Oxford University Press's Blog, page 479

A possible cause of the Big Bang and current acceleration of the Universe

The Big Bang theory predicts that there was a powerful repulsive force at the beginning of the expanding of the Universe. A common hypothesis of the cause of the Big Bang is a short-term repulsive field, the so-called “inflanton”. Observations of supernovas have shown that the Universe is still expanding with acceleration. There are some models that explain the current acceleration of the Universe using a concept of the so-called “dark energy”, a substance that has a negative pressure thus causing a repulsive effect.

Recently, the LIGO experiment detected gravitational waves caused by the merger of two black holes with masses of about 36 and 29 times the mass of the sun. About three times the mass of the sun, i.e. about 5% of the initial total mass of the black holes, was converted into gravitational waves. If we assume that the Big Bang was preceded by a collapsing Universe, the “Big Crunch”, with multiple mergers of black holes, it is possible to show that a significant fraction of the initial mass of the Universe was converted into gravitational waves. A question then arises: what is happening to the gravitational field of this collapsing Universe?

We consider a solution of the Einstein equations for a system comprised of merging black holes and show that the solution contains a term which represents a repulsive force. This repulsive term is proportional to 1/r, where r is the distance from the system, and it is additional to the common Newtonian term which is proportional to 1/r2. This repulsive force acts as an effective dark energy if the total mass of the Universe is decreased.

Gravitational potential (in 10-21 cm2 s-2) as a function of the radius (in billion light years) for different times. The curves 1,2,3 correspond to times from the start of changing mass of the system: t=0.3, 0.5, 0.8 billion years. For better visualization, the curve 2 shifted on 1 unit vs the curve 3; the curve 1 shifted on 2 units vs the curve 3. The case of the exponential decrease of the mass with α=10. Illustration created by the authors and used with permission.

As seen below, a shape of the gravitational potential is often illustrated by a funnel made of rubber film where a heavy ball (blue) is located in the center. In this model, a fast decrease of the gravitational mass corresponds with a sharp ascent of the ball. The film attached to the ball forms a cone-type hill in the center of the funnel. Light balls (green) on the central cone run away from the center. The central cone expands fast but keeps it exterior slope; this corresponds to long-term repulsive force.

An illustrated example of gravitational potential using a funnel made of rubber film and balls of varying weights. Illustration created by the authors and used with permission.

A mechanism of the repulsive force may be applied to a model of the expanding Universe. This may imply that the Big Bang and accelerated expansion of the Universe is not related to current processes in the Universe but to a relic repulsive gravitational force or to a configuration of space-time that originates in the previous cycle of the Universe when at the last stage of a collapse the intensive generation of gravitational waves resulted in sharp decrease of the gravitational mass of the Universe. This process generated a powerful repulsive force that transformed the Big Crunch into the Big Bang. Because the repulsive acceleration decreases with time, the current Universe expands with lower acceleration. Decreasing acceleration of the Universe can be verified by observations. Gravitational waves caused by the compression of the Universe may not disappear at the stage of expansion and form the relic gravitational radiation. A level of the energy of the relic gravitational waves at GHz frequencies is not limited and may be very high.

The proposed solution may be used for the development of a cosmological model that explains the current expansion of the Universe without assumptions of new fields and exotic particles.

Featured image credit: Galaxy by Wikilmages. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Making the English country house

In February 1764, Samuel Butler, the steward at Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, wrote to the London upholsterer, Thomas Burnett, that he should wait in sending furniture because “our house is now in greater confusion than ever … as we are making great alterations in the middle part of the house.” These changes were being made as a result of the recent coming of age of Edward, fifth Lord Leigh.

Such refurbishment of the ancestral home was common enough, refreshing it as a symbol of wealth, power and taste; but the process also tells us much about a broader array of goods and processes which often slip under the radar of historians of the country house.

To begin with the familiar, Lord Leigh’s wealth and taste would have been immediately apparent to visitors as they walked up the steps and into the Great Hall which was decorated with marble pillars and elaborate stuccowork. In common with many country houses, this had a classical motif, although Lord Leigh preferred figurative rather than abstract designs. His choice of Hercules spoke of his familiarity with classical mythology, but combined this with protestant Christian morality and the athleticism and bravery of Hercules himself; but its execution in high relief was old-fashioned if high quality – a reminder that elite taste was more complex and nuanced than a simple pursuit of the latest fashion.

The Great Hall, Stoneleigh Abbey, 1760s. Photo by Jon Stobart. Used with permission.

Also familiar to historians and readily apparent to Lord Leigh’s visitors was the richness and opulence of the drapery and soft furnishings. These were supplied by Burnett who, like many upholsterers and furniture makers, had some influence over the decorative schemes thus created. The fine green damask in the breakfast room and the rich crimson Genoan velvet used in the chapel are no surprise. More noteworthy are the coordinated colour schemes created in bed chambers, with wallpapers matching the curtain and bed hangings, and rooms labelled accordingly: Yellow Damask, Blue Morine, Crimson Damask…

One of the crimson velvet cushions made for the chapel by Thomas Burnett, c.1764. Photo by Jon Stobart. Used with permission.

Less obvious to the eye – and often escaping our attention, despite the growing interest in beds and sleep – is the trouble taken to make beds comfortable, whilst marking out subtle distinctions. The best bedchambers were on the first floor. The bed frames were richly carved and generously proportioned and the bed itself was stuffed with the ‘best sweet goose feathers’. Further comfort and luxury was added by superfine white calico quilts, down-filled pillows, and large Wilton carpets. On the floor above were a set of bed chambers that were still comfortable, but a notch or two less luxurious: the beds were smaller and un-carved and the bed stuffed with fine goose feathers; there were cotton counterpanes in place of the quilts, and the carpets were half the size. The distinctions are small, but telling; they remind us of the need to be attentive to the detail as well as the grand scheme.

The last feature of Lord Leigh’s refurbishment to highlight is an updating of the kitchen. These are spaces that attract much interest from modern visitors to country houses and increasingly from food historians, but are easily overlooked when thinking about the country house as a whole. The kitchen, and the servants who worked there, were central to the ability of the owner to entertain their guests, so it was important that it was properly equipped. Amongst the array of pots, pans and earthenware, what stands out is the purchase of a new range. Samuel Butler, the steward, noted that the old one ‘is so far worn out, as not to be worth putting into its usual place, yet I did not choose to bespeak a new one, as the Cook perhaps may not like what I should order’. This is a remarkable acknowledgement of the limits of his knowledge and a clear indication of important gender divisions of power not only within the body of servants, but also in shaping the material culture of different parts of the house.

The country house was thus made by many people: the owner was ultimately in charge, but tradesmen and senior servants also played an important role that is all too easily overlooked. The house thus becomes a place of negotiated power and mediated taste; contingencies that are revealed through exploring it as a site of consumption.

Headline image: Stoneleigh Abbey, photo by Ozzy Delaney. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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12 little-known facts about cats

Cats are among some of the most popular pets in the world, and they’ve been so for thousands of years. While some superstitious people may consider them to be bad luck due to their ancient association with witchcraft and magic, others simply cannot get enough, going so far as to be dubbed a ‘cat lady.’ In fact, there are more than two million cat videos on YouTube—way more than any other nonhuman animal—and watching cat videos has been said to be an extremely calming exercise. Who knows, maybe they do have powers we don’t know about.

Whatever you may feel about cats, you can be sure that they don’t feel that much back toward you, or indeed toward anything. As any cat-owner can tell you, you never really own a cat. They own you. These majestic creatures, from the largest tigers to the smallest Singapura cat, have captured imagination with their natural, predatory grace. They are also not without their oddball moments. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but we don’t blame you for getting curious about these meowing mousers. In appreciation of our feline friends for World Cat Day on 8 August, we’ve put together a list of 12 little-known cat facts:

1. Ever dream about cats? People believe that when cats appear to you in a dream, you are in danger of treachery. Moreover, to some dream-analyzers, cats are a symbol of independence, intuition, and creativity. If your dream cat appears unhealthy, this may be a hint that it’s time to have more confidence in yourself.

2. Cats are an important figure in Egyptian religion, with many deities associated with various forms of felines: the warrior goddess Sekhmet with the lioness, the goddess Pakhet with desert wildcats, and Bastet—goddess of protection—as a cat. Devotion to Bastet—and, of course, the usefulness of cats as destroyers of vermin—brought about the popularity of having domestic cats as pets. In fact, Herodotus writes that cats were treated as a family member so much that when they passed away, their human friends would shave off their eyebrows in mourning.

3. You think cat-worship is over? Think again. A cat named Stubbs has ostensibly been honorary mayor of the town of Talkeetna, Alaska, for the past sixteen years. In Japan, Tama the cat served as official station master of the Kishi train station for eight years. They don’t always win, though. In 2013, Morris the cat ran for the mayoral seat in a city in Mexico but lost out to a human competitor.

4. ALL members of the feline family like boxes. Yes, lions and tigers, too. Having a cozy hiding place reduces their level of stress and helps them avoid being social—something cats generally do not like to do. Moreover, cats are used to a warmer climate than us humans, and a warm box is the perfect happy-place for insulation.

Zanzibar in a box, again? by Nicola Ramagna, CC BY 2.0 via flickr.

5. Cats spend 70% of their life sleeping, and for nearly 50% of the hours awake, they spend it grooming. Sometimes, they even groom you. Grooming a human is a show of affection from a cat, as they are marking you as family and treating you fondly, as a mother cat would lick her young or litter mates would nibble each other.

6. It’s a cliché reinforced by many films and stories that cats are often ‘familiars’ of witches; demons who take the form of small animals and accompany and serve witches in exchange for comfort and the occasional sacrifice. However, cats are not by far the only familiars. Hare, dog, and toad familiars are said to be just as common.

7. Meow? The inability to roar marks the difference between big cats and small cats. In small cats—the bobcat, cheetah, and domesticated cats—a U-shaped bone in the throat area called hyoid is hardened, breaking down their voices into less menacing purrs. In contrast, big cats that do roar—lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars—can emit a deafening growl that can be heard five miles away.

8. While dogs are often more well-trained and responsive to commands, it may be that your cat understands but simply doesn’t care. Studies have shown that cats’ brains contain twice as many neurons as dogs’ brains, giving them far better skills at complex problem-solving and memorization. In fact, a cat’s brain is more similar to a human’s than to a dog’s. Dogs may have higher EQ, but cats win hands-down at the IQ game. If they feel like playing, that is.

9. The Iberian lynx is the most endangered wild cat. Due to persecution from the Spanish government and disease greatly decimating their preferred diet of rabbits, there remain only around 600 of these threatened cats.

10. We all know about bulls and bears, but cats and dogs, too? What a very zoo-like place the financial market is. Asides from meaning a downpour, ‘cats and dogs’ also refer to speculative shares, or penny stocks, that are offered by smaller companies and can create gains or losses in a shorter period of time.

11.Two of the most fascinating breeds of cats are the Khao Manee and the Ukrainian Levkoy. The former, also known as the Diamond Eye Cat, often have two solid, odd-colored eyes: gold and silver or sometimes green and blue, resembling precious stones. The latter is a type of cat with no fur whatsoever. They often appear bony or wrinkly, and do not need brushing. Obviously.

12. A female cat is called a ‘queen’ or a ‘molly,’ while a group of cats is called a ‘clowder.’ A lover of cats is called an ‘ailurophile,’ while the opposite would be an ‘ailurophobe.’

Featured image credit: Two Young Cats by Petr Kratochvil. Public Domain via Public Domain Pictures.

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Aldo Leopold’s legacy on our national parks

As my family gazed down on the stratified color bands of geological history in the Grand Canyon, snow and ice lined each ridge, and made each step on the path going down a dangerous adventure, highlighting the glorious drama of the miles-deep gorge. It was dizzying and frightening and awe-inspiring. In June 1915, the young forester Aldo Leopold took similar steps, but at that time, the rims on either side were strewn with tourist shops, lights, hucksters, and piles of garbage, with untreated sewage draining into the river.

Leopold and Forest Supervisor Don Johnston became comrades in envisioning a better path for the Canyon before it was even preserved as a park, creating the first working management plan to begin the dialog about how to best encourage people to enjoy the grandeur of this national and world treasure without despoiling it. Thankfully, President Woodrow Wilson established the National Park Service on 25 August 1916, and the Grand Canyon became our 15th park in 1919.

In 1965, fifty years after his father’s visit, Aldo’s son Luna took a 300-mile trip floating down the Colorado River and through the Canyon (one of the greatest trips of his life) to study and chart this living flow of water. It helped launch the hydrologist’s crusade to protect and free rivers in our country from unnecessary dams, work which has given health to the life blood of many of our national parks.

A few years earlier, President John F. Kennedy had asked Luna’s older brother, A. Starker Leopold, to serve on an advisory committee to study wildlife concerns in the parks. This was an issue that their conservationist father, Aldo, had first worked on in the Grand Canyon’s Kaibab Plateau. Starker became a leader in the efforts to have each park restore its ecosystem with the full range of species from its pre-settlement days. This way visitors could witness and save a sample of the place’s natural communities living on their own rightful turf. Starker presented the assessment summary: “Wildlife Problems in the National Parks,” which became known as the legendary and esteemed Leopold Report–the standard bearer in guiding the parks onward. Because of this vision, bison were successfully reintroduced into Theodore Roosevelt National Park and wolves back into Yellowstone, among many other triumphs.

For me, Glacier National Park was the crown jewel among jewels, a place that had inhabited my vacation hopes for 40 years, and strangely, my husband’s as well. Last summer we were finally able to go, taking our family. It did not disappoint. How could such grandeur, saved for generations, let anyone down? I am so grateful all of the visionaries (including the Leopolds), activists, park staff, presidents, politicians, and visitors who helped saved Glacier and all our other parks. It’s now our job to save them from being privatized and destroyed by oil exploration, mining, fracking, the ravages of climate change, and much more.

Forest fire at Glacier National Park by Marybeth Lorbiecki’s daughter, Mirjana. Used with permission.

While at Glacier, we witnessed a forest fire (from a safe vantage point) one valley beyond the mountain ridge near us. It was frightening and magnificent. My daughter Mirjana took this photo with her phone from our campsite. We had been hiking and hurried back, unsure if we were in its path, watching the fire storm in the sky travel swifter than we did.

The former forest firefighter Aldo and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Madison and its Arboretum helped the nation learn about the role fire plays in the health of prairie and forest communities. Starker Leopold then brought this wisdom to the management of the national parks. Sadly, because of recent droughts and invasive infestations killing the trees, in addition to too much logging in the national forests, there are often too many and too intense of wildfires to maintain the balanced rhythms of old growth and new growth, fire ecology, and human communities. Here, too, we need care, discernment, and preventative action.

The beauty of the gifts of nature and posterity between and within our parks are vastly varied, from gorges to glacier, sand dunes to saltwater flats, everglades to coral beaches, freshwater mountain lakes to below sea level deserts. It takes a long time and many return trips to get to know and savor them. Each time I go through the gateway into one of our national parks, I am grateful for the Leopold family vision of saving within the parks portions of wilderness for our souls and for our wildlife. These are the areas I seek out, and I bring my children to them because I believe what Aldo wrote: “Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip” (“Flambeau,” A Sand County Almanac). How well I have felt the truth of his insights as I hike or canoe or ride a horse in these outbacks:

“Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries


for the primitive arts of wilderness travel,


especially canoeing and packing.


I suppose some will wish to debate whether it is important


to keep the primitive arts alive.


I shall not debate it.


Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old.” (“Wilderness,” SCA)

Thankfully, I am not yet that old, and I hope neither are you. Enjoy and take care of as many of our beautiful parks as you can, and give yourself the time and gift to see parts of them without a motor so you too can feel this joy in your bones.

Featured image credit: Grand Canyon by Marybeth Lorbiecki. Used with permission.

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A talent for politics? Academics, failure, and emotion

Sometimes a fragment of a book manages to lodge itself in the back of your mind. An idea, a description, a phrase…just something, and often completely unrelated to the core story, attaches itself to your mind like an intellectual itch you can’t quite scratch. My ‘itch’ stems from a passing comment towards the end of Michael Ignatieff’s Fire and Ashes (2013) in which he suggests a certain incompatibility between politics ‘as theory’ and politics ‘as practice’ which effectively ensures that successful academics (or political theorists as Ignatieff more precisely argues) rarely make successful politicians. Cicero, Machiavelli, Edmund Burke, James Madison, de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Max Weber all demonstrated huge capacity for writing on the theory and nature of politics, but their forays into the political arena themselves were marred in failure or defined by dissatisfaction. ‘Why theoretical acumen is so frequently combined with political failure’ Ignatieff suggests ‘throws light on what is distinctive about a talent for politics.’

The candour, rigour, willingness to follow a thought wherever is leads, the penetrating search for originality – all these are virtues in theoretical pursuits but active liabilities in politics, where discretion and dissimulation are essential for success. This would suggest that these theorists failed because they couldn’t keep their mouths shut when flattery or partisan discipline required it of them. Equally, however, theorists may have lacked those supreme virtues that separate successful politicians from failures: adaptability, cunning, rapid-fire recognition of Fortuna (Fire and Ashes, p.170-71)

This emphasis on ‘adaptability’, ‘cunning’ and ‘rapid-fire recognition of Fortuna’ – what might be termed the ‘great scholar, poor politician thesis’ – suddenly took on added resonance in the wake of the United Kingdom’s referendum decision to leave the European Union. Not only had the Leave campaign been founded on the explicit rejection of expert advice, but at a more specific level it had also exposed a gap between academics and the broader public. Writing in the THES David Matthews suggested that ‘the referendum result revealed that there was amongst universities and those who work in them a profound sense of dislocation from broader society.’ James Wilsdon, Director of Policy, Impact, and Engagement at the University of Sheffield suggested that ‘we do need to ask ourselves some searching questions about how that [gap between the academy and the public] has grown up.’

