Whatever happened to the Nolan principles? Sleaze in the government of Boris Johnson

The responses by the Prime Minister and ministers to the current spate of allegations of sleaze are illustrative of a longstanding problem in British political life which was meant to have been resolved 25 years ago with the Nolan Committee. Martin Bull argues that a return to Nolan is needed if we are to have any hope of recovering trust in British politics

Draghi may be a banker, but there is a significant political realignment taking place behind his government’s technocratic façade

Much of the response to Mario Draghi’s appointment as Prime Minister of Italy has focused on the technocratic nature of his government. Martin J. Bull argues that while Draghi may be a technocrat, his programme is already generating a significant realignment within Italian politics

Greenview : the gorilla in the library smart sensing and behaviour change

This paper provides a description and analysis of the Greenview project, an experiment in smart sensing leading to energy consumption behaviour change in building users. Greenview was an innovative app built on the back of the successful DUALL project (funded by JISC). Where DUALL created a simple web-based information-feedback tool that could report electrical consumption in specific university buildings back to users via a simple dashboard using Yahoo widgets; Greenview refined the ICT tool further into a sophisticated smart phone application which could connect staff and students in De Montfort University (DMU) to monitor the relative energy consumptions of their buildings. The developed iPhone ‘app’ visualised comparative energy use on the DMU campus through a narrative of improving or declining habitats for endangered species, represented by animated cartoon characters living as virtual mascots in each university building. Based on the emotive nature of the ‘Tamagochi’ concept, the app tested an engaging way to encourage care for the environment. When consumption levels exceeded those on the same day of the previous year, the visible well being of species would change. The app also provided real-time data through meter readings provided on a half-hourly basis, allowing the inclusion of graphical data options, appealing both to emotional identification with the building mascot and to the range of preferences individuals have for viewing and interpreting data.Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union.peer-reviewe

The Gorilla in the Library: lessons in using ICT to engage building users in energy reduction

This paper is concerned with the role of the digital economy as an enabler of behaviour change in the built environment. The Greenview research project at De Montfort University (DMU), funded by JISC’s Greening ICT fund , has undertaken innovative work to explore novel and interesting ways to engage building users in energy reduction. Findings are presented around both the methodological challenges of capturing and presenting live electrical data for iPhone applications and the wider opportunities and barriers to ICT enabled behaviour change. From a technical perspective Greenview has shown the need to conduct detailed and thorough technical work to ensure the visualisations correlate to actual building performance and from the behaviour change perspective both Greenview and its predecessor (DUALL ) have explored moving beyond quantitative approaches to presenting information on energy and sustainability that is fun, creative and [hopefully] engaging. Finally, it is clear that without senior commitment and sincere staff engagement and collaboration mere information provision in the form of dashboards are impotent

The domestication of the probiotic bacterium Lactobacillus acidophilus

Lactobacillus acidophilus is a Gram-positive lactic acid bacterium that has had widespread historical use in the dairy industry and more recently as a probiotic. Although L. acidophilus has been designated as safe for human consumption, increasing commercial regulation and clinical demands for probiotic validation has resulted in a need to understand its genetic diversity. By drawing on large, well-characterised collections of lactic acid bacteria, we examined L. acidophilus isolates spanning 92 years and including multiple strains in current commercial use. Analysis of the whole genome sequence data set (34 isolate genomes) demonstrated L. acidophilus was a low diversity, monophyletic species with commercial isolates essentially identical at the sequence level. Our results indicate that commercial use has domesticated L. acidophilus with genetically stable, invariant strains being consumed globally by the human population

Exploring psychosocial predictors of STI testing in University students

Peer reviewedPublisher PD