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This article comments on an article written by Gary Saxonhouse and Gavin Wright in which the records of most of Lancashire, England's textile machinery makers from 1878 to 1920 were used to document investment in alternative spinning technologies in Lancashire prior to World War I. Saxonhouse and Wright argued that in prewar Lancashire, organizational structure did not constrain the diffusion of ring spinning. The availability of ring-frames that could spin yarn on paper tubes made it unnecessary to incur the heavy expenses of shipping ring yarn on wooden bobbins. With their focus confined to the constraint imposed by wooden bobbins, both the writers failed to explore a related, but more profound problem: the ring-frame was not cost-effective in spinning shuttle-ready weft for Lancashire's looms. Indeed, from the 1880s well into the interwar period, Lancashire's textile engineers devoted considerable inventive effort to the development of a ring-spinning machine that, like the mule, could spin shuttle-ready weft on the bare spindle, but without commercial success. In contrast to weft spinning, ring-frames were often used for warp spinning in specialized coarse and medium spinning mills in prewar Lancashire. Given the available evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that in cases where ring spinning would have been adopted anyway, a firm may well have opted to use paper tubes instead of wooden bobbins.

This article presents comments of authors on the criticism of their article on textile machinery by William Lazonick that was published in the February 1987 issue of the periodical "Economic History Review." The article used the records of most of Lancashire, England's textile machinery makers from 1878 to 1920--to document investment in alternative spinning technologies in Lancashire prior to World War I. Lazonick is correct in pointing out that the article on the persistence of the English mule did not include a comprehensive review and critique of his views on the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry. The central problem is that Lazonick does not use the term "constraint" in a consistent or rigorous way. Formally his analysis appears at first to be an attractive escape from the sterility of the debates over entrepreneurial failure: British managers made choices which were rational and appropriate given their constraints, but the industry collectively failed to transform its organization and technology so as to relax the constraints facing individual producers. The difficulties noted by Lazonick in his present comment relate exclusively to the case of existing spinning firms attempting to sell ring-spun weft yarn in the open market.

Accessible summary •Clients and staff at a service called Calderstones talked to the authors about self injury. •Clients said that staff do not understand why they self-injure. Some clients feel punished when staff stop them self-injuring. All clients like talking to staff and said that telling their problems to staff helps them. Clients said that they should be allowed self-injure without staff being blamed. •Staff said they feel upset and worried when a client self-injures. They told the authors they would like more training about self-injury. Some staff would like clients to be allowed to self-injure, but don't want to be blamed for a client's injuries. This paper is the synthesis of two pre-existing studies. It details the experiences of nine people with mild/moderate learning disabilities who self injure, and those who work with them. At the time of this study the participants were living and working in a medium secure unit at Calderstones NHS Trust in Lancashire. A phenomenological approach was used, and during in-depth interviews, the participants gave rich descriptions of their experiences of self injury. The descriptions that emerged from the interviews detailed four main themes: understanding, communication, control and blame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to use methodologies is an essential ingredient in the teaching of Information System techniques and approaches. One method to achieve this is to use a practical approach where students undertake ‘live’ projects with local client organisations. They can then reflect on the approach adopted with the aim of producing a ‘reflective methodological practitioner’. This paper focuses on the use of experiential learning in a modular course at the University of Central Lancashire to produce these ‘methodological practitioners’ and is based on the experiences of the authors in running this module. A model is presented which outlines three viewpoints of the project. This is in line with a ‘soft systems’ perspective in analysing the three views of the project or problem situation. It reports the results of investigations into one of those viewpoints [that of the students]. This is approached by a survey undertaken amongst students to obtain their views on the determinants of project success and failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that Russell Lewis Oakes from Lancashire, England, has been arrested by police following a complaint by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) that he had fraudulently registered as a veterinary surgeon using false papers. The complaint claimed that Oakes used a forged qualification from Murdoch University in Western Australia to register with the RCVS in November 2006.

