The innovative capacity of voluntary organisations and the provision of public services: A longitudinal approach

The prior history of voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) as pioneers of public services during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has lead to reification of the innovativeness of these organisations. Is this reification justified – are VCOs inherently innovative, or is innovation contingent on other factors? This paper reports on a longitudinal study of this capacity conducted over 1994 – 2006. This study finds that the innovative capacity of VCOs is in fact not an inherent capacity but rather is contingent upon the public policy framework that privileges innovation above other activity of VCOs. The implications of this for theory, policy and practice are considered

Mr. Booke\u27s Thinking Organ

A scene in Middlemarch\u27s thirtieth chapter describes how the creative process can slip out of a writer\u27s control.! A letter has arrived from Mr. Casaubon\u27s estranged cousin, Will Ladislaw, asking whether Will may visit Casaubon and Dorothea at their home at Lowick. But Casaubon is gravely ill and Dorothea is so overwhelmed by her husband\u27s illness and also by the thought of seeing Will that she cannot even read the letter. She asks her uncle, Mr. Brooke, to reply in her stead, \u27to let Will know that Casaubon had been ill, and that his health would not allow the reception of any visitors\u27 (291). She is unwise to trust him with the task. No one more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his only difficulty was to write a short one, and his ideas in this case expanded over the three large pages and the inward foldings. He had simply said to Dorothea- \u27To be sure, I will write, my dear. He\u27s a very clever young fellow - this young Ladislaw - I dare say will be a rising young man. It\u27s a good letter - marks his sense of things, you know. However, I will tell him about Casaubon.\u27 But the end of Mr. Brooke\u27s pen was a thinking organ, evolving sentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind could well overtake them. It expressed regrets and proposed remedies, which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously worded - surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he had never before thought of. In this case, his pen found it such a pity young Ladislaw should not have come into the neighbourhood just at that time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance more fully, and that they might go over the long-neglected Italian drawings together - it also felt such an interest in a young man who was starting in life with a stock of ideas - that by the end of the second page it had persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he could not be received at Lowick, to come to Tipton Grange. Why not? They could find a great many things to do together, and this was a period of peculiar growth - the political horizon was expanding, and - in short, Mr. Brooke\u27s pen went off into a little speech which it had lately reported for that imperfectly edited organ the \u27Middlemarch Pioneer\u27. Mr. Brooke\u27s letter is a turning point for the most central of the novel\u27s several marriage plots. Will is encouraged rather than deterred by Mr. Brooke\u27s pen\u27s speechifying, and he takes up Mr. Brooke\u27s offer to stay with him at Tipton Grange, remaining in Middlemarch when Mr. Brooke offers him the editorship of the Middlemarch Pioneer. Will and Dorothea are now in close enough proximity to fall in love properly

Lifewide learning in the city: novel big data approaches to exploring learning with large-scale surveys, GPS, and social media

Despite UNESCO’s Learning Cities agenda, which argues for the mobilisation of resources to promote education across all sectors and environments, there is little evaluative research on learning city engagement which is both naturalistic and empirically rigorous. The research on informal adult learning in urban contexts is particularly sparse. This paper provides a case study of informal learning and lifewide literacies amongst Glaswegian adults using three distinct approaches to data collection: a household survey capturing rich data on learning attitudes, behaviours, and literacies; GPS trails that track mobility around the city; and the capture of naturally occurring social media. The work operationalises learning city indicators, and explores domains beyond education, some of which have not previously been considered in surveys of adult learning, for example, physical mobilities and transportation patterns. We use the theoretical concepts of Social Identity and Social Capital to situate social inclusion within explanatory frameworks which interpret marginalisation in groups, places and the less tangible domain of informal learning in order to interpret our multi-strand dataset. A triangulated analysis of city-wide participation in lifewide learning reveals a demographic picture of groups marginalised from learning opportunities and practices. Examples of this include older adults in areas of deprivation and households in precarity. We conclude with a call for new approaches to exploring learning participation which offer novel methods to evidence informal learning and lifewide literacies

Big Data, Lifelong Learning and Learning Cities: Promoting City-Discourse on Social Inequalities in Learning

