Intute blog

It is hard to imagine what the world would be like without the Internet. Or what would have happened if the lab that first developed the technology had not released it freely. Today marks the 15th anniversary of the day that CERN put the Web into the public domain, thereby ensuring that the Internet would be available freely worldwide. In a BBC news article some leading luminaries talk about what the future holds for the Web.

Related websites:
The World Wide Web turns 15 (again)
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Mozilla Foundation

There will be a two-day conference on Urban Encounters: Photography, Ethnography and the City, at Goldsmiths in London. It’s on 16th-17th May 2008, when…

“six panels will explore the nature of past and contemporary photographic approaches to the representation and evocation of city life [ ... ] The panel themes will include: urban landscapes: from theory to practice; architecture and photography; street photography; urban portraiture and identities; visual ethnographies and the urban encounter; and emerging forms. [ ...] an associated exhibition, photographic workshop and curated urban walks programme [ ... ] Tickets to the conference are £120 (£80 students)”

Perhaps related to gathering such photographic surveys, and certainly perfectly-timed just one day before the London conference, is a Community Engagement Masterclass in Birmingham, on 15th May 2008. It’s being held by Living Streets (formerly The Pedestrians Association).

For those responsible for publicising such photographic projects, a Voluntary Arts Network training event may be useful:— “Disseminating Information in the Google Age”, on 1st May 2008 in London or 8th July 2008 in Birmingham.

Places are still available on the following workshop, organised under the LLAS Subject Centre’s Workshops-to-go scheme:

*Teaching medieval and early-modern culture to students of modern languages*

23rd May 2008, St Catharine’s College, Cambridge

Repeated on:

21st November 2008, University of Leeds

This workshop aims to support the teaching of medieval and early-modern culture in modern languages – an area which is often felt to be in decline. The workshop starts from the premise that the study of medieval and early-modern culture is pedagogically and intellectually important, enriching students’ lives and providing them with invaluable skills. The workshops will be determinedly upbeat: our purpose is not to lament any changes which have occurred, but to identify practical ways in which we can engage and inspire students. The subject range is deliberately very broad: the aim is to identify transferable good practice in a wide range of national and historical contexts. Colleagues who teach medieval and early-modern topics in all national contexts are invited to participate.

If you would like to contribute a short (15-minute) presentation on your experiences and practice in relation to the topics addressed by the workshop, please contact Matthew Treherne, m.treherne@leeds.ac.uk).

More information and registration details are available here: http://www.llas.ac.uk/events/llaseventitem.aspx?resourceid=2950 (May workshop) and http://www.llas.ac.uk/events/llaseventitem.aspx?resourceid=2951 (November workshop)

*Call for papers – Deadline: Friday 2nd May 2008*

Languages of the Wider World: Valuing Diversity
15th – 16th September 2008, SOAS
Conference website: http://www.llas.ac.uk/events/llaseventitem.aspx?resourceid=2936

Organised jointly by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS) and the SOAS-UCL Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Languages of the Wider World (LWW-CETL), this conference will bring together teachers, researchers, educational developers and policy makers to discuss practical and strategic issues relating to languages of the wider world, or less widely taught languages, in UK higher education.

For more information and how to submit a proposal, please visit the conference website.

An international conference entitled Ancestral Landscapes: Burial mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans – Adriatic – Aegean, 4th-2nd millennium BC) will be held at Udine, Italy, on 15-18 May 2008. This seems a very interesting conference for specialists. Abstracts (PDF file) can be accessed from the conference website.

Read the rest of this entry »

Following on from the decision of Canadian experts to label polar bears  “at risk” rather than “endangered”, a judge has told the US government to delay no longer in deciding whether to list them as an endangered species.  Conservation groups have been pressing for protection for the bears whose numbers have fallen by about a third in less than fifty years, and they argue that the only way to prevent the summer ice in the Arctic from disappearing entirely is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically.  The judge ruled that the slow progress made by the US government in making a decision on the status of the bears was illegal and denied a request for a further delay.

We have made a small change to how search works on Intute: Social Sciences. As some of you may know Intute is made up of four subject groups ourselves, Arts and Humanities, Health and Life Sciences and Science, Engineering and Technology. The default search now searches across all four subject groups and provides links to search results in other groups.

So in the example above a search for “human rights” means you can click through to the results in Arts, Health or Science for this topic, as well as, finding resources in the Social Sciences section of Intute.

Why not try it out with some other popular searches such as social exclusion, Marx, environmental economics or blog.

We hope this mean that you get far fewer instances of searches retrieving no hits and will make you aware of some of the other great resources available on Intute. If you have any feedback on this or any other search issue on Intute, then why not get in touch.

Here are some useful sites if you want to start researching the rise, impact and nature of elected mayors in local politics.

Official Mayor of London site lists duties and gives access to recent reports and statements.

MayorWatch an independent site which aims to scrutinise the activities of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly (GLA). Its website provides access to some background information on the history of government in London and the current structure and roles of the official bodies. It includes access to news stories and discussion forums.

City Mayors.  established by Urban Publishing Co. It aims to provide access to news headlines and information about mayors and their urban policy initiatives in cities worldwide. The site includes news stories on all aspects of local government policy including health, employment, transport and local politics. It highlights innovative solutions adopted by mayors. Other features include international salary surveys and discussion forums. Also useful are biographies of selected mayors and an extensive directory of links to mayor, local government and local government professional organisations worldwide.

New Local Government Network research and comment on mayors.

Political Studies Association (UK) has some papers on mayors you can search all proceedigns from 1994-2007

Institute for Public Policy research has some coment and surveys on mayors.

LSE London has some discussion papers on the GLA and government in London which can be read online.

Cost of London’s mayor a pamphlet by Victoria Borwick which was published by conservative think tank the Centre for Policy studies in 2007. It provides analysis of the economic cost of supporting a mayor in London. There are criticisms of the extravagances of Ken Livingstone and its cost to London taxpayers.

How are mayors measuring up?This site provides access to a paper published in July 2004 by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. It contains the preliminary findings of research conducted by Dr Gerry Stoker and the Evaluating Local Government New Constitutions and Ethics research project. This considers the expereinces of eleven directly elected mayors in England.

More papers and reports can be found by browsing the Intute mayors section.

INASP – the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications – has announced an agreement with Nature Publishing Group to make 65 of its titles freely available to institutions in 20 INASP member countries. This will be part of INASP’s Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI). The journals in the collection include NPG’s principal journal Nature, the Nature Clinical Practice series, the Nature research journals and Nature Reviews journals in the life sciences and medicine as well as 40+ journals published by NPG on behalf of learned societies.

Intute also has a number of resources relevant to health in developing countries or see a selection of these in our Hot Topic for January.

read the manifestos and statements from the candidates. All also have video statements and debates. Plus links to supporters websites.

Richard Barnbrook BNP

Gerard Batten UKIP

Sian Berry Green party.

Alan Craig Christian Choice

Lindsay German Left List

Boris Johnson Conservative Party.

Ken Livingstone Labour

Winston Mckenzie Independent.

Matt O’Connor English Democrats

Brian Piddick - Liberal Democrats