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Living after Offa: Place-Names and Social Memory in the Welsh Marches
Get PDFHow are linear monuments perceived in the contemporary landscape and how do they operate as memoryscapes for today’s borderland communities? When considering Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke in today’s world, we must take into account the generations who have long lived in these monuments’ shadows and interacted with them. Even if perhaps only being dimly aware of their presence and stories, these are communities living ‘after Offa’. These monuments have been either neglected or ignored within heritage sites and museums with only a few notable exceptions (Evans and Williams 2019; Williams 2020), and have long been subject to confused and challenging conflations with both the modern Welsh/English border and, since the 1970s, with the Offa’s Dyke Path. Moreover, to date, no study has attempted to compile and evaluate the toponomastic (place-name) evidence pertaining to the monuments’ presences, and remembered former presences, in today’s landscape. Focusing on naming practices as memory work in the contemporary landscape, the article explores the names of houses, streets, parks, schools and businesses. It argues for the place-making role of toponomastic evidence, mediated in particular by the materiality of signs themselves. Material and textual citations to the monuments render them integral to local communities’ social memories and borderland identities, even where the dykes have been erased, damaged or obscured by development. Moreover, they have considerable potential future significance for engaging borderland communities in both dykes as part of the longer-term story of their historic environment
Heterospecific Fear and Avoidance Behaviour in Domestic Horses (Equus caballus)
Get PDFRidden horses have been reported to be fearful of cows. We tested whether cows could provoke behavioural and cardiac fear responses in horses, and whether these responses differ in magnitude to those shown to other potential dangers. Twenty horses were exposed to cow, a mobile object or no object. The time spent at different distances from the stimulus was measured. In a separate test, heart rate (HR), root mean square of successive differences between heartbeats (RMSSD) and the horses’ perceived fear were assessed at various distances from the stimuli. The horses avoided the area nearest to all stimuli. During hand‐leading, the cow elicited the highest HR and lowest RMSSD. Led horses’ responses to the cow and box were rated as more fearful as the distance to the stimulus decreased. Mares had a higher HR than geldings across all tests. HR positively
correlated with the fearfulness rating at the furthest distance from the cow and box, and RMSSD negatively correlated with this rating in cow and control conditions. Our results show that these horses’ avoidance response to cows was similar or higher to that shown towards a novel moving object, demonstrating that potentially, both neophobia and heterospecific communication play a role in this reaction
Assessment of serum total 25-hydroxyvitamin D assay commutability of Standard Reference Materials and College of American Pathologists Accuracy-Based Vitamin D (ABVD) Scheme and Vitamin D External Quality Assessment Scheme (DEQAS) materials: Vitamin D Standardization Program (VDSP) Commutability Study 2
Get PDFThe final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00216-021-03470-wAn interlaboratory study was conducted through the Vitamin D Standardization Program (VDSP) to assess commutability of Standard Reference Materials® (SRMs) and proficiency testing/external quality assessment (PT/EQA) samples for determination of serum total 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] using ligand binding assays and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). A set of 50 single-donor serum samples were assigned target values for 25-hydroxyvitamin D2 [25(OH)D2] and 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 [25(OH)D3] using reference measurement procedures (RMPs). SRM and PT/EQA samples evaluated included SRM 972a (four levels), SRM 2973, six College of American Pathologists (CAP) Accuracy-Based Vitamin D (ABVD) samples, and nine Vitamin D External Quality Assessment Scheme (DEQAS) samples. Results were received from 28 different laboratories using 20 ligand binding assays and 14 LC-MS/MS methods. Using the test assay results for total serum 25(OH)D (i.e., the sum of 25(OH)D2 and 25(OH)D3) determined for the single-donor samples and the RMP target values, the linear regression and 95% prediction intervals (PIs) were calculated. Using a subset of 42 samples that had concentrations of 25(OH)D2 below 30 nmol/L, one or more of the SRM and PT/EQA samples with high concentrations of 25(OH)D2 were deemed non-commutable using 5 of 11 unique ligand binding assays. SRM 972a (level 4), which has high exogenous concentration of 3-epi-25(OH)D3, was deemed non-commutable for 50% of the LC-MS/MS assays
Testing the Efficacy of the Synthesis of Iron Antimony Sulfide Powders from Single Source Precursors
