Field Studies: Bringing Historical Records Down to Earth

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-47
Author(s):  
Emily W. B. Russell Southgate
Keyword(s):  
Aerial Photography ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Soil Characteristics ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Remote Imaging ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ground Survey ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Over Time

There are many field techniques that take research beyond what can be found in written documents. Clues to the past are hidden in such subtle (and not so subtle) features as topographic modifications, soils, and tree trunks. Field studies search for evidence of conditions and for their resultant effects through a variety of techniques. Features may be evident from a ground survey, located precisely through GPS. Remote imaging, using a variety of techniques from simple aerial photography to lidar, reveal hidden patterns, that may then be studied on the ground. Archeological study relates the patterns found on the ground to human activities, as they have changed over time. Dendroecology interprets records left in tree rings. Some studies look at stands of different ages to study change over time, and long-term studies trace change in individual stands. In these field studies that look at the past, soil characteristics and materials hidden in the soil, such as DNA, stable isotopes and charcoal, can reveal details of past processes and species. These methods are illustrated with examples from a wide range of biomes.

Chinese Medicine Protein and Peptide in Gene and Cell Therapy

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yinlu Feng ◽  
Zifei Yin ◽  
Daniel Zhang ◽  
Arun Srivastava ◽  
Chen Ling
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Cell Therapy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Promising Strategy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Gene And Cell Therapy ◽  
Proteins And Peptides

The success of gene and cell therapy in clinic during the past two decades as well as our expanding ability to manipulate these biomaterials are leading to new therapeutic options for a wide range of inherited and acquired diseases. Combining conventional therapies with this emerging field is a promising strategy to treat those previously-thought untreatable diseases. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has evolved for thousands of years in China and still plays an important role in human health. As part of the active ingredients of TCM, proteins and peptides have attracted long-term enthusiasm of researchers. More recently, they have been utilized in gene and cell therapy, resulting in promising novel strategies to treat both cancer and non-cancer diseases. This manuscript presents a critical review on this field, accompanied with perspectives on the challenges and new directions for future research in this emerging frontier.

Anti-corruption in History

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Wellbeing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Legitimate Power ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Over Time

Anticorruption in History is the first major collection of case studies on how past societies and polities, in and beyond Europe, defined legitimate power in terms of fighting corruption and designed specific mechanisms to pursue that agenda. It is a timely book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem, undermining trust in government, financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the “path to Denmark”—a feted blueprint for stable and successful statebuilding. The resonance of this view explains why efforts to promote anticorruption policies have proliferated in recent years. But while the subjects of corruption and anticorruption have captured the attention of politicians, scholars, NGOs and the global media, scant attention has been paid to the link between corruption and the change of anticorruption policies over time and place. Such a historical approach could help explain major moments of change in the past as well as reasons for the success and failure of specific anticorruption policies and their relation to a country’s image (of itself or as construed from outside) as being more or less corrupt. It is precisely this scholarly lacuna that the present volume intends to begin to fill. A wide range of historical contexts are addressed, ranging from the ancient to the modern period, with specific insights for policy makers offered throughout.

Cognitive impairment in long-term benzodiazepine users

1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Golombok ◽  
Parimala Moodley ◽  
Malcolm Lader
Keyword(s):  
Neuropsychological Tests ◽  
Matched Control ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Therapeutic Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
High Doses ◽  
One Year

SynopsisIn view of the very extensive and often prolonged use of benzodiazepines in therapeutic practice, this study was designed to investigate whether or not cognitive ability is impaired in longterm benzodiazepine users, and to determine the nature and extent of any deficit. Fifty patients currently taking benzodiazepines for at least one year, thirty-four who had stopped taking benzodiazepines, and a matched control group of subjects who had never taken benzodiazepines or who had taken benzodiazepines in the past for less than one year were administered a battery of neuropsychological tests designed to measure a wide range of cognitive functions. It was found that patients taking high doses of benzodiazepines for long periods of time perform poorly on tasks involving visual-spatial ability and sustained attention. This is consistent with deficits in posterior cortical cognitive function.

