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Many egalitarians incorporate a concern for interpersonal welfare inequality as part of their favored axiology – that is, they take it to be a bad-making feature of outcomes. It is natural to think that, if inequality is in this sense a bad, it is an impersonal bad (one that makes an outcome worse, while not in itself being worse for any person). This natural thought has been challenged. Some writers claim that egalitarian judgments can be accommodated by adopting an expanded view of a person's good, according to which being worse off than others is one of the factors that, in itself, makes one's life go worse. The putatively impersonal bad of inequality is thereby “dispersed” among individuals. I argue that this dispersion strategy fails. In a slogan: if you care about inequality, do not disperse it.

International agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have committed to conserve, and sustainably and equitably use, biodiversity. The CBD is a vital instrument for global conservation because it guides 195 countries and the European Union in setting priorities and allocating resources, and requires regular reporting on progress. However, the CBD and similar policy agreements have often neglected genetic diversity. This is a critical gap because genetic diversity underlies adaptation to environmental change and ecosystem resilience. Here we aim to inform future policy, monitoring, and reporting efforts focused on limiting biodiversity loss by conducting the largest yet evaluation of how Parties to the CBD report on genetic diversity. A large, globally representative sample of 114 CBD National Reports was examined to assess reported actions, progress, values and indicators related to genetic diversity. Although the importance of genetic diversity is recognized by most Parties to the CBD, genetic diversity targets mainly addressed variation within crops and livestock (a small fraction of all species). Reported actions to conserve genetic diversity primarily concerned ex situ facilities and legislation, rather than monitoring and in situ intervention. The most commonly reported status indicators are not well correlated to maintaining genetic diversity. Lastly, few reports mentioned genetic monitoring using DNA data, indigenous use and knowledge of genetic diversity, or development of strategies to conserve genetic diversity. We make several recommendations for the post-2020 CBD Biodiversity Framework, and similar efforts such as IPBES, to improve awareness, assessment, and monitoring of genetic diversity, and facilitate consistent and complete reporting in the future.

Este artículo contiene 10 páginas, 3 figuras, 3 tablas., Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) are engineering solutions for managing storm water, and they can also provide blue spaces that equitably benefit the health and wellbeing of urban dwellers. The main objectives of this study were to test whether affluent neighbourhoods have SuDS with better ecological quality in one of Europe’s fastest developing cities, and to investigate whether designable or manageable habitat characteristics of the SuDS, and the adjacent terrestrial area, are related to ecological quality. We estimated SuDS ecological quality by dimension reduction of five biotic and abiotic ecosystem components through performing a Principal Coordinate Analysis. Then we regressed SuDS ecological quality against socio-economic descriptors of the neighbourhood. We next applied non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis tests and probabilistic co-occurrence analysis to assess associations between habitat characteristics and ecological quality of SuDS. Our data showed that more affluent neighbourhoods have SuDS of higher ecological quality. We identified thresholds for some easily designable and manageable habitat characteristics of SuDS clearly linked to their ecological quality. There was strong co-occurrence of habitat characteristics, with aggregation of features linked to poor and good ecological quality, in SuDS designed as detention basins/swales or ponds respectively. Our results can be applied to the design andmanagement of SuDS to foster good ecological quality irrespective of the neighbourhood. This study will be valuable for building and managing SuDS in a nature-based way, thus providing more socially equitable access to high-quality urban blue space.

The health of the world's oceans is intrinsically linked to the biodiversity of the ecosystems they sustain. The importance of protecting and maintaining ocean biodiversity has been affirmed through the setting of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14 to conserve and sustainably use the ocean for society's continuing needs. The decade beginning 2021-2030 has additionally been declared as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. This program aims to maximize the benefits of ocean science to the management, conservation, and sustainable development of the marine environment by facilitating communication and cooperation at the science-policy interface. A central principle of the program is the conservation of species and ecosystem components of biodiversity. However, a significant omission from the draft version of the Decade of Ocean Science Implementation Plan is the acknowledgment of the importance of monitoring and maintaining genetic biodiversity within species. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of genetic diversity to adaptive capacity, evolutionary potential, community function, and resilience within populations, as well as highlighting some of the major threats to genetic diversity in the marine environment from direct human impacts and the effects of global climate change. We then highlight the significance of ocean genetic diversity to a diverse range of socioeconomic factors in the marine environment, including marine industries, welfare and leisure pursuits, coastal communities, and wider society. Genetic biodiversity in the ocean, and its monitoring and maintenance, is then discussed with respect to its integral role in the successful realization of the 2030 vision for the Decade of Ocean Science. Finally, we suggest how ocean genetic diversity might be better integrated into biodiversity management practices through the continued interaction between environmental managers and scientists, as well as through key leverage points in industry requirements for Blue Capital financing and social responsibility. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

In 2003, the Chilean architecture firm Elemental began to revisit the idea of partially completed housing harnessing the productive capacities of the informal process within a more formal framework. The Quinta Monroy project in the northern Chilean city of Iquique was the first such project and involved the in-situ replacement of an informal settlement. The desire of residents was for a middle-class house that was beyond the scope of their budget or the subsidy. The Elemental project at Quinta Monroy comprised 93 expandable houses designed in parallel buildings and organized in four courtyards aiming to promote community interaction and maintain neighbors’ affinities. This paper investigates the process of housing adaptation through self-construction twelve years after the residents received their homes in 2005. The strategy to promote resident-driven expansions has been successful as 92 out of 93 households expanded their homes. The most significant concerns focused on the deterioration of living standards due to progressive and uncontrollable extensions which might have significant impacts on the settlement development. The findings from this paper focus on the neighbors’ negotiations for housing extensions and the risk of the re-creation of precarious living environments evidencing limitations for unassisted or spontaneous incremental schemes of housing development.

Despite magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) being the gold-standard imaging modality in the glioblastoma (GBM) setting, the availability of rodent MRI scanners is relatively limited. CT is a clinically relevant alternative which is more widely available in the pre-clinic. To study the utility of contrast-enhanced (CE)-CT in GBM xenograft modelling, we optimized CT protocols on two instruments (IVIS-SPECTRUM-CT;TRIUMPH-PET/CT) with/without delivery of contrast. As radiomics analysis may facilitate earlier detection of tumors by CT alone, allowing for deeper analyses of tumor characteristics, we established a radiomic pipeline for extraction and selection of tumor specific CT-derived radiomic features (inc. first order statistics/texture features). U87R-Luc2 GBM cells were implanted orthotopically into NOD/SCID mice (n=25) and tumor growth monitored via weekly BLI. Concurrently mice underwent four rounds of CE-CT (IV iomeprol/iopamidol; 50kV-scan). N=45 CE-CT images were semi-automatically delineated and radiomic features were extracted (Pyradiomics 2.2.0) at each imaging timepoint. Differences between normal and tumor tissue were analyzed using recursive selection. Using either CT instrument/contrast, tumors > 0.4cm3 were not detectable until week-9 post-implantation. Radiomic analysis identified three features (waveletHHH_firstorder_Median, original_glcm_Correlation and waveletLHL_firstorder_Median) at week-3 and -6 which may be early indicators of tumor presence. These features are now being assessed in CE-CT scans collected pre- and post-temozolomide treatment in a syngeneic model of mesenchymal GBM. Nevertheless, BLI is significantly more sensitive than CE-CT (either visually or using radiomic-enhanced CT feature extraction) with luciferase-positive tumors detectable at week-1. In conclusion, U87R-Luc2 tumors > 0.4cm3 are only detectable by Week-8 using CE-CT and either CT instrument studied. Nevertheless, radiomic analysis has defined features which may allow for earlier tumor detection at Week-3, thus expanding the utility of CT in the preclinical setting. Overall, this work supports the discovery of putative prognostic pre-clinical CT-derived radiomic signatures which may ultimately be assessed as early disease markers in patient datasets.

Genetic diversity is critically important for all species-domesticated and wild- to adapt to environmental change, and for ecosystem resilience to extreme events. International agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have committed to conserve and sustainably and equitably use all levels of biodiversity-genes, species and ecosystems-globally. However, assessment and monitoring of genetic diversity are often overlooked, and there are large knowledge and policy gaps regarding genetic diversity conservation. In this study, we present the first quantitative analysis of genetic diversity assessments conducted by Parties to the CBD. We conducted a detailed, systematic analysis of 114 CBD 5th (submitted 2014) and 6th (submitted 2018) National Reports to quantitatively assess actions, progress on targets, values and indicators related to genetic diversity. First, we found that the importance of genetic diversity is recognised by most Parties to the CBD, and that recognition increased over time. However, genetic targets mainly addressed genetic diversity within cultivated plants, farm animals, and crop wild relatives, with little focus on other wild species. Also, actions for conserving genetic diversity primarily concerned ex-situ facilities and policy, rather than monitoring and intervention for maintaining genetic diversity in situ. The most commonly used indicators of genetic diversity status were the number of genetic resources in conservation facilities, number of threatened breeds, and Red List Index, which are not well correlated to genetic erosion in most species -- highlighting that genetic change is poorly monitored by current indicators. Lastly, analyses of genetic data observations, indigenous use and knowledge of genetic diversity, and strategies being developed and implemented to conserve genetic diversity are highly under-reported. We make several recommendations for the post-2020 CBD Biodiversity Framework to improve awareness, assessment, and monitoring, and facilitate consistent and complete reporting of progress of genetic diversity in future National Reports.Article Impact StatementAn analysis of genetic diversity in CBD National Reports neglects non-domesticated species and demonstrates need for sufficient indicators.

