Not a drop to drink: Emerging meanings in local newspaper reporting of the 1995 water crisis in Yorkshire

This article takes data from the Huddersfield Examiner (HE) and the Yorkshire Evening Post (YEP) and critically analyzes discourse features of the November 1995 drought as reported in these papers. It suggests that this kind of discourse generates new linguistic categories, which exist between the generalized patterns of language (langue) and the differentiated experience of language in context (parole). Whilst the langue-parole distinction is no longer seen as absolute, if it is seen as a gradable concept it could capture the tension between stability and change characterizing actual linguistic experience of discourse participants. The value of textual analysis is discussed and the article asks how far texts can be described as (re)producing ideologies in a particular context. The research reported here is based on a small, discrete corpus of news texts and concludes that the data in question produce a meaning for the word water that differs from its meaning over larger bodies of data, and yet which maps closely onto the meaning of the word commodity. The general ideological outlook encompassing this view of water as productlike and passive, rather than a natural resource with its own agency, is considered as an ‘explanatory’ mechanism linking this news ‘story’ with a dominant capitalist ideology

Structural insights into the b-mannosidase from T.reesi obtained by synchrotron small-angle X-ray solution scattering enhanced by X-ray crystallography

A molecular envelope of the β-mannosidase from Trichoderma reesei has been obtained by combined use of solution small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and protein crystallography. Crystallographic data at 4 Å resolution have been used to enhance informational content of the SAXS data and to obtain an independent, more detailed protein shape. The phased molecular replacement technique using a low resolution SAXS model, building, and refinement of a free atom model has been employed successfully. The SAXS and crystallographic free atom models exhibit a similar globular form and were used to assess available crystallographic models of glycosyl hydrolases. The structure of the β-galactosidase, a member of a family 2, clan GHA glycosyl hydrolases, shows an excellent fit to the experimental molecular envelope and distance distribution function of the β-mannosidase, indicating gross similarities in their three-dimensional structures. 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A New and Efficient Method for the Synthesis of 3,4-Disubstituted Pyrrolidine-2,5-diones

A newly found reaction for the synthesis of 3,4-disubstituted 1-hydroxy-pyrrolidine-2,5-diones from 3-substituted coumarins and nitromethane has been elaborated. The reaction involved a simple and convenient experimental procedure. The applicability of the rearrangement reaction is determined