Country level devolution: Scotland

The Scottish Parliament has been in existence for nearly two decades. Its powers have been extended to cover a number of taxes and areas of social security in recent years. This paper examines the use of these powers and assesses 10 individual exemplar policies in distributional terms. These lie in the areas of taxation, social security and housing. It identifies that the values underpinning them are progressive, as are the individual policies themselves. They are also imbued with caution, with tax changes being designed to leave most people better or no worse off. Social security and housing policies are generally targeted at low income households or people who are otherwise vulnerable. Private rented tenancy reform is an exception, since it is designed to bring security to a broader range of the population. These policies do not tell the whole story, and a complete assessment would need to consider other areas notably education, as part of a wider assessment of where funding has been diverted from in order to finance priority areas. Many of the powers have been recently acquired and it is not possible to assess their outcomes. Looking to the future, there should be concern about the suitability of the funding base to finance spending ambitions. Meanwhile Scotland is developing new tax and social security institutions that may in time permit more strategic thinking about distributional policies

Study on Housing Exclusion: Welfare Policies, Housing Provision and Labour Markets

This is a six country comparative study of the relationship between housing, welfare states and labour markets. The study employs both quantitative (using EU-SILC) and qualitative data

La critique architecturale aux États-Unis entre 1930 et 2005

Entre 1930 et 2005, la critique architecturale dans les journaux et les périodiques américains a joué un rôle significatif en attirant l’attention sur la conception de l’environnement construit. Cette forme de critique architecturale « publique » doit être différenciée des écrits postulatifs et des essais théoriques élaborés pour servir de guide à la création architecturale. La critique architecturale « publique » est généralement plus empirique par nature – elle s’intéresse à des projets qui ont été réalisés. Ses méthodes d’évaluation reposent sur des critères fondés sur des valeurs, des positions et des idées émanant du discours architectural du moment. Toutefois, à la différence de la critique littéraire ou artistique, bien peu de recherches ont été consacrées à l’histoire de cette forme de critique architecturale publique, à son impact ou encore à la construction de ses méthodes d’évaluation. Plus important, les problèmes et les écueils auxquels est confronté cette critique destinée aussi bien au grand public qu’aux lecteurs professionnels, n’ont pas été véritablement traités. Pour cette raison, la critique architecturale publique, qui s’appuie pourtant beaucoup sur l’image que renvoient les bâtiments et les villes, reste une discipline qui a peu réfléchi à sa nature propre. À partir de l’analyse des écrits de certains critiques, tels que Lewis Mumford (le critique d’architecture pour le New Yorker de 1931 à 1963), Ada Louise Huxtable (critique au New York Times dans les années 1960 et au début des années 1970, actuellement au Wall Street Journal), et Herbert Muschamp (le critique d’architecture de la New Republic dans les années 1980 et du New York Times de 1992 à 2004), pour n’en citer que quelques uns, il est possible de déterminer un certain nombre de forces et de faiblesses de ce type de critique, sur plusieurs décennies. Parmi les critères utilisés pour juger les constructions et les réalisations, on trouve par exemple l’aspect fonctionnel, urbanistique, esthétique, culturellement symbolique, ou social. Depuis l’intérêt particulier d’un Mumford pour des critères organiques, fonctionnalistes et urbanistiques jusqu’à la sensibilité d’un Herbert Muschamp plus versé sur une structure psychologiue et phénoménologique, comment apprécier ce qui était satisfaisant et que pouvait-on attendre d’une critique évoluant au même titre que l’architecture elle-même ? La critique architecturale aurait-elle pu être plus efficace si elle s’était penchée davantage sur ses propres méthodes ? Ce sont des questions et des problématiques auxquels cet article tente de répondre.Between 1930 and 2005, architectural criticism in American newspapers and periodicals played a significant role in calling attention to the design of the built environment. This form of “public“ architectural criticism should be distinguished from postulative writings and theoretical essays generated to guide the creation of architecture. “Public“ architectural criticism is usually more empirical in nature – it responds to designed works after they are built. Its method of evaluation relies on criteria developed from values, attitudes, and ideas emanating from architectural discourse at the time. Yet, public architectural criticism is unfortunately part of an unselfconscious tradition : unlike literary or art criticism, very little investigation has taken place regarding the history of this form of architectural criticism, its impact, or even how its methods of evaluation are shaped. More important, the problems and pitfalls of writing such criticism for the general audience as well as professional readers have not been fully addressed. For this reason public architectural criticism, which relies so much on reflecting about buildings and cities, remains a very unreflective discipline with regard to its own nature. By focusing on the writings of certain critics writing in these decades, beginning with Lewis Mumford, (architecture critic for the New Yorker from 1931 to 1963), Ada Louise Huxtable, (as critic at The New York Times in the 1960s and early 1970s, and currently at The Wall Street Journal) and Herbert Muschamp (architecture critic for the New Republic in the 1980s and The New York Times from 1992-2004), to name a few, it is possible to determine some of the strengths and weaknesses of this type of criticism through several decades. The criteria these critics employed in judging buildings could be categorized as functional, urbanistic, aesthetic, culturally symbolic, or socially-oriented. From Mumford’s organic-functionalist and urbanistic criteria to Herbert Muschamp’s more psychologically –and phenomenologically-based – framework, what was acceptable and what was expected in criticism changed, along with architecture itself. Could architectural criticism have been more effective, if it had been more self-conscious about its methods ? This paper shall attempt to grapple with these and other such issues