Get PDFFrom MDPI via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-07-21, pub-electronic 2021-08-02Publication status: PublishedFunder: D.J.L. and F.A. thank the EPSRC for funding (EP/R020590/1); Grant(s): (EP/R020590/1)The antimony-iron sulfide system in general does not produce alloys below 540 °C from traditional solid-state methods. However, single source precursors have been known to produce unexpected products that arise from kinetically trapped polymorphs. In this paper, we test the efficacy of this approach toward the Fe-Sb-S system. Antimony and iron diethyldithiocarbamate complexes of the form Sb[S2CN(Et2)]3 (1) and Fe[S2CN(Et2)]3 (2) were synthesised, characterised, and used as single-source precursors for the preparation of Sb2S3, FexSy, and mixed iron antimony sulfide Sb2(1−x)Fe2xS3 (0 ≥ x ≥ 1) powders using the solvent-less thermolysis method at different temperatures ranging from 300 to 475 °C. The effect of different mole fractions of the iron precursor was evaluated on morphology, shape, and optical and magnetic properties of Sb2(1−x)Fe2xS3 (0 ≥ x ≥ 1). The obtained powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, magnetometer measurement, and UV/vis/NIR spectroscopy. The results demonstrated that the crystalline structure, morphology, and elemental composition of the samples changed with the mole fraction of the precursor. There was significant phase separation between Sb and Fe sulfides noted from EDX spectroscopic mapping, yet an optoelectronic study monitoring the direct band gap energy of antimony sulfide shows that the band gap energy increases as a function of Fe content, which suggests limited alloying is possible from the single source route
Adipocyte NR1D1 dictates adipose tissue expansion during obesity
Get PDFFrom eLife via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2020-09-22, collection 2021, accepted 2021-07-30, pub-electronic 2021-08-05Publication status: PublishedFunder: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000268; Grant(s): BB/I018654/1Funder: Medical Research Council; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265; Grant(s): MR/N021479/1Funder: Medical Research Council; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265; Grant(s): MR/P00279X/1Funder: Medical Research Council; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265; Grant(s): MR/P011853/1Funder: Medical Research Council; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265; Grant(s): MR/P023576/1Funder: Wellcome Trust; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100004440; Grant(s): 107849/Z/15/ZFunder: Wellcome Trust; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100004440; Grant(s): 107851/Z/15/ZThe circadian clock component NR1D1 (REVERBα) is considered a dominant regulator of lipid metabolism, with global Nr1d1 deletion driving dysregulation of white adipose tissue (WAT) lipogenesis and obesity. However, a similar phenotype is not observed under adipocyte-selective deletion (Nr1d1Flox2-6:AdipoqCre), and transcriptional profiling demonstrates that, under basal conditions, direct targets of NR1D1 regulation are limited, and include the circadian clock and collagen dynamics. Under high-fat diet (HFD) feeding, Nr1d1Flox2-6:AdipoqCre mice do manifest profound obesity, yet without the accompanying WAT inflammation and fibrosis exhibited by controls. Integration of the WAT NR1D1 cistrome with differential gene expression reveals broad control of metabolic processes by NR1D1 which is unmasked in the obese state. Adipocyte NR1D1 does not drive an anticipatory daily rhythm in WAT lipogenesis, but rather modulates WAT activity in response to alterations in metabolic state. Importantly, NR1D1 action in adipocytes is critical to the development of obesity-related WAT pathology and insulin resistance
Thinking with ‘lexical’ features to reconceptualize the ‘grammar’ of schooling: Shifting the focus from school to society
Get PDFFrom Springer Nature via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: registration 2020-08-03, pub-electronic 2020-08-13, online 2020-08-13, pub-print 2021-08Publication status: PublishedAbstract: Achieving changes to education practices and structures is a significant issue facing reformers internationally, and researchers have confronted how such changes, and the conditions for these, might be conceptualized. These issues resonate particularly as researchers grapple with imagining a post-COVID-19 landscape where social and educational norms may change. Tyack and Tobin, in their 1994 article ‘The “Grammar” of Schooling: Why has it been so hard to change?’ argued that several features of the American education system are so persistent as to warrant being understood as the ‘grammar’ of schooling. In this article, we reconceptualize this ‘grammar’ by taking seriously Tyack and Tobin’s insistence that ‘grammar’ organises meaning. Starting here, we argue that what they took to be grammatical features are the products and not the producers of meaning. We draw on the cases of the United States and England to argue that four international discourses have performed this meaning-making work: industrialization; welfarism; neoliberalism and neoconservatism. These are the ‘grammars’ of schooling—and of society. Their discursive products, including age grading and sorting into subjects are, we suggest, ‘lexical’ features that express the grammar. We use lexical features to explain the multi-directional interplay between discourse and educational feature: the lexical may endure longer than the grammatical, changes to which may be effected and/or legitimated through appealing to a lexical feature. We conclude by outlining key implications for realizing and conceptualizing educational change, including for a post-COVID-19 landscape
