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State of the Field and Future of CLD in Scotland
No full textI was asked to provide an input at Moray house on the state of the field of Community, Learning and Development (CLD). This was on 14th June and therefore, before the findings of the review called by the Minister for Higher and Further Education on how the CLD Service offers support and development to learners in Scotland’s communities (Scottish Government, 2023a). The following is a slightly amended version of that talk to provide greater reading clarity
The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& how it came to control your life) (2024)
No full textWhile there have been other books on the rise of neoliberalism[1] this book seeks to bring the concept of neoliberalism to a wider public. It aims to offer a readable, accessible guide, to make visible the key concepts of this ideology, how it has been promoted, and to develop an argument which opposes a political logic that in recent years has advocated these concepts as the new “common sense” - immutable principles for which there is no alternative
A Potent Chew?: Kenyan Khat and the Agency of Drugs
No full textFew other categories of things appear so bound up with questions of agency, power and responsibility as that of ‘drugs’. With over a century of global treaties and prohibition of such substances, we are accustomed to thinking of them as potent things that can hold us in their thrall. Social science approaches, in contrast, tend to downplay the agency and power of the drug itself, showing how such agency and power is distributed among wider contexts. This paper explores themes of drug power and agency through a case study of khat. While relatively weak in terms of pharmacology, khat brims with potency in how people talk about it and its effects. I argue that such talk is crucial for understanding the potency of the substance itself. This talk helps us understand how drug potency is not just a pharmacological property, but an historical, sociological and anthropological one too; such talk also acts to reinforce this potency through influencing expectations of what being ‘under the influence’ entails. Furthermore, while drug potency during moments of intoxication is fleeting, the stories of succumbing to a drug that arise from these moments have a longer-term potency as they are recounted over the years
Solace of Substance: Agency, Surrender, and Consolation in Addiction and Polydrug Use
No full textAlthough preceding its association with substance use, early uses of the term ‘addiction’ signified intense attachment or ‘devotion’ to an activity or pursuit, indicating compromised autonomy, a necessary ‘culling’ of conflicting obligations, such as family and other concerns, and a potentially dangerous surrender (Lemon 2018). Recent advances in biomedical and neuroscientific understandings of addiction, as a relapsing neurological disorder, have sharpened notions of substance use as being outside of conscious control. Yet framing addiction in terms of individual, neurobiological predispositions towards addictive behaviour, continues to impact how we view agency, responsibility, and autonomy, even as substances are ascribed their own powerful agencies.
Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with individuals and third sector services in south-east Scotland, this article attends to ambiguous notions of agency attributed to and by people who use substances, and to substances themselves. It asks how responsibility for recovery becomes divested onto individuals, and how a moral ‘devotion’ to one’s recovery is mandated by medical and judicial institutions. The article further highlights how dyadic and intimate relationships with heroin are emplaced within wider webs of relations, and how heroin itself is suffused with agency and intentionality: becoming at once a force for destruction and source of life-giving surrender
Preprints mean peer review can be reimagined as it should always have been
Get PDFPeer review, a cornerstone of scholarly communications, is often acknowledged as a vital yet flawed process in academia. Among its well-known limitations—sluggishness, wastefulness, inconsistency and bias—its lack of transparency has arguably most impeded efforts to reform research assessment and promote open science. The recent boom in preprints, however, may now provide the impetus and opportunity to reimagine peer review for the better.
eLife’s new ""preprint-first"" publishing model is a response to this challenge and opportunity. Since January 2023, the open-access journal has eliminated ""accept/reject"" decisions after peer review. Instead, they’ve redesigned their processes to provide public assessments for every preprint reviewed. In doing so, peer review at eLife makes better use of the peer reviewers’ time and can offer readers an understanding of a specific work\u27s strengths and weaknesses, much more nuanced and representative than any individual metric could ever hope to provide.
Drawing on data and lessons from the first year of the new model, this presentation will delve into the transformative potential of preprints and reimagined peer review to positively influence both career development opportunities and diversity within the researcher community.
The talk made the case that the remaining barrier to the wider adoption of new models of transparent peer review is not technological but cultural. Transforming research culture for the better now hinges on uptake by other publishers, as well as support from institutions and funders. While this kind of change will take time, the potential resulting shift in research culture could see academia finally break free from its obsession with journal titles and impact factors, enabling researchers to be judged on what they publish and not where they publish
Valvular and Myocardial Fibroblast Activation in Aortic Stenosis
Get PDFActivated fibroblasts drive leaflet thickening and left ventricular decompensation in aortic stenosis. Gallium-68 Fibroblast Activation Protein Inhibitor (68Ga-FAPI) binds to these key effector cells, and provides a readout of fibroblast activation. We aimed to describe the role of activated fibroblasts in patients with aortic stenosis in vivo using 68Ga-FAPI.
