Suchergebnisse

In the UK, water supplies are under pressure from climate, population and lifestyle change. Showering is the largest component of domestic water consumption. Young adults are high water-users at a transitional life-stage, when practices are dynamic, and habits shaped. This paper presents the methodology, early findings and reflections on challenges of working with different data types and scales, to explore real-world water-saving through a mixed-methods approach, focusing on showering patterns of first year university students in campus accommodation at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Combining household meter, logged water-fixture micro-component, personal-use questionnaire, user diary and stakeholder focus group data with the Scottish Government Individual-Social-Material model, typical showering demand reduction interventions were evaluated and insights into alternative interventions were generated. Results indicate Estates' routine equipment maintenance and database management affect data quality and consistency. Despite these issues a profile of daily student water use was derived (equivalent to 114 litres per person per day) but with high variability between different households (from 83 to 151 litres per person per day). Average shower durations (self-reported 10–12 minutes) were higher than reported UK norms, although frequency was similar to the UK daily shower norm. Average measured shower volumes (51 litres in one house) were not excessive, indicating shower fixtures provided a contribution to water saving.

AbstractUsing longitudinal household survey data from rural China and an identification strategy based on observed rainfall realizations, we are able to test household responses to idiosyncratic and covariate income shocks. We find that negative idiosyncratic income shocks increase migration and elicit household out rental of land. The effect of covariate income shocks is generally dependent on both the timing and the nature of the shock. Our results suggest that rainfall deficiencies during paddy maturing or harvesting seasons reduce the number of migrants by raising the marginal value product of farm labour, thereby increasing the opportunity costs associated with migration.

Recent scholarship in the field of party organization has focused attention on questions of adaptation and change. This article isolates one component of change - innovation - and develops that concept. It proposes a general model linking organizational innovation in political parties to changes in party environments. Further, it is demonstrated how this model may be operationalized. Finally, potential problems of measurement and data collection are discussed and collective strategies proposed.

Debate about the decline and revival of American political parties proceeds unabated in political science. Related to this debate is the attempt to link electoral outcomes with party organizational activity. A continuing impediment to resolving this conflict is the asymmetry in our ability to measure the two central concepts. While standard measures of electoral success and partisan competition abound, measures of party organization are less abundant. Although the methods introduced by the authors of the Party Transformation Study (PTS) for measuring party organizational strength have been influential, their survey-based technique has greater utility for some purposes than for others. We argue for the use of state party archives as a means for gathering the data necessary for building appropriate measures of party organization. We demonstrate the utility of this approach by linking data gathered in a pilot study of three such archives to the PTS framework.

This article examines the ways in which state parties have responded to changes in patterns of electoral competition. We contend that parties have tended to alter their organizational practices not only in anticipation of future elections, but also as a function of previous ones. The data are formed by case studies of the Republican parties in Texas and Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s. The sources of much of these data were the records of the parties themselves. This time period was chosen as it represents a dynamic period for Southern parties when the electoral landscape of the region was transformed. Both Republican party organizations were faced with opportunities that resulted from unanticipated election victories; however, the Texas party was more successful in capitalizing on this opportunity. We explain this by a number of organizational attributes.

This study examines the appropriate position for and configuration of a toilet seat for the population of the United Kingdom. The study is based on the assumption that only a seated posture would be acceptable. Subjects underwent sitting trials using five different toilet seats, and data obtained include physical and subjective measures of subjects' responses. It is recommended that the height of a toilet seat should be 0.4 m. Seat angle is not a critical factor in subject preference.