Returning to deposits...

Examines the Court of Appeal ruling in Midill (97PL) Ltd v Park Lane Estates Ltd on whether the court should exercise its discretion to return a deposit paid under a contract for the sale of a property where, despite the claimant having defaulted on its purchase, the owner obtained a higher price than would have been paid by the claimant when it subsequently sold the property to a third party. Considers the need for special or exceptional circumstances to be present to override the rule that deposits were to be forfeited upon the purchaser's default.

Public-public partnerships (PUPs) in water

Water operators need to be efficient, accountable, honest public institutions providing a universal service. Many water services however lack the institutional strength, the human resources, the technical expertise and equipment, or the financial or managerial capacity to provide these services. They need support to develop these capacities. The vast majority of water operators in the world are in the public sector – 90% of all major cities are served by such bodies. This means that the largest pool of experience and expertise, and the great majority of examples of good practice and sound institutions, are to be found in existing public sector water operators. Because they are public sector, however, they do not have any natural commercial incentive to provide international support. Their incentive stems from solidarity, not profit. Since 1990, however, the policies of donors and development banks have focussed on the private companies and their incentives. The vast resources of the public sector have been overlooked, even blocked by pro-private policies. Out of sight of these global policy-makers, however, a growing number of public sector water companies have been engaged, in a great variety of ways, in helping others develop the capacity to be effective and accountable public services. These supportive arrangements are now called 'public-public partnerships' (PUPs). A public-public partnership (PUP) is simply a collaboration between two or more public authorities or organisations, based on solidarity, to improve the capacity and effectiveness of one partner in providing public water or sanitation services. They have been described as: “a peer relationship forged around common values and objectives, which exclude profit-seeking”.1 Neither partner expects a commercial profit, directly or indirectly. This makes PUPs very different from the public–private partnerships (PPPs) which have been promoted by the international financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank. The problems of PPPs have been examined in a number of reports. A great advantage of PUPs is that they avoid the risks of such partnerships: transaction costs, contract failure, renegotiation, the complexities of regulation, commercial opportunism, monopoly pricing, commercial secrecy, currency risk, and lack of public legitimacy.2 PUPs are not merely an abstract concept. The list in the annexe to this paper includes over 130 PUPs in around 70 countries. This means that far more countries have hosted PUPs than host PPPs in water – according to a report from PPIAF in December 2008, there are only 44 countries with private participation in water. These PUPs cover a period of over 20 years, and been used in all regions of the world. The earliest date to the 1980s, when the Yokohama Waterworks Bureau first started partnerships to help train staff in other Asian countries. Many of the PUP projects have been initiated in the last few years, a result of the growing recognition of PUPs as a tool for achieving improvements in public water management. This paper attempts to provide an overview of the typical objectives of PUPs; the different forms of PUPs and partners involved; a series of case studies of actual PUPs; and an examination of the recent WOPs initiative. It then offers recommendations for future development of PUPs.

Watching the clock

Discusses the implications of the Court of Appeal ruling in Ashe v National Westminster Bank Plc on whether a mortgagee's right to possession ran from the date that the legal charge was made over property, meaning that attempts to enforce possession 12 years after the mortgage was agreed were statute barred. Considers the reasons for banks to delay possession, the application of adverse possession rules in this context and the issue of public interest. Advises mortgagees on the benefits of limiting rights to possession to only become actionable when mortgagors are in default to avoid claims becoming statue barred. [From Legal Journals Index]

The mortgagee's duties on sale

Discusses the remedies available to mortgage lenders when borrowers default on their mortgage repayments. Examines aspects of the mortgagee's duty of care to the mortgagor when choosing to sell the property in terms of the timing of the sale, the mode of sale, the price obtained, and the sale of a commercial property to a party associated with the mortgagor. [From Legal Journals Index]

Leadership and management standards in the UK Lifelong Learning sector

Leadership and Management Standards in the UK Lifelong Learning Sector. Presentation on research findings on leadership and management in the LLS sector, in the context of UK government policy changes introducing the 2007 Principals' Qualifying Programme (PQP) delivered by the Centre for Excellence in Leadership (CEL)/Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS). Discusses the role of standards in leadership and management professional practice and development and sums up the history of development of standards in relation to the National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Leadership and Management, based on the UK Management Standards Centre (MSC) Institute for Leadership and Management Standards. Discusses the Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) Benchmark Role Specification for Principals in FE, Sixth Form and Specialist Colleges and the fact that the LSIS PQP has adopted those as part of its programme for Principal development. In the context of the implementation of standards for leadership and management, discusses the importance of values-based and research-informed leadership and the development of trust in lifelong learning sector institutions, given the multiple challenges facing vocational education and training (VET) institutions and the relative lack of recognition and support for the difficult roles taken on by Principals and senior leaders.

