'Wee women no more': female partners of republican political prisoners in Belfast

Studies of the female partners of politically motivated prisoners have generally studied women via a caring paradigm. Less well observed are those women who privately transgressed and challenged masculine-centred renditions or political imprisonment. This lacuna in the research dedicated to such women has been constructed around stereotypical depictions of them as a barely visible support network. We argue that the relatively indiscernible appearance of women who challenged such typecasting is attached to a persistent process of gender blindness within which women remain peripheral to wider narratives of collectivity and ideological presentation. We chart how some women actively involved themselves in creating their own identity as active agents, especially when the effects of conflict entered the private sphere.

Female choice in the red mason bee, Osmia rufa (L.) (Megachilidae)

Females are often thought to use several cues and more than one modality in selection of a mate, possibly because they offer complementary information on a mate's suitability. In the red mason bee, Osmia rufa, we investigated the criteria a female uses to choose a mating partner. We hypothesized that the female uses male thorax vibrations and size as signs of male viability and male odor for kin discrimination and assessment of genetic relatedness. We therefore compared males that had been accepted by a female for copulation with those rejected, in terms of their size, their immediate precopulatory vibrations (using laser vibrometry), the genetic relatedness of unmated and mated pairs (using microsatellite markers) and emitted volatiles (using chemical analyses). Females showed a preference for intermediate-sized males that were slightly larger than the modal male size. Furthermore, male precopulatory vibration burst duration was significantly longer in males accepted for copulation compared with rejected males. Vibrations may indicate vigor and assure that males selected by females are metabolically active and healthy. Females preferentially copulated with males that were genetically more closely related, possibly to avoid outbreeding depression. Volatiles of the cuticular surface differed significantly between accepted and rejected males in the relative amounts of certain hydrocarbons, although the relationship between male odor and female preference was complex. Females may therefore also use differences in odor bouquet to select among males. Our investigations show that O. rufa females appear to use multiple cues in selecting a male. Future investigations are needed to demonstrate whether odor plays a role in kin recognition and how the multiple cues are integrated in mate choice by females.

Relationship between work stress and body mass index among 45,810 female and male employees

Objective: The proportion of overweight and obese people has grown rapidly, and obesity has now been widely recognized as an important public health problem. At the came time, stress has increased in working life. The 2 problems could be connected if work stress promotes unhealthy eating habits and sedentary behavior and thereby contributes to weight gain. This study explored the association between work stress and body mass index (BMI; kg/m(2)). Methods: We used cross-sectional questionnaire data obtained from 45,810 female and male employees participating in the ongoing Finnish Public Sector Cohort Study. We constructed individual-level scores, as well as occupational- and organizational-level aggregated scores for work stress, as indicated by the demand/control model and the effort-reward imbalance model. Linear regression analyses were stratified by sex and socioeconomic status (SES) and adjusted for age, marital status, job contract, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and negative affectivity. Results: The results with the aggregated scores showed that lower job control, higher job strain, and higher effort-reward imbalance were associated with a higher BMI. In men, lower job demands were also associated with a higher BMI. These associations were not accounted for by SES, although an additional adjustment for SES attenuated the associations. The results obtained with the individual-level scores were in the same direction, but the relationships were weaker than those obtained with the aggregated scores. Conclusions: This study shows a weak association between work stress and BMI.

Job strain and leisure-time physical activity in female and male public sector employees

Background. High work stress could decrease physical activity but the evidence of the relationship has remained equivocal, The present study examined the association between job strain and leisure-time physical activity in a large sample of employees.

Investigation into mercury bound to biothiols:structural identification using ESI-ion-trap MS and introduction of a method for their HPLC separation with simultaneous detection by ICP-MS and ESI-MS

Mercury in plants or animal tissue is supposed to occur in the form of complexes formed with biologically relevant thiols (biothiols), rather than as free cation. We describe a technique for the separation and molecular identification of mercury and methylmercury complexes derived from their reactions with cysteine (Cys) and glutathione (GS): Hg(Cys)(2), Hg(GS)(2), MeHgCys, MeHgGS. Complexes were characterised by electrospray mass spectrometry (MS) equipped with an ion trap and the fragmentation pattern of MeHgCys was explained by using MP2 and B3LYP calculations, showing the importance of mercury-amine interactions in the gas phase. Chromatographic baseline separation was performed within 10 min with formic acid as the mobile phase on a reversed-phase column. Detection was done by online simultaneous coupling of ES-MS and inductively coupled plasma MS. When the mercury complexes were spiked in real samples (plant extracts), no perturbation of the separation and detection conditions was observed, suggesting that this method is capable of detecting mercury biothiol complexes in plants.