Let young people move: why any post-Brexit migration deal must safeguard youth mobility

Restrictions on free movement are likely to be an important aspect of the UK’s new relationship with EU countries post-Brexit. Richard Bronk argues that safeguarding youth mobility should be a major principle behind any immigration reforms. He explores the economic, political and social case for preserving it, before suggesting some ways to do so – based in part on existing provisions for youth mobility with certain Commonwealth and other non-EU allies

Letter to MPs from a Remain voter: a plea for realism, tolerance and honesty

This is the text of a letter written by Richard Bronk, a Visiting Fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics, to two Conservative MPs, one a friend, with whom he was in correspondence. The letter (which has been anonymised) was written to foster a better understanding of how many of the 48% who voted Remain are thinking and feeling following the vote – and thereby contribute to efforts to bridge the dangerous chasm opening up between most of the UK’s great cities, universities and the young, on the one hand, and the new Brexit government on the other

The art of following the science

In recent years, western democracies have experienced a damaging erosion of faith in scientific expertise. While online conspiracy theories and the alternative facts promoted by charismatic demagogues are partly responsible, some blame attaches to the naïve way in which governments apply scientific data to policy questions, writes Richard Bronk. Science can neither substitute for political choices between competing goals nor replace the need for nuanced judgment of the multifaceted nature of specific problems

Book review: cents and sensibility: what economics can learn from the humanities

Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith's great classic, The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and contend that a few decades later Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration in order to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity. Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a freewheeling dialogue between economics and the humanities by addressing a wide range of problems drawn from the economics of higher education, the economics of the family, and the development of poor nations

Mapping the Human Vasculature by In Vivo Phage Display

In vivo phage display screenings by intravenous injection of a random phage-displayed peptide library allow for the selection of peptides that localize to specific vascular beds. At the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, we have had the opportunity to perform phage display screenings in cancer patients in order to select for cancer specific targets directly in humans. These targets serve to define biochemical diversity of endothelial cell surfaces and can be validated and explored towards the design of vascular-targeted pharmacology. In the most recent patient screen, samples were recovered from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) as well as 26 additional tissues. High-throughput sequencing and multidimensional bioinformatics analysis of recovered peptides led to the identification of extensive panels of motifs that are predicted to distinctly localize to tissue-specific vascular beds. Utilizing peptide affinity purification and phage based binding assays, we have shown that the HCC targeting peptide (SGVGAASL) identified from this patient screen, selectively binds to HCC in vitro as well as in vivo facilitated by a receptor mediated interaction with the giantin protein. FACS and protein fractionational experiments showed that the giantin polypeptide, normally considered an intracellular protein, is uniquely expressed on the surface of HCC cell lines as well as activated endothelial cells. shRNA mediated depletion of giantin expression lead to a loss of proliferation and adhesion in cancer cells. Finally, an extensive study of giantin expression in patient HCC tissue uncovered a unique expression pattern on the surface of tumor-associated vasculature. Collectively, these data support a functional role for giantin on the surface of HCC tumor endothelium that could potentially be exploited for delivery of imaging and therapeutic agents. Ultimately, this work serves as the foundation of a high-throughput integrative platform for discovery and validation of tissue-specific motifs towards a comprehensive understanding of the vascular landscape in humans

Might economists be partly to blame for Trump and moves towards a ‘full British Brexit’?

The reasons for the Trump phenomenon and Brexit vote are many and various, but have we overlooked ways in which standard economics, by failing to take seriously the radical uncertainty endemic in modern political economies, has contributed to the populist turn? Richard Bronk argues that by mischaracterising their profession as able to make precise forecasts of uncertain futures – an impossible task – economists contributed to the current denigration of experts. More importantly, by assuming that people form rational expectations, they encouraged us to ignore the transformative power of simple narratives

“Much, I am sure, depends on you”: James Fordyce’s lessons on female happiness and perfection

