Sport, War and Democracy in Classical Athens

This article concerns the paradox of athletics in classical Athens. Democracy may have opened up politics to every class of Athenian but it had little impact on sporting participation. The city’s athletes continued to drawn predominantly from the upper class. It comes as a surprise then that lower-class Athenians actually esteemed athletes above every other group in the public eye, honoured them very generously when they won, and directed a great deal of public and private money to sporting competitions and facilities. In addition athletics escaped the otherwise persistent criticism of upper-class activities in the popular culture of the democracy. The research of social scientists on sport and aggression suggests this paradox may have been due to the cultural overlap between athletics and war under the Athenian democracy. The article concludes that the practical and ideological democratization of war by classical Athens legitimized and supported upper-class sport

Californian Science Students' Perceptions of their Classoom Learning Environments.

This study utilised the What Is Happening In this Class (WIHIC) questionnaire to examine factors that influence Californian student perceptions of their learning environment. Data were collected from 665 USA middle school science students in 11 Californian schools. Several background variables were included in the study to investigate their effects on students’ perceptions, such as student and teacher gender, student ethnic background and socio-economic status (SES), and student age. Class and school variables, such as class ethnic composition, class size and school socioeconomic status were also collected. A hierarchical analysis of variance was conducted to investigate separate and joint effects of these variables. Results from this study indicate that some scales of the WIHIC are more inclined to measure personal or idiosyncratic features of student perceptions of their learning environment whereas other scales contain more variance at the class level. Also, it was found that different variables affect different scale scores. A variable that consistently affected students' perceptions, regardless of the element of interest in the learning environment was student gender. Generally speaking girls perceived their learning environment more positively than did boys

The effect of wilting and drying on intake rate and acceptability by sheep of the shrub legume Cratylia argentea

A series of feeding trials with sheep were carried out at the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical in Colombia to assess the effect of wilting and drying on intake rate and acceptability of the shrub legume Cratylia argentea (Desvaux) O. Kuntze. In the first 2 experiments, intake rate was measured in periods of 20 minutes with sheep fed immature and mature legume either fresh, wilted or sun-dried. Relative acceptability of fresh and dried, immature and mature C. argentea was measured in 2 subsequent experiments with sheep of different age and previous experience with the legume. The test forages were offered separately in pairs for periods of 20 minutes and relative acceptability was defined as the short-term intake of fresh and dried forage corrected for metabolic weight of the animals. Intake rate of C. argentea was affected by post-harvest treatment when the legume was immature, but not when it was mature. With immature C. argentea, intake rate was higher when the forage was wilted and dried than when fed fresh. When sheep were given the choice of selecting fresh or dried C. argentea, they consumed more dried forage, regardless of maturity, age of the animals and previous experience with the forage. Factors responsible for low intake rate and acceptability of fresh, immature C. argentea could not be defined in this study

Trypanocidal drugs: mechanisms, resistance and new targets.

The protozoan parasites Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi are the causative agents of African trypanosomiasis and Chagas disease, respectively. These are debilitating infections that exert a considerable health burden on some of the poorest people on the planet. Treatment of trypanosome infections is dependent on a small number of drugs that have limited efficacy and can cause severe side effects. Here, we review the properties of these drugs and describe new findings on their modes of action and the mechanisms by which resistance can arise. We further outline how a greater understanding of parasite biology is being exploited in the search for novel chemotherapeutic agents. This effort is being facilitated by new research networks that involve academic and biotechnology/pharmaceutical organisations, supported by public-private partnerships, and are bringing a new dynamism and purpose to the search for trypanocidal agents