The Twilight of the Public Intellectual: Germany

This essay focuses on the questions of whether German unification resulted in a wholesale retreat of intellectuals from politics and engagement with social issues, as the rhetoric of failure would indicate, or whether the key debates of the period can be read instead as a sign that Germany is on the road to becoming a more 'normal' European nation. Before returning to these issuesat the end of this paper I first provide a broad historical and theoretical context for my discussion of the role of the concerned intellectual in Germany, before offering an overview of the respective functions of literary intellectuals in both German states in the post-war period. I then address a series of key debates and discussions in 1989 and the early nineteen-nineties that were responsible for changing the forms of engagement in intellectual debates in post-unification German society. I argue that the 1990s and early years of the new millennium hastened the disappearance of the writer as a universal intellectual and focused attention on the writer as an individualist and a professional. Today's youngest generation of writer in Germany is a specialist intellectual who intervenes in political and social matters from time to time but who is not expected to take a moral-ethical stance on most issues of national and international concern. S/he is one who frequently writes about personal subjects, but may also occasionally, as witnessed after September 11, turn his or her pen to topics of global concern as in terrorism and Islam. More often than not, however, writers now leave the work of commenting on political affairs to writers of the older guard and to other 'senior' specialist intellectuals

Flagellin induces β-defensin 2 in human colonic ex vivo infection with enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli

Enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) is an important foodborne pathogen in the developed world and can cause life-threatening disease particularly in children. EHEC persists in the human gut by adhering intimately to colonic epithelium and forming characteristic attaching/effacing lesions. In this study, we investigated the innate immune response to EHEC infection with particular focus on antimicrobial peptide and protein expression by colonic epithelium. Using a novel human colonic biopsy model and polarized T84 colon carcinoma cells, we found that EHEC infection induced expression of human β-defensin 2 (hBD2), whereas hBD1, hBD3, LL-37 and lysozyme remained unchanged. Infection with specific EHEC deletion mutants demonstrated that this was dependent on flagellin, and apical exposure to purified flagellin was sufficient to stimulate hBD2 and also interleukin (IL)-8 expression ex vivo and in vitro. Flagellin-mediated hBD2 induction was significantly reduced by inhibitors of NF-κB, MAP kinase p38 and JNK but not ERK1/2. Interestingly, IL-8 secretion by polarized T84 cells was vectorial depending on the side of stimulation, and apical exposure to EHEC or flagellin resulted in apical IL-8 release. Our results demonstrate that EHEC only induces a modest immune response in human colonic epithelium characterized by flagellin-dependent induction of hBD2 and low levels of IL-8

The contribution of community pharmacy to improving the public’s health. Report 3, An overview of evidence-base from 1990-2002 and recommendations for action

Community pharmacists have always played a significant role in promoting, maintaining and improving the public’s health. Based at the heart of communities, they gain a unique understanding of the health needs of the communities they serve through daily interactions with patients and customers. Reports 1 and 2 of the Evidence Base Review clearly demonstrate the potential for community pharmacists to improve the public’s health. There has been increasing recognition of the contribution that they can make to improving the public’s health and the need to integrate them into the wider public health workforce. The new pharmacy global contracts and pharmacy public health strategy for England sets the framework for the current and future public health role of pharmacy. We hope this role will develop further and that community pharmacists’ skills and knowledge will be harnessed even more effectively in order to improve the public’s health. The following report summarises the evidence base linked to national targets and makes recommendations for action. PCTs may wish to use the findings to develop pharmacy services to improve the health of communities that they serve and to meet local health improvement targets

A numerically exact local solver applied to salt boundary inversion in seismic full-waveform inversion

In a set of problems ranging from 4-D seismic to salt boundary estimation, updates to the velocity model often have a highly localized nature. Numerical techniques for these applications such as full-waveform inversion (FWI) require an estimate of the wavefield to compute the model updates. When dealing with localized problems, it is wasteful to compute these updates in the global domain, when we only need them in our region of interest. This paper introduces a local solver that generates forward and adjoint wavefields which are, to machine precision, identical to those generated by a full-domain solver evaluated within the region of interest. This means that the local solver computes all interactions between model updates within the region of interest and the inhomogeneities in the background model outside. Because no approximations are made in the calculation of the forward and adjoint wavefields, the local solver can compute the identical gradient in the region of interest as would be computed by the more expensive full-domain solver. In this paper, the local solver is used to efficiently generate the FWI gradient at the boundary of a salt body. This gradient is then used in a level set method to automatically update the salt boundary

