778 research outputs found
'All are instructive if read in a right spirit': Reading, Religion and Instruction in a Victorian Reading Diary
This paper conducts a study of reading choices and practices through the reading diary of a middle-class reader in mid-nineteenth-century Glasgow within the context of her socio-cultural, intellectual and religious milieu. Anne Galloway (1802-1889) wrote her reading diary between 1850 and 1856, wherein she recorded one hundred and eighty-four books and three periodicals. This study combines an investigation in the availability of books and their circulation with a focus on Stirling’s Library, a subscription library founded by Walter Stirling in 1791, from which Anne obtained her books. Anne’s borrowing record is re-constructed using the library catalogues. These are used to assess the different classifications of the books she read and their respective numbers to determine the pattern of Anne’s borrowing and reading practices. This investigation offers new insights into Glasgow’s book culture through the reconstructed history of a ‘lesser-known’ Evangelical, non-professional, married woman reader in the mid-nineteenth century, demographics of which are currently all under-represented in individual case studies in the history of reading
The Literary Clubs and Societies of Glasgow during the Long Nineteenth Century: A City’s History of Reading through its Communal Reading Practices and Productions
This thesis uses the minute books and manuscript magazines of Glasgow’s literary societies as evidence for my argument that the history of mutual improvement groups—including literary societies—needs to be re-written as a unique movement of ‘improvement’ during the long nineteenth century.
In foregrounding the surviving records, I examine what it meant to be literary to society members in Glasgow during this period. I discuss what their motivations were for becoming so, and reflect on the impact that gender, occupation and social class had on these. I demonstrate that these groups contributed to the education and literacy of people living in the city and to a larger culture of ‘improvement’. Further, I argue that there is a case to be made for a particularly Scottish way of consuming texts in the long nineteenth century.
In Glasgow, there were at least 193 literary societies during this period, which I divide into four phases of development. I provide an in-depth examination of two societies which serve as case studies. In addition, I give an overview and comparison of the 652 issues of Scottish and English society magazines I discovered in the context of a larger, ‘improving’ culture.
I offer possible reasons why so many literary societies produced manuscript magazines, and show that this phenomenon was not unique to them. These magazines fostered a communal identity formed around a combination of religion, class, gender and local identity. I determine that societies in England produced similar types of magazines to those in Scotland possibly based upon the Scottish precedent.
These materials substantially contribute to the evidence for nineteenth-century mutual improvement societies and their magazines, and for working- and lower-middle class Scottish readers and writers during the long nineteenth century, social groups that are under-represented in the history of reading and in Victorian studies
Social Interventions for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Research
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face a variety of barriers in social, communicative, and behavioral functioning. In particular, children with ASD have deficits in social behavior that decrease opportunities to socialize and develop peer relationships (Kroeger, Schultz, & Newsom, 2006). A child’s early development of social skills has been linked to successful school adjustment and academic achievement while preschoolers with poor social behavior experience peer rejection, low academic achievement, and behavior problems (McClelland & Morrison, 2003). I conducted a systematic review of research on interventions that provided positive social outcomes for young children with ASD. Results from this study exposed common research designs (i.e., multiple baseline, randomized control trial), topics (e.g., joint attention, imitation), and practices (e.g., pivotal response training, peer mediation) applied to teaching social skills to this population. Research is limited on social interventions that do not include behaviorally-based techniques, which could reveal additional components of effective social skills interventions. Rigorous and well-designed research studies are needed to determine the most efficient and effective dosage of established scientifically-based practices, as well as measures of social validity, which was lacking in many of the studies reviewed. A discussion regarding targeting pivotal skills in early intervention is included in this review
New insights into genomic variation in health and disease
A report on the Genomic Disorders conference on Genomic Variation in Health and Disease, Hinxton, UK, 9–11 March, 2009
The Inconsistent use of in the RV Equation
Since the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star,
astronomers have inferred the orbital properties of planets using stellar
radial velocity (RV) measurements. For a star orbited by a single planet, the
stellar orbit is a dilation and rotation of the planetary orbit.
Thus, many of the Keplerian orbital properties of the star are identical to
those of the planet. However, there is a notable exception: the argument of
periastron, , defined as the angle between the periapsis of an orbiting
body and its ascending node. The argument of periastron of the star
() is offset from the argument of periastron of the
planet (). This distinction is important because some derivations of
the RV equation use , while others use . This
discrepancy arises because commonly used derivations of the RV equation do not
adhere to a single coordinate system. As a result, there are inconsistencies in
the definitions of the Keplerian orbital parameters in various RV models,
leading to values of the ascending node and that are
offset. For instance, some packages, such as \texttt{RadVel} and
\texttt{ExoFast}, report values for that are identical to the
values determined with other packages, such as \texttt{TTVFast} and
\texttt{Orvara}, resulting in orbital solutions that differ by .
This discrepancy highlights the need for standardized conventions and
definitions in RV modeling, particularly as we enter the era of combining RVs
with astrometry.Comment: 5 pages,2 figures, 1 tabl
Inner Planetary System Gap Complexity is a Predictor of Outer Giant Planets
The connection between inner small planets and outer giant planets is crucial
to our understanding of planet formation across a wide range of orbital
separations. While Kepler provided a plethora of compact multi-planet systems
at short separations ( AU), relatively little is known about the
occurrence of giant companions at larger separations and how they impact the
architectures of the inner systems. Here, we use the catalog of systems from
the Kepler Giant Planet Search (KGPS) to study how the architectures of the
inner transiting planets correlate with the presence of outer giant planets. We
find that for systems with at least three small transiting planets, the
distribution of inner-system gap complexity (), a measure of the
deviation from uniform spacings, appears to differ () between
those with an outer giant planet () and those without any outer giants. All four inner systems (with 3+
transiting planets) with outer giant(s) have a higher gap complexity
() than 79% (19/24) of the inner systems without any outer
giants (median ). This suggests that one can predict
the occurrence of outer giant companions by selecting multi-transiting systems
with highly irregular spacings. We do not find any correlation between outer
giant occurrence and the size (similarity or ordering) patterns of the inner
planets. The larger gap complexities of inner systems with an outer giant hints
that massive external planets play an important role in the formation and/or
disruption of the inner systems.Comment: Published in AJ. 16 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl
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