'What was your blood sugar reading this morning?': representing diabetes self-management on Facebook

Social networking sites have swiftly become a salient venue for the production and consumption of neoliberal health discourse by individuals and organisations. These platforms offer both opportunities for individuals to accrue coping resources and a means for organisations to promote their agendas to an online audience. Focusing specifically on diabetes, this article examines the representation of social actors and interactional styles on three organisational Pages on Facebook. Drawing on media and communication theories, we situate this linguistic analysis in relation to the communicative affordances employed by these organisations as they publish content online. Diabetes sufferers are represented as an at-risk group whose vulnerabilities can be managed through forms of participation specific to the respective organisation. More popular diabetes Pages draw on the opportunities for social interaction afforded by Facebook and combine informational and promotional content to foster communication between the organisation and its audience. By encouraging reflexive management of diabetes risks, these Pages contribute to the construction of ‘biological citizens’ who interweave habitual interactions on social networking sites with responsible self-care, consumption of health information and health activism

Class talk: habitus and class in parental narratives of school choice

© 2016 Westburn Publishers Ltd. This article explores how social class is linguistically negotiated and contested in parental narratives of school choice in the British education marketplace. Our study reveals prevalent yet obscured vestiges of ‘class talk’, and in doing so, unmasks ‘micro-political’ acts of status claiming. Using interactional narrative interviewing with 30 parents, we explore how inter- and intra-class differences are emotionally expressed, thus exposing the embodied dispositions of parents’ habitus and its’ subtle influence on school choice. The parental narratives also unveil a moral and political tension between the neoliberal ideal of entrepreneurial self-advancement and an egalitarian sentiment for social equality. Our study therefore challenges the neoliberal educational policy of market choice in closing the attainment gap

Resistance and challenge: competing accounts in aftercare monitoring

This paper presents an example of how patient and worker accounts differ and provide competing versions of events. The data is derived from a study based on 59 interviews with workers and patients in forensic mental health settings. It shows how nascent identity work by patients is attempted in the face of on-going aftercare monitoring and supervision. This aftercare is in part a response to discourses surrounding mental illness and risk behaviours towards others. Patients work to show development of new identities and independence from the psychiatric system. Workers however use occupational knowledge of risk as a rationale for their work of providing 'safe' aftercare. This knowledge works as a form of normalising ideology of what is to be understood as good mental health and non-risk oriented behaviours. Risk is therefore an ever-present concern for both parties in establishing aftercare arrangements and also for patients in attempting to formulate and put into action new identities for continued community living

A methodological guide to using and reporting on interviews in conservation science research

1: Interviews are a widely used methodology in conservation research. They are flexible, allowing in- depth analysis from a relatively small sample size, and place the focus of research on the views of participants. While interviews are a popular method, several critiques have been raised in response to their use, including the lack of transparency in sampling strategy, choice of questions, and mode of analysis. 2: In this paper, we analyse the use of interviews in research aimed at making decisions for conservation. Through a structured review of 228 papers, we explore where, why, and how interviews were used in the context of conservation decision-making. 3: The review suggests that interviews are a widely used method for a broad range of purposes. These include gaining ecological and/or socio-economic information on specific conservation issues, understanding knowledge, values, beliefs or decision-making processes of stakeholders, and strengthening research design and output. The review, however, identifies a number of concerns. Researchers are not reporting fully on their interview methodology. Specifically, results indicate that researchers are: failing to provide a rationale as to why interviews are the most suitable method; not piloting the interviews (thus questions may be poorly designed), not outlining ethical considerations; not providing clear guides to analysis, nor critically reviewing their use of interviews. 4: Based on the results of the review, we provide a detailed checklist aimed at conservation researchers who wish to use interviews in their research (whether experienced in using the methodology or not), and journal editors and reviewers to ensure the robustness of interview methodology use.Funded by: Pembroke College; DST-NRF Early Career Fellowship (University of South Africa); Fondation Philippe Wiener - Maurice Anspach; Department of Science and Technology (India) WOS-A; NERC. Grant Number: Grant/Award Number: NE/R006946/

Presence of three mycorrhizal genes in the common ancestor of land plants suggests a key role of mycorrhizas in the colonization of land by plants