The Final Score

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-210
Author(s):  
Steven M. Ortiz
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Professional Athlete ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Empowerment ◽  
Final Score ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Over Time

The conclusion provides some final observations about the longitudinal research itself and its short- and long-term effects on the women involved. It briefly touches on the few areas of the sport marriage that have seen improvement in the past few decades, discusses the conscious decisions the women make to continue normalizing the career-dominated marriage, and reports on how the marriages fared over time. It also describes the women’s personal empowerment as a result of their participation in the research. Finally, it summarizes the advice and suggested keys to a successful sport marriage that the wives in both studies offered, based on their lived experience. This overview essentially describes how and why the wife of a male professional athlete must adapt to realities if she wants her marriage to survive her husband’s career and retirement.

Legitimacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
George E. Mitchell ◽  
Hans Peter Schmitz ◽  
Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken
Keyword(s):  
Stakeholder Expectations ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Future ◽  
Governance Transparency ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 5 explores how the foundations for TNGO legitimacy have changed over time, creating imperatives for TNGOs to invest in new capabilities and adopt new practices. In the past, TNGOs derived legitimacy from their espoused principles, representational claims, elite expertise, demonstrated financial stewardship, commitment to charity, and patterns of conformity. More recently, TNGOs themselves have helped to bring about a shift toward new bases for legitimacy that focus on effectiveness, strategy, leadership, governance, transparency, and responsiveness. However, transitioning to the legitimacy practices of the future is complicated by the persistence of an antiquated architecture that still demands that TNGO conform to legacy expectations. Nevertheless, new approaches to enhancing legitimacy provide a wide range of opportunities that invite organizations to proactively align their aspirations with emerging stakeholder expectations.

scholarly journals O7C.2 Developing a measuring strategy for monitoring and evaluation of a national occupational health intervention programme in great britain (GB)

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. A64.3-A65
Author(s):  
Yiqun Chen ◽  
Andrew Curran
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
National Level ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Measurement Framework ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Over Time

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the GB regulator for health and safety at work. The HSE Health and Work (H&W) program designs and carries out a wide range of interventions; including inspection, enforcement and other regulatory activities as well as prevention; targeting priority health conditions in high-risk sectors. It is anticipated that long-term, sustainable and coordinated actions developed as part of the program will over time improve awareness, behaviors, control of exposures, and, as a result, prevent work-related ill health in GB workforce.An HSE Measuring Strategy, together with measurement framework and principles, has been developed. The measurement framework draws together data systems, covering Attitudes (A), Behaviors (B), Control of exposures (C), and Disease and work-related ill health reduction (D), based on a simple model to provide evidence required for evaluating the short, medium and long term impacts of the large scale and complex H&W program on the GB health and safety system. The Strategy gives a new focus on measuring behavioral changes and risk reductions; and emphasizes longitudinal measurement designs to assess progress over time.For developing the Strategy, workshops were organized to bring stakeholders across HSE to review existing systems for conducting population surveys, collecting exposure intelligence and occupational health surveillance, which have contributed to forming a long-term vision of fit-for-purpose measurement systems.We will present the development of the Strategy and the plans to implement it with the H&W program, which requires close collaborations between epidemiologists and social researchers, policy makers, and other multidisciplinary regulatory specialists. The lessons learnt will help HSE towards building the right evidence base for monitoring and evaluation of a range of national level intervention programs for work-related ill health prevention.©British Crown copyright (2019)

No Margin for Error: Fifteen Years in the Working Lives of Lone Mothers and their Children

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANE MILLAR ◽  
TESS RIDGE
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Qualitative Research Study ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lone Mothers ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Social Security Policy ◽  
Over Time

AbstractOver the past two decades, the emphasis on paid work has become one of the defining features of social security policy in the UK. Lone mothers and their families have been one of the key groups affected. In this article we focus on the working and family lives of lone mothers and their children over time, drawing on material from a long-term qualitative research study, and setting this in the context of policy developments. We explore the long-term consequences of trying to sustain work, and manage low-income family life as children grow up and needs change over time. This highlights some of the tensions and limitations in family support and relationships when resources are limited. We reflect on the links between insecurity, legacies and the state.

scholarly journals Medical Ethnography over Time

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Last
Keyword(s):  
Local Culture ◽  
Important Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Medical Ethnography ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

