Russell Square: a lifelong resource for teaching and learning

A quarter of a century ago, in 1978, Birkbeck College’s Faculty of Continuing Education (FCE, then the Department for Extra-Mural Studies of the federal University) moved to the offices that it now occupies in numbers 26 and 25 Russell Square. Then, as now, FCE was the one of the largest and most active extra-mural departments of any British university, with an enormous range of courses covering virtually every subject taught in ‘internal’ university departments and many more besides 1. Some of these courses have, from time to time, used Russell Square as a learning resource. Many more staff and students alike have (along with thousands of local workers, tourists and residents) used the square’s gardens for relaxation and recovery, without reflecting on its origins or present significance. This Occasional Paper examines the past and present fabric of Russell Square (‘the Square’) as a resource for teaching and learning. It is a composite narrative assembled by FCE staff whose disciplines range from nature conservation through garden history and architectural history to social policy. It deconstructs the Square as an entity and attempts to decipher some of its ‘meanings’ that provide links between subjects taught within FCE. We hope that it will stimulate discussion about the way this single ‘place’ – our Square - can be ‘seen’ or interpreted in different ways for diverse purposes, and about the way that it can be used as a resource for teaching and learning across disciplines

The Effect of Rat Spleen Cells on Two Transplanted Mouse Tumours

IT was reported in a previous paper (Woodruff and Symes, 1962a) that the growth, in A-strain mice, of subcutaneous transplants of a mammary carcinoma which originated in this strain, could be greatly retarded, and the tumour could sometimes be completely destroyed, by giving a sublethal dose of whole body irradiation followed by an intravenous injection of allogeneic spleen cells from either a normal CBA mouse or a CBA mouse which had been immunized against the A-strain tumour. Due to the concomitant induction of graft-versus-host disease, however, these procedures sometimes resulted in early death of the treated animals while the growth of their tumours remained arrested. The present experiments are concerned with the effect of an intraperitoneal injection of heterogeneic spleen cells from normal or pre-immunized rats, preceded in some cases by sublethal whole body irradiation, on mice previously injected by the same route with the Landschutz ascites tumour or with a cell suspension prepared from an A-strain mammary carcinoma. Previous observations on the anti-tumour effect of heterogeneic cells have bee

The role of ecolabeling in fisheries management and conservation

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Blackwell for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Conservation Biology 20 (2006): 392-398, doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00319.x.The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) regulate the ecolabeling of products from fisheries with the aim of promoting sustainable fishery practices. To date 11 fisheries have attained full certification and a further 7 are under review. Together these fisheries offer 220 ecolabeled marine products to consumers. Despite great potential to encourage sustainable fisheries, and thereby bring conservation benefits to marine systems, there are a range of issues that may serve to limit the wider uptake of MSC ecolabeled products. These include a general lack of consumer concern for marine fish and sustainable fisheries, an absence of guaranteed continued financial benefits to participating fishers and difficulties of quality assurance which are related to the complexities in monitoring compliance of marine fisheries. In addition, it is apparent that property-rights over the fishery seem to be an essential prerequisite for engagement in MSC and this is one major impediment to wider uptake of the scheme in current marine fisheries, which tend to be open access. Some modifications to the current scheme may be needed if wider participation of marine fishers is to be achieved. These may include a tiered approach to certification, certification of fishers rather than fisheries, governmental facilitation to assist the latter, and greater engagement with retailers and buyers rather than individual consumers. None of these changes will occur without constructive engagement of Government, retailers and the fishing industry.MJK was part funded through a Marine Policy Center Senior Research Fellowship

Construction of KP Hierarchies in Terms of Finite Number of Fields and their Abelianization

The $2M$-boson representations of KP hierarchy are constructed in terms of $M$ mutually independent two-boson KP representations for arbitrary number $M$. Our construction establishes the multi-boson representations of KP hierarchy as consistent Poisson reductions of standard KP hierarchy within the $R$-matrix scheme. As a byproduct we obtain a complete description of any finitely-many-field formulation of KP hierarchy in terms of Darboux coordinates with respect to the first Hamiltonian structure. This results in a series of representations of \Win1\, algebra made out of arbitrary even number of boson fields.Comment: 12 p., LaTeX, minor typos corrected, BGU-93/2/June-P

Transforming growth factor β controls CCN3 expression in nucleus pulposus cells of the intervertebral disc

Objective To investigate transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) regulation of CCN3 expression in cells of the nucleus pulposus. Methods Real‐time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analyses were used to measure CCN3 expression in the nucleus pulposus. Transfections were used to measure the effect of Smad3, MAPKs, and activator protein 1 (AP‐1) on TGFβ‐mediated CCN3 promoter activity. Lentiviral knockdown of Smad3 was performed to assess the role of Smad3 in CCN3 expression. Results CCN3 was expressed in embryonic and adult intervertebral discs. TGFβ decreased the expression of CCN3 and suppressed its promoter activity in nucleus pulposus cells. DN‐Smad3, Smad3 small interfering RNA, or DN‐AP‐1 had little effect on TGFβ suppression of CCN3 promoter activity. However, p38 and ERK inhibitors blocked suppression of CCN3 by TGFβ, suggesting involvement of these signaling pathways in the regulation of CCN3. Interestingly, overexpression of Smad3 in the absence of TGFβ increased CCN3 promoter activity. We validated the role of Smad3 in controlling CCN3 expression in Smad3‐null mice and in nucleus pulposus cells transduced with lentiviral short hairpin Smad3. In terms of function, treatment with recombinant CCN3 showed a dose‐dependent decrease in the proliferation of nucleus pulposus cells. Moreover, CCN3‐treated cells showed a decrease in aggrecan, versican, CCN2, and type I collagen expression. Conclusion The opposing effect of TGFβ on CCN2 and CCN3 expression and the suppression of CCN2 by CCN3 in nucleus pulposus cells further the paradigm that these CCN proteins form an interacting triad, which is possibly important in maintaining extracellular matrix homeostasis and cell numbers.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87040/1/30468_ftp.pd

Attention Bias in Test Anxiety: The Impact of a Test-threat Congruent Situation, Presentation Time, and Approach-avoidance Temperament

Previous studies have shown that test anxiety is related to attention bias. It is not clear, however, whether a congruent test-threat manipulation is required to elicit this bias or whether the bias is a result of automatic or conscious processes. In the present study we used a mood induction procedure to examine attention bias in test anxious persons using a dot-probe task and incorporated approach-avoidance temperament as a possible moderator. Results showed that the mood induction procedure was not effective in manipulating state anxiety. In the absence of an effective test-threat manipulation, high test anxious persons showed attention bias towards supraliminal threat stimuli. Attention bias was only shown to subliminal threat stimuli in high test anxious persons with a strong approach temperament. This suggests that the mechanism for attention bias to threat stimuli in high test anxious persons is a result of both automatic and conscious processes