Location of the River Euphrates in the Late Miocene; dating of terrace gravel at Shireen, Syria

International audienceWe report gravel of the River Euphrates, capped by basalt that is Ar-Ar dated to ~9 Ma, at Shireen in northern Syria. This gravel, preserved by the erosion-resistant basalt, allows us for the first time to reconstruct the history of this major river during the Late Miocene. In response to progressive regional surface uplift, the Euphrates extended SE by ~800 km between the early Middle Miocene, when the coast was near Kahramanmara? in southern Turkey, and the Pliocene, when it lay in western Iraq, east of the Arabian Platform uplands

Learning through social spaces: migrant women and lifelong learning in post-colonial London

This article shows how migrant women engage in learning through social spaces. It argues that such spaces are little recognised, and that there are multiple ways in which migrant women construct and negotiate their informal learning through socialising with other women in different informal modes. Additionally, the article shows how learning is shaped by the socio-political, geographical and multicultural context of living in London, outlining ways in which gendered and racialised identities shape, construct and constrain participation in lifelong learning. The article shows that one way in which migrant women resist (post)colonial constructions of difference is by engaging in informal and non-formal lifelong learning, arguing that the benefits are (at least) two-fold. The women develop skills (including language skills) but also use their informal learning to develop what is referred to in this article as 'relational capital'. The article concludes that informal lifelong learning developed through social spaces can enhance a sense of belonging for migrant women

The changing patterns of group politics in Britain

Two interpretations of ways in which group politics in Britain have presented challenges to democracy are reviewed: neo-corporatism or pluralistic stagnation and the rise of single issue interest groups. The disappearance of the first paradigm created a political space for the second to emerge. A three-phase model of group activity is developed: a phase centred around production interests, followed by the development of broadly based 'other regarding' groups, succeeded by fragmented, inner directed groups focusing on particular interests. Explanations of the decay of corporatism are reviewed. Single issue group activity has increased as party membership has declined and is facilitated by changes in traditional media and the development of the internet. Such groups can overload the policy-making process and frustrate depoliticisation. Debates about the constitution and governance have largely ignored these issues and there is need for a debate

Advances in crosshole seismic reflection processing

In recent years there have been significant advances in the acquisition and processing of crosshole seismic reflection data, and the method has been shown to be a high resolution imaging technique. However, the fidelity of the final images produced by this technique needs to be considered carefully to avoid incorrect interpretation. This thesis concerns the imaging capability of crosshole surveys, as well as advances made in processing techniques for application to crosshole seismic reflection surveys. In a migrated seismic section, a meaningful image is only obtained if a range of dips around the local structural dip is sampled at each image point. For crosshole seismic reflection surveys, the distribution of dips sampled at an image point is controlled principally by the survey geometry, including source and receiver array lengths and their element spacings. By considering the dips sampled, the imaging capability of crosshole reflection surveying is discussed, with suggestions as to how to ensure optimal imaging of the target zone. To overcome problems encountered in applying standard processing procedures, two new processing techniques are presented which enhance the imaging potential of crosshole reflection seismics. Generalised Berryhill migration has been developed as a full generalised Kirchhoff migration to include the near-field term, with the aim of improving image accuracy close to the source and receiver arrays. 3-D f-k-k filtering is an improved method of wavefield separation for crosshole seismic data. Finally, the results of processing three types of dataset are presented. One is from a site in the Groningen gas field, another was acquired through a model interrogated at ultrasonic frequencies in a water tank, and the third type was acquired using coal exploration boreholes in Yorkshire. The results demonstrate the imaging capability of the crosshole reflection method, and the success of the two new processing schemes

Increased pain intensity is associated with greater verbal communication difficulty and increased production of speech and co-speech gestures

Effective pain communication is essential if adequate treatment and support are to be provided. Pain communication is often multimodal, with sufferers utilising speech, nonverbal behaviours (such as facial expressions), and co-speech gestures (bodily movements, primarily of the hands and arms that accompany speech and can convey semantic information) to communicate their experience. Research suggests that the production of nonverbal pain behaviours is positively associated with pain intensity, but it is not known whether this is also the case for speech and co-speech gestures. The present study explored whether increased pain intensity is associated with greater speech and gesture production during face-to-face communication about acute, experimental pain. Participants (N = 26) were exposed to experimentally elicited pressure pain to the fingernail bed at high and low intensities and took part in video-recorded semi-structured interviews. Despite rating more intense pain as more difficult to communicate (t(25) = 2.21, p = .037), participants produced significantly longer verbal pain descriptions and more co-speech gestures in the high intensity pain condition (Words: t(25) = 3.57, p = .001; Gestures: t(25) = 3.66, p = .001). This suggests that spoken and gestural communication about pain is enhanced when pain is more intense. Thus, in addition to conveying detailed semantic information about pain, speech and co-speech gestures may provide a cue to pain intensity, with implications for the treatment and support received by pain sufferers. Future work should consider whether these findings are applicable within the context of clinical interactions about pain

