At the Heart of the City: The Battle for British Marketplaces, c. 1925-1979

At the Heart of the City examines how small-scale retail adapted to economic globalization in twentieth-century Britain. More specifically, I argue that during a long mid-century (the 1920s through the 1970s) characterized by bouts of economic decline and stretches of modernist urban renewal, the salience of the town or city-center market helped a variety of historical actors rearticulate how publicly managed retailing spaces served a contemporary social good. A history of economic life and urban development told from the provincial margins, At the Heart of the City draws from over ten local archives in England, Scotland, and Wales to reassemble how shoppers, sellers, planners, and politicians defended localism as a form of everyday commercial citizenship and belonging in modern Britain. The first section examines how retailing communities at the market were forged along class and ethno-national lines during the interwar depression and the wartime economy of rationing and austerity. Using the market trade journal The World’s Fair, local market archives from cities such as Glasgow and Leeds, inter-war life writing, the novels and films of J.B. Priestley, and Board of Trade records from Second World War, I argue that markets were at once expansive in their economic ethos of “fairness,” yet increasingly bound in their ethno-national terms of social inclusion. The second section considers the market’s malleable and polyvalent role in the British built environment, concentrating primarily on the postwar period. Attending to the way in which modernist planner-architects such as Frederick Gibberd in Harlow New Town or Konrad Smigielski in historic Leicester conceptualized the purpose of the retail market in urban space, this section also considers the economic realities of “planning for affluence” in rebuilt and newly built towns and cities. Questioning the wholesale application of Americanized retailing and the primacy of property development, markets traders—along with select small business associations and local government committees—advocated for the commercial value of traditional, low-cost market squares and market halls. This section argues that the continuing relevance of retail markets in postwar Britain accentuated the unevenness of affluence and consumerism in provincial towns and cities. The final section concentrates on the 1970s as a period of divergence for the market’s ownership and purpose. One development was the rise of private markets held on rural and semi-industrial spaces of towns and cities, beyond the control of local authorities. A second trend was the push for market preservation, with heritage activists petitioning for the protection of market places and Victorian market halls in struggling industrial towns and cities such as Bradford and Chesterfield. This final section argues that these were two products of the same political conjuncture. As Labour-backed planning and redevelopment lost favor, economic populism and local heritage emerged as alternatives. The debate over retail markets thus serves as a heuristic tool for understanding the roots of two paradoxical tenets of neoliberal Thatcherism: the iconoclasm of enterprise culture and the reverence for a “shared” British past. As questions about the value of small-scale economies continue preoccupy twenty-first century planners, citizens, politicians, and developers, At the Heart of the City makes the case for historicizing how certain commercial institutions and urban spaces came to be the protected purview of a tangible, local “public” rather than an abstract, globalized “market” over the twentieth century.PHDHistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145812/1/smmass_1.pd

Extracurricular Enterprise Activities as a Vehicle for Entrepreneurial Learning: Examining Experiential, Social and Self-directed Learning Outcomes

