The Use of Social Media by UK Local Resilience Forums

The potential uses of social media in the field of emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR) are varied and interesting. The UK government have produced guidance documents for its use in the UK EPRR field but evidence of use is poorly documented and appears sporadic. This paper presents the results of a survey of Local Resilience Forums (LRF) in the UK on their use and engagement with social media. The findings suggest that the level of application of social media strategies as emergency planning or response tools varied significantly between the LRFs. While over 90percent of respondents claimed that their LRF used social media as part of their strategy, most of this use was reactive or passive, rather than proactive and systematic. The various strategies employed seem to be linked most strongly to local expertise and the existence of social media ‘champions’ rather than to the directives and guidance emerging from government

PEDESTRIANISATION IN PLYMOUTH: THE EFFECT ON CAR USERS' ACCESSIBILITY TO AND WITHIN THE TRAFFIC FREE ZONE

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/1905 on 28.02.2017 by CS (TIS)When pedestrianisation was introduced in Plymouth, in February 1987,, there were two important physical changes to the city centre; environment changes and accessibility changes. Environmentally, the city centre was improved aesthetically and also in terms of safety for pedestrians,, less congestion, and ease of movement within the traffic free zone. The process of pedestrianisation initially reduced the accessibility of the city centre, particularly for car users, because the scheme removed nearly all the on-street parking meters together with two small short stay car parks. This caused a temporary reduction in car parking facilities, and the replacement facilities, completed in late 1988, were located at longer walking distances from the shops. Car users' access to the car parks and from the car parks to the shops was therefore changed. Previous experience in other cities has shown that accessibility to newly pedestrianised areas is of paramount importance and in Plymouth this was particularly evident when car users' accessibility problem became the most controversial aspect of the scheme. Conventional methods of appraising the success or otherwise of pedestrianisation schemes have tended to concentrate on commercial indicators such as trade turnover or on the acceptance of the scheme measured by studying peoples'attitudes and opinions. This research develops a conceptual and operational model that looks predominantly at the behaviour of the city centre users and which focuses on the particular problem experienced in the city, namely the changes in accessibility for the car user. The methodology examines the car users' travel, parking and shopping behaviour at three stages of the city centre's development; before pedestrianisation was introduced, during it s construction and after it s completion. The research was therefore able to discover how people adapted their behaviour in response to the changes in the city. The research found that many car users adopted a more leisurely approach to visiting the city centre, reflecting it s new image of a recreational as well as a retail shopping centre. Attitudes towards pedestrianisation also changed significantly during the survey period, and were found to be strongly related to respondents' experiences and perceptions of the parking facilities

Calculation of nitrogen rates for quota wheat

WHEAT delivery quotas well below previous production levels on many farms have created strong farmer interest in alternative land uses and economic production methods

Keynote speakers : wearables for good

The Digital Catapult Centre brings together the UK’s brightest digital ideas, by programming targeted events for innovators. We also encourage serendipitous opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs to meet likeminded people through our programme of coffee mornings, digital breakfasts and meet ups. The Wearable Health: The Market Gap, part of our Digital Health Festival, looks at the innovative ways UK small businesses are using wearables to tackle health challenges, as well as the opportunities this growth market presents. With even conservative estimates predicting the wearables market to explode to hundreds of millions of units by 2025, we will discuss what businesses need to do next and the consumer pressures and fears they are already facing. We expect 80-100 people to attend the conference, including talks from key industry voices, award winning wearable organisations and tech pioneers trying to capitalise on this rapidly expanding market. Dr David Swann and Julia Meaton's keynote presentation describes project WAAA!, a 2015 UNICEF Wearable for Good Challenge finalist that seeks to reduce newborn mortality in low-resource settings through a low-cost wearable and APGAR education

La traducción de los artículos económicos de opinión sobre el conflicto en Ucrania: los retos de la intertextualidad y otros recursos literarios

