The domestic and gendered context for retirement

Against a global backdrop of population and workforce ageing, successive UK governments have encouraged people to work longer and delay retirement. Debates focus mainly on factors affecting individuals’ decisions on when and how to retire. We argue that a fuller understanding of retirement can be achieved by recognizing the ways in which individuals’ expectations and behaviours reflect a complicated, dynamic set of interactions between domestic environments and gender roles, often established over a long time period, and more temporally proximate factors. Using a qualitative data set, we explore how the timing, nature and meaning of retirement and retirement planning are played out in specific domestic contexts. We conclude that future research and policies surrounding retirement need to: focus on the household, not the individual; consider retirement as an often messy and disrupted process and not a discrete event; and understand that retirement may mean very different things for women and for men

Bostonia: The Boston University Alumni Magazine. Volume 20

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Dynamics of Coupled Microbial and Contaminant Transport.

Dynamic microbial attachment/detachment occurs in subsurface systems in response to changing environmental conditions caused by contaminant movement and degradation. This project's objective is to develop the understanding of the environmental conditions and mechanisms by which anaerobic bacteria partition between aqueous and solid phases. In particular this interdisciplinary research project provides fundamental information on the attachment/detachment dynamics of anaerobic bacteria in heterogeneous porous media under growth and growth-limiting conditions. This is a critical requirement for designing and evaluating in situ bioremediation efforts

The Effects of Dietary Linoleic Acid and Hydrophilic Antioxidants on Basal, Peak, and Sustained Metabolism in Flight‐trained European Starlings

Dietary micronutrients have the ability to strongly influence animal physiology and ecology. For songbirds, dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and antioxidants are hypothesized to be particularly important micronutrients because of their influence on an individual\u27s capacity for aerobic metabolism and recovery from extended bouts of exercise. However, the influence of specific fatty acids and hydrophilic antioxidants on whole‐animal performance remains largely untested. We used diet manipulations to directly test the effects of dietary PUFA, specifically linoleic acid (18:2n6), and anthocyanins, a hydrophilic antioxidant, on basal metabolic rate (BMR), peak metabolic rate (PMR), and rates of fat catabolism, lean catabolism, and energy expenditure during sustained flight in a wind tunnel in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). BMR, PMR, energy expenditure, and fat metabolism decreased and lean catabolism increased over the course of the experiment in birds fed a high (32%) 18:2n6 diet, while birds fed a low (13%) 18:2n6 diet exhibited the reverse pattern. Additionally, energy expenditure, fat catabolism, and flight duration were all subject to diet‐specific effects of whole‐body fat content. Dietary antioxidants and diet‐related differences in tissue fatty acid composition were not directly related to any measure of whole‐animal performance. Together, these results suggest that the effect of dietary 18:2n6 on performance was most likely the result of the signaling properties of 18:2n6. This implies that dietary PUFA influence the energetic capabilities of songbirds and could strongly influence songbird ecology, given their availability in terrestrial systems

Organisational participation and women - an attitude problem?

Employee participation is a dynamic and contested area of organisational behaviour, attracting continuing academic, practitioner and policy interest and debate. This chapter focuses on organisational participation and women

Automated Risk Identification of Myocardial Infarction Using Relative Frequency Band Coefficient (RFBC) Features from ECG

Various structural and functional changes associated with ischemic (myocardial infarcted) heart cause amplitude and spectral changes in signals obtained at different leads of ECG. In order to capture these changes, Relative Frequency Band Coefficient (RFBC) features from 12-lead ECG have been proposed and used for automated identification of myocardial infarction risk. RFBC features reduces the effect of subject variabilty in body composition on the amplitude dependent features. The proposed method is evaluated on ECG data from PTB diagnostic database using support vector machine as classifier. The promising result suggests that the proposed RFBC features may be used in the screening and clinical decision support system for myocardial infarction

Epidermolysa bullosa in Danish Hereford calves is caused by a deletion in LAMC2 gene

BACKGROUND Heritable forms of epidermolysis bullosa (EB) constitute a heterogeneous group of skin disorders of genetic aetiology that are characterised by skin and mucous membrane blistering and ulceration in response to even minor trauma. Here we report the occurrence of EB in three Danish Hereford cattle from one herd. RESULTS Two of the animals were necropsied and showed oral mucosal blistering, skin ulcerations and partly loss of horn on the claws. Lesions were histologically characterized by subepidermal blisters and ulcers. Analysis of the family tree indicated that inbreeding and the transmission of a single recessive mutation from a common ancestor could be causative. We performed whole genome sequencing of one affected calf and searched all coding DNA variants. Thereby, we detected a homozygous 2.4 kb deletion encompassing the first exon of the LAMC2 gene, encoding for laminin gamma 2 protein. This loss of function mutation completely removes the start codon of this gene and is therefore predicted to be completely disruptive. The deletion co-segregates with the EB phenotype in the family and absent in normal cattle of various breeds. Verifying the homozygous private variants present in candidate genes allowed us to quickly identify the causative mutation and contribute to the final diagnosis of junctional EB in Hereford cattle. CONCLUSIONS Our investigation confirms the known role of laminin gamma 2 in EB aetiology and shows the importance of whole genome sequencing in the analysis of rare diseases in livestock

Towards in cellulo virus crystallography

Viruses are a significant threat to both human health and the economy, and there is an urgent need for novel anti-viral drugs and vaccines. High-resolution viral structures inform our understanding of the virosphere, and inspire novel therapies. Here we present a method of obtaining such structural information that avoids potentially disruptive handling, by collecting diffraction data from intact infected cells. We identify a suitable combination of cell type and virus to accumulate particles in the cells, establish a suitable time point where most cells contain virus condensates and use electron microscopy to demonstrate that these are ordered crystalline arrays of empty capsids. We then use an X-ray free electron laser to provide extremely bright illumination of sub-micron intracellular condensates of bacteriophage phiX174 inside living Escherichia coli at room temperature. We have been able to collect low resolution diffraction data. Despite the limited resolution and completeness of these initial data, due to a far from optimal experimental setup, we have used novel methodology to determine a putative space group, unit cell dimensions, particle packing and likely maturation state of the particles.Peer reviewe

Formation and Degradation of Beta-casomorphins in Dairy Processing

Milk proteins including casein are sources of peptides with bioactivity. One of these peptides is beta-casomorphin (BCM) which belongs to a group of opioid peptides formed from b-casein variants. Beta-casomorphin 7 (BCM7) has been demonstrated to be enzymatically released from the A1 or B b-casein variant. Epidemiological evidence suggests the peptide BCM 7 is a risk factor for development of human diseases, including increased risk of type 1 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases but this has not been thoroughly substantiated by research studies. High performance liquid chromatography coupled to UV-Vis and mass spectrometry detection as well as enzyme–linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has been used to analyze BCMs in dairy products. BCMs have been detected in raw cow’s milk and human milk and a variety of commercial cheeses, but their presence has yet to be confirmed in commercial yoghurts. The finding that BCMs are present in cheese suggests they could also form in yoghurt, but be degraded during yoghurt processing. Whether BCMs do form in yoghurt and the amount of BCM forming or degrading at different processing steps needs further investigation and possibly will depend on the heat treatment and fermentation process used, but it remains an intriguing unknown