Geographies of youth citizenship and national identity: a case study of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and the Scottish independence referendum

The year 2014 welcomed two major events of national importance for Scotland, the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and the Scottish Independence Referendum. These national sporting and political events provided Scotland and its citizens with an opportunity to display the nation on the world stage and decide upon its geopolitical future. While the referendum was widely acknowledged as a significant ‘once in a generation’ event for all voters, it also marked the first time extension of the franchise in a major UK public ballot to those aged 16 and 17 years old. Therefore, this thesis draws upon the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and Independence Referendum as a lens to investigate understandings of youth citizenship and national identity among a generation of newly enfranchised 16 and 17 year old voters, living in the city of Glasgow, located at the epicentre of these events. First, the thesis examines how ideas of Scotland presented through the Games resonated with young people’s conceptions of the nation. Second, the discussion explores how the Games and Referendum prompted young people to consider the future of the nation. Third, the thesis considers how young people mobilised their vote as newly enfranchised citizens through the Referendum. Fourth, the thesis aims to inform, and be informed by, current theories of the geographies of citizenship and national identity. Overall, the thesis concludes by providing a timely and original analysis of the geographies of youth citizenship and national identity through an exploration of the reconfigured interstitial political space that these young people occupied during the referendum

Update on duloxetine for the management of stress urinary incontinence

Duloxetine is a relatively balanced serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), which is the first drug with widely proven efficacy to have been licensed for the medical treatment of women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Despite favorable results from randomized controlled trials, surgical management continues to be the mainstay of treatment for SUI. In this review we explore the pharmacology of duloxetine in the nervous system and lower urinary tract, and the evidence for its use in the management of women with urinary incontinence

Following palladium catalyzed methoxycarbonylation by hyperpolarized NMR spectroscopy : A: para hydrogen based investigation

Pd(OTf)2(bcope) is shown to react in methanol solution with diphenylacetylene, carbon monoxide and hydrogen to produce the methoxy-carbonylation product methyl 2,3 diphenyl acrylate alongside cis- and trans-stilbene. In situ NMR studies harnessing the parahydrogen induced polarization effect reveal substantially enhanced 1H NMR signals in both protic and aprotic solvents for a series of reaction intermediates that play a direct role in this homogeneous transformation. Exchange spectroscopy (EXSY) measurements reveal that the corresponding CO adducts are less reactive than their methanol counterparts

Educating and Debating Social and Political Issues in the Naperville Lyceum

This historical research responds to a call from other scholars to allow thetopics discussed in the lyceum of the nineteenth century to shed light onthe social consciousness of the frontier settlements of the era. The recentdiscovery of the “Proceedings of the Naperville Lyceum” (1836-1843)provided the means to do this. Since political topics were clearly central tothe Naperville Lyceum members, this research focused on those items. Itis revealing that lyceum topics in this location were not self-absorbed. Thedebated topics included several global issues and did not simplychampion the American status quo. It suggests that the frontier settlers ofNaperville were concerned with concerns of justice as citizens of acosmopolitan world, one in which they valued self-governance. The studyfurther reveals how some topics have continued to be politically relevantfor more than 180 years since the Naperville Lyceum began. Many of thesame topics are prominent in modern political discussion and debate

Making a decision about surgery for female urinary incontinence: a qualitative study of women's views.

INTRODUCTION AND HYPOTHESIS: This qualitative interview study explores aspects women with urinary incontinence(UI) reflect upon when considering whether or not to have surgery. Conducted prior to the recent mesh pause in the UK, the article provides insights for current and future approaches to shared decision-making. METHODS: Qualitative in-depth interviews of 28 patients referred to secondary care for stress and mixed UI who were considering UI surgery. Participants were recruited from four urogynaecology clinics in the Midlands and South England, UK. Interviews were conducted in clinics, in patient homes, and by telephone. Data analysis was based on the constant comparative method. RESULTS: Participants' accounts comprised three key concerns: their experience of symptoms, the extent to which these impacted a variety of social roles and demands, and overcoming embarrassment. Accounts drew on individual circumstances, values, and concerns rather than objective or measurable criteria. In combination, these dimensions constituted a personal assessment of the severity of their UI and hence framed the extent to which women prioritized addressing their condition. CONCLUSIONS: Acknowledging women's personal accounts of UI shifts the concept of 'severity' beyond a medical definition to include what is important to patients themselves. Decision-making around elective surgery must endeavour to link medical information with women's own experiences and personal criteria, which often change in priority over time. We propose that this research provides insight into how the controversy around the use of mesh in the UK emerged. This study also suggests ways in which facilitating shared decision-making should be conducted in future

Can policy be risk-based? The cultural theory of risk and the case of livestock disease containment

