Staging "a Queene opprest": William Habington's Exploration of the Politics of Queenship on the Caroline Stage

This essay deepens our growing understanding of Caroline theatre as a vibrant space that boldly engaged with contemporary issues. As England lurched toward civil war, there was growing unease within the Protestant establishment at the apparent success of Queen Henrietta Maria's Counter-Reformation ambitions. During this period, competing ideals of queenly conduct were performed on both the elite and commercial stages. William Habington's The Queen of Aragon (licensed and published in 1640) exposed the dilemma of a virtuous queen chastised by her people for seeking foreign support to quell insurrection. Notably, Henrietta Maria was criticized in precisely these terms during the Scottish crisis of 1638-40. Habington, a respected figure in the recusant community who enjoyed the patronage of both Henrietta Maria and the godly Earl of Pembroke, offered a surprising alternative to such political isolation. Through a brilliant revision of fashionable Neoplatonic drama, he successfully transformed the troubling image of "a Queene opprest" into a paradigm of queenly enlightenment

"Your name shall live / In the new yeare as in the age of gold": Sir Thomas Salusbury’s "Twelfth Night Masque, Performed at Knowsley Hall in 1641" and its Contexts

On Twelfth Night, 1641, James, Lord Strange, and his wife, Charlotte de le Tremouille, hosted a masque at Knowsley Hall written by their kinsman, Sir Thomas Salusbury. This is the only extant dramatic entertainment to survive from Knowsley and, with Lord Strange’s children, Charles and Henrietta Maria, performing masquing roles it offers a rare glimpse into an intimate Derby family occasion. As this paper seeks to explore, with England teetering towards Civil War, this masque also allows us an intrinsic insight into Lord Strange’s self-fashioning at a moment of acute political anxiety. For the masquers invited to perform alongside Lord Strange’s children were prominent figures from the leading families of Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales who did not all agree with Lord Strange’s political and religious viewpoints. Just as the court masques held at Whitehall aimed to promote the King’s values and bind the court together so, in this ‘Twelfth Night Masque’, Thomas Salusbury deftly foregrounds Lord Stanley’s viewpoint - satirising the religious debates which were rocking the country to create a charming, if ultimately elusive, vision of concord and harmony within the Edenic or golden world of Knowsley Hall

‘Thy sceptre to a trident change / And straight, unruly seas thou canst command’: Contemporary representations of King Charles I and the Ship Money Fleets within the cultural imagination of Caroline England.

This essay examines the ideal of Charles I as a maritime ruler through an exploration of literary representations of the ship money fleets, embodied by the flagship, Sovereign of the Seas. This trope spanned genres from Edmund Waller’s and Thomas Beedome’s poetry to James Shirley’s and William Strode’s plays, reaching its height when Charles I appeared in seeming nautical triumph in Inigo Jones’s and William Davenant’s opulent court masque, Britannia Triumphans. As England teetered towards civil war, parliament commandeered the fleets, delivering a severe blow to the king’s image and the royalist cause. Such a sharp reversal of fortune exposes the importance of maritime Britain in defining and understanding the Caroline nation at a moment of acute political anxiety

Habitat preferences of hazel dormice Muscardinus avellanarius and the effects of tree-felling on their movement

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Modern management of multifunctional woodlands must address many and various demands, including for recreation, timber production and the conservation of biodiversity. The responses of individuals and populations of protected species to woodland management and habitat change are often not well understood. Using radio-tracking and LiDAR, we investigated the short-term habitat preferences of hazel dormice Muscardinus avellanarius, and their ranging and resting behaviours before and after small-scale tree felling, following a before-after control-impact design. Mean dormouse home range size was 0.51 Ha (±0.07 SE, n = 16) and did not vary between sexes or among sites, though heavier animals had smaller ranges. Dormice preferred mid-height woodland habitat (5–10 m tall), with low proportions of high forest (over 10 m tall), for both ranging and resting sites. Ranging habitats were often located on woodland edges and relatively dense vegetation. Dormice preferentially used yew, rowan and hazel during ranging. There was no difference in the distances travelled by dormice before and after felling, but dormice in areas where trees had been felled showed less evidence of a shift in ranging area than those in unfelled areas. Although the limited response of dormice to tree felling activities has the potential to be associated with increased mortality and/or limited dispersal of individual dormice, the requirements of dormice for mid-successional and edge habitats that arise after tree removal means that a dynamic optimum of felling and regeneration is essential for conservation of dormouse populations.CEDG’s work was supported by a PhD studentship funded by The Forestry Commission and the Natural Environment Research Council

