W.G. Grace: Sporting Superstar, Cultural Celebrity, and Hero (to Oscar Wilde’s Villain) of the Great Public Drama of 1895

Abstract: »W.G. Grace: Sportstar, kulturelle Berühmtheit und Held (als Oscar Wildes Schurke) vom großen öffentlichen Drama von 1895«. This article explores the sporting superstardom and cultural celebrity of the Victorian English cricketer Dr. W.G. Grace, who played first-class cricket from 1865-1908. The great attention capital and significant masculine social status associated with his fame were deployed by him and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) to side line the then dominant professional cricket teams and ensure that the aristocratic amateur-led MCC controlled the game from the early 1870s. It focuses on the social and cultural organisation of fame and a close analysis of Grace’s recognition to explore how Grace’s three-decade (1865-1895) superstardom and celebrity allied to a resurgence in his cricket form made Grace the masculine robust hero of 1895 to Oscar Wilde’s scandalous villain. It explores how that comparison played out as a public drama involving other celebrities. Wilde was reported as systematically removed from masculine social status and Grace approvingly confirmed in its secure embodiment and possession. Keywords: Cultural celebrity; attention capital; masculine social status; mediated publicness; public drama

Contagious Magic: Metonymic Shifts in Spanish-English Poetry Translation

Metonymy has slowly begun to get its due in tropological research involving translation, although it lags well behind metaphor. This study starts from the difficult mapping of metonymy across several subtypes, its manifestations as conceptual metonymy, and its imbrications with cognitive poetics and metaphor; leaving aside translating metonymic instances themselves, the work examines the 'metonymic reading' performed in published Spanish-English poetry translations. The overarching goal is to explore how the metonymic characterization of translation processes can help nuance our understanding of related techniques such as modulation, and to recognize, translate, and assess semantic relations more knowledgeably through metonymic thinking

FGF23 metabolism, a new paradigm for chronic kidney disease

Introduction:  Fibroblast growth factor-23 (FGF23) is a major regulator of phosphate metabolism often elevated in genetic hypophosphataemic disorders and in chronic kidney disease. Recent studies have identified relationships between FGF23 and various markers of iron status including ferritin. New assays measuring the intact form of FGF23 have been released.  Objective:  To determine the relationship between ferritin and C-terminal and intact FGF23 concentrations in blood.  Method:  FGF23 concentrations were measured using the 2nd generation, two-site enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for either C-terminal or intact FGF23 (Immutopics Inc., Ca, USA). Ferritin was measured on a COBAS 6000 (Roche Diagnostics). Assay accuracy and precision were monitored using kit controls supplied by the manufacturers.  Results:  We observe a weak negative correlation between measurements of C-terminal and intact FGF23 (Pearson’s rho=0.85 p<0.0001). We observed no statistically significant correlation of ferritin concentrations with either FGF23 C-terminal or intact. However high concentrations of ferritin were observed in samples showing low concentrations of C-terminal FGF23 (<140RU/mL) and intact FGF23 (<122pg/mL).  Conclusion:  Although not statistically significant, we observe a negative relationship between concentrations of ferritin and FGF23. High level of C-terminal FGF23 is found in patients with chronic kidney disease, especially in patients with end-stage renal disease usually regarded as a compensatory response to hyperphosphatemia or phosphate overload. We observed a cluster of patients with retention of both C-terminal and intact FGF23 associated with low levels of ferritin suggesting that metabolism and/or excretion of FGF23 in CDK patients might be an iron dependent mechanism

Engineering soils to act as carbon sinks

PhD ThesisSoils containing calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) bearing waste silicate minerals may be intentionally engineered to capture and store atmospheric carbon (C). Within the soil environment these minerals can capture and store atmospheric C through the process of weathering that releases Ca and Mg which then precipitate as carbonate minerals. Like natural silicates, silicate ‘wastes’ and artificial silicates sequester C through carbonation of calcium (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+). Terrestrial CO2 sequestration may be promoted by the inclusion of these reactive mineral substrates in soils, and many waste sites and urban and anthropogenic soils already contain quantities of these materials. The UK Government is currently committed to reducing carbon emissions by 80% in 2050 (against a 1990 baseline) and soils have a role to play, acting as sinks for carbon. It is proposed that soil engineering measures could harness the high C turnover of the global pedologic system, ~120Pg C a-1 , to develop an efficient method of enhanced weathering. Artificial silicates have the potential to capture 192-333 Mt C a-1 , representing 2.0-3.7% of contemporary global C emissions; natural silicates present a carbon capture potential many orders of magnitude greater. Mineral carbonation in an artificial soil setting has the potential to capture inorganic carbon comparable to organic carbon accumulation. Soils of this type can accumulate 20-30 kg C m2 as carbonates (≥ organic carbon content in natural soils, ~17.5 kg C m2 for rural soils in the UK). Laboratory investigations were carried out on a number of experimental scales, from meso-scale flow-through reactors to micro-scale batch experiments, to determine the rate at which Ca and Mg could be supplied from suitable materials in engineered soil systems to perform a carbon capture function. Environmental factors were controlled for each in order to constrain their contribution to the overall process. Batch experiments were carried out at standard temperature and pressure (STP) to investigate effects of changes in solute concentration, water chemistry, agitation and particle size. pH controlled experiments were run at STP from pH 3-8, to determine the effects of pH changes on the weathering of wollastonite. Flow-through weathering experiments at STP investigated the effects of time, water chemistry, hydrogeological conditions and addition of CO2 on the weathering of steel slag. Analytical results demonstrate that Ca leaches rapidly from a number of Ca-rich artificial minerals providing great potential for carbon capture to occur on human-relevant timescales. Steel slag was shown to weather at a log rate of -9.39 to -11.88 mol Ca m-2 sec-1 in laboratory settings and -7.11 to - 7.56 mol Ca m-2 sec-1 under ambient environmental conditions in the field over 975 days. Anthropogenic soils, known to contain substantial quantities of Ca and Mg-rich minerals derived from industrial and demolition activity (including iron and steel slag, cement and concrete), were systematically sampled across two field sites. Analysis illustrated mean soil carbonate values of 21.8 ± 4.7% wt to 41.16 ± 9.89 wt % demonstrating that a large quantity of soil carbonate forms and persists in these environments, formed at a rate of 18kg CO2 t-1 a-1 . Stable isotope data ( 13C, 18O) confirm that up to 81% of C in these pedogenic carbonates is atmospherically derived. 14 C data also suggest that a significant proportion of the C present in carbonates analysed is ‘modern’. Applying a current CO2 trading cost of £8-£12 t-1 CO2, the potential value of CO2 sequestration at a study site was calculated to be £51,843 £77,765 ha-1 after 58% of its carbonation potential had been exploited. The studies contained in this thesis add to a growing body of evidence for the formation of carbonate minerals in soil settings where Ca/Mg-bearing silicate minerals occur. They also support the idea that engineered soils could be effectively utilised for carbon sequestration. Soil engineering for carbon capture provides a comparatively cheap, easy and attractive way of beginning to offset the environmental impact of certain industrial processes. Carbonation of waste silicates is a useful exercise in ‘closing the loop’ on C emissions produced in their manufacture. Carbon capture taking place on sites containing industrial waste materials is of interest to a variety of stakeholders: site owners, third sector bodies and local and national legislative bodies. Effective, low- energy field-scale implementation of mineral carbonation through soil engineering could assuage current constraints on economic performance of enhanced weathering technologies and highlight the importance of soil carbon storage.Natural Environment Research Counci

Future Cities: Imagining Urban Green Space in Fiction and Planning

There is no lack of vision for the future city. Since our early days as an urban species, we have crated stories and images to reflect our wildest imaginings of cities of curious form, in magnificent settings; underwater, in the sky, even other planets. But to what extent does this great corpus of art and fiction on cities relate to the planning and building of real urban spaces? In our day to day lives we frequently see representations of cities ‘yet to be’, often in quite prosaic settings; printed across hoardings for new developments and buried in the pages of lifestyle magazines. Increasingly these aspirational images include open and green spaces, but these do not always seem to come from the same inspired minds as the modernist buildings that surround them. Preliminary work by the proposer has sought to understand the way in which we currently imagine urban green space in cities and how these visions are presented through different media formats. This approach takes two routes: 1) A brief overview of urban green space in futures fiction (fiction, film, visual art) – noting the scope of description and any major themes to which this is often allied (i.e. wildness, utopia) 2) A reflection on depictions of urban green space in contemporary planning documents and the consultative and marketing materials related to these (text, images) – noting the scope of description and any common themes to (1) The proposed session seeks to explore the prevailing ideas around urban green space in future cities and the extent to which the creative visions of real cities is (over)influenced or limited by expectations of what is socially desirable and what is physically or economically possible. It considers possibilities for using fiction to push the boundaries of urban planning, influencing creative and transformational urban planning for green space particularly in participatory planning exercises

Experiences in gifted education : implications for teaching strategies for a clever country.

In preparation for a workshop at Monash University, where a group of Australian educators were to be involved in writing a book based on their collective wisdom and interest in the fostering of excellence in young people and children in the 1990\u27s, the present writers engaged in a reflective exercise in ascertaining how best to educate our most talented science students. However, in the eventual chapter written by Newhouse et al. (in Goodall and Culhane 1991:70), the theme was related to the concept of empowering a whole school community, \u27globally\u27 a far cry from the notion of empowering talented students to be competent, creative and autonomous scientists. In the present social climate in Australia, where there is an increasing demand for creative scientists and caring technologists, it would appear to be both appropriate and timely to consider a Science Extension programme in which both writers were engaged in the early eighties. The focus will be a description of the strategy which progressively produced over a three year period, not only efficacy in the student\u27s preparation for research, efficiency and creativity in open ended inquiry in science, but a group of young people who thought reflectively and productively as scientists. In the light of their analysis of the role of the teacher /mentor and the outcomes of the science extension program, the writers will speculate on the implications for teacher education in the 1990\u27s