Consumer Culture and the 2011 'Riots'

This paper argues that in order to be properly comprehended, the 'riots' of August 2011 must be located in the context of an increasingly consumerist society. The suggestion is that the riots represented conformity to the underlying values of a consumerist society, if, momentarily, not its norms. To make this case, the riots are divided into three constituent 'moments'; the initial, the acquisitive and the nihilistic. Themes and ideas from the literature on consumer culture and crime are applied to the latter two.Consumer Culture, Consumerism, Riots

School performance and reference group orientation to achievement : a pilot study : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education at Massey University

Page 137 is missing from original copy.The main purpose of the study was to test the thesis that a relationship exists between a pupil's performance at school and the orientation towards achievement obtaining from his 'reference group'. This concept was understood principally in terms of social psychology, although conceptual strands from sociology were woven into the theoretical considerations. The study examined the interrelationships of the main variables with socioeconomic status, ethnic origin, class s tream, pupil teacher affect and ses of proposed occupation. An (untestable) causal logic was implicit in the design, namely that a reference group orientation to achievement served as a mediator between the independent variables of (1) SES, Ethnic Origin, IQ, Class Stream and previous grades and (2) the dependent variables of Teacher-pupil affect, Pupil-teacher affect, SES of proposed occupation and present grades. The report contains a justification of the thesis, an account of the pilot study conducted with eighty four fourth form pupils from three streamed classes of a co-educational secondary school, the findings and a discussion of the implications of the study. The empirical phase called for the gathering of data by interview, questionnaire and a search of school records. As well it entailed the development of an index to measure reference group orientation to achievement. The subsequent statistical analysis relied principally on cross tabulation and step-wise multiple regression analysis. The results revealed that reference group orientation to achievement did not appear to mediate between independent and dependent variables but rather that it acted independently intervening to yield a higher correlation with present grades and SES of proposed occupation than any of the variables tested. Further, Reference Group Orientation to achievement emerged as a partial function of SES and ethnic origin, also correlating positively with a simple measure of pupil definition of the school situation and with pupil sociometricrejection

UIEGA and the rise and rise of gaming and gambling in the UK

The paper explores gaming and gambling cultures in the UK and US arguing that they are ripe for a renewed sociological and criminological attention

Time Series Data Mining Algorithms for Identifying Short RNA in Arabidopsis thaliana

The class of molecules called short RNAs (sRNAs) are known to play a key role in gene regulation. Th are typically sequences of nucleotides between 21-25 nucleotides in length. They are known to play a key role in gene regulation. The identification, clustering and classification of sRNA has recently become the focus of much research activity. The basic problem involves detecting regions of interest on the chromosome where the pattern of candidate matches is somehow unusual. Currently, there are no published algorithms for detecting regions of interest, and the unpublished methods that we are aware of involve bespoke rule based systems designed for a specific organism. Work in this very new field has understandably focused on the outcomes rather than the methods used to obtain the results. In this paper we propose two generic approaches that place the specific biological problem in the wider context of time series data mining problems. Both methods are based on treating the occurrences on a chromosome, or “hit count” data, as a time series, then running a sliding window along a chromosome and measuring unusualness. This formulation means we can treat finding unusual areas of candidate RNA activity as a variety of time series anomaly detection problem. The first set of approaches is model based. We specify a null hypothesis distribution for not being a sRNA, then estimate the p-values along the chromosome. The second approach is instance based. We identify some typical shapes from known sRNA, then use dynamic time warping and fourier trans-form based distance to measure how closely the candidate series matches. We demonstrate that these methods can find known sRNA on Arabidopsis thaliana chromosomes and illustrate the benefits of the added information provided by these algorithms

Credit crunch: have the rules of financial management been broken?

With the questions being asked about the sustainability of banking in the UK and the after effects of exposure to toxic assets in the US the effects of global liquidity and profitability of UK banks is considered. The big question is how has this affected shareholder value, measured by the share price, for investors in the UK banks. Secondly, as UK banks’ have faltered, is worth considering whether pricing efficiency of the true economic value of bank shares has been under mind by recent events such as the practice known as short selling. The debate looks at an abstract of what savers and borrowers look for in a scenario without banks. If we then revert back to basics to understand that banks act as brokers and create the ability to lend money many times over, through a number of transactions, whilst maintaining liquidity and confidence. This relies on the money being re-deposited within the banking system such that where 8% liquidity is required then this is equal to 100/0.08 i.e. £1,250 can be lent through a number of transaction. This lending and re-depositing within the UK banking system worked with a zero funding gap up until 2001 but since then the international scale of banking meant that the Bank of England reported that for 2007 there was a net deficit of £625billion between the amount of actual savings and borrowers (Source BBC website - Robert Preston 2nd October 2008). The debate is whether this deficit in the UK is now a surplus in another country overseas or is it a case that the UK Banks have allowed their liquidity to fall by underwriting unprofitable lending. To understand this we have to explore the securitisation process and in turn how this can expand a banks’ balance sheet but has also been used to ease liquidity on a global scale, with consequences that are now only becoming understood

