Choice and the citizen? Health decisions and their implications for developing a Welsh citizenship

This article focuses on the effects of music on sufferers of dementia as a means of communicating through familiar songs within a Welsh context. The fieldwork is based on the author’s experience singing to the accompaniment of the Celtic harp at an assessment unit for dementia and at resident homes for the elderly on the Llŷn Peninsula during the Summer of 2010 and presents insights gained from observing patients recalling familiar songs when conversation was difficult. On this basis, the article examines the way in which music can assist patients who suffer from this condition, describing and analysing the results.

Since the Nineteenth Century, choral singing has played a prominent part in Welsh culture and society. In the latter part of the Twentieth Century, there were increasing demands to consider the influences of quality of life and well-being on health. As a result, there is a growing field of research that considers the role of the community arts, and choral singing in particular, as social capital, and the way in which they can influence personal and social health and well-being. Due to this growing recognition, this article will consider research that examines the relationship between amateur choir-singing in Wales – as both a musical and social event – and general health and well-being.

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of quality and quantity of linguistic input (i.e. to what extent are individuals exposed to a language from different sources during their lives) on Welsh-English bilingual adults’ acquisition of the Welsh plural system. Previous research found differences between bilingual children from different language backgrounds. While it is possible to reduce the difference with an increase in exposure to the language, however, when the structures are complex how quickly (if at all) can any difference be reduced, especially when the system is used inconsistently across adults. However, to what extent these differences reduce is unclear, as no research has been conducted on individuals over age 11. The aim of the study was to assess Welsh-English bilingual adults’ abilities to create plural words in Welsh, in order to trace the extent the differences seen between children have reduced over time.

The knowledge we have about the sun’s corona is based on observations made from afar. It is impossible, therefore, to speculate about the three-dimensional structure of the corona directly. This article outlines the history of the study of the structure of the corona, and describes new techniques which for the first time enable us to know the structure of the corona in detail. A description is given of the change in the structure over the life cycle of the sun, together with new information about the connection between the magnetic field and coronal density and new results concerning the rotation rates of the corona. The results show that knowledge about the corona can be greatly increased by applying new tomography techniques, enabling and stimulating further studies of the corona in years to come.