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The UK Physical Sciences Centre is collaborating with two HEFCE-funded projects – S-Lab (Safe, Successful, Sustainable Laboratories) and the University of Bradford’s Ecoversity initiative – on a workshop on Sustainable Laboratory Chemistry. The event, at York on June 14, includes presentations on curriculum innovation, micro-scale chemistry, and laboratory environmental auditing and improvement.

There is no registration fee for this meeting; lunch and refreshments will be provided. Please see the event website for registration details.

Event announcement courtesy of The Higher Education Academy UK Physical Sciences Centre.

Laboratory demonstrators are a core part of university teaching and learning and commonly involve postgraduate students. This workshop aims to give an overview of the skills expected of a demonstrator and highlight common issues relating to supporting students in the laboratory. The day will also provide participants with an opportunity to network with peers from other institutions and further develop their own key skills, and aims to complement institutional programmes offered.

There is no registration fee for this meeting for those working in UK HE and lunch and refreshments will be provided. For more details and to register online, please see the event website. Online registration closes on Monday 22nd March.

Event announcement courtesy of The UK Higher Education Academy Physical Sciences Centre.

This week Colombians went to the polls. However the results were delay and there has been some discussion and recriminations. Global Voices online explains why

Find out more using these Intute recommended resources.

IFES has background information on the electoral system and past results

Registraduria Nacional del Estado Civil, the official electoral commission of Colombia. It gives information about its organisation, purpose and current activities. It includes details about election procedures and the electoral system in Colombia, with access to recent election results. Links are provided to associated YouTube and Twitter channels which it maintains.

Consejo Nacional Electoral Colombia another official electoral body whose website contains documents and regulations relating to elections.

Official website of the OAS (Organisation of American States) has some press releases from its election monitoring mission.

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) includes some papers on the state of democracy and womens political participation in the run up to the elections.

The Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) is based at the Center for the Americas Vanderbilt University. It carries out high quality public opinion surveys of importance to political science researchers and the social sciences in general. There are some recent surveys of Colombian citzens which cover electoral issues and politics.

Latin American thought is a multi-author blog maintained by a group of young professionals (think tank advisers, researchers and academics) which aims to exchange ideas and stimulate debate about current news stories relating to Latin America. Scroll down for some comment!

The Plan Colombia and Beyond blog is produced by the Center for International Policy’s Latin America Demilitarization Project it also has recent comment on politics.

Find more resources on Colombian politics from Intute

Here is the latest round up from Intute and the LSE Library

Stern review of rape reporting

Social Workers’ Workload Survey: Message from the frontline – Findings from the 2009 survey and Interviews with senior managers

On the State of Public Health: Annual report of the Chief Medical Officer 2009

Advancing Health: Examples of the work of the Chief Medical Officer for England, 1998-2010

Flexible Working: Working for families, working for business Family Friendly Task Force.

The Social Fund: Customer experiences and perspectives – Qualitative research with Jobcentre Plus customers
Department for Work and Pensions.

Healthy Balance: A review of public health performance and spending - Audit Commission

Equality and Human Rights Commission HL 72/HC 183 Joint Committee on Human Rights

Green Jobs and Skills: Government Response to the Committee’s Second Report HC 435 Environmental Audit Committee

National security and resilience: Government response to the Committee’s Third Report of Session 2009-10 Defence Select committee HC 382 Defence Select Committee

Rebuilding the House: Implementation Reform of the House of Commons Select Committee

Maurice Smith Review: A review of the provision to prevent the promotion of racism in schools

Improving Dementia Services in England - an Interim Report HC 321 Public Accounts

Too Many Ministers? Public Administration report HC 457

The Omagh bombing: some remaining questions Northern Ireland Select Committee. HC 374

Credit and Store Card Research covers usage and attitudes Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Department for Work and Pensions: Management of Benefit Overpayment Debt- Public Accounts Committee. HC 444

The proposal for a National Policy Statement on Ports Transport Committee. HC 217

Reducing the numbers of young people not in education, employment or training: what works and why OFSTED

The Chief Adviser on the Safety of Children: First annual report to Parliament – 2010

Management and Administration of Contracted Employment Programmes Work and Pensions Committee HC 101

The Decent Homes Programme – Public accounts Committee HC 350

Reorganising central government National Audit Office report HC: 452, 2009-10

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia (APPG) published its inquiry into the funding of the National Dementia Strategy (NDS) Misspent Opportunity?

Evaluation of Community Development Finance Institutions. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

National Evaluation of Participatory Budgeting in England: Interim evaluation report Communities and Local Government

Home Office: National workforce modernisation programme – Final report run by the National Policing Improvement Agency,

Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report 2009-10 Cabinet office.

