Assessment and management of the geomorphological heritage of Monte Pindo (NW Spain): a landscape as a symbol of identity

This study focuses on the granite mountain known as Monte Pindo (627 m above sea level) in the Autonomous Community of Galicia (NW Spain). This territory is included in the area classified as “Costa da Morte” in the “Politica de Ordenación Litoral” (POL) (Coastal Planning Policy) for the region of Galicia. This coastal unit, located between “Rías Baixas” and “Cape Fisterra” has great potential for demonstrating geological processes and its geomorphological heritage is characterized by a high degree of geodiversity of granite landforms. The main objective of our work is to assess the geomorphological heritage of the site, thus revealing its wide geodiversity. We shall analyze and highlight: its scientific value, developing an inventory of granite landforms; its educational valuel and its geotouristic potential. It must be ensured that the Administration understands that natural diversity is composed of both geodiversity and biodiversity. Only then will the sustainable management of Monte Pindo become possible by integrating natural and cultural heritage values. The goal is to ensure that Monte Pindo and its immediate surroundings become a geopark with the aim of promoting local development projects based on the conservation and valorization of its geological heritage.

School health promotion and teacher professional identity

PURPOSE – Health and education are inextricably linked. Health promotion sits somewhat uncomfortably within schools, often remaining a marginal aspect of teachers’ work. The purpose of this paper is to examine the compatibility of an HP-initiative with teacher professional identity. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – A qualitative research design was adopted consisting of semi-structured interviews. In total, 49 teachers in two school districts in the Auvergne region in central France were interviewed in depth post having completed three years’ involvement in a health promoting schools initiative called “Learning to Live Better Together” (“Apprendre a Mieux Vivre Ensemble”). FINDINGS – Teachers in the study had a broad conceptualisation of their role in health promotion. In keeping with international trends, there was more success at classroom than at whole school level. While generally teachers can be reluctant to engage with health promotion, the teachers in this study identified having little difficulty in understanding their professional identity as health promoters and identified strong compatibility with the HP-initiative. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS – Teachers generally viewed professional development in health promotion in a positive light when its underlying values were commensurate with their own and when the context was seen as compatible with the school mission. The promotion of health in schools needs to be sensitive to professional identity and be tailored specifically to blend more successfully with current teacher identity and practice. ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The promotion of health in schools needs to be sensitive to professional identity and be tailored specifically to blend more successfully with current teacher identity and practice.

The Irish pub as a third place : a sociological exploration of people, place and identity

There is considerable interest in alcohol in Irish society, yet minimal sociologcial understanding of its consumption, particularly of the sites where most drinking occurs: the country's 8750 pubs. Despite widespread public discussions on the role of the pub, there is scant social science evidence to better inform debate. Pubs are central to Irish community and are key sites of social interaction. American sociologist Ray Oldenburg has argued that "third places" (neither workplace nor home) are crucial to the maintenance of the community and the enhancement of social capital. According to Oldenburg, the role of the third place in the community is to provide continuity, regularity, a sense of place - all of which conceptually contribute to the construction of the self, the projection of the self within the public sphere, the distribution of social capital and the generation of a collective identity. The pub is the archetypal third place, but Oldenburg is concerned that modern pubs are less able to provide this vital function. Social scientists have suggested that community is in a state of fragmentation and decline due to changes in modes of social interaction and a decrease in shared spaces, resulting in a weakened connection to place. Community without propinquity has been characterised by social alienation, fragmentation and what Oldenburg refers to as the "problem of place" (13). Third places, and thus the Irish pub, have been particularly affected. In order to increase the sociological knowledge of the pub in Ireland, this project critically engages with the pub to assess the importance that public drinking houses have in the everyday. Moreover, this research sets out to investigate the people/place relationship using the pub as an investigative lens and examine the ways in which people shape place, place shapes people and how that relationship is implicated in the construction of irish identities. Furthermore, this is also an articulation of a cultural shift within Ireland and Irish places whose effects are deep and multi-layered. This project aims to explore the development of the contemporary geography of identity as the irish pub as a third place is transformed or disappears from the social landscape.

Television and the construction of identity: Barcelona, Olympic host

This document, originally published as part of the book The Keys of success: the social, sporting, economic and communications impact of Barcelona’92, comes from a larger study that looked at all aspects of television in the Olympics and can be found in its original version, in Miquel de Moragas Spà, Nancy K. Rivenburgh and James F. Larson (1996). Television in the Olympics. London: John Libbey.

The identity type weak factorisation system

We show that the classifying category C(T)of a dependent type theory T with axioms for identity types admits a nontrivial weak factorisation system. After characterising this weak factorisation system explicitly, we relate it to the homotopy theory of groupoids.

"Public on the outside, private on the inside": the organizational hybridization, sense of belonging and identity strategies of the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland

A number of studies show that New Public Management reforms have altered the current identity benchmarks of public officials, particularly by hybridizing values or management practices. However, existing studies have largely glossed over the sense of belonging of officials when their organization straddles the concerns of public service and private enterprise, so that the boundary between public and private sector is blurred. The purpose of this article is precisely to explore this sense of belonging in the context of organizational hybridization. It does so by drawing on the results of research conducted among the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland. On the one hand, the analysis shows how much their markers of belonging are hybrid, multiple and constructed in negative terms (with regard to the State), while indicating that the working practices of the employees point to an identity that is nevertheless closely bound with the public sector. On the other hand, the analysis shows that the organization plays strategically with its State status, by exploiting either its private or public identity in line with the needs related to its external image. The article concludes with a discussion of the results highlighting the strategic functionality of the hybrid identity of the actors.