Too often, research into the health of a particular community is brief and superficial, focusing only on what is public and leaving the private health of women and children ‘foggy’. By contrast, long-term anthropology can offer access to processes taking place within a local culture of illness. Here, an account of a community’s experience of health over the past 50 years not only outlines the key changes as seen anthropologically but also shows how even close ethnography can initially miss important data. Furthermore, the impact of a researcher – both as a guest and as a source of interference – underlines how complex fieldwork can be in reality, especially if seen through the eyes of the researcher’s hosts.

scholarly journals A 40-million-year history of atmospheric CO 2

2013 ◽  
Vol 371 (2001) ◽  
pp. 20130096 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Ge Zhang ◽  
Mark Pagani ◽  
Zhonghui Liu ◽  
Steven M. Bohaty ◽  
Robert DeConto
Keyword(s):  
Middle Miocene ◽  
Carbon Fixation ◽  
Middle Eocene ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Algal Growth ◽  
Equatorial Atlantic ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range

The alkenone– p CO 2 methodology has been used to reconstruct the partial pressure of ancient atmospheric carbon dioxide ( p CO 2 ) for the past 45 million years of Earth's history (Middle Eocene to Pleistocene epochs). The present long-term CO 2 record is a composite of data from multiple ocean localities that express a wide range of oceanographic and algal growth conditions that potentially bias CO 2 results. In this study, we present a p CO 2 record spanning the past 40 million years from a single marine locality, Ocean Drilling Program Site 925 located in the western equatorial Atlantic Ocean. The trends and absolute values of our new CO 2 record site are broadly consistent with previously published multi-site alkenone–CO 2 results. However, new p CO 2 estimates for the Middle Miocene are notably higher than published records, with average p CO 2 concentrations in the range of 400–500 ppm. Our results are generally consistent with recent p CO 2 estimates based on boron isotope-pH data and stomatal index records, and suggest that CO 2 levels were highest during a period of global warmth associated with the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum (17–14 million years ago, Ma), followed by a decline in CO 2 during the Middle Miocene Climate Transition (approx. 14 Ma). Several relationships remain contrary to expectations. For example, benthic foraminiferal δ 18 O records suggest a period of deglaciation and/or high-latitude warming during the latest Oligocene (27–23 Ma) that, based on our results, occurred concurrently with a long-term decrease in CO 2 levels. Additionally, a large positive δ 18 O excursion near the Oligocene–Miocene boundary (the Mi-1 event, approx. 23 Ma), assumed to represent a period of glacial advance and retreat on Antarctica, is difficult to explain by our CO 2 record alone given what is known of Antarctic ice sheet history and the strong hysteresis of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet once it has grown to continental dimensions. We also demonstrate that in the Neogene with low CO 2 levels, algal carbon concentrating mechanisms and spontaneous biocarbonate–CO 2 conversions are likely to play a more important role in algal carbon fixation, which provides a potential bias to the alkenone– p CO 2 method.

scholarly journals Green Construction: Contractor Motivation and Trends in Austin, Texas

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Tinker ◽  
Urs Kreuter ◽  
Richard Burt ◽  
Sherry Bame
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Residential Construction ◽  
Sustainable Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Construction Contractor ◽  
Study Population ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

The purpose of this paper is to describe and assess one of the first comprehensive residential green-builder programs in the U.S. It compares trends of items used in residential construction during the past five years and reports why participating builders chose to incorporate specific items and their level of commitment to the program. This description provides a baseline of strategies to investigate the effect of this program in developing sustainable communities. The builder study population was derived from a database of registered “green” residences built during 1998-2002 in greater Austin, Texas (2,335 homes and 73 listed builders). Almost half the builders constructed just one “green” home, whereas two builders built almost 75% of the green homes during the 5-year study period. Less than 1% of the homes received a perfect 5-star rating, whereas 87% were rated 1 or 2 stars. The frequency of implementing the 122 green features were compared over time and analyzed for correlation with cost and their associated star-value. Cost was the primary factor determining item use frequency. Participating builders generally concurred that the program was successful and beneficial to homeowners but that the additional work required for participation provided little financial reward for builders. While much can be done with low-cost interventions to reduce the negative environmental impacts of residential construction, builder participation may be enhanced by promotion of some of the higher cost features. In addition, public education about the long-term benefits of green homes is needed to increase homeowner participation, and encourage builders to incorporate more environmentally friendly features in the homes they construct.

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