The Birmingham Brief archive Contensis: http://www.contentmanagement.co.uk http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/index.aspx?SyndicationType=2 2013-05-24T14:10:41Z

Information on Italy's new left-right government: not the 'normalisation' of the country's politics as yet...

2013-05-13T10:49:00Z 2013-05-13T10:38:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/09-05-13Italys-new-left-right-government-not-the-normalisation-of-the-countrys-politics-as-yet.aspx

From the Empire State Building to the pyramids, members of the global autism community shone a lens on autism this week by lighting many iconic landmarks in blue. This was in celebration of World Autism Day, which is a global initiative instigated by the United Nations to help raise awareness. It marks the start of autism awareness month.

2013-04-05T12:11:00Z 2013-04-17T10:45:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/world-autism-day.aspx

Many years ago a British politician, on learning that he was about to be appointed Minister for Transport, exclaimed: 'Some enemy hath done this!' It is not hard to see why he might have said this. The transport portfolio is often brimming over with some extremely difficult issues; and the HS2 (High Speed Rail 2) proposal is certainly no exception.

2013-01-31T09:52:00Z 2013-01-31T10:05:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/hs2-proposal.aspx

Since the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, health services in the UK have been funded primarily through general taxation and delivered free at the point of access to individuals. However, recent decades have witnessed an expansion in the global market for health services. This has been manifest in various ways, including an unprecedented increase in the volume of patients willing to traverse national borders for the purposes of receiving medical care.

2012-02-10T16:00:00Z 2012-03-23T13:07:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/10feb12-health-tourism.aspx

The current financial crisis started in the Autumn of 2008, and is only the last one of the many that have followed the banking deregulation of the mid-1980s. It has been a rolling financial crisis moving from economy to economy. Governments and bank regulators have tried to understand the role of financial markets in this process and are trying to improve financial stability.

2011-10-06T00:00:00Z 2011-10-17T14:34:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/6oct-banking-regulation.aspx

As Colonel Gaddafi's 42 years in charge of Libya draw to a seemingly climactic end – the dramatic scenes in Tripolil leave a series of questions that need to be urgently answered.

2011-08-23T13:54:00Z 2011-08-23T14:37:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/23-Aug-Libya-what-next.aspx

George Osborne has doggedly fought back at critics of the government's austerity strategy, repeating the mantra that sustaining the 'policy credibility' of UK plc with financial markets and investors is the paramount challenge facing this parliament. This week the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been able to draw on an apparent endorsement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for his agenda of public spending cuts and the Coalition's broader economic policy choices. But is the IMF's 'endorsement' all that the Chancellor makes it out to be?

2011-07-29T10:24:00Z 2011-07-29T10:15:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/9-June-Cash-or-Credit-UK-public-spending-cuts-and-the-IMF.aspx

In 2010, the former Prime Minister published a review of adult social care in which the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) argued that the system was fundamentally broken. A year on and very little has changed to alter our pessimistic assessment. Indeed in recent weeks, this diagnosis has been reconfirmed by a number of inter-related developments, including:

2011-07-15T14:24:00Z 2011-07-15T14:23:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/23Jun-SocialCareisBroken.aspx

The much-touted phrase 'from nanny to nudge' symbolises the Coalition Government's aspirations to find new ways to shape the habits and attitudes of good citizenship and to spread them more widely. Policy makers hope to change our expectations of what local and national government should provide, our ideas about who might provide them, and our commitment to changing our own and others' behaviours in all areas of our lives.

2011-07-15T14:14:00Z 2011-07-15T14:12:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/12Jul-YoungPeople-publicservices.aspx

With thousands of public sector workers striking this week and the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both speaking at the Local Government Conference in Birmingham the future of public services has rarely seemed a more divisive or topical issue.

2011-07-14T17:53:00Z 2011-07-14T16:55:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/26JunPublic-Servants-Reform.aspx

The Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, has recently announced the approval of the Initial Gate Business Case for the replacement for the Vanguard Class nuclear submarines. The contracts for this phase are likely to be in the region of £3bn. However, the Defence Secretary admitted that the total cost was likely to reach £25bn by the time the boats are built. Given that the initial estimates prepared in 2006 were in the region of £15–20bn, the sceptics around Whitehall, who are well used to Ministry of Defense (MoD) 'guesstimations', anticipate the final bill being closer to £38bn.

2011-06-07T16:48:00Z 2012-02-06T14:42:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/07JunTridentNews.aspx

About half of the UK population use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) during their lifetimes. Yet despite this, successive governments have appeared remarkably reluctant to engage with the regulation of these therapeutic practices, despite its stated commitment to responsive and appropriate regulation of the health sector.

