Court of Appeal found no love for Topshop tank: the image right that dare not speak its name

This article contains an analysis of the first instance and appeal decisions of the "Rihanna" case. In particular, the authors consider the substantive law of passing off in the context of the unauthorised use of a celebrity’s image on a Topshop tank vest top. This is followed by a discussion of the consequences of the case for celebrities, consumers and stakeholders in the entertainment and fashion industries

Seeing blue: negotiating the politics of Avatar media activism

This thesis examines how the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar (2009) has been taken-up in media activism directed towards Indigenous struggles against imperialism. It assumes the importance of locating this phenomenon within the discursive and material regimes that mediate, enable, and constrain it. I therefore offer a contextualised analysis of the film and media relating to its appropriation, which focuses on the representational practices and structural mechanisms that inform the production, circulation, and reception of the texts. This approach emphasises the tensions and contradictions that underpin activists’ relationship to the media they mobilise. Such contradictions are particularly apparent in relation to the politics of race that shape Avatar, the Indigenous activism that references it, and the media regimes that make this possible. The very forces that marginalise Indigenous voices empower auteur James Cameron to speak on their behalf and to be heard. Activists must also negotiate the tension between co-opting media spectacle and being commercialised as spectacle. However, refusing a simple critique of the representations activists deploy as media spectacles, I argue for a model that foregrounds the alliances that they seek to engender. Drawing on the work of feminist scholars Oliver (2001) and Deslandes (2010), I signal a theoretical approach that focuses on how the mediated spectator relates to such representations and insists on the spectator’s responsibility to respond. Acknowledging that the tensions that animate Avatar media activism can be both constrictive and creative, this project seeks a model that maximises the potential for the latter. It thus resists the paralysis of activism that can come with critiquing how we fight for the world we imagine

Emma Mitchell

The purest form of pleasure is found in simplicity; holding something meant to be held, touching a surface meant to be touched. My sculptural ceramic work focuses on embracing the childlike desire to reach out and touch. The textures visible on the sculptures heighten the viewer’s inclination to feel what they are seeing. Just as mugs are created to meet the lips of the drinker, my sculptures are built to meet the contours of the holder’s hands. This mirrors the effect of holding a child or caressing a loved one. Many of my sculptures begin as a flat surface, created to meet the ground or table in such a way that implies growth, flourishing into a form resembling a figure with an enormous amount of life and energy. Although the form doesn’t necessarily mirror the figure exactly, it mimics elements found in the figure; curves, bumps, concaving surfaces, etc. My chosen medium is clay because clay is natural, found on this earth, manipulated by hand. Clay is a living organism, growing and collapsing with the elements. The clay has memory, it remembers how it was formed, built. It can embrace the hand of the potter, or choose to reject it. I find beauty in the fact that ceramic failures can be recycled into something greater. The majority of my early sculptural endeavors collapsed or cracked in relation to the speed at which I was building and, as a result, were recycled. Now, I embrace impurities, honesty. As I continue learning, I experiment more with different surfaces as well as the meanings behind them. The cracks, glaze drips, streaks, and imperfect surfaces remind me of the human body and the many imperfections associated with it; birth marks, scars, stretch marks, etc. No one is without imperfections; flaws provide character, personality. My work is meant to empower those who interact with it and give them a sense of safety and security by encouraging them to embrace impurities and less-than-perfect.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art399/1090/thumbnail.jp

Unprecedented

The broad concept behind my work is that of acceptance for one’s true form. As someone who struggles with self-acceptance, building ceramic sculptures bearing flaws and strange features has been a sort of therapy. When looking at my work, the viewer should feel empowered and safe in their own skin. They should see a reflection of their own flaws and insecurities in my sculptures, and feel a sense of belonging. Out of the five senses, the one I resonate with most is touch. In all ceramic work, touch is utilized in the making; whether the finished product is meant to be held, felt, or seen. Through the element of texture, my work awakens the human desire to reach out and touch; however intimate and unconventional. Although I don’t want the viewer to touch my work without expressed invitation, I do want the sculptures to evoke the innate desire to feel. I am continuously experimenting with different textures and the sensations they provoke in the viewer. In executing these textures, nature is used as both the tools and the inspiration. I have used lava rocks as well as other unconventional tools to texture my sculptures. Some of my sculptures invite touch as they are visually satisfying surfaces, while others are hostile and rough to the touch. Texture not only serves as a physically appealing aspect, but a visual one as well. The contrast that texture adds to a piece draws the eye in all different directions; inviting the viewer to look at every curve and crevice. The form beneath the texture is inspired by both natural formations and the fluidity of the human body. My sculptures begin as a flat surface, mirroring a starting point in every journey towards acceptance. I often let the clay dictate which direction it wants to grow in; offering help when gravity threatens failure. I enjoy working with clay because it’s natural, almost a creature of its own, growing and collapsing with the elements. I draw inspiration from modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth as well as German contemporary artist Birgit Piskor. Hepworth’s work was influenced by motherhood, history, and war as she sculpted forms evoking the human body and the space it occupies. The minimalist quality and psychological meaning reflect in my work. Birgit Piskor focuses on catching transformation and inevitable change as she sculpts with concrete. Her sculptures depicting the feminine form inspire my work to be poised and elegant.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art499/1048/thumbnail.jp