The town of Colne in Pennine east Lancashire, northern England—once a centre of the textiles trade—is now best known locally as the home of Boundary Mill 'shopping experience'. But there is more to the town than meets the eye, including three significant geologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before Gordon Manley began work on his famous Central England Temperature (CET) record, he constructed an instrumental temperature record for the Lancashire Plain (LP), covering 1753-1945. We describe the construction of the LP series, and discuss strategies for its extension to the present day. We analyse the relationship between the LP and the Central England Temperature (CET) record in order to assess the value of continuing the LP. Three strategies for extending the LP have been considered: replicating the original methodology Manley used to construct the LP (option 1), using linear regression on archived station data to bring the extended record 'in line' with the original LP (option 2), and using the CET to predict the LP (option 3). In extending the LP, the station at Morecambe (Met Office station number 16851) was found to be particularly important. Our analysis highlights the importance of maintaining long-running records at those stations, such as Morecambe, that are representative of a wider region. All three options were successfully extended to the present, providing similar results. The three extended series resulted in annual mean differences of 0.23, 0.26, and 0.29 °C below the CET, respectively. Both options 1 and 2 appear to provide a legitimate extension of the LP that is independent of the CET. Owing to uncertainties in the replication of Manley's methodology, option 2 was used in our final reconstruction of the LP to 2007. The final extension was found to be significantly correlated to ( r2 = 0.912), and statistically indistinguishable from, the CET (Student's t-test, p = 1). Anomalies between the two series (CET-LP) resulted in a frequency distribution with mean of 0.26 °C, and relative standard deviation of 60%, showing that, although closely correlated, there is significant inter-annual variability in the bias between the datasets. Copyright © 2011 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that historians have paid insufficient attention to the agrarian roots of early modern English famines. While not dismissing the insights arising from entitlements theory, the article takes issue with recent writings that have explained the famine of 1622-3 in north-west England as an entitlements crisis. It offers new empirical evidence from an estate in east Lancashire to demonstrate the scale of the crisis in the early 1620s, using estate accounts to produce new price data and estimates of productivity. On the basis of oat tithe data, the scale of the shortfall in foodstuffs in the harvest of 1621 is demonstrated as being probably in the region of a third; that of the following year has to be inferred from price data. The evidence shows that the crisis was not limited to the arable economy, but was followed by an extensive restocking of the pastoral economy. The article therefore makes a contribution to the growing interest in weather as an exogenous factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a subterranean, highly elastic energy source, coal played a vital role in the cotton industry revolution. Coal was also vital to Lancashire's primacy in this revolution, because it was necessary both to the original accumulation of agglomeration economies before the steam age and to their reinforcement during the steam age. In no other part of the world was the cotton industry situated on a coalfield, and the response of other parts of the world cotton industry to Lancashire's agglomeration advantages was dispersal in search of cheap water and/or labour power. Lancashire coal helped to shape the global pattern of cotton production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the post-graduate master's training programme developed by the University of Salford. It states that the training programme aims to promote evidence-based curriculum requirements, and provide a structured pathway for the progress of the trainees. It also notes that the programme offers coherent and cohesive structure of practice theory, and demonstrates expertise for medical and clinical practices.

Background : Anatomy and physiology (A&P) teaching and learning in nursing curricula poses problems for educators because of the often varying levels of students’ background knowledge. This study reports on a pilot project that attempted to normalize these differentials by delivering A&P teaching using an online interactive e-book–virtual learning environment (VLE) hybrid. Objectives : Evaluate the effectiveness of using an online interactive resource to deliver A&P teaching. Methods : Data were collected from pre-registration and post-qualifying students by questionnaire and observation, and from lecturers by structured interviews. Scale-up issues were identified and documented as part of support for the ongoing pilot. Results : The pre-registration group encountered problems accessing the resource and yielded evidence to suggest that inexperienced learners require a high level of direction to use the resource effectively. The post-qualifying group benefited from the resource's interactive elements and 24/7 availability. There was clear evidence that the group were able to relate knowledge gained from the resource to practice. Conclusions : This hybrid has great potential to add value to A&P learning on nursing programmes at post-qualifying level. The resource could replace its printed equivalent; however, negotiations need to take place between institutions and publishers in order to resolve scale-up issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the research on the relation of changes in eye color of juvenile Bearded Tits to study the seasonal breeding productivity at Leighton Moss, Lancashire in England. The study was conducted using artificial nesting boxes to determine colonization and population dynamics of the Bearded Tits between 1997 to 2000. It is reported that the eye color was determined in the field by comparison with a color chart of ten colors from the Leyland Paints 'complements' range. Several charts providing the color variations, days of hatching and breeding dates are also provided.