Detection of microRNAs in color space

MotivationDeep sequencing provides inexpensive opportunities to characterize the transcriptional diversity of known genomes. The AB SOLiD technology generates millions of short sequencing reads in color-space; that is, the raw data is a sequence of colors, where each color represents 2 nt and each nucleotide is represented by two consecutive colors. This strategy is purported to have several advantages, including increased ability to distinguish sequencing errors from polymorphisms. Several programs have been developed to map short reads to genomes in color space. However, a number of previously unexplored technical issues arise when using SOLiD technology to characterize microRNAs.ResultsHere we explore these technical difficulties. First, since the sequenced reads are longer than the biological sequences, every read is expected to contain linker fragments. The color-calling error rate increases toward the 3(') end of the read such that recognizing the linker sequence for removal becomes problematic. Second, mapping in color space may lead to the loss of the first nucleotide of each read. We propose a sequential trimming and mapping approach to map small RNAs. Using our strategy, we reanalyze three published insect small RNA deep sequencing datasets and characterize 22 new microRNAs.Availability and implementationA bash shell script to perform the sequential trimming and mapping procedure, called SeqTrimMap, is available at: http://www.mirbase.org/tools/seqtrimmap/[email protected] informationSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

In-silico prediction and deep-DNA sequencing validation indicate phase variation in 115 Neisseria meningitidis genes

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Medulloblastoma has a global impact on health related quality of life: Findings from an international cohort.

BackgroundUnderstanding the global impact of medulloblastoma on health related quality of life (HRQL) is critical to characterizing the broad impact of this disease and realizing the benefits of modern treatments. We evaluated HRQL in an international cohort of pediatric medulloblastoma patients.MethodsSeventy-six patients were selected from 10 sites across North America, Europe, and Asia, who participated in the Medulloblastoma Advanced Genomics International Consortium (MAGIC). The Health Utilities Index (HUI) was administered to patients and/or parents at each site. Responses were used to determine overall HRQL and attributes (ie specific subdomains). The impact of various demographic and medical variables on HRQL was considered-including molecular subgroup.ResultsThe majority of patients reported having moderate or severe overall burden of morbidity for both the HUI2 and HUI3 (HUI2 = 60%; HUI3 = 72.1%) when proxy-assessed. Self-care in the HUI2 was rated as higher (ie better outcome) for patients from Western versus Eastern sites, P = .02. Patients with nonmetastatic status had higher values (ie better outcomes) for the HUI3 hearing, HUI3 pain, and HUI2 pain, all P < .05. Patients treated with a gross total resection also had better outcomes for the HUI3 hearing (P = .04). However, those who underwent a gross total resection reported having worse outcomes on the HUI3 vision (P = .02). No differences in HRQL were evident as a function of subgroup.ConclusionsBy examining an international sample of survivors, we characterized the worldwide impact of medulloblastoma. This is a critical first step in developing global standards for evaluating long-term outcomes

Sourcing illegal drugs as a hidden older user: the ideal of ‘social supply’

Aims: At a time of growing awareness regarding the non-commercial supply of illegal drugs between friends, this article explores the significance of so-called ‘social supply’ for a group of ‘hidden’ users of illegal drugs aged 40 and over. Methodology: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 users of illegal drugs aged 40 and over who were not in contact with the criminal justice system or treatment agencies regarding their use. Participants were recruited using snowball sampling. Findings: Accessing drugs through the commercial market was considered as a less attractive proposition than social supply by the participants. The majority used only socially supplied drugs, with some engaging commercial dealers when socially supplied product was unavailable. A handful sourced drugs exclusively through the commercial market. Some were home growers of cannabis, and a small number had drifted into social supply themselves. Conclusions: Social supply was seen in a far more favourable light than commercial transactions by our participants, and acted as an ideal against which all other acts of sourcing were compared. Moreover, social supply was often an integral facet of the drug using experience and served to validate and enhance that experience. The relatively benign, non-predatory nature of the social supply engaged in by the participants lends support to calls for some reform of the offence of supply in UK law