Contralateral fatigue during severe-intensity single-leg exercise: influence of acute acetaminophen ingestion.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from American Physiological Society via the DOI in this recordExhaustive single-leg exercise has been suggested to reduce time to task failure (Tlim) during subsequent exercise in the contralateral leg by exacerbating central fatigue development. We investigated the influence of acetaminophen (ACT), an analgesic which may blunt central fatigue development, on Tlim- during single-leg exercise completed both with, and without, prior fatiguing exercise of the contralateral leg. Fourteen recreationally-active men performed single-leg, severe-intensity knee extensor exercise to Tlim on the left (Leg1) and right (Leg2) legs without prior contralateral fatigue, and on Leg2 immediately following Leg1 (Leg2-CONTRA). The tests were completed following ingestion of 1 g ACT or maltodextrin (placebo) capsules. Intramuscular phosphorous-containing metabolites and substrates, and muscle activation, were assessed using 31P-MRS and electromyography, respectively. Tlim was not different between the Leg1ACT and Leg1PL conditions (402 ± 101 vs. 390 ± 106 s; P=0.11). There was also no difference in Tlim between Leg2ACT-CONTRA and Leg2PL-CONTRA (324 ± 85 vs. 311 ± 92 s; P=0.10), but Tlim was shorter in these tests compared to Leg2CON (385 ± 104 s; both P0.05). These findings suggest that levels of metabolic perturbation and muscle activation are not different at task failure during single-leg severe-intensity knee extensor exercise completed with or without prior fatiguing exercise of the contralateral leg. Despite the existence of contralateral fatigue, ACT ingestion did not alter neuromuscular responses or exercise performance.NIH

Insulin resistance:Impact on therapeutic developments in diabetes

Insulin resistance has a broad pathogenic impact affecting metabolic, cardio-renal and other disease areas. Extensive studies to dissect the mechanisms of insulin resistance have provided valuable insights to shape current clinical awareness and advance therapeutic practice. However, the development of direct interventions against insulin resistance has been hindered by its complex and highly variable presentations, especially in type 2 diabetes. Among glucose-lowering agents, metformin and thiazolidinediones provide cellular actions that counter some effects of insulin resistance: reduced glucotoxicity and weight-lowering with antidiabetic therapies also improve insulin action, except that endogenously- or exogenously-created hyperinsulinaemia may partially compromise these benefits. Increasing awareness of the pervasiveness and damaging ramifications of insulin resistance heightens the need for more specifically targeted and more effective therapies

Demographic buffering and compensatory recruitment promotes the persistence of disease in a wildlife population.

Published onlineLETTERDemographic buffering allows populations to persist by compensating for fluctuations in vital rates, including disease-induced mortality. Using long-term data on a badger (Meles meles Linnaeus, 1758) population naturally infected with Mycobacterium bovis, we built an integrated population model to quantify impacts of disease, density and environmental drivers on survival and recruitment. Badgers exhibit a slow life-history strategy, having high rates of adult survival with low variance, and low but variable rates of recruitment. Recruitment exhibited strong negative density-dependence, but was not influenced by disease, while adult survival was density independent but declined with increasing prevalence of diseased individuals. Given that reproductive success is not depressed by disease prevalence, density-dependent recruitment of cubs is likely to compensate for disease-induced mortality. This combination of slow life history and compensatory recruitment promotes the persistence of a naturally infected badger population and helps to explain the badger's role as a persistent reservoir of M. bovis.NERCUK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affair

Higher biodiversity is required to sustain multiple ecosystem processes across temperature regimes

Natural Environment Research Council. Grant Number: NE/D013305/

Foot kinematics in patients with two patterns of pathological plantar hyperkeratosis

Background: The Root paradigm of foot function continues to underpin the majority of clinical foot biomechanics practice and foot orthotic therapy. There are great number of assumptions in this popular paradigm, most of which have not been thoroughly tested. One component supposes that patterns of plantar pressure and associated hyperkeratosis lesions should be associated with distinct rearfoot, mid foot, first metatarsal and hallux kinematic patterns. Our aim was to investigate the extent to which this was true. Methods: Twenty-seven subjects with planter pathological hyperkeratosis were recruited into one of two groups. Group 1 displayed pathological plantar hyperkeratosis only under metatarsal heads 2, 3 and 4 (n = 14). Group 2 displayed pathological plantar hyperkeratosis only under the 1st and 5th metatarsal heads (n = 13). Foot kinematics were measured using reflective markers on the leg, heel, midfoot, first metatarsal and hallux. Results: The kinematic data failed to identify distinct differences between these two groups of subjects, however there were several subtle (generally <3°) differences in kinematic data between these groups. Group 1 displayed a less everted heel, a less abducted heel and a more plantarflexed heel compared to group 2, which is contrary to the Root paradigm. Conclusions: There was some evidence of small differences between planter pathological hyperkeratosis groups. Nevertheless, there was too much similarity between the kinematic data displayed in each group to classify them as distinct foot types as the current clinical paradigm proposes