This paper critically examines the value of extracurricular enterprise activity from a student and educator perspective at United Kingdom (UK) universities. Extracurricular activities are a popular facet of enterprise education and studies note an increase in recent years of provision of extracurricular enterprise activities across European universities (Rae et al., 2012; Lilischkis et al., 2015). The research aims to examine the benefits of participation in extracurricular enterprise activities and in particular the benefits to students’ entrepreneurial learning processes. Thus, this research addresses the following research questions: 1. What benefits, learning or otherwise, may be attainable from Higher Education (HE) student engagement in extracurricular enterprise activities? 2. How may engagement in extracurricular enterprise activities enhance students’ entrepreneurial learning processes? This paper addresses the conference theme – ‘Research, policy and practice: Collaboration in a disparate world’ by examining the advancement of individuals’ entrepreneurial learning processes through engagement in collaborative activities. This study adopted an inductive methodological approach to explore themes emergent from the data rather than to predict or explain through hypotheses (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Booth et al., 2009). A semi-structured survey (n=55), administered to students at a national conference themed on extracurricular enterprise activity, contained qualitative questions regarding what types of extracurricular enterprise activities respondents had participated in and what they felt they had gained from participation. A total of 26 in-depth interviews were also conducted, 23 with student participants and three with enterprise educators, to ascertain the perceived value of participation in extracurricular enterprise activities to students’ entrepreneurial learning processes. In relation to research question one, it was found that each participant was unique in the combination of benefits they gained from engaging in extracurricular enterprise activities but there were commonalities identified under the six themes of: skills development, knowledge acquisition, personal growth, development of social capital, venture creation/growth and enhanced employability. These benefits ranged from intrinsic, such as a growth in self-belief, to extrinsic such as an enhanced CV. They also ranged across the spectrum of the venture creation process from ideation to business registration. In relation to research question two, the data was reviewed in accordance with established theoretical framing for the examination of entrepreneurial learning processes; experiential and social learning theory (Taylor and Thorpe, 2004; Politis, 2005; Cope et al., 2007; Pittaway et al., 2015). It was found that prior links posited in the literature between entrepreneurial learning and experiential learning were supported in the data but the role of reflection was found to be diminished as limited opportunities to reflect upon learning may hinder abstract conceptualization processes. Links already posited in the literature between 2 social learning theories and entrepreneurial learning were also confirmed; entrepreneurial learning was seen to be enacted alone but also in groups whereby participants observed others to enhance their entrepreneurial learning, modelling behaviours, and collaborating in a ‘community of practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991). For policy and practice, findings contribute to ongoing debate regarding the value of enterprise education and in particular extracurricular activities (Lilischkis et al., 2015; Johannisson, 2016; Arranz et al., 2017; Nabi et al., 2017). This research contributes significant empirical knowledge to the limited understanding of how extracurricular enterprise activities may positively enhance students’ entrepreneurial learning processes. Prior studies have focused upon mapping the extracurricular enterprise activities available at universities and gathering an educator perspective of potential benefits (Rae et al., 2012; Lilschkis et al., 2015; Vanevenhoven and Drago, 2015). This research moves beyond mapping activities to contribute empirical evidence of how HE students’ entrepreneurial learning processes may be enhanced by engagement in extracurricular enterprise activities and also offers valuable insight into the student perspective of these activities. This research also has value in enhancing the theoretical conceptualisation of entrepreneurial learning within a HE setting. A conceptual framework confirms the importance of the experiential and social learning activities afforded by participation in extracurricular enterprise activities but also provides a novel contribution in positioning the self-directed nature of these activities as key to developing students’ autonomous learning capabilities. Such findings have important implications for enterprise educators in their design and delivery of extracurricular enterprise activities

Can an outdoor learning environment improve children’s academic attainment? A quasi-experimental mixed methods study in Bangladesh

The present study adopted a quasi-experimental mixed method approach to investigate the influence of an improved school ground on children’s academic performance. In total, 123 children from two (intervention and control) primary schools in Bangladesh participated. In the intervention school, a barren school ground was redesigned with several behavior settings (e.g., gardens and amphitheater) for teaching and learning. Treatment group children (n = 29) received math and science classes outdoors, while a comparison group (n = 32) received usual indoor classes. A control school with no changes to the outdoor environment was included (n = 62). The redesigned school ground was associated with higher levels of academic attainment. Furthermore, all intervention schoolchildren perceived more opportunities to explore in the redesigned school ground. Qualitative insights suggest the diverse settings provided more opportunities to explore, experiment, and work collaboratively. These results highlight the potential for school ground design to contribute to improvement of children’s academic attainment in developing countries

Population-based prevalence survey of follicular trachoma and trachomatous trichiasis in the Casamance region of Senegal.