Conduct literature written for women has had a long tradition in British culture. According to scholars, such as Ingrid H. Tague (2002), it circulated most widely during the eighteenth century because new ideals of proper feminine behaviour and conduct developed. The Scottish Presbyterian minister and poet, James Fordyce (1720-1796), very observant of the transformations in his society as well as advocating the need to reform moral manners, likewise created a set of sermons dedicated to young women of the second half of the eighteenth century. He is worthy of close study not only because his Sermons to Young Women constitute an important yet understudied contribution to the tradition of conduct writing, but also because he records and disseminates opinions on female perfection both as a man of the church as well as the representative of his sex, thus presenting a broad scope of the official gender ideology of the eighteenth century. The proposed article engages in a close reading of Fordyce's rules and regulations pertaining to proper femininity, pointing also to the tone of his published sermon-manual and the socio-techniques used for the sake of perpetuating his ideological precepts for women. As such, the article is to prove that this popular eighteenth-century preacher, whose work was even mentioned on the pages of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, not only offers a significant contribution to ongoing research on conduct manual tradition as well as on feminist re-readings of women’s history, but also adds more evidence to feminist claims of a purposeful campaign aimed at creating a selfaware and self-vigilant woman who almost consciously strives to become the object of masculine desire, and allegedly all for her own good

“Next unto the gods my life shall be spent in contemplation of him”: Margaret Cavendish’s dramatised widowhood in "Bell in Campo" (i&ii)

Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) is nowadays remembered as one of the most outspoken female writers and playwrights of the mid-seventeenth-century; one who openly promoted women’s right to education and public displays of creativity. Thus she paved the way for other female artists, such as her near contemporary, Aphra Behn. Although in her times seen as a harmless curiosity rather than a paragon to emulate, Cavendish managed to publish her plays along with more philosophical texts. Thanks to the re-discovery of female artists by feminist revisionism, her drama is now treated as a valuable source of knowledge on the values and norms of her class, gender, and, more generally, English society in the seventeenth century. Cavendish’s two-partite play Bell in Campo (1662) is a fantasy on the world where women can fight united not only against misogyny but also against an actual enemy. While the two plays seem to be focused on the valiant Lady Victoria and her female “Noble Heroicks”, Bell in Campo likewise offers an odd subplot featuring two widows and their lives without their beloved husbands. In the secular discourse of the seventeenth century, widowhood has been seen as either liberating – as when the woman became the sole owner of her husband’s estate and goods, or regained her own, and thus more independent – or degrading – when she became the not-so-welcomed burden on her children’s shoulders and pockets. Other studies on widowhood likewise state its symbolic function, showing women as the bearers of memory, predominantly of the husband and his virtues, and often attending to the spouse’s site of memory. While discussing the cultural history of properly performed widowhood, seen as the final (st)age of a woman’s life, and taking into account Cavendish’s remarkable biography, the present paper offers a close study of her propositions for appropriate widowhood and its positioning in contrast to other states of womankind as presented in Bell in Campo. It will likewise take into account the more or less sublimated evidence for gerontophobia, particularly in relation to women, as shown in Cavendish’s play and seventeenth century culture.The research for this paper was supported by a grant of the National Science Centre, Poland, project number 2014/13/B/H52/00488, “Embodied sites of memory? Investigations into the definitions and representations of old age and ageing in English drama between 1660 and 1750

Factors Influencing Study Abroad Participation Among Binghamton University Students

Binghamton University (BUS)\u27s Office of International Programs (OIP) offers almost 30 study abroad programs. Increasing BU students\u27 study abroad participation is one of the ways by which the University aims to increase students\u27 preparation for a global society (Binghamton University, Office of the Provost 2010b,p.12).The OIP has continually strives to increase students\u27 study abroad participation, with an objective of increasing the percentage of the University\u27s graduating class that study abroad to 25%; however, it has not yet met its objective. This study examines the factors (both student-related and institutional-related) that influence BU undergraduate students\u27 participation in study abroad programs