Public Policy to Reduce Inequalities across Europe

There is a broad consensus across European states and the EU that social and economic inequality is a problem that needs to be addressed. Yet inequality policy is notoriously complex and contested. This book approaches the issue from two linked perspectives. First, a focus on functional requirements highlights what policymakers think they need to deliver policy successfully, and the gap between their requirements and reality. We identify this gap in relation to the theory and practice of policy learning, and to multiple sectors, to show how it manifests in health, education, and gender equity policies. Second, a focus on territorial politics highlights how the problem is interpreted at different scales, subject to competing demands to take responsibility. This contestation and spread of responsibilities contributes to different policy approaches across spatial scales. We conclude that governments promote many separate equity initiatives, across territories and sectors, without knowing if they are complementary or contradictory. This outcome could reflect the fact that ambiguous policy problems and complex policymaking processes are beyond the full knowledge or control of governments. It could also be part of a strategy to make a rhetorically radical case while knowing that they will translate into safer policies. It allows them to replace debates on values, regarding whose definition of equity matters and which inequalities to tolerate, with more technical discussions of policy processes. Governments may be offering new perspectives on spatial justice or new ways to reduce political attention to inequalities

Public Policy to Reduce Inequalities across Europe

There is a broad consensus across European states and the EU that social and economic inequality is a problem that needs to be addressed. Yet inequality policy is notoriously complex and contested. This book approaches the issue from two linked perspectives. First, a focus on functional requirements highlights what policymakers think they need to deliver policy successfully, and the gap between their requirements and reality. We identify this gap in relation to the theory and practice of policy learning, and to multiple sectors, to show how it manifests in health, education, and gender equity policies. Second, a focus on territorial politics highlights how the problem is interpreted at different scales, subject to competing demands to take responsibility. This contestation and spread of responsibilities contributes to different policy approaches across spatial scales. We conclude that governments promote many separate equity initiatives, across territories and sectors, without knowing if they are complementary or contradictory. This outcome could reflect the fact that ambiguous policy problems and complex policymaking processes are beyond the full knowledge or control of governments. It could also be part of a strategy to make a rhetorically radical case while knowing that they will translate into safer policies. It allows them to replace debates on values, regarding whose definition of equity matters and which inequalities to tolerate, with more technical discussions of policy processes. Governments may be offering new perspectives on spatial justice or new ways to reduce political attention to inequalities

Universality of Level Spacing Distributions in Classical Chaos

We suggest that random matrix theory applied to a classical action matrix can be used in classical physics to distinguish chaotic from non-chaotic behavior. We consider the 2-D stadium billiard system as well as the 2-D anharmonic and harmonic oscillator. By unfolding of the spectrum of such matrix we compute the level spacing distribution, the spectral auto-correlation and spectral rigidity. We observe Poissonian behavior in the integrable case and Wignerian behavior in the chaotic case. We present numerical evidence that the action matrix of the stadium billiard displays GOE behavior and give an explanation for it. The findings present evidence for universality of level fluctuations - known from quantum chaos - also to hold in classical physics

Cortical microtubule nucleation can organise the cytoskeleton of Drosophila oocytes to define the anteroposterior axis.

Many cells contain non-centrosomal arrays of microtubules (MTs), but the assembly, organisation and function of these arrays are poorly understood. We present the first theoretical model for the non-centrosomal MT cytoskeleton in Drosophila oocytes, in which bicoid and oskar mRNAs become localised to establish the anterior-posterior body axis. Constrained by experimental measurements, the model shows that a simple gradient of cortical MT nucleation is sufficient to reproduce the observed MT distribution, cytoplasmic flow patterns and localisation of oskar and naive bicoid mRNAs. Our simulations exclude a major role for cytoplasmic flows in localisation and reveal an organisation of the MT cytoskeleton that is more ordered than previously thought. Furthermore, modulating cortical MT nucleation induces a bifurcation in cytoskeletal organisation that accounts for the phenotypes of polarity mutants. Thus, our three-dimensional model explains many features of the MT network and highlights the importance of differential cortical MT nucleation for axis formation.This work was supported in part by the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds and EPSRC (P. K. T.), core support from the Wellcome Trust [092096] and Cancer Research UK [A14492] (H. D.), the MIT Solomon Buchsbaum Award (J. D.), a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship [080007] (D. StJ.), the Leverhulme Trust, and the European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant [247333] (R. E. G.).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from eLife via http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.0608

Engaging communities to improve mental health in African and African Caribbean groups: a qualitative study evaluating the role of community well-being champions.

Over the last decade, Britain has undergone reforms to promote engagement in local structures of governance. These reforms have encouraged the promotion of active citizenship and have been central to the government's public service modernisation agenda. This article presents the findings from a study evaluating a pilot outreach intervention which adopted a community engagement model to address the mental health needs of African and African Caribbean groups, which entailed a partnership between faith-based organisations, local public services and community organisations to co-produce the pilot project. Lay people were trained to raise awareness about mental health among these communities in South London. Between 2012 and 2013, a qualitative participatory approach was used to evaluate the pilot project, which enabled a researcher to take part in the engagement phase of the pilot project, and the project co-ordinators to be involved in the research process. Semi-structured, one-to-one interviews were carried out with 13 community and well-being champions (CWBCs) recruited from African and African Caribbean communities (seven male and six female). This study examines the impact of the relationship between the intervention and community through the participants' engagement in the pilot outreach project and the action undertaken as champions. We found that although CWBCs used circles of influence to share ideas about mental health and well-being and to encourage change, they encountered resistance on the part of the people they engaged with, which resulted from a lack of knowledge about mental health, taboos and ascribed stigma. We argue that CWBCs acted as healthy examples to communicate mental health knowledge to those approached, but that they needed to be equipped with bespoke communication skills to be able to talk about such sensitive issues as mental health

Genome-wide association study of shared components of reading disability and language impairment

Written and verbal languages are neurobehavioral traits vital to the development of communication skills. Unfortunately, disorders involving these traits—specifically reading disability (RD) and language impairment (LI)—are common and prevent affected individuals from developing adequate communication skills, leaving them at risk for adverse academic, socioeconomic and psychiatric outcomes. Both RD and LI are complex traits that frequently co-occur, leading us to hypothesize that these disorders share genetic etiologies. To test this, we performed a genome-wide association study on individuals affected with both RD and LI in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The strongest associations were seen with markers in ZNF385D (OR = 1.81, P = 5.45 × 10−7) and COL4A2 (OR = 1.71, P = 7.59 × 10−7). Markers within NDST4 showed the strongest associations with LI individually (OR = 1.827, P = 1.40 × 10−7). We replicated association of ZNF385D using receptive vocabulary measures in the Pediatric Imaging Neurocognitive Genetics study (P = 0.00245). We then used diffusion tensor imaging fiber tract volume data on 16 fiber tracts to examine the implications of replicated markers. ZNF385D was a predictor of overall fiber tract volumes in both hemispheres, as well as global brain volume. Here, we present evidence for ZNF385D as a candidate gene for RD and LI. The implication of transcription factor ZNF385D in RD and LI underscores the importance of transcriptional regulation in the development of higher order neurocognitive traits. Further study is necessary to discern target genes of ZNF385D and how it functions within neural development of fluent language