To some extent the basic argument that a gap has emerged is open to challenge. The simple fact that most British academics are left leaning and pro-European and therefore generally campaigned in favour of ‘Remain’ is, surveys would suggest, broadly accurate. It is also factually correct to state that 51.9% of those members of the British electorate that voted were in favour of ‘Leave’. But to infer from these facts that the academy therefore ‘failed’ is to adopt a rather simplistic line of argument. The role of the social and political sciences is to help promote a balanced, accurate, and wherever-possible evidence-based debate but if the public decide to dismiss that scholarship then that is not ‘failure’, but the simple price we pay for living in a democracy.

And yet Ignatieff’s naughty ‘great scholar, poor politician thesis’ keeps nagging at my mind. By anyone’s reckoning the debate about the UK’s membership of the European Union had to be an opportunity if not to convince the public of the benefits of continued membership, then at the very least to showcase the relevance and value of the social and political sciences. All the aftermath rhetoric of ‘soul searching’ and ‘identity crisis’ and the need for experts (including academics) ‘to reassert their value to society’ left me feeling that maybe, just maybe, we had failed to display exactly the adaptability, cunning, rapid-fire recognition of Fortuna that Ignatieff highlighted. Indeed, if expert research can be so easily disregarded in relation to an issue as important as membership of the European Union then why bother to fund the social and political sciences?

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff at a town hall discussion in Victoria, BC by Georges Alexandar. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

To make things worse, surveys conducted in the wake of the referendum suggested that levels of public trust in academics had declined significantly and that they were now seen by large parts of society as part of ‘the elite’ or ‘the establishment’.

But if – and it is a big ‘IF’ – the academy failed in some way and might therefore be expected to shoulder some of the blame for failing to get their message across, if the decision to ‘leave’ represents something of a deeper cultural defeat for universities as many have suggested, then the rebuilding of public trust in academic experts represents a far-reaching challenge. Indeed, as the work of Sir Bernard Crick repeatedly attempted to emphasise, it is the role of scholars, intellectuals, and the universities to ‘speak truth to’ both ‘power’ and ‘the public’ and to act as a counterweight to the embedded position of elites, markets, and other dominant institutions. The question then is what – specifically – might have gone amiss in the relationship not between the governors and the governed, but between the professors and the public? And at the root of any answer to this question has to be a focus not so much on the evidence or data but on the basic skills of political communication and social engagement. If there was a ‘problem’ that demands reflection – and possibly some strategic response – then it has to focus on ‘the art of translation’ when it comes to the framing and provision of academic knowledge.

A slightly bolder argument might suggest that in many ways what the social and political sciences displayed as a failure to learn from the core insights of the social and political sciences in recent decades, especially in relation to the link between emotion and fact. Studies have repeatedly revealed how firmly held beliefs tend to be incredibly resilient in the face of conflicting ‘facts’ or ‘evidence’. Indeed, the more you bombard an individual, community, or section of society with ‘data’, ‘facts’ and ‘research’ the more they are likely to hold on to preconceived ideas and assumptions. The ‘problem’ then for academics within the Brexit debate was that they – quite understandably  –adopted a facts-based approach that may well be the dominant idiom within higher education, but that possibly failed to find any traction in the emotive sphere of cultural politics and national identity. The ‘facts’ were not grounded and the projected ‘risk scenarios’ meant little to large sections of the public that thought they had little to lose or put at risk anyway. Although irrational from an objective scientific perspective, spurious claims to ‘take back control’, ‘regain power’ and put the ‘Great’ back into all sorts of things including ‘Great Britain’ offered powerful emotional triggers that scholarship appeared unable to challenge or dissect. As a result, academics in favour of remaining were rapidly defined by the ‘leave’ campaign as part of an elite that benefitted from exactly the ‘gravy train’ that Brexit was intended to bring to a halt.

Returning to Ignatieff’s naughty little thesis, might it be that academics really did fail to display exactly that mixture of adaptability and cunning – ‘those supreme virtues’ – that might allow them to have slightly more traction in the political sphere?

There are no simple answers to complex questions and this is certainly a complex question, but we can at least use Igantieff’s ‘great scholar, poor politician thesis’ as a useful intellectual reference point from which to make at least three observations. First, there is something to be said for academics receiving more professional training on ‘the art of translation’ and ‘engaged scholarship’. How do we engage ‘with multiple audiences in multiple ways’ without over-simplifying, dumbing-down, or compromising our academic credibility? There is (secondly) an anti-thesis that legitimately questions the role of academic experts within political debates and campaigns. Far better, some might say, not to risk dirtying one’s hands within the grubby world of politics, especially if it involves locating research findings within emotive language. The tricky context for this ‘dirty hands, clean research’ argument is that ‘society’ seems to be demanding more of academics in terms of evidence that publicly-funded research is a worthwhile public investment. Squaring the circle need not involve dirtying one’s hands or ‘selling out’ in terms of risking the credibility of one’s research, but a more sophisticated and subtle understanding of the need to ground or frame the available facts and research within the ‘everyday lives’ of the public. This would involve a more granular analysis, more refined prescriptions, and an acceptance that issues that may be ‘positive’ in terms of aggregated effects across time can also be ‘negative’ when viewed from the short-term and immediate position of local communities.

