Highland settlement evolution in West Perthshire : development and change in the parish of Balquhidder from the fifteenth century to 1851

PhD ThesisThis thesis is concerned with four leading ideas. These are continuity, persistence, discontinuity, and redundancy, as essential elements of the evolutionary process of human settlement. This requires a dynamic view of history, rather than a periodic one. The research, therefore, focussed upon one parish and traced its evolution from the middle ages into the nineteenth century. The thesis reviews evidence for origins of the social and settlement system before the fifteenth century. Internal local processes of change, and external forces, are examined. Modern theories of the antiquity and influence of great estates, and their subsidiary territorial units, upon the development of rural environments, are examined in relation to the development of land use, tenurial systemst and social organisation. Results indicate the persistence of ancient land divisions, and of cultural characteristics of communities, through periods of significant change. Demographic changes were very important driving forces in the evolutionary process. However, cultural traditions, handed down through generations, tended to inhibit changes, even in the face of economic necessity and land shortage. A destructive negative force operated within an expanding population, on a fixed area of land. The policy-making role of the superiors in the great estates was seen to act as a positive force. This first produced incremental changes which accommodated crises, and later more fundamental changes resulting in some discontinuity. The dissolution of the archaic system, and synthesis of a new one, took place in the early nineteenth century. Population increase was traced as early as the sixteenth century. Responses in estate management appeared by the early ei ghteenth century. The research combined evidence from documentary sources and field surveys. This thesis follows one special aspect of the results. Others remain to be examined. It is an open-ended presentation, intended as a base for further work, although complete within itself.Research Committee,University of Newcastle upon Tyne: Excavation and Field work Committee, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Exploring the Structure of Misconceptions in the Force Concept Inventory with Modified Module Analysis

Module analysis for multiple-choice responses (MAMCR) was applied to a large sample of Force Concept Inventory (FCI) pretest and post-test responses (Npre ¼ 4509 and Npost ¼ 4716) to replicate the results of the original MAMCR study and to understand the origins of the gender differences reported in a previous study of this dataset. When the results of MAMCR could not be replicated, a modification of the method was introduced, modified module analysis (MMA). MMA was productive in understanding the structure of the incorrect answers in the FCI, identifying 9 groups of incorrect answers on the pretest and 11 groups on the post-test. These groups, in most cases, could be mapped on to common misconceptions used by the authors of the FCI to create distractors for the instrument. Of these incorrect answer groups, 6 of the pretest groups and 8 of the post-test groups were the same for men and women. Two of the male-only pretest groups disappeared with instruction while the third male-only pretest group was identified for both men and women postinstruction. Three of the groups identified for both men and women on the post-test were not present for either on the pretest. The rest of the identified incorrect answer groups did not represent misconceptions, but were rather related to the blocked structure of some FCI items where multiple items are related to a common stem. The groups identified had little relation to the gender unfair items previously identified for this dataset, and therefore, differences in the structure of student misconceptions between men and women cannot explain the gender differences reported for the FCI

Kidney single-cell atlas reveals myeloid heterogeneity in progression and regression of kidney disease

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the roles of myeloid cell subsets in kidney injury and in the limited ability of the organ to repair itself. Characterizing these cells based only on surface markers using flow cytometry might not provide a full phenotypic picture. Defining these cells at the single-cell, transcriptomic level could reveal myeloid heterogeneity in the progression and regression of kidney disease. METHODS: Integrated droplet– and plate-based single-cell RNA sequencing were used in the murine, reversible, unilateral ureteric obstruction model to dissect the transcriptomic landscape at the single-cell level during renal injury and the resolution of fibrosis. Paired blood exchange tracked the fate of monocytes recruited to the injured kidney. RESULTS: A single-cell atlas of the kidney generated using transcriptomics revealed marked changes in the proportion and gene expression of renal cell types during injury and repair. Conventional flow cytometry markers would not have identified the 12 myeloid cell subsets. Monocytes recruited to the kidney early after injury rapidly adopt a proinflammatory, profibrotic phenotype that expresses Arg1, before transitioning to become Ccr2(+) macrophages that accumulate in late injury. Conversely, a novel Mmp12(+) macrophage subset acts during repair. CONCLUSIONS: Complementary technologies identified novel myeloid subtypes, based on transcriptomics in single cells, that represent therapeutic targets to inhibit progression or promote regression of kidney disease

Epstein-Barr Virus and Autoimmunity

There is a large body of evidence that infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), the aetiological agent of infectious mononucleosis, has a role in the pathogenesis of many human chronic autoimmune diseases. This chapter will review the evidence for the role of EBV in each of these diseases and also focus on the features that are common to the different human chronic autoimmune diseases, with the aim of providing an explanation for what appears to be a unique role for EBV in the pathogenesis of these diseases

Pregnancy, prescription medicines and the potential risk of herb-drug interactions:a cross-sectional survey

Funding All funding was from institutional resource. JSM, AS are employed by the University of Aberdeen. DS is employed by the Robert Gordon University. BP and CR are employed by NHS Scotland. ARP and MAH are employed by the Hamad Medical Corporation. Qatar. NI is a postgraduate student at the University of Aberdeen.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Measurement of the production of a W boson in association with a charm quark in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The production of a W boson in association with a single charm quark is studied using 4.6 fb−1 of pp collision data at s√ = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. In events in which a W boson decays to an electron or muon, the charm quark is tagged either by its semileptonic decay to a muon or by the presence of a charmed meson. The integrated and differential cross sections as a function of the pseudorapidity of the lepton from the W-boson decay are measured. Results are compared to the predictions of next-to-leading-order QCD calculations obtained from various parton distribution function parameterisations. The ratio of the strange-to-down sea-quark distributions is determined to be 0.96+0.26−0.30 at Q 2 = 1.9 GeV2, which supports the hypothesis of an SU(3)-symmetric composition of the light-quark sea. Additionally, the cross-section ratio σ(W + +c¯¯)/σ(W − + c) is compared to the predictions obtained using parton distribution function parameterisations with different assumptions about the s−s¯¯¯ quark asymmetry