Football in the community schemes: Exploring the effectiveness of an intervention in promoting healthful behaviour change

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of a Premier League football club’s Football in the Community (FitC) schemes intervention in promoting positive healthful behaviour change in children. Specifically, exploring the effectiveness of this intervention from the perspectives of the participants involved (i.e. the researcher, teachers, children and coaches). A range of data collection techniques were utilized including the principles of ethnography (i.e. immersion, engagement and observations), alongside conducting focus groups with the children. The results allude to the intervention merely ‘keeping active children active’ via (mostly) fun, football sessions. Results highlight the important contribution the ‘coach’ plays in the effectiveness of the intervention. Results relating to working practice (i.e. coaching practice and coach recruitment) are discussed and highlighted as areas to be addressed. FitC schemes appear to require a process of positive organizational change to increase their effectiveness in strategically attending to the health agenda

Classical and Quantum Nambu Mechanics

The classical and quantum features of Nambu mechanics are analyzed and fundamental issues are resolved. The classical theory is reviewed and developed utilizing varied examples. The quantum theory is discussed in a parallel presentation, and illustrated with detailed specific cases. Quantization is carried out with standard Hilbert space methods. With the proper physical interpretation, obtained by allowing for different time scales on different invariant sectors of a theory, the resulting non-Abelian approach to quantum Nambu mechanics is shown to be fully consistent.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figure, 1 table Minor changes to conform to journal versio

Discount venture brands:Self-congruity and perceived value-for-money?

Grocery retailers have begun to target price conscious consumers with a new type of budget brand, called discount venture brands. These brands are exclusive to the retailer but, unlike traditional private-label brands, do not display retailer branding at all. Sharing the same price point as economy private-label brands, the aim of discount venture brands is to attract customers with an overall look-and-feel that is not explicitly premium, yet is more attractive than that of conventional budget brands. Drawing on the self-congruity literature, the authors explore two questions: (1) whether customers perceive discount venture brands to offer greater value-for-money than conventional budget brands; and (2) whether such perceptions translate to customer impressions about the retailer brand? Results from a scenario-based experiment involving 505 participants suggest that, in comparison with conventional budget brands, discount venture brands may be less conducive to engendering favorable value-for-money perceptions; in short, discount venture brands may be less effective than conventional budget brands. This finding can be explained with a concept called self-congruity. Overall, we show that self-congruity acts as an indirect-only mediator of the path between the type of a brand and value-for-money perceptions of the brand. Particular findings are that self-congruity has a positive effect on value-for-money perceptions associated with conventional budget brands, discount venture brands, and the retailers selling those brands. However, for consumers with a preference for brands with a budget price point, self-congruity appears to be higher for conventional budget brands than discount venture brands; and this difference in self-congruity is more pronounced when shopping for others than when shopping for oneself

'Education, education, education' : legal, moral and clinical

This article brings together Professor Donald Nicolson's intellectual interest in professional legal ethics and his long-standing involvement with law clinics both as an advisor at the University of Cape Town and Director of the University of Bristol Law Clinic and the University of Strathclyde Law Clinic. In this article he looks at how legal education may help start this process of character development, arguing that the best means is through student involvement in voluntary law clinics. And here he builds upon his recent article which argues for voluntary, community service oriented law clinics over those which emphasise the education of students

Phosphorothioate antisense oligonucleotides induce the formation of nuclear bodies

Antisense oligonucleotides are powerful tools for the in vivo regulation of gene expression. We have characterized the intracellular distribution of fluorescently tagged phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotides (PS-ONs) at high resolution under conditions in which PS-ONs have the potential to display antisense activity. Under these conditions PS-ONs predominantly localized to the cell nucleus where they accumulated in 20-30 bright spherical foci designated phosphorothioate bodies (PS bodies), which were set against a diffuse nucleoplasmic population excluding nucleoli. PS bodies are nuclear structures that formed in cells after PS-ON delivery by transfection agents or microinjection but were observed irrespectively of antisense activity or sequence. Ultrastructurally, PS bodies corresponded to electron-dense structures of 150-300 nm diameter and resembled nuclear bodies that were found with lower frequency in cells lacking PS-ONs. The environment of a living cell was required for the de novo formation of PS bodies, which occurred within minutes after the introduction of PS-ONs. PS bodies were stable entities that underwent noticeable reorganization only during mitosis. Upon exit from mitosis, PS bodies were assembled de novo from diffuse PS-ON pools in the daughter nuclei. In situ fractionation demonstrated an association of PS-ONs with the nuclear matrix. Taken together, our data provide evidence for the formation of a nuclear body in cells after introduction of phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotides

Alteration assemblages in Martian meteorites: implications for near-surface processes

The SNC (Shergotty-Nakhla-Chassigny) meteorites have recorded interactions between martian crustal fluids and the parent igneous rocks. The resultant secondary minerals – which comprise up to 1 vol.% of the meteorites – provide information about the timing and nature of hydrous activity and atmospheric processes on Mars. We suggest that the most plausible models for secondary mineral formation involve the evaporation of low temperature (25 – 150 °C) brines. This is consistent with the simple mineralogy of these assemblages – Fe-Mg-Ca carbonates, anhydrite, gypsum, halite, clays – and the chemical fractionation of Ca-to Mg-rich carbonate in ALH84001 "rosettes". Longer-lived, and higher temperature, hydrothermal systems would have caused more silicate alteration than is seen and probably more complex mineral assemblages. Experimental and phase equilibria data on carbonate compositions similar to those present in the SNCs imply low temperatures of formation with cooling taking place over a short period of time (e.g. days). The ALH84001 carbonate also probably shows the effects of partial vapourisation and dehydration related to an impact event post-dating the initial precipitation. This shock event may have led to the formation of sulphide and some magnetite in the Fe-rich outer parts of the rosettes. Radiometric dating (K-Ar, Rb-Sr) of the secondary mineral assemblages in one of the nakhlites (Lafayette) suggests that they formed between 0 and 670 Myr, and certainly long after the crystallisation of the host igneous rocks. Crystallisation of ALH84001 carbonate took place 0.5 Gyr after the parent rock. These age ranges and the other research on these assemblages suggest that environmental conditions conducive to near-surface liquid water have been present on Mars periodically over the last 1 Gyr. This fluid activity cannot have been continuous over geological time because in that case much more silicate alteration would have taken place in the meteorite parent rocks and the soluble salts would probably not have been preserved. The secondary minerals could have been precipitated from brines with seawater-like composition, high bicarbonate contents and a weakly acidic nature. The co-existence of siderite (Fe-carbonate) and clays in the nakhlites suggests that the pCO2 level in equilibrium with the parent brine may have been 50 mbar or more. The brines could have originated as flood waters which percolated through the top few hundred meters of the crust, releasing cations from the surrounding parent rocks. The high sulphur and chlorine concentrations of the martian soil have most likely resulted from aeolian redistribution of such aqueously-deposited salts and from reaction of the martian surface with volcanic acid volatiles. The volume of carbonates in meteorites provides a minimum crustal abundance and is equivalent to 50–250 mbar of CO2 being trapped in the uppermost 200–1000 m of the martian crust. Large fractionations in 18O between igneous silicate in the meteorites and the secondary minerals (30) require formation of the latter below temperatures at which silicate-carbonate equilibration could have taken place (400°C) and have been taken to suggest low temperatures (e.g. 150°C) of precipitation from a hydrous fluid