Plural policing in Europe:relationships and governance in contemporary security system

References to ‘plural policing’, ‘policing beyond the police’ and the ‘extended policing family’ are now commonplace in many discussions of policing in late modern societies. There is a danger that claims about the dynamic and changing nature of plural policing themselves become a new orthodoxy and begin to lose a sense of local nuance and recognition of the importance of place-based specificity and context in understanding the particularities of policing. It is this need to unpack the complex ways in which contemporary plural policing is now configured at a local level within different national political environments that provides the underpinning rationale for this Special Issue. Focussing on aspects of relationships and governance in six jurisdictions across northern and western Europe, it provides important insights into how the policies, practices and narratives around plural policing reflect the influence of particular histories and geographies. The first three articles are focused primarily on the relationships which have emerged in the public sector through its own processes of pluralisation, in particular, through the introduction of policing auxiliaries or municipal policing in Scotland, England and The Netherlands. The fourth article considers both relationships and governance in pluralised policing in Paris, France. A detailed analysis of the governance of safety and security is taken up in the final two articles, examining the cases of Austria and Belgium. These articles clearly demonstrate that experiences of pluralised policing vary widely within Europe and call into question the assumed dominance of neo-liberal forces in this area

A bird's eye view: using geographic analysis to evaluate the representativeness of corvid indicators for West Nile virus surveillance

BACKGROUND: The objective of this evaluation was to determine whether reports of dead corvid sightings and submissions of dead corvids for West Nile virus testing were representative of true corvid mortality in British Columbia in 2004, a year with no West Nile virus activity, in order to ensure the system was accurately describing corvid mortality rather than reflecting regional differences in surveillance methods. RESULTS: Local Health Areas reported 0–159 (median = 3) dead corvid sightings and 0–209 (median = 5) submissions for West Nile virus testing. The expected numbers of dead corvid sightings and submissions for testing from each Local Health Area were 0–232 (median = 3) and 0–258 (median = 4), respectively. Twelve Local Health Areas reported significantly fewer sightings than expected; 21 reported significantly more. Eleven Local Health Areas submitted significantly fewer corvids than expected; 26 submitted significantly more. CONCLUSION: Some Local Health Areas were over-represented and others under-represented in terms of corvid West Nile virus surveillance indicators. Recommendations were made to improve the representativeness of corvid surveillance data. Geographic analysis can be used to evaluate the representativeness of surveillance systems and result in improvements to surveillance

Immediate reward reinforcement learning for clustering and topology preserving mappings

We extend a reinforcement learning algorithm which has previously been shown to cluster data. Our extension involves creating an underlying latent space with some pre-defined structure which enables us to create a topology preserving mapping. We investigate different forms of the reward function, all of which are created with the intent of merging local and global information, thus avoiding one of the major difficulties with e.g. K-means which is its convergence to local optima depending on the initial values of its parameters. We also show that the method is quite general and can be used with the recently developed method of stochastic weight reinforcement learning [14]

Circular economy: Questions for responsible minerals, additive manufacturing and recycling of metals

© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The concept of the circular economy proposes new patterns of production, consumption and use, based on circular flows of resources. Under a scenario where there is a global shift towards the circular economy, this paper discusses the advent of two parallel and yet-to-be-connected trends for Australia, namely: (i) responsible minerals supply chains and (ii) additive manufacturing, also known as 3D production systems. Acknowledging the current context for waste management, the paper explores future interlinked questions which arise in the circular economy for responsible supply chains, additive manufacturing, and metals recycling. For example, where do mined and recycled resources fit in responsible supply chains as inputs to responsible production? What is required to ensure 3D production systems are resource efficient? How could more distributed models of production, enabled by additive manufacturing, change the geographical scale at which it is economic or desirable to close the loop? Examples are given to highlight the need for an integrated research agenda to address these questions and to foster Australian opportunities in the circular economy

Smart Grid, Smart City, Customer Research Report

Prepared by the UTS: Institute for Sustainable Futures as part of the AEFI consortium for Ausgrid and EnergyAustrali

First Detection of Mycobacterium ulcerans DNA in Environmental Samples from South America

