24%|
|American Indian and Alaskan Native||0.63%||0.60%||4.88%|
|Two or More Races||1.66%||1.23%||29.76%|
All of the data on this page is sourced from the Decennial Census survey, from the United States Census Bureau.
Link To or Reference This Page
We spent a lot of time downloading, cleaning, merging, and formatting the data that is shown on the site.
If you found the data or information on this page useful in your research, please use the tool below to properly cite or reference Name Census as the source. We appreciate your support!
"Beck Surname Popularity in the United States". NameCensus.com. Accessed on December 3, 2021. http://namecensus.com/last-names/beck-surname-popularity/.
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Beck Surname Popularity in the United States. NameCensus.com. Retrieved from http://namecensus.com/last-names/beck-surname-popularity/.


How is your mood? Is stress an issue? Memory issues may be a sign of depression, especially in older adults. When we are feeling down and depressed we may process information more slowly and not remember new information as well. The same is true when we are very stressed. When we have many worries, it is hard to concentrate on one thing and learn new information. Despite what we may think, we can only think about one thing at a time. If our mind is overcome with worries, anxiety or sadness, it will be difficult to maintain mental focus. If depression or stress are issues for you (or a loved one), seek out assistance. There are many strategies to assist you in getting help with these issues and getting back to functioning your best.
Strengthen your body to strengthen your mind. When we exercise, a complex array of physical and chemical changes occur in our body. Our blood flow increases which may help us to think more clearly. As we age, it is normal to see some shrinking in the size of our brain and it is thought that some of the age-related declines in memory are a result of this shrinking. However, a study has shown that regular exercise such as walking is associated with less brain shrinkage. Exercise is also a potent stress-reducer and has been shown to improve mood. In fact, previous studies have shown that 30 minutes of exercise three times a week can be as effective as an anti-depressant pill for some people with depression.
Eat your colors and spice it up. When our cells become damaged, they do not function normally and it is thought that this cell damage may be a common pathway for many disease and aging processes including Alzheimer's, Diabetes and Arthritis. Antioxidants are strong chemical compounds that are thought to protect against cell damage. Natural antioxidants are abundant in many fresh and whole foods especially berries, and some beans (see my website for a listing of high antioxidant foods). Also, some spices and green tea are high in antioxidants. So try to get your 'dose' of anti-oxidants by including these rich antioxidant foods in your diet. While it is possible to buy anti-oxidant vitamins and in supplements, so far, these non-food antioxidant sources have not been proven by science to be helpful. Eating antioxidant foods is the better (and cheaper) bet.
Diabetes and high blood pressure - prevent them or control them. Diabetes and high blood sugars have been associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and memory problems in general. If you already have diabetes, it is important to know that people with well controlled diabetes have less decline in memory than those whose diabetes is not well controlled. So work on controlling your disease to the best of your ability.
High blood pressure also can also be associated with memory problems. Some people with a long-standing history of high blood pressure will get small strokes (often unrecognized) and these can lead to memory problems. This is called multi-infarct dementia. Maintaining good blood pressure control with lifestyle changes and medications (if needed) is a way to decrease your chances of developing this condition.
Keep learning and maintain connections. Learning new skills and information is a way to keep our brains strong and youthful. This does not mean that you have to go back to school. Perhaps you have always wanted to learn to draw or how to knit or speak Swahili. When we are learning new skills our brain is active and creating new connections. We can also create and maintain connections with people -- family members, friends, members of our community. Sharing our skills and experiences keeps us engaged and excited about our life and its myriad possibilities. Remember, strong life, strong body, stronger memory.
Dr. Winbush is a family physician practicing at NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center. She has a strong interest in wellness and patient education to help individuals feel empowered to optimize their health and functioning. She wants to hear from you! To respond to this article, request topics for future articles and for additional resources visit www.functionwellmedicine.com or LIKE Function Well Medicine on Facebook.
The information contained herein should not be used as a substitute for the advice of an appropriately qualified and licensed physician or other health care provider. The information provided here is for educational and informational purposes only. In no way should it be considered as offering medical advice. Please check with a healthcare provider if you suspect you are ill.


The Hunter was the main RAF front-line day fighter during the 1950s. It was also delivered
to 23 nations.
Designed by Sidney Camm, the designer of the war-time Hurricane, the Hunter incorporated the
swept wing design and replaced the obsolescent Meteor and Vampire in RAF service.
Camm, with great foresight, had originally refused to consider the swept-back wing because
it was German.
The stages which eventually led to the Hunter are as follows :
- P1040 developed from Sea Fury. This was a straight-wing aircraft, which developed
into the Sea Hawk.
- P1052 which had a swept-wing but unswept tailplane. Flew 19 October 1948. Later
fitted with sweptback tail.
Two were built, the second being converted later to a P1081.
- P1081 with an Avon engine, new back fuselage, all swept lift surface and
with a single jet pipe (instead
of two on the side). It was itended to permit installation of re-heat.
- P1067 (which eventually became the Hunter)
The Hunter prototype, it first flew in 20 July 1951 from Boscombe Down, piloted by
Neville Duke, the Chief Test Pilot for Hawker Aircraft.
The first prototype (WB188), designated of type Mark 1 flew
with Rolls-Royce Avons, as did the second prototype WB195.
The Mark 2, the third prototype WB202, flew with Armstrong-Whitworth Sapphires engines.
Its first confirmed supersonic flight was on 24 June 1952 (it had been breaking the barrier
before then but its flight instruments were too unreliable to actually confirm this), and its first public
supersonic flight occured on 10 July 1952 at Melsbroek, Belgium.
Its first public demonstration in Britain was at Farnborough in 1952, where the new concepts of supersonic flight
were greatly marred by the death of John Derry while flying a De Havilland aircraft, causing the death of
several spectators, as well.
The first production aircraft flew in May 1953 and
the type was introduced into the RAF in August 1954. However the F1 did not become fully
operational with the RAF straight away because the engines had a tendency to surge
when firing its guns. This feature was apparently absent from the Sapphire-powered aircraft -
nevertheless the problem with the Avon was solved and this engine powered the vast majority of Hunters.
Initial problems with the early marks
lead to the introduction into service, in 1955, of the Mark 4 (with Avons)
and the Mark 5 (with Sapphires). Originally the Mark 4 supplied 21 squadrons and the Mark 5 supplied
In 1956 the Mark 6 was introduced and this and
all further Hunters flew with Avon engines.
In 1960, it changed from being a fighter to being a ground attack aircraft, taking over the
role played up till then by the Venom. Significant numbers were converted
to FGA9 standard.
Its last major use was as a trainer with No 1 Tactical Weapons Unit, RAF Brawdy.
After this was ended, TMK75 Integrated Flight Instrumentation System RAF Honington (used as Bucaneer trainers)
A fully supersonic version, the P1083, had been planned, but this was cancelled on 13 July 1953.


It may sound crazy, but human beings do have viruses inside them on a daily basis. Some of these viruses are very ancient, and their reactivation in the course of certain diseases may only worsen the condition of the patient. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the role of viruses in evolutionary history of humans and their diseases. Basing on this information, we will also discuss the possibility of battling and prevention of the viral infection.
Buy How Old Viruses Can Haunt Us essay paper online
According to the recent scientific findings, the remains of the old viruses may supposedly play a crucial role in several diseases, such as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. Researchers presume that humans have genes, in which the remains of the old viruses can be found. They also state that our ancestors were infected by these retroviruses from the rodents. The uniqueness of these old viruses lies in the fact that they are capable of copying their DNA into the DNA of humans, and because of this peculiarity they managed to survive through generations. With the flow of time, human genome changed sufficiently, and now the virus genes represent 8 percent of the whole human DNA. Is it a lot? Probably the answer to this question is positive, because this number is in fact considerably bigger than the number of genes responsible for the outer appearance of human beings. Consequently, there are more virus genes in the human organism than genes responsible for the eye or hair colors (Marcus, 2011).
After discovering the presence of genes in human DNA, the researchers started wondering, whether they can possibly have a connection to any modern human diseases. Actually, the problems in this respect are caused not so much by the very retroviruses, but by the fact that they are switched on again and used not to the benefit of a human being. It must be acknowledged that not all the retroviruses cause the development of the diseases in the organism. Some of them were actually helpful because of their active role in placenta’s formation. There were also those that inserted parts of the old infections into the DNA of the humans and in this way helped their organisms to fight with similar viruses appearing all the time (Marcus, 2011).
