Middle class youth and education in neoliberal India

Economic reform and structural adjustment in India has undermined state institutions through which the middle classes have historically reproduced their advantage. Education has been profoundly affected by increasing privatisation and a reduction in government subsidies, which in turn has implications for its accessibility, quality and utility. Given that education has historically been central to the processes of class formation for the lower middle classes, my primary concern is to analyse the capacity of this social group to reproduce their advantage through education in the neoliberal era. While I argue throughout that the Indian middle classes are a socially and culturally fragmented group, the major finding of this thesis is that these youth are experiencing increased hardship, heightened anxiety, and are confronting the reality of downward mobility. By demonstrating the contemporary challenges that youth living outside major metropolitan areas face, this thesis contributes to debates about the Indian middle classes as well as debates about youth and education in the Global South. Given the sheer enormity of the youthful population in India, theorising their trajectories is necessary for our understandings of Indian development more broadly

Urban youth cultures and the re-building of social capital: illustrations from a pilot study in Glasgow

The demonization of youth in urban communities is on the increase globally, and the recent media obsession with youth gang culture has added to this moral panic. This paper examines evidence from a small qualitative pilot study of young people in some of the most deprived urban communities in Glasgow, Scotland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with disaffected young people between the ages of 14-19 years as a means of exploring their experience of urban phenomena and the impact this experience has on the generation of social capital. The findings illustrate that the young people feel stigmatised, victimised and excluded from urban space, and that territorial issues restrict their social mobility. Although gang membership provides some young people with a source of bonding social capital, the reality of their lives is one devoid of trust, reciprocity and agency. The paper presents evidence from a case study of a new community-based youth work initiative in Glasgow and the impact it has on re-building social capital among young marginalised men. The paper ends with implications for practice and suggestions for future research

Code-Switching in Linguistics: A Position Paper

This paper provides a critical review of the state of the art in code-switching research being conducted in linguistics. Three issues of theoretical and practical importance are explored: (a) code-switching vs. borrowing; (b) grammaticality; and (c) variability vs. uniformity, and I take a position on all three issues. Regarding switching vs. borrowing, I argue that not all lone other-language items are borrowings once more subtle measures of integration are used. I defend the use of empirical data to compare competing theoretical frameworks of grammaticality, and I exemplify quantitative research on variability in code-switching, showing that it also reveals uniformity and the possible influence of community norms. I conclude that more research is needed on a range of bilingual communities in order to determine the relative contribution of individual factors, processing and community norms to the variability and uniformity of code-switching.</jats:p

Adsorption characteristics at a solid-solution interface

The adsorption characteristics at an alumina-solution interface have been studied for solutions consisting of series of p-substituted phenols (methyl-, chloro-, bromo-, tertiary-butyl-, and nitro-) dissolved in cycloherane and tetrahydrofuran. Characterisation of the alumina surface has been attempted by x-ray diffraction photography, electron microscopy, low temperature nitrogen adsorption and dehydration experiments. The presence of pores in the alumina sample has been confirmed and a pore size distribution analysis carried out. Consideration of the porosity and surface area values obtained by the use of gas adsorption and solution adsorption methods, has enabled the area of the alumina surface available to the adsorptives to be assessed. The molecular area requirements of the adsorptives on the alumina surface have been determined from the adsorption isotherms and indicate that the phenols are perpendicularly orientated to the adsorbent surface. From the nature of the alumina surface and the orientation of the adsorptives, a probable mechanism of adsorption has been suggested. An assessment of the influence of the solvent on the adsorptive capacity of the alumina surface for the phenols has been made resolving the composite adsorption isotherms into the individual isotherms using experimentally determined monolayer values for the adsorptives from vapour and solution phase measurements. In order to compare the adsorptive affinity of the alumina surface for the phenols, an index of adsorption has been defined as "the number of moles of adsorptive present in the adsorbed phase at constant equilibrium mole fraction of the mobile phase". The values of K(_A) for the substituted phenols are seen to reflect the changes occurring in the electrical character of the hydroxyl group of the adsorptive due to the presence of thep-substituent, and are in accord with the relationship observed between hydrogen-bonding association in solution and p-substituent character

Using constraint grammar in the Bangor Autoglosser to disambiguate multilingual spoken text

Proceedings of the NODALIDA 2011 Workshop Constraint Grammar Applications. Editors: Eckhard Bick, Kristin Hagen, Kaili Müürisep, Trond Trosterud. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 14 (2011), 17–25. © 2011 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/19231

Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces

Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our article we argue that a particular symbolic construction of social space, as experienced and constructed by weapon-carrying young white men in Glasgow, informs the landscape of violence judged in terms of official statistics and fear of crime. Signal crime theory as a particular type of cultural criminology affords insights about why weapons are carried. Links with a hierarchical codification of consumer culture inform the findings and resonate with the penetration of capitalism in the lives of the marginalised street youth

Perfluorocarbon Enhanced Glasgow Oxygen Level Dependent (GOLD) magnetic resonance metabolic imaging identifies the penumbra following acute ischemic stroke

The ability to identify metabolically active and potentially salvageable ischaemic penumbra is crucial for improving treatment decisions in acute stroke patients. Our solution involves two complementary novel MRI techniques (Glasgow Oxygen Level Dependant (GOLD) Metabolic Imaging), which when combined with a perfluorocarbon (PFC) based oxygen carrier and hyperoxia can identify penumbra due to dynamic changes related to continued metabolism within this tissue compartment. Our aims were (i) to investigate whether PFC offers similar enhancement of the second technique (Lactate Change) as previously demonstrated for the T2*OC technique (ii) to demonstrate both GOLD metabolic imaging techniques working concurrently to identify penumbra, following administration of Oxycyte® (O-PFC) with hyperoxia. Methods: An established rat stroke model was utilised. Part-1: Following either saline or PFC, magnetic resonance spectroscopy was applied to investigate the effect of hyperoxia on lactate change in presumed penumbra. Part-2; rats received O-PFC prior to T2*OC (technique 1) and MR spectroscopic imaging, which was used to identify regions of tissue lactate change (technique 2) in response to hyperoxia. In order to validate the techniques, imaging was followed by [14C]2-deoxyglucose autoradiography to correlate tissue metabolic status to areas identified as penumbra. Results: Part-1: PFC+hyperoxia resulted in an enhanced reduction of lactate in the penumbra when compared to saline+hyperoxia. Part-2: Regions of brain tissue identified as potential penumbra by both GOLD metabolic imaging techniques utilising O-PFC, demonstrated maintained glucose metabolism as compared to adjacent core tissue. Conclusion: For the first time in vivo, enhancement of both GOLD metabolic imaging techniques has been demonstrated following intravenous O-PFC+hyperoxia to identify ischaemic penumbra. We have also presented preliminary evidence of the potential therapeutic benefit offered by O-PFC. These unique theranostic applications would enable treatment based on metabolic status of the brain tissue, independent of time from stroke onset, leading to increased uptake and safer use of currently available treatment options