A study of the interactions between ylidic phosphorus species and organic acids

This thesis describes the synthesis and characterisation of phosphonium aryloxides, amides and phosphides. These compounds have been formed via the deprotonation of organic acids [of the type ROH, and R(_2)X, where X = NH, PH, R = aryl group] by basic phosphonium ylidic species [R(_3)PX, X = CH(_2,) C(Me)H, C(Ph)H, NH] in mixtures of hydrocarbon (toluene) and/or polar (acetonitrile, thf) solvents. All of these compounds contain both acidic CHs and 'naked' anions which promote extensive hydrogen bonding. Chapter 1 provides an outline of the fields of ylidic chemistry and hydrogen bonding. In Chapter 2, general experimental methods are described. Chapter 3 records all experimental results pertaining to this work. Here preparation of starting materials is documented, followed by an account of the synthesis and characterisation of twenty-three compounds. For all compounds melting point measurements, (^1)H NMR, (^31)P NMR, infrared spectra, and elemental analysis are recorded. Discussion of these results is documented in Chapters 4 to 7. Where possible, solid-state structures for compounds obtained by single crystal X-ray diffraction (nineteen structures) and single crystal neutron diffraction (two structures) are included. Chapter 4 discusses simple phosphonium aryloxide salts, while Chapter 5 is concerned with related phosphonium amides and phosphides. Chapter 6 deals with an extension of this work involving multifiinctional organic acids. Finally, Chapter 7 discusses unexpected results resulting from the work described in Chapter 6

The beggared mother : older women's narratives in West Bengal

In this article I wish to concentrate on the less often heard voices of older South Asian women by looking at the stories they tell about motherhood. Stories told by older women in West Bengal, from a mother's perspective, tend not to focus on the power of mothers and mothers-in-law, but on their powerlessness; not on the revered mother, but on the beggared and displaced one. I suggest that it is through such oral narratives that many Bengali women scrutinize and critique the social worlds they experience, giving voice to their experiences through the language of story. Many women come to believe, as they grow up and listen to the more dominant oral traditions and much of everyday talk, that becoming a mother-in-law and a mother of grown sons will lead to unparalleled freedoms, unquestioned authority, and devoted affection; but they encounter instead plaguing disappointments and troubling ambiguities. Their narratives form, then, a kind of subaltern voice, through which they present alternate visions of motherhood and a woman's old age, visions that contrast with the more official ones.orIssue title: South Asian Oral Traditions

Being Single in India

Today, the majority of the world’s population lives in a country with falling marriage rates, a phenomenon with profound impacts on women, gender, and sexuality. In this exceptionally crafted ethnography, Sarah Lamb probes the gendered trend of single women in India, examining what makes living outside of marriage for women increasingly possible and yet incredibly challenging. Featuring the stories of never-married women as young as 35 and as old as 92, this book offers a remarkable portrait of a way of life experienced by women across class and caste divides. For women in India, complex social-cultural and political-economic contexts are foundational to their lives and decisions, and remaining unmarried is often an unintended consequence of other pressing life priorities. Arguing that never-married women are able to illuminate their society’s broader social-cultural values, Lamb offers a new and startling look at prevailing systems in India today. “This pathbreaking book offers a vital analysis of the rising but unrecognized category of single women in a marriage-minded society such as India. Through beautifully rendered and diverse stories, Sarah Lamb challenges conventional wisdom.” —MARCIA C. INHORN, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University “For fans of Lamb’s evocative narratives on Bengali widows, her new book provides another rich look at the negative space of marriage: the rare demographic of single women in Bengal across class and caste.” —SRIMATI BASU, author of The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India “This lively ethnographic account makes several key contributions to feminist anthropological appraisals of marriage as an institution. Lamb renders a compelling, detailed, and sensitive portrait of compulsory heterosexuality and patriliny as seen from the margins.” —LUCINDA RAMBERG, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell Universit

Ecological Drivers of Brown Pelican Movement Patterns and Reproductive Success in the Gulf of Mexico