The Key Features of Learning Cities, published by UNESCO (2013), laid out possible indicators through which learning communities, cities, and regions could support and evaluate learning engagement and urban success, within a context of international collaboration. This briefing paper presents an overview of Learning Cities from the perspective of operationalising a range of indicators, illustrating the role of ‘Big Data’ in in this pursuit. We also argue for public engagement opportunities to be embedded within social science research. Such discourse and debate regarding individual motivations, decisions and ambitions, may highlight where lifelong learning opportunities are needed, and for the wider value of active citizenship. The present work, of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) at the University of Glasgow, is a key investment for researchers to more easily access the potential of big data for addressing city challenges, such as learning inclusion. UBDC exemplifies how novel, open, big data can be applied to assess learning engagement in an urban context, embedded in place and with considerations of demographic and deprivation changes. The principles of our research relate to Learning City frameworks, and have been inspired by the PASCAL Observatory’s Learning City Network, as well as the existence of a Memorandum of Agreement between PASCAL and the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. Using Learning City Frameworks and applying innovative Big Data approaches offers educationalists avenues for exploring learning engagement in our own regions, as well as future global comparisons of Learning Cities. More importantly, novel and interdisciplinary approaches can help us use our city data, to open discussions about learning inequalities, specifically promoting lifelong learning and lifewide literacies for more engaged citizenry

A temperate river estuary is a sink for methanotrophs adapted to extremes of pH, temperature and salinity

River Tyne (UK) estuarine sediments harbour a genetically and functionally diverse community of methane-oxidizing bacteria (methanotrophs), the composition and activity of which were directly influenced by imposed environmental conditions (pH, salinity, temperature) that extended far beyond those found in situ. In aerobic sediment slurries methane oxidation rates were monitored together with the diversity of a functional gene marker for methanotrophs (pmoA). Under near in situ conditions (4-30°C, pH 6-8, 1-15gl-1 NaCl), communities were enriched by sequences affiliated with Methylobacter and Methylomonas spp. and specifically a Methylobacter psychrophilus-related species at 4-21°C. More extreme conditions, namely high temperatures ≥40°C, high ≥9 and low ≤5 pH, and high salinities ≥35gl-1 selected for putative thermophiles (Methylocaldum), acidophiles (Methylosoma) and haloalkaliphiles (Methylomicrobium). The presence of these extreme methanotrophs (unlikely to be part of the active community in situ) indicates passive dispersal from surrounding environments into the estuary

Illuminating the Chorus in the Shadows: Elizabethan and Jacobean Exeter 1550-1610

This thesis challenges the notion that little light can be shed on Exeter’s ‘middling’ and ‘poorer’ sorts in the period 1550-1610, defined as ‘the chorus’ by Wallace MacCaffrey in his book Exeter 1540-1640. It selects data from mid- to late- sixteenth and early seventeenth century urban archives, defines the strengths and weaknesses of that data and captures it in a digitised database. It uses this data to test which of the methodologies of prosopography, collective and individual biography, social network analysis and occupied topography are most appropriate for analysis of the city’s social structure and individuals’ lived experiences. It subsequently selects collective and individual biography for use with the randomly incomplete data set presented by the archives. Using the database to create group and individual biographies, it then introduces elementary quantitative analyses of the city’s social structure, starting by describing broadly the distinguishing characteristics of the leading actors and the chorus. Following on from this, it describes several groups who form part of the chorus, including the more civically active, alongside those with less data against their names. It investigates family and household dynamics and reveals how these are reflected through the occupation of baker. It continues by examining the post-mortem intentions of those who bequeathed goods and explores the lives of a selection of craftsmen, merchants, tailors and widows viewed through in-depth biographies created from the comparatively rich data associated with death. It also makes explicit that the lack of a particular document type compromises the degree of success in connecting the chorus to the cityscape using occupied topography methodologies. It reveals the challenges of recreating the notion of neighbourhood in the city’s west quarter around St Nicholas Priory, then the town house of the wealthy Hurst family. It concludes that it is possible to outline a new model, that of the ‘categorised, connected citizen’, which challenges the validity of MacCaffrey’s construct of a bi-partite society, one side of which is a murky unknown quantity about whom no ‘striking assertions’ can be made. This new model acknowledges the dynamism, individuality and interactivity of Exeter’s inhabitants, and contents that it is a better one for enabling historians to treat respectfully people they cannot yet fully understand

