British National Research Articles

Associations of non-employment with common mental disorder subcomponents among working age population: analysis of national data from 1993, 2000, 2007 and 2014.

Associations between employment status and mental health are well-recognised and such associations may have multiple modifying factors which may also contribute to variations in results. We aimed to investigate associations between non-employment and CMD subcomponents and the extent of their variation across age groups using nationally representative data in Britain. We used a series of national mental health surveys of adults living in private households: the British National Surveys of Psychiatric Morbidity of 1993, 2000, 2007 and 2014. Employment status was the primary exposure of interest. Presence or absence of each fourteen symptoms of common mental disorder (CMD), as the primary outcome, was ascertained identically in all surveys from the revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R). Odds ratio for the association between exposure and outcome and population attributional fractions (PAFs) for each association was calculated. Within the highest-risk 45 to 54 years age group, all odds ratios were statistically significant and strongest associations were observed with panic symptoms (OR = 2.33), followed by depressive symptoms (1.90), worry about physical health (1.84), depression (1.82), forgetfulness (1.82) and somatic symptoms (1.70). In the 55 to 64 years age group, highest population attributable fractions were observed for non-employment as a hypothetical risk factor for panic symptoms (51.7%), phobias (44.2%), forgetfulness (39.5%), depressive symptoms (38.5%), worries about physical health (37.9%) and somatic symptoms (36.0%). The particularly high impact in middle-aged, pre-retirement groups of non-employment on CMD suggests a policy focus on alleviating stressors and providing support for those made redundant and/or compelled to take unwanted early retirement.

The Grainger Test Challenged? Thomas v Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

ABSTRACT This note analyses the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) (Sheldon J) of Thomas v Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Brett. The central message of the case is that English Nationalism with an anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant tinge does not deserve legal protection as a philosophical belief under s.10 Equality Act 2010. Thomas raises an interesting point of principle regarding the question of whether the fifth limb of the Grainger v Nicholson test—namely whether philosophical beliefs are worthy of respect in a democratic society, compatible with human dignity or are in conflict with the fundamental rights of others (fifth limb)—should be expanded to exclude from protection beliefs espousing intolerance or discrimination, and provides helpful clarity on how tribunals may take into account material beyond what is pleaded by the claimant in order to ascertain what the true nature of a purported philosophical belief may be. The note concludes that the former point is a move which should be resisted given the importance of rights under Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and also critiques the reasoning of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in countenancing this possibility. It also concludes that the latter point will be of particular interest to practitioners who plead these sort of cases before the tribunals and predicts respondents to be bolder in their use of extraneous material to interrogate the nature of a claimant’s beliefs beyond what is pleaded or contained in their witness statements. The note also concludes that tribunals can also have more confidence, in light of Thomas, in relying on such material in their judgments without excessive caution that they have blurred the lines of overreliance on manifestations of beliefs as opposed to focusing on the beliefs themselves.

Hostages to Fortunes: Britain, The Gulf Monarchies and the Incarceration of UK Nationals

Hostage-taking has become a distressing feature of international politics over the last two decades, associated either with terrorist groups or hostile state actors, such as Iran, willing to engage in hostage diplomacy for political and security advantage. By contrast, the incarceration of foreign nationals by friendly powers has received scant attention. This is the hidden dimension of hostage diplomacy. By examining the case of British nationals held in prisons across the Gulf monarchies, but with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia, we argue that such prisoners were, in effect, hostages themselves, subject to the pursuit of national interests (commercial, economic and strategic) that denied their human rights and wider political agency. They became in effect, hostages to fortunes.