The effects of environmental change on vast, inaccessible marine ecosystems are often difficult to measure and detect. As accessible and highly visible apex predators in marine environments, seabirds are often selected as indicators for studying the effects of disturbance at lower trophic levels, although data are restricted both temporally and spatially. For example, studies of seabirds have historically been limited to the breeding season, with limited data being available throughout the remainder of the annual cycle. Additionally, understanding of habitat associations and behavior of seabirds in the marine environment comes primarily from pelagic seabirds, whose habitat year-round is generally in remote marine areas removed from anthropogenic development, while similar data from nearshore seabirds are less common. Such data gaps limit our understanding or life-history traits among seabirds, one of the most imperiled avian groups globally, and subsequently our ability to inform conservation and marine spatial planning. My goal was to examine ecological relationships of diet, breeding biology, and movement patterns of a nearshore tropical seabird, the Eastern brown pelican, in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most anthropogenically developed marine ecosystems worldwide. While my results supported previous findings that nutritional conditions are a key driver of seabird reproductive success and recruitment, they differ in suggesting that prey availability and delivery rates are more important to reproductive rates than energetic value of prey species. Since direct measurement of reproductive rates is time-consuming and difficult to collect, I also tested an integrated measure of nutritional stress during development, feather corticosterone, as a predictor of nestling survival and fledging rates. Corticosterone predicted 94% of inter-colony variation in fledging success and was also correlated with post-fledging survival, making it a powerful tool for measuring demographic patterns in this species. To measure adult movement patterns, I deployed bird-borne biologgers to collect highly accurate spatial data from pelicans throughout the annual cycle. I found that individual breeders quickly returned to normal behavior after capture and tagging. GPS tracking also indicated that pelicans were highly mobile, ranging over large areas during the breeding season and migrating up to 2,500 kilometers during non-breeding. Movement patterns were influenced by local conspecific competition during both breeding and migration, such that birds from larger colonies moved longer distances year-round compared to those from smaller colonies. I also found a high degree of spatial, temporal, and individual variation in exposure to surface pollutants across the population. I recorded a high degree of individual variation in movement, which interacted with pollutant exposure to create a complex and varying distribution of risk throughout the northern Gulf metapopulation of brown pelicans. Understanding the factors driving this variation will inform future monitoring, conservation, and mitigation efforts for this species

Fulfilling Lives: Supporting people with multiple needs, Evaluation Report, Year 1

This report is prepared for the Big Lottery Fund (the Fund) by the national evaluationteam and provides emerging findings and lessons learned from the first year of thenational evaluation of the Fulfilling Lives: Supporting people with multiple needsinitiative hereafter referred to as Fulfilling Lives (multiple needs).The national evaluation has been designed to determine the degree to which the initiativeis successfully achieving its aims and how they are being achieved. The evaluation will beboth formative and summative in nature, in that, it will inform the ongoing design and delivery of Fulfilling Lives (multiple needs) and its component projects as well as assessoverall achievements and value for money to inform future decision and policy making.Within this context, the evaluation has a number of objectives:— To track and assess the achievements of the initiative and to estimate the extent to whichthese are attributable to the projects and interventions delivered.— To calculate the costs of the projects and the corresponding value of benefits to theexchequer and wider society. This will enable an assessment of value for money of theprogramme and for individual interventions.— To identify what interventions and approaches work well, for which people, families andcommunities and in which circumstances and contexts.— To assess the extent to which the Big Lottery Fund's principles are incorporated into projectdesign and delivery and to determine the degree to which these principles affect successfuldelivery and outcomes.— To explore project implementation, understand problems faced and to facilitate theidentification of solutions and lessons learned

Controlling Cryptosporidium in vulnerable catchments used for drinking water supply

The overall aim of this project was to assess the potential to control Cryptosporidium in vulnerable catchments, using the Louth area in the Anglian Water region as a case study. This was completed through a literature review, a critical analysis of existing data and a four month sampling programme. It was found that Cryptosporidium oocysts which could potentially contaminate humans who get their drinking water from the downstream Covenham Water Treatment Works (WTW), were originating from Louth Sewage Treatment Works (STW). The oocysts from human or sheep hosts were entering Louth STW in the crude sewage. The STW collects and builds up the oocysts in the sludge holding tanks. When dewatering occurs, the sludge holding tanks release a large amount of Cryptosporidium into the STW, which in turn passes through the rest of the works, relatively untreated, into Louth Canal. The oocysts in Louth Canal were abstracted from, and added to, Covenham Reservoir. The oocysts from the reservoir occasionally passed through to Covenham WTW, where there is potential for human contamination. The literature review identified that treatment processes at Louth STW were less effective at oocyst removal than other research has indicated. Trickling filters and humus tanks removed a lower percentage of Cryptosporidium oocysts (17% and 44%) than literature suggested (91%). Overall, it appeared that during the sampling period, the works added 18 oocysts/l, when the influent and the final effluent of the works were compared. This is because of the episodic nature of oocysts and the way that they were being recycled in the works. Oocysts entering Louth STW seemed to be being concentrated in the sludge holding tanks and then recirculated in the sludge supernatant from the dewatering process, back to the primary settlement tanks. This meant that primary settlement at Louth STW was not as effective (-1299%) as literature suggests (54% removal) because of the additional input of oocysts to this treatment process. The concentration increase of Cryptosporidium oocysts within primary settlement tanks has not been observed previously. Not only did this appear at Louth STW, but also at Stamford STW, which was sampled as an additional STW. Because of this research, the operation and monitoring of the sludge at Louth STW is to be further investigated. Additional treatment options are to be considered at the STW and WTW, such as sand filtration at Louth STW and the installation of a permanent UV system or ultrafiltration at Covenham WTW. Further work would be to complete a more in depth analysis of more STWs to determine whether other sites have the same potential to accumulate and release Cryptosporidium. Another area for further study would be to look at the different combinations of treatments that STW use. This would help us understand why there are discrepancies in Cryptosporidium removal rates between sites. This would help to determine the most effective combination of treatment methods for the removal of Cryptosporidium during wastewater treatment

Is the POLST Model Desirable for Florida?

Florida has one ofthe largest and most rapidly growing elderly populations in the nation. Although advances in medicine are allowing physicians to extend the lives of elderly patients, advances must simultaneously be made in the end-of-life care arena to ensure that the comfort and quality of life of elderly patients is maintained. This paper argues that use of a Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form in Florida would be effective in increasing the accuracy oftranslating patients’ end-of-life wishes into treatment orders, in ensuring the consistency of treatment across settings, and in improving health care provider compliance with patient preferences. It will be demonstrated that present concerns in Florida are essentially the same as those which previously existed in other states that have successfully implemented POLST programs

Formation of Box Canyon, Idaho, by megaflood: implications for seepage erosion on Earth and Mars

Amphitheater- headed canyons have been used as diagnostic indicators of erosion by groundwater seepage, which has important implications for landscape evolution on Earth and astrobiology on Mars. Of perhaps any canyon studied, Box Canyon, Idaho, most strongly meets the proposed morphologic criteria for groundwater sapping because it is incised into a basaltic plain with no drainage network upstream, and approximately 10 cubic meters per second of seepage emanates from its vertical headwall. However, sediment transport constraints, ^4He and ^14C dates, plunge pools, and scoured rock indicate that a megaflood (greater than 220 cubic meters per second) carved the canyon about 45,000 years ago. These results add to a growing recognition of Quaternary catastrophic flooding in the American northwest, and may imply that similar features on Mars also formed by floods rather than seepage erosion

Development and delivery of an exercise programme for falls prevention: the Prevention of Falls Injury Trial (PreFIT)

This paper describes the development and implementation of an exercise intervention to prevent falls within The Prevention of Fall Injury Trial (PreFIT), which is a large multi-centred randomised controlled trial based in the UK National Health Service (NHS).Using the template for intervention description and replication (TIDieR) checklist, to describe the rationale and processes for treatment selection and delivery of the PreFIT exercise intervention.Based on the results of a validated falls and balance survey, participants were eligible for the exercise intervention if they were at moderate or high risk of falling.Intervention development was informed using the current evidence base, published guidelines, and pre-existing surveys of clinical practice, a pilot study and consensus work with therapists and practitioners. The exercise programme targets lower limb strength and balance, which are known, modifiable risk factors for falling. Treatment was individually tailored and progressive, with seven recommended contacts over a six-month period. Clinical Trials Registry (ISCTRN 71002650)

Psychometric properties of the Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life Scale (SAQOL-39) in a generic stroke population

Background: We previously developed the Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life scale (SAQOL-39) and tested it with people with chronic aphasia. A scale allowing comparisons of quality of life between people with versus without aphasia post-stroke would be of value to clinicians. Objectives: To evaluate the psychometrics of the SAQOL-39 in a generic stroke sample. Should this process result in a generic-stroke version of the scale (SAQOL-39g), a further aim is to compare the latter and the SAQOL-39 as tested in chronic aphasia. Design and subjects: Repeated measures psychometric study, evaluating internal consistency, test—retest reliability, construct validity and responsiveness to change. People admitted to hospital with a first stroke were assessed two weeks, three months and six months post stroke. Measures: SAQOL-39, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, Barthel, Frenchay Aphasia Screening Test, General Health Questionnaire-12 and Frenchay Activities Index. Results: Of 126 eligible participants, 96 (76%) participated and 87 (69%) were able to self-report and are presented here. Testing the SAQOL-39 in generic stroke resulted in the SAQOL-39g, which has the same items as the SAQOL-39 but three domains: physical, psychosocial, communication. The SAQOL-39g showed good internal consistency (α = 0.95 overall score, 0.92—0.95 domains), test—retest reliability (interclass correlation (ICC) = 0.96 overall, 0.92—0.98 domains), convergent (r = 0.36—0.70 overall, 0.47—0.78 domains) and discriminant validity (r = 0.26 overall, 0.03—0.40 domains). It differentiated people by stroke severity and visual analogue scale (VAS)-defined quality of life. Moderate changes (d = 0.35—0.49; standardized response mean (SRM) = 0.29—0.53) from two weeks to six months supported responsiveness. Conclusions: The SAQOL-39g demonstrated good reliability, validity and responsiveness to change. It can be used to evaluate quality of life in people with and without aphasia post stroke