Mandatory public benefit reporting as a basis for charity accountability: findings from England & Wales

Charitable status is inherently linked in many jurisdictions with the requirement that an entity must be established for public benefit. But, until recently the public benefit principle had relatively little impact on the operations of most established charities. However, in England and Wales, reforms linked to the Charities Act 2006 led to a new requirement for public benefit reporting in the trustees’ annual report (TAR) of every registered charity. This new narrative reporting requirement had the potential to affect the understanding of accountability by charities. The paper investigates the impact of that requirement through a study of over 1400 sets of charity reports and account

Living standards and plague in London, 1560–1665

We use individual records of 920,000 burials and 630,000 baptisms to reconstruct the spatial and temporal patterns of birth and death in London from 1560 to 1665, a period dominated by recurrent plague. The plagues of 1563, 1603, 1625, and 1665 appear of roughly equal magnitude, with deaths running at five to six times their usual rate, but the impact on wealthier central parishes falls markedly through time. Tracking the weekly spread of plague before 1665 we find a consistent pattern of elevated mortality spreading from the same northern suburbs. Looking at the seasonal pattern of mortality, we find that the characteristic autumn spike associated with plague continued into the early 1700s. Given that individual cases of plague and typhus are frequently indistinguishable, claims that plague suddenly vanished after 1665 should be treated with caution. Natural increase improved as smaller plagues disappeared after 1590, but fewer than half of those born survived childhood

INCREMENTAL INNOVATION BY DESIGN: A DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES PERSPECTIVE (44)

Drawing together knowledge and research from a variety of fields, it is demonstrated that although IT-enabled innovation might be critical to the long-term success of all organisations, it is not an ambition that is always easy to achieve. Consequently, the broad purpose of this short, conceptual paper is to both provide an overview of our proposed, new approach to innovation - Incremental Innovation by Design – and to reflect upon the role dynamic capabilities may have to play in supporting its successful deployment. In so doing, we introduce a provisional research agenda, to indicate how our research interests may be productively developed in the future

Home truths from abroad? : a TESOL blueprint for the mediation of L1/L2 language awareness

The status of the cross-linguistic dimension of second language learning, and hence of L2 pedagogy, appears to have been systematically underplayed in epicentric, i.e. flowing from centre to periphery, theories of second language acquisition (SLA). Indeed, following the advent of cognitivism, mainstream SLA theory has frequently sought to marginalize anything suggestive of a contrastive paradigm. SLA conceptions of the nature of the influence of a learner’s first language on L2 acquisition and performance have tended to take the form of reductive dichotomies of the interference versus facilitative resource type – a mutually exclusive either/or interpretation. Consciously or otherwise, epicentric theories of L2 learning and pedagogy have filtered down to the language improvement and language awareness components of TESOL initial teacher education (ITE) and in-service education and training (INSET), where the focus is exclusively monolingual L2 and necessity all too often masquerades as principle. Against this backdrop, the present inquiry set out to evaluate the perceived benefits of an explicitly cross-linguistic (L1/L2) approach to language awareness on an L2 ITE program for pre-service trainees from the Japanese EFL context. Based on the evaluative response data from the non-native speaker (NNS) program participants, I invoke the notion of analytic generalization to argue that an explicit focus on selected cross-linguistic aspects of L2 learning, together with awareness-raising in respect of a range of context-specific ESOL-related issues has the potential to positively contribute both to trainees’ L2 development and to their development as pre-service TESOL professionals. The thesis further argues for a more holistic appreciation of the dynamic, complex nature of cross-linguistic influence viewed within a broader, context-specific conception of the L2 Teacher Language Awareness (L2 TLA) construct

Development of Ground-testable Phase Fresnel Lenses in Silicon

Diffractive/refractive optics, such as Phase Fresnel Lenses (PFL's), offer the potential to achieve excellent imaging performance in the x-ray and gamma-ray photon regimes. In principle, the angular resolution obtained with these devices can be diffraction limited. Furthermore, improvements in signal sensitivity can be achieved as virtually the entire flux incident on a lens can be concentrated onto a small detector area. In order to verify experimentally the imaging performance, we have fabricated PFL's in silicon using gray-scale lithography to produce the required Fresnel profile. These devices are to be evaluated in the recently constructed 600-meter x-ray interferometry testbed at NASA/GSFC. Profile measurements of the Fresnel structures in fabricated PFL's have been performed and have been used to obtain initial characterization of the expected PFL imaging efficiencies.Comment: Presented at GammaWave05: "Focusing Telescopes in Nuclear Astrophysics", Bonifacio, Corsica, September 2005, to be published in Experimental Astronomy, 8 pages, 3 figure

Development of a New Dislodgeable Foliar Residue Analytical Laboratory Method for Pesticides

© 2022 The Author(s) . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Occupational Hygiene Society. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The dislodgeable foliar residue (DFR) is the amount of pesticide that exists on foliage after the pesticide has dried and which could dislodge to the skin or clothes of workers and is a key parameter for non-dietary risk assessments required to demonstrate safe use for pesticide registration. DFR data in the literature are described as insufficiently reliable, limited, and encompasses considerable statistical uncertainties. The purpose of this article is to describe a newly developed laboratory method for the quantification of DFR with an illustrative example. The laboratory method reflected available field DFR methodology but involved controlled application of droplets to leaves and validation of the wash-off process used to remove the residue from the leaf surface before the analytical quantification. A very high level of accuracy (99.7-102.1%) and precision (±1.5%) was achieved. Residue data generated from the illustrated application of the method showed a robust normal distribution, unlike field studies. The method is deemed to be controllable, cost-efficient, and time-saving, taking hours rather than days. This enables the generation of more data to allow extrapolation between the generated data by investigating multiple factors that may influence DFR. An improved understanding of DFR could save time, money, and resources.Peer reviewe

Determination of the Key Parameters Influencing Dislodgeable Foliar Pesticide Residues

Dislodgeable foliar residue (DFR) is the amount of pesticide residue deposited on plant leaves after pesticide application which may be dislodged by people during the performance of various tasks. This can subsequently be transferred to human skin and clothes that may cause potential risk. However, the factors influencing DFR are unknown.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio