The character and denomination of shares in the Victorian equity market

The seminal work of J. B. Jefferys highlighted two unusual features of the Victorian equity market, namely high share denomination and uncalled capital. This article examines the extent to which publicly traded company stocks in the nineteenth century had these features. It also analyses the effect of these features on stock returns using monthly data for the London Stock Market over the period 1825–70. We find that stocks with unpaid capital earned a higher return, which is consistent with investors being rewarded for the risk of a call on their personal assets. We also find that stocks with a high share denomination earned a lower return, which is consistent with the view that this feature was conducive to superior corporate governance.

Family Caregivers and Palliative Care: Current Status and Agenda for the Future

The quality of life of the person confronting the end stages of their life may be severely compromised without the support of family caregivers. Indeed, most people requiring palliative care would not be able to fulfill their preferences, such as care at home, without significant family caregiver input. As a consequence, health services are mandated to support the family alongside the person diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. In short, palliative care is supposed to be family centred. However, the quality and type of support made available to family caregivers has been questioned. The purpose of this review is to outline a succinct and empirically informed account of family caregiving within the context of palliative care and to propose an agenda for the future. The appraisal is underpinned by several systematic reviews, and other seminal publications from the last decade.

Becoming a national composer: critical reception to c.1925

The centrality of Vaughan Williams to British music in the first half of the twentieth century is now a commonplace in musicology, but this has not always been so. Prior to 1914 Vaughan Williams was regarded by a number of British critics as a figure of considerable potential, but of less interest than composers like Granville Bantock, Cyril Scott, and Joseph Holbrooke: a reflection, in part, of the many different strands that existed in musical modernism in pre-war Britain, as well as scepticism that Vaughan Williams's engagement with English folksong offered anything original. In this chapter, I consider this inauspicious early period of Vaughan Williams reception, when even works considered seminal today like the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis were received by some critics with bewilderment, and the changes that took place in the years after World War One after which Vaughan Williams became the leader of British musical modernism. I argue that Vaughan Williams's emergence reflects a change in attitude by British critics to modernism in general, to their approach to musical criticism, and to Vaughan Williams's musical language; in particular I note the distinction increasingly drawn by critics between folksong arrangements and a musical language derived from folksong.

“ Humanitarian Competition: An Intellectual History in Perspective”.

Competition has become the mantra for survival in a globalised world where meaningful existence is fraught with demands, which go beyond the material to the immaterial ‘byte-size’. This has been exemplified by our obsession with illusions of immediate fame and fortune. This paper contextualises and extends the debate about the role of competition in general. Here the four major myths of competition are explored and deconstructed, from a Darwinian perspective to a more demonstrably engaged perspective on ‘capabilities’ (Sen, 1999). The second section deals particularly with the key debates, theories that influenced Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s seminal ideas of ‘humanitarian competition’ in 1903. The final part of the paper seeks to decipher the relevance of the key ideas of ‘humanitarian competition’ as proposed by Dr Daisaku Ikeda in his 2009 peace proposal. Here the transition from competition to cooperation is explored by tying together the key principles of global coexistence enunciated by both Makiguchi and Ikeda in the context of expanding spiritual influence by the forces of culture, morality and virtue. To engage with humanitarian competition calls for a major shift from hard power to soft power, from subordination to one of engagement. In other words this concept advances the Buddhist principle of peaceful co-existence, or Panchsheel, as a norm for human behaviour of love, kindness, sacrifice and peace through cooperation, where equality and mutual benefit are critical. Humanitarian competition provides the essential framework to establish a new world order as highlighted by both Makiguchi and Ikeda.

Semiotics, Presence and the Sublime in the Work of Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier, in his uncompromising exploration into the artistic potential of acoustic phenomena, has developed a body of work that remains highly original and hugely influential across many disciplines. His seminal works such as I am sitting in a room and Music for Solo Performer foreshadowed ways of approaching sound that are in common use among electro-acoustic composers, installation artists, as well as in commercial products. Lucier, despite his far reaching influence, is and has always been a composer, and his explorations of acoustics have been singularly focused on the development of a rich body of music. In this article, I investigate Lucier’s unique approach and attitude towards acoustics and aspire to enumerate important aesthetic developments he has made in creating music through the exploration of acoustic phenomena. In particular, this article seeks to investigate the role of semiotics in Lucier’s work, commenting on the pre-linguistic nature of Lucier’s approach to acoustic phenomenon. Here as well, an exploration of Lucier’s musical materials takes place, focusing on his instrumental compositions, specifically Diamonds for One, Two or Three Orchestras, where instruments are used as catalysts to generate in real-time acoustic phenomenon which interact to produce a rich yet intimate world of sound. Finally, Lucier’s approach to semiotics and real-time generation of music is viewed through a sublime aesthetic provoking questions regarding issues of presence and the now.

'False, fleeting, perjured Clarence': pseudonymity and criminality in the writings of James Clarence Mangan

This article explores the significance of the adopted partial pseudonym “Clarence” to James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), who is increasingly regarded as the most important Irish poet before W. B. Yeats. Tracing the literary history of “Clarence” from Shakespeare to Maria Edgeworth, this essay argues that the intriguing adoption exposes a preoccupation with themes of unlawful textual copying that is at the centre of Mangan’s imagination. These tropes assume singular significance when appreciated alongside Mangan’s profession as a scrivener. While literary criticism has separated Mangan the poet from Mangan the legal scribe, his hitherto under-explored assumption of “Clarence” provides a clue to their close and crucial connection. These themes of pseudonymity, copying, and criminality combine with particular resonance in his quasi-translation “The Man in the Cloak” (1838) to open up new perspectives on Mangan’s writing and its participation in wider European cultural contexts and concerns. The essay will conclude with a salient comparison of Mangan’s story with Nikolay Gogol’s seminal story “The Overcoat”, or, “The Cloak” (1842).

Differences in the Endocannabinoid System of Sperm from Fertile and Infertile Men

Male infertility is a major cause of problems for many couples in conceiving a child. Recently, lifestyle pastimes such as alcohol, tobacco and marijuana have been shown to have further negative effects on male reproduction. The endocannabinoid system (ECS), mainly through the action of anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG) at cannabinoid (CB(1), CB(2)) and vanilloid (TRPV1) receptors, plays a crucial role in controlling functionality of sperm, with a clear impact on male reproductive potential. Here, sperm from fertile and infertile men were used to investigate content (through LC-ESI-MS), mRNA (through quantitative RT-PCR), protein (through Western Blotting and ELISA) expression, and functionality (through activity and binding assays) of the main metabolic enzymes of AEA and 2-AG (NAPE-PLD and FAAH, for AEA; DAGL and MAGL for 2-AG), as well as of their binding receptors CB(1), CB(2) and TRPV1. Our findings show a marked reduction of AEA and 2-AG content in infertile seminal plasma, paralleled by increased degradation: biosynthesis ratios of both substances in sperm from infertile versus fertile men. In addition, TRPV1 binding was detected in fertile sperm but was undetectable in infertile sperm, whereas that of CB(1) and CB(2) receptors was not statistically different in the two groups. In conclusion, this study identified unprecedented alterations of the ECS in infertile sperm, that might impact on capacitation and acrosome reaction, and hence fertilization outcomes. These alterations might also point to new biomarkers to determine male reproductive defects, and identify distinct ECS elements as novel targets for therapeutic exploitation of ECS-oriented drugs to treat male fertility problems. 

Centres, Peripheries and Party Systems: nested secession processes in Great Britain and Ireland

The seminal work of Lipset and Rokkan, which explores how party systems evolved organically from nineteenth-century roots, has generally been applied in states which have enjoyed a long-standing territorial identity. Their model's emphasis on stability and predictability can, however, be reconciled with circumstances where the very identity of the state itself is an issue. This article explores the capacity of the model to explain party divisions in three nested contexts: the pre-1922 United Kingdom, which encountered problems with its Celtic peripheries, and especially with Ireland; independent Ireland, where a unique party system developed, largely in response to a broader historical and geographical context; and Northern Ireland, where party politics fossilised in the 1880s, and began to unfreeze only in the 1970s. The article argues that the Lipset–Rokkan model casts valuable light on these processes, which in turn contribute to the theoretical richness of the model.

‘Reconsidering Dermot Bolger’s Grotesquery: Class and Sexuality in The Journey Home’

Dermot Bolger's The Journey Home (1990) narrates an often hyperbolic and overblown diatribe against a litany of social and political ills, which elicited frequently critical responses to the novel from reviewers. Yet Bolger's seminal work remains both popular and controversial because of its capacity to shock and upbraid the false morality of Irish society--a society that the author considered to be riven by class inequalities and official abuses. Bolger employs sexual abuse as a metonym for political corruption in the novel, and this essay explores The Journey Home's surreal story of youth in a working-class Dublin suburb in light of more recent revelations of Ireland's legacy of institutional sexual abuse.

Twenty years since ‘antibody mimics’ by molecular imprinting were first proposed: A critical perspective

In February 1993, the group of Klaus Mosbach published their milestone study in Nature where, for the first time, non-covalent molecular imprints were employed in a competitive binding assay. In this seminal piece of work, and also for the first time, they refer to molecularly imprinted polymers as being ‘antibody mimics’ and hypothesised that these synthetic materials could one day provide ‘a useful, general alternative to antibodies’. This perspective article examines how far we have come in the 20 years since this publication in terms of realising this hypothesis and poses the question of whether we actually need molecularly imprinted polymers to be a general alternative to antibodies.

