Social Science sites of the week 9th Juanary 2020

Australian Bush Fires

With the ongoing devastation of the Australian bush fires filling the news
here are several recommended starting points to finding academic quality information.
Geoscience Australia provides basic facts on natural hazards in Australia and the work which it does to protect
The Bureau of Meterology has facts about bush fires and the weather
It has links to current fire danger warnings.
Australian central and regional governments also have air quality indexes
https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alert-bushfires-and-smoke

How common are bush fire disasters?
Find out by searching the Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub which has open source authoritative reports. It also includes case studies of good practice. and a disaster map of historic incidents.
In 2018 it published this report on the economic costs of natural disasters to Australia
The Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC is a research organisation. Its website has comment and academic papers it includes bush fire prediction projects
A catalogue of 300 inquiries and reviews relating to emergency management/natural hazards across all jurisdictions in Australia between 1886 and 2017.
the news and blogs section has discussion of the causes and handling of the crisis


The Bushfire and Natural Hazard Cooperative Research Centre
Are bushfires linked to climate change?
The Climate Council has issued a paper This is not normal
Australia Institute also has discussion
NSW government website has some links to Australian federal and regional government papers.


FTSE 100 CEOs only need to work until Monday 6 January 2020 in order to make the same amount of money that the typical full-time employee does in the entire year

Get the facts from the High Pay Centre website which also has a pay counter where you can compare your wages with that of the average CEO. The site also has briefings on pay inequality in general. CIPD has pay reviews of the renumeration packages of top FTSE executives

See discussion of the data on the Conversation blog.


Luxembourg launches web archive

La Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg (BnL) has just launched a new web archive.It aims to preserve curated collections of web resources from the nation on key topics. They currently have local and national elections from 2017 onwards plus current events

For information on the challenges facing UK web archiving see presentations from the ALISS website.

The UK National Archives is currently preparing a special web archive to contain information on legislation on the day we leave the EU.

This can be viewed here
The aim is for researchers to be able to understand which legislation originated from the EU, its original form and how it evolved after. See the information on the UK government legislation website

Veganuary - some free academic facts and figures

In recent years there have been compaigns related to veganuary.
Veganuary is a non-profit organisation that encourages people worldwide to try vegan for January and beyond

Is Veganism increasing?
the Vegan Society quote the statistics that from 2014-2018 the number of vegans in Great Britain increased 4 times. In 2014, the number of vegans was 150 thousand, which increased to 600 thousand in 2018.in 2018 1.16 percent of the population of Great Britain were vegan in 2018. The Food Standards Agency has consumer surveys of the types of foods purchased. These offer insight into household diets in the Uk and the changing nature of foods consumed. Wave 5 2018 noted. "Over time, the consumption of red meat and pre-cooked meat has gradually fallen. In Wave 2 (2012) of Food and You, 75% of adults ate cuts of beef, lamb or pork at least once a week, compared with 55% in the current wave.
Mintel has also recently noted UK is increasingly launching Vegan food brands . It noted: "as many as one in six (16%) food products launched in the UK in 2018 had a vegan/no animal ingredients claim, doubling from just 8% in 2015"

Does veganism help combat global warming?
A recent report by the Committee on Climate Change
recommended adopting a more plant based diet along with reducing transport emissions and making heating more efficient to help reduce global warming
This echoes a 2016 PNAS article by Springmann et al which found that: "Transitioning toward more plant-based diets that are in line with standard dietary guidelines could reduce global mortality by 6–10% and food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 29–70% compared with a reference scenario in 2050"
In 2018 Greenpeace published a similar report demanding ' global reduction of 50% in production and consumption of animal products by 2050 and a change in the way we produce them."

What about veganism and health?
Try searching Pubmed for scientific evidence of any possible advantages and disadvantages. A recent example is this systematic review which produced some interesting evidence.

Did you know that many early feminists were vegetarian?
In 1911 Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary “I have become a vegetarian and keep rigidly to the two meals a day.. I hanker after giving up tea, coffee alcohol, all poisons but the appetite overcomes my better will
https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:won715bor/read/single#page/156/mode/2up
the radical journal, Shafts, edited by Margaret Shurmer Sibthorp gave some early advice on how to become a vegetarian in 1893
https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:yaw345dol/read/single#page/1/mode/1up
https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:yaw345dol/read/single#page/2/mode/1up

Office for Students will intervene if colleges do not have robust procedures for dealing with allegations of sexual harassment and abuse

The latest guidelines have just been released by the Office for Students. Read the full text on their website
Our scoop.it page has links to other reports covering HE , teaching and learning


Has the UK always been a nation of Migrants?

Interesting facts from this recent PNAS map of the genetic landscape of Scotland. It reveals the extent of Norse Viking ancestry.


Ideas of India website

Great resource built by Rahul Sagar. It aims to provide information on historic periodicals produced by Indian scholars from the 18th century. Many of these are now no longer published, cannot easily be located in India and details are often lost. The site has online indexes with publication details and links to online resources where available. It is possible to browse by era or speciality. There are also tables of print library holdings which can be consulted.


CC Search Browser Extension

From the official Creative Commons Website a new tool which can be added to a browser to filter images and attribute. See the full explanation for the website. The The latest version of the extension is available for installation via Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera.



Finally be nostalgic

Radio times from the 1950s.
BBC Genome website has now added Radio Times from the 1950s. This supplements the existing historic collections from 1920s-1940s. see this blog posting of highlight such as Andy Pany from watch with Mother.

The Christmas 1957 radio Times previews the Queens Christmas broadcast on TV. The back page has a wonderful ad for the top of the range Ferguson TV.

The database now has a searchable catalogue of programme listings from 1923-2009.the BBC website also has :

21/03/1974 · MP Sally Oppenheim and writer Juliet Mitchell debate the role of women in society. (1974) https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/argument--womens-rights-radical-change/zkghd6f

Aside from the Debate the 1970s styles are worth viewing.!