2011-05-12T00:00:00Z 2012-02-06T14:42:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/12may-complementary-health.aspx

The Department for International Development (DFID) recently published a Multilateral Aid Review (MAR), critically assessing 43 different international organisations (IOs), agencies and private groups. It has concurrently conducted a Bilateral Aid Review (BAR) of its own operations. This brief shows that both reviews indicate an important shift in UK aid policies, whereby future development assistance will be based on the UK's vision of development rather than more traditional global indicators.

2011-04-21T15:27:00Z 2011-04-21T15:26:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/21apr-aid-review.aspx

Recent events in Libya and Cote d'Ivoire have once again highlighted the issue of conflict in Africa, raising the question of whether the continent is capable of addressing crises without international intervention.

2011-04-18T12:02:00Z 2011-04-18T12:00:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/14apr-conflict-in-africa.aspx

Fathers of children born after 3 April 2011 are entitled to take Additional Parental Leave (APL), in addition to two weeks statutory paternity leave. By allowing both (qualifying) parents to share paid parental leave, APL seemingly demonstrates a commitment to giving fathers a genuine opportunity to parent their children in the first year of life. In fact, it is not obvious that APL will make a significant difference.

2011-04-08T00:00:00Z 2011-04-13T09:34:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/8apr-parental-leave.aspx

This week is Climate Week but has anyone noticed? Events in Libya and Japan have quite rightly grabbed both the headlines and the inside pages of the media. Nevertheless, climate events have been running throughout the country to try and show that climate should still be high on the nation's agenda. 23 March, as well as being Budget Day in the UK, was also World Meteorological Day commemorating the founding of the World Meteorological Organisation in 1950. The theme this year is 'Climate for you'.

2011-03-24T17:27:00Z 2011-03-25T17:09:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/24Mar-climatechange.aspx

As the crisis in Libya unfolds and as the US, France and the UK get potentially sucked ever deeper into yet another disastrous military intervention, policy debates and decisions appear to be driven primarily by humanitarian concern. Unsurprisingly, supporters and opponents alike use the humanitarian argument—one side seeks to stop a murderous dictator from slaughtering his own people, the other is concerned about the inevitable civilian casualties and 'collateral damage' caused by airstrikes, no matter how sophisticated the military technology behind them might be.

2011-03-22T11:29:00Z 2011-03-22T15:39:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/22Mar-Libya-a-solution.aspx

The tragic events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant constitute the worst nuclear disaster in more than two decades. Whilst the human cost is of paramount importance and rightly dominates the headlines there will also be significant implications for the future of the world wide nuclear industry, which suffered a 20 year decline after the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island and the disaster at Chernobyl. Both events reinforced the negative public perception toward nuclear power that had emerged over the course of the 1970s.

2011-03-18T00:00:00Z 2012-02-06T14:41:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/18mar-nuclear-industry.aspx

The current demographic trends show that the UK's population is becoming older. As this happens the incidence of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's, dementia and Parkinson's disease is also increasing. This has huge social, economical and political implications – further evidence that understanding how the brain works both in health and disease is a challenge that we need to address urgently before the problem of neurodegeneration becomes more evident.

2011-03-14T15:04:00Z 2011-03-14T15:01:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/14mar-neuroscience-research.aspx

Few can have been unaffected by the disturbing scenes following the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January. More than one million displaced survivors are now housed in camps around the capital, Port-au-Prince, with squalid sanitation facilities and little access to clean drinking water. Poor sanitation is known to give rise to disease and so it is unsurprising that, at the time of writing, there are more than 2,600 known cases of cholera in Haiti, with more than 250 people having lost their lives.

2010-11-17T16:04:00Z 2010-11-17T15:54:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/Cholera.aspx

The recent terror plot to transport printers containing the explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, from Yemen to Chicago synagogues has once again focused attention on the need to detect explosives reliably and in real-time. PETN is the same explosive that the so-called 'shoe-bomber' tried to set off on an American Airlines jet to Miami in 2001.

2010-11-17T16:04:00Z 2010-11-17T15:54:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/sorrel-detectingexplosives.aspx

Navigating the job market can be a difficult process for those newly graduated. Expectations can quickly become replaced by a sense of disillusionment as settling for a seemingly less prestigious, and in some cases a "non graduate" role appears the only option.