This article explores the nature of calls for risk-based policy present in expert discourse from a cultural theory perspective. Semi-structured interviews with professionals engaged in the research and management of livestock disease control provide the data for a reading proposing that the real basis of policy relating to socio-technical hazards is deeply political and cannot be purified through ‘escape routes’ to objectivity. Scientists and risk managers are shown calling, on the one hand, for risk-based policy approaches while on the other acknowledging a range of policy drivers outside the scope of conventional quantitative risk analysis including group interests, eventualities such as outbreaks, historical antecedents, emergent scientific advances and other contingencies. Calls for risk-based policy are presented, following cultural theory, as ideals connected to a reductionist epistemology and serving particular professional interests over others rather than as realistic proposals for a paradigm shift

Kriging‐based robotic exploration for soil moisture mapping using a cosmic‐ray sensor

Soil moisture monitoring is a fundamental process to enhance agricultural outcomes and to protect the environment. The traditional methods for measuring moisture content in the soil are laborious and expensive, and therefore there is a growing interest in developing sensors and technologies which can reduce the effort and costs. In this work, we propose to use an autonomous mobile robot equipped with a state‐of‐the‐art noncontact soil moisture sensor building moisture maps on the fly and automatically selecting the most optimal sampling locations. We introduce an autonomous exploration strategy driven by the quality of the soil moisture model indicating areas of the field where the information is less precise. The sensor model follows the Poisson distribution and we demonstrate how to integrate such measurements into the kriging framework. We also investigate a range of different exploration strategies and assess their usefulness through a set of evaluation experiments based on real soil moisture data collected from two different fields. We demonstrate the benefits of using the adaptive measurement interval and adaptive sampling strategies for building better quality soil moisture models. The presented method is general and can be applied to other scenarios where the measured phenomena directly affect the acquisition time and need to be spatially mapped

Variation in surgical treatment advice for women with stress urinary incontinence: a study using clinical case vignettes.

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to determine how recommendations of gynaecologists on surgical treatment for stress urinary incontinence (SUI) were influenced by patient characteristics. METHODS: Two hundred forty-five gynaecologists in the UK fully responded to an online questionnaire including 18 vignettes describing 7 clinical characteristics of women with SUI (age, body mass index, SUI type, previous SUI surgery, frequency of leakage, bother, physical status). The gynaecologists scored recommendations for surgery ranging from 1 'certainly not' to 5 'certainly yes'. Mean scores were used to calculate the relative impact ('weight') of each clinical characteristic. Latent class analysis was used to distinguish groups of gynaecologists with a particular practice style because they responded to the patient characteristics captured in the case vignettes in a similar way. RESULTS: The gynaecologists' overall average recommendation score was 2.9 (interquartile range 2 to 4). All patient characteristics significantly influenced the recommendation scores (p always < 0.001) but their impact was relatively small. SUI type was most important (weight 23%), followed by previous SUI surgery (weight 21%). Latent class analysis identified five groups of gynaecologists with practice styles that differed mainly with respect to their mean recommendation score, ranging from 1.3 to 4.0. CONCLUSIONS: Surgical treatment advice in response to case vignettes was only minimally influenced by patient characteristics. There were five groups of gynaecologists whose inclination to recommend surgical treatment varied. This suggests that there is lack of consensus on the role of surgery as a treatment for SUI. A considerable number of gynaecologists were reluctant to recommend surgery

A case controlled study examining the bladder microbiome in women with Overactive Bladder (OAB) and healthy controls

Objective: To characterise the microbiome in healthy women with no bladder symptoms and to compare this to the bladder microbiome in patients with overactive bladder syndrome (OAB).Study design: MSU specimens from 63 women with OAB were compared to urine from 35 controls. Urine was centrifuged and the resulting sediment pellet was re-suspended in supernatant and plated under aerobic conditions for 48 h and anaerobic conditions for 7 days. Each morphologically distinct colony was purity plated. Bacterial colonies were lysed and polymerase chain reaction undertaken to amplify the 16 s ribosomal RNA gene. This DNA was purified and sequenced allowing identification of bacterial genera.Results: The mean number of different bacterial genera was 5.0 in both controls and OAB patients (p = 0.99). The uropathogenic bacteria Proteus (P = 0.01) was more commonly isolated from women with OAB. The genus lactobacillus was present less commonly in urine from OAB patients when compared to urine taken from controls (p = 0.02). Overall the most commonly grown bacteria were staphylococcus (grown in 59% of samples), streptococccus (51%), corynebacterium (37%) and lactobacillus (28%). A total of 95 different genera were identified from the urine samples.Conclusion: The female human bladder has a diverse microbiome with stastistically significant differences between bacterial species present in OAB patients and controls