Whilst critical realism (CR) is becoming recognised as a significant meta-theory for the social sciences, there is little guidance on how to produce research which is consistent with its ontological and epistemological assumptions. This article contributes to an emerging discussion about how CR can be applied, drawing on an example of a qualitative study that has sought to understand and explain t

Recent literature has recognised the value of food sovereignty and human rights frameworks in agrarian struggles. Relatively little attention has gone toward how agrarian movements develop and apply their own rights discourses to further demands for social justice. This study considers Brazil's landless movement (MST) between 1984 and 1995, revealing three distinct rights discourses that recruited

Community-based approaches are pursued in recognition of the need for place-based responses to environmental change that integrate local understandings of risk and vulnerability. Yet the potential for fair adaptation is intimately linked to how variations in perceptions of environmental change and risk are treated. There is, however, little empirical evidence of the extent and nature of variations

Whilst it is increasingly recognised that socio-political contexts shape climate change adaptation decisions and actions at all scales, current modes of development typically fail to recognise or adequately challenge these contexts where they constrain capacity to adapt. To address this failing, we consider how a rights-based approach broadens understanding of adaptive capacity while directing att

Transformative justice has emerged in recent years as both a critical response to transitional justice and as a new practice agenda for challenging social-economic harms in post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. While the transformative scholarship is relatively new, it falls short of providing a way to capture the underlying mechanisms by which people’s needs are frustrated. This study e

The Transmission Loss of different kind of layered structures is investigated by means of a four microphone technique in a plane wave tube. By using the decomposition technique, incident, reflected and transmitted contributions are separated and transmission coefficient is easily calculated. In this paper a single measurement approach based on transfer matrix, taking into account reflection contri

The atmospheric profile whose sound speed varies linearly with height is simple in concept, but leads to complications when solving for the sound pressure. Its effects are commonly approximated by a similar profile whose squared refractive index is a linear function of height. In this paper, the validity of the approximation has been examined for sound propagation above an impedance ground and a c

We introduce a robust and efficient methodology to solve the Ornstein-Zernike integral equation using the pseudoarc length (PAL) continuation method that reformulates the integral equation in an equivalent but nonstandard form. This enables the computation of solutions in regions where the compressibility experiences large changes or where the existence of multiple solutions and so-called branch p

We consider a class of degenerate diffusion equations where the nonlinearity is assumed to be singular (non-Lipschitz) at zero. It is shown that solutions with compactly supported initial data become identically zero in finite time. Such extinction follows by comparison with newly constructed finite travelling waves connecting two stable equilibria.

We consider a class of differential-algebraic equations (DAEs) defined by analytic nonlinearities and study its singular solutions. The main assumption used is that the linearization of the DAE represents a Kronecker index-2 matrix pencil and that the constraint manifold has a quadratic fold along its singularity. From these assumptions we obtain a normal form for the DAE where the presence of the

A spectral element method is described which enables reduced wave equation problems defined in regular, arbitrary length regions to be solved as a set of coupled problems over neighbouring domains. A combination of trial functions are considered, namely the specific eigenfunctions of a differential operator and a set of hierarchical polynomials. Accurate approximations are obtained for computation

The transmission of vibrations over the surface of the ground, due to high-speed moving, vertical harmonic rectangular loads, is investigated theoretically. The problem is three-dimensional and the interior of the ground is modelled as an elastic half-space or a multilayered ground. The transformed solutions are obtained using the Fourier transform on the space variable. A new damping model in the

The transmission of vibrations over the surface of the ground, due to a high-speed moving, vertical harmonic strip load, is investigated theoretically. Consequently, the problem is essentially two-dimensional and the interior of the ground is modelled as an elastic half-space. The transformed solutions are obtained using the Fourier transform on the space variable. A study of a new damping model i

A boundary integral equation is described for the prediction of acoustic propagation from a monofrequency coherent line source in a cutting with impedance boundary conditions onto surrounding flat impedance ground. The problem is stated as a boundary value problem for the Helmholtz equation and is subsequently reformulated as a system of boundary integral equations via Green's theorem. It is shown

The transmission of vibrations, and its reduction, in the far-field of the surface of the ground due to a harmonic load acting over a strip, is investigated theoretically. A possible vibration attenuation device that has shown some promise is the "wave impedance block" (WIB). The principle of this is to modify the modal wave propagation regime of the ground by introducing an artificial stiffened l