Thinking about audience and agency in the museum: models from historical research

This paper examines a current trend within museum studies to conceptualise the contemporary museum as democratic, open, and working in partnership with its community, which is seen as a fundamental change from museums at some point in the past, when they were didactic and produced or encouraged a passive audience. This trend, it maintains, is not just produced by museums needing to fit into various agendas for social inclusivity, but also by some of the most important texts in museum history, which look at the ways in which various forms of agency worked to deny agency to the public. It argues that such a view radically understates the forms of agency available to ‘outsiders’ to museums in the past; and that as a corollary, analyses of the contemporary museum need to be wary of seeing shared agency as already achieved. By exploring the forces which work to distribute agency widely inside and beyond the museum, alongside those which worked to centralise agency in the institution of the museum and its curators, we can gain a much fuller understanding of museums past and present

Manufactures, archaeology and bygones: making a sense of place in civic museums, 1850-1914

This article considers the extent and nature of the ways in which civic museums created a sense of place in the period 1850-1914. The local has been shown to be constructed in visual culture, such as architecture, paintings and engravings, as well as in civic ritual, but museum collections and displays had the potential to present both emotional and scientific understandings of place together. The article examines the the construction of place through the identification of places with particular industries, through the historicisation of local government, through the display of the distant, archaeological past, and through displays focused on the 'everyday' past which was increasingly seen as imaginatively accessible within and beyond the present. It suggests that throughout the period museums were an important part of localities' attempts to define and enhance local attitudes especially in the face of rivalry or perceived 'London-centric' attitudes. However, they were torn between presenting the locality as progressive and modern, or as historically rooted, forwards or backwards facing; and equally they had to tread a fine line between presenting the locality as parochial or as having a universal importance

"He knows me...but not at the museum": women, natural history collecting and museums, 1880-1914

This article examines women collectors of natural history during the period 1880-1914, their natural history practices, and their relationships with museums. It suggests that for women natural history collections could be used to create and modify gender identities

Understanding and measuring continuity of care in stroke.

Background: This study investigated care for patients following an acute stroke. The focus was on the patient’s experience, with particular reference to their impressions of the continuous and discontinuous aspects of care. The study aimed to explore the meaning of continuity of care for stroke patients, the feasibility of measuring patient-perceived continuity of care in stroke, and to examine its effect on outcomes. Methods: A mixed methods approach was used, starting with a systematic review of the literature and a qualitative exploration of patients’ experiences of care. A case note review was also conducted. An existing quantitative measure of patient-perceived continuity was applied in a sample of patients [N = 310]. Two new measures of continuity of care (one patient-centred and one record-based) were developed and tested in a further sample [N = 178]. Finally, a qualitative study examined the views that stroke care professionals held on communication and continuity of care. Results: Accepted models of continuity of care did not readily transfer to the type of care or the services received by stroke survivors. Patients could, either directly or indirectly, comment on the quality of the individual elements of care they had received, and rate their feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with them. They could not distinguish the overall process of care. “Achieved care” and “perceived care” could be measured quantitatively by including components of the physical, psychological and cognitive status of the patient in addition to the two new indices. An association between the measures of care and outcomes was found. Patterns of care were identified that indicated that care networks exist in stroke services. The findings suggest that it is the connectedness of individuals within these networks rather than the longevity or predictability of individual relationships that delivers good care. Conclusions: Continuity of care is a professional concept focused on the provision of statutory services. Current ideas of continuity privilege factors such as relational continuity (seeing the same person) in primary care; managerial continuity in acute care and informational continuity in areas like mental health which emphasises care planning not consultant led care. In measurement from the patient’s perspective, continuity is intimately linked to related concepts such as quality of care and patient satisfaction

The 3-D clustering of radio galaxies in the TONS survey

We present a clustering analysis of the Texas-Oxford NVSS Structure (TONS) radio galaxy redshift survey. This complete flux-limited survey consists of 268 radio galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in three separate regions of the sky covering a total of 165 deg^2. By going to faint radio flux densities (s_1.4>3 mJy) but imposing relatively bright optical limits (E R 19.5), the TONS sample is optimised for looking at the clustering properties of low luminosity radio galaxies in a region of moderate (0 < z < 0.5) redshifts. We use the two point correlation function to determine the clustering strength of the combined TONS08 and TONS12 sub-samples and find a clustering strength of r_0(z)=8.7+/-1.6 Mpc (h=0.7). If we assume growth of structure by linear theory and that the median redshift is 0.3, this corresponds to r_0(0)=11.0+/-2.0 Mpc which is consistent with the clustering strength of the underlying host galaxies (~ 2.5 Lstar ellipticals) of the TONS radio galaxy population.Comment: 18 pages, MNRAS accepted. Full paper including all spectra can be found at http://www.noao.edu/noao/staff/brand/brand_corr_fn.ps.g

Musical Bridges

All the things that make IWU’s School of Music special were on display in a 150th anniversary celebration of its founding

The homeodomain protein PAL-1 specifies a lineage-specific regulatory network in the C. elegans embryo

Maternal and zygotic activities of the homeodomain protein PAL-1 specify the identity and maintain the development of the multipotent C blastomere lineage in the C. elegans embryo. To identify PAL-1 regulatory target genes, we used microarrays to compare transcript abundance in wild-type embryos with mutant embryos lacking a C blastomere and to mutant embryos with extra C blastomeres. pal-1-dependent C-lineage expression was verified for select candidate target genes by reporter gene analysis, though many of the target genes are expressed in additional lineages as well. The set of validated target genes includes 12 transcription factors, an uncharacterized wingless ligand and five uncharacterized genes. Phenotypic analysis demonstrates that the identified PAL-1 target genes affect specification, differentiation and morphogenesis of C-lineage cells. In particular, we show that cell fate-specific genes (or tissue identity genes) and a posterior HOX gene are activated in lineage-specific fashion. Transcription of targets is initiated in four temporal phases, which together with their spatial expression patterns leads to a model of the regulatory network specified by PAL-1

The Multimedia activity recall for children and adolescents (MARCA): development and evaluation

BACKGROUND: Self-report recall questionnaires are commonly used to measure physical activity, energy expenditure and time use in children and adolescents. However, self-report questionnaires show low to moderate validity, mainly due to inaccuracies in recalling activity in terms of duration and intensity. Aside from recall errors, inaccuracies in estimating energy expenditure from self-report questionnaires are compounded by a lack of data on the energy cost of everyday activities in children and adolescents. This article describes the development of the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adolescents (MARCA), a computer-delivered use-of-time instrument designed to address both the limitations of self-report recall questionnaires in children, and the lack of energy cost data in children. METHODS: The test-retest reliability of the MARCA was assessed using a sample of 32 children (aged 11.8 ± 0.7 y) who undertook the MARCA twice within 24-h. Criterion validity was assessed by comparing self-reports with accelerometer counts collected on a sample of 66 children (aged 11.6 ± 0.8 y). Content and construct validity were assessed by establishing whether data collected using the MARCA on 1429 children (aged 11.9 ± 0.8 y) exhibited relationships and trends in children's physical activity consistent with established findings from a number of previous research studies. RESULTS: Test-retest reliability was high with intra-class coefficients ranging from 0.88 to 0.94. The MARCA demonstrated criterion validity comparable to other self-report instruments with Spearman coefficients ranging from rho = 0.36 to 0.45, and provided evidence of good content and construct validity. CONCLUSION: The MARCA is a valid and reliable self-report questionnaire, capable of a wide variety of flexible use-of-time analyses related to both physical activity and sedentary behaviour, and offers advantages over existing pen-and-paper questionnaires

The Triggering and Bias of Radio Galaxies

We present new results on the clustering and three-dimensional distribution of radio galaxies from the Texas-Oxford NVSS Structure (TONS) survey. The TONS survey was constructed to look at the distribution of radio galaxies in a region of moderate (0 < z < 0.5) redshifts by matching NVSS sources with objects in APM catalogues to obtain a sample of optically bright (R < 19.5), radio faint (1.4-GHz flux density S_1.4 > 3 mJy) radio galaxies over large areas on the sky. We find that redshift spikes, which represent large concentrations of radio galaxies which trace (~ 100 Mpc^3) super-structures are a common phenomena in these surveys. Under the assumption of quasi-linear structure formation theory and a canonical radio galaxy bias, the structures represent ~ 4-5 sigma peaks in the primordial density field and their expected number is low. The most plausible explanation for these low probabilities is an increase in the radio galaxy bias with redshift. To investigate potential mechanisms which have triggered the radio activity in these galaxies - and hence may account for an increase in the bias of this population, we performed imaging studies of the cluster environment of the radio galaxies in super-structure regions. Preliminary results show that these radio galaxies may reside preferentially at the edges of rich clusters. If radio galaxies are preferentially triggered as they fall towards rich clusters then they would effectively adopt the cluster bias.Comment: 4 pages to be published in the proceedings of "Multiwavelength AGN Surveys", Cozumel, Dec 8-12, 200