Gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars encode information about nuclear matter at extreme densities, inaccessible by laboratory experiments. The late inspiral is influenced by the presence of tides, which depend on the neutron star equation of state. Neutron star mergers are expected to often produce rapidly rotating remnant neutron stars that emit gravitational waves. These will provide clues to the extremely hot post-merger environment. This signature of nuclear matter in gravitational waves contains most information in the 2–4 kHz frequency band, which is outside of the most sensitive band of current detectors. We present the design concept and science case for a Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory (NEMO): a gravitational-wave interferometer optimised to study nuclear physics with merging neutron stars. The concept uses high-circulating laser power, quantum squeezing, and a detector topology specifically designed to achieve the high-frequency sensitivity necessary to probe nuclear matter using gravitational waves. Above 1 kHz, the proposed strain sensitivity is comparable to full third-generation detectors at a fraction of the cost. Such sensitivity changes expected event rates for detection of post-merger remnants from approximately one per few decades with two A+ detectors to a few per year and potentially allow for the first gravitational-wave observations of supernovae, isolated neutron stars, and other exotica.

The Northern Ireland beef herd currently incorporates a very diverse range of genotypes which produces a very varied product in terms of carcass weight, fatness and conformation (Kirkland et al., 2004). However, factors other than genotype may also influence the expression of maternal traits and progeny carcass characteristics. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the influence of dam conformation, irrespective of genotype, on dystocia and progeny carcass traits.

The suckler beef industry in Northern Ireland comprises many differing dam breeds and breed crosses. However, there is a paucity of data on the influence of dam breed on parameters such as carcass weight, fatness and conformation, and on factors affecting management of the herd (e.g. dystocia and fertility). The latter are particularly important in view of the increasing number of part time beef farmers in Northern Ireland. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the influence of dam breed on production characteristics of the suckler herd in Northern Ireland.

In proving the contractibility of certain hyperspaces J. L. Kelley identified and defined a certain uniformnessproperty which he called Property 3.2. It is known that the classes of locally connected continua, homogeneous continua and hereditarily indecomposable continua have Property 3.2. In this paper we prove that two examples of indecomposable continua developed respectively by the authors have Property 3.2. One is the example of a nonchainable atriodic tree-like continuum with positive span which was defined by the first author, and the other is a nonchainable, noncircle-like continuum which has the cone=hyperspace property which was defined by the second author. Each of the examples is an inverse limit of an inverse system having a single bonding map.

In this paper it is proved that if a circle-like continuum M cannot be embedded in the plane, then M is not a continuous image of any plane continuum (Theorem 5).

Suppose that (S, ρ) is a metric space. A finite sequence of domains L1, L2 , … , Ln is called a linear chain provided Li intersects Lj if and only if |i — j| ⩽ 1. If, in addition, there is a positive number ∊ such that, for each i, the diameter of Li is less than ∊, then the linear chain is called a linear ∊-chain. If for each positive number ∊ the continuum M can be covered by a linear ∊-chain, then M is said to be chainable (or snake-like) (2).