Development management and localism: Zeitgeist or lasting change?

The spatial planning approach has become accepted as the progressive theoretical and professional currency in England following the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act. The reforms which followed sought considerable change in the remit of planning and the approach to community engagement. However, an often overlooked component of the spatial planning approach is development management; and yet it is potentially of most relevance to the challenges of neighbourhood planning and community resilience. Development management focuses upon outcomes (i.e. meeting needs) rather than outputs (the implications of permitting/refusing development - normatively related to the regulatory ‘DC’ function). The methodological approach is based around a more varied and multi-faceted concept than in the reactive past. A key part of this relates to the way in which community participation occurs and decision making takes place. This artcile discusses the concept that empowering communities through early engagement, support for community led initiatives/plans, Local Development Orders, and enhanced delegated decision making at the Parish level are examples of localism before Localism, and highlight the contemporary relevance of the development management approach. It is suggested, therefore, that rather than requiring a planning revolution, the current changes represent an opportunity to firstly recognise and secondly utilise existing tools to support community planning. Implementing further significant change in the planning system may not be in anyone’s best interest, least of all for the resilience of those communities it seeks to empower.This article explores the evolution of the development management approach and its significance in the context of the proposed neighbourhood planning systems, including Neighbourhood Plans and Development Orders, the Community Right to Build, and community engagement and participation methods

Developing the repository manager community

This paper describes activities which have taken place within the UK institutional repository (IR) sector focusing on developing a community of practice through the sharing of experiences and best practice. This includes work done by the UK Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR) and other bodies, together with informal activities, such as sharing the experience of organising Open Access Week events. The paper also considers future work to be undertaken by UKCoRR to continue developing the community

Black House

Our memorial is called “The Black House”, and it has many rooms that symbolize the hardships of enslaved Africans who endured the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Savannah was the perfect place to place a memorial due to the incredibly high amount of people that were sold on auction there. Every year on March 2nd and 3rd, Savannah observes a “Weeping Time” to mourn for the 429 that were sold in 1859, making it the largest amount of people sold in one day. First, you enter through the back door into the kitchen which shows how enslaved women predominantly worked inside. Here, they took on roles such as cooks, cleaners, servants, and also were in charge of looking after the children. From there you move to the kid’s room, which hints at shocking details about the amount of enslaved children that were torn from their families. In the basement, you’ll find holding pens and chains used for holding enslaved Africans on their voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. They were imported by the United States from major contributors like Brazil, who alone was responsible for 40% of all slave trade. You exit the basement into a warm, inviting, and colorful living room that shows how life was for Africans before the slave trade began.https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/historyfrombelow/1006/thumbnail.jp

Antarctic Dry Valley mineral soils contain unexpectedly high levels of microbial biomass

We have applied bioluminescent ATP detection methods to microbial enumeration in Antarctic Dry Valley mineral soils, and validated our ATP data by two independent methods. We have demonstrated that ATP measurement is a valid means of determining microbial biomass in such sites, and that the desiccated surface mineral soils of the Antarctic Dry Valleys contain cell numbers over four orders of magnitude higher than previously suggeste

Does community-based point of care HIV testing reduce late HIV diagnosis? A retrospective study in England and Wales.

The objective of this study was to investigate if patients diagnosed in community clinics have higher baseline CD4 cell counts than those diagnosed in Genitourinary medicine (GUM)/HIV clinics. We undertook a retrospective review of baseline CD4 cell counts for patients receiving a reactive HIV test in community-testing clinics. Eleven local HIV clinics were contacted to determine the baseline CD4 cell counts of these patients. Baseline CD4 cell counts of those diagnosed in the community were compared with mean local GUM/HIV clinic and median national baseline CD4 cell count for their year of diagnosis. Clients diagnosed in community settings had a mean baseline CD4 cell count of 481 cells/mm3 (SD 236 cells/mm3) and median baseline of 483 cells/mm3 (interquartile range 311-657 cells/mm3). This was significantly higher than those diagnosed in the GUM/HIV clinic local to the community-testing site (mean baseline CD4 397 cells/mm3, p = 0.014) and the national median for that year (336 cells/mm3, p < 0.001). HIV testing in community settings identifies patients at an earlier stage of infection than testing in clinical settings

Establishing the role and impact of academic librarians in supporting open research: a case study at Leeds Beckett University, UK

This practical paper presents findings of a small scale study undertaken at a large UK University. The purpose of the study was to encourage academic engagement with Open Access (OA) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) mandate with the measurable impact being increased engagement with the Repository and dissemination of research whilst circulating information to the wider community. In order to promote research, a series of ‘Focus on’ webpages were created aligned to a particular theme, and were then disseminated via social media. It was anticipated that by potentially increasing access to research outputs, academic staff would be motivated to make their work available following OA models and use the institutional repository (IR) as a means to achieve this. The main drivers for the study were the Finch Report (2012), the HEFCE Policy for open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (2014) and the institutional strategy for research. Data was collected through a statistical analysis of both the ‘Focus on’ pages and journal article downloads via the IR, with results indicating increased engagement with the IR making research openly accessible