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a key conduit of the BRI but also China’s most rigidly controlled region. This chapter will examine this apparent contradiction through an analysis of recent events there and interviews with people living in and from the region. The Chinese government is undertaking a widely condemned campaign which has seen over one million Uyghur and other ethnic minorities forced to attend “vocational schools”, a campaign which has been described as a programme of mass internment. This chapter aims to explore how this extremely repressive approach to the region impacts the lives of Xinjiang’s people and what impact this may have on the future of BRI, a key aim of which is to help develop the region and increase stability and security.

This chapter explores questions of nationalism and national identity in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The official government narrative grossly simplifies the intricacies of history and exacerbates tension in the region by failing to engage with the experiences and perceptions of its citizens in Xinjiang. Xinjiang has witnessed, at times serious, ethnic conflict in recent years. This chapter examines the effect of recent conflict on ideas of the nation and senses of belonging among people from both ethnic groups. It examines the multiplicity of nationalist discourses in Xinjiang, both in terms of state constructed narratives of Chinese national identity, which emphasises ethnic unity and material progress, and with the lived experiences of people in a region struggling with deep divisions.

Guided by Michel Foucault's concept of “pastoral power,” this article examines the ways in which contemporary discourses within official narratives in China portray the state in a paternal fashion to reinforce its legitimacy. Employing interdisciplinary approaches, this article explores a number of sites in Urumqi, the regional capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), in order to map how a coherent official narrative of power and authority is created and reinforced across different spaces and texts. It demonstrates how both history and the present day are depicted in urban Xinjiang in order to portray the state in a pastoral role that legitimates its use of force, as well as emphasizing its core role in developing the region out of poverty and into “civilization.”

Many egalitarians believe that there is a pro tanto reason to remedy inequalities of opportunity in access to higher education. This consensus, I argue, masks practical disagreement among egalitarians: in many real-world choice contexts, egalitarians will disagree about which policies are to be endorsed, both from the point of view of equality and all things considered. I focus my discussion on a real-world case (the ‘big squeeze’ – so-called because the children of well-off families ‘squeeze out’ the children of less well-off families from access to highly selective US universities) that has recently been discussed by Amy Gutmann. I argue that while (a) the ‘big squeeze’ is condemned by the ideal of equal opportunity, nevertheless (b) different egalitarians will favor different policies in response to the ‘big squeeze’, and (c) one intuitive, and apparently egalitarian, response lacks support from most plausible egalitarian views.

This paper considers the use of evidence for government decision-making using ethnographically informed data from the lived experiences of those involved in British cultural policy. It does this in order to engage and extend work that has sought to defend bureaucratic forms of activity. The paper offers an empirical case study of how the civil servants’ ethic of office [DuGay, P. (2008) ‘Max weber and the moral economy of office’, Journal of Cultural Economy, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 129–144] is reinforced by the identity of the social scientist. The use of social science in policy advice is a moment where the bureaucrats are able to distance themselves from political decision-making, thus reasserting an important aspect of civil service practice and identity. However, as the latter part of the article illustrates, the dynamics of cultural policy-making, in particular the use of economics, situate the role of social science as paradoxical. It is both supportive and corrosive of the bureaucratic ethic. T...

© FEMS 2017. All rights reserved. Microbial ecology provides insights into the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of microbial communities underpinning every ecosystem on Earth. Microbial communities can now be investigated in unprecedented detail, although there is still a wealth of open questions to be tackled. Here we identify 50 research questions of fundamental importance to the science or application of microbial ecology, with the intention of summarising the field and bringing focus to new research avenues. Questions are categorised into seven themes: host-microbiome interactions; health and infectious diseases; human health and food security; microbial ecology in a changing world; environmental processes; functional diversity; and evolutionary processes. Many questions recognise that microbes provide an extraordinary array of functional diversity that can be harnessed to solve real-world problems. Our limited knowledge of spatial and temporal variation in microbial diversity and function is also reflected, as is the need to integrate micro- and macro-ecological concepts, and knowledge derived from studies with humans and other diverse organisms. Although not exhaustive, the questions presented are intended to stimulate discussion and provide focus for researchers, funders and policy makers, informing the future research agenda in microbial ecology.

New efforts and requirements to deposit data in research repositories are necessary to protect privacy interests and comply with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The authors...

†The financial crisis has led to questions for mainstream economics. Open Democracy, a non-partisan politics website, has recently concluded the ‘Uneconomics’ debate, drawing attention to the limit...

There is often a difficult balance in academic work between responding to immediate questions and taking a longer term perspective on any given issue. This is especially true of policy oriented work, which faces the temptation of pronouncing on headlines or else dismissing specific developments as mere distractions from historical trends. The corollary to this difficult balance comes with the question of evidence in government, which often has an uncertain and difficult status in public policy. Even during the height of New Labour's attempts to foster a culture of evidence based policy making within Whitehall, there were numerous critiques of the very idea that policy making was about evidence, rather than electoral concerns, party ideologies or responses to individual ministerial pressures or personalities (O'Brien, in press). Indeed Stevens (2011 found policy making suffused with evidence of differing and competing forms, all incorporated into policy decisions in complex and sometimes diffused ways.

PurposeThis study aims to quantify the provision of blood result logons to new Foundation 1 (F1) doctors in a large teaching hospital over the course of two years, with the audit used to bring about improvement over this time.Design/methodology/approachNew F1 doctors starting in August 2008 completed a questionnaire assessing their access to blood results and whether they had to resort to using other doctors' passwords. The results were fed back to stakeholders involved in F1 induction, and new F1s were audited again in August 2009.FindingsOn starting the job in 2008, 25 per cent of new F1s had pathology result logons and this rose to 78 per cent at eight weeks. None of the audit targets were met. The results were fed back to the IT department, the medical school and the Human Resources department with the result that in 2009, 90 per cent of the doctors had passwords on starting their jobs, with 100 per cent provision at eight weeks. All of the audit targets were met. Access and security improved considerably from 2008 to 2009.Practical implicationsEase of access to those staff requiring access to patient data is important for patient safety; this has to be balanced against data security. Extra resources may be required to provide secure access to large numbers of staff starting all at the same time.Originality/valueThis study shows the usefulness of audit as a tool for producing improvements in patient safety and data security in large organisations; very little literature has been produced on this topic.

Cultural planning has emerged as a key concern for town planners and policy-makers. However, although extensive attention has been given to critical and evaluative approaches of the impact of cultural planning, there is a comparative lack of research using theories of governance. This article contributes to the literature on cultural planning using the case study of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008. The article illustrates how a range of local state organisations, particularly those from the cultural sector, administer cultural planning in Liverpool, showing how cultural planning can be understood as a new form of urban governance.

This article deploys Mark Bevir's concept of decentred tradition to interpret the emergence of New Labour's welfare reforms, and critical responses to them, in terms of continuity and change within the social democratic tradition. It does so by exploring the historical interaction of beliefs, traditions, and dilemmas to make three main claims about the ways Gordon Brown and Roy Hattersley each constructed beliefs about welfare provision. First, individuals necessarily develop their beliefs against the background of an inherited tradition. Brown and Hattersley developed their beliefs against the background of the social democratic tradition. Second, individuals are agents who can revise their beliefs and thus modify traditions. Brown revised his beliefs about welfare provision and thus modified the social democratic tradition. Hattersley neither revised his beliefs nor modified this historical tradition. Third, individuals revise their beliefs in response to dilemmas, where a dilemma constitutes an authori...

Governments from Bogota to Beijing are engaging with emerging cloud computing technologies and its industry in a variety of overlapping contexts. Based on a review of a representative number of advanced cloud computing strategies developed by governments from around the world, including the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, and Japan, we observed that these governments – mostly implicitly – have taken on several different “roles” with respect to their approaches to cloud computing. In particular, we identify six distinguishable but overlapping roles assumed by governments: users, regulators, coordinators, promoters, researchers, and service providers. In this paper, we describe and discuss each of these roles in detail using examples from our review of cloud strategies, and share high-level observations about the roles as well as the contexts in which they arise. The paper concludes with a set of considerations for policymakers to take into account when developing approaches to the rapidly evolving cloud computing technologies and industry.

This article examines several bilateral and multilateral programmes that were designed to forward El Salvador's transition from a war‐torn society to a democratic polity. Both procedural and substantive democratic strengthening measures were pursued by external donors within the national framework for reconstruction, and independently through larger Central American initiatives. Because links between development and democracy are not clearly understood this article questions the implicit assumption accepted by foreign donors that democracy will be a by‐product of development assistance. To illustrate this point, state‐level procedural reforms and local level reconstruction and reconciliation interventions are assessed. Particular attention is paid to the Development Programme for Refugees, Displaced and Repatriated in Central America (PRODERE) which is compared with two other local level interventions. In a comparative setting, PRODERE highlights the potential of development assistance to open a hitherto ...

