Celebrity culture and public connection: bridge or chasm?

Media and cultural research has an important contribution to make to recent debates about declines in democratic engagement: is for example celebrity culture a route into democratic engagement for those otherwise disengaged? This article contributes to this debate by reviewing qualitative and quantitative findings from a UK project on 'public connection'. Using self-produced diaries (with in-depth multiple interviews) as well as a nationwide survey, the authors argue that while celebrity culture is an important point of social connection sustained by media use, it is not linked in citizens' own accounts to issues of public concern. Survey data suggest that those who particularly follow celebrity culture are the least engaged in politics and least likely to use their social networks to involve themselves in action or discussion about public-type issues. This does not mean 'celebrity culture' is 'bad', but it challenges suggestions of how popular culture might contribute to effective democracy

Tracking the reflexivity of the (dis)engaged citizen: some methodological reflections

The relationship between governments and citizens in many contemporary democracies is haunted by uncertainty and sociologists face the task of listening effectively to citizens’ own reflections on this uncertain relationship. This article reflects on the qualitative methodology of a recently completed UK project which used a combination of diary and multiple interviews/ focus groups to track over a fieldwork period of up to a year citizens’ reflections on their relationship to a public world and the contribution to this of their media consumption. In particular, the article considers how the project’s multiple methods enabled multiple angles on the inevitable artificiality and performative dimension of the diary process, resulting in rich data on people’s complex reflections on the uncertain position of the contemporary citizen

Characteristics of EGRET Blazars in the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS)

We examine the radio properties of EGRET-detected blazars observed as part of the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS). VIPS has a flux limit roughly an order of magnitude below the MOJAVE survey and most other samples that have been used to study the properties of EGRET blazars. At lower flux levels, radio flux density does not directly correlate with gamma-ray flux density. We do find that the EGRET-detected blazars tend to have higher brightness temperatures, greater core fractions, and possibly larger than average jet opening angles. A weak correlation is also found with jet length and with polarization. All of the well-established trends can be explained by systematically larger Doppler factors in the gamma-ray loud blazars, consistent with the measurements of higher apparent velocities found in monitoring programs carried out at radio frequencies above 10 GHz.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Ap

Antibiotic resistance patterns of Escherichia coli isolates from different aquatic environmental sources in Leon, Nicaragua

AbstractAntibiotic-resistant bacteria have emerged due to the selective pressure of antimicrobial use in humans and animals. Water plays an important role in dissemination of these organisms among humans, animals and the environment. We studied the antibiotic resistance patterns among 493 Escherichia col/isolates from different aquatic environmental sources collected from October 2008 to May 2009 in Leon, Nicaragua. High levels of antibiotic resistance were found in E. coli isolates in hospital sewage water and in eight of 87 well-water samples. Among the resistant isolates from the hospital sewage, ampicillin, chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, nalidixic acid, trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole was the most common multi-resistance profile. Among the resistant isolates from the wells, 19% were resistant to ampicillin, ceftazidime, ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, nalidixic acid and trimethoprim-sulphameth-oxazole. E. coli producing ESBL and harbouring blaCTX-M genes were detected in one of the hospital sewage samples and in 26% of the resistant isolates from the well-water samples. The blaCTX-M-9 group was more prevalent in E. coli isolates from the hospital sewage samples and the blaCTX-M-1 group was more prevalent in the well-water samples

Double jeopardy: the influence of excessive daytime sleepiness and impaired cognition on health‐related quality of life in adults with heart failure

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106066/1/ejhfhfs054.pd

Safety profile of statins alone or combined with ezetimibe : a pooled analysis of 27 studies including over 22,000 patients treated for 6-24 weeks

