POST Newsletter

April 2012

Future work programme

At the POST Board meeting on March 27th, the Board agreed the following subject areas for future POSTnotes, which will be started when resources permit.

• Maximising the Value of Recycled Materials: this note will look at 'closed loop recycling' in which the quality of component materials is retained; the 'cradle to cradle' movement to integrate reuse and recyling into product design; and the potential for recovering greater amounts of rare and valuable metals from electronic products.
• Advanced Manufacturing: this note will look at developments in advanced manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing and initiatives to promte R&D in the UK.
• Managing Identity Online: this note will look at technical solutions to managing identity online, the implementation of single sign-on systems and the 'user-centric identity' movement which seeks to give people more control over their online identity.   
• Intermittent Electricity Generation: this note will examine the current evidence base for the impact of intermittency in electricity systems such as wind, wave and solar power.
• Biodiversity in UK Overseas Territories: this note will look at the internationally signifcant biodiversity contained in UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies and the responsibility for its protection.
• Preventing Diabetes: this note will look at trends in the prevalence of diabetes in the UK and elsewhere, summarise the evidence from long-term clincial trials about the potential to prevent diabetes in at-risk populations and look at initiatives to translate such findings into prevention programmes.
• Drug-resistant Tuberculosis: this note will look at the global threat of drug-resistant TB, examine surveillance systems in the UK and elsewhere, assess the risk of new strains emerging and the prospects of new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines being developed to control them.
• Assessing Disability: this note will look at ways of taking account of the wider picture when assessing disabled people's eligibility for benefits and services and examine the issue of who should have input into the assessment process.
• Mental Health and the Workplace: this note will describe trends in the prevalence of common mental health problems and their human and economic impacts. it will look at different approaches to managing mental problems in the workplace and supporting people affected by such conditions.

More details of POST's current work can be found on this website.

Recent news

Professor David Cope, the Director of POST, retired from Parliament at the end of March after nearly 15 years in the position. POST's Board and staff wish him a long and happy retirement.

Dr Chris Tyler, currently Executive Director of the Centre for Science and Policy in Cambridge has been appointed as Head of POST and will take up his position in June. In the interim, Dr Chandrika Nath has been promoted to Acting Head.

Undergrounding of Power Lines:  on 31st January, POST, in collaboration with the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, held a seminar on the costs of electricity power lines.  The seminar summarised the findings of an independent report on the subject, which was published the same day and endorsed by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.  The meeting was chaired by Tim Yeo MP, Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, and gave parliamentarians the opportunity to hear a summary of the report on the day of its publication, as well as to ask questions of the authors.

Future of UK Research: On 7th February, POST hosted a special meeting of the ‘Foresight Action Network’ to examine the future of UK scientific research, in collaboration with the Science and Technology Facilities Council. About 50 participants from a wide range of organisations took part in an intensive ‘brainstorm’, based on six ‘café tables’. The results of each table’s deliberations were then reported back and examined collectively.