KENDALL, Paul. 2019. The Sounds of Social Space: Branding, Built Environment, and Leisure in Urban China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

I first visited the southwestern Chinese city of Kaili 凱里 in 1987. At that time, the city, with its many secretive Third Front factories, was still closed to foreigners, and I was quickly picked up by local public security officers and put on the next bus out of town. But Kaili – existing as it did in the midst of Guizhou’s Miao 苗 minority heartland – intrigued me, and in 1993 I returned to conduct dissertation research on ethnic tourism development in the region. I was again shoed out of tow..

Mediating Asia: Information, Democracy, and the State In and Before the Digital Age

What are the political, economic, and cultural implications of an increasingly robust and globally penetrating Asia-based media industry? How have Asian states tried to manage the diffuse representations of Asia emerging from informal yet globalized media channels? This collection of articles by Asian media scholars and professional journalists explores the changing relationships between Asian states and Asia -based media institutions and industries as the nature and role of media in Asian society undergoes profound change. With the increasing visibility and power of Indian film, Korean television, and Japanese animation industries, and of Asian broadcasting networks such as Star TV and Al Jazeera, there has been no shortage of scholarly attention devoted to the rise of Asian media. This collection, however, focuses less on the meteoric rise and power of Asian media itself and more on how that rise has been negotiated by Asian states, with a particular focus on China and Indonesia. As digital media technologies become ubiquitous, both formal and informal media platforms push beyond state boundaries, challenging state efforts to control the content of and access to information and entertainment. This challenge is addressed in commentaries by three journalists with extensive Asian experience, and three academics exploring the spatial and historical contexts of an increasingly mediated Asia

Kendall, Paul. 2019. The Sounds of Social Space: Branding, Built Environment, and Leisure in Urban China. Honolulu : University of Hawai’i Press.

J’ai visité pour la première fois la ville de Kaili 凱里, dans le sud-ouest de la Chine, en 1987. À l’époque, la ville était encore fermée aux étrangers en raison de la présence de nombreuses usines secrètes du Troisième Front, et les agents de la sécurité publique locale m’avaient rapidement repéré et placé dans le prochain bus au départ de la ville. Kaili – qui se trouve au cœur du pays miao 苗 au Guizhou – m’avait cependant suffisamment intrigué pour qu’en 1993, je revienne y mener mes recher..

Socioeconomic deprivation, urban-rural location and alcohol-related mortality in England and Wales

Background: Many causes of death are directly attributable to the toxic effects of alcohol and deaths from these causes are increasing in the United Kingdom. The aim of this study was to investigate variation in alcohol-related mortality in relation to socioeconomic deprivation, urban-rural location and age within a national context. Methods: An ecological study design was used with data from 8797 standard table wards in England and Wales. The methodology included using the Carstairs Index as a measure of socioeconomic deprivation at the small-area level and the national harmonised classification system for urban and rural areas in England and Wales. Alcohol-related mortality was defined using the National Statistics definition, devised for tracking national trends in alcohol-related deaths. Deaths from liver cirrhosis accounted for 85% of all deaths included in this definition. Deaths from 1999-2003 were examined and 2001 census ward population estimates were used as the denominators. Results: The analysis was based on 28,839 deaths. Alcohol-related mortality rates were higher in men and increased with increasing age, generally reaching peak levels in middle-aged adults. The 45-64 year age group contained a quarter of the total population but accounted for half of all alcohol-related deaths. There was a clear association between alcohol-related mortality and socioeconomic deprivation, with progressively higher rates in more deprived areas. The strength of the association varied with age. Greatest relative inequalities were seen amongst people aged 25-44 years, with relative risks of 4.73 (95% CI 4.00 to 5.59) and 4.24 (95% CI 3.50 to 5.13) for men and women respectively in the most relative to the least deprived quintiles. People living in urban areas experienced higher alcohol-related mortality relative to those living in rural areas, with differences remaining after adjustment for socioeconomic deprivation. Adjusted relative risks for urban relative to rural areas were 1.35 (95% CI 1.20 to 1.52) and 1.13 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.25) for men and women respectively. Conclusions: Large inequalities in alcohol-related mortality exist between sub-groups of the population in England and Wales. These should be considered when designing public health policies to reduce alcohol-related harm

