585 research outputs found
Hybridizing the institutional logics of performance improvement and budgetary stewardship in English and Welsh local government
This article introduces and applies a three-stage process to show how advocates of the conflicting institutional logics of budgetary stewardship and performance improvement in English and Welsh local authorities created a hybrid logic. Drawing on interviews with officers in 25 councils, it demonstrates how cooperative working environments meant that hybridization proceeded largely 'peacefully', in contrast to previous studies of more competitive contexts that found it occurs on a 'battlefield'. We argue that the nature of conflict within the hybridization process, along with the power dynamics between representatives of different logics, shapes the nature and sustainability of the resulting hybrid
On the Unicity of Smartphone Applications
Prior works have shown that the list of apps installed by a user reveal a lot
about user interests and behavior. These works rely on the semantics of the
installed apps and show that various user traits could be learnt automatically
using off-the-shelf machine-learning techniques. In this work, we focus on the
re-identifiability issue and thoroughly study the unicity of smartphone apps on
a dataset containing 54,893 Android users collected over a period of 7 months.
Our study finds that any 4 apps installed by a user are enough (more than 95%
times) for the re-identification of the user in our dataset. As the complete
list of installed apps is unique for 99% of the users in our dataset, it can be
easily used to track/profile the users by a service such as Twitter that has
access to the whole list of installed apps of users. As our analyzed dataset is
small as compared to the total population of Android users, we also study how
unicity would vary with larger datasets. This work emphasizes the need of
better privacy guards against collection, use and release of the list of
installed apps.Comment: 10 pages, 9 Figures, Appeared at ACM CCS Workshop on Privacy in
Electronic Society (WPES) 201
Austerity, political control and supplier selection in English local government: implications for autonomy in multi-level systems
Analysis of 60,000 contracts awarded by English councils between 2015-19 reveals that austerity constraints are a key predictor of councils outsourcing services to for-profit suppliers, regardless of their political control. Conservative Party-controlled councils are also more likely to contract with for-profit suppliers, although we found no link between Labour-controlled councils and not-for-profit suppliers, nor evidence that political or budgetary factors influence whether councils contract with providers based in their own region. We argue that centrally imposed funding cuts, and a belief that for-profit suppliers represent a cheaper option, could be overriding Labour Party councils’ ideological preference for not-for-profit providers
Engaging postgraduate students and supporting higher education to enhance the 21st century student experience:Final Report
Recommended from our members
Local Government Finance and the 2019 Spending Review inquiry: submission to the House of Commons committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government
Recommended from our members
Structure, agency and local climate governance: how do individual actors exploit local contexts to shape policymaking in smaller cities and towns?
A growing literature has emphasised how structural factors shape levels of ambition in local climate policy. Specifically, cities that have larger, wealthier, highly-educated and younger populations, are supported by local universities and research institutes and in which civil society organisations and green parties are strong and active, are more likely to be ‘leaders’ in climate mitigation and adaptation (Haupt et al 2022). Conversely, smaller towns, with less wealthy and older populations, which are more reliant on heavy industry and with weaker civil society organisations and green parties, are more likely to be ‘laggards’ (Otto et al 2021; Salvia et al 2021).
Such studies are informative from an academic perspective (because they identify the key factors that contribute towards more ambitious policymaking), and instructive for policymakers (who can pinpoint where additional support and funding schemes may be necessary to ensure that all cities keep pace with the leaders). However, they neglect to take account of agency and the likelihood that individuals in some municipalities can pursue ambitious climate policy despite operating in unfavourable local conditions. At the same time, cities that we might expect to become leaders due to their socioeconomic and political conditions may instead be slower to adopt ambitious policies due to the actions of key individuals in the municipality
Regulation of the ESC transcriptome by nuclear long non-coding RNAs
Long noncoding (lnc)RNAs have recently emerged as key regulators of gene expression. Here, we performed high-depth poly(A)+ RNA sequencing across multiple clonal populations of mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and neural progenitor cells (NPCs) to comprehensively identify differentially regulated lncRNAs. We establish a biologically robust profile of lncRNA expression in these two cell types and further confirm that the majority of these lncRNAs are enriched in the nucleus. Applying weighted gene co-expression network analysis, we define a group of lncRNAs that are tightly associated with the pluripotent state of ESCs. Among these, we show that acute depletion of PAT-14 using antisense oligonucleotides impacts the differentiation- and development-associated gene expression program of ESCs. Furthermore, we demonstrate that Firre, a lncRNA highly enriched in the nucleoplasm and previously reported to mediate chromosomal contacts in ESCs, controls a network of genes related to RNA processing. Together, we provide a comprehensive, up-to-date and high resolution compilation of lncRNA expression in ESCs and NPCs and show that nuclear lncRNAs are tightly integrated into the regulation of ESC gene expression
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