Abortion Counselling in Britain: Understanding the Controversy

This article reviews literature from a number of disciplines in order to provide an explanation of the political controversy attached to the provision of abortion counselling. It will show how this is an area of health policy debate in which women's reproductive bodies have become a setting for political struggle. The issue of abortion counselling in Britain has undergone a number of discursive shifts in response to political manoeuvring and changing socio‐legal framing of abortion. In particular, the article shows how much of the controversial reframing of abortion counselling was a tactical shift by political actors opposed to abortion per se, and this work is critiqued for not contextualising abortion. The article then focuses on women's abortion experiences and discusses research that shows how women's decision‐making processes, and responses to an abortion, are related to gendered socio‐cultural contexts: the extent to which women having an abortion feel they have transgressed societal norms and values, for example, is likely to affect their abortion experiences. Finally, it is suggested that providing a non‐judgemental context, and challenging negative discourses on abortion, may be the most effective way of minimising the possibility of negative emotions.     

The diluted working classes of rural England and Wales

This paper asks, what are the attributes of the rural working class population in England and Wales? Drawing on the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) Longitudinal Study (LS), household and personal attributes at both the 1991 and 2001 Censuses are examined, with a view to exploring how far the rural working classes can be conceptualised as a cohesive occupational group; in other words, is the traditional vision of the rural working classes, as comprising a cohesive occupational community, still accurate? The results show this understanding is inaccurate. Social dynamism turns out to be high in rural areas, with little uniformity in the rural population with working class occupations, not simply due to occupational change but also as a result of cohabitation with those of other occupational grades and as a consequence of population turnover through migration. The paper indicates that caution is needed over messages in the rural studies literature concerning the magnitude of disadvantages that the rural working classes face, in good part because the composition of rural households with working class constituents is so dynamic.     

Bivariate kurtotic distributions of garment fibre data

Summary. A bivariate and unimodal distribution is introduced to model an unconventionally distributed data set collected by the Forensic Science Service. This family of distributions allows for a different kurtosis in each orthogonal direction and has a constructive rather than probability density function definition, making conventional inference impossible. However, the construction and inference work well with a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis.     

Design catalogue for eco-engineering of coastal artificial structures: a multifunctional approach for stakeholders and end-users

Urban Ecosystems - Coastal urbanisation, energy extraction, food production, shipping and transportation have led to the global proliferation of artificial structures within the coastal and marine...     

Macroinvertebrate richness on flood defence walls of the tidal River Thames

The River Thames through central London has seen significant environmental recovery, particularly in regard to water quality, but a substantial barrier to further ecological improvement is the spatial restriction of riparian areas. Flood defence walls represent a potential habitat for ecological improvements to benefit biodiversity. However before restoration actions are considered, an understanding of the current biodiversity and ecological status of these structures is necessary. Physical habitat and macroinvertebrate richness of flood defence walls at 15, evenly spaced sites along a 32?Km reach in central London were evaluated. We found no longitudinal patterns in total macroinvertebrate richness among our 15 sites, but did find that richness was influenced by wall type. Specifically, we found the highest richness on brick walls and lowest richness on concrete walls. Further, wall sections with algal cover supported significantly higher numbers of macroinvertebrates than sections lacking algal cover. However, reaches of the river where the channel was constricted had fewer macroinvertebrates likely due to scouring flows. These results show that macroinvertebrates of the river walls are influenced by habitat availability (i.e., wall type) and localised river flows. This work suggests that appropriate management of river wall habitats has the potential to enhance the biodiversity of highly modified, urban rivers.     

Urban river wall habitat and vegetation: observations from the River Thames through central London

Along heavily engineered urban rivers, river walls and embankments represent the most common habitat available to riparian vegetation. This paper presents the first study into river wall vegetation and the influence of wall surface materials on plant diversity. We were concerned with investigating the plant diversity of such wall habitats, assessing relationships between different wall surface materials and plant diversity, and determining whether river wall and embankment habitats along the River Thames through central London could support native riparian species alongside more typical urban wall flora. Fifteen sites along the River Thames through central London were surveyed to describe wall flora and establish relationships between plant diversity and wall materials. Walls were not species rich, but contained a mix of terrestrial and riparian species. Stone walls with surface fractures and heterogeneous wall surfaces were conducive to plant diversity at the local scale, while wall surface heterogeneity was also important at the landscape scale. Some stratification of vegetation was observed based on wall position relative to flow disturbance. The potential exists for walls to act as sites for habitat improvement and reconciliation ecology within urban rivers.