In short, maybe the Brexit campaign suggests that academics need to display just a little more adaptability and social awareness – possibly even a dash of non-partisan political cunning – otherwise the gap between the professors and the public is only likely to grow.

Featured image credit: spiral notebook with subject dividers by theilr. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

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Mole and Rat: A chancing friendship

National Friendship Day was originally founded by Hallmark as a promotional campaign to encourage people to send cards, but is now celebrated in countries across the world on the first Sunday in August. This extract celebrates the friendship of two of our favourite characters from classic literature, Rat and Mole from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Their friendship begins after a chance meeting and is strengthened throughout their adventures together.

As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water’s edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside residence, above flood-level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like a frame round a picture. A brown little face, with whiskers. A grave round face, with the same twinkle in its eye that had first attracted his notice. Small neat ears and thick silky hair. It was the Water Rat!


Then the two animals stood and regarded each other cautiously.


‘Hullo, Mole!’ said the Water Rat.


‘Hullo, Rat!’ said the Mole.


‘Would you like to come over?’ inquired the Rat presently.


‘Oh, it’s all very well to talk,’ said the Mole, rather pettishly, he being new to a river and riverside life and its ways. The Rat said nothing, but stooped and unfastened a rope and hauled on it; then lightly stepped into a little boat which the Mole had not observed. It was painted blue outside and white within, and was just the size for two animals; and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at once, even though he did not yet fully understand its uses. The Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his fore-paw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. ‘Lean on that!’ he said. ‘Now then, step lively!’ and the Mole to his surprise and rapture found himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.


‘This has been a wonderful day!’ said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. ‘Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat before in all my life.’


‘What?’ cried the Rat, open-mouthed: ‘Never been in a — you never — well, I — what have you been doing, then?’

Wind in the Willows by Xxagile. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

‘Is it so nice as all that?’ asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

‘Nice? It’s the only thing,’ said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. ‘Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,’ he went on dreamily: ‘messing — about — in — boats; messing — ’


‘Look ahead, Rat!’ cried the Mole suddenly.


It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.


‘— about in boats— or with boats,’ the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. ‘In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not. Look here! If you’ve really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?’


The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into the soft cushions. ‘What a day I’m having!’ he said. ‘Let us start at once!’


‘Hold hard a minute, then!’ said the Rat. He looped the painter through a ring in his landing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after a short interval reappeared staggering under a fat, wicker luncheon-basket. ‘Shove that under your feet,’ he observed to the Mole, as he passed it down into the boat. Then he untied the painter and took the sculls again.


‘What’s inside it?’ asked the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.


‘There’s cold chicken inside it,’ replied the Rat briefly; ‘coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwidgespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater— ’


‘O stop, stop,’ cried the Mole in ecstasies: ‘This is too much!’


‘Do you really think so?’ inquired the Rat seriously. ‘It’s only what I always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it very fine!’ The Mole never heard a word he was saying. Absorbed in the new life he was entering upon, intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scents and the sounds and the sunlight, he trailed a paw in the water and dreamed long waking dreams. The Water Rat, like the good little fellow he was, sculled steadily on and forbore to disturb him. ‘I like your clothes awfully, old chap,’ he remarked after some half an hour or so had passed. ‘I’m going to get a black velvet smoking-suit myself some day, as soon as I can afford it.’


‘I beg your pardon,’ said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. ‘You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So — this — is — a — River!’


‘The River,’ corrected the Rat.

Feature Image: Boat rowing swimming by Unsplash. Public domain  via Pixabay. 

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Should we watch the Olympics?

We used to have to take time off from work –or at least leave work early– to watch the Olympics on TV. Now we can thank the engineering marvels of DVR and web replay for protecting our love affair with the Games from our evil work schedules.  We are, rightly, mesmerized by the combination of talent, discipline, skill, and genetics embodied by the world’s greatest athletes. While admittedly luck plays a role, these elite athletes use strategies tuned over decades to prove who is the best on the world’s biggest sports stage. What is not to like?  This year’s games promise to be epic with greats like Bolt and Phelps closing out their legacies, unstoppable rookies like Simone Biles planning to make their mark, and new sports like Rugby and Golf looking to reach new international audiences. Ready or not, here comes Rio 2016!

