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Regulation of inflammation and protection against invasive pneumococcal infection by the long pentraxin PTX3
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Applied Dog Genomics
Get PDFWhile the concept of interspecies kinship foregrounds partial connections across species difference, breed as a form of cultivated subspecies difference is also reckoned with as people seek to understand and care for their companion animals. This includes those whose companion animals are defined as mixed breed. This article explores the continued salience of breed as a way of knowing companion dogs in a context in which purity and pedigree is no longer the dominant framing of their value. It does so through a focus on companion dog cultures in the US and new forms of breed knowledge that are offered by genetic tests that provide a breakdown of the breeds in a mixed-breed dog’s background. In this applied science of canine genetics, the mixed-breed is made into a new resource for extracting profit, through the suggestion that people’s care for and relationships with their mixed-breed dog are enhanced by knowing their breed background. This promise depends, however, on eliding the complex and contested significance of breed for understanding dogs, both in canine behavioural science and among dog people. Investigating what lies behind the familiar question of “What breed is your dog?” through a focus on these tests suggests that interests in knowing the breeds in a mixed-breed dog reflect the continued cultural hold of modern breed imaginaries of fixing and mixing—the appeal of named and contained categories of dog diversity and fascination with the outcome of crossing—and with origin stories, not only for people, but also for dogs.</jats:p
Acquiring a New Accent: Changes to perception, production and identity among Northerners in the South of England
Get PDFSpeakers who move to a region where the dialect differs from their own often acquire features of this second dialect (D2), in a process known as second dialect acquisition (SDA). SDA is a complex process, with studies showing inconsistent results in the extent to which individuals acquire D2 features. The current thesis aims to address gaps in our understanding of SDA, by asking three as yet unanswered research questions: (1) what kinds of adult language change are possible in cases of SDA; (2) how do cognitive representations of regional accent categories change after migration; (3) what role does implicit regional identity play in SDA? Specifically, I examine how speakers from the North West of England alter their sociophonetic production, perception and sense of self-identity after moving to the South. The thesis investigates this through both longitudinal tracking of the speech of recent migrants and by comparing migrants to non-migrants. The first study presents a longitudinal study carried out with 26 undergraduate students from the North of England who migrated to attend Southern universities. Participants were recorded during their first year post-migration, at three timepoints. Variationist analysis of wordlist and reading passage data was conducted to assess whether participants had acquired three variables of differing social salience and complexity: a BATH-TRAP split, a STRUT-FOOT split, and an allophonic split between dark and light /l/. Results showed limited evidence of shifting, and where this did occur, Southern-like patterns were usually not acquired. A participant’s early childhood exposure to other varieties appeared to be the main factor in whether they changed their speech. A variable’s relative lack of complexity did not appear to make it easier to acquire, with more salient variation ostensibly more likely to be shifted towards. The second study considered sociophonetic perception after migration, turning to the question of how perceptual sensitivity to regional accent features is shaped by exposure, awareness and individual cognitive factors. Looking at non-mobile Northern, non-mobile Southern, and mobile North-to-South participants, the study involved an online forced-choice accent categorisation experiment and measures of individual executive control to examine how cognitive differences in attention control influence the retrieval of social categories with and without extended D2 exposure. The results show that exposure reduces the need for attentional resources to categorise accents. Non-mobile listeners’ ability to discriminate between Northern and Southern accents is strongly influenced by their attention control (executive function) skills, whereas mobile listeners were equally adept at the task regardless of executive function. Additionally, the results showed that individual cognitive differences in the activation and retrieval of social information should be incorporated into existing models of sociolinguistic perception. Finally, I was interested in how participants’ identification with regional accent categories was influenced by their migratory background. For this, I adapted a type of implicit association test (IAT) not yet used in sociolinguistics to assess how implicit regional self-identity may be influenced by migration. Results confirmed previous findings that implicit associations are resistant to change over time. However, more consistent differences between groups suggested that identity IATs may be a more useful tool for sociolinguists than previously used evaluative IATs. By combining variationist and experimental sociophonetic methods, this thesis sheds new light on how linguistic and social context, individual cognition and implicit self-associations influence production, perception and regional identity after regional migration
Modelling the Impact of Patient-Specific Fibrosis and Anatomy on Atrial Fibrillation Triggered by Pulmonary Vein Ectopy
No full textFrom Necropolitics to Piety: TWAIL and the ‘Other’ Subject of Human Rights
No full textThis essay contextualizes and engages with the intellectual tradition of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) through a review of two influential postcolonial texts: Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics (2019) and Saba Mahmood’s The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2004). Working with the aim of this AJIL special issue to rethink conventional approaches and foster new conversations in international law, I use these two texts to discuss TWAIL’s key contributions: its analysis of the colonial encounter’s role in justifying, perpetuating and institutionalizing dominance over the ‘Other’ in international law and human rights; and the contemporary normative and epistemological consequences of this analysis. Mbembe reconceptualizes liberal sovereignty through necropolitics, exposing its constitution by persistent phobogenic racial violence. He maps the politics of liberal sovereign power in determining which ‘Others’ are deemed ‘human’/deserving of rights; and who lives and who dies. Mahmood rethinks dominant liberal feminist understandings of the ‘Other’ female subject under patriarchal structures and posits alternative epistemological understandings of female agency and subjectivity. This review analyzes how Necropolitics and Politics of Piety explore new understandings of selfhood and their implications for the subject of human rights from a TWAIL perspective. This perspective argues that a shift from liberal epistemic hubris to epistemic humility is required for an authentic and compassionate engagement with the disenfranchised ‘Other.’ Without this critical shift, the ongoing global crises in which human rights are so thoroughly and brutally implicated cannot be creatively reimagined, let alone equitably resolved