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Do news media and citizens have the same agenda on COVID-19? An empirical comparison of twitter posts
No full textThis study analyses the agenda setting on social media in the COVID-19 pandemic by exploiting one of the disruptive technologies, big data analytics. Our purpose is to examine whether the agenda of news organisations matches the public agenda on social media in crisis situations, and to explore the feasibility and efficacy of applying big data analytics on social media data. To this end, we used an unsupervised machine learning approach, structural topic modelling and analysed 129,965 tweets posted by UK news media and citizens during April 2, and 8, 2020. Our study reveals a wide diversity of topics in the tweets generated by both groups and finds only a small number of topics are similar, indicating different agendas set in the pandemic. Moreover, we show that citizen tweets focused more on expressing feelings and sharing personal activities while news media tweets talked more about facts and analysis on COVID-19. In addition, our results find that citizens responded more significantly to breaking news. The findings of the study contribute to the agenda setting literature and offer valuable practical implications
The sea: nature and culture
No full textBook synopsis: This book explores the sea and its meanings from ancient myths to contemporary geopolitics, from Atlantis to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. Richard Hamblyn traces a cultural and geographical journey from estuary to abyss, beginning with the topographies of the shoreline and ending with the likely futures of our maritime environments. Along the way the book considers the sea as a site of work and endurance, of story and song, of language, leisure and longing. By considering the sea as both a physical and a cultural presence, the book shines new light on the sea and its indelible place in the human imagination
Home improvement in Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK
No full textBook synopsis: This book examines experiences of home improvement in the UK and Aotearoa New Zealand, providing valuable insight into the ways in which people make and maintain home in social, material and economic context. Drawing on in-depth interviews, examining both DIY projects and projects carried out by professional handymen, Rosie Cox explores how home improvement fits into wider social relationships and structures of inequality. Consideration is given to the importance of such work for gender and national identities, and how these identities are related to material contexts and the forms and fabric of homes. The book also highlights how home improvement can be a rewarding and valuable form of work, as well as an unrewarding and alienating endeavour. It will be of interest to scholars from a range of disciplines including anthropology, sociology and human geography
Intentional kinship through caring relationships, heritage, and identity: adoptive parents’ inclusion of non-biological and non-affinal relationships on family maps
Get PDFStructural open adoption has been beneficial to adoptees in integrating their birth heritage and identity. Adoptive parents also may sometimes seek out others who are neither related biologically nor through partnership to support their child in developing an integrated sense of identity. To what extent do these intentional kinship relationships become incorporated within the adoptive family network and how do adoptive parents view their role in their child’s life? Qualitative data on family inclusion of non-biological and non-affinal kin are reported from interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual adoptive parents (n = 25 families). Analyses of verbal and visual data from family map drawing interviews indicated that adoptive parents from the different types of families similarly included intentional kin in their conceptualization of their child’s family. Adopted children’s foster carers, family friends, other adoptive families, and other children and adults were specifically included on family maps to facilitate children’s knowledge of different aspects of their birth heritage and adoption story. The implications of open adoption policy therefore move beyond considerations of only birth family contact. In practice, open adoption procedures convey a broad message to families that appear to widen adoptive parents’ conceptualization of kinship
A escolarização em Portugal no princípio dos anos 40: uma análise quantitativa
Get PDFIn 1940, the Portuguese Government approved the denominated “Plano dos Centenários,” a massive plan of primary school construction all over the country. The plan projected a 60% increase in the number of primary schools. Based on a thorough data collection and statistical analysis, we establish several facts regarding the situation of formal education and schooling levels in Portugal prior to the beginning of the plan by region, gender and type of school, as well as provide a description of the plan’s strategy regarding the location of new schools. In 1940, the distribution of schools was uneven at the geographical level, and there were great gender differences in educational achievement. The plan involved a larger relative expansion of schools in the most disadvantaged areas of the country. Finally, we describe the delays in the plan’s execution in a particular example, the Évora region
