The effects of recent austerity on environmental protection decisions:evidence and perspectives from Scotland

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish the evidence for, the why and how recent austerity policy atmosphere associated with the UK government affected environmental protection decisions within planning in Scotland. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative analysis based on perspectives gathered via questionnaire survey targeted at stakeholders involved in planning in Scotland was undertaken. The questionnaire responses were analysed thematically, supplemented by using statistical tests of significance and variance to show how responses differed across participants. Findings: The evidence showed that austerity policy atmosphere resulted in a pervasive neoliberal imperative of resuscitating the economy; whilst producing subtle and adverse effects on environmental decisions. This was best understood within a neo-Gramscian perspective of hegemony, borrowed from the field of political economy of states. Research limitations/implications: The gathered views were constrained within unknown biases that the participants may have had; and because the case study approach was not equipped to generalize the results beyond the study, more research testing cause-effect between the austerity and selected environmental parameters is needed, from various contexts. Practical implications: Decision-making frameworks should explicitly acknowledge the unique pressures during austerity periods; and contemplate resilient decision-making frameworks that can withstand the hegemonic tendencies which prioritise economic goals above environmental ones. Originality/value: Whilst the area of austerity’s impacts on the environment remains poorly evidenced, empirically, this seminal paper uses robust analysis to establish how the austerity policy atmosphere affects environmental decisions. This is insight into what may be happening in other similar situations outside Scotland, raising concern as to whether and how we should approach the challenge of hegemonic ideas

Symmetrization Techniques in Image Deblurring

This paper presents a couple of preconditioning techniques that can be used to enhance the performance of iterative regularization methods applied to image deblurring problems with a variety of point spread functions (PSFs) and boundary conditions. More precisely, we first consider the anti-identity preconditioner, which symmetrizes the coefficient matrix associated to problems with zero boundary conditions, allowing the use of MINRES as a regularization method. When considering more sophisticated boundary conditions and strongly nonsymmetric PSFs, the anti-identity preconditioner improves the performance of GMRES. We then consider both stationary and iteration-dependent regularizing circulant preconditioners that, applied in connection with the anti-identity matrix and both standard and flexible Krylov subspaces, speed up the iterations. A theoretical result about the clustering of the eigenvalues of the preconditioned matrices is proved in a special case. The results of many numerical experiments are reported to show the effectiveness of the new preconditioning techniques, including when considering the deblurring of sparse images

Landscape impact assessment in planning processes

The book is specifically dedicated to a broad spectrum of aspects of landscape impact assessment in the process of strategic planning and decision-making. It aims to show the required standard process, content and scope of assessment of impact on the landscape and to present the main principles to ensure their integrity and consistency

L'accertamento del dolore nel paziente con demenza

Background: La demenza è caratterizzata da un progressivo declino cognitivo che porta, specialmente nella fase più avanzata, alla perdita dell’abilità di comunicare nonché alla perdita di alcuni concetti tra cui quello di dolore. Ciò rappresenta un problema per l’infermiere: il self-report risulta impossibile e si rendono, perciò, necessari strumenti osservazionali che permettano di valutare la presenza di dolore nell’anziano con demenza. Questa revisione della letteratura ha l’obiettivo di indagare quali siano gli strumenti di accertamento del dolore più validi che l’infermiere può utilizzare a seconda dell’avanzamento della patologia e quale sia il ruolo dell’infermiere nella valutazione di questo sintomo così soggettivo. Materiali e metodi: La ricerca è stata effettuata presso le banche dati PUBMED, CINAHL, GOOGLE SCHOLAR e COCHRANE. Essa ha portato all’inclusione di 72 articoli, i quali sono stati revisionati e tradotti seguendo i criteri di inclusione, eseguendo una selezione che ha portato alla scelta finale di 25 articoli specifici dell’argomento trattato. Risultati: Dalla ricerca emerge che le scale di autovalutazione sono il gold standard per l’accertamento del dolore, ma nel decadimento cognitivo severo esse risultano inapplicabili. In questa fase è opportuno utilizzare strumenti osservazionali che dovrebbero essere a disposizione in ogni ambito di cura. Tuttavia, nonostante siano molti gli strumenti disponibili, il dolore negli anziani con demenza è sottovalutato e sotto-trattato. Inoltre, non esiste uno strumento universalmente valido e applicabile in qualsiasi contesto. L’infermiere gioca un ruolo molto importante nella valutazione del dolore, in particolare perché, con la sua vicinanza al paziente, può cogliere quei segni atipici come i sottili cambiamenti di comportamento che sono spesso l’unica manifestazione con cui le persone con demenza esprimono il proprio dolore. Parole chiave: demenza, dolore, accertamento del dolore, strumenti di accertamento del dolore, scale di dolore, comportamenti di dolore, gestione del dolore, manifestazioni di dolore, infermieristica, ruolo dell’infermiere. Key words: dementia; pain; pain assessment; pain assessment tools; pain scales; pain behaviors; pain management; pain manifestations; nursing; nurse’s role.ope

Landscape impact assessment in planning processes

The book is specifically dedicated to a broad spectrum of aspects of landscape impact assessment in the process of strategic planning and decision-making. It aims to show the required standard process, content and scope of assessment of impact on the landscape and to present the main principles to ensure their integrity and consistency

“Albergo Diffuso” Model for the Analysis of Customer Satisfaction

This paper focuses on assessing the level of satisfaction of customers that had spent some part of their holidays in an eco-way style. This is an innovative form of hospitality that is represented by the “Albergo Diffuso”. The connection between this sustainable tourism model and the customers wellbeing is based on concepts which are directly connected with sustainability and environment in a rural destination. The data are related to 450 reviews which were selected randomly from two websites of reviews and are about 15 different Hotels (Albergo Diffuso model). The methodology of content analysis, with a successive application of regression model, has been used to understand the factors that influence the tourist’s opinion. It also identifies the role ofsustainability, innovation, and tradition for customers that spend their holiday in ADs. The hypotheses tested in the paper are associated with the features of the literature and the link with sustainability of this model. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the customers satisfaction factors of a new tourist model which is quite diffused in Italy and other parts of the world. This will help to understand if the elements highlighted in the literature are consistent with the reviews or if there are other factors. For example, the provision of physiological and safety needs are more important for tourists