Environmental controls on bacteriohopanepolyol signatures in estuarine sediments

PhD ThesisTo date, research on the fate of methane in marine settings has mainly focused on anaerobic microbial processes. An alternative fate for methane is aerobic methane oxidation (AMO) by methanotrophic bacteria which takes place in aerobic surface sediments and the overlying water column. Tracing methanotroph activity in past environments can be achieved via analysis of a distinctive suite of biomarkers called bacteriohopanepolyols (BHPs). BHPs are membrane lipids produced by many prokaryotes comprising a pentacyclic triterpenoid structure with an extended polyfunctionalised side chain. Although, there is much debate about the role of BHPs, studies suggest they regulate cell membrane fluidity, however, the factors controlling their expression are poorly constrained. They have a wide range of structural variation which varies between bacterial phyla and species. The major BHPs produced by methanotrophs are collectively known as the 35-aminoBHPs, most commonly including 35-aminobacteriohopane-32,33,34-triol (aminotriol), 35-aminobacteriohopane-31,32,33,34-tetrol (aminotetrol) and 35-aminobacteriohopane-30,31,32,33,34-pentol (aminopentol), with aminopentol seen as a diagnostic marker for Type I methanotrophs from the phylum Gammaproteobacteria. The changes in methanotroph community composition in estuarine sediments under a range of environmental perturbations and the effect this had on BHP composition, namely the 35-aminoBHPs, was assessed. Aerobic microcosms inoculated with River Tyne (UK) estuarine sediment with a 5% methane amended headspace (unless otherwise stated), were subjected to a range of environmental perturbations; methane concentration (0.1-5%), temperature (4-60°C), pH (4-9) and salinity (1-150 g/L NaCl). Methane oxidation rates were monitored and methanotroph diversity was determined by targeting the particulate methane monooxygenase gene (pmoA). Methane oxidation was observed between 4 and 50°C, at all tested pH values and up to salinities of 70 g/L; however, methanotroph community composition varied with temperature, pH and salinity and these changes were reflected in the 35-aminoBHP signatures quantified by LC-MS analysis. For example, aminopentol was not enriched at pH 9 when the unusual Type I Methylomicrobium spp. were dominant, whilst the maximal production of C-3 methylated aminopentol was witnessed at 50°C when a Methylocaldum sp. was enriched. The hpnR gene, required for the methylation of BHPs at the C-3 position, was also identified in sediments at the aforementioned temperature. Novel iv compounds, identified after the analysis of six previously untested Type I marine methanotrophs within this study, were also found in microcosm sediments in varying abundances. The effect that of growth stage on 35-aminoBHP abundance was determined by analysing aerobic microcosms inoculated with River Tyne estuarine sediment over a 28 day period at times before and after methane oxidation. It revealed the continued production of aminopentol at mesophilic temperatures after methane oxidation was complete. This may have implications for the interpretation of the sedimentary record where aminopentol witnessed in marine settings may not represent periods of significant methane oxidation but rather a response to methane limiting conditions. Anaerobic producers of BHPs were investigated and the preservation and/or degradation of individual compounds was assessed in long-term studies. Microcosms inoculated with anoxic River Tyne estuarine sediment were subjected to sulphate-reducing and methanogenic conditions over a period of 706 and 665 days respectively. Changes in BHP composition over time were quantified by LC-MS with compounds including bacteriohopane-32,33,34,35-tetrol (BHT) and adenosylhopane found to be more resistant to degradation over the course of the study compared to bacteriohopane-32,33,34,35-tetrol cyclitol ether (BHT cyclitol ether). This indicates that some compounds are more resistant to degradation over time compared with others

The Effects of Residency and Body Size on Contest Initiation and Outcome in the Territorial Dragon, Ctenophorus decresii

Empirical studies of the determinants of contests have been attempting to unravel the complexity of animal contest behaviour for decades. This complexity requires that experiments incorporate multiple determinants into studies to tease apart their relative effects. In this study we examined the complex contest behaviour of the tawny dragon (Ctenophorus decresii), a territorial agamid lizard, with the specific aim of defining the factors that determine contest outcome. We manipulated the relative size and residency status of lizards in contests to weight their importance in determining contest outcome. We found that size, residency and initiating a fight were all important in determining outcomes of fights. We also tested whether residency or size was important in predicting the status of lizard that initiated a fight. We found that residency was the most important factor in predicting fight initiation. We discuss the effects of size and residency status in context of previous studies on contests in tawny dragons and other animals. Our study provides manipulative behavioural data in support of the overriding effects of residency on initiation fights and winning them.This study was funded by the Australian Research Council (www.arc.gov.au), the School of Botany and Zoology, and ANU (www.anu.edu.au). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript