Sport and neighbourhood regeneration : exploring the mechanisms of social inclusion through sport

This thesis explores the way that sport can be used as a component of effective practice of neighbourhood regeneration. In particular, the thesis examines how and to what extent projects using sport for the purpose of engaging with young people affected by the deprivation of a neighbourhood can add to regenerating the area. The last decade has seen the shift of focus in British urban regeneration policy from physical renewal and economic development to tackling social and community-related matters concentrated in deprived neighbourhoods, such as unemployment, low income, low skills, poor housing, high crime rates, and poor health – in short, social exclusion. Young people who live in these neighbourhoods are greatly disadvantaged in respect both of their well-being at the present time and of their transition into adulthood. Use of sport for the purpose of alleviating these disadvantages is increasingly popular, although conclusive evidence of social benefits of sport participation has been lacking. The thesis identifies four sets of hypotheses that represent how sport may enhance the process of social inclusion; namely, personal development, diversion, social interaction/social networks, and the salience of sport. The normative and analytical framework is developed based on Amartya Sen’s ‘capability’ perspective so as to re-define the goal of neighbourhood regeneration, against which sport-related regeneration projects can be assessed their contribution. An in-depth qualitative case study, based on grounded theory, was carried out in deprived neighbourhoods in the East End of Glasgow. Main findings include: (1) young people in the area were trapped into the vicious circles of leisure deprivation, territoriality, and poor transition into adulthood; (2) the process of tackling youth-related problems in deprived areas can be represented with the analogies of ‘hooking’ and ‘signposting’; (3) a successful structure of a sport-related regeneration project can be represented by a ‘pyramid’, founded on financial sustainability nested in robust organisational base; (4) a project can enlarge its organisational base through a repeated process of ‘ownership’ and ‘evolution’, represented by an expanding ‘spiral’; and (5) sport-related projects are often too small to reach the majority of the ‘excluded’.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Brief for American Association on Mental Retardation, The Arc of the United States, the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, The Arc of Georgia, and the Georgia Advocacy Office, Stripling v. Head

Pursuant to Rule 37.2(b) of the Rules of this Court, The Arc of the United States, el al., move the Court for leave to file a Brief Amici Curiae in support of the petition in the above-entitled case. Counsel for Petitioner has granted his consent to the filing of this brief. Counsel for Respondent, however, has notified counsel for amici that Respondent does not consent. Amici include national and state professional and voluntary associations concerned with criminA1 proceedings affecting people with mental disabilities. Amici thus have expertise concerning criminal defendants with mental disabilities and the impediments to fair judicial processes which will result if those defendants are required to prove their mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt. Amici wish to offer the Court relevant information on the historical development of the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and why it cannot be applied to a defendant\u27s effort to invoke the constitutional protection of Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002). Amici also wish to present information on contemporary practices and standards when the State imposes a burden of persuasion on defendants with mental retardation who may face execution. Amici believe that the Georgia statute, providing that crimi1:!a1 defendants must prove their mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt to invoke the protections of Atkins, impermissibly obstructs the fair adjudication of such constitutional claims. For the above-stated reasons, we respectfully urge the Court to grant this motion for leave to file the accompanying brief in the present case in support of the petition for certiorari

Fermion Masses in Emergent Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

We consider the generation of fermion masses in an emergent model of electroweak symmetry breaking with composite $W,Z$ gauge bosons. A universal bulk fermion profile in a warped extra dimension is used for all fermion flavors. Electroweak symmetry is broken at the UV (or Planck) scale where boundary mass terms are added to generate the fermion flavor structure. This leads to flavor-dependent nonuniversality in the gauge couplings. The effects are suppressed for the light fermion generations but are enhanced for the top quark where the $Zt{\bar t}$ and $Wt{\bar b}$ couplings can deviate at the $10-20$ level in the minimal setup. By the AdS/CFT correspondence our model implies that electroweak symmetry is not a fundamental gauge symmetry. Instead the Standard Model with massive fermions and $W,Z$ gauge bosons is an effective chiral Lagrangian for some underlying confining strong dynamics at the TeV scale, where mass is generated without a Higgs mechanism.Comment: modified discussion in Sec 3.1, version published in JHE

A broad distribution of the alternative oxidase in microsporidian parasites

Microsporidia are a group of obligate intracellular parasitic eukaryotes that were considered to be amitochondriate until the recent discovery of highly reduced mitochondrial organelles called mitosomes. Analysis of the complete genome of Encephalitozoon cuniculi revealed a highly reduced set of proteins in the organelle, mostly related to the assembly of ironsulphur clusters. Oxidative phosphorylation and the Krebs cycle proteins were absent, in keeping with the notion that the microsporidia and their mitosomes are anaerobic, as is the case for other mitosome bearing eukaryotes, such as Giardia. Here we provide evidence opening the possibility that mitosomes in a number of microsporidian lineages are not completely anaerobic. Specifically, we have identified and characterized a gene encoding the alternative oxidase (AOX), a typically mitochondrial terminal oxidase in eukaryotes, in the genomes of several distantly related microsporidian species, even though this gene is absent from the complete genome of E. cuniculi. In order to confirm that these genes encode functional proteins, AOX genes from both A. locustae and T. hominis were over-expressed in E. coli and AOX activity measured spectrophotometrically using ubiquinol-1 (UQ-1) as substrate. Both A. locustae and T. hominis AOX proteins reduced UQ-1 in a cyanide and antimycin-resistant manner that was sensitive to ascofuranone, a potent inhibitor of the trypanosomal AOX. The physiological role of AOX microsporidia may be to reoxidise reducing equivalents produced by glycolysis, in a manner comparable to that observed in trypanosome