Well, you might be ready, the corporate sponsors are and the IOC is ready, but Brazil is not. The country faces unprecedented corruption and scandal, a president forced to step down, insurmountable debt, sewage-laced water, external and internal security threats, an incredible number of poor residents displaced due to Olympic infrastructure implementation, and half a dozen serious viruses including poorly understood Zika linked to horrendous microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome. Fortunately, we can watch from the safety of our homes. What’s that? You bought tickets when you heard Phelps would compete again? You need to make a hard decision about whether it’s safe enough to travel. And, here’s some solace: staying home might mean you lose a few thousand bucks, but Olympic-qualifying athletes making the same decision risk losing the most important defining experience of their lives.

They shouldn’t have to make this decision. The stakes are too high. How does a potential Olympian weigh serious risks to health and safety against membership in the pantheon of the world’s greatest athletes?  They (and maybe you) are forced to make this decision by the Olympic political-corporate behemoth that saw Rio’s signs of economic, public health, political, and safety failure and chose to keep applying band-aids to deep, festering wounds. Appropriate surgery would have meant postponing or moving the Olympics. Appropriate preventive treatment would have meant not giving the Olympics to a country whose majority population didn’t want the games to begin with and who will be left with useless venues and backbreaking debt. Despite valid last ditch attempts, like imploring the WHO to reconsider allowing the Games to proceed, we’re stuck with the mess. Should we, as Olympics fans, do something about it? Can we do anything?

Raise your hand if you care about doing the right thing generally. Maybe you were part of the crowd over a decade ago that stopped buying GAP or Nike clothing because of unfair labor practices, which facilitated changes in both companies and made them leaders in corporate social responsibility. Maybe you pay attention to the origins of your food and don’t buy factory farmed chicken or out-of-season veggies that require insane resources to ship from warmer climes. Maybe you tweet research about company practices and influence your friends. Gone are the days of believing that one’s actions don’t affect the corporate tides. The profit-driven Olympics rely on broadcasting revenue, which relies on viewers. Does this mean we could have similar power over the behavior of the Olympic Machine, or maybe even a duty to not watch the Games?

Whoa, slow down, we started this piece by agreeing that the Olympics are awesome. What happened? We began thinking about the context in which sports take place. Sports occupy extensive real estate in our hearts and minds. Unfortunately, power carries complicated obligations and when those in charge of sports do not know how to meet these obligations, or want to meet them, people are harmed. The same way we’ve learned to ask about the age, working conditions, and pay rate of the people who made our shoes and shirts, we need to question how many people lost their homes and how many travelers will get sick to put on the beautiful competition pageant we’ll see mid-August.

Although the Olympics have caused and exacerbated serious problems throughout the years, they also do amazing things. They create jobs. They catalyze public improvement projects. They inspire millions, if not billions, of people. Even if these facts are not outweighed by their negative counterpoints, does taking a stand against watching the Olympics deny support to the deserving athletes and their home countries? They did nothing wrong and everything right to represent you.  Despite racist and sexist historical roots and present corruption, the Olympics are good in concept. If watching or not watching is the average citizen’s main source of advocacy power, does acting on this power allow for the statement “I believe in the Olympics, just not this kind of Olympics”?

No final answers here. Sorry. Just a belief that every fan has a duty to think hard about the consequences of their fandom. Sports are moral, not just diversions or entertainment. They unite countries, they start riots, they destroy bodies, they create leaders. And, it’s up to the ethical spectator to decide whether to watch the opening ceremonies in real time, DVR Judo on Friday August 12th, both, or neither.

Featured Image: “Rio de Janerio Olympics 2016.”  CC0 Public domain via Pixabay.

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Hey everybody! Meet Estefania!

Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Estefania Ospina, who joined the gang in June 2016, just two months ago, as an OUPblog Deputy Editor and Social Media Marketing Coordinator! You can learn more about Estefania below.

When did you start working at OUP?

6 June 2016.

What was your first job in publishing?

Oxford University Press is my first publishing job; although, having previously worked at Barnes & Noble, I’ve been exposed to being surrounded by books and most importantly, book lovers.

What’s the most enjoyable part of your day?

I love that everyday is different, even as I’m beginning to feel like I’m getting a handle on things, I still find myself learning something new every day, and I enjoy and welcome the challenge!

What is the strangest thing currently on or in your desk?

A lot of space. Now I’m thinking I have to decorate my desk, maybe get a plant. Stay tuned.

What’s your favourite book?

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry because he reminds us that, “all grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”

Photo of Estefania Ospina, used with permission.

What is your favorite word?

I just decided that it’s papaya.

What will you be doing once you’ve completed this Q&A?

After editing a post for the OUPblog, I’ll schedule it and then Tweet about it.

