Renewable energy in remote communities

This article is the result of a competitively tendered University-funded project, this brings together two major Government Policy areas: sustainable communities and use of carbon fuels, and is aimed at influencing the policy debate on the difficulties of linking remote communities to renewable energy production because of poor distribution networks. Linkage with the Sustainable Communities agenda is an essential ingredient, as the proposal is that the renewable energy technologies will be installed and maintained by the communities themselves

Young people today: news media, policy and youth justice

The new sociology of childhood sees children as competent social agents with important contributions to make. And yet the phase of childhood is fraught with tensions and contradictions. Public policies are required, not only to protect children, but also to control them and regulate their behaviour. For children and young people in the UK, youth justice has become increasingly punitive. At the same time, social policies have focused more on children's inclusion and participation. In this interplay of conflict and contradictions, the role the media play is critical in contributing to the moral panic about childhood and youth. In this article, we consider media representations of “antisocial” children and young people and how this belies a moral response to the nature of contemporary childhood. We conclude by considering how a rights-based approach might help redress the moralised politics of childhood representations in the media

Maternal protein-energy malnutrition during early pregnancy in sheep impacts the fetal ornithine cycle to reduce fetal kidney microvascular development

This paper identifies a common nutritional pathway relating maternal through to fetal protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) and compromised fetal kidney development. Thirty-one twin-bearing sheep were fed either a control (n=15) or low-protein diet (n=16, 17 vs. 8.7 g crude protein/MJ metabolizable energy) from d 0 to 65 gestation (term, ∼ 145 d). Effects on the maternal and fetal nutritional environment were characterized by sampling blood and amniotic fluid. Kidney development was characterized by histology, immunohistochemistry, vascular corrosion casts, and molecular biology. PEM had little measureable effect on maternal and fetal macronutrient balance (glucose, total protein, total amino acids, and lactate were unaffected) or on fetal growth. PEM decreased maternal and fetal urea concentration, which blunted fetal ornithine availability and affected fetal hepatic polyamine production. For the first time in a large animal model, we associated these nutritional effects with reduced micro- but not macrovascular development in the fetal kidney. Maternal PEM specifically impacts the fetal ornithine cycle, affecting cellular polyamine metabolism and microvascular development of the fetal kidney, effects that likely underpin programming of kidney development and function by a maternal low protein diet

Building a Small Cinema: Resisting Neoliberal Colonization in Liverpool

In its stated aim of “creating cinemas not supermarkets,” the Small Cinema project voiced its alterity to the recent redevelopment of Liverpool’s city center and those of other former industrial cities throughout the Midlands and the north of the UK. These regeneration projects addressed the problem of a shrinking manufacturing base by replacing them with service industries, a move which has entailed the privatization of vast tracts of public space. Conversely, the building, functioning, and general praxis of the Small Cinema project suggests a mode of practice that more accurately fits within the paradigm of a collaborative commons than a capitalist marketplace. The project’s exemption from market criteria grants it the freedom to pursue public over private goods, thereby constituting a point of resistance to the ongoing neoliberalization of the city and changes to government policy that make it increasingly difficult for non-profit projects to exist. Historically speaking, cinemas have been accessible to the working class in a way that other artistic media have not. However, while the history of film as a tool for political subversion is well documented, less attention has been paid to the physical construction of independent cinematic space, its programming/running, and its potential as a node of resistance to neoliberal colonization. This paper uses the case study of the Small Cinema project in Liverpool as a means by which to understand how cinematic spaces can counteract the effects of policies that continue to have such a detrimental impact on the arts and education, as well as social health and well-being

New Petro‐aggression in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia in the Spotlight

That hydrocarbon abundance may lead to more violence is an established truism in the literature on the resource curse. Looking at the Middle East, however, the literature relates bellicose state behaviour entirely to oil-producing revolutionary republics. Instead, dynastic monarchies are claimed to be the more peacefully behaving actors. Current developments turn this conclusion upside down, however. Since 2015 at the latest, the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia, the leading monarchy in the Middle East, has transformed from multi-dependence to petro-aggression. By discussing this striking transformation, the paper puts forward a framework looking at the interaction of three crucial dimensions: first, the decreasing power projection towards the Middle East by the United States, the decade-long hegemon, due to gradual changes in world energy markets and war fatigue at home; second, the lasting fiscal potency of the Saudi regime; and, third, the personalization of the Saudi monarchy under King Salman as a historically contingent result of transferring power to the generation of Ibn Saud's grandsons