Re-negotiating Ideologies of Bilingualism on the Margins of Education

This article reports on an ethnographic study carried out in three interrelated sites: two contrasting secondary schools and a Youth-Club (the principal focus of this article), in an area of southwest Wales. This article highlights the incongruence between the language at home and the language of the school and posits that the relationship between language use at school and in the wider community needs to be problematised and questioned far more than has been done thus far. This study questions whether school-based ideologies and school-based practices are re-negotiated or contested on the margins of education and whether this re-negotiation and contestation plays an important role in whether a young person chooses to use Welsh or English outside of school. It will be argued that recreational spaces, even though loosely connected to schools as institutions, function as more open spaces where institutional ideologies are actively reworked and renegotiated, either through choosing to use English or by mixing and blending different aspects of linguistic resources, or by re-negotiating and questioning which version of Welshness is more valuable, ‘the removed and authentic’ (as seen at the Welsh school) or the ‘new and hybrid’ as seen at the Youth-Club.

Field Evaluation of a Competitive Lateral-flow Assay for Detection of Alternaria brassicae in Vegetable Brassica Crops

On-site detection of inoculum of polycyclic plant pathogens could potentially contribute to management of disease outbreaks. A 6-min, in-field competitive immunochromatographic lateral flow device (CLFD) assay was developed for detection of Alternaria brassicae (the cause of dark leaf spot in brassica crops) in air sampled above the crop canopy. Visual recording of the test result by eye provides a detection threshold of approximately 50 dark leaf spot conidia. Assessment using a portable reader improved test sensitivity. In combination with a weather-driven infection model, CLFD assays were evaluated as part of an in-field risk assessment to identify periods when brassica crops were at risk from A. brassicae infection. The weather-driven model overpredicted A. brassicae infection. An automated 7-day multivial cyclone air sampler combined with a daily in-field CLFD assay detected A. brassicae conidia air samples from above the crops. Integration of information from an in-field detection system (CLFD) with weather-driven mathematical models predicting pathogen infection have the potential for use within disease management systems.