Stigma narratives: LGBT transitions and identities in Malta

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ 2011 A B Academic Publishers.This article considers narratives of transition experiences of a group of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) young people in Malta. The article draws on Goffman's concept of stigma and uses this to explore transitions in a society that retains some traditional characteristics, particularly the code of honour and shame, although mediated by aspects of modernity. Interviews were undertaken with 15 young people with the goal of producing narratives. The article analyses the experience of stigma, its effects and how young people manage its consequences. It concludes by drawing attention to the pervasive nature of stigma and the importance of structure, agency and reflexivity in youth transitions. In particular stigma remains an important feature of societies in which hetero-normative sexuality remains dominant

Grassland Management Practices and the Diversity of Soil Nematode Communities

Nematodes are numerically abundant in northern temperate grassland soils where, through their feeding on plants, soil microbes and each other as well as being a food resource, they contribute to soil functioning and affect plant soil interrelationships. Permanent plant cover and the consequent abundance of root tissue supply a year-round food supply. There are only limited data on the effects of root-feeding by nematodes on the growth and development of pasture plants but under some circumstances above-ground biomass may be reduced. Herbivory by specific nematode parasites may not only directly affect the host plant but also promote soil microbial activity and nutrient fluxes. Nematodes in other feeding groups interact directly with the microbial communities influencing soil processes, including decomposition and mineralisation

Investigating the impact of GIS modelled daily exposures to the retail food environment on routinely linked child health data

Obesity continues to be a huge public health concern around the globe, and numbers are projected to continue to increase. There is particular concern around the issue of obesity in children because obese children are far more likely become obese adults than children who are a healthy weight. We have so far been ineffective in developing successful public health policies and interventions that report population level reductions in obesity. In order to tackle obesity on a large scale, we need to be creative and develop interventions and policies that drive societal change.The cause of obesity has been found to be not a linear relationship of cause and effect but a complex and multifaceted system. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are being used to more fully understand the role of the environment on obesity. There has been a particular focus on exposure to the ‘retail food environment’ (RFE) and how this may be linked with obesity. Currently, GIS modelled exposures to the RFE along routes to and from school are not adequate to make reliable predictions about exposure. Instead, GPS data are used to obtain accurate exposures. This thesis has developed a GIS method to generate population level exposures to the RFE. In order to advise policies and interventions that will effectively cause societal change, population level research must be undertaken. A novel way that this type of research can be undertaken is through data linkage. This study has calculated exposures to the RFE for school children aged 13-14 years in south Wales and linked these exposures to individual level health data held within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank (SAIL). These results contribute to the evidence base and shed light on new aspects of the built environment that can be altered to encourage healthy lifestyles

Evaluation of a White Clover Variety With Increased Resistance to Stem Nematode (\u3cem\u3eDitylenchus Dipsaci\u3c/em\u3e) Under Sheep Grazing and Cutting

Stem nematode (Ditylenchus dipsaci (Kühn) Filipjev) is a major pest of white clover (Trifolium repens L.) in UK pastures (Cook et al., 1992a) and in other parts of the world. In a previous trial, resistant and susceptible selections yielded the same in three years in the absence of the nematode but, on infested plots, the susceptible yielded the same as the resistant selection in year 1 but only 68 and 58% in years 2 and 3, as the nematode infestation increased (Cook et al., 1992b). We have now developed varieties with enhanced resistance to this pest by screening under controlled conditions (Plowright et al., 2002). We describe an experiment to test the hypothesis that stress imposed on the plant by grazing as opposed to cutting management would exacerbate the effects of nematode infestation and accentuate the advantages of resistance through longer survival of clover plants

Theorising age and generation in development: A relational approach

This introduction outlines the analytical approach informing the articles presented in this special issue. The project of ‘generationing’ development involves re-thinking development as distinctly generational in its dynamics. For this, we adopt a relational approach to the study of young people in development, which overcomes the limitations inherent to common categorising approaches. Concepts of age and generation are employed to conceptualise young people as social actors and life phases such as childhood and youth in relational terms. Acknowledging the centrality of young people in social reproduction puts them at the heart of development studies and leads the articles comprising this special issue to explore how young people’s agency shapes and is shaped by the changing terms of social reproduction brought about by development

Southern Greenland glaciation and Western Boundary Undercurrent evolution recorded on Eirik Drift during the late Pliocene intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.We present new sedimentological and environmental magnetic records spanning ~3.2–2.2 Ma, during the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, from North Atlantic Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site U1307 on Eirik Drift. Our new datasets and their high-fidelity age control demonstrate that while inland glaciers – and potentially also at times restricted marine-terminating ice-caps – have likely existed on southern Greenland since at least ~3.2 Ma, persistent and extensive marine-terminating glacial margins were only established in this region at 2.72 Ma, ~300 kyr later than in northeastern and eastern Greenland. Despite a dramatic increase in Greenland-sourced ice-rafted debris deposition on Eirik Drift at this time, contemporaneous changes in the bulk magnetic properties of Site U1307 sediments, and a reduction in sediment accumulation rates, suggest a decrease in the delivery of Greenland-sourced glaciofluvial silt, which we attribute to a shift in depositional regime from bottom-current-dominated to glacial-IRD- dominated between ~2.9–2.7 Ma in response to a change in the depth of the flow path of the Western Boundary Undercurrent relative to our study site

Children and young people's body mass index measures derived from routine data sources: A national data linkage study in Wales.