The State of the Estate 2009 Office of Government Commerce

Sharper Investment for Changing Times: Getting more out of museums, libraries and archives Museums, Libraries and Archives Council

London 2012: A legacy for disabled people Strategy Document.

The Variety in Chemistry Education conference provides a forum for the exchange of ideas related to the learning of chemistry at degree level, the sharing of good practice and innovation, and the dissemination of the outcomes of pedagogic research as they relate to chemistry at university level.

Contributions are invited in the following categories:

Workshops

In these 2 hour workshop sessions, groups of 15-20 will participate in activities designed to enhance student learning or related to other aspects of teaching and learning.

Oral Communications

These are 10 minute papers followed by discussion of no more than 5 minutes.

Oral Bytes

Brief (5 minutes) accounts of new ideas, novel approaches or new resources. Oral Bytes may describe work in progress or be used to identify potential collaborators to take projects forward. A maximum of three PowerPoint slides will be allowed.

The deadline for offers of workshops and oral presentations is 25th June 2010. See the conference website for further details and online registration.

Event announcement courtesy of The Higher Education Academy UK Physical Sciences Centre.

There’s been a tremendous amount of media coverage of natural disasters in recent years; much of this of course stemmed from the devastating earthquake and resultant tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, while the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980 also received prominent global coverage.

Intute’s Natural Hazards section provides a wealth of information about a wide range of natural disasters, including historic events, earthquake and tsunami databases, satellite imagery, links to external and internal resources, real-time earthquake monitoring from the United States Geological Survey, tornado and storm warning imagery, and lists of the most devastating earthquakes of recent times.

This is a vast resource which offers students, researchers and the general public access to lots of interesting material and reference data. Check it out today.

Intute Natural Hazards

We welcome content and links from our users and community; for example, Ashley Merusi provided a link to this alternative look at major earthquake events.
10 Most Devastating Earthquakes of All Time

According to reports today, The Crown Estate has leased ten sites off the Scottish coast to energy companies for the development of tidal and wave power schemes.

The areas are located in the Pentland Firth and around Orkney, and by 2020 the plan is to generate 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of energy, which would be enough energy to supply around three quarters of a million homes.

The development of the 6 wave energy and 4 tidal power sites has received strong endorsement from Scottish ministers, and industry figures, and is one of the strongest green energy projects yet undertaken in the UK. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond declared: “Together with planned offshore wind developments, these latest marine renewables projects show that Scotland is powering ahead in the development and deployment of clean, green energy.”

Winning bidders among the 20 companies that tendered for the sites include SSE Renewables Developments Ltd (wave and tidal), Scottish Power Renewables UK Ltd (wave and tidal) and E.ON (wave).

Discover more about green energy, wave power and tidal power on Intute.

 eHealth Week 2010 is currently taking place in Barcelona (15th to 18th March).  Two important European ehealth events make up the eHealth Week, and they are:

• The E.U. High Level Conference on eHealth
• The World of Health IT (WoHIT)

The European Commission defines ehealth as:

… all of the tools based on information and communication technologies that are used in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and management of health and the way of life. The concept covers interaction between patients and providers of healthcare services, the transmission of data on an equal basis between patients and healthcare professionals; it also includes the health information networks, electronic medical histories, telemedicine services and the personal and portable systems of communication for following up on patients’ assistance.

 If you aren’t fortunate enough to attend, there are still ways to participate online and join in the conversation, for e.g.

• Ask your questions directly through Twitter including the hashtag #ehw_ and the appropriate talk code.
• Follow discussion forums on Facebook
• Follow ‘live’ events through a variety of social media tools

 Videos of the parallel and plenary sessions should be available quite soon after a session has been completed, available here.

NHS trusts urged to sign up to environmental efficiency model (HES)
Green procurement set to become the norm (BusinessGreen)
Green Procurement Has Already Become a Key Competitive Factor (Supply and Demand Chain Executive)

see also:
DEFRA sustainable development indicators
Sustainable Development Commission Library and definitions

The satellite image search facility on the Intute World Guide now returns any matching images retrived from the flickr photo service.

The World Guide contains more than 2,000 satellite photos covering a wide range of themes including agriculture, mountains, rivers, natural hazards, storms, volcanoes and many more. Users can also browse images by country, and in some cases view hi-res imagery. The addition of flickr photos to the search should ensure that almost all queries will now return results for the user.

Try out our satellite image search facility now, or browse and explore the thousands of images currently available!