How Enid Blyton created the template for children's theatre in Britain

© 2021, The Conversation Trust (UK) Limited. This work is open access, published under Creative Commons — Attribution/No derivatives license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/Final Published versio

\u27The Mill on the Floss\u27 and \u27Silas Marner\u27: New Casebooks

This collection of essays on two of George Eliot\u27s most popular novels adds to the growing number of Casebooks produced by Palgrave. These are useful volumes, particularly for students, providing as they do a selection of recent critical perspectives. That said, I would have thought that The Mill on the Floss might have merited a volume all to itself; however the choice of essays contained herein provides some interesting links both within and across the two novels discussed. In their Introduction, the editors comment that \u27the essays reprinted in this New Casebook serve as a reminder of the dimensions of Eliot\u27s achievements and the complex and often open-ended questions her work elicits\u27, identifying Eliot as \u27realist, scientist and sage\u27 (5). As I mentioned above, the essays seem to have been chosen for the ways in which they link across the two novels, rather than because each exemplifies some particular aspect of Eliot studies, which means that the depth of Eliot criticism is not, perhaps, fully conveyed. However, there is much to enjoy in this volume. The inclusion of some of Sally Shuttleworth\u27s work on Eliot would probably be regarded as essential by most Eliot scholars, and her discussion of Silas Mamer from George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science concludes the collection. Other selections exhibit a variety of interpretive strategies, with the balance in terms of numbers slightly in favour of The Mill on the Floss. Contributions range from J. Hillis Miller\u27s deconstructionist reading of The Mill on the Floss to Jim Reilly\u27s historicist examination of Silas Mamer

Evaluating the relevance of the “Real Access” criteria as a framework for rural HCI research

Developing ICT software that is useful and usable in a rural context poses many problems. One of the major difficulties is understanding the real needs of the target users and the constraints imposed by the rural environment. Many techniques exist in the field of human computer interaction (HCI) that attempt to understand the needs of the target user but many are not useful in a rural context (or a least not when applied in a standard way). This paper presents some existing HCI research techniques that are applicable in a rural context and shows how they fit into the Bridges.org ‘Real Access’ framework.NRF, Telkom, Siemens, THRIP, IDRC, SANPADDepartment of HE and Training approved lis

Assessing the suitability of user centric design methods when applied in a developing world context

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-233).The application of information and communication technologies to development (ICT4Dev) is widely believed to have the potential to improve livelihoods in developing regions. Within the field of HCI, it is recognised that user-centred design (UCD) methodologies need to be applied if ICT4Dev activities are to yield locally appropriate technologies. However, there is no overarching methodology or framework for the application of UCD within 4Dev design initiatives. This thesis sets out to explore which UCD methods best enable designers to work successfully outside their own contexts, what challenges arise and how UCD methodologies can be developed to support ICT4Dev designers. Two field studies were conducted, applying two UCD methodologies: An empathic and a technology probing approach. In each case the author designed an artefact, evaluated it in situ and reflected on the suitability of the design methods, tools and techniques employed. The design environments were the rural Eastern Cape Province and the township of Khayelitsha near Cape Town, both in South Africa. An empathic approach was found to have two major shortcomings: It was unable to overcome significant communication challenges and, partly as a result, it failed to identify major design problems until very late in the process. The major benefit of technology probing was its open-ended nature, which fostered user engagement and participation and yielded valuable design inspiration for future modifications of the probe. However, the emergent scenarios of use in the case of a technology probe were heavily influenced by the nature of the technology itself. We thus conclude that technology probing, while it has a valuable place in the ICT4Dev design toolbox, should be deployed in tandem with other techniques to ensure that important livelihoods problems are not overlooked

Hunting the parent of the orphan stream: Identifying stream members from low-resolution spectroscopy

We present candidate K-giant members in the Orphan Stream that have been identified from low-resolution data taken with the AAOmega spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. From modest signal-to-noise spectra and independent cuts in photometry, kinematics, gravity, and metallicity we yield self-consistent, highly probable stream members. We find a revised stream distance of 22.5 ± 2.0 kpc near the celestial equator and our kinematic signature peaks at V GSR = 82.1 ± 1.4 km s-1. The observed velocity dispersion of our most probable members is consistent with arising from the velocity uncertainties alone. This indicates that at least along this line of sight, the Orphan Stream is kinematically cold. Our data indicate an overall stream metallicity of [Fe/H] = -1.63 ± 0.19 dex which is more metal-rich than previously found and unbiased by spectral type. Furthermore, the significant metallicity dispersion displayed by our most probable members, σ([Fe/H]) = 0.56 dex, suggests that the unidentified Orphan Stream parent is a dSph satellite. We highlight likely members for high-resolution spectroscopic follow-up

Intranasal immunisation with recombinant adenovirus vaccines protects against a lethal 2 challenge with pneumonia virus of mice

Pneumonia virus of mice (PVM) infection of BALB/c mice induces bronchiolitis leading to a fatal pneumonia in a dose-dependent manner, closely paralleling the development of severe disease during human respiratory syncytial virus infection in man, and is thus a recognised model in which to study the pathogenesis of pneumoviruses. This model system was used to investigate delivery of the internal structural proteins of PVM as a potential vaccination strategy to protect against pneumovirus disease. Replication-deficient recombinant human adenovirus serotype 5 (rAd5) vectors were constructed that expressed the M or N gene of PVM pathogenic strain J3666. Intranasal delivery of these rAd5 vectors gave protection against a lethal challenge dose of PVM in three different mouse strains, and protection lasted for at least 20 weeks post-immunisation. Whilst the PVM-specific antibody response isuch animals was weak and inconsistent, rAd5N primed a strong PVM-specific CD8+ T cell response and, to a lesser extent, a CD4+ T cell response. These findings suggest that protection induced by rAd5N was mediated by T-cells rather than serum antibody

Creating and sharing multi-media packages using large situated public displays and mobile phones

This paper will describe a novel interaction technique that allows mobile phone users to create and share contextualised media packages between their personal, BlueTooth enabled camera phones, and situated public displays. Unlike other solutions to this problem, the one presented in this paper does not require any specialist software or hardware on the user’s handset. We believe this technique has the potential to revolutionise how people donate and retrieve digital media files without incurring any direct cost