Throughout British membership of the European Union (EU), agricultural policy was largely determined by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This was viewed by the UK as a dysfunctional policy and while periodic reforms meant that the EU moved slowly in the direction advocated by the UK, many of the main policy elements remained in place. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have always enjoyed a measure of policy freedom in agriculture and have diverged from England in some areas. This article explores the extent of de-Europeanisation in the agricultural sectors in the UK and the patterns of divergence between them, focusing primarily on the development of policies for agricultural support that will replace those in place under the CAP. Overall, there has been substantial divergence in policy, but also areas of continuity, which means that processes of de-Europeanisation in the UK agricultural sectors has been uneven.

This article describes the development of the Tristan 10 M detector for time-resolved synchrotron experiments. Tristan 10 M has an unprecedented time resolution (ns time scale) over long-duration continuous acquisition (days). The detector is constructed from an array of 160 Timepix3 readout application-specified integrated circuit (ASIC; about 10 million pixels) flip chip bonded to ten monolithic silicon sensors, which enable it to cover an area large enough to effectively carry out crystallography experiments. The large array of ASICs resulted in a number of severe technical challenges that had to be overcome during the development of the detector. The minimization of the dead area between sensors required the development of a very challenging mechanical and electronic packaging. Such a packaging had to be able to route the large number of data and power lines within the footprint of a sensor, had to effectively sink the heat generated by the ASICs, and had to be able to position the sensors accurately. In addition, the packaging of the detector was designed to be scalable in consideration of possible future larger versions of this detector, which added a further challenge. The data-driven nature of Timepix3 and the sheer data volume produced by the array of ASICs required us to devise a dedicated hardware, firmware, and software data acquisition architecture. This architecture proved very effective during the commissioning of Tristan 10 M when time-resolved crystallography experiments were carried out.

In this paper the back-side-illuminated Percival 2-Megapixel (P2M) detector is presented, along with its characterization by means of optical and X-ray photons. For the first time, the response of the system to soft X-rays (250 eV to 1 keV) is presented. The main performance parameters of the first detector are measured, assessing the capabilities in terms of noise, dynamic range and single-photon discrimination capability. Present limitations and coming improvements are discussed.

This paper compares the effects of right-wing populism on agro-food policy in the US and UK. In both countries, populist campaigns politicized agro-food issues but the effects on policy have been variable. In the United States, policy has remained relatively stable despite the politicization of agro-food issues under Trump. In the UK, amid the uncertainty over Brexit, an opportunity exists to incorporate a wider range of goals around the environment, climate change and public health. These differences reveal how features of the policy process and the party system mediate the effects of politicization on policy change.

The Cryogenic Near Infrared Spectropolarimeter (Cryo-NIRSP) data processing pipeline has been created to process the live data stream whilst on summit and supports the extensive variety of operational modes that the Cryo-NIRSP accommodates. It performs data processing, data storage, and the displaying of quality assurance measures. This includes tasks such as the derivation of calibration parameters, saving of master frames, data reduction, and demodulation. Significant work has also gone into the quality assurance aspect, which publishes the outputs to a display in real time for on-the-spot data verification. This provides the final element to the end-to-end running of the Cryo-NIRSP.

In this paper, we are presenting the Percival detector, a monolithic CMOS Imager for detection of soft x-rays in Synchrotron Rings and Free Electron Lasers. The imager consists in a 2D array of many (2M) small (27um pitch) pixels, without dead or blind zones in the imaging area. The imager achieves low noise and high dynamic range by means of an adaptive-gain in-pixel circuitry, that has been validated on prototypes. The imager features on-chip Analogue-to-Digital conversion to 12+1 bits, and has a readout speed which is compatible with most of Free Electron Laser Facilities. For direct detection of low-energy x-rays, the imager is back-illuminated and post-processed to achieve 100% fill factor.

It is commonly believed that the general public is heavily dependent on the media for its political news and views and that, as a consequence, the media exercise a strong influence over public opinion and behaviour. However, many millions in the Western world strongly believe things that are barely ever mentioned in the mainstream media, just as many millions also firmly reject or ignore some of the messages that are repeated incessantly by them. This confirms sixty years of experimental psychology research showing that most individuals are capable of preserving their beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, argument and logic to the contrary. Consistent with this, political science research finds little evidence of strong media influence on the party voting, political attitudes and election agendas of citizens. They have their own ways of gathering political information about the world around them, and they do not necessarily believe what they read in the papers, unless they are so inclined to start with. Consequently, media influences on mass opinion and behaviour are weaker than commonly assumed and, such as they are, their effects are more beneficial than harmful for democracy.

AbstractMay 2019 marks twenty years since the first elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. This report discusses a paper published by the Institute for Government (IfG) that reflects on the experience to date of devolution, drawing on interviews with thirteen individuals who have served as ministers in the devolved governments. Reflecting the structure of the IfG paper, there are three main themes in this report: governing without a majority, institutional change, and—in the light of Brexit—relationships between the devolved governments, Westminster and the EU. The conclusion is that the report, although limited in coverage, provides a useful addition to the literature on devolution.

The Political QuarterlyVolume 89, Issue 1 p. 134-138 Original Article Brexit and Devolution Alan Greer, Alan GreerSearch for more papers by this author Alan Greer, Alan GreerSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 November 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12442Citations: 10Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume89, Issue1January–March 2018Pages 134-138 RelatedInformation

A core claim about agricultural policy making is that it is compartmentalized' and exceptional'. In this picture, the policy process is insulated from other policy concerns, has a distinctive system of actors and institutional structures, and is rooted in extensive governmental intervention in the market and the redistribution of resources from taxpayers to food producers. Recently there have been suggestions that a post-exceptional' agricultural politics has emerged, which is more market-driven, has reduced state intervention, and where policies reflect influences relating to non-food issues such as the environment. This contribution discusses the concepts of compartmentalization and exceptionalism and then applies indicators of change' to a case study of the 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It concludes that the reform provides evidence for shallow' post-exceptionalism where a historically persistent agricultural policy subsystem has opened up to new actors, incorporated some programme change but left the ideational framework largely intact.

This chapter considers the nature of farm interest group politics in Ireland, focused primarily on farm interest structures in the Republic of Ireland – notably the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association. It begins with an overview of the interest group system, set within an overall economic, political and ideological framework. The chapter discusses the history, internal governance, objectives and core policies of the main farmers' organizations, and the pattern of their interactions with the state. The institutional machinery developed as a result of Belfast Agreement to link the Irish political system with devolved institutions in Northern Ireland has the potential to completely refashion the relationship between north and south in agricultural policy. The crucial factor in the resilience of the IFA is its partnership with the Irish state. The feature of the Irish agricultural policy community is the high degree of consensus between government and farming interests on the main elements of agricultural policy.

A multi-authored briefing paper prepared for the Yorkshire Agricultural Society/The Farmer Scientist Network to inform the debate on the EU referendum in relation to agriculture.

The period that is the focus of this well-argued book was pivotal in the development of politics in Northern Ireland over the last fifty years. We might ask why we need another analysis of this per...

A novel motion control system which utilizes the Power PMAC controller from Delta Tau Data Systems Inc., has been developed for positioning with 1 nm spatial resolution. Present work is a significant step forward towards commissioning of the X-ray microscope which will operate at the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (HXN) beamline at the NSLS-II. The control system is capable of performing high-speed / high-accuracy on-the-fly scans of the sample with respect to the nano-focusing optics e.g. Multilayer Laue Lenses (MLL) or Fresnel X-ray Zone Plates (ZP) [1]. The Power PMAC controls piezoelectric-based nano-positioning stages using piezo-expansion for short range motion and stick-slip motion for longer travel distances. An EPICS interface to the Power PMAC has been developed allowing for easy integration into a beamline control environment.

After highlighting the budgetary context and the historical trends on the funding of the CAP, this paper considers contemporary debates about its reform in the context of two ‘historic firsts’. Negotiations about the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2014-20 for the first time took place in tandem with a proposed CAP reform, within the broader context set by the financial crisis after 2008. Second, the CAP reform debates took place within the new institutional arrangements introduced in the Lisbon Treaty, which by extending the co-decision mechanism to the CAP potentially has increased the influence of the European Parliament (EP). Indeed the CAP reform dossiers were the first real test of these new arrangements and provide an insight into how the new institutional structure will work in practice. In both cases the paper highlights a continuing cleavage among member states and stakeholder interests - that maps partly onto a broader budgetary gainers/losers division - between advocates of radical reform (e.g. the UK, Sweden) and those who favour the retention of the traditional CAP (such as France, Spain and Ireland).

As PLCs evolve from simple logic controllers into more capable Programmable Automation Controllers (PACs), observatories are increasingly using such devices to control complex mechanisms(1,2). This paper describes use of COTS software to control such hardware using the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) Common Services Framework (CSF). We present the Enclosure Control System (ECS) under development in Spain and the UK.The paper details selection of the commercial PLC communication library PLCIO. Implemented in C and delivered with source code, the library separates the programmer from communication details through a simple API. Capable of communicating with many types of PLCs (including Allen-Bradley and Siemens) the API remains the same irrespective of PLC in use.The ECS is implemented in Java using the observatory's framework that provides common services for software components. We present a design following a connection-based approach where all components access the PLC through a single connection class. The link between Java and PLCIO C library is provided by a thin Java Native Interface (JNI) layer. Also presented is a software simulator of the PLC based upon the PLCIO Virtual PLC. This creates a simulator operating below the library's API and thus requires no change to ECS software. It also provides enhanced software testing capabilities prior to hardware becoming available.Results are presented in the form of communication timing test data, showing that the use of CSF, JNI and PLCIO provide a control system capable of controlling enclosure tracking mechanisms, that would be equally valid for telescope mount control.

The dominant portrayal of the policy process around the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) emphasises a system of inter-governmental bargaining, close links between institutions and farming interests, and compartmentalised closed policy networks. This article considers how inter-institutional relationships might be reshaped by the extension of ‘co-decision’ powers to the European Parliament in the Lisbon Treaty. This raises the possibility that policy proposals and outcomes may increasingly reflect the participation of a broader range of actors and interests. Using four scenarios that reflect different institutional configurations, a preliminary analysis of the 2011 dairy regime proposals (the ‘Milk Package’) is used to draw some conclusions about whether the agricultural policy agenda is likely to be broadened through de-compartmentalisation, leading to a more fluid policy arena characterised by more actors with conflicting values.

Public AdministrationVolume 90, Issue 1 p. 280-282 DIRECT RULE AND THE GOVERNANCE OF NORTHERN IRELAND - edited by Derek Birrell DEVOLUTION AND THE GOVERNANCE OF NORTHERN IRELAND - edited by Colin Knox Alan Greer, Alan Greer 1University of the West of EnglandSearch for more papers by this author Alan Greer, Alan Greer 1University of the West of EnglandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 March 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2012.02029.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume90, Issue1March 2012Pages 280-282 RelatedInformation