'Where You Once Belonged' Class, Race and Liverpool Roots of Lennon and McCartney's Songs

While Lennon and McCartney’s class affiliations are ambiguous to degrees that should remain debatable, the depth and the detail in which working-class life defines their work have been overlooked, thus misrepresenting The Beatles’ cultural significance. Initial New Left criticisms of The Beatles—almost exclusively in response to one composition, ‘Revolution’ (1968)—have recently been adapted by commentators eager to portray The Beatles as a culturally and politically conservative force. I argue that early left-wing and recent right-wing criticisms of The Beatles’ legacy are misleading, because both overlook Lennon and McCartney’s different relationships to working-class culture. I also emphasize an importantly related, even more marginalized aspect of The Beatles’ history: the significance of black musical and cultural influences from Liverpool. The article seeks to offer new interpretations of songs including ‘Norwegian Wood’, ‘A Day In The Life’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da’ and ‘Working Class Hero’. KEYWORDS: : avant-garde; The Beatles; left wing; Liverpool; race; working clas

Phosphoenolpyruvate phosphomutase activity in an L-phosphonoalanine-mineralizing strain of Burkholderia cepacia

A strain of Burkholderia cepacia isolated by enrichment culture utilized l-2-amino-3-phosphonopropionic acid (phosphonoalanine) at concentrations up to 20 mM as a carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus source in a phosphate-insensitive manner. Cells contained phosphoenolpyruvate phosphomutase activity, presumed to be responsible for cleavage of the C—P bond of phosphonopyruvate, the transamination product of l-phosphonoalanine; this was inducible in the presence of phosphonoalanine

"Doctor, I'm Damaged": Medical and Cultural Narratives of Nicky Hopkins and The Rolling Stones

Pianist Nicky Hopkins (1944-1994) was one of the most gifted and prolific session musicians of his generation, playing on recordings by artists including The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles, and most extensively, The Rolling Stones. This essay considers Hopkins’ legacy through the lens of disability studies, discussing how physical illness prevented him from joining bands because he was unable to tour. As a point of contrast against Hopkins’ image as an abstinent and (at the start and end of his career) teetotal musician, narratives of ‘rock & roll excess’ surrounding the Rolling Stones are critiqued as part of a cultural lineage dating back to Romanticism. Through these focal points, the essay also confronts the complex relationship between disability studies and addiction

Antenatal couples' counselling in Uganda (ACCU): study protocol for a randomised controlled feasibility trial.

BACKGROUND: Common avoidable factors leading to maternal, perinatal and neonatal deaths include lack of birth planning (and delivery in an inappropriate place) and unmet need for contraception. Progress has been slow because routine antenatal care has focused only on women. Yet, in Uganda, many women first want the approval of their husbands. The World Health Organization recommends postpartum family planning (PPFP) as a critical component of health care. The aim of this trial is to test the feasibility of recruiting and retaining participants in a trial of a complex community-based intervention to provide counselling to antenatal couples in Uganda. METHODS: This is a two-group, non-blinded cluster-randomised controlled feasibility trial of a complex intervention. Primary health centres in Uganda will be randomised to receive the intervention or usual care provided by the Ministry of Health. The intervention consists of training village health teams to provide basic counselling to couples at home, encouraging men to accompany their wives to an antenatal clinic, and secondly of training health workers to provide information and counselling to couples at antenatal clinics, to facilitate shared decision-making on the most appropriate place of delivery, and postpartum contraception. We aim to recruit 2 health centres in each arm, each with 10 village health teams, each of whom will aim to recruit 35 pregnant women (a total of 700 women per arm). The village health teams will follow up and collect data on pregnant women in the community up to 12 months after delivery and will directly enter the data using the COSMOS software on a smartphone. DISCUSSION: This intervention addresses two key avoidable factors in maternal, perinatal and neonatal deaths (lack of family planning and inappropriate place of delivery). Determining the acceptability and feasibility of antenatal couples' counselling in this study will inform the design of a fully randomised controlled clinical trial. If this trial demonstrates the feasibility of recruitment and delivery, we will seek funding to conduct a fully powered trial of the complex intervention for improving uptake of birth planning and postpartum family planning in Uganda. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Pan African Clinical Trials Registry PACTR202102794681952 . Approved on 10 February 2021. ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN97229911. Registered on 23 September 2021

Attentional Processing in C57BL/6J Mice Exposed to Developmental Vitamin D Deficiency

Epidemiological evidence suggests that Developmental Vitamin D (DVD) deficiency is associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia. DVD deficiency in mice is associated with altered behaviour, however there has been no detailed investigation of cognitive behaviours in DVD-deficient mice. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of DVD deficiency on a range of cognitive tasks assessing attentional processing in C57BL/6J mice. DVD deficiency was established by feeding female C57BL/6J mice a vitamin D-deficient diet from four weeks of age. After six weeks on the diet, vitamin D-deficient and control females were mated with vitamin D-normal males and upon birth of the pups, all dams were returned to a diet containing vitamin D. The adult offspring were tested on a range of cognitive behavioural tests, including the five-choice serial reaction task (5C-SRT) and five-choice continuous performance test (5C-CPT), as well as latent inhibition using a fear conditioning paradigm. DVD deficiency was not associated with altered attentional performance on the 5C-SRT. In the 5C-CPT DVD-deficient male mice exhibited an impairment in inhibiting repetitive responses by making more perseverative responses, with no changes in premature or false alarm responding. DVD deficiency did not affect the acquisition or retention of cued fear conditioning, nor did it affect the expression of latent inhibition using a fear conditioning paradigm. DVD-deficient mice exhibited no major impairments in any of the cognitive domains tested. However, impairments in perseverative responding in DVD-deficient mice may indicate that these animals have specific alterations in systems governing compulsive or reward-seeking behaviour

Ablation of nanoparticles and efficient harmonic generation using a 1-kHz laser

Author name used in this publication: D. Y. Lei2013-2014 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe