From Dreamweaver to Drupal: A University Library Website Case Study

In 2016, Colgate University Libraries began converting their static HTML website to the Drupal platform. This article outlines the process librarians used to complete this project using only in-house resources and minimal funding. For libraries and similar institutions considering the move to a content management system, this case study can provide a starting point and highlight important issues

COVID-19 has emphasised the importance of the local state – but how to solve a problem like local government funding?

The funding resilience of English local authorities has been a concern for some time, but COVID-19 has thrown such concerns into sharper relief, write Mark Sandford and Kevin Muldoon-Smith

Schrodinger’s devolution and the potential for ongoing political instability after Brexit

Territorial governance in the UK has taken the form of ‘Schrodinger’s devolution’, where the devolved nations both have and have not experienced fundamental constitutional change. But Brexit highlights the need for exact decisions where ambiguity has so far existed, explain Mark Sandford and Cathy Gormley-Heenan

Devolution revolution? Assessing central-local relationships in England's devolution deals

Much recent debate has been generated by the priorities of the newly-elected metro-mayors and their implications for the sub-national governance of England. But the broader question is: will they lead to longer-term change in relationships between central and local government? Mark Sandford, Sarah Ayres, and Matthew Flinders argue that, although not radical, England’s devolution deals may contain the seeds od change

Processing network delay measurements into network events

Network performance monitoring is an ongoing process as networks and their users are constantly changing. Networks are subject to various changes, some of which are controlled by the network providers (such as upgrades or re-routes) and some are not (equipment failure, usage). Network monitoring may include the detecting of such changes. These changes can be referred to as network event

A high-resolution structure of the EF-hand domain of human polycystin-2.

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) affects over 1:1000 of the worldwide population and is caused by mutations in two genes, PKD1 and PKD2. PKD2 encodes a 968-amino acid membrane spanning protein, Polycystin-2 (PC-2), which is a member of the TRP ion channel family. The C-terminal cytoplasmic tail contains an EF-hand motif followed by a short coiled-coil domain. We have determined the structure of the EF-hand region of PC-2 using NMR spectroscopy. The use of different boundaries, compared with those used in previous studies, have enabled us to determine a high resolution structure and show that the EF hand motif forms a standard calcium-binding pocket. The affinity of this pocket for calcium has been measured and mutants that both decrease and increase its affinity for the metal ion have been created

Grasping the nettle: the central–local constraints on local government funding in England

In England, the traditional method of central government redistribution and equalization between locations has been replaced with a greater emphasis on self-sufficiency and entrepreneurism. English local government now faces existential funding questions – a situation that is repeated around the world as the public sector manages the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Financialization has figured large in the study of entrepreneurial behaviour. However, in England, legal and procedural constraints have driven authorities to seek revenue funding from other sources, principally seeking additional property-related revenues. In response, this article presents a novel typology of local government funding sources and offers an original analysis of their implications for local authorities’ role. The empirical findings show that the buoyancy and quantum of many funding sources are constrained by prior evolution of location and central–local relations: they are not automatic routes to financialization. Conceptually, these findings reveal that methods of financialization, and the local government funding system within which they typically sit, are as likely to be constrained by the evolution and techniques of governance as they are accelerated by it. International debates around financialization, and wider concerns of how locations develop, would benefit from this account of the often-hidden nature and agency of local government funding systems

Generic performance management of multiservice networks

This paper discusses various approaches to the development of an integrated and automated network performance measurement tool. Adopting an object-orientated approach to the entire system design can assist this requirement for intelligence in a distributed manner. The authors have found the JAVA language to greatly assist in this task and this language has been used for all aspects of the system from traffic generation/reception, to the database and display systems. Finally, examples of the systems have been developed and implemented at various levels, from experimental operations on ATM networks, to a prototype operational system on BT's commercial SMDS (Switched Multi-megabit Data Service) networ

Policy-making ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage:Assessing the implications for effectiveness and democracy

The aim of this article is to examine the complex interrelationship between ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage policy-making. ‘Front stage’ describes the activities of visible and accountable office holders in elected bodies, constrained by established bureaucratic rules. ‘Back stage’ describes the world of unseen decision-making where public officials are less constrained by formal rules and public scrutiny. Drawing on a recent case study of English devolution in the United Kingdom, this article examines how front and back stage policy-making shape one another and the impact this can have on policy effectiveness and democratic accountability. Findings reveal that policy-makers need to think more explicitly about the interplay between front and back stage activities. In the context of English devolution, the transition from back to front stage has been flawed. Central government’s purposeful strategy of informal negotiations with very few formal objectives has resulted in low stakeholder buy-in, which has mitigated against the potential effectiveness of back stage decision-making. </jats:p

Biotransformation of fluorophenyl pyridine carboxylic acids by the model fungus Cunninghamella elegans

1. Fluorine plays a key role in the design of new drugs and recent FDA approvals included two fluorinated drugs, tedizolid phosphate and vorapaxar, both of which contain the fluorophenyl pyridyl moiety. 2. To investigate the likely phase-I (oxidative) metabolic fate of this group, various fluorinated phenyl pyridine carboxylic acids were incubated with the fungus Cunninghamella elegans, which is an established model of mammalian drug metabolism. 3. 19F NMR spectroscopy established the degree of biotransformation, which varied depending on the position of fluorine substitution, and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) identified alcohols and hydroxylated carboxylic acids as metabolites. The hydroxylated metabolites were further structurally characterised by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), which demonstrated that hydroxylation occurred on the 4′ position; fluorine in that position blocked the hydroxylation. 4. The fluorophenyl pyridine carboxylic acids were not biotransformed by rat liver microsomes and this was a consequence of inhibitory action, and thus, the fungal model was crucial in obtaining metabolites to establish the mechanism of catabolism