192815 research outputs found
Sort by
Petrochemicals, pollution, and the moral economy of noxious industry: Grangemouth, Scotland, from 1951 to 1989
Get PDFIn 1989, British Petroleum (BP) made the largest onshore investment in the company’s 72-year history in Scotland by expanding its Grangemouth petrochemical complex. Construction and operation were promised to generate between 1,200 and 1,500 jobs, but upon the project’s completion, over 1,000 industrial jobs were lost in the town, and employment never increased. This research explains this outcome by embedding it within a history of post-World War II deindustrialization and engaging with E.P. Thompson’s moral economy and the concept of “noxious deindustrialization”: expanding environmentally destructive capacity and shrinking industrial employment. It illuminates what the buildup and later transgression of moral economy promises looked like for a town experiencing rapid but fragile expansion on the back of petrochemicals, a modern, highly toxic, and land-intensive industry. Using oral history and archive study, the research establishes the presence of noxiousness in Grangemouth from the mid-twentieth century onward. Between 1951 and 1970, industrialization, urban expansion, and paternalistic corporate practices shaped customary notions that embedded the petrochemical sector into the community, justifying concerns about pollution, smells, and the industry’s intensive requirements on land. Between 1970 and 1989, the moral economy was transgressed as the planning system was dismantled and BP’s welfarist responsibility to Grangemouth lessened under economic liberalization. Amid growing environmental concerns globally, noxiousness became intolerable. Noxious deindustrialization accelerated with changes in energy prices, consolidation of private power, and discovery of North Sea oil, leading to company restructuring and job cuts in BP Chemicals. Consequently, the link between employment, population growth, and economic security broke down
Confined and mined: anthropogenic river modification as a driver of flood risk change
Get PDFRivers are often confined by structures and subjected to aggregate mining. In dynamic rivers, these interventions cause changes to riverbed and bank topography that potentially cause changes in hydraulics and flood risk. Repeat, system-scale, high-resolution topographic surveys of the gravel-bed Bislak River, the Philippines, are used to quantify annual morphological change and, using two-dimensional hydraulic modelling, to simulate changes to flood risk. Aggregate mining exports sediment and creates pitted topography, and embankments cause both deeper channels and disconnect the river from its floodplain. The consequently increased channel capacity reduces flood risk, with up to a 5% decrease in inundated areas for 10- to 100-year return periods. Sediment deprivation also increases bed shear stress that can induce scour, infrastructure damage and increased flood impacts. Rising global floodplain populations and increasing demand for aggregate ensure that sustainably managing geomorphologically dynamic rivers to support floodplain development and mitigate flood impacts remains a pertinent challenge
Bodyguards, priests and professionals: Hungarian translators of French and German thought
Get PDFThis article investigates the translations of radical texts in Hungary in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. It offers a survey of French political texts rendered into Latin and Hungarian, and follows the historic exploration through discussing the work of three Hungarian Jacobins put to trial for their participation in the Hungarian Jacobin movement: János Laczkovics, Ferenc Szentmarjay, and Ferenc Verseghy. It argues that their work as translators went hand in hand with their political activism. Through mapping out the use of the local vernacular and the political language of Latin in the process, it calls for developing new trends in research in historical transnationalism and multilingualism in the field of textual production
The start of a new journey: decolonising the Global Mental Health curriculum
Get PDFIntellectual colonisation is defined as the imposition of Western knowledge systems onto non-Western cultures, resulting in the marginalisation and subordination of non-Western beliefs, practices, and technologies. Decolonisation aims to challenge this dominance. Higher Education Institutions play a crucial role in dismantling intellectual colonisation, and sustained efforts are needed to promote diverse perspectives. The authors adopt a critical pedagogy and cyclical improvement approach to develop inclusive and equitable learning environments. They have committed to the process of decolonising the curriculum, acknowledging it as ongoing and multifaceted. A range of staff-led developments have been initiated as understandings of decolonisation have deepened. Alumni have applied review tools related to decolonising the curriculum to identify potential improvement areas. A student workshop was facilitated to overview the initial project developments and gain insight on how to address the issues identified. Feedback from the diverse student cohort indicated this was highly valuable. The potential for student-staff partnerships in driving decolonising efforts has begun to be explored, but key challenges include resource constraints and the need for student upskilling. The project goal is to empower students and staff to acknowledge their positionality, critically engage, and adopt a decolonial lens in both educational and workplace arenas
A simple three-dimensional microfluidic platform for studying chemotaxis and cell sorting
Get PDFMicrobial chemotaxis plays a key role in a diversity of biological and ecological processes. Although microfluidics-based assays have been applied to investigate bacterial chemotaxis, retrieving chemotactic cells off-chip based on their dynamic chemotactic responses remains limited. Here, we present a simple three-dimensional microfluidic platform capable of programmable delivery of solutions, maintaining static, stable gradients for over 20 hours, followed by active sorting and retrieval of bacteria based on their chemotactic phenotypes. Using this platform, we revealed the swimming features of individual E. coli cells in response to chemoattractant and observed rapid bacterial adaptation to the gradients. Furthermore, the robust performance of the platform allowed us to investigate complex natural microbial communities. Exemplified by sorting bacteria towards soluble cellulose and lignin compounds, we found only a small percentage (<20%) of chemotactic bacteria from a leaf mould microbiota exhibited cellulolytic or lignin-degradation abilities. These findings highlight that chemotaxis does not always align with degradation abilities. Interestingly, a new Erwinia aphidicola strain was discovered with substantial cellulose degradation capabilities. These results illustrate the strong potential of this microfluidic platform for investigating broad processes involving bacterial chemotaxis and for discovering functional microbes
Anaesthetic management of oncological disease in pregnancy: a narrative review
Get PDFIntroduction:
Cancer complicates approximately 1 in 2000 pregnancies, with increasing incidence due to factors such as increased maternal age, obesity and advancements in antenatal testing. Anaesthetists play a crucial role in managing pregnant patients with cancer, both during delivery and in providing anaesthesia for oncological treatments. This review explores the challenges in anaesthetic management and specific considerations for common cancers encountered in pregnant patients.
Methods:
An electronic literature search was carried out using PubMed and Google Scholar to identify peer-reviewed articles published in English from 1 January 1990 to 30 July 2024.
Results:
Two main areas were identified: anaesthetic management related to pregnancy and the peripartum period in patients with cancer; and oncological management during pregnancy. Current data suggest that pregnancy does not worsen cancer prognosis, but diagnosis and treatment are complicated by the overlap of cancer symptoms with physiological changes of pregnancy and concerns about the safety of diagnostic procedures and treatments. Ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging are preferred imaging modalities, while careful use of ionising radiation is advised. Treatment during pregnancy, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy is possible, with specific timing and modality considerations to ensure maternal and fetal safety. Anaemia, poor nutrition and preterm birth are significant concerns in managing pregnant patients with cancer. For operative births, neuraxial techniques are preferred, though general anaesthesia may be required in complex cases. Comprehensive multidisciplinary support, including psychosocial care, is essential for optimal outcomes. Oncological surgery during pregnancy should preferably be scheduled for the second trimester, with consideration for fetal monitoring and steroids. Regional anaesthesia should be utilised if possible and uteroplacental perfusion maintained. Increased risks of thromboembolism should be addressed postoperatively, along with psychological support.
Discussion:
Effective and safe anaesthetic management of cancer in pregnancy requires a multidisciplinary approach to balance maternal and fetal safety, with a focus on careful planning and individualised care
Hospicing Gaza (غزة): stunned languaging as poetic cries for a heartbreaking scholarship
Get PDFThe article explores the notion of stunned languaging in the construction of poetic cries as a genre of grief in times of unspeakability while witnessing the online streaming of the Gaza Genocide. Weaving together conceptual, experiential, and poetic threads and traces, the article presents a hospicing project of heartbreaking scholarship as a form of bearing witness, collective accountability, and a caring commons. It discusses the role of language in mobilising the immobile through poetic cries that speak to failing intercultural projects and argues for the need for attending to the languaging of mourning and grief as hospicing work that is both post-human and post-secular.
تكشف المقالة دور مفهوم اللغة المذهولة في بناء البكاء الشعري كنمط أدبي للحداد في أوقات عدم القدرة على التعبير كما هو الحال أثناء المشاهدة الإلكترونية للإبادة الجماعية في غزة. من خلال نسج خيوط مفاهيمية وتجريبية وشعرية، تقدم المقالة مشروعًا لرعاية الحداد لبناء الدراسات المفجعة كشكل من أشكال الشهادة، والمساءلة الجماعية، والرعاية المشتركة. كما تناقش المقالة دور اللغة في تحريك ما هو غير قابل للحركة من خلال امثله البكاء الشعري التي تعبر عن فشل مشاريع التعرف على الثقافات، وتؤكد على ضرورة الانتباه للغة الحداد كعمل رعاية في إطار مفاهيمي يندرج في ما بعد الإنسان وما بعد العلمانية
Cluster categories for completed infinity-gons I: categorifying triangulations
Get PDFPaquette and Yıldırım recently introduced triangulated categories of arcs in completed infinity-gons, which are discs with an infinite closed set of marked points on their boundary. These categories have many features in common with the cluster categories associated to discs with different sets of marked points. In particular, they have (weak) cluster-tilting subcategories, which Paquette–Yıldırım show are in bijection with very special triangulations of the disc. This is in contrast to Igusa–Todorov's earlier work in the uncompleted case, in which every triangulation corresponds to a weak cluster-tilting subcategory. In this paper, we replace the triangulated structure of Paquette–Yıldırım's category by an extriangulated substructure and prove that, with this structure, the weak cluster-tilting subcategories are once again in bijection with triangulations. We further show that functorial finiteness of a weak cluster-tilting subcategory is equivalent to a very mild condition on the triangulation, which also appears in Çanakçı and Felikson's study of infinite rank cluster algebras from Teichmüller theory. By comparison with the combinatorics of triangulations, we are also able to characterise when weak cluster-tilting subcategories can be mutated in this new extriangulated category
Ecological risk factors for the establishment of West Nile virus in Britain
Get PDFWest Nile virus (WNV) is a zoonotic mosquito-borne virus which is emerging across Europe, largely due to climate and other environmental changes. Detection of WNV at increasingly northern latitudes raises concern that WNV may be introduced to Britain, where ecological conditions could eventually support sustained transmission. Establishment of WNV depends on spatial and temporal overlap between infectious migratory birds and native vectors. However, understanding of the distributions and phenology of key vector species in Britain is incomplete and must be updated to prioritise activities for WNV surveillance and response. Here, we review recent findings related to WNV ecology in continental Europe and the ecology of British mosquito species in order to evaluate the risk of WNV establishment in Britain
Improve CS performance by developing spatial skills
Get PDFFor decades, spatial skills have been associated with success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). More recently, these skills have been linked to success in computer science (CS) specifically. Two features of spatial skills make them relevant to learners and practitioners of CS. First, spatial skills are malleable, meaning that anyone can improve them with training. Second, spatial skills are transferable, meaning that training in spatial skills also improves general STEM performance. In this article, we highlight how spatial skills are cognitively connected to STEM success, summarize the work associating them with performance in computing, and provide guidance on how learners and practitioners can develop these skills
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Open Research Online? Become a CORE Member to access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard! 👇