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Points, Pincers and Paper Play: The Containing and Uncontaining Work of Chatterboxes
No full textWhat you will find contained within the next few pages is no ordinary article. Or, at least, no article constructed in the ordinary way in which academic communication is contained. Rather, drawing on our creative/critical school Ullapoolism, what ensues is a playful approach towards a paper object and, as a consequence, a way of communicating, conveying, and containing knowledge. It is a textual container, but one which works in an unusual way. As such, ‘Points, Pincers and Paper Play: The Containing and Uncontaining Work of Chatterboxes’ needs something of a user’s manual for reading. The article is structured like the object of its focus, the ‘chatterbox’, or paper fortune teller (Figure 1) whose provenance and purpose is explored within
James Wodrow, John Witherspoon and the Negotiation of Moderatism in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Full text linkJohn Witherspoon is well known for his career as principal of the College of New Jersey after his years as a parish minister in Ayrshire, but other Evangelical ministers in the eighteenth-century Church of Scotland are now acknowledged not merely to have had spiritual priorities, but also to have responded to and participated in the Enlightenment project. Their Moderate counterparts, however, are still often characterised as essentially irreligious, or at least unspiritual, intellectuals and power players. This article examines James Wodrow (1730-1810), parish minister of Stevenston, Ayrshire, and his relationships with John Witherspoon and other Ayrshire and Renfrewshire ministers, both Evangelicals (or Popular party adherents) and Moderates. It suggests that Wodrow represented, in one person, the imprint of a Moderate stamp upon a Covenanting and Evangelical heritage; that his friends, and his own modus operandi, illuminate a spectrum of Moderate theology and practice in late eighteenth-century Scotland, rather than a single blueprint; and that there was perhaps a greater proximity between Moderates and Popular party divines than is sometimes represented. It draws on the long and rich correspondence between Rev. James Wodrow (1730-1810) and his friend, the Unitarian banker, Samuel Kenrick (1729-1811) of Bewdley, Worcestershire.Output Status: Forthcomin
This condition impacts every aspect of my life: A survey to understand the experience of living with developmental prosopagnosia
Full text linkThis mixed methods study examined the real-world experiences of living with developmental prosopagnosia (face blindness), a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that severely affects the ability to recognise faces despite otherwise normal vision, IQ and memory. Twenty-nine UK based adults with confirmed face recognition difficulties completed an online survey describing and quantifying their experiences of living with poor face recognition. Although the majority (62%) of participants reported being able to recognise their immediate family, e.g., parent, partner, or child, strikingly 35% reported being unable to reliably recognise their immediate family members out of context. Even fewer (45%), reported always being able to recognise their three closest friends when encountering them unexpectedly, highlighting that DP commonly affects the recognition of highly familiar faces with whom individuals have close emotional relationships. Furthermore, participants who reported being able or unable to recognise their immediate family showed no significant difference in objective face memory ability. More than two thirds of participants (65.5%) reported being able to recognise fewer than 10 familiar faces (with the most common response being none), far below typical abilities. Thematic framework analysis highlighted how low public, professional, and employer awareness of developmental prosopagnosia presented challenges across multiple domains including seeking diagnosis, social and family relationships and workplaces. Driven largely by concerns about negative evaluation by others, most participants employed a range of highly effortful, though error prone, strategies to disguise and compensate for their face recognition difficulties. Some of the strategies described may help explain why many individuals can perform within typical norms on laboratory face processing tests despite their clear difficulties in everyday life and highlight the need for ecologically valid tests. Participants' highest priorities for future research were improved awareness of developmental prosopag-nosia and interventions to improve their face recognition ability.Good Health and Well-BeingReduced Inequalitie
A Psycho-Educational Curriculum Package for Sports Career Transition Practitioners: A Pilot Intervention Case Study
Full text linkThis study investigates the efficacy of a psycho-educational curriculum package in enhancing the practitioners’ competence to support high-performance athletes’ career transitions. This curriculum was integrated into academic modules at higher education institutions in Singapore (n = 18) and the UK (n = 14). Using online pre- and post-intervention questionnaires, along with open-ended questions, participant feedback on the curriculum was collected. Paired t-tests were used to assess the within-group differences pre- and post-intervention and two-way repeated-measures ANOVAs were conducted to examine the between-group differences pre- and post-intervention. The results revealed a significant difference between pre- and post-intervention scores for four factors and for both countries: Singapore and the UK. The curriculum enhanced participants’ confidence in working with athletes and helped identify areas for development. Three key themes were identified from the thematic content analysis of open-ended responses: (a) informative and insightful content, (b) interactive and engaging delivery (strengths), (c) overlapping content, and reading demands and time constraints (areas for improvement). By incorporating this feedback, supported by the results, the current study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by furnishing insights into an effective psycho-educational curriculum for helping the career transitions of high-performance athletes
Risky firms, ESG, and firm value: do women undertake a particular role?
