Action for cities : the Thatcher government and inner city policy

This article reintroduces the issue of the inner city into the project of understanding the Thatcher government. Through exploring how the Thatcher government formed urban policy in the 1980s, I want to make a contribution to the debate of whether 1979 saw a definite break with past approaches, or whether it is better seen as a continuation of the period of confusion and retreat which characterises much of the 1970s. Furthermore, I want to ask how much new policy ideas really did amount to a particularly Thatcherite, or indeed a neoliberal, urbanism, or whether it was more a case of returning to the admixture of dirigisme and deregulation that had long been at the heart of Tory approaches –albeit dressed up with new terminologies and often in new neo-vernacular styling. These questions are important for a broader issue of how we periodise the changes to cities in the post-war period

The lost world of the British leisure centre

This article presents the first historical account of the spectacular growth of British leisure centres throughout the 1970s. The first section explains why the concept of leisure became so prominent, and emphasizes the extent of the boom in construction of centres. The second section offers a tour of a pioneering leisure centre in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire. The third provides a history of a firm of architects, Gillinson, Barnett and Partners, who were particularly active in producing leisure centres. The article argues that leisure centres help us to revise a view of municipal government in this period as being sclerotic and moribund; instead the social democratic state is seen as expanding its purview and adapting in response to a range of issues

Museums and the ‘new museology’ : theory, practice and organisational change

The widening of roles and expectations within cultural policy discourses has been a challenge to museum workers throughout Great Britain. There has been an expectation that museums are changing from an ‘old’ to a ‘new museology’ that has shaped museum functions and roles. This paper outlines the limitations of this perceived transition as museum services confront multiple exogenous and endogenous expectations, opportunities, pressures and threats. Findings from 23 publically funded museum services across England, Scotland and Wales are presented to explore the roles of professional and hierarchical differentiation, and how there were organisational and managerial limitations to the practical application of the ‘new museology’. The ambiguity surrounding policy, roles and practice also highlighted that museum workers were key agents in interpreting, using and understanding wide-ranging policy expectations. The practical implementation of the ‘new museology’ is linked to the values held by museum workers themselves and how they relate it to their activities at the ground level

Surface fragmented QRS in a patient with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and malignant arrhythmias: Is there an association?

An 18- year old woman with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, aborted sudden cardiac death and implanted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), developed progressive fragmentation of her surface 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG). During the follow-up, she presented with multiple appropriate ICD discharges. Here, we discuss the possible association between surface fragmented ECG and the risk of ventricular arrhythmias in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Regarding the editorial by Sau and Ng. 'Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy risk stratification based on clinical or dynamic electrophysiological features: two sides of the same coin'

This Letter to the Editor refers to article ‘Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy risk stratification based on clinical or dynamic electrophysiological features: two sides of the same coin’ by Sau A, Ng, FS https://doi.org/10.1093/europace/euad072. ‘Response to the letter to the editor EUPC-D-23-00362 of Richard Saumarez’, by Arunashis Sau and Fu Siong Ng, https://doi.org/10.1093/europace/euad174

The classicism of Hugh Trevor-Roper

Hugh Trevor-Roper was educated as a classicist until he transferred to history, in which he made his reputation, after two years at Oxford. His schooling engendered in him a classicism that was characterised by a love of classical literature and style, but rested on a repudiation of the philological tradition in classical studies. This reaction helps to explain his change of intellectual career. His classicism, however, endured: it influenced his mature conception of the practice of historical studies, and can be traced throughout his life. This essay explores a neglected aspect of Trevor-Roper's intellectual biography through his ‘Apologia transfugae’ (1973), which explains his rationale for abandoning classics, and published and unpublished writings attesting to his classicism, especially his first publication ‘Homer unmasked!’ (1936) and his wartime notebooks

Myocardial energy depletion and dynamic systolic dysfunction in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Evidence indicates that anatomical and physiological phenotypes of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) stem from genetically mediated, inefficient cardiomyocyte energy utilization, and subsequent cellular energy depletion. However, HCM often presents clinically with normal left ventricular (LV) systolic function or hyperkinesia. If energy inefficiency is a feature of HCM, why is it not manifest as resting LV systolic dysfunction? In this Perspectives article, we focus on an idiosyncratic form of reversible systolic dysfunction provoked by LV obstruction that we have previously termed the 'lobster claw abnormality' — a mid-systolic drop in LV Doppler ejection velocities. In obstructive HCM, this drop explains the mid-systolic closure of the aortic valve, the bifid aortic pressure trace, and why patients cannot increase stroke volume with exercise. This phenomenon is characteristic of a broader phenomenon in HCM that we have termed dynamic systolic dysfunction. It underlies the development of apical aneurysms, and rare occurrence of cardiogenic shock after obstruction. We posit that dynamic systolic dysfunction is a manifestation of inefficient cardiomyocyte energy utilization. Systolic dysfunction is clinically inapparent at rest; however, it becomes overt through the mechanism of afterload mismatch when LV outflow obstruction is imposed. Energetic insufficiency is also present in nonobstructive HCM. This paradigm might suggest novel therapies. Other pathways that might be central to HCM, such as myofilament Ca2+ hypersensitivity, and enhanced late Na+ current, are discussed

Ruled by records: The expropriation of land and the misappropriation of lists in Islamabad

In this article, I investigate the ongoing battle between villagers on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, and the state development agency attempting to expropriate their land. This battle has been waged through the medium of documents, particularly lists, which villagers and colluding officials have used to defraud the Pakistani government of the equivalent of millions of dollars. Through this case study, I develop an approach to contemporary state governance as material practice, showing how government discourse is shaped by the material forms it takes and highlighting the issue of reference and predication (or how words relate to things). [ governance, documents, state, semiotics, technology, materiality, South Asia, Pakistan ]Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75363/1/j.1548-1425.2008.00095.x.pd

Should lethal arrhythmias in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy be predicted using non-electrophysiological methods?

While sudden cardiac death (SCD) in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is due to arrhythmias, the guidelines for prediction of SCD are based solely on non-electrophysiological methods. This study aims to stimulate thinking about whether the interests of patients with HCM are better served by using current, 'risk factor', methods of prediction or by further development of electrophysiological methods to determine arrhythmic risk. Five published predictive studies of SCD in HCM, which contain sufficient data to permit analysis, were analysed to compute receiver operating characteristics together with their confidence bounds to compare their formal prediction either by bootstrapping or Monte Carlo analysis. Four are based on clinical risk factors, one with additional MRI analysis, and were regarded as exemplars of the risk factor approach. The other used an electrophysiological method and directly compared this method to risk factors in the same patients. Prediction methods that use conventional clinical risk factors and MRI have low predictive capacities that will only detect 50-60% of patients at risk with a 15-30% false positive rate [area under the curve (AUC) = ∼0.7], while the electrophysiological method detects 90% of events with a 20% false positive rate (AUC = ∼0.89). Given improved understanding of complex arrhythmogenesis, arrhythmic SCD is likely to be more accurately predictable using electrophysiologically based approaches as opposed to current guidelines and should drive further development of electrophysiologically based methods