The Function and Structure of Nominative Participial Constructions in Modern English

The following paper examines the syntactic construction and functional variety of nominative participial constructions in Contemporary English, focusing on the syntactic economy provided by nominative participial constructions and the contribution to discourse clarity. Based on examples from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, this chapter discusses how these sorts of structure embed delicate actions or states into sentences without elaborate clause structures. This chapter will explore how nominative participial constructions serve these discourse functions through the use of examples from academic, journalistic, and literary registers-foregrounding information, summarizing preceding actions, and emphatic purposes. The study also provides comparative insights into nominative participial constructions in relation to other forms of non-finite clauses, such as gerunds, which uniquely allow for condensation with a clearly identifiable subject even in highly reduced syntactic environments. In all, these findings contribute to a view that nominative participial constructions in English represent an instance of embodiment of the functional-syntactic interface: conciseness vs. richness of description, contributing to a more flexible and expressive syntax.

Naturalising Appreciation and Inquiry in the British National Health Service: A Story

This article discusses the author’s introduction to Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and the results from a MSc qualitative study that introduced AI into the British National Health Service (NHS). Three themes are shared, together with a short illustration of what this means to start a broader conversation: 1. It gave people permission to think differently. 2. It gave a new frame of reference. 3. It changed how we felt. The writer reflects on the value of AI within the NHS, with a couple of stories thrown in for good measure.

Digital Dis/Connection as Everyday Boundary Work Among Hong Kong BN(O) Migrants in the UK

While digital media can be seen to keep alive social connections among migrants across borders, the impact of how digital disconnection has redrawn migrants’ boundaries has not been adequately researched. Migrants subjected to the dual border-and-boundary work of Western host countries and their non-Western home countries make for complicated self–other boundary narratives. This study explores the everyday boundary work of migrants originating from Hong Kong, a former British colony, who have chosen to relocate to the UK through the British National (Overseas) (BN[O]) visa scheme. The scheme was catalysed by the 2019 political upheaval in Chinese Hong Kong and the UK–Hong Kong colonial affiliation. Through the lens of dis/connection assemblage, we conceptualise digital dis/connections as a form of boundary work and conduct in-depth interviews and thematic analysis of 14 BN(O)s. We demonstrate that digital disconnection can be seen as a socio-political practice related to identity regulation by situating BN(O)s’ digital media practices within the political projects of belonging in the UK, Hong Kong, and China. Through a matrix of disconnected approaches, BN(O)s shape boundaries around identity politics in terms of social positions, a sense of belonging, and social relations. The political meaning of digital disconnection is highlighted through its fracture of connected space-time and resilient management of social relationships<strong>.</strong>

English Nationalism and the Study of the History of Anglo-Saxon England

The author in the presented article analyses the features and directions of development of English academic historiography, focused on the history of England before 1066, as a form of political memory. It is assumed that UK political elites do not pursue memorial politics in its classical forms. Therefore, the author notes that the role of a similar historical policy in Europe and in England is played by academic historiography.The purpose of the study is to analyse the role, place and significance of research focused on the history of Anglo-Saxon England in the context of the development of memory policy and memorial culture. The novelty of the research lies in the study of academic historiography as a form of historical policy in a society where there are institutions of memory and memorial laws.The article shows that 1) Anglo-Saxon narratives in modern memorial culture have become a form of nationalist historical interaction, 2) actors and agents of English politics are both historians and the intellectual community in general, since the ruling elites distance themselves from participation in the politics of collective historical memory, 3) Anglo-Saxon narratives in the historical general began to show interest in English cultural nationalism, since its political forms and dimensions are undeveloped.It is suggested that academic historians in modern England have become both important and forced participants in the politics of history, nationalizing history before 1066, drawing attention to the significance of the past in modern identity.The article shows that modern English historiography in the field of memory and memorial culture actually plays the role of a political expert and agent who shapes and promotes ideas about the past, instrumentalizing history as a political resource.

The Implementation and Students Perceptions of Corpora Utilized in Teaching and Learning Agreement and Disagreement Expressions

This study explored using English Corpora as a media in teaching and learning process. This study aims to know how the British National Corpus is used as a media in the teaching and learning process and how students' perceptions of it. This research was conducted at Junior High School in Karawang. The researcher used a case study approach with a questionnaire to collect the data. The data were processed in the descriptive, descriptive, and table. Based on the findings, using English corpora, especially British National Corpus, is worthwhile as a media in teaching and learning agreement by providing students with the actual usage of agreement and disagreement and examples of agreement and disagreement expressions. This study also shows that using British National Corpus can engage students in expanding their examples of agreement and disagreement expressions. The questionnaires also showed that after used the British National Corpus, students were satisfied, BNC increased students’ autonomous learning, and BNC helped them learn agreement and disagreement expressions by increase their comprehension.

Blood transfusion in the Caribbean: Historical perspective in the context of Trinidad and Tobago.

To compare the historical development of blood transfusion in Britain and a former British West Indian colony. International transfusion bodies recommend national coordination and exclusively voluntary non-remunerated donation as essential pre-requisites for blood safety. These ideals have been achieved in high-income countries including Great Britain, the United States of America and Canada. However, most West Indian countries have fragmented, hospital-based blood services that rely on family replacement and remunerated donors. Comparative historical analysis of blood transfusion service development in Great Britain and Trinidad and Tobago was undertaken to provide insight into their dichotomous development and inform policy decisions to bridge the gap between the two types of transfusion service. The British National Blood Transfusion service was based on voluntary non-remunerated blood donation from its inception but achieved national coordination over 50 years that included a period of regional control during which incoordination contributed to a tainted blood scandal. Failure to establish community voluntary non-remunerated donation in Trinidad and Tobago during the colonial period, before independence in 1962, allowed regionally-controlled family replacement and remunerated blood donation to become entrenched then perpetuated by path dependence. A university-led programme has recently used historically-proven methods, drawing on the experiences of the British National Blood Transfusion Service, to establish a model for developing a voluntary non-remunerated programme. The programme aims to avoid historical pitfalls during its national extension. Historical analysis provided information for introducing voluntary non-remunerated blood donation and planning a nationally-coordinated blood transfusion service.

Representation of Prepositions in ESL Textbooks of Lower Primary Classes: A Study of NCERT Textbooks in India

Prepositions are among the most difficult parts of speech for ESL learners owing to their polysemous nature and how they behave in different languages. The present study aims to determine how English prepositions are represented in English Language textbooks designed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for Classes I and II in India. For a comparison of the frequency of prepositions in English, we have selected the British National Corpus. The study revealed that though the choice of prepositions in the textbooks is as par with their occurrences in the standard English corpus, their senses are not always primary, i.e., spatial. We found instances of temporal and metaphorical senses as well. One significant finding of this study is the relatively very low frequency of temporal use of prepositions as compared to the proto-typical spatial sense in these textbooks. The metaphorical uses of some common prepositions, which are more abstract and complex, are higher in frequency, especially in the exercises for giving instructions.

Medals awarded to the personnel of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902–1904: an inconsistency of recognition

ABSTRACT The 1902–1904 Scottish National Antarctic (Scotia) Expedition led by William Speirs Bruce was overshadowed by the 1901–1904 British National Antarctic (Discovery) Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. The establishment of the independent Scottish expedition had been resented by those promoting the ‘official’ British venture and the accolades accorded to each on their return home were very different. The Royal Scottish Geographical Society honoured both leaders with prestigious medals and later, after public pressure, rewarded Scotia’s captain and scientific staff but not her officers or crew. By contrast, the Royal Geographical Society rewarded the leader and personnel of the Discovery expedition and completely ignored Scotia. An even greater demarcation arose when the Polar Medal was hastily created for the benefit of Scott and the Discovery team, and subsequently extended to the crews of their two relief ships. Aggrieved that his men had not received such public recognition, Bruce commissioned his own expedition silver medal, yet did not present it to all eligible personnel. His exclusion of artist William Cuthbertson and taxidermist Alastair Ross is paradoxical given his indignation over the partiality of other awards but may indicate some unacknowledged personal friction during the Scotia expedition. The paper illuminates the politics and personalities involved in recognition of the achievements of early twentieth-century Antarctic exploration after the events themselves.

Temperature Analysis of Single busbar With Variation of Total Harmonic Distortion in Current

Typically, busbars are used to transmit and distribute currents in a bus duct system. The alarming use of nonlinear loads in the industrial sector or at residentials, such as arc welding, computers, ballast lighting, variable speed drives, and so on, has resulted in the generation of harmonics in current distortion, which are uncontrolled and thus increase heat generation within the system. The research conducted in this paper focuses on the prediction of the heat distribution as well as the analysis on operating temperature of a single busbar with compliance to the British National and International Standard (BS 159: 2014) using the Finite Element Method (FEM) in COMSOL Multiphysics software. The copper busbar dimension used for this research was 20mm x 6mm x 300mm, and the fundamental Root Mean Square (RMS) current was 419.1 A. The size of this busbars can withstand the maximum current of 430 A at a maximum operating temperature of 90°C, which complies with the standard requirement. The fundamental current is injected with variation of total harmonic distortion in current up to 55% with an interval of 5%. According to the findings, the operating temperature increases in direct proportion to the increase in total harmonic distortion with the current injections. With the presence of 55% of total harmonics in the current, the current was increased up to 57.73 A from the fundamental current, while the operating temperature was increased up to 140C from the fundamental temperature. The total harmonics in current produced by the nonlinear loads could affect the operating temperature of the busbars, and this continuous operation of current flow will affect the busbars' lifespan due to the occurrence of overheating.

Peculiarities of Adverb Placement in English Sentences (exemplified by the adverb "fairly")

The article deals with the problem of adverb placement in English sentences. The paper aims at studying the main tendencies and patterns which influence the choice of the syntactic position of adverbs in English. Special attention is paid to the correlation between the semantic and syntactic features of adverbs. The article also describes possible syntactic positions of adverbs belonging to different semantic classes and the factors which determine the change of the place of the adverb in the sentence. The paper also considers the peculiarities of functioning of adverbs in the sentence based on the analysis of the adverb "fairly". The material for study includes contexts of use of the adverb "fairly" taken from the British National Corpus (BNC). The research uses the following methods: descriptive and statistical methods, methods of contextual analysis and syntactic analysis. The relevance of the subject of the research is due to the fact that in modern English adverbs are characterized by a high level of variability in syntactic placement, and even adverbs belonging to the same semantic class may have different syntactic properties. The analysis showed that "fairly" can be used as an intensifying adverb, an emphasizer, an adverb of manner, an evaluation adverb; in a number of cases it can also acquire additional modal meanings or serve as a speech act-related adverb. Each meaning of the adverb is characterised by its specific variants of syntactic positioning: before the word it modifies, in medial position, in end position and as a parenthetic word detached from the rest of the sentence. The results of the research show the necessity to study the syntactic properties of adverbs in more detail and to clarify their existing dictionary definitions.

Cost-effectiveness analysis of the geko™ device (an NMES technology) in managing venous leg ulcers in UK healthcare settings.

This study evaluates the cost-effectiveness of the geko device a neuromuscular electro-stimulator technology with standard of care (SoC) versus SoC alone for venous leg ulcer (VLU) treatment, from the UK National Health Service (NHS) perspective over 12 months. Research was conducted across NHS UK facilities, primarily within community services and outpatient leg ulcer clinics, encompassing a total of 51 patients. A partitioned survival model, based on a two-arm randomised controlled trial, assessed wound healing rates using Kaplan-Meier curves and parametric extrapolations over a 12-month time horizon. Costs were derived from UK reference costs the British National Formulary, and the Personal Social Services Research Unit (2021/22). The primary outcome measured was the incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year gained. The geko device provides additional benefits by stimulating the lateral popliteal nerve, augmenting venous, arterial, and microvascular flow. The addition of the geko device to SoC significantly enhanced outcomes, increasing healing probability by 68% compared to SoC. This integration would result in a cost saving of £774.14 per patient when compared to the SoC alone across the NHS. Economic analyses indicate that integrating the geko device into SoC protocols would reduce the overall NHS expenditure on VLU wound management by as much as 15%. The approach also positively impacted health-related quality of life. The geko™ device when used adjunctively with SoC would be a cost-effective method for managing chronic VLUs within the NHS, improving healing rates and offering economic benefits.

