Discourse Analysis: varieties and methods

This paper presents and analyses six key approaches to discourse analysis, including political discourse theory, rhetorical political analysis, the discourse historical approach in critical discourse analysis, interpretive policy analysis, discursive psychology and Q methodology. It highlights differences and similarities between the approaches along three distinctive dimensions, namely, ontology, focus and purpose. Our analysis reveals the difficulty of arriving at a fundamental matrix of dimensions which would satisfactorily allow one to organize all approaches in a coherent theoretical framework. However, it does not preclude various theoretical articulations between the different approaches, provided one takes a problem-driven approach to social science as one?s starting-point

The biosynthesis of betaine and related compounds in higher plants and fungi

A satisfactory synthesis of crystalline betaine aldehyde was achieved and methods were developed for the isolation and characterization of choline, betaine aldehyde, betaine and related compounds. The suitability of these methods (ion-exchange column chromatography and thin-layer chromatography in particular) were demonstrated by their application to the choline oxidase system known to exist in the mitochondria of rat liver. Attempts were made to demonstrate a similar choline oxidase system in plants. Experiments designed to demonstrate the existence of these enzymes by spectrophotometric and polarographic methods in mitochondria extracted from plant sources were largely unsuccessful. The mitochondria were structurally intact and were of high bio chemical integrity. On the isolated occasions when stimulation of respiration occurred when choline was supplied as substrate, the formation of betaine aldehyde or betaine was never confirmed by the characterization techniques which had been developed. The existence of a permeability barrier to the uptake of choline was discounted as an explanation of the 'latency' of the enzymes investigated. The methods employed to overcome such a barrier in mitochondria extracted from rat liver were without effect on the plant systems. Radioactive choline was taken up by mitochondria, from plants and a fraction of the labelled compound became closely associated with the mitochondrial membranes. However, the level of radioactivity did not increase with time indicating an upper limit of choline uptake or a continual utilization of the choline taken up. The existence of an alternative pathway for the oxidation of choline was superficially examined but no definite conclusions could be reached

The utility of unmanned probes in lunar exploration

Utility of unmanned probes of Ranger or Surveyor class in Apollo exploration program - Lunar scientific exploratio

A theory for investment across defences triggered at different stages of a predator-prey encounter

We introduce a general theoretical description of a combination of defences acting sequentially at different stages in the predatory sequence in order to make predictions about how animal prey should best allocate investment across different defensive stages. We predict that defensive investment will often be concentrated at stages early in the interaction between a predator individual and the prey (especially if investment is concentrated in only one defence, then it will be in the first defence). Key to making this prediction is the assumption that there is a cost to a prey when it has a defence tested by an enemy, for example because this incurs costs of deployment or tested costs as a defence is exposed to the enemies; and the assumption that the investment functions are the same among defences. But if investment functions are different across defences (e.g. the investment efficiency in making resources into defences is higher in later defences than in earlier defences), then the contrary could happen. The framework we propose can be applied to other victim-exploiter systems, such as insect herbivores feeding on plant tissues. This leads us to propose a novel explanation for the observation that herbivory damage is often not well explained by variation in concentrations of toxic plant secondary metabolites. We compare our general theoretical structure with related examples in the literature, and conclude that coevolutionary approaches will be profitable in future work

Tele-operated high speed anthropomorphic dextrous hands with object shape and texture identification

This paper reports on the development of two number of robotic hands have been developed which focus on tele-operated high speed anthropomorphic dextrous robotic hands. The aim of developing these hands was to achieve a system that seamlessly interfaced between humans and robots. To provide sensory feedback, to a remote operator tactile sensors were developed to be mounted on the robotic hands. Two systems were developed, the first, being a skin sensor capable of shape reconstruction placed on the palm of the hand to feed back the shape of objects grasped and the second is a highly sensitive tactile array for surface texture identification

GMRF Estimation under Topological and Spectral Constraints

International audienceWe investigate the problem of Gaussian Markov random field selection under a non-analytic constraint: the estimated models must be compatible with a fast inference algorithm, namely the Gaussian belief propagation algorithm. To address this question, we introduce the *-IPS framework, based on iterative proportional scaling, which incrementally selects candidate links in a greedy manner. Besides its intrinsic sparsity-inducing ability, this algorithm is flexible enough to incorporate various spectral constraints, like e.g. walk summability, and topological constraints, like short loops avoidance. Experimental tests on various datasets, including traffic data from San Francisco Bay Area, indicate that this approach can deliver, with reasonable computational cost, a broad range of efficient inference models, which are not accessible through penalization with traditional sparsity-inducing norms

Tourism and the smartphone app: capabilities, emerging practice and scope in the travel domain.

