The Instruments of Place Branding: How is it Done?

Place branding is the idea of discovering or creating some uniqueness, which differentiates one place from others in order to gain a competitive brand value. This article is not about the concepts or justifications but about how it is actually done at the local level, especially as part of broader conventional place management policies. Three main local planning instruments are widely used throughout the world in various combination in diverse places, each of which is described and exemplified here. These are first, personality association, where places associate themselves with a named individual, from history, literature, the arts, politics, entertainment, sport or even mythology, in the hope that the necessarily unique qualities of the individual are transferred by association to the place. Secondly, the visual qualities of buildings and urban design is an instrument of place-branding available to local planners. This could include flagship building, signature urban design and even signature districts. Thirdly, event hallmarking is where places organise events, usually cultural or sporting, in order to obtain a wider recognition that they exist but also to establish specific brand associations. Lessons are drawn from practice about the importance of combining these instruments and integrating them into wider planning and management strategies

Mushroom Thief

This experimental short film was conceived, written and directed by Ashworth, and developed with the support of Seed Fold Films. The project builds on visual experiments with liquid environments begun in How Mermaids Breed (Ashworth 2002), through which Ashworth invented a new material, ‘graspable water’. Mushroom Thief explored another surface area with a dual identity, ‘liquid meadow’, across which the film’s heroine is able to move freely, diving through its membrane into a liquid representation of earth. Mushroom Thief was developed using innovative digital tools, facilitating outdoor stop-frame animation with instant playback. This early use of portable digital stop-frame tools has been readily adopted by a new generation of filmmakers. The script for Mushroom Thief was developed though creative writing workshops organised by author and RCA-based AHRC Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts, Deborah Levy. Levy also assisted in the initial research into visual and literary sources, including liquid meadows and the symbolism of hares and hunters, to inform the narrative of the film, which plays on the close bond found between women, water and earth. In the film, the young male hunter is unable to access the liquidity of the meadow, sliding on its hard surface. The film was produced in collaboration with cinematographer Hugh Gordon, actors Clare Bennett and James Hutchison, and composer Philippe Ciompi. The film was screened at a number of international events, including the ‘Edinburgh International Film Festival’ (2011), ‘Ottawa International Animation Festival’, Canada (2010) and ‘Melbourne International Animation Festival’ (2011). Marking a change in the appeal of Ashworth’s work to contemporary arts audiences, Mushroom Thief was also presented in the ‘Moves11: Intersections’ exhibition at The Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool (2011) and in a programme titled ‘Into the Woods’, curated by Marina Warner for the Deloitte Ignite Contemporary Arts Festival, Royal Opera House, London (2010)

Seat cushion to provide realistic acceleration cues to aircraft simulator pilot

Seat cushions, each including an air cell with a non-compressible surface, are disclosed. The apparatus are provided for initially controlling the air pressure in the air cells to allow the two main support areas of the simulator pilot to touch the non-compressible surface and thus begin to compress the flesh near these areas. During a simulated flight the apparatus control the air pressure in the cells to simulate the events that occur in a seat cushion during actual flight

Quantum Liouville Theory from a Diffeomorphism Chern-Simons Action

A Chern-Simons action written with Christoffel Symbols has a natural gauge symmetry of diffeomorphisms. This Chern-Simons action will induce a Wess-Zumio-Witten model on the boundary of the manifold. If we restrict the diffeomorphisms to chiral diffeomorphism, the Wess-Zumio-Witten model is equivalent to a quantum Liouville action.Comment: Minor typo correcte

Dietary counseling in the management of moderate malnourishment in children.

BACKGROUND: Dietary counseling is an integral part of treating malnutrition. A first step toward improving the management of moderate malnutrition is to evaluate dietary messages in current programs and assess their adequacy and effectiveness. OBJECTIVES: To ascertain current recommendations regarding family foods for the treatment of moderate malnutrition and assess whether these are likely to meet nutritional requirements for rehabilitation; to review the effectiveness of dietary counseling in the management of moderate malnutrition. METHODS: Information was requested from 10 United Nations agencies or donors, 20 international nongovernmental organizations, 3 pediatric associations, and 6 national programs about the dietary advice they give to caregivers of moderately malnourished children. Adequacy was assessed by comparing dietary recommendations with nutritional requirements. Linear programming was used to identify problem nutrients. A literature search was conducted of studies using family foods for rehabilitating malnourished children. RESULTS: There was a greater emphasis on providing food supplements for rehabilitation than on utilizing family foods. Dietary recommendations were mostly vague and unlikely to be effective. Those developed by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization for well-nourished children may meet nutritional requirements in moderate malnutrition if the recommendations are made more prescriptive. Zinc and vitamin E emerged as possible problem nutrients. Intervention studies in wasted children suggest that counseling caregivers about family foods can achieve good rates of weight gain. CONCLUSIONS: Dietary counseling can be effective in managing malnutrition, but it is often weak or absent and should be strengthened. More attention will need to be given to formulating the messages and improving counseling skills

George Osborne’s proposed ‘credit easing’ measures must incentivise banks to increase their lending to small businesses: they are vital to the recovery of employment and the wider economy

Chancellor George Osborne is set to announce “credit easing” measures in his Autumn Statement, aimed at getting banks to lend on more affordable terms and in greater volume to under-served segments of the economy. Charles Goodhart OBE FBA and Morgan Stanley’s Jonathan Ashworth believe ‘quasi-fiscal’ policies could provide a larger and more sustained boost to the economy, particularly when focused on small and medium-sized enterprises, historically a key driver of job creation

Some evidence on financial factors in the determination of aggregate business investment

Standard theories of investment behaviour have concentrated on the neoclassical and Tobin’s Q approaches, with most empirical work on aggregate data focusing on the former. In contrast, a separate literature on monetary transmission, centred on the credit channel and financial accelerator effects, has highlighted the potential impact of credit market imperfections in constraining the investment behaviour of firms. In this paper we present evidence at a macro level for the G7 countries that a broad range of financial variables, consistent with the valuation ratio, financial accelerator and credit channel approaches, are relevant determinants of business fixed investment above those variables normally included in traditional macroeconomic investment functions. The results indicate a wider incidence of these financial effects on investment than the existing literature, focused as it is on the US, would otherwise indicate