Climate change and the rental sector: Mapping the legislative and policy context: Analysis

The Briefing Paper series of the ‘Rental housing, climate change and adaptive capacity: a case study of Newcastle NSW’ project seeks to provide readers with access to current research on rental sector adaptation to climate change. Briefing Papers produced by the project team are working documents that provide a forum on theoretical, methodological and practical issues related to climate change adaption in rental housing. The project is funded by the National Climate change Adaptation Facility (NCCARF) for 2012. The publication as a ‘Briefing Paper’ does not preclude subsequent publication in scholarly journals, books or reports. Unless otherwise stated, ‘Rental housing, climate change and adaptive capacity’ publications are presented as contributions to debate and discussion and represent our developing thinking about the research. We are hoping that they may facilitate feedback from readers, researchers, renters and housing managers

Climate change and the rental sector: Mapping the legislative and policy context: Local Government

The Briefing Paper series of the ‘Rental housing, climate change and adaptive capacity: a case study of Newcastle NSW’ project seeks to provide readers with access to current research on rental sector adaptation to climate change. Briefing Papers produced by the project team are working documents that provide a forum on theoretical, methodological and practical issues related to climate change adaption in rental housing. The project is funded by the National Climate change Adaptation Facility (NCCARF) for 2012. The publication as a ‘Briefing Paper’ does not preclude subsequent publication in scholarly journals, books or reports. Unless otherwise stated, ‘Rental housing, climate change and adaptive capacity’ publications are presented as contributions to debate and discussion and represent our developing thinking about the research. We are hoping that they may facilitate feedback from readers, researchers, renters and housing managers

Cellular mechano-environment regulates the mammary circadian clock

Circadian clocks drive B24 h rhythms in tissue physiology. They rely on transcriptional/ translational feedback loops driven by interacting networks of clock complexes. However, little is known about how cell-intrinsic circadian clocks sense and respond to their microenvironment. Here, we reveal that the breast epithelial clock is regulated by the mechano-chemical stiffness of the cellular microenvironment in primary cell culture. Moreover, the mammary clock is controlled by the periductal extracellular matrix in vivo, which contributes to a dampened circadian rhythm during ageing. Mechanistically, the tension sensing cell-matrix adhesion molecule, vinculin, and the Rho/ROCK pathway, which transduces signals provided by extracellular stiffness into cells, regulate the activity of the core circadian clock complex. We also show that genetic perturbation, or age-associated disruption of self-sustained clocks, compromises the self-renewal capacity of mammary epithelia. Thus, circadian clocks are mechano-sensitive, providing a potential mechanism to explain how ageing influences their amplitude and function

Middle Holocene environmental change and archaeology in coastal wetlands: further implications for our understanding of the history of Taxus woodland

A radiocarbon-dated multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental record from Beckton in the Lower Thames Valley, Southern England, has permitted a detailed reconstruction of human activities and environmental change during the middle-Holocene. Peat accumulation occurred over river terrace gravels from ca. 7200 to 6600 until at least 3450–3240 cal. BP, and in the later period a trackway and platform structure provide unequivocal evidence for human exploitation of the floodplain environment during the Bronze Age. The site is unique in offering the first certain evidence of the utilisation of Taxus in the construction of a wooden prehistoric platform. Across north-west Europe during the middle-Holocene, the colonisation of Taxus on peat is well documented; at Beckton, it occurred between ca. 5220–4940 and 4410–4220 cal. BP. This research provides important insights into the former distribution of Taxus, and reasons for its expansion and decline during the Holocene, which has relevance to present-day concerns over the conservation and management of Taxus woodland. Abandonment of the site occurred in response to environmental change to wetter conditions. The study employed multi-proxy analyses, including pollen, plant and wood macrofossils, and uniquely Coleoptera; Coleopteran analysis has significant potential to enhance understandings of environmental change and human–environment interactions in coastal wetland research

1954 Turf Conference

Attendance (I - XV) Grass Leaves at Work - S.N. Postlethwait (5) Seed Supply and Prices - Gager T. Vaughn (8) Hocus-Pocus in Grass Breeding - Glen W. Burton (11) Techniques and Turf Quality - Fred V. Grau Case Histories of Turf Improvement Programs - O.J. Noer (20) Fertilizer Facts and Fancies - A.J. Ohlrogge (38) Crabgrass Control in Turf - Ralph E. Engel (43) Athletic Field Reseeding - Fred V. Grau (44) Vegetative Grass Potential - W.H. Daniel (48) Who Plays Golf Today? - Herb Graffis (50) Poa Annua & Arsenic Toxicity - W.H. Daniel (53) Replanting Golf Greens - (58) Planting Stolons on Large Areas - A. Linkogel (59) Management, Weather & Disease - Ralph Engel (62) Practical Microscopic Disease Observations - Robert Williams (64