The occurrences of many environmentally-persistent and zoonotic infections are driven by ecosystem changes, which in turn are underpinned by land-use modifications that alter the governance of pathogen, biodiversity and human interactions. Our current understanding of these ecological changes on disease emergence however remains limited. Buruli ulcer is an emerging human skin disease caused by the mycobacterium, Mycobacterium ulcerans, for which the exact route of infection remains unclear. It can have a devastating impact on its human host, causing extensive necrosis of the skin and underlying tissue, often leading to permanent disability. The mycobacterium is associated with tropical aquatic environments and incidences of the disease are significantly higher on floodplains and where there is an increase of human aquatic activities. Although the disease has been previously diagnosed in South America, until now the presence of M. ulcerans DNA in the wild has only been identified in Australia where there have been significant outbreaks and in western and central regions of Africa where the disease is persistent. Here for the first time, we have identified the presence of the aetiological agent's DNA in environmental samples from South America. The DNA was positively identified using Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) on 163 environmental samples, taken from 23 freshwater bodies in French Guiana (Southern America), using primers for both IS2404 and for the ketoreductase-B domain of the M. ulcerans mycolactone polyketide synthase genes (KR). Five samples out of 163 were positive for both primers from three different water bodies. A further nine sites had low levels of IS2404 close to a standard CT of 35 and could potentially harbour M. ulcerans. The majority of our positive samples (8/14) came from filtered water. These results also reveal the Sinnamary River as a potential source of infection to humans. © 2014 Morris et al

Rapid and sensitive detection of mycobacterium ulcerans by use of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification test

This work reports the design and evaluation of a rapid loop-mediated isothermal amplification test for detecting Mycobacterium ulcerans DNA based on the multicopy insertion sequence IS2404. The test is robust and specific with a detection limit equivalent to 20 copies of the target sequence (0.01 to 0.1 genome). The test has potential for the diagnosis of Buruli ulcer under field conditions

Effect of Narrow Spectrum Versus Selective Kinase Inhibitors on the Intestinal Proinflammatory Immune Response in Ulcerative Colitis

Background: Kinases are key mediators of inflammation, highlighting the potential of kinase inhibitors as treatments for inflammatory disorders. Selective kinase inhibitors, however, have proved disappointing, particularly in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. Consequently, to improve efficacy, attention has turned to multikinase inhibition. Methods: The activity of a narrow spectrum kinase inhibitor, TOP1210, has been compared with selective kinase inhibitors (BIRB-796, dasatinib and BAY-61-3606) in a range of kinase assays, inflammatory cell assays, and in inflamed biopsies from patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). Effects on recombinant P38α, Src, and Syk kinase activities were assessed using Z-lyte assays (Invitrogen, Paisley, United Kingdom). Anti-inflammatory effects were assessed by measurement of proinflammatory cytokine release from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, primary macrophages, HT29 cells, inflamed colonic UC biopsies, and myofibroblasts isolated from inflamed colonic UC mucosa. Results: TOP1210 potently inhibits P38α, Src, and Syk kinase activities. Similarly, TOP1210 demonstrates potent inhibitory activity against proinflammatory cytokine release in each of the cellular assays and the inflamed colonic UC biopsies and myofibroblasts isolated from inflamed colonic UC mucosa. Generally, the selective kinase inhibitors showed limited and weaker activity in the cellular assays compared with the broad inhibitory profile of TOP1210. However, combination of the selective inhibitors led to improved efficacy and potency in both cellular and UC biopsy assays. Conclusions: Targeted, multikinase inhibition with TOP1210 leads to a broad efficacy profile in both the innate and adaptive immune responses, with significant advantages over existing selective kinase approaches, and potentially offers a much improved therapeutic benefit in inflammatory bowel disease

Europe's lost forests: a pollen-based synthesis for the last 11,000 years

8000 years ago, prior to Neolithic agriculture, Europe was mostly a wooded continent. Since then, its forest cover has been progressively fragmented, so that today it covers less than half of Europe’s land area, in many cases having been cleared to make way for fields and pasture-land. Establishing the origin of Europe’s current, more open land-cover mosaic requires a long-term perspective, for which pollen analysis offers a key tool. In this study we utilise and compare three numerical approaches to transforming pollen data into past forest cover, drawing on >1000 14C-dated site records. All reconstructions highlight the different histories of the mixed temperate and the northern boreal forests, with the former declining progressively since ~6000 years ago, linked to forest clearance for agriculture in later prehistory (especially in northwest Europe) and early historic times (e.g. in north central Europe). In contrast, extensive human impact on the needle-leaf forests of northern Europe only becomes detectable in the last two millennia and has left a larger area of forest in place. Forest loss has been a dominant feature of Europe’s landscape ecology in the second half of the current interglacial, with consequences for carbon cycling, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity