Prospects for local co-governance

British local authorities and their partners are increasingly developing new ways of working together with local communities. The nature of this co-working, however, is complex, multi-faceted and little understood. This article argues for greater clarity of thinking on the topic, by analysing this co-working as a form of political co-governance, and drawing attention in particular to issues of scale and democracy. Using evidence from a study of 43 local authority areas, 16 authorities are identified where co-governance is practised, following three main types of approach: service-influencing, service-delivering and parish council developing. It is concluded that strengthening political co-governance is essential for a healthy democracy

High Frame Rate Volumetric Imaging of Microbubbles Using a Sparse Array and Spatial Coherence Beamforming

Volumetric ultrasound imaging of blood flow with microbubbles enables a more complete visualization of the microvasculature. Sparse arrays are ideal candidates to perform volumetric imaging at reduced manufacturing complexity and cable count. However, due to the small number of transducer elements, sparse arrays often come with high clutter levels, especially when wide beams are transmitted to increase the frame rate. In this study, we demonstrate with a prototype sparse array probe and a diverging wave transmission strategy, that a uniform transmission field can be achieved. With the implementation of a spatial coherence beamformer, the background clutter signal can be effectively suppressed, leading to a signal to background ratio improvement of 25 dB. With this approach, we demonstrate the volumetric visualization of single microbubbles in a tissue-mimicking phantom as well as vasculature mapping in a live chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane

SUMSS: A Wide-Field Radio Imaging Survey of the Southern Sky. I. Science goals, survey design and instrumentation

The Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope, operating at 843 MHz with a 5 square degree field of view, is carrying out a radio imaging survey of the sky south of declination -30 deg. This survey (the Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey, or SUMSS) produces images with a resolution of 43" x 43" cosec(Dec.) and an rms noise level of about 1 mJy/beam. SUMSS is therefore similar in sensitivity and resolution to the northern NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS; Condon et al. 1998). The survey is progressing at a rate of about 1000 square degrees per year, yielding individual and statistical data for many thousands of weak radio sources. This paper describes the main characteristics of the survey, and presents sample images from the first year of observation.Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures (figures 2, 8, 10 in jpg format); AJ, in pres

Do national resources have to be centrally managed? Vested interests and institutional reform in Norwegian fisheries governance

Corporatism -with its privileged access, restricted participation and centralized structures - has a long history in Norwegian fisheries governance. Co-management – understood as a decentralized, bottom-up and more inclusive form of fisheries governance - has not been considered a relevant alternative.. Why does corporatism still prevail in a context where stakeholder status in fisheries governance globally – both in principle and practice - has been awarded environmental organizations, municipal authorities and even consumer advocacy groups? Why then have alternatives to the corporatist system of centralized consultation and state governance never been seriously considered in Norway, in spite of the growing emphasis on fish as a public resource and fisheries management as human intervention in geographically confined and complex ecosystems? We suggest that thismay have to do with the fundamental assumptions behind Norwegian fisheries governance that since fish is a national resource, it must be centrally managed. We argue that this is an assumption that may be contested

The decline and rise of neighbourhoods: the importance of neighbourhood governance

There is a substantial literature on the explanation of neighbourhood change. Most of this literature concentrates on identifying factors and developments behind processes of decline. This paper reviews the literature, focusing on the identification of patterns of neighbourhood change, and argues that the concept of neighbourhood governance is a missing link in attempts to explain these patterns. Including neighbourhood governance in the explanations of neighbourhood change and decline will produce better explanatory models and, finally, a better view about what is actually steering neighbourhood change

Constraints on the Clustering, Biasing and Redshift Distribution of Radio Sources

We discuss how different theoretical predictions for the variance $\sigma^2$ of the distribution of radio sources can be matched to measurements from the FIRST survey at different flux limits. The predictions are given by the integration of models for the angular correlation function $w(\theta)$ for three different functional forms of the redshift distribution $N(z)$, different spatial correlation functions and by different evolutions of the bias $b(z)$ with redshift. We also consider the two cases of open and flat Universes. Although the predicted $w(\theta)$ show substantial differences due to differences in the $N(z)$'s, these differences are not significant compared to the uncertainties in the current observations. It turns out that the best fit is provided by models with constant biasing at all times, although the difference between models with epoch-independent bias and models with bias that evolves linearly with redshift is not very large. All models with strong evolution of bias with epoch are ruled out. As a further step we directly calculated $w_{obs}(\theta)$ at 3mJy from the catalogue and matched it with our models for the angular correlation function in the hypothesis that the clustering signal comes from two different populations, namely AGN-powered sources and starbursting galaxies. The results are consistent with a scenario for hierarchical clustering where the fainter starbursting galaxies trace the mass at all epochs, while brighter AGN's are strongly biased, with $b(z)$ evolving linearly with redshift, as suggested by some theories of galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, version to appear on MNRA

Market Disequilibria and Their Influence on Small Retail Store Pricing

In this paper a quantitative model is developed to explain differences in average store price levels. We assume that stores may operate under different economic regimes, that is, under excess capacity or excess demand. Prices are expected to be higher than average in case of an excess demand regime and lower in an excess capacity situation. Actual information regarding the regime that applies to each individual store is not available. Therefore, we propose to use a so-called 'switching model' with endogenous regime choice to analyse the store price differences. The model developed m the paper is estimated using four largely differing types of stores from the Durch retail trade. These samples consist mainly of small stores

A vidéki táj használatában bekövetkezett változások társadalmi reakciók tükrében

Kutatásunk alapvető célja a hazai vidéki táj használatában bekövetkezett változások vizsgálata, valamint az ezzel kapcsolatos társadalmi reakciók feltárása. Ennek során azt kívánjuk elsősorban megvizsgálni a Kiskunsági Nemzeti Park példáján, hogy a táj kezelése során milyen módon és eszközökkel törekedtek a korábbi mezőgazdasági művelés területeinek művelési ág váltására, és a természetközeli állapotok visszaállítására, illetve e folyamatban milyen eredményeket értek el. A téma időszerűségét az is jelzi, hogy az elmúlt év végén a védett területek kb. 20 %-át a Nemzeti Földalap kezelésébe adta az állam, tehát sorsuk a természetvédelem szempontjából újra bizonytalanná válhat