The control exerted by substrate oxidation reactions, by ATP turnover and by the proton leak over the oxygen consumption rate, the phosphorylation rate, the proton leak rate and the protonmotive force (delta p) in isolated rat liver mitochondria under a range of conditions between non-phosphorylating (State 4) and maximum phosphorylation (State 3) was investigated by using the top-down approach of metabolic control analysis. The experiments were carried out with saturating concentrations of the substrates succinate, glutamate with malate, or pyruvate with malate. The distribution of control was very similar with each of the three substrates. The effective P/O ratio (i.e. not corrected for leak reactions) was also measured; it varied from zero in State 4 to 80-90% of the maximum theoretical P/O ratio in State 3. Under most conditions control over the effective P/O ratio was shared between proton leak (which had negative control) and the phosphorylating subsystem (which had roughly equal positive control); near State 4, substrate oxidation reactions also acquired some control over this ratio. In resting hepatocytes the effective P/O ratio was only 50% of its maximum theoretical value, corresponding to an effective P/O ratio of only 1.3 for complete oxidation of glucose. The effective P/O ratio for intracellular mitochondrial oxygen consumption was 64% of the maximum value. The control coefficient of the mitochondrial proton leak over the effective P/O ratio in cells was -0.34; the control coefficient of phosphorylation reactions over this ratio was 0.31 and the control coefficient of substrate oxidation reactions over the ratio was 0.03, showing how the coupling efficiency in cells can respond sensitively to agents that change the proton leak or the ATP demand, but not to those that change substrate oxidation.

The laboring population of early modern England (ca. 1550–1750) has long been characterized as “inarticulate”—by contemporary elites and historians alike. This article uses transcribed linguistic exchanges between lower-class speakers and their social superiors—especially those that occurred in the context of the criminal justice system—to reconsider the causes and consequences of plebeian inarticulacy during the period, and beyond. It suggests that certain varieties of inarticulacy—including stammering—should be understood in relation to the radically hierarchical social structure of early modern England and the particular forms of subordination and deference that it demanded of and engendered in lower-class individuals. This allows for a reconsideration of the relationship between language and class as well as the role of quotidian subordinate-superior exchanges in reproducing socioeconomic and political inequality.

Historians of early modern England are aware that the legal testimony of poor, dependent, and subordinated individuals was regarded with suspicion. Contemporaries believed that labouring people would provide false evidence in return for ‘gifts’ or ‘rewards’. To what extent did such assumptions accurately reflect the processes whereby such witnesses came to depose for their ‘betters’? This article uses sixteenth‐ and early seventeenth‐century perjury and subornation suits from the court of Star Chamber to reconstruct labouring people's experiences and understandings of the politics of testimony. In explicating the structural and material factors that could militate against their deposing, override their reservations about doing so, and colour the contents of the depositions they gave, it makes two broader contributions to our understanding of the period. On the one hand, it presents a markedly more pessimistic account of the social relations involved in the increase in litigation. On the other, it reappraises a category of source—depositions—that historians have long regarded as providing singularly privileged access to the expressions of social groups that left little trace in the historical record.

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issue of "nation" is never addressed, though the construction and expression of national identity has a large research literature of its own. Even the territorial space is misleading. The book is about England, not Britain-Scotland gets just a couple of mentions while Wales is ignored (except for Gwen's little terrace house in Barry in Gavin and Stacey). And, despite a few references to Manchester, the book is about London. The literature is overwhelmingly about London, while the sitcoms are mostly implicitly, if not explicitly, so. Bishop knows this, but she does not draw out the implications for her claims about a lower-middle-class nation.In each chapter, Bishop draws on historical studies of workplace, occupation, suburbs, and the like and relates them to the themes emerging from the popular cultural sources. In doing so, however, Bishop understates what is for me most important about the book. She occasionally acknowledges that it is representations of white-collar workers that she is studying, but if this is to be connected to the overall argument that Britain has become a lower-middle-class nation, then the reader needs a much stronger interrogation of how these striking continuities of representation were maintained. Cultural products such as fiction and sitcoms are distinctive sources that raise methodological questions that are not really considered. Bishop is struck by the continuity of tropes and conventions, but she does not foreground it as a key question for the book: How do we account for these continuities over 150 years or, within a single genre, 50 years of sitcoms? Novels and sitcoms are products, and we need to think about how they were commissioned and produced, and by whom, and the pressures that asked for originality -but only within very limiting constraints.We also need to think about how these products are consumed. Audience studies have stopped us from assuming that what appears on a stage or screen is what the audience experiences, and reader response theory has stopped us from seeing texts (literary, but the same applies to performance) as objects to be analyzed on their own. That is especially the case if we are asked to fit the novels and sitcoms to the construction of a broader social or cultural identity. Did the same kind of people read Wells and Bennett as read Shan Bullock and Pett Ridge? And what about the polemical nonfiction of W. H. Crossland and C. F. G. Masterman? The fact that the sitcom Men Behaving Badly might have been intended as a critique of laddish culture-and was seen as such by many women-but also served as an affectionate validation of behaving badly is one of the few occasions when Bishop draws such ambiguities to the reader's attention. Audiences and reception needed sustained attention if Bishop's overall argument is to be sustained.Bishop has written an engaging and enjoyable book from which I learned a good deal about the fascinating continuities in how the white-collar lower middle class has been represented in fiction and on screen. She may not have per...