The place and practices of wellbeing in local governance

The concept of well-being has become prominent within national policy goals in the UK since the end of the 1990s. However, the concept of well-being remains ill defined, an instability that is increasingly understood as problematic to policy making. We engage with this terminological instability through an exploration of how the concept of well-being is practised discursively in local governance and critically examine the place of the concept in local policy making. In contrast to the current enthusiasm to define and measure well-being, we argue that the conceptual instability has inherent value for local governance. The concept of well-being is practised through a number of potentially conflicting discourses, but it is exactly this conceptual instability that enables a local negotiation and combination of alternative policy frameworks for local place-shaping strategies. As such, well-being not only is an overarching goal of governance but also contributes to the dynamics of the policy process

Nonlinear Abel type integral equation in modelling creep crack propagation

Copyright @ 2011 Birkhäuser BostonA nonlinear Abel-type equation is obtained in this paper to model creep crack time-dependent propagation in the infinite viscoelastic plane. A finite time when the integral equation solution becomes unbounded is obtained analytically as well as the equation parameters when solution blows up for all times. A modification to the Nyström method is introduced to numerically solve the equation and some computational results are presented

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Climatic significance of the marginalization of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) c. 2500 BC at White Moss, south Cheshire, UK

Subfossil wood from White Moss, south Cheshire, has become the focus of palaeoenvironmental research employing not only conventional coring, pollen analysis, radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology on pine and oak, but also the exhumation of in situ peat areas and dendroecology of the pine ring-width records. Initial dendrochronological research at the site yielded five pine chronologies dating from 3520 to 2462 cal. BC. These and other data indicate three episodes of pine colonization of the mire in the period between 3643 and 1740 cal. BC. Comparison of the pollen and spore records suggest that pine became marginalized at the site c. 2500 cal. BC after successive episodes of increased wetness, and this may represent a staged response to climatic deterioration. Two oak chronologies were dated by reference to the Belfast and to English oak master chronologies to 3228-2898 BC and 2190-1891 BC, respectively, showing the possible co-existence of pine and oak on the mire for part of the time. Further dendrochronological work on subfossil pine at the site resulted in a chronology (WM4) that was cross-matched with pine from elsewhere in England, and subsequently dated absolutely to 2881-2559 BC. Detailed dendroecological information, such as fire episodes and periods of environmental stress indicated in the tree-ring records, have been assigned, precisely and accurately, to calendar years in prehistory. The detailed data show the potential for both dendroecological and wider palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental information that may become available from prehistoric bog-pine chronologies, which might then permit precise correlation and comparisons of proxy-climate data between sites

Comprehensive characterization of the Published Kinase Inhibitor Set

Despite the success of protein kinase inhibitors as approved therapeutics, drug discovery has focused on a small subset of kinase targets. Here we provide a thorough characterization of the Published Kinase Inhibitor Set (PKIS), a set of 367 small-molecule ATP-competitive kinase inhibitors that was recently made freely available with the aim of expanding research in this field and as an experiment in open-source target validation. We screen the set in activity assays with 224 recombinant kinases and 24 G protein-coupled receptors and in cellular assays of cancer cell proliferation and angiogenesis. We identify chemical starting points for designing new chemical probes of orphan kinases and illustrate the utility of these leads by developing a selective inhibitor for the previously untargeted kinases LOK and SLK. Our cellular screens reveal compounds that modulate cancer cell growth and angiogenesis in vitro. These reagents and associated data illustrate an efficient way forward to increasing understanding of the historically untargeted kinome

Use of SMS texts for facilitating access to online alcohol interventions: a feasibility study

A41 Use of SMS texts for facilitating access to online alcohol interventions: a feasibility study In: Addiction Science & Clinical Practice 2017, 12(Suppl 1): A4