May we live in less interesting times? Changing public sector support for tourism in England during the Sovereign Debt Crisis

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleNOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Destination Marketing and Management. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, vol. 1,1-2:4-7 doi:10.1016/j.jdmm.2012.05.004This Regional Spotlight focuses on recent changes in public sector support for tourism in England since the Coalition Government was elected in 2010. It focuses on some of the early consequences of stripping away the long-established regional layer of tourism administration and its replacement with more flexible sub-regional arrangements of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and Destination Management Organisations (DMOs). Policy extols the importance of reaping the rewards of the 2012 Olympics, but the recent changes in tourism administration challenge this by creating great uncertainty and by putting responsibility for delivery in the hands of multiple quasi-independent, non-government bodies

Tourism and the public sector in England since 2010: a disorderly transition?

Post-print version of article. Final version published by Routledge; available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/The recent financial crisis has reconfigured tourism production and consumption. Many states have cut public spending to reduce deficits. However, there has been no analysis of the nature, extent or outcomes of such changes to state support for, or mediation of, the tourism sector. This paper examines how reforms since the Coalition Government came to power in May 2010 have impacted on tourism governance and administration in England, and how they have been experienced as they have been unfolding. This paper argues, more generally, for a greater appreciation of sense-making in critical studies of tourism and public policy. More specifically, rapid reforms to the preferred nature and scale of state intervention have had destabilising effects. New localism, sub-regional bodies, and a desire in central government to reduce public contributions to a minimum have introduced complexity and uncertainty to a previously ordered and understood system. The implications are that these reforms may frustrate other national policy aspirations they are intended to facilitate. As it is likely that other states will also downgrade their support for tourism in response to the crisis, the paper points to the importance of developing a deeper understandings of what happens as public sector support is withdrawn

Cytokinin Signaling in Arabidopsis

Cytokinins have been implicated in many developmental processes and environmental responses of plants, including leaf senescence, apical dominance, chloroplast development, anthocyanin production, and the regulation of cell division and sink/source relationships. They were identified in th

Signaling via histidine-containing phosphotransfer proteins in Arabidopsis (Plant Signaling and Behavior)

The Arabidopsis genome encodes a number of proteins with similarity to two-component phosphorelay signaling elements, including hybrid receptor histidine kinases, two classes of response regulator proteins (type-A and type-B ARRs) and a family of six histidine-containing phosphotransfer proteins (AHPs), five of which contain a conserved His residue that is required for phosphorelay signaling. The current model for cytokinin signaling includes a multistep phosphorelay: three histidine kinases and at least five type-B ARRs have been shown to act as positive regulators of cytokinin signaling, while a number of type-A ARRs, and AHP6, act as negative regulators of the pathway. In our recent Plant Cell paper, we provided genetic evidence that at least four AHPs can act as positive regulators of cytokinin signaling, affecting responses to cytokinin in the root and the shoot. In this addendum, we discuss the role of AHPs in cytokinin signaling and speculate on their potential interactions with other signaling pathways in Arabidopsis

Personalities, Preferences and Practicalities: Educating Nurses in Wound Sepsis in the British Hospital, 1870 – 1920

The history of nursing education has often been portrayed as the subordination of nursing to medicine. Yet, as scholars are increasingly acknowledging, the professional boundaries between medicine and nursing were fluid in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when both scientific knowledge and systems of nurse training were in flux. Through its focus on the role of medical practitioners in educating nurses in wound sepsis at four British hospitals between 1870 and 1920, this article attempts to further unite histories of medicine and nursing. It demonstrates that, in this period of uncertainty, the ideas and practices relating to antisepsis, asepsis and bacteriology disseminated to nursing probationers depended on the individual instructor. In demonstrating the localised nature of nursing education, this article argues that further analyses of clinical problems like wound sepsis may enable historians to more clearly identify the importance of professional collaboration within the hospital