Post-16 curriculum choice: processes, values and tensions at a dual-curriculum UK independent school

This study explores the processes, values and tensions experienced by students when making post-compulsory curriculum choices at the independent boys’ school in South London where I am International Baccalaureate Coordinator. The research was conducted with Year 11 students as they chose what subjects to study in Year 12 and under which overarching curriculum (IB Diploma or A-levels). A purposive sample of 21 students (10 individuals and two groups), manifesting wide-ranging attributes, were interviewed in a coaching format on three occasions across a six-month period in the academic year 2020-21. Narrative and thematic analyses of the interview transcripts revealed that post-16 curriculum choice is guided by subject interests, ongoing progress in Key Stage 4 courses and assessments, aspirations, influential family members and friends, advice from teachers, perceived ‘fit’, extra-curricular interests and past experiences. The information on which decisions are based is often inaccurate or incomplete, and some students demonstrated negative self-talk. Each individual student selects their curriculum route and subjects in adherence with school requirements, but is influenced by the values they hold (and the relative importance of these values). Yet, five categories of choice process emerged: placidity, quiet assurance, borderline obsessional, performances of satisfaction and thriving. Combining a Bourdieusian lens with critical realism tools reveals the relevance of capital, habitus, field, reproduction, doxa and symbolic violence, and I have noted some of the tensions in my professional role through autoethnographic techniques. The International Baccalaureate mission encourages educators to increase uptake. But efforts to do so without establishing how distinctive students in particular school settings make curriculum choices are futile. I argue that educators and researchers can connect to students through coaching to reveal more than could have been discovered otherwise. All 16-year-olds, when making curriculum choices, deserve to be informed about the short-term realities and awakened to the long-term implications

Corticospinal and reticulospinal contacts on cervical commissural and long descending propriospinal neurons in the adult rat spinal cord; evidence for powerful reticulospinal connections

Descending systems have a crucial role in the selection of motor output patterns by influencing the activity of interneuronal networks in the spinal cord. Commissural interneurons that project to the contralateral grey matter are key components of such networks as they coordinate left-right motor activity of fore and hind-limbs. The aim of this study was to determine if corticospinal (CST) and reticulospinal (RST) neurons make significant numbers of axonal contacts with cervical commissural interneurons. Two classes of commissural neurons were analysed: 1) local commissural interneurons (LCINs) in segments C4-5; 2) long descending propriospinal neurons (LDPNs) projecting from C4 to the rostral lumbar cord. Commissural interneurons were labelled with Fluorogold and CST and RST axons were labelled by injecting the b subunit of cholera toxin in the forelimb area of the primary somatosensory cortex or the medial longitudinal fasciculus respectively. The results show that LCINs and LDPNs receive few contacts from CST terminals but large numbers of contacts are formed by RST terminals. Use of vesicular glutamate and vesicular GABA transporters revealed that both types of cell received about 80% excitatory and 20% inhibitory RST contacts. Therefore the CST appears to have a minimal influence on LCINs and LDPNs but the RST has a powerful influence. This suggests that left-right activity in the rat spinal cord is not influenced directly via CST systems but is strongly controlled by the RST pathway. Many RST neurons have monosynaptic input from corticobulbar pathways therefore this pathway may provide an indirect route from the cortex to commissural systems. The cortico-reticulospinal-commissural system may also contribute to functional recovery following damage to the CST as it has the capacity to deliver information from the cortex to the spinal cord in the absence of direct CST input

The use of blood-flow restriction to enhance high-intensity endurance performance and skeletal muscle adaptation