BACKGROUND: Routine monitoring of Body Mass Index (BMI) in general practice, and via national surveillance programmes, is essential for the identification, prevention, and management of unhealthy childhood weight. We examined and compared the presence and representativeness of children and young people's (CYPs) BMI recorded in two routinely collected administrative datasets: general practice electronic health records (GP-BMI) and the Child Measurement Programme for Wales (CMP-BMI), which measures height and weight in 4-5-year-old school children. We also assessed the feasibility of combining GP-BMI and CMP-BMI data for longitudinal analyses. METHODS: We accessed de-identified population-level GP-BMI data for calendar years 2011 to 2019 for 246,817 CYP, and CMP-BMI measures for 222,772 CYP, held within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank. We examined the proportion of CYP in Wales with at least one GP-BMI record, its distribution by child socio-demographic characteristics, and trends over time. We compared GP-BMI and CMP-BMI distributions. We quantified the proportion of children with a CMP-BMI measure and a follow-up GP-BMI recorded at an older age and explored the representativeness of these measures. RESULTS: We identified a GP-BMI record in 246,817 (41%) CYP, present in a higher proportion of females (54.2%), infants (20.7%) and adolescents. There was no difference in the deprivation profile of those with a GP-BMI measurement. 31,521 CYP with a CMP-BMI had at least one follow-up GP-BMI; those with a CMP-BMI considered underweight or very overweight were 87% and 70% more likely to have at least one follow-up GP-BMI record respectively compared to those with a healthy weight, as were males and CYP living in the most deprived areas of Wales. CONCLUSIONS: Records of childhood weight status extracted from general practice are not representative of the population and are biased with respect to weight status. Linkage of information from the national programme to GP records has the potential to enhance discussions around healthy weight at the point of care but does not provide a representative estimate of population level weight trajectories, essential to provide insights into factors determining a healthy weight gain across the early life course. A second CMP measurement is required in Wales

Catalyst‐mediated enhancement of carbon nanotube textiles by laser irradiation: Nanoparticle sweating and bundle alignment

The photonic post-processing of suspended carbon nanotube (CNT) ribbons made by floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition (FC-CVD) results in selective sorting of the carbon nanotubes present. Defective, thermally non-conductive or unconnected CNTs are burned away, in some cases leaving behind a highly crystalline (as indicated by the Raman G:D ratio), highly conductive network. However, the improvement in crystallinity does not always occur but is dependent on sample composition. Here, we report on fundamental features, which are observed for all samples. Pulse irradiation (not only by laser but also white light camera flashes, as well as thermal processes such as Joule heating) lead to (1) the sweating-out of catalyst nanoparticles resulting in molten catalyst beads of up to several hundreds of nanometres in diameter on the textile surface and (2) a significant improvement in CNT bundle alignment. The behavior of the catalyst beads is material dependent. Here, we show the underlying mechanisms of the photonic post-treatment by modelling the macro- and microstructural changes of the CNT network and show that it is mainly the amount of residual catalyst which determines how much energy these materials can withstand before their complete decomposition

Bringing the Street Back In:Considering Strategy, Contingency and Relative Good Fortune in Street Children’s Access to Paid Work in Accra

A sociology of street children has emerged defined by its rejection of the dominant narratives of child welfare organisations that identify the street as the root cause of children’s immiseration and improper socialisation. In its place, sociological analysis has undermined the value of conceptualising street children as a coherent group on the street and in a parallel move has looked to conceptually reposition street children away from assumptions of passivity and neglect, towards a foundational insistence that the starting place for analysis is the positioning of street children as active and strategic social agents. It is the adequacy of this latter concern that is the focus of this article. By reintroducing the location of children within the social relations of the informal street economy, this article draws upon extensive and long-term qualitative research examining the lives of street children in Accra, Ghana. The argument here is that sociological notions of strategic action and efficacious agency seem ill-suited to accounting for the dilemmas and difficulties that street children’s quests for paid work inevitably involve. Rather, it is relative good fortune within the radical uncertainty of the social relations of the informal street economy that seems much more appropriate to accounting for how these children are integrated into wor

Study protocol for investigating the impact of community home modification services on hospital utilisation for fall injuries: a controlled longitudinal study using data linkage

Introduction: This study will evaluate the effectiveness of home adaptations, both in preventing hospital admissions due to falls for older people, and improving timely discharge. Results will provide evidence for services at the interface between health and social care, informing policies seeking to promote healthy ageing through prudent healthcare and fall prevention. Methods and analysis: All individuals living in Wales, UK, aged 60 years and over, will be included in the study using anonymised linked data from the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank. We will use a national database of home modifications implemented by the charity organisation Care & Repair Cymru (C&R) from 2009 to 2017 to define an intervention cohort. We will use the electronic Frailty Index to assign individual levels of frailty (fit, mild, moderate or severe) and use these to create a comparator group (non-C&R) of people who have not received a C&R intervention. Coprimary outcomes will be quarterly numbers of emergency hospital admissions attributed to falls at home, and the associated length of stay. Secondary outcomes include the time in moving to a care home following a fall, and the indicative financial costs of care for individuals who had a fall. We will use appropriate multilevel generalised linear models to analyse the number of hospital admissions related to falls. We will use Cox proportional hazard models to compare the length of stay for fall-related hospital admissions and the time in moving to a care home between the C&R and non-C&R cohorts. We will assess the impact per frailty group, correct for population migration and adjust for confounding variables. Indicative costs will be calculated using financial codes for individual-level hospital stays. Results will provide evidence for services at the interface between health and social care, informing policies seeking to promote healthy ageing through prudent healthcare and prevention. Ethics and dissemination: Information governance requirements for the use of record-linked data have been approved and only anonymised data will be used in our analysis. Our results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. We will also work with lay members and the knowledge transfer team at Swansea University to create communication and dissemination materials on key findings