Was 'Sport and the British' a foundational text? The view of the next generation

This article is a personal response to Richard Holt's Sport and the British: a modern history, on the 21st anniversary of its publicatio

“OS ARQUIVOS DOS PÉS”: A CAMINHADA DE CAMPO NA HISTÓRIA DO ESPORTE

O patrimônio histórico esportivo é uma preocupação em crescimento, com clubes e entidades gestoras cada vez mais interessadas em apresentar seu passado. Este artigo trabalha com uma hipótese básica: os lugares onde esportes ocorreram no passado interessam ao presente. Historiadores do esporte reconhecem essa questão e as têm levado cada vez mais em consideração. Pode-se observar assim um crescente interesse em algumas questões chave na história do esporte: o que acontece quando locais esportivos antigos são abandonados? Como a reurbanização de locais antigos acomoda a memória do que aconteceu lá? Os traços de utilização esportiva permanecem muito após o campo e as arquibancadas terem sido reduzidos a arqueologia e substituídos por residências, lojas ou escritórios? É com essa questão -- como perceber os locais esportivos depois que o esporte desapareceu -- que me preocupo aqui. No entanto, falta a alguns estudos um método importante ao estudar essas questões: o contato físico com o local. O que pretendo fazer aqui é advogar pela maior utilização da caminhada de campo como método na pesquisa histórica do esporte, e dar como modelo um estudo de caso de uma caminhada de campo em um importante local que deixou apenas traços mínimos, o percurso da maratona olímpica de 1908, que caminhei em seu ano centenário, como parte de minha pesquisa atual sobre os primeiros Jogos Olímpicos de Londres.Palavras-Chave: Caminhada de Campo; fontes e metodologia; cultura material esportiva.  Abstract “The Archive of the Feet”: Field Walking in Sport History  Sports heritage is a growing concern, with clubs and governing bodies are taking an increasing interest in presenting their past. Underlying this article is a basic assumption: that the places where sport happened in the past matter in the present. Sports historians are recognizing these issues, and have increasingly taken ‘place' into account. There has thus been an increased interest in some key issues in sports history: what happens when old sporting sites are abandoned? How do redevelopments of old sites accommodate the memory of what happened there? Do traces of the sport usage remain evident long after the field and the stands have been reduced to archaeology and replaced by housing, shops, or offices? It is this issue -- how to get a feel for sport sites when the sport has gone -- that concerns me here. However, some studies miss a key method when studying this question: physical engagement with the site. What I aim to do here is to advocate an increased use of field walking as a method in sports history research and to model it with a case study of a field walk on an important site that left only minimal traces behind, the route of the 1908 Olympic Marathon, which I walked in the centenary year as part of my on-going research on the first London Olympics.Keywords: Field Walking; sources and method; sportive material culture

‘The Archive of the Feet’: field walking in sports history

This article makes a case for sports historians to use fieldwalking as a methodology, and suggests a variety of influences - from heritage, local history, military history, and the flâneur tradition - that can be drawn on to make connections between sport and landscape. It uses a case study of the route of the 1908 Olympic Marathon

The Foreign Office and international sport: 1918-1948

This thesis examines the Foreign Office's involvement in international sport from the end of the First World War to 1948, with an introductory survey of earlier incidents. The evolution of political intervention in the cultural area of sport is traced in an attempt to give historical perspective to the contemporary debate on the relationship between politics and sport. The records of the Foreign Office for this period show that while involvement in sport was a predominantly informal part of its work, sport was used consistently for the political ends of diplomatic advantage and national self-advertisement, and to help re-inforce on the cultural level the expediencies and demands of foreign policy. The infrequent examples of high-level political involvement, including the Cabinet's discussion of the location of the 1940 Olympic Games and the governmental backing given to the 1948 Olympic Games in London, are discussed as part of a wider system of intervention.The records of the Foreign Office, held at the Public Record Office, have been the main source for research, along with relevant files of the British Council, the Cabinet Office, and the Home Office. Sources from the two sports organisations most frequently involved in state involvement, the British Olympic Association and the Football Association, have also been used for supplementary information

Searching for real-world effectiveness versus efficacy of healthcare innovations: the case of social prescribing for diabetes

Background: Social prescribing is a process whereby primary care patients are linked or referred to nonmedical sources of support in the community and voluntary sector. It is a concept that has arisen in practice and implemented widely in the United Kingdom and has been evaluated by various organizations. Objective: The aim of our study was to characterize, collate, and analyze the evidence from evaluation of social prescribing for type 2 diabetes in the United Kingdom and Ireland, comparing information available on publicly available websites with the published literature. Methods: We used a broad, pragmatic definition of social prescribing and conducted Web-based searches for websites of organizations providing potentially relevant services. We also explored linked information. In parallel, we searched Medline, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and reference lists for relevant studies published in peer-reviewed journals. We extracted the data systematically on the characteristics, any reported evaluation, outcomes measured and results, and terminology used to describe each service. Results: We identified 40 UK- or Ireland-based projects that referred people with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes to nonmedical interventions or services provided in the community. We located evaluations of 24 projects; 11 as published papers, 12 as Web-based reports, and 1 as both a paper and a Web-based report. The interventions and services identified included structured group educational programs, exercise referral schemes, and individualized advice and support with signposting of health-related activities in the community. Although specific interventions such as community-based group educational programs and exercise referral have been evaluated in randomized controlled trials, evaluation of individualized social prescribing services involving people with type 2 diabetes has, in most cases, used pre-post and mixed methods approaches. These evaluations report generic improvement in a broad range of outcomes and provide an insight into the criteria for the success of social prescribing services. Conclusions: Our study revealed the varied models of social prescribing and nonmedical, community-based services available to people with type 2 diabetes and the extent of evaluation of these, which would not have been achieved by searching databases alone. The findings of this scoping study do not prove that social prescribing is an effective measure for people with type 2 diabetes in the United Kingdom, but can be used to inform future evaluation and contribute to the development of the evidence base for social prescribing. Accessing Web-based information provides a potential method for investigating how specific innovative health concepts, such as social prescribing, have been translated, implemented, and evaluated in practice. Several challenges were encountered including defining the concept, focusing on process plus intervention, and searching diverse, evolving Web-based sources. Further exploration of this approach will inform future research on the application of innovative health care concepts into practice

