Intergovernmental relations in Scotland post-devolution

Central-local relations in Scotland pre-devolution were different to a degree, but the overall substance and rationale behind them tended to be very similar to those in England. This article outlines post-devolution developments in Scotland. As in England, 'partnership' has dominated the rhetoric of central politicians and policy-makers. This has masked significant differences in approach to central-local relations. The Scottish Executive has focused on central-local relations as a topic in its own right, regulatory oversight arrangements are less heavy-handed and the new parliament has increased transparency. Despite its more 'light touch' approach, the executive has successfully imposed its agenda on Scottish local government. Attention is however beginning to focus on 'delivery'. Given the non-executant nature of the executive, this will increase its focus on local councils. Failure to deliver will impose serious strains on the much-hyped central-local partnership

Finesse and sensitivity gain in cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy of biomolecules in solution

We describe a ‘wet mirror’ apparatus for cw cavity-enhanced absorption measurements with Bacteriochlorophyll a (BChla) in solution and show that it achieves the full sensitivity gain (≈ 2.3×10^4) afforded by the finesse (3.4 × 10^4) and loss distribution of our optical resonator. This result provides an important proof-of-principle demonstration for solution-phase cavity-enhanced spectroscopy; straightforward extrapolation to a system with state-of-the-art low-loss mirrors and shot-noise-limited performance indicates that single molecule sensitivity in liquids is within reach of current technology. With the probe laser locked to the cavity resonance, our instrument achieves a sensitivity ≈3.4×10^−8/√Hz (for a sample of length 1.75 mm) with 100 kHz bandwidth and can reliably detect sub-nM concentrations of BChla with 1 ms integration time

HEA/JISC Open Educational Resources case study: pedagogical development from OER practice: research ethics OER: can they be 'radically repurposed and remixed'?

This case study provides guidance on discovering, reusing and repurposing of Open Educational Resources (OER). It is presented within the context of research ethics OER for higher education learning and teaching and, together with the OER guidance, provides examples of OER found for this subject area

Identifying biotic determinants of historic American eel (Anguilla rostrata) distributions

Traditionally, ecologists studying large scale patterns in species distributions emphasize abiotic variables over biotic interactions. Noting that both abiotic & biotic variables likely determine distributions of all organisms, many ecologists now aim for a more comprehensive view of species distributions, inclusive of both abiotic and biotic components (Soberón 2007)

The Interdependence of School Outcomes and School and Neighborhood Crime

In this paper, we estimate the effects of neighborhood crime and in-school crime on educational outcomes for elementary and secondary schools in the city of Atlanta over the period 1999 to 2002. We specify a model that accounts for the joint determination of both types of crime along with school outcomes. Despite the large empirical literature on both education production functions and crime incidence, there has been little empirical work on crime's effect on school outcomes. One exception is Grogger (1997) who used individual data from the High School and Beyond study to estimate the effect of school violence on measures of individual student performance. After controlling for individual and school characteristics, he found that moderate and severe levels of school violence had substantial negative consequences for school outcomes. Our study both updates and expands on his work, using current data and better measures of neighborhood violence. Working Paper 07-1

Estimating the emigration rate of fish stocks from marine sanctuaries using tag-recovery data

A critical process in assessing the impact of marine sanctuaries on fish stocks is the movement of fish out into surrounding fished areas. A method is presented for estimating the yearly rate of emigration of animals from a protected (“no-take”) zone. Movement rates for exploited populations are usually inferred from tag-recovery studies, where tagged individuals are released into the sea at known locations and their location of recapture is reported by fishermen. There are three drawbacks, however, with this method of estimating movement rates: 1) if animals are tagged and released into both protected and fished areas, movement rates will be overestimated if the prohibition on recapturing tagged fish later from within the protected area is not made explicit; 2) the times of recapture are random; and 3) an unknown proportion of tagged animals are recaptured but not reported back to researchers. An estimation method is proposed which addresses these three drawbacks of tag-recovery data. An analytic formula and an associated double-hypergeometric likelihood method were derived. These two estimators of emigration rate were applied to tag recoveries from southern rock lobsters (Jasus edwardsii) released into a sanctuary and into its surrounding fished area in South Australia