Growth, profits and technological choice: The case of the Lancashire cotton textile industry

Using Lancashire textile industry company case studies and financial records, mainly from the period just before the First World War, the processes of growth and decline are re-examined. These are considered by reference to the nature of Lancashire entrepreneurship and the impact on technological choice. Capital accumulation, associated wealth distributions and the character of Lancashire business organisation were sybiotically linked to the success of the industry before 1914. However, the legacy of that accumulation in later decades, chronic overcapacity, formed a barrier to reconstruction and enhanced the preciptious decline of a once great industry

Trending now: feminism, sexism, misogyny and postfeminism in British journalism

In the last few years feminism has gained spectacular visibility across media and popular culture. As Sarah Banet-Weiser (2018) observes, “everywhere you turn, there is an expression of feminism – on a T-shirt, in a movie, in the lyrics of a pop song, in an inspirational instagram post, in an acceptance speech”. News media have been pivotal to this, not only reporting on feminist campaigns such as slutwalk or metoo, or on feminist demonstrations like the Women’s marches, but also centering feminism as a topic of discussion – whether substantively in terms of equal pay or sexual violence, or more broadly as something to be routinely asked of politicians, actresses or pop stars. “The new DO: Calling yourself a feminist” announced Glamour magazine in the US, cementing a wider impression that no interview of a high-profile woman is complete without its subject being asked about their views of or identification with feminism

The developmental socialisation of young people in club sport: an ethnographic account

This thesis is concerned with the issues surrounding the participation of young people (aged 11 to 13) in junior club sport. This follows the acknowledgement that club sport is a key site for participation by young people away from school but that very little is known or understood about how this sports experience actually works (MacPhail et al, 2003). This thesis examines the complex relationships and interactions that shape the participation and attrition of young people from a cricket club in the Midlands. This ethnographic participant-observation study focuses on two seasons of coaching sessions, practices and matches. It explores the dynamic interactions between the young people, their parents, their coaches and the cricket club itself Underpinning this thesis are the core concepts of the sports socialisation process and the sociology of the family. On a more applied level, the thesis draws upon the theories of developmental stages of sports participation (Cote & Hay, 2002a), social construction and positioning in sport (Kirk & MacPhail, 2003) and situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Data was generated through observation and semi-structured interviews with the young people, their parents, the coaches and other club officials. The taped interviews and field notes were then collated and a grounded theory approach was used to analyse the data thematically. A number of methods were used to do this including data coding, memos and conceptual mapping. The conclusions to the thesis highlight that there are key differences between the developmental stages of sampler and specialiser, that social construction and positioning within legitimate peripheral participation is vital to the way the sports club is experienced and practised by everyone involved in it and that `the family' is of vital importance in the participation process at the club as well as the way that the club is socially constructed and perpetuated as being like a certain type of family. The young people themselves were seen to inhabit varied social positions which were linked to the positions and practices of their parents and the coaches as well as their level of participation within the club `community of practice'. These experiences influenced their social construction of `self as cricketer' and their continued participation (or attrition) from the club. The implications for policy makers and coaching practitioners is that more awareness needs to be made of the way that the interactions between coaches, parents and young people dictate their future participation or attrition from the club. The thesis ends with the assertion that the sports club experience for young people requires further detailed investigation

Statistical mechanics of an ideal Bose gas in a confined geometry

We study the behaviour of an ideal non-relativistic Bose gas in a three-dimensional space where one of the dimensions is compactified to form a circle. In this case there is no phase transition like that for the case of an infinite volume, nevertheless Bose-Einstein condensation signified by a sudden buildup of particles in the ground state can occur. We use the grand canonical ensemble to study this problem. In particular, the specific heat is evaluated numerically, as well as analytically in certain limits. We show analytically how the familiar result for the specific heat is recovered as we let the size of the circle become large so that the infinite volume limit is approached. We also examine in detail the behaviour of the chemical potential and establish the precise manner in which it approaches zero as the volume becomes large.Comment: 13 pages, 2 eps figures, revtex

A Minimalist Turbulent Boundary Layer Model

We introduce an elementary model of a turbulent boundary layer over a flat surface, given as a vertical random distribution of spanwise Lamb-Oseen vortex configurations placed over a non-slip boundary condition line. We are able to reproduce several important features of realistic flows, such as the viscous and logarithmic boundary sublayers, and the general behavior of the first statistical moments (turbulent intensity, skewness and flatness) of the streamwise velocity fluctuations. As an application, we advance some heuristic considerations on the boundary layer underlying kinematics that could be associated with the phenomenon of drag reduction by polymers, finding a suggestive support from its experimental signatures.Comment: 5 pages, 10 figure

Neck atonia with a focal stimulation-induced seizure arising from the SMA: pathophysiological considerations.

A 28-year-old patient with pharmacoresistant non-lesional right frontal epilepsy underwent extra-operative intracranial EEG recordings and electrical cortical stimulation (ECS) to map eloquent cortex. Right supplementary motor area (SMA) ECS induced a brief seizure with habitual symptoms involving neck tingling followed by asymmetric tonic posturing. An additional feature was neck atonia. During atonia and sensory aura, discharges were seen in the mesial frontal electrodes and precentral gyrus. Besides motor signs, atonia, although rare and not described in the neck muscles, and sensations have been reported with SMA stimulation. The mechanisms underlying neck atonia in seizures arising from the SMA can be explained by supplementary negative motor area (SNMA) - though this was not mapped in electrodes overlying the ictal onset zone in our patient - or primary sensorimotor cortex activation through rapid propagation. Given the broad spectrum of signs elicited by SMA stimulation and rapid spread of seizures arising from the SMA, caution should be taken to not diagnose these as non-epileptic, as had previously occurred in this patient

There is no new physics in the multiplicative anomaly

We discuss the role of the multiplicative anomaly for a complex scalar field at finite temperature and density. It is argued that physical considerations must be applied to determine which of the many possible expressions for the effective action obtained by the functional integral method is correct. This is done by first studying the non-relativistic field where the thermodynamic potential is well-known. The relativistic case is also considered. We emphasize that the role of the multiplicative anomaly is not to lead to new physics, but rather to preserve the equality among the various expressions for the effective action.Comment: 24 pages, RevTex, no figure