Updating the Building Code to Include Indoor Farming Operations

Urban agricultural production has grown to be a critical tool in the battles for food security and sustainability. A common regulatory barrier to urban agricultural operations big and small has been ambiguity in land-use laws. Local governments are increasingly friendly toward community gardens, small greenhouse farming operations, farmers markets, and the like. Many have sought to lift regulatory restrictions and provide clarity in the law. However, while these efforts benefit a multitude of local food production efforts, they do little to address the regulatory ambiguities faced by commercial-scale, indoor farming operations, especially vertical farms. Particularly concerning to indoor vertical farms are the ambiguities implicit in the International Building Code (“IBC”), which serves as the model building code for virtually every American municipality. Currently, the IBC lacks any provisions contemplating buildings purposed for large-scale indoor crop production. While some state governments have traditionally exempted agricultural buildings from this type of regulation, this is neither a safe nor feasible solution for indoor farming operations. This article seeks to provide alternative solutions. First, in the short term, local governments should provide clear statutory guidance concerning where indoor farming operations fit into the IBC scheme. Second, as a more sustainable solution, the International Code Council, should update the IBC to account for commercial-scale indoor farming operations by including such operations under a particular occupancy group

Economic development in Spain, 1850-1936

Indicators of the good health of Spanish economic history include the growing number of publications in English, the proliferation in the number of academic journals within Spain, and the fact that the 1998 International Economic History Congress is to be held in Seville. It is not possible to provide here a general note on all aspects of recent research, but this essay offers a critical examination of the major arguments advanced for the slow growth in the Spanish economy over the century or so before the civil war of 1936-9. The period after 1936 has been excluded because, although many of the obstacles to development remained until the 1960s, three excellent surveys of the literature have recently been published.' Where possible, English versions of works are cited, and the essay lists only those Spanish publications which are likely to be relatively easily obtainable. After considering recent estimates of economic growth and development, the survey tries to explain the slow change by looking at three areas: agriculture, industry, and the role of the state.Publicad

Borrowing, risks and charges in the water industry : a rejoinder to the Cuthberts

In their article* in the June 2006 issue of this Commentary, Jim and Margaret Cuthbert address a number of questions to the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, the industry regulator. These questions reflect the authors' concerns about some regulatory procedures and decisions, concerns that they have expressed earlier elsewhere. The Cuthberts' criticisms can be summarised in the proposition that Scottish Water should be allowed to borrow more money, and thereby be able to lower its current charges to customers

The luminosity dependence of the Type 1 AGN fraction

Using a complete, magnitude-limited sample of active galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) we show that the fraction of broad-line (Type 1) active galactic nuclei increases with luminosity of the isotropically-emitted [O III] narrow emission line. Our results are quantitatively in agreement with, and far less uncertain than, similar trends found from studies of X-ray and radio-selected active galaxies. While the correlation between broad-line fraction and luminosity is qualitatively consistent with the receding torus model, its slope is shallower and we therefore propose a modification to this model where the height of the torus increases slowly with AGN luminosity. We demonstrate that the faint-end slope of the AGN luminosity function steepens significantly when a correction for `missing' Type 2 objects is made and that this can substantially affect the overall AGN luminosity density extrapolated from samples of more luminous objects.Comment: 8 pages, accepted for publication by MNRA

The changing perspectives on three Muslim men on the question of saint worship over a 10-year period in Gujarat, western India

In many religious traditions, those who mediate relations between men and gods are often the focus of controversy and moral ambiguity. The ethnography in this paper outlines a number of perspectives on the role of such intermediaries (here ‘saints’) in Muslim society in western India. In the South Asian literature, historians have provided a thorough treatment of the doctrinal history and content of these debates. However, very little attention has been paid to how living individuals interpret and rehearse these debates in practice. The examination of the changing perspectives of three Muslim men on the question of saint worship over a ten-year period reveals the following. First, an individual’s relationship with ‘saints’ is often determined primarily by social context rather than simply by doctrinal allegiance or the compulsions of particular ‘beliefs’. Second, discourses of religious reform are also powerful social objects that can be used as political instruments for purposes other than simply refining the religious practices of a community. Finally, many commonplace assumptions in the literature – notably on the nature of belief and the significance of doctrinal divisions among Muslims – do not withstand ethnographic scrutiny

Rethinking empirical research into Children in Care and Contact

Current literature in relation to contact for Children in Care reveals that there have been a number of theories that have informed the current notion of contact and these are underpinned by psychological and psychosocial assumptions about identity development (Winter and Cohen, 2005). These have included the maintenance of the ‘mother-child’ bond (Clarke and Clarke, 1976); the need to maintain contact to avoid ‘genealogical bewilderment’ (Sants, 1964) and the importance of continuing socio-genealogical connectedness (Owusu-Bempah and Howitt, 1997) and most importantly Bowlby’s (1960) theory of attachment. These psychological and psychosocial assumptions have informed not only the type of research undertaken but also the methodology used (see Cleaver, 2000; Macaskill, 2002; Selwyn, 2003 and McWey and Mullis, 2004). A further theoretical notion that has informed the current understanding of contact is the family which Smart (2007) has described as the optimal expression of kinship and relatedness. Yet this notion in and of itself is socially constructed, and has the irony of not just being built upon by personal experience but also wider societal expectations that are communicated via the taken for granted prioritisation of family, which is illustrated in everyday language, images and ideas (Gillis, 1996 and Morgan, 1996:238). This paper will highlight that the empirical research methods that have been used to understand and explain the phenomenon of contact have been dominated not only by socially constructed notions in relation to the family and children, but also by a positivist approach where scientific techniques are used to explain and understand the dynamic of contact which can be described as a complex interaction where there are a range of agendas, interpretations and expectations that take place. An argument will be made for the use alternative methodological approaches that place the child or young person at the centre of the research project. In particular attention will be given to tools such as Hart’s ladder of participation (2008) which actively promotes empowerment and respect of children and their role in research. Additionally, the methodological approach of triadic interviews will be posited because it allows researchers the opportunity to gain a “more holistic and multi-dimensional understanding of the problem” (Brownhill and Hickey, 2012 p.370), thereby capturing the complexities of contact which can be interpreted as an interactional process built upon the foundation of existing relationships, and which is aimed at maintaining or possibly enhancing what is already present