2010-11-17T16:04:00Z 2010-11-17T15:55:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/employment-hope.aspx

Birmingham will be at the forefront of developments in childhood cancer research thanks to the launch of a new centre which will co-ordinate groundbreaking clinical trials across the UK. The Cancer Research UK Children's Clinical Trials Team at the University of Birmingham will play a major role in the development of new treatments for childhood cancers. Dr Pam Kearns reflects on the challenges for childhood cancer treatment in the UK.

2010-11-17T15:55:00Z 2010-11-17T15:53:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/childhoodcancertrials.aspx

As poor air quality is associated with poor health, rising levels of air pollutants are a cause for legitimate concern. Air pollution is a mix of gases and particles which arise from natural sources, industry and, most importantly, motor vehicles. Air pollution episodes usually occur during periods of high pressure especially when pollutants are trapped close to the ground not allowing upwards escape to the atmosphere.

2010-11-17T15:54:00Z 2010-11-17T15:51:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/Airpollution–hotanddirty.aspx

A primary challenge for publicly funded health care is the distribution of resources and the setting of priorities. As the impacts of the recent economic slump are increasingly felt throughout government departments, the rationing of health care within the National Health Service is likely to become a matter of controversy and conflict. The basis by which we ration health care will come under increasing scrutiny.

2010-11-17T15:54:00Z 2010-11-17T15:51:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/measuringmedicaltreatments.aspx

The general election held on 6 May finally led to a new government for the UK. Eventually, because of course the election itself did not produce an outright winner and only when the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were able to agree on the construction of a coalition could a new government be formed. The delays flowing from this have made it more difficult to predict at an early stage how the new government will act, in particular because third sector policy was not a high profile policy issue to be included in the initial coalition talks.

2010-11-17T15:54:00Z 2010-11-17T15:52:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/Bigsocietyorcivilsociety.aspx

Volunteering at a Day Centre for people with head injuries, as part of my research, provides a different perspective on life. You get to hear comments such as "The general public don't understand what head injury is... they look at you and think you're perfectly normal".

2010-11-17T15:54:00Z 2010-11-17T15:52:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/headinjury.aspx

Climate change is now widely accepted as one of the greatest challenges we all face. In our own region, Birmingham City Council has made a bold commitment to tackle this challenge with a target to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% by 2026. However, mitigating any change provides just part of the solution in combating the problem.

2010-11-17T15:54:00Z 2010-11-17T15:52:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/climaterisk.aspx

High speed train travel is already established in many mainland European countries and in some it has become the major transport mode for long distance internal journeys. In the UK there is only one stretch of high speed railway from St Pancras to the channel tunnel (known as High Speed 1 or HS1) and there does seem to be considerable backing for the development of a second high speed line north of London.

2010-11-17T15:53:00Z 2010-11-17T15:51:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/HS2.aspx

Suffolk County Council's recent decision to outsource almost all of its services to social enterprises or private companies has intensified the debate about the future of local public services.

2010-11-17T15:53:00Z 2010-11-17T15:51:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/publicservices,bigsociety.aspx

This was the question at a debate at the University of Birmingham last week held as part of the British Science Festival. Around one-fifth of the power stations in Great Britain will close within five years as air pollution rules get tougher, and most of our nuclear stations will reach the end of their expected lifetimes soon after 2020.

2010-11-17T15:53:00Z 2010-11-17T15:51:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/energyconsumption.aspx

I always tell my students that, when sitting an exam, they have to answer the question that has been set rather than one that they feel comfortable with. No analogy is ever perfect, but this one sums up pretty neatly the outcome of the deliberations by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which, by ten votes to four, found that the Declaration of Independence (DoI) of Kosovo adopted on 17 February 2008 did not violate international law.

2010-11-17T15:53:00Z 2010-11-17T15:51:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/courtofjustice.aspx

Benjamin Franklin famously said that 'in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes' and the issue of how death and taxes should be linked in future policy has provoked plenty of lively pre-election discussion amongst politicians of all parties.

2010-04-28T00:00:00Z 2011-01-31T20:50:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/deathtaxes.aspx

The UK is one of the leading centres for cancer research and clinical trials. Many of the most significant drug developments of the last decade have come through UK research.

2010-04-21T00:00:00Z 2011-01-31T20:50:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/cancercare.aspx

It is widely accepted that a major challenge of the 21st century is to provide safe drinking water and basic sanitation for all, particularly in urban areas. More people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war.

2010-03-22T00:00:00Z 2011-01-31T20:51:00Z http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/thebirminghambrief/items/urbanwater.aspx