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The paper builds on recent flexitarianism scholarship by approaching this heterogeneous dietary category as a socio-cultural and political economic, rather than just a psychological phenomenon. It does this by drawing on Edmund Harris’s conceptualization of alternative food provisioning activities and subject-making as a “politics of the possible.” The paper addresses the following questions: does flexitarianism and the making of flexitarian subjectivities represent a “politics of the possible” and if so how; what are the limits of these politics and how might these limits be overcome? Empirically, the paper undertakes a qualitative analysis of UK national print news media coverage of flexitarianism and semi-structured interviews with self-identified flexitarians. Data from these two sources are interwoven in the discussion of themes that provide some evidence in support of flexitarianism as a politics of the possible, but which also draw attention to the limits of these politics. The paper concludes that only by addressing these limits can a full and critical assessment be made of flexitarianism’s contribution to a food system less dependent on animal-based foods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goals of this study were to evaluate (1) how specific aspects of executive control, briefly assessed, predict social competence and classroom adjustment during preschool and (2) differences between two aspects of executive control, according to child’s age, socioeconomic risk status, and gender. The facets of executive control were defined as cool executive control (CEC; affectively neutral, slow acting, and late developing) and hot executive control (HEC; more emotional, fast acting, and early developing). Two hundred eighty-seven 3- to 5-year-old children from private child care and Head Start centers were directly assessed during executive control tasks, and preschool teachers provided information on their school success. Aspects of executive control varied with age, socioeconomic risk, and gender. Specifically, older children performed better on CEC tasks across three age levels; for HEC tasks, change was seen only between 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds. Children of mothers with less formal education performed less well on CEC than those whose mothers had more education; girls performed better than boys on HEC tasks. Further, facets of executive control were differentially related to later social competence and classroom adjustment. HEC predicted social competence, whereas CEC uniquely predicted classroom adjustment. Implications for everyday practice and specific curricula formulation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the production of aesthetic ‘truths’ in UK livestock breeding, drawing on detailed qualitative research with breeders and breed societies. It extends emerging interest in the aesthetic in human geographical research, examining how aesthetic judgements about non-human animals depend, in part, on the agency of the animal and their inter-subjective relations with humans in specific places. Aesthetic evaluation further produces implicit judgements about animals' ethical considerability, at the same time obscuring the effects of such judgements on their framing and treatment. Aesthetic evaluation is thus related to sets of material and ethical interests. The paper develops a more-than-human reading of Foucault's biopower, which explores how truths about visual evaluations of animals become established. Two empirical perspectives explore, first, a ‘relational practical aesthetic’ for evaluating beef cattle and sheep, exploring the implications of the aesthetic framing of specific animals and, second, the tensions involved in looking at animals when different aesthetic truths conflict and when traditions of aesthetic evaluation encounter genetic modes of evaluation. The paper concludes by discussing the ethical implications of ongoing transformations of evaluative modes in livestock breeding, suggesting that shifts away from inter-subjective modes of aesthetic evaluation further diminish the ethical status of animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent hospital effluent contributes to antimicrobial presence in the environment and its impact on resistance dissemination remains unknown. To investigate the fate of the antimicrobial ciprofloxacin in hospital effluent a Monte Carlo simulation model was developed to model levels from hospital use to wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent release, in addition to modeling resistance formation potential, hazard quotient (HQ) and swimmer exposure. The mean predicted concentration (PC) of ciprofloxacin in hospital effluent, urban effluent, WWTP effluent, sludge, soil and sea water was 579, 6.06, 2.59, 3.48, 0.006 and 0.15 mg/m3, respectively. A parallel surveillance study confirmed levels of ciprofloxacin above or below the limit of detection. The model predicted levels would never exceed the ECOSAR toxicity value. The model predicted a 98% probability of ciprofloxacin exhibiting a HQ > 1 (low toxicity concern). The mean ciprofloxacin PC in WWTP effluent was less than the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). The probability of conditions in WWTP effluent being favorable for resistance at 20% and 80% of the MIC was 3% and 72%, respectively. In all instances, when the MIC was bound, the probability for resistance formation within soil and sea water was < 1%. The probability of a swimmer being exposed to a level of ciprofloxacin greater than the acceptable daily intake was negligible. The study concluded that release of hospital effluent into the environment may lead to concentrations of ciprofloxacin which are of low toxicity concern but may be conducive to resistance formation and allow for the dissemination of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a