Où en est-on aujourd'hui, trente ans après la « révolution sexuelle » ? Dans une grande confusion, due en partie à l'alliance « objective » entre la droite chrétienne et les féministes « néo-libérales » appelées par leur critiques les « néo-victoriennes ». S'opposent à elles les féministes « libertaires », y compris les plus radicales, qui vont jusqu' à défendre la pornographie et la prostitution. Le récent rapport Sex in America n'a fait qu' ajouter à la confusion. Et les nouvelles technologies telles que Internet ont complètement changé la donne. Les décisions de la Cour suprême reflètent ces changements d'attitude. L Amérique est-elle en train de devenir une « pornotopie », un « Etat pornographique » ? Par ailleurs, est-ce aussi nouveau qu' on semble le croire ?, O’Brien David. Sexual Re(X)pression in the USA: Somewhere between Pornutopia and the Land of Puritans. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°68, mars 1996. Sexualités : expression et répression. pp. 20-28.

A sixteen year old girl presented with a four year history of hip pain followed subsequently by back pain radiating down her left leg, progressive urgency of micturition, urinary incontinence, a feeling of bladder fullness and incomplete bladder emptying, faecal impaction and finally, numbness in both of her buttocks. A diagnosis of Cauda Equina Syndrome was suspected on the history and the clinical examination. A plain X-ray of her lumbar spine revealed evidence of a slow growing mass within the vertebral canal at the level of L3. A Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan confirmed an intradural space occupying lesion at the same level. This lesion was surgically removed and histological examination revealed a benign epidermoid cyst.

Objectives As part of the Every Woman Every Child movement, the United Nations Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children has selected magnesium sulfate, oxytocin and misoprostol as three life-saving maternal health commodities. The objective is to describe the aim, components and target audience of the Maternal Health Commodity Security Framework (MHCS), a tool to help low and middle income countries (LMICs) to develop and implement strategies to ensure access and use by end users. Methods To develop the framework, we performed a desk- based review and interviewed key informants. We used a variety of data sources including policy documents from key maternal health organizations, peer-reviewed articles identified through MEDLINE and a grey literature search using Google and POPLINE. Results The aim of the MHCS Framework is “women and their health providers can equitably access and use essential, quality maternal health life-saving commodities made available and affordable throughout the continuum of care by inter-sectoral collaboration and integrated service delivery.” The key stakeholders targeted by this framework are governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs, civil society, and the private sector. The framework has eleven components that are based on the Commission’s ten cross-cutting recommendations. Overarching elements include policies & regulations, co-ordination, health systems financing and advocacy & leadership. Operational and programmatic aspects include service delivery, human resources, health supplies, supply chain strengthening, quality assurance and monitoring & evaluation. Population awareness focuses on demand generation and education. Conclusions A maternal health commodity security framework is needed as a tool for LMICs to secure these life-saving commodities. Future steps include pilot testing the framework and evaluating its impact. T. Firoz: None. D. O’Brien: None. E. Bahirai: None. L. Stan: None.

Amid a forest of southern California technology start-ups and dot-coms, a century-old healthcare institution delivers health care to the neediest of Mission Valley’s residents. Mission Valley Medical Center (MVMC) has managed to maintain an “open door” policy since 1876. Providing quality medical care under the strict auspices of Mission County’s oversight has left few resources to support clinical information technology (IT). County resources must be used to meet the information needs of about 4,500 county employees, as well as the 200 employees who make up the medical staff, also known as Physicians Group Practice, Inc. (PGP) members. Historically, PGP physician IT needs have been a low priority for MVMC.As a result, in 1998, PGP began to support these needs first by supplying e-mail services, and now it provides a dedicated staff. With some successes, PGP IT found favor with the medical staff by providing a high level of support. Some overlap with MVMC IT functions resulted in a need for negotiation, which resulted in a “memorandum of understanding” (MoU) being written (Appendix 21.1). The MoU attempted to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the MVMC IT department and the PGP IT group.The MoU has been useful, but tensions remain between the two IT staffs. Recently rumors have been circulating that MVMC IT and PGP IT staffs will be merged as the result of a near future reorganization. The PGP chief operating officer (COO), Paul Hammer, is faced with a dilemma. He faces his governing board with the possibility of his IT staff being absorbed by MVMC IT in order to streamline services and cut costs. His staff is opposed to this measure, particularly because historically, MVMC IT support has been poor for PGP staff.