Numerous economic opinion articles on the Ukraine conflict have been published in the specialized media. To hold reader interest, authors incorporate literary devices such as metaphors and idioms, as well as intertextuality, proverbs, quotations, and word play into these articles, a technique that can prove challenging to the translator. This paper studied six Spanish economic opinion articles to determine the type, frequency and difficulty of the different literary devices employed and to analyze which prove most problematic during translation into English. Said articles were chosen from well-established Spanish economic news sources in a six-month period and translated. Tables were created to record the use of the above-mentioned devices. Results suggest that intertextuality and cultural references are more challenging than metaphors or word play, and greater use is made of metaphors and idioms in subsequent articles. It is also concluded that such articles could be useful in the teaching of translation.Recientemente los medios especializados han publicado numerosos artículos económicos de opinión sobre la guerra en Ucrania, cuyo fin es llegar a un amplio público, captando su atención mediante una serie de recursos literarios como metáforas, modismos, intertextualidad, refranes y juegos de palabras. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar seis artículos económicos en español sobre este tema para determinar el tipo y la frecuencia de los recursos literarios utilizados y su grado de dificultad. Se extrajeron de fuentes prestigiosas del ámbito económico en un rango de seis meses, se tradujeron y se diseñaron unas tablas para volcar los datos. Los resultados indican que la intertextualidad y las referencias culturales presentaron más dificultades que las metáforas y los juegos de palabras y que, mientras avanzaba el conflicto, aumentaba también el uso de metáforas y frases hechas. Otra conclusión final es su utilidad en el campo de la didáctica de la traducción

Housing Conditions in Palestinian Refugee Camps, Jordan

This paper evaluates the quality of housing in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan. More than two million registered refugees live in Jordan, most of whom living in thirteen refugee camps established in the late 1960s following the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967. Many of these camps are characterized by poor living conditions and associated health, social and environmental problems. However, there is scant empirical evidence regarding the quality of the housing in these camps. This paper addresses this gap by reporting on the findings of a questionnaire survey of 382 household units in Baqa’a Camp, the largest of the camps. The quantitative survey was triangulated by a series of extensive fieldwork visits to the area. Findings reveal that the housing in the camp is generally substandard. Poor structure and maintenance are key problems and this paper identifies and discusses various challenges, political and practical, that stand in the way of housing improvements. The paper concludes by suggesting that new models of ownership and responsibility need to be forged between the stakeholders in order to break the current stalemate of inaction

Surface distribution of microphytoplankton of the south-west Indian Ocean along a repeat transect between Cape Town and the Prince Edward Islands

Surface chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentrations, microphytoplankton (>20 μm) species composition and distribution along a repeat transect between Cape Town and the Prince Edward Islands were investigated in early austral autumn (April/May) 1996. Samples were collected at approximately 30 nautical mile intervals for the analysis of size-fractionated chl-a and the identification and enumeration of microphytoplankton species. Peaks in total chl-a (>1 μg 1 [superscript -1]) were recorded at the Subtropical Convergence (STC), at the Sub-Antarctic Front (SAF) and in the waters surrounding the Prince Edward Islands. In addition, a minor peak in chl-a concentration was recorded in the continental shelf waters. At stations where elevated chl-a concentrations were recorded, microphytoplankton generally formed a substantial contribution (-10%) to total chlorophyll. Outside these regions, total chlorophyll concentrations were lower (95% of the total. Microphytoplankton species composition along both transects were dominated by chain-forming species of the genera Chaetoceros (mainly C. neglectum, C. peruvianus and C. constrictus), Nitzschia spp. and Pseudoeunotia doliolus. Cluster and ordination analysis based on species composition identified five distinct microphytoplankton assemblages, which were closely associated with the different water masses in the region between Cape Town and the Prince Edward Islands. The microphytoplankton species composition and biogeographic zones identified during this investigation are in general agreement with similar studies conducted in the south-west Indian Ocean during the austral summer, which suggests that there are little seasonal trends in both the microphytoplankton species composition and biogeographic zonation