'All are instructive if read in a right spirit': Reading, Religion and Instruction in a Victorian Reading Diary

This paper conducts a study of reading choices and practices through the reading diary of a middle-class reader in mid-nineteenth-century Glasgow within the context of her socio-cultural, intellectual and religious milieu. Anne Galloway (1802-1889) wrote her reading diary between 1850 and 1856, wherein she recorded one hundred and eighty-four books and three periodicals. This study combines an investigation in the availability of books and their circulation with a focus on Stirling’s Library, a subscription library founded by Walter Stirling in 1791, from which Anne obtained her books. Anne’s borrowing record is re-constructed using the library catalogues. These are used to assess the different classifications of the books she read and their respective numbers to determine the pattern of Anne’s borrowing and reading practices. This investigation offers new insights into Glasgow’s book culture through the reconstructed history of a ‘lesser-known’ Evangelical, non-professional, married woman reader in the mid-nineteenth century, demographics of which are currently all under-represented in individual case studies in the history of reading

The Literary Clubs and Societies of Glasgow during the Long Nineteenth Century: A City’s History of Reading through its Communal Reading Practices and Productions

This thesis uses the minute books and manuscript magazines of Glasgow’s literary societies as evidence for my argument that the history of mutual improvement groups—including literary societies—needs to be re-written as a unique movement of ‘improvement’ during the long nineteenth century. In foregrounding the surviving records, I examine what it meant to be literary to society members in Glasgow during this period. I discuss what their motivations were for becoming so, and reflect on the impact that gender, occupation and social class had on these. I demonstrate that these groups contributed to the education and literacy of people living in the city and to a larger culture of ‘improvement’. Further, I argue that there is a case to be made for a particularly Scottish way of consuming texts in the long nineteenth century. In Glasgow, there were at least 193 literary societies during this period, which I divide into four phases of development. I provide an in-depth examination of two societies which serve as case studies. In addition, I give an overview and comparison of the 652 issues of Scottish and English society magazines I discovered in the context of a larger, ‘improving’ culture. I offer possible reasons why so many literary societies produced manuscript magazines, and show that this phenomenon was not unique to them. These magazines fostered a communal identity formed around a combination of religion, class, gender and local identity. I determine that societies in England produced similar types of magazines to those in Scotland possibly based upon the Scottish precedent. These materials substantially contribute to the evidence for nineteenth-century mutual improvement societies and their magazines, and for working- and lower-middle class Scottish readers and writers during the long nineteenth century, social groups that are under-represented in the history of reading and in Victorian studies

Social Interventions for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Research

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face a variety of barriers in social, communicative, and behavioral functioning. In particular, children with ASD have deficits in social behavior that decrease opportunities to socialize and develop peer relationships (Kroeger, Schultz, & Newsom, 2006). A child’s early development of social skills has been linked to successful school adjustment and academic achievement while preschoolers with poor social behavior experience peer rejection, low academic achievement, and behavior problems (McClelland & Morrison, 2003). I conducted a systematic review of research on interventions that provided positive social outcomes for young children with ASD. Results from this study exposed common research designs (i.e., multiple baseline, randomized control trial), topics (e.g., joint attention, imitation), and practices (e.g., pivotal response training, peer mediation) applied to teaching social skills to this population. Research is limited on social interventions that do not include behaviorally-based techniques, which could reveal additional components of effective social skills interventions. Rigorous and well-designed research studies are needed to determine the most efficient and effective dosage of established scientifically-based practices, as well as measures of social validity, which was lacking in many of the studies reviewed. A discussion regarding targeting pivotal skills in early intervention is included in this review

New insights into genomic variation in health and disease

A report on the Genomic Disorders conference on Genomic Variation in Health and Disease, Hinxton, UK, 9–11 March, 2009

The Inconsistent use of ω\omega in the RV Equation

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star, astronomers have inferred the orbital properties of planets using stellar radial velocity (RV) measurements. For a star orbited by a single planet, the stellar orbit is a dilation and $180^\circ$ rotation of the planetary orbit. Thus, many of the Keplerian orbital properties of the star are identical to those of the planet. However, there is a notable exception: the argument of periastron, $\omega$, defined as the angle between the periapsis of an orbiting body and its ascending node. The argument of periastron of the star ($\omega_\star$) is $180^\circ$ offset from the argument of periastron of the planet ($\omega_p$). This distinction is important because some derivations of the RV equation use $\omega_\star$, while others use $\omega_p$. This discrepancy arises because commonly used derivations of the RV equation do not adhere to a single coordinate system. As a result, there are inconsistencies in the definitions of the Keplerian orbital parameters in various RV models, leading to values of the ascending node and $\omega$ that are $180^\circ$ offset. For instance, some packages, such as \texttt{RadVel} and \texttt{ExoFast}, report values for $\omega_{\star}$ that are identical to the $\omega_p$ values determined with other packages, such as \texttt{TTVFast} and \texttt{Orvara}, resulting in orbital solutions that differ by $180^\circ$. This discrepancy highlights the need for standardized conventions and definitions in RV modeling, particularly as we enter the era of combining RVs with astrometry.Comment: 5 pages,2 figures, 1 tabl

Inner Planetary System Gap Complexity is a Predictor of Outer Giant Planets

The connection between inner small planets and outer giant planets is crucial to our understanding of planet formation across a wide range of orbital separations. While Kepler provided a plethora of compact multi-planet systems at short separations ($\lesssim 1$ AU), relatively little is known about the occurrence of giant companions at larger separations and how they impact the architectures of the inner systems. Here, we use the catalog of systems from the Kepler Giant Planet Search (KGPS) to study how the architectures of the inner transiting planets correlate with the presence of outer giant planets. We find that for systems with at least three small transiting planets, the distribution of inner-system gap complexity ($\mathcal{C}$), a measure of the deviation from uniform spacings, appears to differ ($p \lesssim 0.02$) between those with an outer giant planet ($50 M_\oplus \leq M_p\sin{i} \leq 13 M_{\rm Jup}$) and those without any outer giants. All four inner systems (with 3+ transiting planets) with outer giant(s) have a higher gap complexity ($\mathcal{C} > 0.32$) than 79% (19/24) of the inner systems without any outer giants (median $\mathcal{C} \simeq 0.06$). This suggests that one can predict the occurrence of outer giant companions by selecting multi-transiting systems with highly irregular spacings. We do not find any correlation between outer giant occurrence and the size (similarity or ordering) patterns of the inner planets. The larger gap complexities of inner systems with an outer giant hints that massive external planets play an important role in the formation and/or disruption of the inner systems.Comment: Published in AJ. 16 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl