Underperforming policy networks : the biopesticides network in the United Kingdom

Loosely integrated and incomplete policy networks have been neglected in the literature. They are important to consider in terms of understanding network underperformance. The effective delivery and formulation of policy requires networks that are not incomplete or underperforming. The biopesticides policy network in the United Kingdom is considered and its components identified with an emphasis on the lack of integration of retailers and environmental groups. The nature of the network constrains the actions of its agents and frustrates the achievement of policy goals. A study of this relatively immature policy network also allows for a focus on network formation. The state, via an external central government department, has been a key factor in the development of the network. Therefore, it is important to incorporate such factors more systematically into understandings of network formation. Feedback efforts from policy have increased interactions between productionist actors but the sphere of consumption remains insufficiently articulated

Forty years studying British politics : the decline of Anglo-America

The still present belief some 40 years ago that British politics was both exceptional and superior has been replaced by more theoretically sophisticated analyses based on a wider and more rigorously deployed range of research techniques, although historical analysis appropriately remains important. The American influence on the study of British politics has declined, but the European Union dimension has not been fully integrated. The study of interest groups has been in some respects a fading paradigm, but important questions related to democratic health have still to be addressed. Public administration has been supplanted by public policy, but economic policy remains under-studied. A key challenge for the future is the study of the management of expectations

Rubber Impact on 3D Textile Composites

A low velocity impact study of aircraft tire rubber on 3D textile-reinforced composite plates was performed experimentally and numerically. In contrast to regular unidirectional composite laminates, no delaminations occur in such a 3D textile composite. Yarn decohesions, matrix cracks and yarn ruptures have been identified as the major damage mechanisms under impact load. An increase in the number of 3D warp yarns is proposed to improve the impact damage resistance. The characteristic of a rubber impact is the high amount of elastic energy stored in the impactor during impact, which was more than 90% of the initial kinetic energy. This large geometrical deformation of the rubber during impact leads to a less localised loading of the target structure and poses great challenges for the numerical modelling. A hyperelastic Mooney-Rivlin constitutive law was used in Abaqus/Explicit based on a step-by-step validation with static rubber compression tests and low velocity impact tests on aluminium plates. Simulation models of the textile weave were developed on the meso- and macro-scale. The final correlation between impact simulation results on 3D textile-reinforced composite plates and impact test data was promising, highlighting the potential of such numerical simulation tools

Functional and Biogenetical Heterogeneity of the Inner Membrane of Rat-Liver Mitochondria

Rat liver mitochondria were fragmented by a combined technique of swelling, shrinking, and sonication. Fragments of inner membrane were separated by density gradient centrifugation. They differed in several respects: electronmicroscopic appearance, phospholipid and cytochrome contents, electrophoretic behaviour of proteins and enzymatic activities. Three types of inner membrane fractions were isolated. The first type is characterized by a high activity of metal chelatase, low activities of succinate-cytochrome c reductase and of glycerolphosphate dehydrogenase, as well as by a high phospholipid content and low contents of cytochromes aa3 and b. The second type displays maximal activities of glycerolphosphate dehydrogenase and metal chelatase, but contains relatively little cytochromes and has low succinate-cytochrome c reductase activity. The third type exhibits highest succinate-cytochrome c reductase activity, a high metal chelatase activity and highest cytochrome contents. However, this fraction was low in both glycerolphosphate dehydrogenase activity and phospholipid content. This fraction was also richest in the following enzyme activities: cytochrome oxidase, oligomycin-sensitive ATPase, proline oxidase, 3-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase and rotenone-sensitive NADH-cytochrome c reductase. Amino acid incorporation in vitro and in vivo in the presence of cycloheximide occurs predominantly into inner membrane fractions from the second type. These data suggest that the inner membrane is composed of differently organized parts, and that polypeptides synthesized by mitochondrial ribosomes are integrated into specific parts of the inner membrane

Political Leadership as Statecraft? Aligning Theory with Praxis in Conversation with British Party Leaders

How should prime ministerial and party leadership be understood and assessed? One leading approach posits that we should assess them in terms of whether they achieve statecraft, that is, winning and maintain office in government. This article supplements and then assesses that theory by drawing from Pawson and Tilley’s (1997) concept of the realistic interview, in which practitioners are deployed as co-researchers to assess and revise theory. Unprecedented interviews with British party leaders were therefore undertaken. The article provides new empirical support for the framework because many of the key generative mechanisms identified within the neo-statecraft model were present in an analysis of the interviews. The interviews also allowed the limitations of the model to be demarcated. Statecraft focusses purely on cunning leadership where the aim is to maximise power and influence. This differs from leadership by conscious where the aim is to achieve normative goals

Star Clusters

This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects dynamical evolution deep in the core, and the spectrum of stellar masses; in turn the evolution of the core determines the highest stellar densities, and the rate of encounters. In this way external tidal effects indirectly influence the formation and evolution of blue stragglers, binary pulsars, X-ray sources, etc. More controversially, the stellar density appears to influence the relative distribution of normal stars. In the opposite sense, the evolution of individual stars governs much of the early dynamics of a globular cluster, and the existence of large numbers of primordial binary stars has changed important details of our picture of the dynamical evolution. New computational tools which will become available in the next few years will help dynamical theorists to address these questions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, Te

The utilisation of health research in policy-making: Concepts, examples and methods of assessment

The importance of health research utilisation in policy-making, and of understanding the mechanisms involved, is increasingly recognised. Recent reports calling for more resources to improve health in developing countries, and global pressures for accountability, draw greater attention to research-informed policy-making. Key utilisation issues have been described for at least twenty years, but the growing focus on health research systems creates additional dimensions. The utilisation of health research in policy-making should contribute to policies that may eventually lead to desired outcomes, including health gains. In this article, exploration of these issues is combined with a review of various forms of policy-making. When this is linked to analysis of different types of health research, it assists in building a comprehensive account of the diverse meanings of research utilisation. Previous studies report methods and conceptual frameworks that have been applied, if with varying degrees of success, to record utilisation in policy-making. These studies reveal various examples of research impact within a general picture of underutilisation. Factors potentially enhancing utilisation can be identified by exploration of: priority setting; activities of the health research system at the interface between research and policy-making; and the role of the recipients, or 'receptors', of health research. An interfaces and receptors model provides a framework for analysis. Recommendations about possible methods for assessing health research utilisation follow identification of the purposes of such assessments. Our conclusion is that research utilisation can be better understood, and enhanced, by developing assessment methods informed by conceptual analysis and review of previous studies

Potential effects of oilseed rape expressing oryzacystatin-1 (OC-1) and of purified insecticidal proteins on larvae of the solitary bee Osmia bicornis

Despite their importance as pollinators in crops and wild plants, solitary bees have not previously been included in non-target testing of insect-resistant transgenic crop plants. Larvae of many solitary bees feed almost exclusively on pollen and thus could be highly exposed to transgene products expressed in the pollen. The potential effects of pollen from oilseed rape expressing the cysteine protease inhibitor oryzacystatin-1 (OC-1) were investigated on larvae of the solitary bee Osmia bicornis (= O. rufa). Furthermore, recombinant OC-1 (rOC-1), the Bt toxin Cry1Ab and the snowdrop lectin Galanthus nivalis agglutinin (GNA) were evaluated for effects on the life history parameters of this important pollinator. Pollen provisions from transgenic OC-1 oilseed rape did not affect overall development. Similarly, high doses of rOC-1 and Cry1Ab as well as a low dose of GNA failed to cause any significant effects. However, a high dose of GNA (0.1%) in the larval diet resulted in significantly increased development time and reduced efficiency in conversion of pollen food into larval body weight. Our results suggest that OC-1 and Cry1Ab expressing transgenic crops would pose a negligible risk for O. bicornis larvae, whereas GNA expressing plants could cause detrimental effects, but only if bees were exposed to high levels of the protein. The described bioassay with bee brood is not only suitable for early tier non-target tests of transgenic plants, but also has broader applicability to other crop protection products

Coordinated optimization of visual cortical maps (II) Numerical studies

It is an attractive hypothesis that the spatial structure of visual cortical architecture can be explained by the coordinated optimization of multiple visual cortical maps representing orientation preference (OP), ocular dominance (OD), spatial frequency, or direction preference. In part (I) of this study we defined a class of analytically tractable coordinated optimization models and solved representative examples in which a spatially complex organization of the orientation preference map is induced by inter-map interactions. We found that attractor solutions near symmetry breaking threshold predict a highly ordered map layout and require a substantial OD bias for OP pinwheel stabilization. Here we examine in numerical simulations whether such models exhibit biologically more realistic spatially irregular solutions at a finite distance from threshold and when transients towards attractor states are considered. We also examine whether model behavior qualitatively changes when the spatial periodicities of the two maps are detuned and when considering more than 2 feature dimensions. Our numerical results support the view that neither minimal energy states nor intermediate transient states of our coordinated optimization models successfully explain the spatially irregular architecture of the visual cortex. We discuss several alternative scenarios and additional factors that may improve the agreement between model solutions and biological observations.Comment: 55 pages, 11 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1102.335