Blood Rheology in Diabetes Mellitus and Its Complications: Assessment of New Methods

This thesis reviews blood rheology and its known associations with diabetes mellitus and vascular complications in diabetic patients. The relationship between blood viscosity and two conditions which are common in diabetes, namely hypertension and peripheral neuropathy, was examined for the first time. Type 2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetics with hypertension were found to have increased blood viscosity compared with normotensive type 2 diabetics. Blood viscosity and red cell deformability were measured in diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy. When compared with diabetics who have no evidence of neuropathy but were matched for other microvascular complications, no differences were found. Using the recently-introduced Carri-Med filtrometer, red cell deformabiltiy was assessed by filtration through Nuclepore membranes in a large group of type 1 (insulin-dependent) and type 2 diabetic patients. Compared with healthy control subjects, deformability was impaired in all diabetic patients, but to a greater extent in type 1 patients. In the control population, red cell filterability was related to mean cell volume; while in diabetic patients, it was related to mean cell haemoglobin concentration. Within the diabetics, red cell filtration was not significantly different in patients with microvascular or macrovascular complications. Red cell aggregation was measured in the new Myrenne photometric aggregometer and found to be increased in both type 1 and type 2 diabetic patients, particularly hypertensive type 2 diabetics. Aggregation was found to be related to plasma triglyceride and very low density lipoprotein levels. Deformability of white cell subpopulations was measured by a filtration method in type 2 diabetics, and although non significant differences were found when compared with non-diabetic control subjects, a correlation of both mononuclear and polymorphonuclear cell filtration pressure was demonstrated with glycaemic control. The implications of the findings in these studies are discussed, and suggestions for further rheology studies in diabetic patients are proposed

"Identity Theft in The Talented Mr. Ripley: A post-panel discussion."

Transcription of a panel discussion following a performance of The Faction's production, The Talented Mr. Ripley. The production took place as a special event organised by the Media and the Inner World research network, and was held at the New Diorama Theatre, London in February 2015. The discussion is contextualised in an introduction written by Prof Candida Yates, who directs Media and the Inner World and who chaired the panel

Oat-enriched diet reduces inflammatory status assessed by circulating cell-derived microparticle concentrations in type 2 diabetes

This work was funded by the Chief Scientists Office of the Scottish Government by a joint grant to the University of the Highland and Islands, Grampian Health Board, Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland and the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen. Additional support was provided by Provexis plc.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

’Team GB’ and London 2012: The Paradox of National and Global Identities

This article explores the problems associated with ’national identity’ in the UK and examines the tensions arising between the international and local dimensions of the games through examples of domestic (UK) and international (Brazil, Chicago) media coverage of the key debates relating to London’s period of preparation. The chapter proposes a conception of London 2012 as exemplar of an event poised to generate insights and experiences connected to a new politics of ’cosmopolitan’ identity; insights central to grasping the cultural politics of contemporary urban development-and the paradoxes of national identity in current discourses of Olympism. Properly speaking, cosmopolitanism suits those people who have no country, while internationalism should be the state of mind of those who love their country above all, who seek to draw to it the friendship of foreigners by professing for the countries of those foreigners an intelligent and enlightened sympathy. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Food Intake and Dietary Glycaemic Index in Free-Living Adults with and without Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

A recent Cochrane review concluded that low glycaemic index (GI) diets are beneficial in glycaemic control for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). There are limited UK data regarding the dietary GI in free-living adults with and without T2DM. We measured the energy and macronutrient intake and the dietary GI in a group (n = 19) of individuals with diet controlled T2DM and a group (n = 19) without diabetes, matched for age, BMI and gender. Subjects completed a three-day weighed dietary record. Patients with T2DM consumed more daily portions of wholegrains (2.3 vs. 1.1, P = 0.003), more dietary fibre (32.1 vs. 20.9 g, P < 0.001) and had a lower diet GI (53.5 vs. 57.7, P = 0.009) than subjects without T2DM. Both groups had elevated fat and salt intake and low fruit and vegetable intake, relative to current UK recommendations. Conclusions: Patients with T2DM may already consume a lower GI diet than the general population but further efforts are needed to reduce dietary GI and achieve other nutrient targets

The Regeneration Games: Commodities, Gifts and the Economics of London 2012

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic ‘legacy’, setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’ Olympics – setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socioeconomic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Costbenefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games

Sedentary time and sedentary bout duration and waking glucose in adults with Type 2 diabetes

To explore the relationship between sedentary behaviour and mean glucose and glucose variability in people with T2D using objective continuous measurement

Disability activism and the politics of scale

In this paper, we examine the role of spatial scale in mediating and shaping political struggles between disabled people and the state. Specifically, we draw on recent theoretical developments concerning the social construction of spatial scale to interpret two case studies of disability activism within Canada and Ireland. In particular, we provide an analysis of how successful the disability movement in each locale has been at 'jumping scale' and enacting change, as well as examining what the consequences of such scaling-up have been for the movement itself. We demonstrate that the political structures operating in each country markedly affect the scaled nature of disability issues and the effectiveness of political mobilization at different scales

Institutional creativity and pathologies of potential space: The modern university

This paper proposes the applicability of object relations psychoanalytic conceptions of dialogue (Ogden, 1986, 1993) to thinking about relationships and relational structures and their governance in universities. It proposes that: the qualities of dialogic relations in creative institutions are the proper index of creative productivity; that is of, as examples, ’thinking’ (Evans, 2004), ’emotional learning’ (Salzberger-Wittenburg et al., 1983) or ’criticality’ (Barnett, 1997); contemporary institutions’ explicit preoccupation in assuring, monitoring and managing creative ’dialogue’ can, in practice, pervert creative processes and thoughtful symbolic productivity, thus inhibiting students’ development and the quality of ’thinking space’ for teaching and research. In this context the paper examines uncanny and perverse connections between Paulo Freire’s (1972) account of educational empowerment and dialogics (from his Pedagogy of the oppressed) to the consumerist (see, for example, Clarke & Vidler, 2005) rhetoric of student empowerment, as mediated by some strands of managerialism in contemporary higher education. The paper grounds its critique of current models of dialogue, feedback loops, audit and other mechanisms of accountability (Power, 1997; Strathern, 2000), in a close analysis of how creative thinking emerges. The paper discusses the failure to maintain a dialogic space in humanities and social science areas in particular, exploring psychoanalytic conceptions from Donald Winnicott (1971), Milner (1979), Thomas Ogden (1986) and Csikszentmihalyi (1997). Coleridge’s ideas about imagination as the movement of thought between subjective and objective modes are discussed in terms of both intra- and inter-subjective relational modes of ’dialogue’, which are seen as subject to pathology in the pathologically structured psychosocial environment. Current patterns of institutional governance, by micromanaging dialogic spaces, curtail the ’natural’ rhythms and temporalities of imagination by giving an over-emphasis to the moment of outcome, at the expense of holding the necessary vagaries of process in the institutional ’mind’. On the contrary, as this paper argues, creative thinking lies in sporadic emergences at the conjunction of object/(ive) outcome and through (thought) processes