• The colonization of land by plants fundamentally altered environmental conditions on earth. Plant–mycorrhizal fungus symbiosis likely played a key role in this process by assisting plants to absorb water and nutrients from soil. • Here, in a diverse set of land plants, we investigated the evolutionary histories and functional conservation of three genes required for mycorrhiza formation in legumes and rice ( Oryza sativa ), DMI1 , DMI3 and IPD3 . • The genes were isolated from nearly all major plant lineages. Phylogenetic analyses showed that they had been vertically inherited since the origin of land plants. Further, cross-species mutant rescue experiments demonstrated that DMI3 genes from liverworts and hornworts could rescue Medicago truncatula dmi3 mutants for mycorrhiza formation. Yeast two-hybrid assays also showed that bryophyte DMI3 proteins could bind to downstream-acting M. trunculata IPD3 protein. Finally, molecular evolutionary analyses revealed that these genes were under purifying selection for maintenance of their ancestral functions in all mycorrhizal plant lineages. • These results indicate that the mycorrhizal genes were present in the common ancestor of land plants, and that their functions were largely conserved during land plant evolution. The evidence presented here strongly suggests that plant–mycorrhizal fungus symbiosis was one of the key processes that contributed to the origin of land flora.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78704/1/j.1469-8137.2009.03137.x.pd

Citizenship Norms in Eastern Europe

Research on Eastern Europe stresses the weakness of its civil society and the lack of political and social involvement, neglecting the question: What do people themselves think it means to be a good citizen? This study looks at citizens’ definitions of good citizenship in Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, using 2002 European Social Survey data. We investigate mean levels of civic mindedness in these countries and perform regression analyses to investigate whether factors traditionally associated with civic and political participation are also correlated with citizenship norms across Eastern Europe. We show that mean levels of civic mindedness differ significantly across the four Eastern European countries. We find some support for theories on civic and political participation when explaining norms of citizenship, but also demonstrate that individual-level characteristics are differently related to citizenship norms across the countries of our study. Hence, our findings show that Eastern Europe is not a monolithic and homogeneous bloc, underscoring the importance of taking the specificities of countries into account

Fostering support for non-democratic rule? Controlled political liberalization and popular support for non-democratic regimes

When the Cold War ended, many non-democratic regimes across the globe embarked on a course of controlled political liberalization, hoping to stabilize their autocratic rule by mitigating popular demands for democratization and increasing regime legitimacy. But does this strategy actually work? This article uses multi-level analyses to examine how the degree of political liberalization affects regime support in non-democratic political systems and to ascertain which mechanisms underlie this effect. Drawing on aggregate measures of political liberalization and comparative survey data from four regional survey projects and 31 non-democracies, the study's results indicate that the degree of liberalization has no decisively positive effect on regime support, suggesting controlled political liberalization might not be an effective legitimizing strategy after all.Nach Ende des Kalten Krieges haben viele nicht-demokratische Regime weltweit einen Kurs der begrenzten politischen Öffnung eingeschlagen, um öffentliche Forderungen nach Demokratisierung zu entschärfen und auf diese Weise die Legitimität ihrer autokratischen Herrschaft zu erhöhen. Doch ist diese Strategie tatsächlich effektiv? Der Beitrag verwendet Mehrebenenanalysen, um zu untersuchen wie der Grad an politischer Öffnung die Regimerunterstützung in nicht-demokratischen politischen Systemen beeinflusst. Auf Basis von Aggregatmaßen zur politischen Öffnung und Individualdaten aus vier regionalen Umfrageprojekten und 31 Autokratien kann kein klarer positiver Effekt des Grads der politischen Öffnung auf die Regimeunterstützung nachgewiesen werden, was eine begrenzte politische Öffnung als wenig effektive Legitimationsstrategie erscheinen lässt

Two interpretations of human evolution: Essentialism and Darwinism

Despite intensive studies of a large number of fossils discovered during the 20th century there is no consensus as to the interpretation of the process of hominin evolution. Some authors see as many as six genera and some 17 species, while others argue for a single lineage from Plio/Pleistocene until today. Such diversity of interpretations of the same facts indicates lack of a uniform theoretical basis underlying studies of human evolution. Debates can be resolved using basic principles of scientific inquiry - parsimony and falsification of null hypotheses. Hypothesis testing is now possible with respect to the evolution of basic hominin characteristics such as brain size, body size and the size of the dentition that have sample sizes of a few hundred individual data points each. These characters display a continuous change with time. Analyses of variance do not falsify the null hypothesis of the existence of only one species at any time - variances around regression lines on time do not differ from the variance observed in the single species of Homo sapiens - distributions of residuals are normal. Thus, splitting of the hominin lineage into coeval species can only be based on descriptive characteristics that are liable to errors of subjective judgment.Maciej Henneber