Post-exercise blood flow restriction (BFR) is a novel training method which, through alterations to the haemodynamic, metabolic and hypoxic stimulus, could augment skeletal muscle adaptation in endurance trained individuals. The studies described in this thesis investigated the combined effect of post-exercise BFR and interval training on angiogenic and mitochondrial biogenic molecular and adaptive responses and high-intensity endurance performance. It was initially demonstrated that a very strong correlation exists between critical power (CP), an important parameter of endurance performance, and indices of skeletal muscle capillarity (r = 0.94), implying that skeletal muscle capillarity is an important determinant of CP (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 investigated the efficacy of combining post-exercise BFR with 4 weeks of sprint interval training (SIT) (4-7 x 30 s maximal bouts) in trained individuals. SIT increased CP by ~3.5% in trained individuals, but the addition of BFR did not enhance this further. In contrast, neither skeletal muscle capillarity or mitochondrial protein content increased following SIT with or without BFR. However, there was a trend (P = 0.06) for an increase in proliferating endothelial cells after four weeks of SIT only with post-exercise BFR, tentatively suggesting that post-exercise BFR could elicit an enhanced angiogenic response when undertaken with a greater training duration and/or volume. This was investigated in Chapter 6 in which the time course of transient transcriptional changes during two weeks of post-exercise BFR combined with a higher volume high intensity interval training (HIIT) modality was examined. BFR did not enhance the transient increases in VEGF, PGC-1α of HIF-1α mRNA following HIIT during two-weeks of training and did not increase VEGF protein content. There was however, an increase in resting eNOS mRNA after two weeks only when HIIT was combined with post-exercise BFR, suggesting BFR elicited an increased shear stress stimulus. There was no increase in mitochondrial protein content or citrate synthase activity following 2 weeks of HIIT with or without post-exercise BFR. Collectively the findings from these studies imply that post-exercise BFR does not increase mitochondrial content, but although there was no increase in skeletal muscle capillarity, there were suggestions that post-exercise BFR could elicit an enhanced angiogenic stimulus when undertaken with higher training volumes and could subsequently increase performance

New ages from Sehonghong rock shelter: Implications for the late Pleistocene occupation of highland Lesotho

Sehonghong rock shelter is situated in the eastern Lesotho highlands, a climatically extreme region of southern Africa. The site is one of a handful in southern Africa that preserves human occupations before, during, and after the Last GlacialMaximum(LGM). The site's long and well-preserved sequence makes it relevant to addressing questions of human mobility, subsistence, and technology in relation to broader environmental change. Here we present a Bayesian-modelled radiocarbon chronology for the LGM and terminal Pleistocene occupations at Sehonghong. Our model incorporates previously published radiocarbon dates and new accelerator mass spectrometry ages. We also present archaeological evidence to test the hypothesis that Sehonghong was occupied in a series of punctuated events, and that some of these occupations were more intensive than others. Previous chronological and archaeological data were insufficient for testing these hypotheses. The new dates and archaeological data confirmthat the sitewas occupied intensively in the early LGMand immediately thereafter. The site was otherwise occupied sporadically.We find that greater site occupation density is not always correlated with intensified use of local resources as measured by increased bipolar reduction and fish consumption. The new dates further confirm that Sehonghong contains some of the oldest evidence for systematic freshwater fishing in southern Africa. The availability of fish, a high fat protein source, probably stimulated human occupation, however sporadic, of suchmontane environments during cooler and drier periods. These findings suggest behavioural variability in response to shifting mobility and subsistence strategies. Our brief discussion informs upon huntergatherer occupation of southern Africanmontane environments more broadly and human behavioural variability during the LGM

Detour pathways of descending motor systems

The motor cortex makes a substantial contribution to contralateral limb function via the corticospinal tract (CST). The extent to which the motor cortex influences ipsilateral limb function is less clear. Interest in ipsilateral cortical control stems from studies of stroke survivors, demonstrating increased activation of the ipsilateral motor cortex during movement of the affected limb. This raises the possibility that ipsilateral pathways contribute to recovery of function following damage to the contralateral CST. The overarching aim of this thesis was to extend the knowledge of neural systems that might mediate ipsilateral actions of the motor cortex, both under normal circumstances and after stroke. In rodent models of stroke, there is evidence that CST axons originating from the non-ischaemic hemisphere sprout into the denervated (ipsilateral) side of the spinal cord, and the extent of sprouting correlates with the degree of motor recovery. However, it is yet to be confirmed whether the CST from the nonischaemic hemisphere establishes new terminals in the denervated (ipsilateral) side of the spinal cord to replace connections lost after stroke. Hence, the first major aim of this thesis was to assess for CST terminal remodelling between the non-ischaemic hemisphere and the denervated (ipsilateral) side of the cervical spinal cord following recovery from experimental stroke in the rat. Rats underwent 60 min middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo) or sham occlusion surgery. Behavioural testing was conducted prior to MCAo and postoperatively for 28 days to monitor functional deficit and recovery. At day 28, the anterograde tracer cholera toxin b (CTb) subunit was injected into the forelimb motor cortex of the non-ischaemic hemisphere. Spinal sections containing anterogradely labelled terminals were reacted with antibodies against CTb and immunoreactive terminals were quantified. MCAo was associated with loss of approximately 35% of CST axons originating from the ischaemic hemisphere and infarcts were localised to subcortical structures. Rats exhibited sensorimotor deficits in the early phase after MCAo but recovered over time such that there were no significant differences in sensorimotor performances between shamoperated and MCAo rats at post-operative day 28. Despite functional recovery demonstrated by MCAo rats, the number of CTb-labelled terminals in the II cervical spinal cord originating from the non-ischaemic hemisphere was not altered compared to shams. The results of this first study suggest that after subcortical stroke, the motor cortex from the non-ischaemic hemisphere does not contribute to recovery of the affected limb via increasing its direct CST connections to the denervated (ipsilateral) side of the spinal cord. If the motor cortex from the non-ischaemic hemisphere does take over control of ipsilateral spinal circuitry after stroke, it likely utilises an indirect route. In the intact animal, a number of indirect routes via which the motor cortex may gain access to ipsilateral spinal circuitry have been identified. These pathways are complex and involve intercalated neurons located in the brainstem and contralateral spinal cord. However, there are numerous putative indirect routes which have yet to be investigated. One such route involves contralaterally descending CST axons targeting spinal commissural interneurons (CINs), which in turn would either mono- or polysynaptically affect motor neurons on the opposite side of the spinal cord. CINs are a heterogeneous population of cells important for inter-limb coordination. Despite the importance of CINs to locomotion and their potential role in providing the motor cortex indirect access to ipsilateral spinal circuits, supraspinal input to CINs is poorly defined. Hence, the second major aim of this thesis was to characterise contacts to CINs from different supraspinal sources (the CST and reticulospinal tract (ReST)) in the cervical spinal cord of the intact rat. The CINs included i) those that issue longrange axonal projections to lumbar segments, termed long-descending propriospinal neurons (LDPNs), and ii) those that issue short-range axonal projections confined to a single segment, termed intrasegmental CINs. Axons were labelled anterogradely by injecting CTb into the forelimb motor cortex or medial longitudinal fasciculus (MLF), to label CST and ReST axons, respectively. Fluorogold (FG) was injected unilaterally into segments L1/L2 or C3/C4 in order to retrogradely label LDPNs or intrasegmental CINs, respectively. Spinal sections containing labelled cells and terminals were immunoreacted with various antibody combinations and were then examined with confocal microscopy. Both LDPNs and intrasegmental CINs received very few contacts from CST terminals but had significant numbers of contacts from ReST terminals. Use of vesicular glutamate and vesicular GABA transporters revealed that both cell types received approximately 80% of excitatory and 20% of inhibitory ReST contacts. III The results suggest that in the intact animal, the CST has a minimal direct influence on LDPNs and intrasegmental CINs but the ReST has a powerful direct influence. Therefore, following loss of CST axons (e.g. after stroke), the corticoreticulospinal- commissural pathway has the capacity to deliver information from the intact hemisphere to the denervated side of the spinal cord

The Dissociable Impact of Auditory vs. Visual Emotional Cues on Visual Processing

Background: Emotional information has privileged access to processing resources, which can cause it to have a distracting or facilitating effect on task performance for reasons that are poorly understood. The sensory modality through which it is presented may be one determining factor. Some findings suggest that auditory stimuli facilitate visual task performance while visual stimuli interfere with it, but there are conflicting findings. Hypothesis: We hypothesize that emotional content of a different sensory modality from the task improves task-related performance via a general alerting and arousing effect for all stimuli, while emotional content of the same modality disrupts performance when task-relevant neutral stimuli compete with emotional stimuli for processing resources. Methods: Participants will attempt to identify the location of a Gabor patch (a sinusoidal grating of horizontal lines), either on the left or right side of the computer screen, while a negative or neutral image or sound is presented. Their reaction times will be compared across conditions. Expected Results: We expect that emotional content presented through the auditory modality will result in faster responses on the visual perception task, compared to neutral content. Conversely, compared to neutral stimuli, emotional content presented visually will lead to slower responses. Discussion: This research will lead to a better understanding of how the manner in which emotional information is presented can determine its effect on task performance. This is a key step in determining how emotional content perceived through multiple modalities interacts to affect a person’s perceptual abilities in complex emotional situations