growing scholarship on the history of amateur meteorology, contemporary amateur meteorology has tended to remain a largely invisible social phenomenon. Moreover, questions of female involvement and gender relations therein have tended to be overlooked. This paper seeks to address this gap by drawing on interviews with members of one of the most important amateur meteorological networks in the UK—the Climatological Observers Link. The research identifies a predominantly male bias within amateur meteorology in the UK, offers insight into why and how this bias has emerged and explores the implications of this bias for gender politics in the home. It also considers the way in which, as a pursuit that is very much situated within the domestic sphere, amateur meteorology complicates traditional framings of the home as a female realm and contributes to a domestic masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares tear glucose dynamic differences between 121 diabetic and nondiabetic subjects after the administration of a carbohydrate load. A quantitative chromatographic analysis of tear glucose was used and the values correlated to blood glucose values. Diabetic and nondiabetic tear glucose mean values were 0.35 ± 0.04 mmol/L and 0.16 ± 0.03 mmol/L, respectively. Significant differences were observed among the subject groups in both the tear and capillary blood glucose values. A correlation between tear glucose and capillary blood glucose was observed. The concentration of glucose in the tear fluid changes proportionately with respect to capillary blood glucose after a carbohydrate challenge. Although it is possible to determine the diabetic status of a subject using tear glucose values alone, in the clinical setting this may not prove to be practical due to technical limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we briefly describe the mission, history, and current status of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), and then focus on the current and near future work of the NSDL Core Integration (CI) service, including the NSDL Collection Development activity, phase two of the architecture and data model, and two new services—On Ramp and Expert Voices—that leverage acquisition and management of user-contributed contextual information about educational resources, and the ability to express complex relationships between them—made possible by the new architecture. An introduction to the NSDL is provided by the About NSDL page at http://nsdl.org/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture is a key land user implicated in the causes of, and solutions to, the problem of biodiversity decline. The development, in the late 1990s, of farm biodiversity action plans (farm BAPs) represents an important step towards achieving greater farmer involvement in biodiversity and is the first specific attempt to devise a practical mechanism for meeting biodiversity targets at the farm level. In this paper the processes surrounding the design and implementation of farm BAPs are used to explore how farmers are responding to the biodiversity issue and to highlight challenges and opportunities being faced by the organizations delivering biodiversity to the farming community. It describes the formulation and operation of farm BAPs, and then moves on to present two conceptual domains, governance and ecological modernization, which provide a framework for interpreting the emergence of farm BAPs. Following a brief elaboration of methodology, the paper presents and discusses selected findings from empirical research into farm BAPs across the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon the 'Farmlife' pages of Farmers' Weekly, the most significant farming publication in the UK, this article assesses the ways in which gender identities in farming are represented in text and images. Lead articles from 1976 and 1996 issues of 'Farmlife' are taken as the research focus to determine how representations have altered in line with restructuring of the agricultural industry. Reference is made to Connell's notions of hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity to inform the analysis about the ways in which these gender identities are (re)produced through the British farming media. A simple typology is derived from the articles, which assists in revealing a remarkable degree of consistency in the portrayal of gender identities over time. Case studies reveal that hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity are perpetuated through the farming media, but in increasingly subtle and fragmented ways. The limitations of Connell's conceptualisation are revealed, particularly in its ability to accommodate multiple constructions of femininity. Suggestions are made for research that investigates the consumers of these media products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Established largely by private sector institutions in the food supply system, quality assurance schemes (QASs) have recently become significant as means of addressing consumer concerns about food production and to help improve the competitiveness of food producers. The environmental standards of QASs offer a new opportunity for the delivery of environmental benefits in food production. The paper examines this potential contribution by considering the place of environmental concerns within the design and operation of QASs as a whole and through preliminary analysis of the environmental standards within a selection of schemes. This initial investigation suggests that QASs are unlikely to produce the environmental outcomes characteristic of public sector agri-environmental schemes, but could make a contribution to raising the baseline of good environmental practice in agriculture. The complementary relationship between QASs and other agri-environmental delivery mechanisms is considered in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]