Ontologies of Play: Reconstructing the Relationship between Audience and Act in Early English Drama

This article examines the ontological relationship between audience and play in early English drama, a relationship often figured in terms of the distinction between a ‘play world’ and the ‘real world.’ Exploring a proposed disjunction between this modern concept and earlier understandings of dramatic ontology, it tests current paradigms against evidence from medieval and early modern playtexts and records, in particular those pertaining to late-medieval and early-sixteenth-century biblical plays. The article argues that current paradigms are rooted in post-nineteenth century, ‘theatrical’ aesthetics, highlighting key contexts that point towards an alternative relationship, in which characters and events occupy the same spatio-temporal location as the audience. It closes by suggesting some potential implications of such a model for early drama research and performance practice

The penultimate syllable vowel length among Setswana-English bilingual children

This study examines the relative duration of the penultimate syllable vowel (PSVL) in multisyllabic Setswana words in the speech of 20 Batswana (citizens) primary school children aged 6-7 years growing up in Botswana. Setswana phonology requires the lengthening of the vowel in the penultimate syllable of multisyllabic words. The participants are 10 privately educated English medium early sequential Setswana-English bilingual children, taught full-time in English (L2) from the age of 3 years, for whom English has become dominant, and 10 Setswana monolingual children. The aim is to see whether the L2, which does not have the PSVL as a phonological pattern, has had an effect on the L1 of the bilinguals. The results show that the bilinguals do not lengthen the penultimate syllable vowel; rather, they lengthen the vowel of the final syllable. The results support the notion that extensive exposure to L2 can cause changes to the patterns of L1

An evaluation of a multi-site community pharmacy based chronic obstructive pulmonary disease support service

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive chronic condition which can be effectively managed by smoking cessation, optimising prescribed therapy and providing treatment to prevent chest infections from causing hospitalisation. The government agenda in the UK is for community pharmacists to become involved in chronic disease management and COPD is one area where they are ideally located to provide a comprehensive service. Objective To evaluate the effect of a community pharmacy based COPD service on patient outcomes. Method Patients in one UK location were recruited over a 3 month period to receive a community pharmacy based COPD support service consisting of signposting to or provision of smoking cessation service, therapy optimisation, and recommendation to obtain a rescue pack containing steroid and antibiotic to prevent hospitalisation as a result of chest infection. Data was collected over a six month period for all recruited patients. Appropriate clinical outcomes, patient reported medication adherence, quality of life and NHS resource utilisation were measured. Key findings 306 patients accessed the service and full data to enable comparison before and after was available for 137. Significant improvements in patient reported adherence, utilisation of rescue packs, quality of life and a reduction in routine GP visits were identified. The intervention cost was estimated to be off-set by reductions in the use of other NHS services (GP and A&E visits and hospital admissions). Conclusion Results suggest that the service improved patient medicine taking behaviours and that it was cost-effective

Metabolic adaption of mucosal macrophages: Is metabolism a driver of persistence across tissues?

Macrophages play essential roles in tissue homeostasis, defense, and repair. Their functions are highly tissue-specific, and when damage and inflammation stimulate repopulation by circulating monocytes, the incoming monocytes rapidly acquire the same, tissue-specific functions as the previous, resident macrophages. Several environmental factors are thought to guide the functional differentiation of recruited monocytes, including metabolic pressures imposed by the fuel sources available in each tissue. Here we discuss whether such a model of metabolic determinism can be applied to macrophage differentiation across barrier sites, from the lung to the skin. We suggest an alternative model, in which metabolic phenotype is a consequence of macrophage longevity rather than an early driver of tissue-specific adaption

New directions and developments in defining, analyzing and measuring L2 speech fluency

In studying second language (L2) fluency attainment, researchers typically address questions about temporal and hesitation phenomena in a descriptive manner, cataloguing which features appear under which learning circumstances. The goal of this paper is to present a perspective on L2 fluency that goes beyond description by exploring a potential explanatory framework for understanding L2 fluency. This framework focuses on the cognitive processing that underlies the manifestation of fluency and disfluency, and on the ways social context might contribute to shaping fluency attainment. The framework provides a dynamical systems perspective of fluency and its development, with specific consequences for a research program on L2 fluency. This framework gives rise to new questions because of its focus on the intimate link between cognitive fluency and utterance fluency, that is, between measures of the speed, efficiency and fluidity of the cognitive processes thought to underlie implementation of the speech act and measures of the oral fluency of that speech act. Moreover, it is argued that cognitive and utterance fluency need to be situated in the social context of communication in order to take into account the role played by the pragmatic and the sociolinguistic nature of communication in shaping L2 fluency development

Multiple Systems Thinking methods for resilience research

There is no commonly accepted typology to describe the field of Systems Thinking. It may be viewed from a number of different perspectives. This is interesting as systems and systemic problem situations may themselves be considered as conceivable from a number of different perspectives or “dimensions”. The more complex a systemic situation, the more relevant becomes taking a range of different dimensional views in its analysis. Critical Systems Thinking (CST), a domain within Systems Thinking, supports multi-dimensional analysis of systems and offers approaches to support practitioners in selecting and combining multiple systems thinking methods for this purpose. A detailed review of the Critical Systems Thinking literature and the multiple-systems-thinking-methods approaches therein reveals that there is a problem. Much debate surrounds the validity of the theory upon which these meta-methodologies are founded. According to Zhu (2011), “Combining multiple methodologies works in practice, but not yet in theory.” The need to find a reliable approach to selecting and combining multiple systems methods for the purpose of resilience research has led to the proposal of a systems-theory-based meta-methodology as an extension to CST. The proposal is a fusion of the multi-methodology ideas of Jackson, Mingers and Brocklesby with ideas for the conceptual dimensions of systems and levels of complexity of Angyal, Emery and Trist, together with the systems archetypes idea of Senge. It is hypothesised that the proposed new meta-methodology is useful for supporting resilience research. The thesis concludes with suggestions for future work required to develop the hypothesis further

Sound, body and space: audience experience in late medieval English drama

This thesis offers a new approach to the study of actor-audience relations in late medieval English drama and endeavours not only to emphasise the performative elements of medieval plays, but also the effects that they may have produced in performance. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, the work focuses on the audience's corporeal experience of the drama and draws on modern theories of performance, including the intersections with anthropology and, more recently, cognitive neuroscience. The literary, poetic and dramatic aspects of the three case studies chosen are analysed in depth with supporting evidence from the literature, iconography and theory of the period. Five distinct chapters divide the thesis: the first is an overview of the broader context of the study and the methodology used; Chapter Five discusses the findings and implications of the work, and the three central chapters each consider one key element in an audience's experience of medieval performance. Therefore, Chapter Two examines vocal sound in Christ before Herod; Chapter Three investigates the effects produced by the actor's physical movements in The Castle of Perseverance, while Chapter Four shifts attention onto the audience's activities in The Play of the Sacrament and how they may have contributed to the dramatic event. The findings suggest that, in many cases, medieval playwrights and performers had a sophisticated grasp of their medium, understanding its unique impact on human physiology and psychology and, moreover, that they consciously manipulated the fundamental components of the drama to create an experientially profound encounter for their audiences. These conclusions further highlight the need to re-evaluate current concepts of medieval performance space, as well as the extent to which the play texts themselves can illuminate the more ephemeral qualities of medieval theatre. But perhaps the most significant outcome of this thesis is the acknowledgement that medieval audiences not only read and heard what was presented to them, but felt the performances in both body and soul