Person centred phenomenology : service user experiences of exercise

Purpose: The study aimed to explore the lived experience of sport and exercise amongst a group of mental health service users. Participants were recruited from a north of England NHS mental health trust that was piloting a sport and exercise intervention for adults with mental health needs. Design/methodology/approach: In depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with five mental health service users. The chosen phenomenological methodology was collaborative and interpretive. Findings: Two essential themes were highlighted; ‘Intermittent health breaking through heavy clouds of illness’ and ‘The cycle of recovery’. In addition, this person centred research identified a number of intervention benefits beyond those relating to the impact of physical activity on mental health and wellbeing. The main findings are expressed using visual imagery which participants found expressed their perceptions and experiences better than written prose. This includes the way day to day illness impacts on the journey of health for people with mental health problems. Research limitations/implications: The intervention looked to help the transition between leaving mental health services and developing a regular routine to promote recovery. The study illuminates the voices of service users and identifies that sport and exercise for mental health service users can be beneficial for recovery and feelings of belonging which can strengthen perceptions of the self. Practical implications: Social implications: Originality/value: Few studies have approached this methodological approach. This study demonstrates the value of phenomenological research with a collaborative, person centred or indeed an involved patient focus. This collaborative approach enabled a shared understanding of the phenomena

Examining the role of Scotland’s telephone advice service (NHS 24) for managing health in the community : analysis of routinely collected NHS 24 data

Date of Acceptance: 15/06/2015 Funding This work was supported by the Chief Scientist Office, ScottishExecutive (grant no. CZH/4/692). Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Toward target-oriented FWI: An exact local wave solver applied to salt boundary inversion

Seismic full waveform inversion (FWI) uses the gradient of the objective function for computing model updates. This requires computation of the forward and adjoint wavefields on the current model estimate. Calculating the gradient on the full computational domain is wasteful when it is only required in a limited region of interest, as is the case in 4D seismic and salt boundary estimation, for example. In this paper, a local solver is introduced that accurately computes, up to machine precision, all the wavefield interactions between model updates restricted to a region of interest and inhomogeneities in the background model outside. The local solver therefore generates exactly the same forward and adjoint wavefields in the region of interest that a full domain solver would have generated. In this paper, the exact local gradient at the boundary of a salt body is computed from these exact local wavefields. A level set method uses this gradient to automatically update the local salt boundary estimate

Super League Player Welfare Study: A Mixed Method Evaluation

Background The central focus of the current research was to use mixed methods to evaluate current perceptions, experiences and needs with regard to player welfare provision in the Rugby Football League (RFL). Specifically, by using an anonymous survey with professional players and confidential semi-structured interviews with player welfare managers, the study aimed to meet the following objectives: To explore professional players’ perceptions and experiences of the RFL player welfare policy, successes achieved and challenges to be overcome by player welfare managers To explore player welfare managers’ perceptions and experiences of player welfare To explore what assets exist in different clubs throughout the league, and how these assets can be utilised to improve player welfare. To explore trends and links in players perceptions and mental health and wellbeing Methods The players’ survey was carried out between January and May 2015 and repeated again between January and May 2016, with some additional questions. The first year of the survey was sent to 420 players, of which 103 responded (a response rate of 25%), which resulted in a sample of 96 participants. The response rate was much higher in the second year as there were 210 responses from the 450 players (a response rate of 47%), leading to 196 participants. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with the player welfare managers (PWM) in year 1 and year 2. There were 11 interviews conducted in year 1 and 12 in year 2. In some cases this was the same person, in others a new person was in post. The interviews lasted between 20 minutes and 80 minutes and allowed an in-depth understanding of the role of the PWMs

Confronting the “fraud bottleneck”: private sanctions for fraud and their implications for justice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which contemporary organisations are imposing their own private sanctions on fraudsters. Design/methodology/approach – The research draws on primary data from interviews with counter fraud practitioners in the UK, secondary sources and case examples. Findings – Such developments have been stimulated, at least in part, by the broader limitations of the criminal justice system and in particular a “fraud bottleneck”. Alongside criminal sanctions, many examples are provided of organisations employing private prosecutions innovative forms of civil sanction and “pseudo state” sanctions, most commonly civil penalties comparable to fines. Research limitations/implications – Such changes could mark the beginning of the “rebirth of private prosecution” and the further expansion of private punishment. Growing private involvement in state sanctions and the development of private sanctions represents a risk to traditional guarantees of justice. There are differences in which comparable frauds are dealt with by corporate bodies and thus considerable inconsistency in sanctions imposed. In contrast with criminal justice measures, there is no rehabilitative element to private sanctions. More research is needed to assess the extent of such measures, and establish what is happening, the wider social implications, and whether greater state regulation is needed. Practical implications – Private sanctions for fraud are likely to continue to grow, as organisations pursue their own measures rather than relying on increasingly over-stretched criminal justice systems. Their emergence, extent and implications are not fully understood by researchers and therefore need much more research, consideration and debate. These private measures need to be more actively recognised by criminal justice policy-makers and analysts alongside the already substantial formal involvement of the private sector in punishment through prisons, electronic tagging and probation, for example. Such measures lack the checks and balances, and greater degree of consistency as laid out in sentencing guidelines, of the criminal justice system. In light of this, consideration needs to be given to greater state regulation of private sanctions for fraud. More also needs to be done to help fraudsters suffering problems such as debt or addiction to rebuild their lives. There is a strong case for measures beyond the criminal justice system to support such fraudsters to be created and publicly promoted. Originality/value – The findings are of relevance to criminal justice policy-makers, academics and counter fraud practitioners in the public and private sectors