Representations of laboratory animals in popular media forms

Attitudes to animals are in part formed through engagement with popular culture and therefore we should pay attention to the potential of this domain for shaping animal lives. But can popular culture really do anything for the ‘laboratory’ animal? This paper explores the persistent and changing deployment of the laboratory animal in a range of humorous popular media (and cultural) texts, and suggests that its appearance in comedy could provide a useful means to reach an otherwise reluctant audience

The Development and Use of Child Well-Being Indicators in the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect

Summarizes the conceptual framework and development of outcomes-based, measurable indicators focused on child safety, permanency, and well-being to help monitor the status of children in the child welfare system. Outlines recommended indicators

Is the Unspeakable Singable? The Ethics of Holocaust Representation and the Reception of Górecki's Symphony no.3

Debates about Holocaust representation have long been haunted by the idea that the enormity and intensity of human suffering in the events of World War Two are ‘unspeakable’. In many such statements the capacity for cognition and the ethical dimension of aestheticisation are blurred – the Holocaust is ‘unspeakable’ both in the sense of being impossible to imagine in its full horror, but also morally inappropriate as the subject of artistic production. But do all forms of cultural representation of the Holocaust fail in the same way as words or to the same degree, in the eyes of those who would judge their merits according the tenet of unspeakability? This paper considers one particularly renowned work Henryk Górecki’s symphony no. 3 (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych) of 1976, discussing how it mediated both the global politics of Holocaust representation and the recuperation of victimhood in postcommunist Poland. Górecki claimed a subjectivity of failure in response to the challenge of representing the events of World War Two and has insisted that the symphony is not about war but about sorrow. The vocal lyrics are nonetheless profoundly thematised around war suffering, and the Second World War in particular - events he approached with a musical language of epic, pathos and redemption. In framing the subject of his work, he emphasised a Polish national suffering that both eschewed mention of specifically targeted groups of victims, and beckoned to Polish folk and catholic traditions. This article presents a new hypothesis about the success of Górecki’s work by considering it in relation to the ethical debates about Holocaust empathic response that have occurred in relation to historiographic, literary and filmic representation

“Cell Culture Engineering” and what this means for the future of medicine

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Do UK based weight management programmes cause weight loss maintenance in adults? A systematic review

The aim of this dissertation was to examine whether UK based weight management programmes promote weight loss maintenance (follow up of 12 months to assess effectiveness of intervention in weight loss) in adults through the process of a systematic review. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described obesity as a "global epidemic". Weight management comprises two phases; weight loss and weight loss maintenance. The latter phase is the true goal for obesity and the most difficult element of weight management to achieve. However much less is know about this as compared with the weight loss phase. There is little purpose in committing time and money to reducing obesity if the weight is regained. This is counter-productive and weight loss maintenance is essential to combat the obesity epidemic. Searches were made for relevant information from a variety of scientific online databases and journals,. Seven articles met the inclusion criteria and were analysed in the review. All studies incorporated a multi-component (diet, exercise, behaviur modification) intervention approach. All control and internvetion groups reported weight loss at 12 months when compared with baseline. All groups recieved an intervention. One study reported a significant difference (P<0.05) between groups. Four studies reported on at least one component (diet, physical activity, behaviour modification) however there was not enough information to conclude whether they complied with national guidelines (NICE CG43 and SIGN 115). High attrition rates and loss to follow up are problematic for each study except one. Analysis on an intention to treat basis was common however this is problematic and there are alternative methods which may be more suitable for dealing with missing data

Do menopausal women need estrogen replacement to avoid osteoporosis?

This paper considers the hypothesis that modern gynecological practices relating to sex-steroid hormones reflect modern sedentary lifeways, along with pharmaceutical commercial pressures, to produce a widespread medical perception that all postmenopausal women need estrogen replacement therapy to avoid osteoporosis (bone fracture risk resulting from low bone density). Like the concept of menopause itself, the concept of universal menopausal osteopenia (low bone density) is a modern medical construction. Numerous clinical trials have demonstrated that estrogen replacement therapies (ERT) help women to retain bone mass in ageing, but several trials have also shown that ERT is primarily effective in sedentary women who do not exercise, Recent studies of ancient human bones suggest that bone-mass in women was higher in the pre-agricultural ancestral past due to greater physical activity demands and greater nutrient density than are common in modern corporeal lifeways. From an evolutionary perspective, the metabolic nature of bone as a tissue that can be increased or reabsorbed in response not only to sex-steroid hormone levels but also to dietary mineral and protein status, vitamin D, and mechanical loading appears adapted to an environment that was abundant in nutritional micronutrients, sunlight exposure and regular, demanding physical activity

COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN A POST-INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITY, ANACONDA, MONTANA: A MIXED METHODS APPROACH FOR UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE AND TRANSITIONS

Post-industrial rural communities across the United States are experiencing economic, social, and environmental changes. Successful transitions depend on the ability to navigate change and maintain a quality of life, or a community’s resilience. These communities do not start with a blank slate, but rather their present and future decision-making, priorities, and planning are influenced by their pasts. Many of these communities retain strong ties to their extractive identities, histories, and landscapes. Often, collective memories, or how people remember and share knowledge and experiences related to their identity, perpetuate narratives and stories about their pasts. This research draws attention to the social dimensions of post-industrial rural community change. The town of Anaconda, Montana— a former smelting town, Superfund site, and an aspiring tourism and recreation destination— provides an instructive case study to examine the role of collective memory in change and transition. This dissertation uses a mixed methods approach including 33 semi-structured interviews with community leaders, a household survey (n = 347), and 22 phenomenological interviews with community members. Centering analysis on the community scale, research found that collective memory impacts community resilience. Collective memory functions differently throughout time— it can act as a galvanizing force to mobilize and aid in recovery or as a constraint to change and innovative thinking. This research also created quantitative collective memory measures which were tested in a model with community resilience. Findings illuminate a complex temporal relationship between the past, present, and future, where the past influences how communities perceive their resilience, which in turn, influences how they plan and hope for the future. Utilizing collective memory as a springboard, investigation of the community’s lived experiences shed light into the complicated nature of contamination cleanup, where these spaces are rich sources of meaning and memory. Community experiences revealed the need for historically informed cleanups in processes such as Superfund and offered practical recommendations for community engagement. Together this dissertation highlights the importance of studying the social dimensions of post-industrial rural communities for more effective decision-making and community engagement

Historicising Historical Theory's History of Cultural Historiography

Historical theory, as a mode of theoretical criticism, engages in both descriptive and prescriptive readings of historiographic practices, with a view to interpreting and evaluating their meaning as epistemological moves. But it also, often implicitly, situates these practices within its own historical narrative, replete with its own telos of rupture, revolution, and the loss of innocence. As such, historical theory has elaborated its own history of cultural historiography. But these elaborations too have a history. This paper considers a number of theory-driven accounts of cultural historiography, which situate it within a specific historical narrative about its origins. That narrative consists in vision of radical rupture, distinguishing the ‘new cultural history' both from prevailing modes of historical ontology and epistemology up until the end of the twentieth century, and most importantly, distinguishing it from earlier variants of cultural historiography as it was practiced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper describes the narrative of rupture that has imbued theoretical views of cultural historiography and examines the history of their elaboration; Secondly, it proposes that this narrative may itself be inappropriate, and suggests an alternative narrative about why earlier forms of cultural historiography have not commonly been seen as continuous with its current expressions. It argues that several genealogical tentacles connected older forms of cultural historiography to the newer variants, and that these connections cannot be assimilated within the telos of epistemological rupture that is typically invoked to describe the "linguistic turn". Finally, a set of geo-political and institutional contexts are elaborated to explain the sensation of rupture reported by many cultural historians as, alternatively, the product of a series of nationalist hostilities and disciplinary exclusions from the late nineteenth century until after World War Two. Cultural historiography's apparent ‘newness' can better be understood as a late-twentieth-century myth generated by both historical theorists and by cultural historians themselves, which has served to instantiate a new scholarly identity for historians as theory-sophisticates in the ambiance of post-structuralist university humanities cultures of the western world

Looted Art: The Case of the Parthenon Sculptures

Many artifacts which comprise private and museum collections today were possibly stolen from their country of origin and illegally smuggled into the country in which they now reside. In the late eighteenth century, the global powers of England and France exercised their authority over less powerful countries, such as Greece and Egypt, by exporting those countries’ traditional artifacts. Now, the governments of the less dominant countries no longer dismiss the pieces as useless artifacts, but view them as valuable cultural objects. The number of countries attempting to regain possession of lost artifacts from private and museum collections was recently increased. The archetypal case of the repatriation of looted art is the controversy over the sculptures of the Parthenon, better known as the “Elgin Marbles.” The sculptures have been located in the British Museum in London for the past 200 years and the Greek government is continually requesting the marble sculptures to be returned. By closely examining this specific issue and similar cases, I present an in-depth portrait of the trend for the repatriation of looted artifacts