Hematochezia in a patient with liver cirrhosis

Although commonly detectable in patients with cirrhosis, rectal varices only infrequently cause significant hematochezia (0.5–3.6%). While they may be expected to resolve with treatment of the concomitant portal hypertension, there is currently no standardized approach to their management in isolation. Therefore many authorities recommend transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunting (TIPS) as a means of alleviating otherwise recalcitrant bleeding. Conceptually, however, rectal varices should be as amenable to local therapies as are their counterparts occurring at the esophagogastric junction. In this report, we describe the use of endoscopic banding per ano to alleviate significant rectal bleeding in a patient with poorly controlled portal hypertension. This allowed medical optimisation so that the underlying pathology could be controlled without recourse to TIPS or other means of creating a formal portosystemic shunt

The Interplay of Silent Reading, Reading-while-listening and Listening-only

Leading scholars (Gilbert, 2009; Walter, 2008) have highlighted the importance of phonological processing in learning to read. Nevertheless, reading in Japan has traditionally been taught without adequate attention to the role of phonological processing. Accordingly, it was speculated that Japanese university students would demonstrate superior reading comprehension to listening comprehension skills. This study consists of two trials. The first was a comparison of the comprehension of the same text by three classes of 33, 32, and 44 students respectively, in three different modalities: silent reading, reading-while-listening, and listening only. The second was a retrospective longitudinal study of a class of twenty-one students who performed reading-while-listening and listening-only over a fifteen-week semester. The first study confirmed that the students’ reading comprehension exceeded their listening comprehension. In the second study, students were evenly divided as to whether they preferred reading-while-listening or listening-only

Reviews

Review of After the Freeze: New Zealand Unions in the Economy, Keeping Employees Informed, The Future of Work, Wage Indexation - a Study of Australian Wage Issues 1975 - 1980, How Labour Markets Work, Case Studies in Adjustment, Open Cut: The Working Class in an Australian Mining Town, Industrial Accidents and Nightwork in the Manufacturing Sector, The Behavioural Sciences and Industrial Relations: Some Problems of Integratio

The Power of Live Delivery : Reading Empowered by Orature or Audio?

Sixty-four students silently read along while listening to live reading of texts in class, and read while listening to audiobooks for homework, every week over a semester. The teachers conducting the live readings to their respective classes were an American and an Australian. At the end of the semester, students were asked whether they preferred reading along while listening to the live readings or reading-while-listening with audiobooks. Most students preferred the live reading and provided reasons for this, such as the interactive nature of silently reading along while listening to a live reading and the effectiveness of embodied communication. Despite the availability of audio recordings, there are clear advantages to a live reading due to the multi-modal nature of embodied communication. This is manifested through facial expressions and mouth movements, elusive qualities such as warmth and reassurance, and the interaction between the reader and the audience

Tau PET and multimodal brain imaging in patients at risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

ObjectiveTo characterize individual and group-level neuroimaging findings in patients at risk for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).MethodsEleven male patients meeting criteria for Traumatic Encephalopathy Syndrome (TES, median age: 64) underwent neurologic evaluation, 3-Tesla MRI, and PET with [18F]-Flortaucipir (FTP, tau-PET) and [11C]-Pittsburgh compound B (PIB, amyloid-PET). Six patients underwent [18F]-Fluorodeoxyglucose-PET (FDG, glucose metabolism). We assessed imaging findings at the individual patient level, and in group-level comparisons with modality-specific groups of cognitively normal older adults (CN). Tau-PET findings in patients with TES were also compared to a matched group of patients with mild cognitive impairment or dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD).ResultsAll patients with TES sustained repetitive head injury participating in impact sports, ten in American football. Three patients met criteria for dementia and eight had mild cognitive impairment. Two patients were amyloid-PET positive and harbored the most severe MRI atrophy, FDG hypometabolism, and FTP-tau PET binding. Among the nine amyloid-negative patients, tau-PET showed either mildly elevated frontotemporal binding, a "dot-like" pattern, or no elevated binding. Medial temporal FTP was mildly elevated in a subset of amyloid-negative patients, but values were considerably lower than in AD. Voxelwise analyses revealed a convergence of imaging abnormalities (higher FTP binding, lower FDG, lower gray matter volumes) in frontotemporal areas in TES compared to controls.ConclusionsMildly elevated tau-PET binding was observed in a subset of amyloid-negative patients at risk for CTE, in a distribution consistent with CTE pathology stages III-IV. FTP-PET may be useful as a biomarker of tau pathology in CTE but is unlikely to be sensitive to early disease stages