Lactic acid removal and heart rate frequencies during recovery after strenuous rowing exercise.

Three tests were conducted to assess the effectiveness of three different intensities of exercise both in reducing blood lactic acid (LA) levels and in influencing subjects' heart rate (HR), following a 2000 m race in a rowing boat. In the first and second tests these variables were investigated during a 13 min recovery exercise at 60% and 40% of the preceding maximum rowing speed respectively. In the third test the subjects had a resting recovery. The results include a significant increase (P less than 0.001) in the rate of lactate removal following the 40% recovery compared with the 60% and resting recoveries. The HRs were significantly lower during the last minute of resting recovery compared with 40% and 60% recoveries (P less than 0.001). The same was true when 40% recovery was compared with 60% recovery (P less than 0.001). The present data suggest firstly that 40% of the maximum rowing speed is an appropriate pace for effective LA removal and secondly that, at least for trained rowers, 86% of their maximum HR can be taken as an indication of work of an intensity at or above anaerobic threshold

The structure of politics in Cheshire, 1660-1715

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Council for National Academic Awards for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThis thesis examines political attitudes and political activity in Cheshire in the period between the restoration of Charles II and the accession of George I. The first chapter comprises a general survey of the county's economy., institutionss social structure and political development during the early and mid-seventeenth century. Chapter two shows how the Restoration sett3=ent of church and state was implemented in the county., and considers why the re-establishment of the-monarchy failed to achieve 'consensus government'. The third chapter looks at the Cheshire gentry's reactions to the politidal crisis of the late 1670s and early 1680s. It traces the growth of organized political parties and discusses why the Whigs received so much support in the county. In chapter four the local Whigs and Tories' views on religion and the constitution are dealt with in greater detail. This chapter also examines the reasons behind the Duke of Monmouth's progress through Cheshire, and haw the Crown's determination to defeat the Exclusionists affected county government. Unfortunately., the paucity of primary sources precludes a comprehensive study of the effects of James II's policies in Cheshire. Chapter five, therefore, concentrates upon the 1685 elections, the Crown's remodelling of the municipal corporations and county government, and the Cheshire gentry's involvement in the Northern revolt. This is followed, in chapter six, by an examination of the county elite's response to the Revolution of 1688. The 'rage of party' during the reign of Queen Anne is considered in chapter sevens and illustrated by a detailed analysis of the 1701 and 1702 poll books. Having established that the conflict between Whig and Tory was more embittered and prolonged in Cheshire than in some other counties., chapter eight examines why this should have been the case

A study of portraits of the artist in contemporary fiction: critical selfconsciousness as a characterising feature of twentieth-century writing

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThis work examines the selfconscious novel, chiefly through the writing of Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov and SaTnuel Beckett. Selfconscious novels expose themselves as fictions rather than imitations of reality. Thus the art-work becomes a portrait of the artist who invents it, not a photographic study of the solid surfaces which enclose him. The selfconscious novel is also a portrait of art: it seeks to illuminate the nature of, and qualify belief in, all fictions. My introductory survey insists that self consciousness is centrally important to postfeudal individualist culture. The rise of the novel was linked to the rise of the middle classes and the individual, the decline of absolute values and coal, corporate identity. Early novelists and contemporary philosophers thus grew to self consciousness as they dared to depend on individual empirical observation of the world. As social mobility and fragmentation increased, the individual thinker became ever more aware of the provisional nature of perception. The selfconscious novelist shares the insight of the nineteenth-century Idealist philosophers, that all accounts of the world, however 'true' or 'official', are a priori constructs, artificial and even fictional. By portraying his own creative imagination at work'the contemporary selfconscious author may offer a model for independent resistance to the new canrnlnal and corporate fictions which twentieth-century mass society propagates with such unparallelled efficiency. The fictions of institutionalised literary criticism are a relatively minor but interesting example, and the selfconscious author often does battle with his critics. However his primary aim is perhaps to portray the true nature of his own vocation in a century which often projects false fictional roles upon its artists, or else rejects them, out of hand. Some of these themes will emerge in my discussion of Woolf, Nabokov and Beckett. In turn, the diversity of their work will illuminate the nature of, and qualify belief in, my awn critical fictions

The natural and rural world in twentieth century British poetry

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Council for National Academic Awards for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyDuring two hundred years of urbanisation and industrialisationg British poetry has often seemed more concerned with the natural and rural world. The thesis uses this paradox to explore two particular aspects of Twentieth Century poetry of the natural azid rural world -'its attitude and orientation towards the actual changing conditions of its subject matter and the significance of this in literary value judgements. To consider these ideological questions in a way that maintains the specificity and creativity of experience and of literatureq Raymond Williams's concept of "structure of feeling" is introduced. In addition, two broad, historical approaches to this poetry are distinguished: the first involves the transformation of pastoral into rural realism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while the second, which dates from the Romantic revival, offers a poetry of personal experience and metaphysical enquiry. In early Twentieth Century poetryq these approaches frequently converge to form a common front against modernism, while simultaneously, particularly in Edward Thomas and DH Lawrence, fresh importance is attached to the idea of nature poetry for metaphysical enquiry. In considering the post-war revival Of nature and rural poetry, the original approaches are redefined in terms of a materialist- /metaphysical polarity. For Hugh MacDiarmid and Ted Hughes, the tension within this polarity is claimed to be especially productive, while in writers like Hopkins and RS Thomas, a basic commitment to metaphysical orthodoxy is seen to be damagingly incompatible with the principles of free imaginative enquiry and the ontological autonomy of nature. The two central questions of the thesis about Twentieth Century poetry of the natural and rural world, those conceining social change and metaphysical enquiry, are related in two ways: through attention to the cultural mediation of poetic language and form and through demonstrating that creative response to the full conditions of life is politically and metaphysically fundamental

Animal Architecture

A 16 mm film and exhibition exploring Dudley Zoo and its architectural heritage, shown at Dudley Zoo, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and elsewhere.Animal Architecture tells the story of Dudley Zoo and the restoration of its unique animal enclosures, designed in 1937 by the modernist architect, Bernard Lubetkin. The film explores our ambivalent relationship to zoos and how humans define themselves in relation to the animal. Capturing the everyday, poetic feel of the zoo, the film, shot on 16m film, emulates the black and white documentary film style of the 1950's 'Free Cinema' movement

National and European identity

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article is one in a number of attempts by students of nations and nationalism to understand national and European identity. Its point of departure are the arguments of Guibernau (2011) that the EU has created only a non-emotional identity based on the pursuit of prosperity; and, conversely, the claim of Wellings and Power (2015) that the EU has now its own nationalism with an emotional dimension. My initial observation is that an explicit evocation of European nationalism only surfaced in the immediate post war period within the remnants of fascist parties. So the issue is the attempt by the actors within the EU to create a European identity as an accompaniment to federal integration. This was not an initial quest but something that arose within attempts to breathe life into the EU in the 1970s. The endeavour was controversial from the outset and had effectively been curtailed by the mid 1990s as the intergovernmental character of the organisation imposed a primary commitment to preserving national diversity. Subsequent economic and monetary union has relied on the rationale of efficient governance. However, the evidence suggests that identification with Europe and the EU is surprisingly high. To understand it, I finally consider the gestation of Europeanism.Published versio

Monstrous spaces: reframing video game immersion

This is an author's accepted manuscript of a chapter due to be published by Routledge in Farnsworth, S. (ed.) Video Game Monsters: A Compendium. The accepted manuscript may differ from the final published version