Aims:  The aim of this analysis was to assess the overall safety and tolerability profiles of various statins + ezetimibe vs. statin monotherapy and to explore tolerability in sub-populations grouped by age, race, and sex. Methods:  Study-level data were combined from 27 double-blind, placebo-controlled or active-comparator trials that randomized adult hypercholesterolemic patients to statin or statin + ezetimibe for 6-24 weeks. In the full cohort, % patients with AEs within treatment groups (statin: N = 10,517; statin + ezetimibe: N = 11,714) was assessed by logistic regression with terms for first-/second-line therapy (first line = drug-naïve or rendered drug-naïve by washout at study entry; second line = ongoing statin at study entry or statin run-in), trial within first-/second-line therapy, and treatment. The same model was fitted for age (< 65, ≥ 65 years), sex, race (white, black, other) and first-/second-line subgroups with additional terms for subgroup and subgroup-by-treatment interaction. Results:  In the full cohort, the only significant difference between treatments was consecutive AST or ALT elevations ≥ 3 × upper limit of normal (ULN) (statin: 0.35%, statin + ezetimibe: 0.56%; p = 0.017). Significantly more subjects reported ≥ 1 AE; drug-related, hepatitis-related and gastrointestinal-related AEs; and CK elevations ≥ 10 × ULN (all p ≤ 0.008) in first-line vs. second-line therapy studies with both treatments. AEs were generally similar between treatments in subgroups, and similar rates of AEs were reported within age and race subgroups; however, women reported generally higher AE rates. Conclusions:  In conclusion, in second-line studies, ongoing statin treatment at study entry likely screened out participants for previous statin-related AEs and tolerability issues. These results describe the safety profiles of widely used lipid-lowering therapies and encourage their appropriate and judicious use in certain subpopulations

The Robinson Gravitational Wave Background Telescope (BICEP): a bolometric large angular scale CMB polarimeter

The Robinson Telescope (BICEP) is a ground-based millimeter-wave bolometric array designed to study the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) and galactic foreground emission. Such measurements probe the energy scale of the inflationary epoch, tighten constraints on cosmological parameters, and verify our current understanding of CMB physics. Robinson consists of a 250-mm aperture refractive telescope that provides an instantaneous field-of-view of 17 degrees with angular resolution of 55 and 37 arcminutes at 100 GHz and 150 GHz, respectively. Forty-nine pair of polarization-sensitive bolometers are cooled to 250 mK using a 4He/3He/3He sorption fridge system, and coupled to incoming radiation via corrugated feed horns. The all-refractive optics is cooled to 4 K to minimize polarization systematics and instrument loading. The fully steerable 3-axis mount is capable of continuous boresight rotation or azimuth scanning at speeds up to 5 deg/s. Robinson has begun its first season of observation at the South Pole. Given the measured performance of the instrument along with the excellent observing environment, Robinson will measure the E-mode polarization with high sensitivity, and probe for the B-modes to unprecedented depths. In this paper we discuss aspects of the instrument design and their scientific motivations, scanning and operational strategies, and the results of initial testing and observations.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures. To appear in Millimeter and Submillimeter Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy III, Proceedings of SPIE, 6275, 200

Biogeochemical Consequences of Rapid Microbial Turnover and Seasonal Succession in Soil

Soil microbial communities have the metabolic and genetic capability to adapt to changing environmental conditions on very short time scales. In this paper we combine biogeochemical and molecular approaches to reveal this potential, showing that microbial biomass can turn over on time scales of days to months in soil, resulting in a succession of microbial communities over the course of a year. This new understanding of the year-round turnover and succession of microbial communities allows us for the first time to propose a temporally explicit N cycle that provides mechanistic hypotheses to explain both the loss and retention of dissolved organic N (DON) and inorganic N (DIN) throughout the year in terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, our results strongly support the hypothesis that turnover of the microbial community is the largest source of DON and DIN for plant uptake during the plant growing season. While this model of microbial biogeochemistry is derived from observed dynamics in the alpine, we present several examples from other ecosystems to indicate that the general ideas of biogeochemical fluxes being linked to turnover and succession of microbial communities are applicable to a wide range of terrestrial ecosystems