Managerial Work in a Practice-Embodying Institution - The role of calling, the virtue of constancy

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This paper uses the ‘goods-virtues-practices-institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner-directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice

Marxism Lost and Found: Alasdair MacIntyre and the Contemporary Debate

This paper examines the changing nature of debates that focus on the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre. Whilst outlining the history of MacIntyre’s engagement with Marxism and some of his key ideas, it argues that it is only recently that such debates have begun to rightfully recognise the continued relevance of Marxism to such discussions. I note that crucial aspects of MacIntyre’s politics and philosophy, particularly his opposition to capitalism, are now integral to the contemporary debate which helps in generating a shared vision of radical politics. Nevertheless, I point out that key disagreements still remain as to the role of Marxism within such debates, the validity of MacIntyre’s critique of Marxism, as well as the potentially problematic post-Marxist practice that MacIntyre advocates in After Virtue and beyond

Moving beyond DNA: towards functional analysis of the vaginal microbiome by non-sequencing-based methods

Over the last two decades, sequencing-based methods have revolutionised our understanding of niche-specific microbial complexity. In the lower female reproductive tract, these approaches have enabled identification of bacterial compositional structures associated with health and disease. Application of metagenomics and metatranscriptomics strategies have provided insight into the putative function of these communities but it is increasingly clear that direct measures of microbial and host cell function are required to understand the contribution of microbe–host interactions to pathophysiology. Here we explore and discuss current methods and approaches, many of which rely upon mass-spectrometry, being used to capture functional insight into the vaginal mucosal interface. In addition to improving mechanistic understanding, these methods offer innovative solutions for the development of diagnostic and therapeutic strategies designed to improve women’s health

On Recurrent Reachability for Continuous Linear Dynamical Systems

The continuous evolution of a wide variety of systems, including continuous-time Markov chains and linear hybrid automata, can be described in terms of linear differential equations. In this paper we study the decision problem of whether the solution $\boldsymbol{x}(t)$ of a system of linear differential equations $d\boldsymbol{x}/dt=A\boldsymbol{x}$ reaches a target halfspace infinitely often. This recurrent reachability problem can equivalently be formulated as the following Infinite Zeros Problem: does a real-valued function $f:\mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ satisfying a given linear differential equation have infinitely many zeros? Our main decidability result is that if the differential equation has order at most $7$, then the Infinite Zeros Problem is decidable. On the other hand, we show that a decision procedure for the Infinite Zeros Problem at order $9$ (and above) would entail a major breakthrough in Diophantine Approximation, specifically an algorithm for computing the Lagrange constants of arbitrary real algebraic numbers to arbitrary precision.Comment: Full version of paper at LICS'1

Time trends in survival and readmission following coronary artery bypass grafting in Scotland, 1981-96: retrospective observational study

Improvements in coronary revascularisation techniques and an increase in the use of percutaneous interventions1 have led to a rise in the number of coronary artery bypass grafting operations in older patients with more severe cardiac disease and worse comorbidity and who have previously undergone revascularisation procedures. 2 3 Advances in surgical and anaesthetic techniques have prevented a worsening risk profile from being translated into an increase in perioperative deaths. 2 3 The aim of our study was to examine time trends in major outcomes up to two years after coronary artery bypass grafting

Do residents’ perceptions of being well-placed and objective presence of local amenities match? A case study in West Central Scotland, UK

Background:<p></p> Recently there has been growing interest in how neighbourhood features, such as the provision of local facilities and amenities, influence residents’ health and well-being. Prior research has measured amenity provision through subjective measures (surveying residents’ perceptions) or objective (GIS mapping of distance) methods. The latter may provide a more accurate measure of physical access, but residents may not use local amenities if they do not perceive them as ‘local’. We believe both subjective and objective measures should be explored, and use West Central Scotland data to investigate correspondence between residents’ subjective assessments of how well-placed they are for everyday amenities (food stores, primary and secondary schools, libraries, pharmacies, public recreation), and objective GIS-modelled measures, and examine correspondence by various sub-groups.<p></p> Methods:<p></p> ArcMap was used to map the postal locations of ‘Transport, Health and Well-being 2010 Study’ respondents (n = 1760), and the six amenities, and the presence/absence of each of them within various straight-line and network buffers around respondents’ homes was recorded. SPSS was used to investigate whether objective presence of an amenity within a specified buffer was perceived by a respondent as being well-placed for that amenity. Kappa statistics were used to test agreement between measures for all respondents, and by sex, age, social class, area deprivation, car ownership, dog ownership, walking in the local area, and years lived in current home.<p></p> Results:<p></p> In general, there was poor agreement (Kappa <0.20) between perceptions of being well-placed for each facility and objective presence, within 800 m and 1000 m straight-line and network buffers, with the exception of pharmacies (at 1000 m straight-line) (Kappa: 0.21). Results varied between respondent sub-groups, with some showing better agreement than others. Amongst sub-groups, at 800 m straight-line buffers, the highest correspondence between subjective and objective measures was for pharmacies and primary schools, and at 1000 m, for pharmacies, primary schools and libraries. For road network buffers under 1000 m, agreement was generally poor.<p></p> Conclusion:<p></p> Respondents did not necessarily regard themselves as well-placed for specific amenities when these amenities were present within specified boundaries around their homes, with some exceptions; the picture is not clear-cut with varying findings between different amenities, buffers, and sub-groups

Predicting language learners' grades in the L1, L2, L3 and L4: the effect of some psychological and sociocognitive variables

This study of 89 Flemish high-school students' grades for L1 (Dutch), L2 (French), L3 (English) and L4 (German) investigates the effects of three higher-level personality dimensions (psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism), one lower-level personality dimension (foreign language anxiety) and sociobiographical variables (gender, social class) on the participants' language grades. Analyses of variance revealed no significant effects of the higher-level personality dimensions on grades. Participants with high levels of foreign language anxiety obtained significantly lower grades in the L2 and L3. Gender and social class had no effect. Strong positive correlations between grades in the different languages could point to an underlying sociocognitive dimension. The implications of these findings are discussed

Sharing a different voice: Attending to stories in collaborative writing

Through three stories, we hope to reveal how sometimes contradictory or unrecognizable aspects of our lives, selves, and stories can create tensions in the collaborative writing endeavor. We begin with a story that illuminates some of the narrative tensions that surface during a decade of writing collaboratively. In an effort to navigate these tensions, we explore two further stories in dialogue as a way to reveal how dominant narratives shape our lives and the stories we might tell. One aim of sharing these stories is to reveal how problematic ways of being are often inseparable from one’s cultural legacy. Making previously obscured narratives visible paves the way for imaginary leaps that are necessary for change. We hope these insights are useful for other writers and collaborators and those who seek caring, responsive, and nurturing writing relationships yet realize this journey can be problematic

Challenging perspectives on the cellular origins of lymphoma.

Both B and T lymphocytes have signature traits that set them apart from other cell types. They actively and repeatedly rearrange their DNA in order to produce a unique and functional antigen receptor, they have potential for massive clonal expansion upon encountering antigen via this receptor or its precursor, and they have the capacity to be extremely long lived as 'memory' cells. All three of these traits are fundamental to their ability to function as the adaptive immune response to infectious agents, but concurrently render these cells vulnerable to transformation. Thus, it is classically considered that lymphomas arise at a relatively late stage in a lymphocyte's development during the process of modifying diversity within antigen receptors, and when the cell is capable of responding to stimulus via its receptor. Attempts to understand the aetiology of lymphoma have reinforced this notion, as the most notable advances to date have shown chronic stimulation of the antigen receptor by infectious agents or self-antigens to be key drivers of these diseases. Despite this, there is still uncertainty about the cell of origin in some lymphomas, and increasing evidence that a subset arises in a more immature cell. Specifically, a recent study indicates that T-cell lymphoma, in particular nucleophosmin-anaplastic lymphoma kinase-driven anaplastic large cell lymphoma, may originate in T-cell progenitors in the thymus.T.I.M.M. was supported by a Bloodwise Gordon Piller Studentship.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from The Royal Society via https://doi.org/10.1098/rsob.16023