Based on its advanced computing capabilities and ubiquity, the smartphone has rapidly been adopted as a tourism travel tool.With a growing number of users and a wide varietyof applications emerging, the smartphone is fundamentally altering our current use and understanding of the transport network and tourism travel. Based on a review of smartphone apps, this article evaluates the current functionalities used in the domestic tourism travel domain and highlights where the next major developments lie. Then, at a more conceptual level, the article analyses how the smartphone mediates tourism travel and the role it might play in more collaborative and dynamic travel decisions to facilitate sustainable travel. Some emerging research challenges are discussed

Maximum Likelihood Estimation in Gaussian Chain Graph Models under the Alternative Markov Property

The AMP Markov property is a recently proposed alternative Markov property for chain graphs. In the case of continuous variables with a joint multivariate Gaussian distribution, it is the AMP rather than the earlier introduced LWF Markov property that is coherent with data-generation by natural block-recursive regressions. In this paper, we show that maximum likelihood estimates in Gaussian AMP chain graph models can be obtained by combining generalized least squares and iterative proportional fitting to an iterative algorithm. In an appendix, we give useful convergence results for iterative partial maximization algorithms that apply in particular to the described algorithm.Comment: 15 pages, article will appear in Scandinavian Journal of Statistic

Development of a chicken 5 K microarray targeted towards immune function

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The development of microarray resources for the chicken is an important step in being able to profile gene expression changes occurring in birds in response to different challenges and stimuli. The creation of an immune-related array is highly valuable in determining the host immune response in relation to infection with a wide variety of bacterial and viral diseases.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we report the development of chicken immune-related cDNA libraries and the subsequent construction of a microarray containing 5190 elements (in duplicate). Clones on the array originate from tissues known to contain high levels of cells related to the immune system, namely Bursa, Peyers patch, thymus and spleen. Represented on the array are genes that are known to cluster with existing chicken ESTs as well as genes that are unique to our libraries. Some of these genes have no known homologies and represent novel genes in the chicken collection. A series of reference genes (ie. genes of known immune function) are also present on the array. Functional annotation data is also provided for as many of the genes on the array as is possible.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Six new chicken immune cDNA libraries have been created and nearly 10,000 sequences submitted to GenBank [GenBank: <ext-link ext-link-type="gen" ext-link-id="AM063043">AM063043</ext-link>-<ext-link ext-link-type="gen" ext-link-id="AM071350">AM071350</ext-link>; <ext-link ext-link-type="gen" ext-link-id="AM071520">AM071520</ext-link>-<ext-link ext-link-type="gen" ext-link-id="AM072286">AM072286</ext-link>; <ext-link ext-link-type="gen" ext-link-id="AM075249">AM075249</ext-link>-<ext-link ext-link-type="gen" ext-link-id="AM075607">AM075607</ext-link>]. A 5 K immune-related array has been developed from these libraries. Individual clones and arrays are available from the ARK-Genomics resource centre.</p

The inclusion of delirium in version 2 of the National Early Warning Score will substantially increase the alerts for escalating levels of care: findings from a retrospective database study of emergency medical admissions in two hospitals

YesBackground The National Early Warning Score (NEWS) is being replaced with NEWS2 which adds 3 points for new confusion or delirium. We estimated the impact of adding delirium on the number of medium/high level alerts that are triggers to escalate care. Methods Analysis of emergency medical admissions in two acute hospitals (York Hospital (YH) and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust hospitals (NH)) in England. Twenty per cent were randomly assigned to have delirium. Results The number of emergency admissions (YH: 35584; NH: 35795), mortality (YH: 5.7%; NH: 5.5%), index NEWS (YH: 2.5; NH: 2.1) and numbers of NEWS recorded (YH: 879193; NH: 884072) were similar in each hospital. The mean number of patients with medium level alerts per day increased from 55.3 (NEWS) to 69.5 (NEWS2), a 25.7% increase in YH and 64.1 (NEWS) to 77.4 (NEWS2), a 20.7% increase in NH. The mean number of patients with high level alerts per day increased from 27.3 (NEWS) to 34.4 (NEWS2), a 26.0% increase in YH and 29.9 (NEWS) to 37.7 (NEWS2), a 26.1% increase in NH. Conclusions The addition of delirium in NEWS2 will have a substantial increase in medium and high level alerts in hospitalised emergency medical patients. Rigorous evaluation of NEWS2 is required before widespread implementation because the extent to which staff can cope with this increase without adverse consequences remains unknown