Ghosts in contemporary African diasporic literature : re-visioning history, memory and identity

Starting from the observation that ghosts are strikingly recurrent and prominent figures in late-twentieth African diasporic literature, this dissertation proposes to account for this presence by exploring its various functions. It argues that, beyond the poetic function the ghost performs as metaphor, it also does cultural, theoretical and political work that is significant to the African diaspora in its dealings with issues of history, memory and identity. Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) serves as a guide for introducing the many forms, qualities and significations of the ghost, which are then explored and analyzed in four chapters that look at Fred D'Aguiar's Feeding the Ghosts (1998), Gloria Naylor's Mama Day (1988), Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow (1983) and a selection of novels, short stories and poetry by Michelle Cliff. Moving thematically through these texts, the discussion shifts from history through memory to identity as it examines how the ghost trope allows the writers to revisit sites of trauma; revise historical narratives that are constituted and perpetuated by exclusions and invisibilities; creatively and critically repossess a past marked by violence, dislocation and alienation and reclaim the diasporic culture it contributed to shaping; destabilize and deconstruct the hegemonic, normative categories and boundaries that delimit race or sexuality and envision other, less limited and limiting definitions of identity. These diverse and interrelated concerns are identified and theorized as participating in a project of "re-vision," a critical project that constitutes an epistemological as much as a political gesture. The author-based structure allows for a detailed analysis of the texts and highlights the distinctive shapes the ghost takes and the particular concerns it serves to address in each writer's literary and political project. However, using the ghost as a guide into these texts, taken collectively, also throws into relief new connections between them and sheds light on the complex ways in which the interplay of history, memory and identity positions them as products of and contributions to an African diasporic (literary) culture. If it insists on the cultural specificity of African diasporic ghosts, tracing its origins to African cultures and spiritualities, the argument also follows gothic studies' common view that ghosts in literary and cultural productions-like other related figures of the living dead-respond to particular conditions and anxieties. Considering the historical and political context in which the texts under study were produced, the dissertation makes connections between the ghosts in them and African diasporic people's disillusionment with the broken promises of the civil rights movement in the United States and of postcolonial independence in the Caribbean. It reads the texts' theoretical concerns and narrative qualities alongside the contestation of traditional historiography by black and postcolonial studies as well as the broader challenge to conventional notions such as truth, reality, meaning, power or identity by poststructuralism, postcolonialism or queer theory. Drawing on these various theoretical approaches and critical tools to elucidate the ghost's deconstructive power for African diasporic writers' concerns, this work ultimately offers a contribution to "speciality studies," which is currently emerging as a new field of scholarship in cultural theory.

Amino acid identity and/or position determines the proteasomal cleavage of the HLA-A*0201-restricted peptide tumor antigen MAGE-3271-279.

The proteasome plays a crucial role in the proteolytic processing of antigens presented to T cells in the context of major histocompatibility complex class I molecules. However, the rules governing the specificity of cleavage sites are still largely unknown. We have previously shown that a cytolytic T lymphocyte-defined antigenic peptide derived from the MAGE-3 tumor-associated antigen (MAGE-3(271-279), FLWGPRALV in one-letter code) is not presented at the surface of melanoma cell lines expressing the MAGE-3 protein. By using purified proteasome and MAGE-3(271-279) peptides extended at the C terminus by 6 amino acids, we identified predominant cleavages after residues 278 and 280 but no detectable cleavage after residue Val(279), the C terminus of the antigenic peptide. In the present study, we have investigated the influence of Pro(275), Leu(278), and Glu(280) on the proteasomal digestion of MAGE-3(271-285) substituted at these positions. We show that positions 278 and 280 are major proteasomal cleavage sites because they tolerate most amino acid substitutions. In contrast, the peptide bond after Val(279) is a minor cleavage site, influenced by both distal and proximal amino acid residues.

Self-identity and religion/spirituality

Although medicine is practised in a secular setting, religious and spiritual issues have an impact on patient perspectives regarding their health and the management of any disorders that may afflict them. This is especially true in psychiatry, as feelings of spirituality and religiousness are very prevalent among the mentally ill. Clinicians are rarely aware of the importance of religion and understand little of its value as a mediating force for coping with mental illness. This book addresses various issues concerning mental illness in psychiatry: the relation of religious issues to mental health; the tension between a theoretical approach to problems and psychiatric approaches; the importance of addressing these varying approaches in patient care and how to do so; and differing ways to approach Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist patients. This is the first book to specifically cover the impact of religion and spirituality on mental illness.

Genetic identity of the critically endangered Wimmer's shrew Crocidura wimmeri

Coastal primary rainforests have suffered damage in Côte d'Ivoire as a result of a lack of protection and urban pressures. Consequently, the highly endemic and critically endangered Wimmer's shrew, Crocidura wimmeri, known only from its type locality, Adiopodoumé, near Abidjan, was considered to have been extinct since 1976. Shrew species assignment is often problematic because of strong phenotypic similarities among many species. The phylogenetic position of C. wimmeri within the African Crocidura species should thus be clarified. In light of its recent rediscovery in the nearby small Banco National Park (34 km2), we investigated the genetic identity of seven specimens of C. wimmeri, based on 1020 bp of the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b gene compared to other species sampled in the same region and published sequences from GenBank. Crocidura wimmeri formed a well-defined clade, the closest-related species being Crocidura sp., with a distance of 9.3%, a yet unknown species from Taï and Ziama forests. These results thus confirmed the validity of this species. This genetic characterization not only contributes to our knowledge of the evolution of West African shrews, but also may help in the discovery of additional populations of this critically endangered species.