Impact of general practice endorsement on the social gradient in uptake in bowel cancer screening

This is a summary of independent research funded by the National Institute for Health. Research (NIHR)’s Programme Grants for Applied Research Programme (RP-PG-0609–10106

Re-establishing the ‘outsiders’: English press coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup

In 2015, the England Women’s national football team finished third at the Women’s World Cup in Canada. Alongside the establishment of the Women’s Super League in 2011, the success of the women’s team posed a striking contrast to the recent failures of the England men’s team and in doing so presented a timely opportunity to examine the negotiation of hegemonic discourses on gender, sport and football. Drawing upon an ‘established-outsider’ approach, this article examines how, in newspaper coverage of the England women’s team, gendered constructions revealed processes of alteration, assimilation and resistance. Rather than suggesting that ‘established’ discourses assume a normative connection between masculinity and football, the findings reveal how gendered ‘boundaries’ were both challenged and protected in newspaper coverage. Despite their success, the discursive positioning of the women’s team as ‘outsiders’, served to (re)establish men’s football as superior, culturally salient and ‘better’ than the women’s team/game. Accordingly, we contend that attempts to build and, in many instances, rediscover the history of women’s football, can be used to challenge established cultural representations that draw exclusively from the history of the men’s game. In such instances, the 2015 Women’s World Cup provides a historical moment from which the women’s game can be relocated in a context of popular culture

Genome Degradation in Brucella ovis Corresponds with Narrowing of Its Host Range and Tissue Tropism

Brucella ovis is a veterinary pathogen associated with epididymitis in sheep. Despite its genetic similarity to the zoonotic pathogens B. abortus, B. melitensis and B. suis, B. ovis does not cause zoonotic disease. Genomic analysis of the type strain ATCC25840 revealed a high percentage of pseudogenes and increased numbers of transposable elements compared to the zoonotic Brucella species, suggesting that genome degradation has occurred concomitant with narrowing of the host range of B. ovis. The absence of genomic island 2, encoding functions required for lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis, as well as inactivation of genes encoding urease, nutrient uptake and utilization, and outer membrane proteins may be factors contributing to the avirulence of B. ovis for humans. A 26.5 kb region of B. ovis ATCC25840 Chromosome II was absent from all the sequenced human pathogenic Brucella genomes, but was present in all of 17 B. ovis isolates tested and in three B. ceti isolates, suggesting that this DNA region may be of use for differentiating B. ovis from other Brucella spp. This is the first genomic analysis of a non-zoonotic Brucella species. The results suggest that inactivation of genes involved in nutrient acquisition and utilization, cell envelope structure and urease may have played a role in narrowing of the tissue tropism and host range of B. ovis