Reconfiguring rights in austerity britain: boundaries behaviours and contestable margins

This paper addresses policy change in Britain since 2010 across the three fields of domestic welfare, migration and asylum, and analyses the association between welfare, conditionality and control through the lens of civic stratification. Drawing on the work of Richard Munch and Mary Douglas, it moves beyond existing literature in this area to show that the more complex the classification in play, and the more severe its boundary implications, the more likely the emergence of contestable margins. Informed by Munch's ‘battlefield’ approach, it provides a discussion of contestable margins in each of the three policy fields and outlines the nature and source of challenges that emerge within the ‘institutional battlefield’. A concluding section reflects on what is revealed by viewing welfare, migration and asylum within the same conceptual frame, identifying an emergent welfare paradigm that displays recurrent problems across all three fields

The moral economy of austerity: analysing UK welfare reform

This paper notes the contemporary emergence of ?morality? in both sociological argument and political rhetoric, and analyses its significance in relation to ongoing UK welfare reforms. It revisits the idea of ?moral economy? and identifies two strands in its contemporary application; that all economies depend on an internal moral schema, and that some external moral evaluation is desirable. UK welfare reform is analysed as an example of the former, with reference to three distinct orientations advanced in the work of Freeden (1996), Laclau (2014), and Lockwood (1996). In this light, the paper then considers challenges to the reform agenda, drawn from third sector and other public sources. It outlines the forms of argument present in these challenges, based respectively on rationality, legality, and morality, which together provide a basis for evaluation of the welfare reforms and for an alternative ?moral economy?

Area Postrema

This report contains a gene expression summary of the area postrema (AP), derived from the "Allen Brain Atlas":http://www.brain-map.org/welcome.do;jsessionid=EDE40ADC940845D169DE378ADC9B71BD (ABA) in-situ hybridization (ISH) mouse data set. The structure’s location and morphological characteristics in the mouse brain are described using the Nissl data found in the "Allen Reference Atlas":http://www.brain-map.org/mouse/atlas/coronal/legend.html. Using an established algorithm, the expression values of the AP were compared to the values of the macro/parent-structure, in this case the medulla, for the purpose of extracting regionally specific gene expression data. The highest ranking ratios were then manually curated and verified. The 50 Select Genes were compiled for expression characterization. The experimental data for each gene may be accessed via the links provided; complementary sagittal data may also be accessed using the "ABA":http://www.brain-map.org/welcome.do. Correlation between gene expression in the AP and the rest of the brain, across all genes in the coronal dataset (~4300 genes), were derived computationally and are presented below. A gene ontology table (derived from DAVID Bioinformatics Resources 2007) is also included, highlighting possible functions of these 50 Select Genes. 
&#xa

The topology of welfare-migration-asylum: Britain’s outsiders inside

Starting from the observation that recent immigration controls seem ‘hewn from the same rock’ as the welfare reforms, this article seeks to identify commonalities of approach, technique and effect across both fields. These can usefully be viewed through the concept of topology – a process of folding and filtering that challenges clear distinctions between inclusion and exclusion. Alongside a stratified system of rights based on conceptions of desert and apparent in both the welfare and migration/asylum systems, we find overlapping features that emerge from a harnessing of rights in the name of controls, and increasingly affect both citizens and non-citizens alike

Activating the welfare subject: the problem of agency

While accepting Banton’s (2016) view that sociology and social policy are distinct disciplines, this paper argues that times of radical change can profitably bring the two into closer dialogue. Considering an argument from Emirbayer and Mische (1998) that agency becomes especially apparent in unsettled times, it focuses on conceptions of agency at play in the design and implementation of recent UK welfare reforms, and in subsequent legal challenges. Identifying a series of key measures in the Welfare Reform Act of 2012 and the Welfare and Work Act of 2016, this paper examines the challenges that have ensued, and the way that agency is revealed as both a site of disciplinary control and as a focus for contestation, pitting the purposive rationality of welfare reform against the practical reason that emerges from claimant experience

Utilisation of amber suppression/non-natural amino acid technology for protein engineering and cellular control

The amber suppression technology is an intracellular methodology that allows position specific incorporation of a specific non-natural amino acid (NAA) into proteins using imported NAA-specific machinery during protein translation. The method has been utilised to incorporate over 50 NAAs into proteins (e.g. those that confer unique reactivity (and allow subsequent conjugation of additional factors), installation of post-translational modification mimics, modulation of protein function and those that aid in structural determination). Therefore, the aim of the work presented within this Thesis was to explore the use of this technology in novel applications; namely the installation and study of a reactive moiety within a defined environment and the creation of a ‘biological switch’ to control the production of the protein and subsequently a cellular phenotype. It was demonstrated that incorporation of the NAA, azidophenylalanine, within the hydrophobic pocket of T4 Lysozyme (T4LazF) could provide a protein scaffold to stabilise, shield and thereby allow exploration of the chemical reactivity of the photoreactive aryl azide moiety using various spectroscopic techniques. Specifically, electron paramagnetic spectroscopy of irradiated T4LazF demonstrated that the singlet phenyl nitrene species had been captured. To create a ‘biological switch’ to control the production of a protein and the subsequent cellular phenotype, the duality of the amber suppression method was the basis for the novel application rather than the chemical reactivity of the NAA. E. coli and mammalian cell motility readout systems were successfully created using flagellin (non-flagellate) and Rac1 (GTPase protein involved in lamellipodia production) knockout cell lines respectively in conjunction with specially created plasmid constructs. However, complexities regarding the implementation of amber suppression in order to control this motility via the presence/absence of NAA limited the functionality of these readout systems. The work presented has advanced the field of amber suppression and NAA technology by demonstrating that generating reactive intermediates derived from NAAs within a defined chemical environment of a protein provides a novel technique to generate and study highly reactive intermediates. In addition, it has been shown that the amber suppression technology has potential to act as a biological switch to control cellular responses

Plantain (\u3cem\u3ePlantago lanceolata\u3c/em\u3e) Outperforms Chicory (\u3cem\u3eCichorium intybus\u3c/em\u3e) under Moisture Stress in Glasshouse

Forage chicory (Cichorium intybus) and plantain (Plantago lanceolata) are now widely used throughout the world as high feed quality perennial herbage (Sanderson et al. 2003; Labreveux et al. 2006; Li et al. 2010; Golding et al. 2011; Hutton et al. 2011). Both are taprooted plants and are thus likely to confer a degree of drought tolerance through accessing water deeper in the soil profile (Kemp et al. 2010). Nie et al. (2008) reported chicory can tolerate moisture stress to a greater degree than plantain. However, overall little is known about the effect of moisture stress on plantain and chicory persistence under defoliated conditions. The objective was to compare plantain and chicory un-der moisture stress and defoliation under glasshouse conditions