Sovereign rescheduling probabilities in emerging markets: a comparison with credit rating agencies' ratings

This study estimates default probabilities of 124 emerging countries from 1981 to 2002 as a function of a set of macroeconomic and political variables. The estimated probabilities are then compared with the default rates implied by sovereign credit ratings of three major international credit rating agencies (CRAs) – Moody's Investor's Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings. Sovereign debt default probabilities are used by investors in pricing sovereign bonds and loans as well as in determining country risk exposure. The study finds that CRAs usually underestimate the risk of sovereign debt as the sovereign credit ratings from rating agencies are usually too optimistic.

Generalized ocean color inversion model for retrieving marine inherent optical properties

Ocean color measured from satellites provides daily, global estimates of marine inherent optical properties (IOPs). Semi-analytical algorithms (SAAs) provide one mechanism for inverting the color of the water observed by the satellite into IOPs. While numerous SAAs exist, most are similarly constructed and few are appropriately parameterized for all water masses for all seasons. To initiate community-wide discussion of these limitations, NASA organized two workshops that deconstructed SAAs to identify similarities and uniqueness and to progress toward consensus on a unified SAA. This effort resulted in the development of the generalized IOP (GIOP) model software that allows for the construction of different SAAs at runtime by selection from an assortment of model parameterizations. As such, GIOP permits isolation and evaluation of specific modeling assumptions, construction of SAAs, development of regionally tuned SAAs, and execution of ensemble inversion modeling. Working groups associated with the workshops proposed a preliminary default configuration for GIOP (GIOP-DC), with alternative model parameterizations and features defined for subsequent evaluation. In this paper, we: (1) describe the theoretical basis of GIOP; (2) present GIOP-DC and verify its comparable performance to other popular SAAs using both in situ and synthetic data sets; and, (3) quantify the sensitivities of their output to their parameterization. We use the latter to develop a hierarchical sensitivity of SAAs to various model parameterizations, to identify components of SAAs that merit focus in future research, and to provide material for discussion on algorithm uncertainties and future emsemble applications.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS) (I): Toxicity, population exposure and involved foods

Food is one of the main exogenous sources of genotoxic compounds. In heated food products, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) represent a priority group of genotoxic, mutagenic and/or carcinogenic chemical pollutants with adverse long-term health effects. People can be exposed to these compounds through different environments and via various routes: inhalation, ingestion of foods and water and even percutaneously. The presence of these compounds in food may be due to environmental contamination, to industrial handling and processing of foods and to oil processing and refining. The highest levels of these compounds are found in smoked foods, in seafood which is found in polluted waters, in grilled meats and, to a lesser extent, in vegetable fats and oils. Lower levels of PAHs are found in vegetables and in cereals and its products.

La influencia de las nuevas tecnologías en los hábitos de lectura: análisis de las noticias de "El País", "El Mundo" y "ABC" (2011)

En este texto se explica el cambio de hábitos que ha supuesto la lectura en formato digital. Se indican los factores que determinan la selección un formato u otro, al igual que la situación en la que se encuentra la lectura digital en España. Para ello, se analizan las noticias sobre este tema encontradas en los periódicos: ABC, El País y El Mundo durante el año 2011 -período relevante para la lectura digital- y se comparan con los resultados de las encuestas de AIMC, FGEE, etc., con el fin de sacar conclusiones certeras.

