Practical Sociology: Sociology graduates are ideally placed to solve our practical problems.

In the States, ‘clinical’ sociologists are frequently hired to address problems within all various organisations and corporations. The UK is still catching up to this, argues Nick Fox. There are some great examples of the use of sociological approaches in public and private sectors, but sociologists interested in applying knowledge to fields of work outside academia need to identify the tools, knowledge and skills needed to address real-life problems

Are probabilities overweighted or underweighted when rare outcomes are experienced (rarely)?

When making decisions involving risky outcomes on the basis of verbal descriptions of the outcomes and their associated probabilities, people behave as if they overweight small probabilities. In contrast, when the same outcomes are instead experienced in a series of samples, people behave as if they underweight small probabilities. We present two experiments showing that the existing explanations of the underweighting observed in decisions from experience are not sufficient to account for the effect. Underweighting was observed when participants experienced representative samples of events, so it cannot be attributed to undersampling of the small probabilities. In addition, earlier samples predicted decisions just as well as later samples did, so underweighting cannot be attributed to recency weighting. Finally, frequency judgments were accurate, so underweighting cannot be attributed to judgment error. Furthermore, we show that the underweighting of small probabilities is also reflected in the best-fitting parameter values obtained when prospect theory, the dominant model of risky choice, is applied to the data

Health, ethics and environment: A qualitative study of vegetarian motivations

This qualitative study explored the motivations of vegetarians by means of online ethnographic research with participants in an international message board. The researcher participated in discussions on the board, gathered responses to questions from 33 participants, and conducted follow-up e-mail interviews with eighteen of these participants. Respondents were predominantly from the US, Canada and the UK. Seventy per cent were female, and ages ranged from 14 to 53, with a median of 26 years. Data were analysed using a thematic approach. While this research found that health and the ethical treatment of animals were the main motivators for participants’ vegetarianism, participants reported a range of commitments to environmental concerns, although in only one case was environmentalism a primary motivator for becoming a vegetarian. The data indicates that vegetarians may follow a trajectory, in which initial motivations are augmented over time by other reasons for sustaining or further restricting their diet

You are what you eat? Vegetarianism, health and identity

This paper examines the views of ‘health vegetarians’ through a qualitative study of an online vegetarian message board. The researcher participated in discussions on the board, gathered responses to questions from 33 participants, and conducted follow-up e-mail interviews with 18 of these participants. Respondents were predominantly from the United States, Canada and the UK. Seventy per cent were female, and ages ranged from 14 to 53 years, with a median of 26 years. These data are interrogated within a theoretical framework that asks, ‘what can a vegetarian body do?’ and explores the physical, psychic, social and conceptual relations of participants. This provides insights into the identities of participants, and how diet and identity interact. It is concluded that vegetarianism is both a diet and a bodily practice with consequences for identity formation and stabilisation

Structure and Function of a Mycobacterial NHEJ DNA Repair Polymerase

Non homologous end-joining (NHEJ)-mediated repair of DNA double-strand breaks in prokaryotes requires Ku and a specific multidomain DNA ligase (LigD). We present crystal structures of the primase/polymerisation domain (PolDom) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis LigD, alone and complexed with nucleotides. The PolDom structure combines the general fold of the archaeo-eukaryotic primase (AEP) superfamily with additional loops and domains that together form a deep cleft on the surface, likely used for DNA binding. Enzymatic analysis indicates that the PolDom of LigD, even in the absence of accessory domains and Ku proteins, has the potential to recognise DNA end-joining intermediates. Strikingly, one of the main signals for the specific and efficient binding of PolDom to DNA is the presence of a 5'-phosphate group, located at the single/double-stranded junction at both gapped and 3'-protruding DNA molecules. Although structurally unrelated, Pol lambda and Pol mu, the two eukaryotic DNA polymerases involved in NHEJ, are endowed with a similar capacity to bind a 5'-phosphate group. Other properties that are beneficial for NHEJ, such as the ability to generate template distortions and realignments of the primer, displayed by Pol lambda and Pol mu, are shared by the PolDom of bacterial LigD. In addition, PolDom can perform non-mutagenic translesion synthesis on termini containing modified bases. Significantly, ribonucleotide insertion appears to be a recurrent theme associated with NHEJ, maximised in this case by the deployment of a dedicated primase, although its in vivo relevance is unknown

Microclimate affects landscape level persistence in the British Lepidoptera

Microclimate has been known to drive variation in the distribution and abundance of insects for some time. Until recently however, quantification of microclimatic effects has been limited by computing constraints and the availability of fine-scale biological data. Here, we tested fine-scale patterns of persistence/extinction in butterflies and moths against two computed indices of microclimate derived from Digital Elevation Models: a summer solar index, representing fine-scale variation in temperature, and a topographic wetness index, representing fine-scale variation in moisture availability. We found evidence of microclimate effects on persistence in each of four 20 × 20 km British landscapes selected for study (the Brecks, the Broads, Dartmoor, and Exmoor). Broadly, local extinctions occurred more frequently in areas with higher minimum or maximum solar radiation input, while responses to wetness varied with landscape context. This negative response to solar radiation is consistent with a response to climatic warming, wherein grid squares with particularly high minimum or maximum insolation values provided an increasingly adverse microclimate as the climate warmed. The variable response to wetness in different landscapes may have reflected spatially variable trends in precipitation. We suggest that locations in the landscape featuring cooler minimum and/or maximum temperatures could act as refugia from climatic warming, and may therefore have a valuable role in adapting conservation to climatic change

Health identities: from expert patient to resisting consumer

This article explores the formation of 'health identities': embodied subjectivities that emerge out of complex psychosocial contexts of reflexive modernity, in relation to data on health and illness practices among groups of people and patients using medical technologies including weight-loss drugs and the erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil (Viagra). We examine a range of health identities, from the 'expert patient' - a person who broadly adopts a biomedical model of health and illness, to a 'resisting consumer', who fabricates a health identity around lay experiential models of health and the body. The understanding of health identities is developed within a theoretical framework drawing on previous work on body/ self and the work of Deleuze and Guattari. It is concluded that the constellation of health identities reflects the diversity of relations in an industrialized, technology-driven, consumer-oriented and media-saturated society