Background: The Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was formed in 2002 with the merger of two existing trusts. The library services unified to create a new expanded service with 11 staff. Objectives: The librarians wanted to test out users’ opinions of the service, as a basis for a developmental strategy. They also wanted to find out to what extent they were offering a multi-disciplinary service, available to all staff. Therefore it was decided to include both users and non-users in the survey. Methods: A twenty-question questionnaire was sent out to a 10% sample of registered users in all staff categories. The same questionnaire was sent out to a 10% sample of non-users, with the help of the Human Resources Department. Results: The library staff and facilities were generally well regarded. The stock needed expansion in various areas, especially allied health and biomedical science. Non-users were in fact often occasional or remote users. Other non-users needed informing that they were entitled to use the service. Conclusions: Further research is required, especially concerning the information needs of allied health and scientific staff. There is a need for stock expansion. A marketing strategy is required to capture the interest of potential users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economic condition of the British cotton industry during the 1940s. Particular emphasis is laid on the government policy and planning at the industry level. Despite the government's best efforts 30 per cent of Lancashire, England's spindleage remained idle in 1950, output was far below prewar levels, and productivity levels were disappointing. As a result of overtime working, and the closure of inefficient units under the concentration scheme, yarn production per operative had risen during the war, but progress was slow after 1945. Recruitment had been sluggish, and in 1950 the number of workers in spinning and weaving was still 120,000 below the level of 1937. The government's targets for Lancashire were achieved because they were pitched at modest levels which took account of productive inefficiency and the continuing labor shortage. Cotton made a significant contribution to the export drive in the 1940s, the value of all cotton textile exports increased from pound 87 million in 1946 to pound 211 million in 1950, maintaining a constant 9 per cent share of all British visible exports. But Lancashire could have done more if enough people had been willing to return to the mills.

This article examines the employment conditions in the cotton industry in Great Britain from 1950 to 1970. This examination of imports and exports is based on data collected from the statistical reports of the Cotton Board. The results suggest that the relative impact of these factors on employment varied significantly over the period. Between 1950 and 1955 declining exports made the largest contribution to the fall in the employment of cotton operatives. Rising imports were the major factor accounting for declining employment between 1955 and 1960, while falling domestic demand for cloth and yarn was the predominant influence during the 1960s. Participation in this trade, for which demand was relatively buoyant, helped many of Lancashire, England's cotton mills to survive through these difficult years. The accounting procedure is a static technique which is unable to identify any dynamic linkages or interdependencies between the factors analyzed. The reaction in Lancashire to this inexorable decline points to the need for further investigation into the underlying causes of the cotton industry's demise.

The article discusses the aggregate structure of business enterprises in Lancashire, England during the nineteenth century. The mechanization of weaving in the coarse grades, the partial automation of spinning, and the consequent integration in some large firms of spanning and weaving on one factory site, were accompanied by a great increase in the fixed capital outlays needed to enter into competitive production. It was quite likely that these processes were tending to concentrate capital in the hands of the larger producers who could not only afford them but who could also hope to reap economies from their size. Certainly recent historians have implied as much. Several authors agreed on a trend to scale in this period, and suggested further that the vertical integration of spinning and weaving was "a condition of success and growth" in cotton before mid-century. M.M. Edwards anticipated a reduction in the number of small firms" even from his vantage point of 1815. But these several propositions appear to rest less on a systematic review of the industry's structure in these years than on an a priori assumption that labor-saving technological change and investment growth must work to the advantage of larger firms.

The widespread distribution of Calyptella root rot in commercial tomato crops in England is confirmed. The disease is thought to be more prevalent than previously believed, having been isolated from over 50% of ostensibly CalyptelIa-free crops in Lancashire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tragic deaths of twenty-three young Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay on the Lancashire coast have been attributed to the machinations of global capitalism. In fact, these migrant workers came to the UK to escape the poverty created by socialism in China and were working under a regime of state-regulated access to the cockle beds. An alternative market-orientated regime of private property rights in the cockle beds might have prevented the tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the occurrence of carrot red leaf associated RNA in carrots in Great Britain. Collection of carrot leaves from fields in Lancashire, England in July 2002; Initial occurrence of the disease in carrots outside California; Similarity of all of the British sequences to those of two California isolates.