The contribution of rural community businesses to integrated rural development: “Local services for local people”

Policy responses to the problems facing rural areas across Europe have involved the replacement of “productivist” measures that subsidise agriculture to strategies promoting “integrated rural development”, emphasising the interconnections between various facets of the rural economy. Thus farm modernisation and product processing and marketing are linked with the promotion of a more diversified economic base centred on tourism and recreation and the maintenance of services for local residents. An essential element of this model is its reliance on collaborative actions involving a range of community or civil society actors. This paper examines the extent to which the operation of community-owned businesses in rural parts of the Yorkshire and Humber region in the UK corresponds to these ideals of integrated rural development. Evidence is presented on their geographical footprint with respect to both direct economic impacts and linkages with social and institutional networks. This allows an assessment to be made of the contribution that such enterprises make to rural economic development as a whole. The conclusion is that they do have the potential to assist integrated rural development, but only as a small part of a much wider series of economic, social and environmental actions.integrated rural development, rural community businesses, economic impacts, geographical footprint, volunteering

Phenomenological consequences of supersymmetry with anomaly-induced masses

In the supersymmetric standard model there exist pure gravity contributions to the soft mass parameters which arise via the superconformal anomaly. We consider the low-energy phenomenology with a mass spectrum dominated by the anomaly-induced contributions. In a well-defined minimal model we calculate electroweak symmetry breaking parameters, scalar masses, and the full one-loop splitting of the degenerate Wino states. The most distinctive features are gaugino masses proportional to the corresponding gauge coupling beta-functions, the possibility of a Wino as the lightest supersymmetric particle, mass degeneracy of sleptons, and a very massive gravitino. Unique signatures at high-energy colliders include dilepton and single lepton final states, accompanied by missing energy and displaced vertices. We also point out that this scenario has the cosmological advantage of ameliorating the gravitino problem. Finally, the primordial gravitino decay can produce a relic density of Wino particles close to the critical value.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures, LaTe

Consumption of submerged aquatic macrophytes by rudd (scardinius erythrophthalmus L.) in New Zealand

In experiments in New Zealand, rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus L.) of 108–277mm fork length (FL) ate a wide range of native and introduced submerged aquatic macrophytes in captivity and in the field. Rudd consumed the native charophytes Chara globularis Thuill., Chara fibrosa Ag. ex Bruz., and Nitella spp., the native macrophytes Potamogeton ochreatus Raoul. and Myriophyllum propinquum A. Cunn., and the introduced macrophytes Elodea canadensis Michx., Egeria densa Planch., Lagarosiphon major L., and Ceratophyllum demersum L. Rudd consistently consumed the Nitella spp. and Potamogeton ochreatus before Ceratophyllum demersum. From the results of experiments in tanks and in the field, we found the order of highest to lowest palatability was: Nitella spp. > Potamogeton ochreatus > Elodea canadensis> Chara globularis = Chara fibrosa> Egeria densa = Lagarosiphon major > Myriophyllum propinquum > Ceratophyllum demersum. The order of consumption was subject to some variation with season, especially for Egeria densa, Lagarosiphon major, and Myriophyllum propinquum. Rudd consumed up to 20% of their body weight per day of Egeria densa in spring, and 22% of their body weight per day of Nitella spp. in summer. Consumption rates were considerably lower in winter than in summer. The results of our field trial suggested that the order of consumption also applies in the field and that rudd are having a profound impact on vulnerable native aquatic plant communities in New Zealand. Nitella spp. and Potamogeton ochreatus are likely to be selectively eaten, and herbivory by rudd might prevent the re-establishment of these species in restoration efforts

Industrial Strategy and the Regions : the shortcomings of a narrow sectoral focus

Key points - The new money that the UK government has allocated to support its industrial strategy is targeted at R&D in an exceptionally narrow range of sectors – healthcare & medicine, robotics & artificial intelligence, batteries, self-driving vehicles, materials for the future and satellites & space technology. - Even on a generous definition of the industries that might benefit from the new Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, these sectors account for little more than 1 per cent of the whole economy (by employment) and 10 per cent of UK manufacturing. - The jobs in the sectors targeted by the Fund are highly unevenly spread across the country. The pattern is more complex than a simple North-South divide but a number of places in southern England have substantially more jobs in these sectors than industrial cities such as Bradford, Leicester, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Stoke and Swansea. - The distribution across the country of research and development establishments – along with universities and R&D labs in large companies likely to be first in line for the new R&D funding – is particularly skewed in favour of an arc to the immediate north, west and south of London. - Even excluding its famous university, the Cambridge area (population just 285,000) has twice as many jobs in scientific research and development establishments as the whole of the Midlands, more than Scotland and Wales combined, and only 2,000 fewer than the whole of the North of England (population 15.2 million). - The report concludes that the government’s sectoral focus is exceptionally narrow – too narrow alone to provide a base on which to build a revival of British industry. - The report also concludes that the government’s narrow sectoral focus threatens to widen regional divides. It is Cambridge, Oxfordshire, the Thames Valley, Hertfordshire and London itself that may gain most in the first instance

Association between depressive symptom clusters and food attentional bias

Background The mechanisms underlying the depression-obesity relationship are unclear. Food attentional bias (FAB) represents one candidate mechanism that has not been examined. We evaluated the hypothesis that greater depressive symptoms are associated with increased FAB. Method Participants were 89 normal weight or overweight adults (mean age = 21.2 ± 4.0 years, 53% female, 33% non-white, mean body mass index in kg/m2 = 21.9 ± 1.8 for normal weight; 27.2 ± 1.5 for overweight). Total, somatic, and cognitive-affective depressive symptom scores were computed from the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8). FAB scores were calculated using reaction times (RT) and eye-tracking (ET) direction and duration measures for a food visual probe task. Age, gender, race/ethnicity, and body fat percent were covariates. Results Only PHQ-8 somatic symptoms were positively associated with RT-measured FAB (β = 0.23, p = .04). The relationship between somatic symptoms and ET direction (β = 0.18, p = .17) and duration (β = 0.23, p = .08) FAB indices were of similar magnitude but were not significant. Somatic symptoms accounted for 5% of the variance in RT-measured FAB. PHQ-8 total and cognitive-affective symptoms were unrelated to all FAB indices (ps ≥ 0.09). Conclusions Only greater somatic symptoms of depression were linked to food attentional bias as measured using reaction time. Well-powered prospective studies should examine whether this bias replicates, particularly for eye-tracking measures, and whether it partially mediates the depression-to-obesity relationship