In a prospective observational study, patients with aortic stenosis and control subjects underwent echocardiography, 68Ga-FAPI PET, CT, and MRI. Valvular and myocardial 68Ga-FAPI uptake was quantified using maximal standardised uptake values (SUVmax), and target-to-background ratio (TBRmax). Aortic stenosis severity was measured by peak velocity on echocardiography and the CT calcium score. Myocardial fibrosis was quantified by late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) on MRI.
86 patients with aortic valve disease (72±11 years, 68% male) plus 9 matched control subjects (72±9 years, 67%% male) participated. Increased 68Ga-FAPI uptake was observed in the aortic valves of patients with aortic stenosis compared with controls (p<0.001). 68Ga-FAPI TBRmax correlated with peak velocity (r=0.532, p<0.0010) and calcium score (r = 0.577, p<0.001). 54 patients (69%) had myocardial 68Ga-FAPI uptake, of whom 30 (38%) also had LGE corresponding to the region of 68Ga-FAPI uptake. Myocardial 68Ga-FAPI uptake correlated with increased indexed left ventricular mass (r=0.429, p<0.001) and indexed Extracellular Volume (r=0.404, p<0.001).
For the first time, we have described valvular and myocardial fibroblast activation in patients with aortic stenosis in vivo. Valvular fibroblast activation is increased in patients with aortic stenosis, correlating with increased disease severity. Myocardial fibroblast activation is seen in the majority of patients with aortic stenosis in areas with and without established fibrosis, and is associated with adverse left ventricular remodelling. 68Ga-FAPI PET can visualise the key effector cell driving aortic valve disease, and may have a role in monitoring disease modifying treatments, as well as identifying patients at high risk of myocardial decompensation.
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A Comparative Critical Analysis of the Financial Remedies for Cohabiting Couples upon Relationship Breakdown in Scotland and Germany
Get PDFIn light of the Report on Cohabitation of the Scottish Law Commission from 2022, the article assesses which financial remedies are across jurisdictions most appropriate for cohabiting couples upon relationship breakdown and comparatively analyses the existing ones in both Scotland and Germany. The author argues that the best way to balance the protection of the more vulnerable party with private autonomy is by providing a default statutory regime, from which the partners are able to contract out subject to formal and substantial requirements. Even if the financial remedies have to be determined for each jurisdiction independently, two general principles apply, nevertheless; that is, they should not have stronger legal effects than those for marriage and should be compatible with the structure of each legal system. In relation to Scotland and Germany, the article advocates expanding the protection of the more vulnerable partner: German law should introduce maintenance obligations where one partner suffers economic disadvantages or financial hardships, even if they are not related to cohabitation. Scots law should reform its financial remedy not only to extend the available court orders and the considerations on which they are based but also to prolong the time limit to apply for it
Performing Automated, High-Speed Photometry on Occulting, Small Outer Solar System Bodies
Get PDFMonitoring stellar occultations provides a powerful means to measure the shapes and sizes of small Solar System bodies, but produces large quantities of image data which can be laborious to analyse. An automated Python-based software, occ_find, was written for performing high-speed aperture photometry on spool files packed with large volumes of images from the 1.54m Danish Telescope. occ_find processed 11 spool files at a maximum rate of around 4–6 minutes per spool file, without image reduction. From these files, 3 occultation events were detected. The measured chord lengths are consistent with prior size measurements of these small bodies
Investigating Enhanced Electrical Conductivity in Ice VII
Get PDFAt ambient conditions, the electrical conductivity of H2O is around 0.01 S/m, whereas in the deep interiors of Neptune and Uranus (≈5000 K and ≈300 GPa), conductivity increases by three orders of magnitude. So far, few experimental studies have considered the conductivity properties of ice at high-P-T conditions. In this work, we evaluate how the conductivity of H2O changes upon compression at 300 K, and show that at 10 GPa, ice VII exhibits a maximum in conductivity of 1.43 ± 0.47 × 10−5 S/m. We propose that time is an important variable in impedance spectroscopy measurements during the pressure-induced transitions: fluid → phase VI → phase VII, between 0.5 and 4 GPa