2,027 research outputs found
Technological Innovation and Adaption: Tyndrum Lead Mine and the German Managers, 1838 to 1865
In 1838 the second Marquis of Breadalbane, having failed to lease the mineral rights at Tyndrum lead mine on the Campbell family estate in the southern Scottish highlands, made a decision to work the mine himself. When he began his operation, the mine was nearing exhaustion and what little productivity remained was hindered by increasingly complex mineralisation. The Marquis, however, was convinced that the mine could still produce great wealth; he looked to Germany for expertise and employed a succession of German mining engineers to manage his ailing operation. The survival of their monthly progress reports and other documentation offers a unique perspective on the Scottish lead mining industry and the adaptive strategies, in terms of technological innovation and mining practices, that the Germans employed to prolong the venture's economic survival
Seeing, Feeling, Doing: Mandatory Ultrasound Laws, Empathy and Abortion
In recent years, a number of US states have adopted laws that require pregnant women to have an ultrasound examination, and be shown images of their foetus, prior to undergoing a pregnancy termination. In this paper, I examine one of the basic presumptions of these laws: that seeing one’s foetus changes the ways in which
one might act in regard to it, particularly in terms of the decision to terminate the pregnancy or not. I argue that mandatory ultrasound laws compel women into a position of moral spectatorship and require them to recognise the foetus as a being for whom they are responsible, particularly through empathic responses to ultrasound images. The approach I propose extends the project of a bioethics of the image and
highlights the need for a critical analysis of the political mobilization of empathy in discussions of abortion
The Riches Beneath our Feet: How Mining Shaped Britain
Output Type: Book Revie
A Comparison of Relaxation Techniques on Blood Pressure Reactivity and Recovery Assessing the Moderating Effect of Anger Coping Style
This study examined the relationship of anger coping style and relaxation techniques on cardiovascular reactivity and recovery in blood pressure (BP). Eighty-nine students from Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia participated. The participants were instructed to rest for ten minutes (baseline), complete a math task with harassment for 6 minutes (stressor), and engage in one of three recovery conditions (a standard control (SC), diaphragmatic breathing (DB), or mantra recitation (MR) without breathing instructions) for 10 minutes. The Spielberger State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) was utilized to measure trait anger coping style. Participants were compensated $25. It was hypothesized that DB would show the greatest reduction in BP during the recovery period and those individuals with high Anger-In or Anger-Out trait coping style scores would exhibit greater cardiovascular reactivity and slower cardiovascular recovery. It was also hypothesized that high cardiovascular reactivity would be associated with high baseline BP and anger coping style would moderate the effect of relaxation techniques on BP.
A planned (apriori) simple contrast revealed a significant effect for DB on diastolic blood pressure (DBP) during 10 minutes of recovery, F (1, 85) = 6.11, p \u3c .05, such that DB demonstrated the greatest reduction in DBP in comparison to the SC and MR. Greater physiological responses to stress were not associated with higher baseline BP; baseline BP was not significantly related to BP reactivity for baseline systolic blood pressure (SBP) and SBP reactivity, r = .20, ns, for baseline SBP and DBP reactivity, r = .13, ns, for baseline DBP and DBP reactivity, r = .03, ns, or baseline DBP and SBP reactivity r = .16, ns. There were no significant results found to indicate an interaction or main effect of trait anger coping style by recovery condition on recovery BP. Given the significant result for DB\u27s effectiveness at reducing DBP after a stressor, this information may be useful when treating hypertensive patients. Relaxation techniques should be considered an adjunctive treatment for high BP along with hypertensive medication as they can be cost effective at reducing BP
The politics of mere life : Foucault, Butler and Agamben on biopolitics, subjectivation and violence
A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminilization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV
Each year in the United States, thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Two Spirit, queer, questioning and gender non-conforming (LGBT) people and people living with HIV come in contact with the criminal justice system and fall victim to similar miscarriages of justice.According to a recent national study, a startling 73% of all LGBT people and PLWH surveyed have had face-to-face contact with police during the past five years.1 Five percent of these respondents also report having spent time in jail or prison, a rate that is markedly higher than the nearly 3% of the U.S. adult population whoare under some form of correctional supervision (jail, prison, probation, or parole) at any point in time.In fact, LGBT people and PLWH, especially Native and LGBT people and PLWH of color, aresignificantly overrepresented in all aspects of the penal system, from policing, to adjudication,to incarceration. Yet their experiences are often overlooked, and little headway has been madein dismantling the cycles of criminalization that perpetuate poor life outcomes and push already vulnerable populations to the margins of society.The disproportionate rate of LGBT people and PLWH in the criminal system can best be understoodin the larger context of widespread and continuing discrimination in employment, education, socialservices, health care, and responses to violence
Occupational Exposure to Heavy Metals Poisoning: Scottish Lead Mining
The study examines historic occupational lead poisoning (occupational plumbism) amongst the mining labour force at Tyndrum lead mine in the Scottish southern highlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries set against the backdrop of the wider national context. Traditional archival research is combined with environmental science to both identify incidence of poisoning and the historic health risk factors that were specific to the industry, particularly at the surface of the mine. Emphasis is placed upon employment practices, technology and wider social conditions such as diet and alcohol and the toxicity of the different compounds of lead (mineralogy) that the workers were exposed too
National Citizen Service: A Geographical Approach
This three year project examined the state’s motivations behind, the voluntary sector’s engagement with, and young people’s experiences of, National Citizen Service.
National Citizen Service (NCS) is a UK government funded voluntary scheme for 15-17 year olds in England and Northern Ireland delivered through a range of social enterprises, charities and private sector partnerships. Since 2011, over 300,000 young people have completed NCS – a short-term programme with two residential experiences and 30 hours of a social action project (further details on page 6).
Using NCS as a case-study, and positioning this new scheme within the historical context of youth citizenship development, this research project addresses timely and policy-relevant debates on the state and civil society, and contributes to academic debates on youth citizenship, volunteering and informal education
Competition between specialist and generalist species in computational and experimental model ecosystems
An ecological community is complex and the mechanisms behind the assembly
of such a community are still poorly understood. Here, we concentrate on
the question of what mechanisms affect the proportion of specialists and the
proportion of generalists in a community.
First, we use an individual-based model to explore the effects of the available
resource spectrum on the specialist-generalist balance in well-mixed and spatially
structured environments. In the well-mixed model, we uncover a new mechanism
which we term `resource spectrum engineering', in which opportunistic specialists
occupying small niches in a mostly generalist community can change the resource
spectrum that is experienced by other species strongly disfavouring generalists
and causing a community-wide shift towards specialist strategies. Extending
to a spatially structured model in which the dispersal distance of species may
be limited, we find that specialism is linked to intermediate dispersal lengths,
whereas generalism is linked to short and long dispersal lengths.
We then investigate two real microbial systems, using 16rRNS sequence data. In
the first experiment, we identify functional groups of specialists and generalists
by perturbing the microbial environment with variable nutrient concentrations
and establishing which groups survive across different concentrations and which
do not. In the second experiment we use many replicates of samples from the
same source to find co-occur find that generalist species may be more likely
to be dependant on the presence of each other than on specific environmental
conditions
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