Relativistic electron mirrors from nanoscale foils for coherent frequency upshift to the extreme ultraviolet

Reflecting light from a mirror moving close to the speed of light has been envisioned as a route towards producing bright X-ray pulses since Einstein's seminal work on special relativity. For an ideal relativistic mirror, the peak power of the reflected radiation can substantially exceed that of the incident radiation due to the increase in photon energy and accompanying temporal compression. Here we demonstrate for the first time that dense relativistic electron mirrors can be created from the interaction of a high-intensity laser pulse with a freestanding, nanometre-scale thin foil. The mirror structures are shown to shift the frequency of a counter-propagating laser pulse coherently from the infrared to the extreme ultraviolet with an efficiency >10 4 times higher than in the case of incoherent scattering. Our results elucidate the reflection process of laser-generated electron mirrors and give clear guidance for future developments of a relativistic mirror structure. 

A conceptual model and key variables for guiding supportive interventions for family caregivers of people receiving palliative care

According to the World Health Organization, the patient and family should be viewed as the "unit of care" when palliative care is required. Therefore family caregivers should receive optimal supportive care from health professionals. However, the impact of supporting a dying relative is frequently described as having negative physical and psychosocial sequalae. Furthermore, family caregivers consistently report unmet needs and there has been a dearth of rigorous supportive interventions published. In addition, comprehensive conceptual frameworks to navigate the family caregiver experience and guide intervention development are lacking. This article draws on Lazarus and Folkman's seminal work on the transactional stress and coping framework to present a conceptual model specific to family caregivers of patients receiving palliative care. A comprehensive account of key variables to aid understanding of the family caregiver experience and intervention design is provided.

Processing the Peace:An Interview with Teya Sepinuck

In this interview, Teya Sepinuck, the Artistic Director of Theatre of Witness reflects not only on her first two projects in Northern Ireland, but also vividly illustrates her way of working by evoking seminal moments in her previous practice. Although, she has resisted attempts to systematise the Theatre of Witness process, preferring to see it as a set of principles rather than a fixed methodology, these principles have given rise to clear guidelines that have come to govern the process through which she works. As the interview illustrates, Sepinuck, a Jewish Buddhist, has no hesitation in explaining her approach within the framework of a humanist ‘spirituality’ that explicitly deploys Judeo-Christian terminology. She invites discussion of each participant's ‘prayer-life’ and positions herself primarily as a listener rather than an interlocutor. The introduction to the interview contextualises Sepinuck's practice in relation to her previous work and other drama-based interventions in Northern Ireland. Concerns that the lack of critical distance between the tellers and their stories inhibits those who see it from freely engaging with it as they might with a fictionalised account, are also critiqued. In the interview, Sepinuck directly addresses the risk of the commodification of her work, explaining the safeguards in place to protect the participants, who have repeatedly asserted how beneficial they have found their involvement in the work to be. The sense of autonomy and empowerment that emerges from these responses represent a persuasive challenge to concerns that they are passive instruments of the Theatre of Witness process.

Religion and the risk of suicide: longitudinal study of over 1 million people

Background: Durkheim’s seminal historical study demonstrated that religious affiliation reduces suicide risk, but it is unclear whether this protective effect persists in modern, more secular societies.

Aims: To examine suicide risk according to Christian religious affiliation and by inference to examine underlying mechanisms for suicide risk. If church attendance is important, risk should be lowest for Roman Catholics and highest for those with no religion; if religiosity is important, then ‘conservative’ Christians should fare best.

Method: A 9-year study followed 1 106 104 people aged 16–74 years at the 2001 UK census, using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for census-based cohort attributes.

Results: In fully adjusted models analysing 1119 cases of suicide, Roman Catholics, Protestants and those professing no religion recorded similar risks. The risk associated with conservative Christians was lower than that for Catholics (HR = 0.71, 95% CI 0.52–0.97).

Conclusions: The relationship between religious affiliation and suicide established by Durkheim may not pertain in societies where suicide rates are highest at younger ages. Risks are similar for those with and without a religious affiliation, and Catholics (who traditionally are characterised by higher levels of church attendance) do not demonstrate lower risk of suicide. However, religious affiliation is a poor measure of religiosity, except for a small group of conservative Christians, although their lower risk of suicide may be attributable to factors such as lower risk behaviour and alcohol consumption.

Bone morphogenetic proteins and their antagonists: current and emerging clinical uses

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are members of the TGFβ superfamily of secreted cysteine knot proteins that includes TGFβ₁, nodal, activins and inhibins. BMPs were first discovered by Urist in the 1960s when he showed that implantation of demineralized bone into intramuscular tissue of rabbits induced bone and cartilage formation. Since this seminal discovery, BMPs have also been shown to play key roles in several other biological processes, including limb, kidney, skin, hair and neuronal development, as well as maintaining vascular homeostasis. The multifunctional effects of BMPs make them attractive targets for the treatment of several pathologies, including bone disorders, kidney and lung fibrosis, and cancer. This review will summarize current knowledge on the BMP signalling pathway and critically evaluate the potential of recombinant BMPs as pharmacological agents for the treatment of bone repair and tissue fibrosis in patients.