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Rokkan’s electoral mobilization and cleavage model of class-based politics within countries is being undermined by contemporary globalization. A new geography of planetary urbanization has developed in which the key spatial dimension is degrees of metropolitanization between cities. This is illustrated using the results of the UK referendum on EU membership. It is shown that across the UK, irrespective of the level of support to stay, the larger and more central cities within the regions and nations of the country have higher support vote percentages than their lesser city neighbours. The conclusion is that in the aftermath of the failure of ‘trickle-down economics’, there is now a similar breakdown of ‘trickle down politics’.

This article analyses the application of data protection legislation to sensitive personal data, particularly to genetic data, and asks whether the present framework may be adequate to respond to the very sensitive issues involved.

The paper has two purposes: (i) to outline a methodology for systematically measuring economic relations between the world’s major cities and (ii) to provide a general assessment of the position of Belgium’s major cities in this global urban network. In the first section, we stress that research on Brussels and Antwerp under conditions of contemporary globalization lacks a systematic account of their global relational patterns, a knowledge lacuna that can at least partly be traced back to the dearth of suitable data. In a second section, we outline the methodology for measuring the networked context of the world’s major cities. In a third section, we provide a systematic overview of Antwerp’s and Brussels’ position in this global urban network. Apart from the rather common sensical observation that Brussels is more strongly connected than Antwerp, it is also shown that Brussels’ «global» relations contrast with Antwerp’s more intense «local» relations. In relative terms, Brussels is strongly connected to East Asia and North America, while the most thorough links of Antwerp are exclusively with nearby European (especially German) cities.

In order to recycle potentially valuable uranium and plutonium, the Purex process has been successfully used to reprocess spent nuclear fuel for several decades now at industrial scales. The process has developed over this period to treat higher burnup fuels, oxide as well as metal fuels within fewer solvent extraction cycles with reduced waste arisings. Within the context of advanced fuel cycle scenarios, there has been renewed international interest recently in separation technologies for recovering actinides from spent fuel. Aqueous fuel processing research and development has included further enhancement of the Purex process as well as the development of minor actinide partitioning technologies that use new extractants. The use of single cycle Purex solvent extraction flowsheets and centrifugal contactors are key objectives in the development of such advanced Purex processes in future closed fuel cycles. These advances lead to intensified processes, reducing the costs of plants and the volumes of wastes arising. By adopting other flowsheet changes, such as reduced fission product decontamination factors, U/Pu co-processing and Pu/Np co-stripping, further improvements can be made addressing issues such as proliferation resistance and minor actinide burning, without adverse effects on the products. One interesting development is the demonstration that simple hydroxamic acid complexants can very effectively separate U from Np and Pu in such advanced Purex flowsheets.

The use of QSPR to explain the partition behaviour of flavour compounds in different matrices and to predict dynamic flavour release from certain food systems is described. QSPR has been applied in the pharmaceutical and environmental areas to predict properties like the efficacy of drugs (with different substitutions) or behaviours like the accumulation of pollutants in fish, despite the fact that the exact mechanisms are unknown. QSPR relies on the fact that the physicochemical properties of the molecules are responsible for their behaviour and properties in these systems. The models are relatively easy to produce but there are limitations associated with their use outside the defined experimental conditions. The background to modelling flavour partition and release is given, along with examples of relevant QSPR models.

This paper, by Jennifer Taylor and Theresa Jasperson, looks at a successful harm-reduction initiative developed by Streetworks, a needle exchange program in Edmonton, Alberta. The Natural Helpers initiative provides and enhances the skills, knowledge, resources, and support that people who use injection drugs need in order to take care of others in their community. The evolution of the project, from its inception to the present situation, is described.