Determination of metabolic activity in planktonic and biofilm cells of Mycoplasma fermentans and Mycoplasma pneumoniae by nuclear magnetic resonance

Mycoplasmas are fastidious microorganisms, typically characterised by their restricted metabolism and minimalist genome. Although there is reported evidence that some mycoplasmas can develop biofilms little is known about any differences in metabolism in these organisms between the growth states. A systematic metabolomics approach may help clarify differences associated between planktonic and biofilm associated mycoplasmas. In the current study, the metabolomics of two different mycoplasmas of clinical importance (Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Mycoplasma fermentans) were examined using a novel approach involving nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and principle component analysis. Characterisation of metabolic changes was facilitated through the generation of high-density metabolite data and diffusion-ordered spectroscopy that provided the size and structural information of the molecules under examination. This enabled the discrimination between biofilms and planktonic states for the metabolomic profiles of both organisms. This work identified clear biofilm/planktonic differences in metabolite composition for both clinical mycoplasmas and the outcomes serve to establish a baseline understanding of the changes in metabolism observed in these pathogens in their different growth states. This may offer insight into how these organisms are capable of exploiting and persisting in different niches and so facilitate their survival in the clinical setting

Emergency Management and Tourism Stakeholder Responses to Crises: A Global Survey

This paper examines the contested area of the responsibility for destinations and tourists, within emergency settings. It incorporates a Delphi-Scenario technique to facilitate a structured discussion of emergency management for different destination stakeholders. The Delphi exercise engaged 123 senior international stakeholders, from 9 different industry sectors, across 34 countries to provide a global perspective. The study’s principal focus is on the notion of emergency management, to identify the challenges that stakeholders would face within a disaster scenario. The exercise asked stakeholders to identify with whom the responsibility rests for 18 distinct disaster-related activities. The study proposes a responsibility allocation building-block framework which could help speed up the emergency management responses by ”knowing who is going to do what” with a particular focus on dealing with international tourists as a community in a disaster zone

Exploring Perceptions of Group Processes in Ice Hockey Officiating

This is an Original Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Applied Sport Psychology on 10 July 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10413200.2017.1349208.Understanding factors that influence sport officials’ performance is vital to ensuring fair sport competition. Through semi-structured interviews (N = 17), we explored officials’ perceptions of group processes that occurred among ice hockey officiating teams. Participant responses revealed numerous ways that group processes were present within officials’ interactions, and two unique characteristics involved the transient nature of officiating groups (frequently performing with different officials) and intra-team competition pertaining to post-season assignments. In the discussion, we expand on the unique nature of officiating groups, synthesize activities in which officials seek to enhance groupness, and provide insights for future interventions and researchers

Making sense of leadership development: Developing a community of education leaders

In education literature there is a distinct lack of scholarly work on issues of leadership other than on functional leadership at lower levels or high-level individual leadership activity which dominates existing studies. This empirical research is based on the result of a merger of education providers within the North East of England. A crucial aspiration of the newly merged organisation was to provide an overarching innovative leadership structure to facilitate integrated leadership. The specific focus of this article is participants of a bespoke postgraduate learning intervention. The authors apply sense-making theory to identify how student-leaders undertaking a leadership development intervention developed to become a community of education leaders. The reflective accounts of the student-leaders indicated a combined approach of distributed, shared and collaborative leadership. Whilst the study was conducted in the UK, the concepts and ideas are likely to have international application

Dynamic response and impact energy loss in controlled rocking members

Unbonded posttensioning anchors a rocking structural member to its foundation and produces its controlled rocking response when the member undergoes seismic action. Unlike rocking of free‐standing bodies, little attention has been given to the dynamic behavior of these controlled rocking members. This paper utilizes experiments of concrete structural members with unbonded posttensioning, varying member geometries, and levels of initial posttensioning force to (a) characterize the associated impact energy loss and (b) improve modeling of controlled rocking motions. Experimental results show that impact energy loss in controlled rocking members can be captured accurately using the coefficient of restitution (r) approach of the modified simple rocking model (MSRM). Based on the MSRM, a controlled rocking model (CRM) is developed that additionally accounts for the variations in contact length at the member‐to‐foundation (rocking) interface. The CRM reproduces the experimental responses of controlled rocking members with good accuracy and is used to investigate controlled rocking motions under horizontal base excitations

Cornish identities and migration: a multi-scalar approach

The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com. 24 month embargo by the publisher. Article will be released July 2009.In this article we argue that theories of transnationalism have value in exploring the historical context of migration and that historical contexts help to shape such theoretical conceptualizations. Historians of migration have now begun to engage more directly with the literature of transnationalism, focusing on the networks that linked settler and home communities. Here we add to this by examining a nineteenth-century migrant community from a British region through the lens of transnationalism, applying the concept to the case of the Cornish, whose economic specialization produced culturally distinct Cornish communities on the mining frontiers of North America, Australia and South Africa. In doing so, we bring together the issues of scale and time. We review the multiple levels of the Cornish transnational space of the late nineteenth century, which exhibited aspects of both core transnationalism and translocalism. This waned, but in the later twentieth century, a renewed interest in a transnational Cornish identity re-emerged, articulating with changing identity claims in Cornwall itself. To capture better the experience of the Cornish over these two very different phases of transnationalism we identify another subset of transnationalism - that of transregionalism.Leverhulme Trus