Connected Green function approach to ground state symmetry breaking in Φ1+14\Phi^4_{1+1}-theory

Using the cluster expansions for n-point Green functions we derive a closed set of dynamical equations of motion for connected equal-time Green functions by neglecting all connected functions higher than $4^{th}$ order for the $\lambda \Phi^4$-theory in $1+1$ dimensions. We apply the equations to the investigation of spontaneous ground state symmetry breaking, i.e. to the evaluation of the effective potential at temperature $T=0$. Within our momentum space discretization we obtain a second order phase transition (in agreement with the Simon-Griffith theorem) and a critical coupling of $\lambda_{crit}/4m^2=2.446$ as compared to a first order phase transition and $\lambda_{crit}/4m^2=2.568$ from the Gaussian effective potential approach.Comment: 25 Revtex pages, 5 figures available via fpt from the directory ugi-94-11 of [email protected] as one postscript file (there was a bug in our calculations, all numerical results and figures have changed significantly), ugi-94-1

Identifying Candidate Genes for Enhancing Grain Zn Concentration in Wheat

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the major staple food crops worldwide. Despite efforts in improving wheat quality, micronutrient levels are still below the optimal range for human nutrition. In particular, zinc (Zn) deficiency is a widespread problem in human nutrition in countries relying mainly on a cereal diet; hence improving Zn accumulation in grains is an imperative need. This study was designed to understand the genetic architecture of Zn grain concentrations in wheat grains. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for grain Zn concentrations in 369 European wheat genotypes, using field data from 3 years. The complete wheat panel was genotyped by high-density arrays of single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) markers (90k iSELECT Infinium and 35k Affymetrix arrays) resulting in 15,523 polymorphic markers. Additionally, a subpanel of 183 genotypes was analyzed with a novel 135k Affymetrix marker array resulting in 28,710 polymorphic SNPs for high-resolution mapping of the potential genomic regions. The mean grain Zn concentration of the genotypes ranged from 25.05–52.67 μg g-1 dry weight across years with a moderate heritability value. Notably, 40 marker-trait associations (MTAs) were detected in the complete panel of varieties on chromosomes 2A, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4D, 5A, 5B, 5D, 6D, 7A, 7B, and 7D. The number of MTAs in the subpanel was increased to 161 MTAs whereas the most significant and consistent associations were located on chromosomes 3B (723,504,241–723,611,488 bp) and 5A (462,763,758–466,582,184 bp) having major effects. These genomic regions include newly identified putative candidate genes, which are related to Zn uptake and transport or represent bZIP and mitogen-activated protein kinase genes. These findings provide the basis for understanding the genetic background of Zn concentration in wheat grains that in turn may help breeders to select high Zn-containing genotypes to improve human health and grain quality

Chlamydia trachomatis ompA Variants in Trachoma: What Do They Tell Us?

Trachoma is an important cause of blindness resulting from transmission of the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. One way to understand better how this infection is transmitted and how the human immune system controls it is to study the strains of bacteria associated with infection. Comparing strains before and after treatment might help us learn if someone has a new infection or the same one as before. Identifying differences between disease-causing strains should help us understand how infection leads to disease and how the human host defences work. We chose to study variation in the chlamydial gene ompA because it determines the protein MOMP, one of the leading candidates for inclusion in a vaccine to prevent trachoma. If immunity to MOMP is important in natural trachoma infections, we would expect to find evidence of this in the way the strains varied. We did not find this, but instead found that two common strains seemed to cause different types of disease. Although their MOMPs were very slightly different, this did not really explain the differences. We conclude that methods of typing strains going beyond the ompA gene will be needed to help us understand the interaction between Chlamydia and its human host

Long-term modification of cortical synapses improves sensory perception

Synapses and receptive fields of the cerebral cortex are plastic. However, changes to specific inputs must be coordinated within neural networks to ensure that excitability and feature selectivity are appropriately configured for perception of the sensory environment. Long-lasting enhancements and decrements to rat primary auditory cortical excitatory synaptic strength were induced by pairing acoustic stimuli with activation of the nucleus basalis neuromodulatory system. Here we report that these synaptic modifications were approximately balanced across individual receptive fields, conserving mean excitation while reducing overall response variability. Decreased response variability should increase detection and recognition of near-threshold or previously imperceptible stimuli, as we found in behaving animals. Thus, modification of cortical inputs leads to wide-scale synaptic changes, which are related to improved sensory perception and enhanced behavioral performance