Pharmacists at the Forefront: Identifying and Addressing Prescription Errors in Outpatient Settings of Tertiary Care Hospitals in Pakistan

Objective: The study sought to quantify the frequency and categorize the types of prescribing errors occurring in outpatient settings while evaluating the efficacy of pharmacist interventions in mitigating such errors. Methodology: This study was a cross-sectional, retrospective interventional study conducted over a one-year period from September 1, 2017, to August 31, 2018, at the outpatient departments of one government and one private tertiary care hospital in Hyderabad, Pakistan. A total of 2,552 outpatient prescriptions were randomly collected and evaluated by the researchers to identify prescribing errors, using the British National Formulary (BNF) as a reference guide. The study rigorously adhered to the STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) guidelines, ensuring comprehensive reporting, transparency in methodology, analysis, and interpretation of the observational research findings Results: The collected data were analyzed using chi-square tests in SPSS version 25 to assess statistical significance. Among the 2,552 outpatient prescriptions examined, 12,501 (40.4%) prescribing errors were identified. The error rate was higher in the government hospital (6,672; 42.8%) compared to the private hospital (5,829; 38.0%). The most prevalent errors occurred during the subscription stage (2,302; 45.1%), with 1,245 (48.1%) and 1,057 (42.0%) errors in the government and private hospitals, respectively. This was followed by errors in the inscription (3,447; 45.0%), superscription (5,156; 40.4%), and transcription (1,596; 31.3%) stages. Common interventions during the subscription stage addressed incomplete patient information (age, weight, etc.), missing consultant signatures, and stamps. For the inscription stage, frequent interventions involved incorrect drug doses and strengths.Typical interventions for the subscription and inscription stages included adding missing therapy durations and usage instructions, respectively. Pharmacist interventions were accepted at a higher rate in private hospitals (3,669; 62.9%) compared to government hospitals (3,675; 55.1%), with a total of 7,344 (58.7%) interventions accepted. Conclusion: The study revealed a high prevalence of prescribing errors across all stages of the outpatient prescription process, with the subscription stage being the most error-prone. The findings highlight the critical role of pharmacist-led prescription interventions in mitigating prescribing errors, thereby enhancing prescribing practices, optimizing therapeutic outcomes, and safeguarding patient safety.

Exploring Hedging in Spoken Discourse: Insights from Corpus Analysis

The present research deals with the phenomenon of hedging language, mainly focusing on the context of spontaneous verbal interactions. The main aim of the study is to analyze the occurrence of hedges in English spoken discourse as captured in the Spoken British National Corpus 2014. The research process deals with the differences in the usage of approximators and shields existing among men and women across different age groups and levels of education. The research methodology involves creating six sub-corpora, measuring hedge dispersion, examining selected hedges to ascertain their hedging function within the context and calculating frequencies within each sub-corpus. The research outcomes point to the prevalence of shields in spoken discourse. Plausibility shields are commonly used while attribution shields show lower usage. Adaptors contribute to mitigating certainty in utterances, whereas rounders play a less prominent role. These findings emphasize the nuanced interplay between linguistic strategies and speaker characteristics in spoken communication and highlight the importance of cooperative principles in discourse.

English-to-Hindi translation divergence study of English phrasal verbs

English phrasal verbs pose complex semantic interpretations and cause significant problems in their translation into the target language. The paper selects some frequent and highly polysemous English phrasal verbs listed with 10 or more senses in the English WordNet, collects sample English sentences from the British National Corpus and examines their Hindi translation equivalents in terms of the morpho-syntactic structure of Hindi verbs and the representation of semantic information. This study attempts to present the semantic equivalence in rendering the identical semantics in the verbal system of both languages under consideration. The study found that the most frequent and common way of realising the concepts represented by English phrasal verbs in Hindi is by incorporating the compound verb constructions in the Hindi language. Besides that, we observe multiple mapping patterns of English phrasal verbs in Hindi, including the simple Hindi verb (v), compound verb (v1-v2), and conjunct verb (noun/adjective/adverb-verb) constructions.

