Over the last thirteen years parkrun has grown from a small time trial in Bushy Park, London, to become a global social movement. During this time much has been claimed about the potential health-related benefits that are accrued from participating, but comparatively little attention has been given to the social reasons for attending. The aim of this study was to better understand the meanings of participation for both runners and volunteers using an intrinsic case study that focused on a specific event, Colwick parkrun in Nottingham, England. Building on literature that positions leisure sites as third places, the paper seeks to enhance our understanding of parkrun as a community-based initiative. Data collection included observation, participant observation, semi-structured interviews (N=19), and a survey (N=235). Several themes emerged, suggesting that participation in parkrun provides an inclusive leisure space for casual sociability, as well as facilitating a shared experience of exercising with others.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope. It will address fundamental unanswered questions about our Universe including how the first stars and galaxies formed after the big bang, how dark energy is accelerating the expansion of the Universe, the role of magnetism in the cosmos, the nature of gravity, and the search for life beyond Earth. This project envisages the construction of 133 15-m antennas in South Africa and 131,072 log-periodic antennas in Australia, together with the associated infrastructure in the two desert sites. In addition, the SKA is an exemplar Big Data project, with data rates of over 10 Tbps being transported from the telescope to HPC/HTC facilities.
We investigate the feasibility of deep-space navigation using the highly stable periodic signals from X-ray pulsars in combination with dedicated instrumentation on the spacecraft: a technique often referred to as 'XNAV'. The results presented are based on the outputs from a study undertaken for the European Space Agency. The potential advantages of this technique include increased spacecraft autonomy and lower mission operating costs. Estimations of navigation uncertainties have been obtained using simulations of different pulsar combinations and navigation strategies. We find that the pulsar PSR B1937 + 21 has potential to allow spacecraft positioning uncertainties of~2 and~5 km in the direction of the pulsar after observation times of 10 and 1 h respectively, for ranges up to 30 AU. This could be achieved autonomously on the spacecraft using a focussing X-ray instrument of effective area~50 cm 2 together with a high performance atomic clock. The Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (MIXS) instrument, due to be launched on the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury in 2018, is an example of an instrument that may be Exp Astron (2016) further developed as a practical telescope for XNAV. For a manned mission to Mars, where an XNAV system could provide valuable redundancy, observations of the three pulsars PSR B1937 + 21, B1821-24 and J0437-4715 would enable a three-dimensional positioning uncertainty of~30 km for up to 3 months without the need to contact Earth-based systems. A lower uncertainty may be achieved, for example, by use of extended observations or, if feasible, by use of a larger instrument. X-ray instrumentation suitable for use in an operational XNAV subsystem must be designed to require only modest resources, especially in terms of size, mass and power. A system with a focussing optic is required in order to reduce the sky and particle background against which the source must be measured. We examine possible options for future developments in terms of simpler, lower-cost Kirkpatrick-Baez optics. We also discuss the principal design and development challenges that must be addressed in order to realise an operational XNAV system.
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