Review of The Rise and Fall of the Scottish Cotton Industry, 1778-1914 ‘The Secret Spring’

Review of The Rise and Fall of the Scottish Cotton Industry, 1778-1914, ‘the secret spring’, Anthony Cooke. Manchester University Press 201

Macho men or pragmatists?

Paper presented at Understanding the Past and Facing the Future: Labour and Working Class History in Scotland Scottish Labour History Conference. The paper was based on a journal article and enagaged with the theory of masculinity and culture of machismo within male dominated industries. Using oral history narratives the paper argued that workers had limited control at the point of production and rather then take risks within a culture of machismo were more likely to be pragmatic when forced to work in dangerous and risky working conditions

Working in it, through it, and among it all day. Chrome Dust at J & J White of Rutherglen, 1893-1967

Article examining working conditions at J & J White of Rutherglen from 1893-1967

Review of Keir Hardie: Labour's Greatest Hero?

Review of Keir Hardie: Labour's Greatest Hero? by Bob Holman

Review of Life at the ICI : memories of working at ICI Billingham

Review of Life at the ICI: Memories of working at ICI Billingham, M. Williamson (ed). Teeside Industrial Memories Project, Atkinson Print 200

The world turned upside-down : architects as subcontractors in design-and-build contracts

The traditional role of the Architect on UK building projects is well-known and has been the subject of much study and comment. However, recent surveys indicate that design-and-build arrangements now exceed traditional procurement in terms of their share of total UK construction. On such projects, architects and other designers are engaged, not by the employer, but under sub-contract to the main contractor. The question arises as to the effect this has had. This has been approached by considering architects and other design consultants as professional contractors, as opposed to trade contractors - a term adopted to describe the more traditional type of subcontractor. Within these distinctions there are contractual, managerial and cultural implications for the relationships between the parties. To explore this further, representatives of five main contractors were questioned on their relationships with the two types. Clear differences emerged in matters such as contract formation, price-setting, payment and claims; the treatment of selection, work scheduling, and defects / omissions was more complicated. Within trade contractors there is a strong argument for recognising a further category of specialist contractors, who include a design service in their work package. Within the professional contractor category, architects were clearly differentiated from other design team members. The findings are analysed to suggest a theoretical framework with four dimensions that relate to process/product, attitude/motivation, working culture and relative power. The concern is not to be definitive at this stage, but to suggest an agenda for future research into the issues that have emerged

Purification of TrkA intracellular domain and the characterization of novel intracellular proteins : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Molecular Biology at Massey University

Nerve growth factor (NGF) binds to its receptor, TrkA, at the tips of nerve cell axons to inhibit apoptosis, causing survival and differentiation. Some factors within this process are largely unknown, such as the role of the p75 receptor and the molecular mechanisms that occur within the cell. NGF binding causes dimerization of TrkA, which activates the intracellular kinase domain. Autophosphorylation on tyrosine residues stimulates binding to the receptor of several intracellular proteins that mediate the NGF response. This receptor complex has been demonstrated to be retrogradely transported to the cell body. Retrograde transport is hypothesized to occur in small vesicles that have been isolated in our lab using a cell fractionation protocol using in vitro reactions with an ATP regenerating system. Discovering the initial molecular interactions that occur upon NGF binding could further our knowledge of NGF's inhibition of apoptosis, providing us with a possible tool for treatment of diseases that occur when the regulation of apoptosis no longer exists. Novel proteins that were not previously identified were associated with TrkA in small vesicles after NGF activation. To isolate these proteins for further characterization, TrkA's intracellular domain (TrkAID) was expressed in E. Coli. This protein was found to be constitutively tyrosine-phosphorylated and therefore presumably active. In E.Coli, TrkAID protein was localized to the soluble fraction but smaller amounts were detected in the insoluble fraction. TrkAID was partially purified from the soluble fraction using a combination of salt disruption and denaturing techniques. The unpurified TrkAID was immunoprecipitated from the bacterial soluble fraction with an antibody to the C-terminus of TrkA, and some results suggest that immunoprecipitated TrkAID was able to stimulate ERK activation in untreated PC12 cells, but unfortunately this was not reproducible. If the protein could be purified with a combination of techniques, then it would provide a useful tool for studying the initial events in NGF stimulation, that is, the recruitment of several intracellular proteins to the tyrosine-phosphorylated intracellular domain of TrkA

Did Labour fundamentally change Britain in its thirteen years of power? Hardly at all

The ‘new Labour’ governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown altered the societal landscape in the UK. But did they fundamentally change Britain? In a new book, David Walker and Polly Toynbee take an in-depth and balanced look at the achievements of the Labour project. There were some policy successes, and the authors give Labour 6 out of 10 for these. Yet the party lacked an overall vision or narrative, and so squandered its opportunity to push the UK in a more social democratic directio

M74 public archaeology programme evaluation report

Report on public engagement activities with the M74 Public Archaeology Project, a partnership project between Transport Scotland, Glasgow City Council, South Lanarkshire Council and Renfrewshire Council in connection with the M74 Motorway Completion projec