A common law in space for public health

Beyond the gravitational pull of Earth, space travel poses substantial public health hazards pertaining to the physical and mental well-being of astronauts and passengers, in addition to a possible threat to the populace of Earth upon re-entry. Exposure to cosmic radiation, cranial pressure from microgravity, weakened immunity to contagion, and the potential for depression and psychosis are all risks. Public health crises of this nature are to be expected as the duration of missions extends, as is the case with Mars settlement. In contrast to national space programmes, which have regarded these obstacles as human factors effecting the mission, public health law in common law British nations approaches them from the perspective of social justice and the preservation of human life and societal welfare. Countries including Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom continue to apply traditional common law principles of public health law, which provide a sensible and enduring method for reconciling competing public and private interests. Common law permits the violation of civil liberties through the use of force in public health restraint, forced medication, and quarantine, but only if necessary, reasonable, and equitable. While the understanding of the health challenges associated with long-duration spaceflight may be in its infancy for national space programmes and civilian space ventures, the application of common law public health principles could aid in the establishment of health and safety protocols in which human reactions to crises in space resemble those observed on Earth. This may, nevertheless, necessitate the enactment of a more comprehensive federal public health statute. Embedded in both public health common law and international space law, the pre-eminence of preserving and respecting human life and well-being continues to be a cornerstone of humane justice despite the perilous conditions of space.

Nothing but a Humbug: P.T. Barnum, Charles Dickens, and the Construction of National Identities in a Living Archive

Abstract: Even as the Victorians attempted to stabilize British national identity through institutional ownership of cultural property, Britishness remained a protean, imagined construct. This essay shows, through a new narrativization of the auction of Shakespeare's birthplace in 1847, that the purportedly kitschy and fake aspects of Barnumesque, new-money America were paradoxically also constitutive of Britain's own nationalism. In the spring of that year, newspapers advertised that Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon would soon go up for public auction. Rumours immediately began circulating that the American showman P.T. Barnum, who had recently barnstormed through England with the "Greatest Show on Earth," was intent on purchasing the birthplace for his menagerie of cultural oddities. In opposition to this foreign threat, a full-blown rescue campaign, driven by British media fearmongering, was launched in order to save Shakespeare's home "for the nation." Soon, these efforts drew in Britain's own premier showman of the 1840s, Charles Dickens. The nineteenth-century popular press's mythologization of these events, and the myth's subsequent recapitulation in the twenty-first century, is emblematic of the way national-infused archives wind and unwind in a double-spooled temporality. As I renarrativize archival materials associated with the auction of Shakespeare's birthplace, I proffer a different model of American and British nationalisms that points to their symbiotic development and perpetual reinvention. Ultimately, I suggest, we can learn from the Victorians' reinvention of their own history that the nineteenth-century archive is not a stable point of origin but rather a point of departure for questioning our national heritage and understanding the ways in which we inscribe the past with our present.

A Schema for Artorius: History, John Heath-Stubbs, and the Last Modernist Epic

Abstract Although John Heath-Stubbs’s long modernist epic Artorius is largely unknown, this ambitious text combines a cyclical vision of history with a linear one on its way to understanding Great Britain’s loss of imperial status. If this point has generally been missed, the complexity of Heath-Stubbs’s multiple symbolic superstructures partly accounts for the text’s unfortunate reception. Accordingly, I present an explanatory schema for Artorius in line with what other modernist texts – most famously Joyce’s Ulysses – have benefitted from. Besides unpacking the symbolic superstructures used by Heath-Stubbs, I also address how the poet, who lived in Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis, uses them to answer a British nation that can no longer identify as a global power.