The political import of deconstruction—Derrida’s limits?: a forum on Jacques Derrida’s specters of Marx after 25 Years, part I

Jacques Derrida delivered the basis of The Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International as a plenary address at the conference ‘Whither Marxism?’ hosted by the University of California, Riverside, in 1993. The longer book version was published in French the same year and appeared in English and Portuguese the following year. In the decade after the publication of Specters, Derrida’s analyses provoked a large critical literature and invited both consternation and celebration by figures such as Antonio Negri, Wendy Brown and Frederic Jameson. This forum seeks to stimulate new reflections on Derrida, deconstruction and Specters of Marx by considering how the futures past announced by the book have fared after an eventful quarter century. Maja Zehfuss, Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo and Dan Bulley and Bal Sokhi-Bulley offer sharp, occasionally exasperated, meditations on the political import of deconstruction and the limits of Derrida’s diagnoses in Specters of Marx but also identify possible paths forward for a global politics taking inspiration in Derrida’s work of the 1990s

Negative parental responses to coming out and family functioning in a sample of lesbian and gay young adults

Parental responses to youths' coming out (CO) are crucial to the subsequent adjustment of children and family. The present study investigated the negative parental reaction to the disclosure of same-sex attraction and the differences between maternal and paternal responses, as reported by their homosexual daughters and sons. Participants' perceptions of their parents' reactions (evaluated through the Perceived Parental Reactions Scale, PPRS), age at coming out, gender, parental political orientation, and religiosity involvement, the family functioning (assessed through the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales, FACES IV), were assessed in 164 Italian gay and lesbian young adults. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to assess the relation between family functioning and parental reaction to CO. The paired sample t-test was used to compare mothers and fathers' scores on the PPRS. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to analyze the relevance of each variable. No differences were found between mothers and fathers in their reaction to the disclosure. The analysis showed that a negative reaction to coming out was predicted by parents' right-wing political conservatism, strong religious beliefs, and higher scores in the scales Rigid and Enmeshed. Findings confirm that a negative parental reaction is the result of poor family resources to face a stressful situation and a strong belief in traditional values. These results have important implications in both clinical and social fields

Introduction: Interrogating the 'everyday' politics of emotions in international relations

The focus on the everyday in this Special Issue reveals different kinds of emotional practices, their political effects and their political contestation within both micro- and macro-politics in international relations. The articles in this Special Issue address the everyday negotiation of emotions, shifting between the reproduction of hegemonic structures of feelings and emancipation from them. In other words, the everyday politics of emotions allows an exploration of who gets to express emotions, what emotions are perceived as (il)legitimate or (un)desirable, how emotions are circulated and under what circumstances. Consequently, we identify two thematic strands which emerge as central to an interrogation of ‘everyday’ emotions in international relations and which run through each of the contributions: first, an exploration of the relationship between individual and collective emotions and, second, a focus on the role of embodiment within emotions research and its relationship with the dynamics and structures of power

Pneumococcal carriage in sub-Saharan Africa--a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Pneumococcal epidemiology varies geographically and few data are available from the African continent. We assess pneumococcal carriage from studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA) before and after the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) era. METHODS: A search for pneumococcal carriage studies published before 2012 was conducted to describe carriage in sSA. The review also describes pneumococcal serotypes and assesses the impact of vaccination on carriage in this region. RESULTS: Fifty-seven studies were included in this review with the majority (40.3%) from South Africa. There was considerable variability in the prevalence of carriage between studies (I-squared statistic = 99%). Carriage was higher in children and decreased with increasing age, 63.2% (95% CI: 55.6-70.8) in children less than 5 years, 42.6% (95% CI: 29.9-55.4) in children 5-15 years and 28.0% (95% CI: 19.0-37.0) in adults older than 15 years. There was no difference in the prevalence of carriage between males and females in 9/11 studies. Serotypes 19F, 6B, 6A, 14 and 23F were the five most common isolates. A meta-analysis of four randomized trials of PCV vaccination in children aged 9-24 months showed that carriage of vaccine type (VT) serotypes decreased with PCV vaccination; however, overall carriage remained the same because of a concomitant increase in non-vaccine type (NVT) serotypes. CONCLUSION: Pneumococcal carriage is generally high in the African continent, particularly in young children. The five most common serotypes in sSA are among the top seven serotypes that cause invasive pneumococcal disease in children globally. These serotypes are covered by the two PCVs recommended for routine childhood immunization by the WHO. The distribution of serotypes found in the nasopharynx is altered by PCV vaccination