NMR in rapidly rotated metals

Although this thesis is concerned solely with nuclear magnetic resonance, it may be divided into two parts. One part deals with a series of measurements on the NMR parameters of several pure metal powders, namely aluminium, cadmium, niobium and vanadium, and in particular the effect on their resonance spectra of rapid macroscopic sample rotation at the 'magic angle'. The other part relates measurements of spin-lattice relaxation time as a function of temperature for the three solid cuprous halides. By spinning at high speeds a significant narrowing of the resonance lineshape has been achieved in the case of cadium and aluminium. This has enabled precise determinations of their isotropic Knight shifts to be made. For cadmium the width of the residual symmetric central spectrum has been used to obtain an estimate of the magnitude of the indirect electron coupled exchange interaction. Complete narrowing of the aluminium resonance line requires rotation rates in excess of 8 kHz. To this end it has been necessary to develop a new rotor system capable of carrying small metal samples at extremely high spinning rates. In connection with the work on aluminium, pure powder specimens have been prepared which exhibit values of second moment and dipolar relaxation time that agree well with theory. This is in contradiction to the results obtained from filed powders and those recorded by all other workers. Below room temperature the form of the T1 results obtained from the cuprous halides is in accord with the theory of Raman quadrupole relaxation. However theoretical T1 values, as derived from the simple Raman two-phonon mechanism in an ionic crystal lattice, fail to give quantitative agreement with experiment

NMR in rapidly rotated metals

Although this thesis is concerned solely with nuclear magnetic resonance, it may be divided into two parts. One part deals with a series of measurements on the NMR parameters of several pure metal powders, namely aluminium, cadmium, niobium and vanadium, and in particular the effect on their resonance spectra of rapid macroscopic sample rotation at the 'magic angle'. The other part relates measurements of spin-lattice relaxation time as a function of temperature for the three solid cuprous halides. By spinning at high speeds a significant narrowing of the resonance lineshape has been achieved in the case of cadium and aluminium. This has enabled precise determinations of their isotropic Knight shifts to be made. For cadmium the width of the residual symmetric central spectrum has been used to obtain an estimate of the magnitude of the indirect electron coupled exchange interaction. Complete narrowing of the aluminium resonance line requires rotation rates in excess of 8 kHz. To this end it has been necessary to develop a new rotor system capable of carrying small metal samples at extremely high spinning rates. In connection with the work on aluminium, pure powder specimens have been prepared which exhibit values of second moment and dipolar relaxation time that agree well with theory. This is in contradiction to the results obtained from filed powders and those recorded by all other workers. Below room temperature the form of the T1 results obtained from the cuprous halides is in accord with the theory of Raman quadrupole relaxation. However theoretical T1 values, as derived from the simple Raman two-phonon mechanism in an ionic crystal lattice, fail to give quantitative agreement with experiment

Associations between maternal participation in agricultural decision-making and child nutrition in semiarid Kenya

This study explores the associations between childhood growth measures and maternal participation in agricultural decision-making in chronically food-insecure semiarid Kenya. We collected anthropometric measures from 221 mother and child pairs. Maternal participation in agricultural decision-making was measured in a follow-up study. Using Kruskal–Wallis H test and Dunn’s pairwise comparison, we find a statistically significant positive association between child growth and maternal participation in agricultural decision-making. Similar associations are found when controlled for social–demographic variables, particularly among poor households, male-headed households, daughters, children 6–16 months old, and mothers with normal body mass index. The research contributes to our understanding in the nexus of agriculture, gender dynamics, and childhood undernutrition in rural African contexts

Adenoma development in familial adenomatous polyposis andMUTYH-associated polyposis: somatic landscape and driver genes

Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) and MUTYH‐associated polyposis (MAP) are inherited disorders associated with multiple colorectal adenomas that lead to a very high risk of colorectal cancer. The somatic mutations that drive adenoma development in these conditions have not been investigated comprehensively. In this study we performed analysis of paired colorectal adenoma and normal tissue DNA from individuals with FAP or MAP, sequencing 14 adenoma whole exomes (eight MAP, six FAP), 55 adenoma targeted exomes (33 MAP, 22 FAP) and germline DNA from each patient, and a further 63 adenomas by capillary sequencing (41 FAP, 22 MAP). With these data we examined the profile of mutated genes, the mutational signatures and the somatic mutation rates, observing significant diversity in the constellations of mutated driver genes in different adenomas, and loss‐of‐function mutations in WTX (9%; p < 9.99e‐06), a gene implicated in regulation of the WNT pathway and p53 acetylation. These data extend our understanding of the early events in colorectal tumourigenesis in the polyposis syndromes. © 2015 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Rules of Engagement: Journalists’ attitudes to industry influence in health news reporting.

Health-related industries use a variety of methods to influence health news, including the formation and maintenance of direct relationships with journalists. These interactions have the potential to subvert news reporting such that it comes to serve the interests of industry in promoting their products, rather than the public interest in critical and accurate news and information. Here we report the findings of qualitative interviews conducted in Sydney, Australia, in which we examined journalists’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, their relationships with health-related industries. Participants’ belief in their ability to manage industry influence and their perceptions of what it means to be unduly influenced by industry raise important concerns relating to the psychology of influence and the realities of power relationships between industry and journalists. The analysis also indicates ways in which concerned academics and working journalists might establish more fruitful dialogue regarding the role of industry in health-related news and the extent to which increased regulation of journalist-industry relationships might be needed.NHMR

Condensational symbols in British press coverage of Boko Haram

This study of British press coverage of Boko Haram, a militant group in Nigeria, concentrates on condensational symbols in news reports of one of its major acts of terrorism, the bombing of the United Nations House in Abuja, the country’s capital city, in August 2011. The study examines the visibility of Boko Haram in British newspapers before and after the attack. It identifies the condensational symbols that dominated the coverage and how these provided a particular trajectory that could have shaped newspaper readers’ understanding of the event. The study argues that the symbolic terms that journalists used in their reports were not only easily identifiable but were specifically chosen to simplify a complex story for audiences that were perhaps uninformed about the group and its activities. The terms also reflect the repertoire of news frames that journalists mine to reconstruct reality for their audiences

Agricultural R&D, technology and productivity.

Published versio

Theorizing Institutional Scandal and the Regulatory State

One by one, UK public institutions are being scandalised for corruption, immorality or incompetence and subjected to trial by media and criminal prosecution. The state?s historic response to public sector scandal ? denial and neutralisation ? has been replaced with acknowledgement and regulation in the form of the re-vamped public inquiry. Public institutions are being cut adrift and left to account in isolation for their scandalous failures. Yet the state?s attempts to distance itself from its scandalised institutions, while extending its regulatory control over them, are risky. Both the regulatory state and its public inquiries risk being consumed by the scandal they are trying to manage