Book Review: Planning in the Early Medieval Landscape, by John Blair, Stephen Rippon and Christopher Smart
Get PDFThis is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in English Historical Review following peer review. The version of record Pickles, T. (2021). Planning in the early Medieval landscape [Review of the book Planning in the early Medieval landscape, by J. Blair, S. Rippon & C. Smart]. English Historical Review, 136(582), 1288-1290, is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceab213A book review of John Blair, Stephen Rippon, and Christopher Smart, Planning the Early Medieval Landscape (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020)
Simmel and Shakespeare on Lying and Love
Get PDFFrom SAGE Publishing via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: epub 2021-01-31Publication status: PublishedThis article contributes to the development of the sociology of lying by exploring some of the earliest comments on the topic, which are to be found amongst Georg Simmel’s writings about secrecy. We outline Simmel’s broader approach to interaction, as an experience that is conditioned upon non-knowledge, and work towards the attribution to him of the discovery of an aesthetic of concealment and revelation. This, we argue, can be used as a founding block in the sociology of lying. We then examine what Simmel has to say about lying specifically and find he falls into contradiction as he tries to link lying to other social forms, such as love, and to the shifting patterns of life which he understood to define modernity. To refine his approach, we look back to the period of early modernity during which questions of self-revelation and concealment are being explored in literature and lived uncertainly. Specifically, we take a detailed look at William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138, for it clearly articulates the complex, relational dynamics of lying and love and allows us to read this back into Simmel’s account and explain why he falls into confusion. We then conclude by posing a series of questions and taking the position that sociologists should study lying as a relational phenomenon
Acute and chronic effects of beetroot supplementation on blood pressure and arterial stiffness in humans
Get PDFThis article has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input by Cambridge University Press, in Proceedings of the Nutrition Society published by Cambridge University Press. Copyright The Authors 2015.Dietary supplementation of beetroot juice, containing nitrate- a potent vasodilation agent, has been shown to be vasoprotective( 1 ), and dose dependent decreases in blood pressure (BP) have been previously demonstrated(2,3). To our knowledge there has been only one study investigating the effect of beetroot supplementation in humans on arterial stiffness, measured using pulsewave velocity (PWV) and, although there was no effect of supplementation on PWV, there was a significant reduction due to beetroot supplementation in acute diastolic BP (3hrs, P = 0·023)( 4 ).
A double-blind, randomised, cross-over intervention trial was carried out in a cohort of 12 healthy male participants (mean age (SEM) = 43 (2·1) yrs, BMI = 27·8 (1·1) kg.m2) who underwent both beetroot juice and placebo supplementation for 14 days. The aim of the study was to assess the effect of 6·45 mmol of nitrate in a concentrated 70 ml beetroot drink (James White Ltd, Ipswich, UK) on systolic and diastolic BP, mean arterial pressure (MAP) and arterial stiffness (PWV, aortic augmentation index (Aix), brachial Aix) in humans.
BP and arterial stiffness measurements weretaken using PWV (Arteriograph, TensioMed,Hungary). Measurements were taken intriplicate at baseline, 3 hours post-supplementation (either beetroot juice orplacebo) and post-intervention (day 15). This was followed by a 7-day washoutperiod before participants were transferred to the alternate supplement.
Table 1 shows that there was no significant acute or short term effect of beetroot juice supplementation on the parameters measured when compared to placebo. However, there was a significant decrease in systolic BP (P = 0·009), diastolic BP (P = 0·035), MAP (P = 0·017), aortic and brachial AIX (P = 0·042 and 0·041 respectively), 3hours post beetroot supplementation.
These results confirm previous findings( 4 ) that beetroot supplementation does not have an acute or short term effect on arterial stiffness measures. However, acute effects on arterial stiffness and BP within the beetroot juice supplementation group were observed. Further large scale studies on dietary nitrate supplementation and cardiovascular health are required to further assess efficacy
Guest editorial
Get PDFWelcome to the first issue of the Journal of Work Applied Management of 2021 and this special issue
on “The nexus of work-applied skills and learning: comparative approaches across sectors
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