Full text linkPurpose This study draws on financial slack, agency, and critical mass theories to investigate risky firms’ ESG engagement, board gender diversity’s moderating role between firm risk and ESG engagement, market reaction to risky firms’ ESG engagement, and board gender diversity’s role in moderating market reaction to risky firms’ ESG engagement. Design The study uses a sample of 44,129 firm-year observations between 2005 and 2019 across nine industries and 61 countries. We adopt Refinitiv’s (LSEG Workspace database) scheme in assessing firm ESG performance. Findings We find that firm risk is significantly and negatively associated with ESG performance. Board gender diversity (1) negatively moderates between firm risk and the environmental pillar (2) negatively moderates between firm risk and the social pillar, (3) negatively moderates between firm risk and CSR strategy metric of governance pillar but positively moderates between firm risk and management metric of the governance pillar. We show that as the number of female directors increases, their moderating effect between firms’ risk and ESG performance becomes stronger. The existence of a critical mass female directors on the board alleviates the market’s negative reaction to ESG engagements. Originality Although plenty of prior studies focused on board gender diversity’s role in driving firm outcomes, its role in risky firms’ ESG engagement is yet to be explored. It is imperative to investigate risky firms’ engagement in ESG because these firms face more financial distress and are more concerned about their short-term survival whilst investing in ESG is specifically sensitive to the accessibility of slack resources. Consequently, risky firms may have less flexibility to initiate ESG activities or cease them
Interactions between nutritional programming, genotype, and gut microbiota in Atlantic salmon: Long-term effects on gut microbiota, fish growth and feed efficiency
Full text linkNutritional programming (NP) is a tool for developing adaptive changes that can be expressed in adulthood by exposing individuals to a stimulus early in life. This study investigated the interactions between nutritional programming (NP), genotype and gut microbiota in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) across the life cycle, to potentially improve feed efficiency and fish health. Approximately 5100 eggs from six families characterised by high (HP) or low pigment retention (LP) were incubated and divided into four groups (HPM, HPV, LPM, LPV) that received a stimulus diet based on marine (M) (61 % fishmeal and 8 % fish oil) or vegetable (V) (5 % fishmeal, plant proteins and rapeseed oil) ingredients. This stimulus phase lasted three weeks, followed by a 49-week freshwater intermediate phase with fish fed a commercial feed subsequent to seawater transfer. In seawater, the fish were initially fed a commercial feed for 13 weeks and then switched to a plant-based “challenge” diet with approximately 3 % EPA + DHA until the end of the experiment, at 101 weeks, at which point fish were 4 kg. During the study, survival rates, SGR, and FCR were monitored. Samples for microbiota analysis were collected at T0 (after the stimulus), T1 (before the challenge), T2 (challenge, after the feed change), and T3 (end of the feeding trial). Gut and feed microbiota were analysed by bacterial DNA extraction, Illumina NGS library preparation and raw sequencing data analysis using QIIME 2 and PICRUSt software. Gut microbiota composition changed with fish age, independent of NP and pigmentation genotype, emphasising the importance of developmental stage. Early diet influenced beta diversity and increased the number of specific bacteria, but these changes decreased with time. NP influenced the gut microbiota during the stimulus phase but not during the challenge phase, showing that the current diet has a greater influence than the earlier diet. Some microbial genera were associated with different genotypes and diets, suggesting interactions between genotype and stimulus diet. Differences in the metabolic potential of the gut microbiota due to the stimulus diet were observed but were not associated with differences in growth and feed utilisation. The study concludes that early nutritional programming with a plant-based diet has a transient effect on growth and gut microbiota, with long-term growth performance being more strongly influenced by pigmentation genotype. Further studies on the interactions between genotype, diet and microbiota are required
The struggle to establish basketball in Scotland
Full text linkThis article documents the spread and uptake of basketball, specifically the infancy and the difficulty of establishing the sport in Scotland during the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth century. It discusses factors that help explain why basketball struggled to develop in Scotland and was sparsely played until World War II. It utilises accounts from former Scottish basketball personnel, local newspapers alongside documents from the Archives and Special Collections at Springfield College. The article proposes a seven-fold framework that rests upon two overarching arguments: that basketball relied on being voluntarily accepted and adopted in a new host country; and the assimilation of basketball into a different culture was difficult because of the existing social landscape and sporting environment. It concludes that modern sports such as association football, golf and rugby developed earlier in Scotland and by the arrival of basketball, held dominant positions. Furthermore, the Young Men's Christian Association played a key role in developing basketball worldwide were committed to football. Lastly, the contemporary gender ideologies led to men being off put from playing basketball due to the ‘girls’ game’ reputation. This coincided with and was replaced by the rise of netball, which quickly established improved foundations within training colleges for women.Quality Educatio
