Frances Morton gives a quick preview of the ESRC Festival of Social Science which runs from 4-11 November with a rich and varied programme to debate, discuss and discover how social science shapes our lives, public policy, the economy and our society.
Dr Gráinne Watson spoke to Slugger about ‘smart cities’ ahead of her session at Thursday’s Big Data Belfast conference. The concept has burgeoned as local and national governments try to address the impact of climate change, recycling targets, urban regeneration, transport congestion and economic investment.
The Northern Ireland administration’s late and confused hurricane warning to school children and young people parallels local political attitudes to climate change. By failing to take climate change seriously even when the evidence is hitting us in the face we are disregarding the rights of our children and young people. The late, confused and inefficient warning on Sunday evening to students and parents is like a metaphor for the slow, confused and ineffective response that government has made here …
Maybe a dose of distance and diplomacy is what the NI political talks need? Country estates like Mount Stewart offered hospitality and privacy to decision makers. It was an age of slow diplomacy. Something that the National Trust are celebrating in their second year of hosting the Mount Stewart Conversations at their lough shore property.
By Ciara Brennan, Ray Purdy and Peter Hjerp Recent scandals including the RHI debacle and the discovery of illegal dumping on a massive scale (most notably at the Mobuoy Road ‘super-dump’) have catapulted Northern Ireland’s environmental governance failures into the public eye. The divergence from what can be considered ‘good’ environmental governance is clear and the environmental, economic and socio-political consequences of these failures cannot be overestimated. Protecting the environment is not a one-way cost and there has been very little …
DECLASSIFIED PAPERS show how government departments responded to Secretary of State Peter Brooke’s request for ideas about local excellence as he prepared for a speech designed to show off Northern Ireland. What ideas would such a speech contain today?
Wondrous images, from a million miles out in space, from NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) of the shadow of the moon crossing over North America on Aug. 21, 2017. EPIC is aboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), photographing the full sunlit side of Earth every day. [Image credit: NASA EPIC Team. Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Katy Mersmann] Pete Baker
Lessons for Belfast Urban Regeneration at Féile an Phobail 2017 By Peadar Kirby & Peter Doran While Ireland was living through the most severe economic collapse of its history since independence, a group of pioneering people were sowing the seeds of a new society through founding the ecovillage of Cloughjordan in County Tipperary. Seeking to model sustainable living for the 21st century, the ecovillagers conceived their project during the boom years of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger in the late 1990s and …
It’s now OK, according to a paper in BMJ not to finish a course of antibiotics. It is merely a myth according to researchers who can find no evidence that stopping your antibiotics when you feel well, does not lead to bug-resistance as we have always believed. Doctors, however, in spite of this finding are still suggesting that you should continue to take antibiotics as instructed and that means completing the course. It’s all a bit confusing and what’s the …
People in Northern Ireland really love their diesel vehicles. In fact, around 60% of vehicles on the road are diesel powered, and about 45% of private cars. Just one small issue, diesel pollution is killing people. If sitting in a traffic jam on the Westlink is not depressing enough, now you know that you are also slowly killing yourself and everyone around you. Researchers estimate diesel pollution kills around 30,000 people every year. From the Guardian: The global human health impact …
So an end to donation secrecy in Northern Ireland. It’s been long awaited, but today James Brokenshire made good his party’s promise in their Northern Irish manifesto… From Hansard: James Brokenshire: “The hon. Lady highlights the issue of political donations and transparency. We conducted a consultation with all the political parties in Northern Ireland to seek their views first, and that was the reason for the decision we have taken today, reflecting those views and that input and the commitment …
Charlie Gard will probably die in the next few days. His death I hope will be private, peaceful and dignified and my sincere sympathy to his parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard and I truly hope they can move on with their lives after the torture of the last few months. Charlie’s short, tragic life has been lived too much in the glare of publicity, and as a result many will know of his case and the legal wranglings surrounding …
Queen’s University Belfast will be hosting an interactive showcase event at Belfast City Hall to demonstrate the impact the University has on the community in Belfast and across the globe. The showcase will take place on Tuesday, 30 May 2017 from 10am – 2.30pm in the Great Hall at Belfast City Hall. There will be over 30 interactive exhibitions from a range of Queen’s world-leading experts and researchers showcasing their work under the themes of Future Cities, Healthy Citizens, …
I get a distinct feeling of unease when I hear an individual or a group on the media complaining that their ‘rights’ to something have been infringed. I wouldn’t necessarily have thought that these people can make any such claim, but they are often vocal in their assertions. A group, for example, may take over a vacant property and ‘squat’ there; when there is an attempt at eviction they will claim that they have ‘squatters’ rights’. Perhaps they do have …
NI SCIENCE FESATIVAL combines, space, poetry, optics, theatre, stories, TV, cognitive computing, atomic food safety, astrophysics and quantum biology in a fun-packed programme for everyone.
It seems like only yesterday that I was noting First Light on Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory [SDO], and the early hours of this morning for ‘three years in three minutes‘ and ‘SDO Year 4‘. In fact the SDO was launched on 11 Feb 2010, with First Light in April of that year. [Seven long years… – Ed] Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre have produced a short [3 min 22 sec] video marking the solar sunspot cycle during that time. [Credit: NASA’s …
Patrick, 84 this year, is nothing short of a minor miracle. A bright, intelligent and curious man, had he not been such a heavy and committed drinker, his life might have been very different. He has always lived in the street where he grew up in the pitiful poverty of the 1930s. In spite of his sharp intelligence he never broke free from the impoverishment inherited from his parents. A few years back we were sure he would die. Following …
Two items this morning, before the profiles. One was largely a reprise of yesterday’s story on the odd position the SF Health Minister now finds herself in, and then the odd news that the Attorney General is considering suing the Dept of the Economy for not (in the first place) bringing the RHI to the Executive table back in 2012, making it, he argues, unlawful. We really are moving through the looking glass here. So, South Antrim: If the DUP is …
…with this stunning composite image of the Earth and its moon, courtesy of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona] From the associated text This composite image of Earth and its moon, as seen from Mars, combines the best Earth image with the best moon image from four sets of images acquired on Nov. 20, 2016, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Each …
One Sinn Fein friend on Twitter this morning tried to argue that a SF public representative producing their own Press Release from their own email (after it had been withdrawn by the press office) was normal practice. Not in my experience. In fact, as Gareth McKeown points out, it was only one word of a difference: After appearing to clarify it did not support a public inquiry on Friday evening a senior MLA contradicted the party line on Monday by …