The impact of marketisation on postgraduate career preparedness in a high skills economy

This study focuses on the consequences for high skills development of the erosion of the once clear demarcation between higher education and business. It contributes to the broader debate about the relevance of higher education for thewell-being of the society of the future. The research explores the effects of marketisation on the postgraduate curriculum and students’ preparedness for careers in public relations and marketing communications. Interviews with lecturers and students in two universities in the UK and Australia indicate that a tension exists between academic rigour and corporate relevancy. The consequences are a diminution of academic attachment to critique and wider social/cultural engagement, with a resulting impoverishment of students’ creative abilities and critical consciences. Subsequently, graduates of public relations and marketing communications, and to some extent those from other profession-related disciplines, are insufficiently prepared for careers as knowledge workers in a future high-skills economy

A descriptive analysis of the role of co-speech gestures in the representation of information about pain quality

Effective pain communication is essential if adequate treatment and support are to be provided. However, the communication of pain is often problematic and carries the risk of misinterpretation, particularly when communicating about the character or quality of pain. Research indicates that co-speech gestures are frequently produced during pain communication and contain important information about the pain experience (Heath, 2002; Hyden & Peolsson, 2002; Rowbotham et al., 2012); recent work revealed that information about pain quality is most often represented in both speech and gestures together (Rowbotham et al., in press). In the present study, we used qualitative methods to investigate how co-speech gestures interact with speech in the representation of pain quality. The results revealed that when both speech and gestures contained information about pain quality, gestures contributed additional information in two key ways. Firstly, gestures represented more precise information about the same aspects of pain quality as are contained in speech, thus clarifying the verbal message, and secondly, gestures added information about different (and thus entirely new) aspects of pain quality than those contained in speech, providing a fuller overall representation of the pain sensation. This suggests that gestures play an important role in representing information about pain quality and need to be attended to if we are to obtain a fuller and more precise understanding of others’ pain

'An interesting paper but not sufficiently theoretical’ : what does theorising in social research look like

This article explores the concept of theorising in social research: what is theorising; how does theorising look to those doing it and how can it be explained as a practice. The article draws on different sources, including accounts of theory and theorising in the literature as well as first-hand reporting by academics. A view is reached of theorising as a personal undertaking involving a commitment to comprehend the world. It is argued that theorising is driven by the identification of interesting problems (practical or theoretical or both) and a motivation to solve them. Theorising involves a shift of awareness from subsidiary to focal and such a shift allows a more abstract level of understanding. Theorising tends to be an individual undertaking which draws on personal knowledge, but it is only made possible by psychological tools which have been handed down from the past, ones which need to be accessed, understood and adapted. Theorising requires a disciplined creativity in which the imagination is channelled into finding solutions that are compatible with observed data

Psychopolitics: Peter Sedgwick’s legacy for mental health movements

This paper re-considers the relevance of Peter Sedgwick's Psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of mental health. Psychopolitics offered an indictment of ‘anti-psychiatry’ the failure of which, Sedgwick argued, lay in its deconstruction of the category of ‘mental illness’, a gesture that resulted in a politics of nihilism. ‘The radical who is only a radical nihilist’, Sedgwick observed, ‘is for all practical purposes the most adamant of conservatives’. Sedgwick argued, rather, that the concept of ‘mental illness’ could be a truly critical concept if it was deployed ‘to make demands upon the health service facilities of the society in which we live’. The paper contextualizes Psychopolitics within the ‘crisis tendencies’ of its time, surveying the shifting welfare landscape of the subsequent 25 years alongside Sedgwick's continuing relevance. It considers the dilemma that the discourse of ‘mental illness’ – Sedgwick's critical concept – has fallen out of favour with radical mental health movements yet remains paradigmatic within psychiatry itself. Finally, the paper endorses a contemporary perspective that, while necessarily updating Psychopolitics, remains nonetheless ‘Sedgwickian’

Changes to nurses’ practice environment over time

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Aims: To examine changes in the nursing practice environment, retention-related factors, unit stability and patient care tasks delayed or left undone, over two periods between 2004 and 2013. Background: Positive nurse practice environments have been linked to nurse retention and care quality outcomes. Methods: The collection of the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index, job satisfaction, intent to leave, unit instability and tasks delayed or not done at six acute-care hospitals across three Australian states, in two waves between 2004 and 2013; results from the two waves are compared. Results: On average, practice environment scores declined slightly; nurses reported a greater difficulty in finding another nursing position, lower intent to leave their current job and greater instability in their current position. Rates of delayed tasks increased over the period, whereas rates of tasks left undone have decreased over the period. Conclusions: The decline in nurses’ perceptions of the quality of the practice environment is disappointing, particularly given the protracted workforce shortages that have persisted. Significant organisational restructuring and turnover of nurse executives may have contributed to this decline. Implication for Nursing Management: Managers need to apply existing evidence to improve nurse practice environments and manage instability