One of the biggest possible problems caused by a retrovirus may be observed in HIV patients. Retroviruses are found in their DNA in large quantities. It is assumed that HIV stimulates genes that were inactive for years and turns on the parts of human genome that were dormant, in particular, retroviruses genes. In case of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the situation is similar: the patients with cancer cells have old virus cells reactivated. The stimulated retrovirus cell entails aggressive development of cancer and, in this way, destroys the possibility of survival. After these medical discoveries were done, the researchers reached a startling conclusion – reactivated viruses aggravate the condition of people diagnosed with cancer and assist its rapid development. Consequently, if it would be possible to turn theses retroviruses off again, the cancer patients may witness improvement in their condition. Another researchers’ discovery proves that Epstein-Barr virus and two herpes viruses can make the old virus genes active. This, in turn, may worsen the condition of the patients with multiple sclerosis and chronic fatigue syndrome. If this discovery proves to be true, it will definitely become possible to develop treatment that will be directed towards inactivating the retrovirus genes. Such revelation about retroviruses may become one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of medicine (Marcus, 2011).
Although antibiotics discovered long ago successfully battle bacterial infections, they remain useless in treating viral infections, such as influenza, the common cold, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever, and some other hemorrhagic fever types. The discovery of retrovirus in human genome was more than helpful in this respect. The researchers managed to develop a drug on its basis that detects virus cells and cures the infection. It works by pointing the RNA produced only by the cells infected by the viruses. So, how does it work exactly? Drug’s main idea is to initiate programmed cell suicide, when this cell is on its way to become cancerous. Although viruses are successful in developing resistance against any treatment, in this case, it is very unlikely that they will manage to do it (Trafton, 2011).
To conclude with, the ancient viruses present in human genome can be very dangerous and cause a lot of harm to the patients that are already suffering from other diseases like HIV or multiple sclerosis. However, the scientists are on their way to discover successful treatment from the viral infections.
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Keepers of the Animals
Native American StoriesBook - 1991
These traditional Native American stories along with related activities show parents and teachers how to teach children the importance of wildlife in Native American traditions.
Publisher: Golden, Colo. : Fulcrum Pub., c1991.
Branch Call Number: J/398.2/CADU
Characteristics: xx, 266 p. : ill. ; 29 cm.


Zap one part of the brain with a magnetic pulse and people become more likely to lie. Stimulate the opposite side of the region and truth-telling increases, according to new research.
In the study, 16 participants were asked to view red or blue colored disks on a computer monitor and, at their own discretion, to sometimes lie about the color and identify red as blue, or vice versa.
While the volunteers made these choices, researchers applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to their brains. The small rTMS device uses magnets to generate weak electrical fields, and researchers place it near the head to administer the non-invasive pulses. This affects communication between brain cells in targeted regions.
Doctors use rTMS as a treatment for depression that fails to respond to drugs or therapy, and it is also being studied for other psychiatric and neurological disorders. Side effects can include some twitching, but the treatment is not generally reported to be painful.
In the new study, researchers administered rTMS to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — a region involved in planning, memory and self-control — either in the right or left hemisphere of the brain. When rTMS was used on the right hemisphere, participants were more likely to tell the truth. When the stimulation was applied to the left side of that region, the probability of lying increased. Stimulation applied to other brain regions in the study’s control participants had no effect on their honesty.
Because the number of participants was so small, it’s hard to draw firm conclusions from the research. Even if the study were replicated in a much larger group, however, it might not translate directly to the real world. Stimulation of the brain could have a different effect when the stakes of lying — say, to avoid being sent to prison — are higher than simply participating in an experiment. The brain’s responses to experience are different depending on the person’s emotional state.
Nonetheless, the potential ability to detect or even control people’s deceitfulness would be of tremendous interest to those working in professions like law or national security—as well as having terrifying civil liberties implications. Study co-author Talis Bachmann of the University of Tartu in Estonia spoke with the U.K.’s Guardian about the potential legal repercussions of using rTMS to get people to tell the truth:
Provided that the method is validated and legal norms are established, it could perhaps be allowed and justified … but this should not become a routinely used technique. Basic human rights include cognitive privacy and this would be a clear infringement. If a subject freely agrees, maybe it would make sense, but I foresee heated debates on whether ‘knocking truth out of the fellow’ can be legalized in principle.
Quite an understatement, I’d say! Let’s hope the ethicists keep close tabs on this technology.
The study was published in Behavioral Brain Research.
[h/t: Mo Costandi of the Guardian's excellent Neurophilosophy blog]