Women's lives in a shipbuilding community: Irish Catholic Port Glasgow in the 1930s

A conventional account of the shipbuilding town of Port Glasgow might concentrate on the male side of that community, on the shipyards, the workers and their culture. Instead, this thesis explores features of that community from the perspective of the lives of Port Glasgow's Irish Catholic female population. While male experience is also included, the focus is upon female life in an urban industrial setting. In the main, the inter-war years and the period immediately following provide the time frame, although material from other periods is also included. Importantly, the thesis draws extensively on interviews conducted with women and men who experienced the period and the place at first hand. These recordings have been lodged in the archives of the School of Scottish Studies. After outlining the methodology and providing the historical context of this industrial centre, including an account of its development and built environment, the chapters focus on the home and the household and what helped to create and sustain these - courtship and marriage and the place of entertainment and leisure pursuits and courtship; the impact of housing provision on married relationships; the networks in place to assist young couples in finding a home; the circumstances of home-making; family life; the role of religion and cultural beliefs and traditions within the home, and the interaction between these and the wider religious community and institutions. This thesis brings to light experience which has hitherto received relatively little attention and shows the value of a critical use of oral testimony for exploring and understanding lives which have contributed to Scotland's industrial history

Impact of LGBTQ school climate policy on rates of suicide : planning and attempt among high school populations

This study was developed to observe the correlation between the implementation of policies to improve school climate for high school students who identify as LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer), and changes in self reported suicide planning and attempts among school populations. Current academic literature notes an increase in the suicidal behaviors among LGBTQ students, and notes social and environmental factors (e.g. school climate) as potential contributing factors to suicide risk. This study compares school policy data from 49 school districts across the state of Vermont to self-reported rates of suicidal planning and attempt collected by the Vermont Department of Health and aggregated at the school level. The study hypothesized that schools with a greater number of school climate policies (e.g. gender neutral bathrooms, LGBTQ organizations, anti-harassment policy and student antiharassment training) will exhibit lower rates of suicidal planning and attempts. The findings pointed to a slight reduction in rates of suicidal ideation and attempt among school employing three of the four interventions, as well as a negative correlation between the number of intervention implemented and the rates of suicidal planning and attempt. However, these findings lack the statistical significance required to rule out a null hypothesis. Further research is needed to exhibit a statistically significant impact, however these findings can be extrapolated to suggest that certain school policies cannot only improve students\u27 feelings of depression and outlook on life, but may prevent death by suicide

Josephson point-contact resonance responses

The voltage across a dc-current-driven Josephson point contact shunted by a resistive element with an applied small-amplitude ac signal current at frequency omega is calculated. First-order resonances are found to occur whenever +omega or –omega is near the Josephson frequency omega0. Second-order resonances occur whenever omega is near ±omega0/2. Singular perturbation techniques are used to obtain accurate approximate solutions for the contact voltage, in particular solutions when one of the above resonances occurs. These solutions all exhibit frequency (phase) locking when omega is near enough to ±omega0 and ±omega0/2, and frequency pulling otherwise. The regions where frequency locking occurs are obtained

Evaluating Determinants of Participation in Voluntary Riparian Buffer Programs: A Case Study of Maryland's Buffer Incentive Program

Forest or grass buffers planted along streams or other waterbodies are receiving considerable attention by policy makers as a way of providing a range of environmental benefits for society, especially prevention of non-point source water pollution from agricultural land. The current emphasis of riparian buffer discussions focuses on voluntary rather than regulatory initiatives, both nationally and in the Chesapeake Bay region. This is not a project about the behavior of buffers; rather, it is about the behavior of people. Why would a landowner plant a riparian buffer on his land if he bears many of the costs, while the benefits might occur largely downstream? This project compares the decision-making process of a sample of landowners who are participating in Maryland's voluntary Buffer Incentive Program and a sample of farmers who are not in the program. More than 600 telephone interviews were conducted to gather original data about the landowners' demographic characteristics, their awareness of the riparian buffer concept, and the weight they gave to various economic and attitudinal factors during their riparian buffer adoption decision-making process. Water quality or other environmental benefits to the community, creation of fish and wildlife habitat, control of erosion, and the grant from the Buffer Incentive Program were the most important factors in the adoption decision for Buffer Incentive Program participants interviewed. Non-participating farmers cited most often erosion control, water quality or other environmental benefit to the community, compliance with current or future land use regulations, and the grant payment from the Buffer Incentive Program

Type IV Pili Can Mediate Bacterial Motility within Epithelial Cells.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is among bacterial pathogens capable of twitching motility, a form of surface-associated movement dependent on type IV pili (T4P). Previously, we showed that T4P and twitching were required for P. aeruginosa to cause disease in a murine model of corneal infection, to traverse human corneal epithelial multilayers, and to efficiently exit invaded epithelial cells. Here, we used live wide-field fluorescent imaging combined with quantitative image analysis to explore how twitching contributes to epithelial cell egress. Results using time-lapse imaging of cells infected with wild-type PAO1 showed that cytoplasmic bacteria slowly disseminated throughout the cytosol at a median speed of >0.05 μm s-1 while dividing intracellularly. Similar results were obtained with flagellin (fliC) and flagellum assembly (flhA) mutants, thereby excluding swimming, swarming, and sliding as mechanisms. In contrast, pilA mutants (lacking T4P) and pilT mutants (twitching motility defective) appeared stationary and accumulated in expanding aggregates during intracellular division. Transmission electron microscopy confirmed that these mutants were not trapped within membrane-bound cytosolic compartments. For the wild type, dissemination in the cytosol was not prevented by the depolymerization of actin filaments using latrunculin A and/or the disruption of microtubules using nocodazole. Together, these findings illustrate a novel form of intracellular bacterial motility differing from previously described mechanisms in being directly driven by bacterial motility appendages (T4P) and not depending on polymerized host actin or microtubules.IMPORTANCE Host cell invasion can contribute to disease pathogenesis by the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa Previously, we showed that the type III secretion system (T3SS) of invasive P. aeruginosa strains modulates cell entry and subsequent escape from vacuolar trafficking to host lysosomes. However, we also showed that mutants lacking either type IV pili (T4P) or T4P-dependent twitching motility (i) were defective in traversing cell multilayers, (ii) caused less pathology in vivo, and (iii) had a reduced capacity to exit invaded cells. Here, we report that after vacuolar escape, intracellular P. aeruginosa can use T4P-dependent twitching motility to disseminate throughout the host cell cytoplasm. We further show that this strategy for intracellular dissemination does not depend on flagellin and resists both host actin and host microtubule disruption. This differs from mechanisms used by previously studied pathogens that utilize either host actin or microtubules for intracellular dissemination independently of microbe motility appendages