Law, sex and the city: Regulating sexual entertainment venues in England and Wales

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how municipal law, in its various guises, serves to police the boundaries of acceptable sexual conduct by considering how Sexual Entertainment Venues (SEVs) in British cities are controlled through diverse techniques of licensing and planning control. Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes the emergence of permissive new licensing controls that provide local authorities considerable control over SEVs. Licensing decisions, judicial review cases and planning inspectorate adjudications since the inception of the new powers are examined to explore the logic of judgements preventing SEVs operating in specific localities. Findings – Through analysis of case studies, it is shown that local authorities have almost total discretion to prevent SEVs operating in specific localities, particularly those undergoing, or anticipated to be undergoing, redevelopment and regeneration. Originality/value – This paper offers unique insights on the “scope” of municipal law by highlighting how land uses associated with “sexual minority” interests are regulated in the interests of urban regeneration, redevelopment and restructuring

Integrative Sustainability Analysis of European Pig Farms: Development of a Multi-Criteria Assessment Tool

Societal interest in all aspects of sustainability has increased. Therefore, pig farmers need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses in all dimensions of sustainability: economy, environment, social wellbeing, and animal health and welfare. Our aim was to describe and critically discuss the development of a sustainability assessment tool for pig farms and to evaluate its suitability by applying it to 63 European pig farms (13 breeding, 27 breeding-to-finishing, and 23 finishing farms). The multi-criteria assessment tool was developed in several steps (the selection and scaling of indicators and their aggregation and weighting) in order to summarise the indicators into subtheme and theme scores. The indicators contributing the most to the subtheme/theme scores were identified and discussed in order to evaluate the procedure of the development. For example, some indicators, such as Ecological compensation area, Fairness of prices, and Tail docking, for which farms were scored low, were also identified as “real world problems” in other studies. For other sustainability aspects with low performance, the threshold might have been set too ambitiously, e.g., for Number of sows per annual working unit. Furthermore, to analyse the suitability of the tool, we assessed the best and worst median theme scores (good and poor performances) for each dimension, as well as the variability of the performances of the farms within the themes. Some themes were found to be moderate, such as Pig comfort, Biodiversity, or Resilience, whereas others were found to be good, e.g., Water and the Human–animal relationship, as well as several themes of the social wellbeing dimension. Overall, the sustainability tool provides a comprehensive assessment of the sustainability of pig production. Furthermore, this publication contributes to both the theory (development of a robust sustainability tool) and the practice (provision of a tool to assess and benchmark the sustainability on farms). As a next step, a sensitivity analysis should be performed, and the tool should be applied for further development

Integrative Sustainability Analysis of European Pig Farms: Development of a Multi-Criteria Assessment Tool

Societal interest in all aspects of sustainability has increased. Therefore, pig farmers need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses in all dimensions of sustainability: economy, environment, social wellbeing, and animal health and welfare. Our aim was to describe and critically discuss the development of a sustainability assessment tool for pig farms and to evaluate its suitability by applying it to 63 European pig farms (13 breeding, 27 breeding-to-finishing, and 23 finishing farms). The multi-criteria assessment tool was developed in several steps (the selection and scaling of indicators and their aggregation and weighting) in order to summarise the indicators into subtheme and theme scores. The indicators contributing the most to the subtheme/theme scores were identified and discussed in order to evaluate the procedure of the development. For example, some indicators, such as Ecological compensation area, Fairness of prices, and Tail docking, for which farms were scored low, were also identified as “real world problems” in other studies. For other sustainability aspects with low performance, the threshold might have been set too ambitiously, e.g., for Number of sows per annual working unit. Furthermore, to analyse the suitability of the tool, we assessed the best and worst median theme scores (good and poor performances) for each dimension, as well as the variability of the performances of the farms within the themes. Some themes were found to be moderate, such as Pig comfort, Biodiversity, or Resilience, whereas others were found to be good, e.g., Water and the Human–animal relationship, as well as several themes of the social wellbeing dimension. Overall, the sustainability tool provides a comprehensive assessment of the sustainability of pig production. Furthermore, this publication contributes to both the theory (development of a robust sustainability tool) and the practice (provision of a tool to assess and benchmark the sustainability on farms). As a next step, a sensitivity analysis should be performed, and the tool should be applied for further development

High-resolution Laboratory Measurements of K-shell X-ray Line Polarization and Excitation Cross Sections in Heliumlike S XV Ions

We report measurements of electron-impact excitation cross sections for the strong K-shell n=2-1 transitions in S XV using the LLNL EBIT-I electron beam ion trap, two crystal spectrometers, and the EBIT Calorimeter Spectrometer. The cross sections are determined by direct normalization to the well known cross sections of radiative electron capture, measured simultaneously. Using contemporaneous polarization measurements with the two crystal spectrometers, whose dispersion planes are oriented parallel and perpendicular to the electron beam direction, the polarization of the direct excitation line emission is determined, and in turn the isotropic total cross sections are extracted. We further experimentally investigate various line-formation mechanisms, finding that radiative cascades and collisional inner-shell ionization dominate the degree of linear polarization and total line-emission cross sections of the forbidden line $z$.Comment: 16 Pages, 9 Figures, published in Ap