BACKGROUND: Trachoma, caused by ocular infection with Chlamydia trachomatis, is the leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide. We conducted the first population-based trachoma prevalence survey in the Casamance region of Senegal to enable the Senegalese National Eye Care Programme (NECP) to plan its trachoma control activities. The World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines state that any individual with trachomatous trichiasis (TT) should be offered surgery, but that surgery should be prioritised where the prevalence is >0.1%, and that districts and communities with a trachomatous inflammation, follicular (TF) prevalence of ≥10% in 1-9 year-olds should receive mass antibiotic treatment annually for a minimum of three years, along with hygiene promotion and environmental improvement, before re-assessing the prevalence to determine whether treatment can be discontinued (when TF prevalence in 1-9 year-olds falls 1% in all districts. CONCLUSION: With a prevalence <5%, TF does not appear to be a significant public health problem in this region. However, TF monitoring and surveillance at sub-district level will be required to ensure that elimination targets are sustained and that TF does not re-emerge as a public health problem. TT surgery remains the priority for trachoma elimination efforts in the region, with an estimated 1819 TT surgeries to conduct

Catalogue of the circulating department, and of a portion of the books belonging to the intermediate department. Worcester, 1884.

Dictionary catalogue.Prepared by Miss Sarah F. Earle.Preface by Samuel S. Green, librarian.At head of title: Free public library.Mode of access: Internet

Lipid-Independent Regulation of PLIN5 via IL-6 through the JAK/STAT3 Axis in Hep3B Cells

Perilipin 5 (PLIN5) is a lipid droplet coat protein that is highly expressed in oxidative tissues such as those of muscles, the heart and the liver. PLIN5 expression is regulated by a family of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) and modulated by the cellular lipid status. So far, research has focused on the role of PLIN5 in the context of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and specifically in lipid droplet formation and lipolysis, where PLIN5 serves as a regulator of lipid metabolism. In addition, there are only limited studies connecting PLIN5 to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), where PLIN5 expression is proven to be upregulated in hepatic tissue. Considering that HCC development is highly driven by cytokines present throughout NAFLD development and in the tumor microenvironment, we here explore the possible regulation of PLIN5 by cytokines known to be involved in HCC and NAFLD progression. We demonstrate that PLIN5 expression is strongly induced by interleukin-6 (IL-6) in a dose- and time-dependent manner in Hep3B cells. Moreover, IL-6-dependent PLIN5 upregulation is mediated by the JAK/STAT3 signaling pathway, which can be blocked by transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). Furthermore, IL-6-mediated PLIN5 upregulation changes when IL-6 trans-signaling is stimulated through the addition of soluble IL-6R. In sum, this study sheds light on lipid-independent regulation of PLIN5 expression in the liver, making PLIN5 a crucial target for NAFLD-induced HCC

Evaluation of a Multipart Implicit Bias Educational Program Designed for a Non-Profit Organization

Children’s access and opportunities to play sports are influenced by categories of difference, such as gender, race, and socioeconomic status. In order to provide an inclusive community and facilitate the recruitment and retention of diverse youth, athletic organizations should be aware of implicit bias and how this can affect the relationship between volunteers and the children they serve. This paper presents a formative process evaluation of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training program for a non-profit athletic organization. Training was implemented in person in a group setting with multiple opportunities for group discussion. Mixed methods were used to monitor (1) the implementation of training, (2) its effects on attitudes throughout training, and (3) impact one month after training. Findings demonstrate that the program increased participants’ ability to identify DEI initiatives and sense of belonging to the organization, but these effects had declined by the end of the first month after training. However, participants’ self-beliefs regarding DEI and overall willingness to engage in DEI activities remained enhanced one month after training. Qualitative data were helpful in providing insight into how training impacted participants and their interactions within and outside of the organization. Through this mixed methods approach, we can conclude that DEI training did in fact have a positive impact on the organization, but further evaluation and training may be necessary to address the decline in some effects seen one month after training