Aberrant methylation of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor type 2B (NMDAR2B) in non-small cell carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDAR) act as tumor suppressors of digestive malignancies. The expression and genetic methylation patterns of <it>NMDAR2B </it>in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are unknown.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The relationship between gene methylation and expression of <it>NMDAR2B </it>was analyzed in NSCLC cell lines (N = 9) and clinical tissues (N = 216). The cell lines were studied using RT-PCR and 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine treatment, while the clinical tissues were examined by methylation specific real-time quantitative PCR and immunohistochemistry. Retrospective investigation of patient records was used to determine the clinical significance of <it>NMDAR2B </it>methylation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p><it>NMDAR2B </it>was silenced in five of the nine cell lines; 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine treatment restored expression, and was inversely correlated with methylation. Aberrant methylation of <it>NMDAR2B</it>, detected in 61% (131/216) of clinical NSCLC tissues, was inversely correlated with the status of protein expression in 20 randomly examined tumors. Aberrant methylation was not associated with clinical factors such as gender, age, histological type, or TNM stage. However, aberrant methylation was an independent prognostic factor in squamous cell carcinoma cases.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Aberrant methylation of the <it>NMDAR2B </it>gene is a common event in NSCLC. The prognosis was significantly better for cases of squamous cell carcinoma in which <it>NMDAR2B </it>was methylated. It may have different roles in different histological types.</p

Polynomial Growth Harmonic Functions on Finitely Generated Abelian Groups

In the present paper, we develop geometric analytic techniques on Cayley graphs of finitely generated abelian groups to study the polynomial growth harmonic functions. We develop a geometric analytic proof of the classical Heilbronn theorem and the recent Nayar theorem on polynomial growth harmonic functions on lattices \mathds{Z}^n that does not use a representation formula for harmonic functions. We also calculate the precise dimension of the space of polynomial growth harmonic functions on finitely generated abelian groups. While the Cayley graph not only depends on the abelian group, but also on the choice of a generating set, we find that this dimension depends only on the group itself.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in Ann. Global Anal. Geo

Presynaptic partner selection during retinal circuit reassembly varies with timing of neuronal regeneration in vivo

Whether neurons can restore their original connectivity patterns during circuit repair is unclear. Taking advantage of the regenerative capacity of zebrafish retina, we show here the remarkable specificity by which surviving neurons reassemble their connectivity upon regeneration of their major input. H3 horizontal cells (HCs) normally avoid red and green cones, and prefer ultraviolet over blue cones. Upon ablation of the major (ultraviolet) input, H3 HCs do not immediately increase connectivity with other cone types. Instead, H3 dendrites retract and re-extend to contact new ultraviolet cones. But, if regeneration is delayed or absent, blue-cone synaptogenesis increases and ectopic synapses are made with red and green cones. Thus, cues directing synapse specificity can be maintained following input loss, but only within a limited time period. Further, we postulate that signals from the major input that shape the H3 HC's wiring pattern during development persist to restrict miswiring after damage

Strings in AdS_4 x CP^3: finite size spectrum vs. Bethe Ansatz

We compute the first curvature corrections to the spectrum of light-cone gauge type IIA string theory that arise in the expansion of $AdS_4\times \mathbb{CP}^3$ about a plane-wave limit. The resulting spectrum is shown to match precisely, both in magnitude and degeneration that of the corresponding solutions of the all-loop Gromov--Vieira Bethe Ansatz. The one-loop dispersion relation correction is calculated for all the single oscillator states of the theory, with the level matching condition lifted. It is shown to have all logarithmic divergences cancelled and to leave only a finite exponentially suppressed contribution, as shown earlier for light bosons. We argue that there is no ambiguity in the choice of the regularization for the self-energy sum, since the regularization applied is the only one preserving unitarity. Interaction matrices in the full degenerate two-oscillator sector are calculated and the spectrum of all two light magnon oscillators is completely determined. The same finite-size corrections, at the order 1/J, where $J$ is the length of the chain, in the two-magnon sector are calculated from the all loop Bethe Ansatz. The corrections obtained by the two completely different methods coincide up to the fourth order in $\lambda' =\lambda/J^2$. We conjecture that the equivalence extends to all orders in $\lambda$ and to higher orders in 1/J.Comment: 32 pages. Published version; journal reference adde