Single Top Production as a Window to Physics Beyond the Standard Model

Production of single top quarks at a high energy hadron collider is studied as a means to identify physics beyond the standard model related to the electroweak symmetry breaking. The sensitivity of the $s$-channel $W^*$ mode, the $t$-channel $W$-gluon fusion mode, and the \tw mode to various possible forms of new physics is assessed, and it is found that the three modes are sensitive to different forms of new physics, indicating that they provide complimentary information about the properties of the top quark. Polarization observables are also considered, and found to provide potentially useful information about the structure of the interactions of top.Comment: References added and minor discussion improvements; results unchanged; Version to be published in PR

Between Big City and Authentic Village: Branding the Small Chinese City

While recent academic research has already produced an impressive corpus on big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, the small Chinese city has been mostly ignored. In this article, I suggest that consideration of the small city can bring a new perspective on the wider urban fabric of which it is an element. Although small city governments have embraced urban entrepreneurialism with the same enthusiasm as China’s big cities, different configurations of space, branding and the everyday have nevertheless resulted. My case study of Kaili in Guizhou province indicates that the small city exists in a complex relationship with the big city and the village; it is pulled towards large-scale urbanization while simultaneously attempting to construct a unique city image based upon the evocation of rural cultural practices. The perspective from the small city thus suggests the need to consider the rural-urban divide – long a dominant geographical imagination of China – alongside other geographies, including a triad of the small city, the village and the big city

A Social Identity Approach to Sport Psychology: Principles, Practice, and Prospects.

Drawing on social identity theory and self-categorization theory, we outline an approach to sport psychology that understands groups not simply as features of sporting contexts but rather as elements that can be, and often are, incorporated into a person's sense of self and, through this, become powerful determinants of their sport-related behavior. The underpinnings of this social identity approach are outlined, and four key lessons for sport that are indicative of the analytical and practical power of the approach are presented. These suggest that social identity is the basis for sports group (1) behavior, (2) formation and development, (3) support and stress appraisal, and (4) leadership. Building on recent developments within sport science, we outline an agenda for future research by identifying a range of topics to which the social identity approach could fruitfully contribute

Effect of remote ischaemic conditioning on clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI): a single-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Remote ischaemic conditioning with transient ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm has been shown to reduce myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). We investigated whether remote ischaemic conditioning could reduce the incidence of cardiac death and hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months. METHODS: We did an international investigator-initiated, prospective, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI) at 33 centres across the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Serbia. Patients (age >18 years) with suspected STEMI and who were eligible for PPCI were randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre with a permuted block method) to receive standard treatment (including a sham simulated remote ischaemic conditioning intervention at UK sites only) or remote ischaemic conditioning treatment (intermittent ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm through four cycles of 5-min inflation and 5-min deflation of an automated cuff device) before PPCI. Investigators responsible for data collection and outcome assessment were masked to treatment allocation. The primary combined endpoint was cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02342522) and is completed. FINDINGS: Between Nov 6, 2013, and March 31, 2018, 5401 patients were randomly allocated to either the control group (n=2701) or the remote ischaemic conditioning group (n=2700). After exclusion of patients upon hospital arrival or loss to follow-up, 2569 patients in the control group and 2546 in the intervention group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 12 months post-PPCI, the Kaplan-Meier-estimated frequencies of cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure (the primary endpoint) were 220 (8·6%) patients in the control group and 239 (9·4%) in the remote ischaemic conditioning group (hazard ratio 1·10 [95% CI 0·91-1·32], p=0·32 for intervention versus control). No important unexpected adverse events or side effects of remote ischaemic conditioning were observed. INTERPRETATION: Remote ischaemic conditioning does not improve clinical outcomes (cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure) at 12 months in patients with STEMI undergoing PPCI. FUNDING: British Heart Foundation, University College London Hospitals/University College London Biomedical Research Centre, Danish Innovation Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, TrygFonden

Zone infrastructures: China’s new urban paradigm and export product

The presentation includes the following information: introduction BRI and the China model of development infrastructure zone infrastructure case: Gui’an New Area, China concluding point