The Effects of Exercise Duration and Intensity on Breast Cancer-Related DNA Methylation: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Emerging research suggests that one mechanism through which physical activity may decrease cancer risk is through its influence on the methylation of genes associated with cancer. The purpose of the current study was to prospectively test, using a rigorous experimental design, whether aerobic exercise affects DNA methylation in genes associated with breast cancer, as well as whether quantity of exercise completed affects change in DNA methylation in a dose-response manner. 276 women (M age = 37.25, SD = 4.64) were recruited from the Denver metro area for a randomized controlled trial in which participants were assigned to a supervised aerobic exercise program varying in a fully crossed design by intensity (55-65% versus 75-85% of VO2max) and duration (40 versus 20 min per session). DNA methylation was assessed via blood samples provided at baseline, after completing a 16-week supervised exercise intervention, and six months after the intervention. 137 participants completed the intervention, and 81 had viable pre-post methylation data. Contrary to our hypotheses, total exercise volume completed in kcal/kg/week was not associated with methylation from baseline to post-intervention for any of the genes of interest. An increase in VO2max over the course of the intervention, however, was associated with decreased post-intervention methylation of BRCA1, p = 0.01. Higher levels of self-reported exercise during the follow-up period were associated with lower levels of GALNT9 methylation at the six-month follow-up. This study provides hypothesis-generating evidence that increased exercise behavior and or increased fitness might affect methylation of some genes associated with breast cancer to reduce risk. &nbsp;</p

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

A governance model for integrated primary/ secondary care for the health-reforming first world: results of a systematic review

Internationally, key health care reform elements rely on improved integration of care between the primary and secondary sectors. The objective of this systematic review is to synthesise the existing published literature on elements of current integrated primary/secondary health care. These elements and how they have supported integrated healthcare governance are presented.A systematic review of peer-reviewed literature from PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, Informit Health Collection, the Primary Health Care Research and Information Service, the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, European Foundation for Primary Care, European Forum for Primary Care, and Europa Sinapse was undertaken for the years 2006-2012. Relevant websites were also searched for grey literature. Papers were assessed by two assessors according to agreed inclusion criteria which were published in English, between 2006-2012, studies describing an integrated primary/secondary care model, and had reported outcomes in care quality, efficiency and/or satisfaction.Twenty-one studies met the inclusion criteria. All studies evaluated the process of integrated governance and service delivery structures, rather than the effectiveness of services. They included case reports and qualitative data analyses addressing policy change, business issues and issues of clinical integration. A thematic synthesis approach organising data according to themes identified ten elements needed for integrated primary/secondary health care governance across a regional setting including: joint planning; integrated information communication technology; change management; shared clinical priorities; incentives; population focus; measurement - using data as a quality improvement tool; continuing professional development supporting joint working; patient/community engagement; and, innovation.All examples of successful primary/secondary care integration reported in the literature have focused on a combination of some, if not all, of the ten elements described in this paper, and there appears to be agreement that multiple elements are required to ensure successful and sustained integration efforts. Whilst no one model fits all systems these elements provide a focus for setting up integration initiatives which need to be flexible for adapting to local conditions and settings

Differential processing of consonants and vowels in the auditory modality: A cross-linguistic study

International audienceFollowing the proposal by Nespor, Peña, and Mehler (2003) that consonants are more important in constraining lexical access than vowels, New, Araújo, and Nazzi (2008) demonstrated in a visual priming experiment that primes sharing consonants (jalu-JOLI) facilitate lexical access while primes sharing vowels do not (vobi-JOLI). The present study explores if this asymmetry can be extended to the auditory modality and whether language input plays a critical role as developmental studies suggest. Our experiments tested French and English as target languages and showed that consonantal information facilitated lexical decision to a greater extent than vocalic information, suggesting that the consonant advantage is independent of the language’s distributional properties. However, vowels are also facilitatory, in specific cases, with iambic English CVCV or French CVCV words. This effect is related to the preservation of the rhyme between the prime and the target (here, the final vowel), suggesting that the rhyme, in addition to consonant information and consonant skeleton information is an important unit in auditory phonological priming and spoken word recognition