El apoyo a la investigación en las bibliotecas universitarias españolas

Los cambios sufridos por los modelos de comunicación científica hacen que las bibliotecas universitarias se vean obligadas a dar nuevos servicios. Para adecuarse al investigador los bibliotecarios están desarrollando habilidades, colaborando con cada vez más estamentos y sustentando el acceso abierto. Apoyándose en una lista de posibles servicios, basada en la literatura especializada, este trabajo pretende cuantificar y evaluar el apoyo a la investigación desde las bibliotecas universitarias españolas. El sondeo demuestra la aparición de nuevos servicios e infraestructuras. Pero estas asistencias no suelen sistematizarse, difundirse ni evaluarse. Y, por otra parte, las consecuentes inversiones en personal y TIC han generado una brecha entre universidades

The divulgation of hygiene-sanitation matters at the start of Spanish radio (1933-1957)

The work analyse from a journalistic point of view the history radio divulgation of health during the Second Republic and the start of the Franco era. For it, printed sources of the health broadcast conferences have been analysed. The most frequently used radio genre was a combination of informative monologue and monologue opinion. Questions relating to maternal-juvenile health were the most disseminated. In general, the radio language employed responded to the needs for clarity, as well as adapting the message to the target audience. With Francoism, the political slogans were incorporated and the gender discussions were given more importance.

Scientifi c discourses on chronic pain without organic cause Incorporating gender perspective for pain resignifyng-repoliticizing

Chronic pain, without any organic or physical cause (DC), which in psycho-medical terminology is known as fi bromyalgia, (FM), is diagnosed each year to a considerable number of women in capitalistic societies. Our main interest in the following paper is to go in depth in the elaboration of this symptom, its treatment and the psychosocial effects, both in the social order as well as in the lives of the people who suffer from it. Our main goal in the following paper is to look deeper in the elaboration (conceptualization) of this symptom, its treatment and psychological affects, both in the social order as well as in the lives of the people who suffer from it, we are using linked speeches in Spanish magazines publications. The result has been the emergence of three hegemonic discourse positions: One position “scientist”, one “therapeutic of the conformity” position and one “economic and legalistic” position. Each of these has a specifi c feature, but on the whole, is enhanced, producing effects such as the absence of social context to explain the disease; disregard of gender differences in the management and treatment; the instrumentalization of pain to legitimize their practices and the subjection of women to the “psycho-biomedical” paradigm. In that way, a new signifi cance and politicization of the concept of pain is proposed.

La incidencia de los valores culturales en el voluntariado: el caso de Europa

La realidad del voluntariado es sumamente compleja hasta el punto de que resulta complicado definir y caracterizar el trabajo voluntario, dada la gran variedad de interpretaciones, motivaciones, variables sociodemográficas y aspectos culturales que configuran el perfil de los voluntarios. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la influencia conjunta de algunas variables sociodemográficas, así como de los valores culturales de índole secular o tradicional, sobre el perfil de los voluntarios en Europa. Además, se investiga qué variables orientan a los voluntarios hacia un determinado tipo de voluntariado u otro. Para ello se ha aplicado principalmente una metodología de regresión logística a partir de la información disponible en la European Value Study. Los resultados obtenidos ayudan a establecer una caracterización del voluntariado en Europa, y confirman la influencia de los valores culturales, en primer lugar, en la realización o no de trabajos de voluntariado, y en segundo lugar, en la elección que hacen estas personas del tipo de actividad con la que están comprometidos. Al analizar dos tipos de voluntariado de motivación supuestamente muy diferente, se concluye que existe un grupo de valores que influyen en ambos, aunque el sentido y la intensidad en la que lo hacen sea diferente; por otra parte, algunos valores tienen influencia o no en la realización de trabajos de voluntariado, dependiendo del tipo específico al que nos refiramos.

Determining factors of the innovative behavior of cooperatives: an analysis of the case of Castilla y León

Cooperatives have a long historical experience in the Spanish economy and have demonstrated their ability to compete against traditional firms in the market. To maintain this capability, while taking advantage of the competitive advantages associated with their idiosyncrasies as social economy enterprises, they should take into consideration that the economy is increasingly globalized and increasingly knowledge-based, especially with regards to technological content. As a consequence, the innovative capacity appears to be a key aspect in order to be able to challenge competitors. This article characterizes the innovative behavior of cooperatives in the region of Castile and Leon and analyses the internal and external factors affecting their innovative performance, based on data from a survey of 581 cooperatives. The results of the empirical analysis, which is performed by multivariate binary logistic regression on various types of innovation, lead us to identify the size of the organizations, the existence of planning, the R & D activities and the human capital as the main determining factors.