Delivering Public Services: Locality, Learning and Reciprocity in Place Based Practice

Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi-faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant scholarly interest, along with increasing attention from practitioners, is ‘place-based’ solutions. This paper surveys conceptual aspects of this approach. It describes practices in comparable jurisdictions – the UK, the EU and the US. And it explores efforts over the past decade to ‘localise’ Indigenous services. It sketches the governance challenge in migrating from top-down or principal-agent arrangements towards place-based practice. The paper concludes that many of the building blocks for this shift already exist but that these need to be re-oriented around ‘learning’. Funding and other administrative protocols may also ultimately need to be redefined

Pathologies in International Policy Transfer:The Case of the OECD Tax Transparency Initiative

ABSTRACT The importance of international organizations to the development and diffusion of international policy norms is widely recognized but is increasingly tempered by an appreciation of the pathologies of policy transfer. Using a case study of the OECD’s campaign to promote transparency in global tax affairs, this paper identifies a new and relatively distinctive form of dysfunctional policy transfer. Specifically it argues that international organizations face bureaucratic incentives to promote weak or lowest common denominator standards in order to maximize their prospects of brokering successful international agreements. However the paper also notes that while international organizations may have a short-term interest in promoting weak standards, their longer-term legitimacy is often tied to the effectiveness of the standards they promote. It is argued that this dynamic often leads to incremental policy change

Delivering transformative action in paediatric pain: a <i>Lancet Child &amp; Adolescent Health</i> Commission

Every infant, child, and adolescent will experience pain at times throughout their life. Childhood pain ranges from acute to chronic, and includes procedural, disease-related, breakthrough, and other types of pain. Despite its ubiquity, pain is a major challenge for individuals, families, health-care professionals, and societies. As a private mental experience, pain is often hidden and can go undiscussed or ignored. Undertreated, unrecognised, or poorly managed pain in childhood leads to important and long-lasting negative consequences that continue into adulthood, including continued chronic pain, disability, and distress. This undertreatment of pain should not continue, as there are available tools, expertise, and evidence to provide better treatment for childhood pain

A chemical survey of exoplanets with ARIEL

Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s birth, and evolution. ARIEL was conceived to observe a large number (~1000) of transiting planets for statistical understanding, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types using transit spectroscopy in the 1.25–7.8 μm spectral range and multiple narrow-band photometry in the optical. ARIEL will focus on warm and hot planets to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres which should show minimal condensation and sequestration of high-Z materials compared to their colder Solar System siblings. Said warm and hot atmospheres are expected to be more representative of the planetary bulk composition. Observations of these warm/hot exoplanets, and in particular of their elemental composition (especially C, O, N, S, Si), will allow the understanding of the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few million years. ARIEL will thus provide a representative picture of the chemical nature of the exoplanets and relate this directly to the type and chemical environment of the host star. ARIEL is designed as a dedicated survey mission for combined-light spectroscopy, capable of observing a large and well-defined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. Transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy methods, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allow us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of 10–100 part per million (ppm) relative to the star and, given the bright nature of targets, also allows more sophisticated techniques, such as eclipse mapping, to give a deeper insight into the nature of the atmosphere. These types of observations require a stable payload and satellite platform with broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The wavelength range proposed covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from e.g. H2O, CO2, CH4 NH3, HCN, H2S through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species. Simulations of ARIEL performance in conducting exoplanet surveys have been performed – using conservative estimates of mission performance and a full model of all significant noise sources in the measurement – using a list of potential ARIEL targets that incorporates the latest available exoplanet statistics. The conclusion at the end of the Phase A study, is that ARIEL – in line with the stated mission objectives – will be able to observe about 1000 exoplanets depending on the details of the adopted survey strategy, thus confirming the feasibility of the main science objectives.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Comparative mitochondrial proteomics: perspective in human diseases

Mitochondria are the most complex and the most important organelles of eukaryotic cells, which are involved in many cellular processes, including energy metabolism, apoptosis, and aging. And mitochondria have been identified as the "hot spot" by researchers for exploring relevant associated dysfunctions in many fields. The emergence of comparative proteomics enables us to have a close look at the mitochondrial proteome in a comprehensive and effective manner under various conditions and cellular circumstances. Two-dimensional electrophoresis combined with mass spectrometry is still the most popular techniques to study comparative mitochondrial proteomics. Furthermore, many new techniques, such as ICAT, MudPIT, and SILAC, equip researchers with more flexibilities inselecting proper methods. This article also reviews the recent development of comparative mitochondrial proteomics on diverse human diseases. And the results of mitochondrial proteomics enhance a better understanding of the pathogenesis associated with mitochondria and provide promising therapeutic targets