What is your most obscure talent or hobby?

I’m fluent in two languages, which is not very obscure, but I’m also conversant in two other languages. My first language was Spanish, English my second; I have always loved the French language and was determined to learn it and finally, I have been practicing Portuguese for over a year and hope to be able to hold a coherent conversation with a native speaker soon (fingers crossed)!

What is the longest book you’ve ever read?

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (fun fact: its 766 pages).

What is your favorite animal?

Horses. They seem wise.

Featured image credit: Book open by Pezibear. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Gender and location in African politics scholarship: Q&A with Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers

In an effort to address misconceptions about gender and location in relation to academic publishing in Africa, the editors of African Affairs reached out to Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers to discuss the findings from their recent research in more detail.

Over the next few months, there will be subsequent posts featuring Africa-based scholars and their reactions to the implications of this research.

What are some of the observations you found in your research?

We looked at publishing trends in African Affairs (AA) and the Journal of Modern African Studies (JMAS) from 1993 to 2013 and found three initial observations.

First, over this time period, the fraction of women writing in these journals increased substantially. It hovered at around 20% of all articles from 1993 to 2003 but then over the following decade it rose to around 50%.

Second, we find the opposite has happened to authors that are based in Africa, as their contributions have declined from near 30% early in the period to closer to 15% at the end.

Third, we also examined citation patterns and found that Africa-based scholars, but not women, are cited less than other authors.

What can be inferred about the causes of these phenomena from the data?

We present preliminary evidence suggesting that the decline of Africa-based authors publishing in AA and JMAS does not exist because Africa-based authors are submitting fewer articles to these journals. Instead, it seems that the problem is one of low and falling acceptance rates.

Regarding the citation gap, we found that the results held when we controlled for the use of single case studies or the use of statistics in articles. This suggests that basic methodological differences are not causing the gap. That said, it is not clear to us what is causing the gap.

We thought that the citation gap might exist because Africa-based scholars study different topics that do not map neatly onto existing political science debates, and so might be more readily overlooked. To examine this, we grouped all articles by whether or not the authors were based in Africa and we examined the words in article titles that were most unique to each group. The most unique word for authors based outside Africa was “Africa.” This suggested to us that outsiders were more likely to make statements about the continent as a whole. We also found that authors based outside Africa were more likely to write on conflict or economics.

The most unique words for Authors based inside Africa were “Nigeria,” “Botswana,” and “South Africa.” Thus, while single country studies are not causing the citation gap, it could be the case that articles on the internal politics of South Africa get cited less than articles on “conflict in Africa.”

What are the research gaps in terms of understanding the causes?

Our research does not show what is directly causing these issues, however we did rule out some explanations. For example, it seems unlikely that the lack of Africa-based publishing is caused by declining submissions, but that doesn’t lead us to a definitive answer. In informal conversations, editors emphasized that the quality of research from Africa-based scholars is a key barrier to higher publication rates. Although research quality is difficult to measure empirically, especially among unpublished submissions, this may be important. If declining quality is an issue then it may be tied to a broad shift from support for tertiary education in favor of primary education.

The same goes for the citation penalty. It doesn’t seem to be due to basic methodological differences, but we don’t know why it is happening. There is evidence suggesting that both groups of authors study different things, but we are not able to directly connect that difference to the citation penalty.

What are key areas for further research?

If one is thinking from the point of view of mainstream American political science, then one would conclude that we know very little about this topic. This point of view would push towards research that does more to understand the underlying causal forces creating the patterns that we found. Broadly speaking, this is our approach to thinking about the problem. However, it is worth acknowledging that we are coming to this late and that many other authors, often working from a more critical direction, would have different answers to this question. Discussion across these divides may also be productive.

Featured image credit: globe Algeria Niger Africa by Peggy_Marco. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Shakespeare and the natural world [infographic]

It is probable that Shakespeare observed, or at least heard about, many natural phenomena that occurred during his time, which may have influenced the many references to nature and science that he makes in his work. Although he was very young at the time, he may have witnessed the blazing Stella Nova in 1572, which could explain his reference to the “westward star” in Hamlet. In 1580 there was the Dover Straits earthquake, which was one of the largest in recorded English history and inspired several pamphlets, reports, and even poems about its effect. Additionally, the English defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 partially due to a freak windstorm, later referred to as a “Protestant wind.” Although these occurrences may seem commonplace today, in Shakespeare’s time they were surprising and intriguing. Even if they did not influence Shakespeare’s work directly, it is clear that he maintained some understanding of the natural and, what we would identify as, the scientific world.

Download the infographic as a PDF or JPG.

Featured Image: “Miranda – The Tempest” by John William Waterhouse. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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