Hippocampal damage disrupts the latent decision-making processes underlying approach-avoidance conflict processing in humans
Full text linkRodent and human data implicate the hippocampus in the arbitration of approach-avoidance conflict (AAC), which arises when an organism is confronted with a stimulus associated simultaneously with reward and punishment. Yet, the precise contributions of this structure are underexplored, particularly with respect to the decision-making processes involved. We assessed humans with hippocampal damage and matched neurologically healthy controls on a computerized AAC paradigm in which participants first learned whether individual visual images were associated with the reward or loss of game points and were then asked to approach or avoid pairs of stimuli with non-conflicting or conflicting valences. To assess hippocampal involvement more broadly in response conflict, we also administered a Stroop and a Go/No-go task. On the AAC paradigm, following similar learning outcomes in individuals with hippocampal damage and matched controls, both participant groups approached positive and negative image pairs at the same rate but critically, those with hippocampal damage approached conflict pairs more often than controls. Choice and response AAC data were interrogated using the hierarchical drift diffusion model, which revealed that, compared to controls, individuals with hippocampal damage were more biased towards approach, required less evidence to make a decision during conflict trials, and were slower to accumulate evidence towards avoidance when confronted with conflicting image pairs. No significant differences were found between groups in performance accuracy or response time on the response conflict tasks. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the importance of the hippocampus to the evidence accumulation processes supporting value-based decision-making under motivational conflict
'You Know, Coaching, It Feels Like a Bit of a Magpie Game': A Qualitative Investigation into Sources of Teacher-Coach Knowledge and the Subsequent Impact on Espoused Teacher-Coach Pedagogy
Full text linkThe sources of knowledge that sport coaches use have been widely researched however, their impact on espoused pedagogy in the teacher-coach context is compara- tively underexplored The purpose of this study was to explore how teacher-coaches view knowledge, develop their knowledge, and espouse pedagogical practice. Semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis were used to explore this area with eleven teacher-coaches. Results were consistent with previous work on coaches’ and the perceived impact of for- mal coach education; however, certain aspects conflicted in the teacher-coach context. Teacher-coaches reported certain elements of their knowledge as fixed (such as technical models of skills) while acknowledging others such as pedagogical content as tentative. Similarly, although formal coach education was consistently regarded as low-impact due to prior teacher education, those teacher-coaches who had progressed furthest in this field displayed greater declarative nuance and adaptability. This suggests tacit benefits of formal coach education in the role of the theoretical underpinning of coaches’ practice
The Reflective Housing Practitioner: The role of qualifications for building empathy and person-centred approaches in the housing sector
Full text linkTragic events in the UK have led to a call to increase the ‘professionalism’ of those managing and delivering housing-related services. As part of this process, there is a need to build and integrate empathy, solidarity and person-centred approaches into housing learning to support teaching and practice. However, compared to other professions such as education and health, the housing sector has no reflective practice foundation to support this. In response, this paper offers a bespoke model of reflection for the housing sector, which we argue is pivotal to driving forward sector-wide ambitions to raise professional standards through education and qualifications. The ‘pyramid of housing reflection’ model is informed by experiences of the UK higher education context and empirical evidence that takes practitioners and learners through the journey of contextualising their position (description), impact and positionality (feelings), person-centred practice (empathy and solidarity) alongside engaging with power and critical thinking (structural impacts) to become a reflective housing practitioner. The paper outlines the powerful nature of reflective practice to support personal and professional growth, development and to raise service standards for tenants and other service users in the UK housing sector
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