Inference of tissue relative proportions of the breast epithelial cell types luminal progenitor, basal, and luminal mature
Get PDFSingle-cell analysis has revolutionised genomic science in recent years. However, due to cost and other practical considerations, single-cell analyses are impossible for studies based on medium or large patient cohorts. For example, a single-cell analysis usually costs thousands of euros for one tissue sample from one volunteer, meaning that typical studies using single-cell analyses are based on very few individuals. While single-cell genomic data can be used to examine the phenotype of individual cells, cell-type deconvolution methods are required to track the quantities of these cells in bulk-tissue genomic data. Hormone receptor negative breast cancers are highly aggressive, and are thought to originate from a subtype of epithelial cells called the luminal progenitor. In this paper, we show how to quantify the number of luminal progenitor cells as well as other epithelial subtypes in breast tissue samples using DNA and RNA based measurements. We find elevated levels of cells which resemble these hormone receptor negative luminal progenitor cells in breast tumour biopsies of hormone receptor negative cancers, as well as in healthy breast tissue samples from BRCA1 (FANCS) mutation carriers. We also find that breast tumours from carriers of heterozygous mutations in non-BRCA Fanconi Anaemia pathway genes are much more likely to be hormone receptor negative. These findings have implications for understanding hormone receptor negative breast cancers, and for breast cancer screening in carriers of heterozygous mutations of Fanconi Anaemia pathway genes
Louis-Ferdinand Celine: journeys to the extreme
No full textBook synopsis: Louis-Ferdinand Céline was one of the most innovative novelists of the twentieth century, and his influence both in his native France and beyond remains huge. This book sheds light on Céline’s groundbreaking novels, which drew extensively on his complex life: he rose from humble beginnings to worldwide literary fame, then dramatically fell from grace only to return, belatedly, to the limelight.
Céline’s subversive writing remains fresh and urgent today, despite his abhorrent political views and the inflammatory pamphlets that threatened to ruin his reputation. The first English-language biography of Céline in over two decades, this book explores new material and reminds us why the author belongs in the pantheon of modern greats
Procedural justice, compliance with the law and police stop-and-search: a study of young people in England and Scotland
Get PDFThe policing of young people, especially through stop-and-search, has been rigorously debated in the context of rising violence in the UK. While concepts based on procedural justice theory and perceptions of police fairness are directly relevant to these debates, these have rarely been tested on young people, nor have they taken account of the impact of stop-and-search. This paper examines young people’s experiences of stop-and-search in two Scottish and two English cities, and tests the relationship between these experiences, their trust in the police, their perceptions of police legitimacy and their compliance with the law. The study finds that Scottish adolescents, who experienced higher volume stop-and-search, had more negative attitudes to the police and perceived them to be less procedurally fair than English adolescents. Structural equation modelling confirms that principles of procedural justice theory do apply to young people in this UK sample. However, our findings suggest that stop-and-search may damage trust in the police and perceptions of police legitimacy, regardless of the volume of police stop-and-search, and this may result in increased offending behaviour. With ongoing calls to increase the use of stop-and-search in response to recent increases in knife crime in England, we argue that its use needs to be carefully balanced against the, as yet poorly evidenced, benefits of the use of the tactic
Inhibiting parasite proliferation using a rationally designed anti‐tubulin agent
Get PDFInfectious diseases caused by apicomplexan parasites remain a global public health threat. The presence of multiple ligand‐binding sites in tubulin makes this protein an attractive target for anti‐parasite drug discovery. However, despite remarkable successes as anti‐cancer agents, the rational development of protozoan parasite‐specific tubulin drugs has been hindered by a lack of structural and biochemical information on protozoan tubulins. Here, we present atomic structures for a protozoan tubulin and microtubule and delineate the architectures of apicomplexan tubulin drug‐binding sites. Based on this information, we rationally designed the parasite‐specific tubulin inhibitor parabulin and show that it inhibits growth of parasites while displaying no effects on human cells. Our work presents for the first time the rational design of a species‐specific tubulin drug providing a framework to exploit structural differences between human and protozoa tubulin variants enabling the development of much‐needed, novel parasite inhibitors
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