The Problem of Doping

In this Essay, we examine Professor Michael J. Sandel and Judge Richard A. Posner\u27s thoughts on how to draw the line between substances and techniques that are fair game and those that constitute doping; whether there is a difference between sport and spectacle; and the nature of the public’s interest in sport as an institution and in doping as a practice that risks its integrity. Although we do not agree with all of their conclusions, they have made serious contributions to the ongoing discussion of these issues. Their linedrawing work in particular deserves considered attention from WADA and other stakeholders as they continue to work toward a useful and defensible definition of the spirit of sport

Emulating prosthetic feet during the prescription process to improve outcomes and justifications

<p>The current process of prescribing prosthetic feet is hampered by imprecise classifications based on self-assessment, recommendations based on subjective prediction, burdensome justification requirements, and slow, costly testing of devices. These problems have been exacerbated by the introduction of robotic prostheses, which can improve gait performance for some individuals, but are very expensive. We propose an alternative process, in which a versatile robotic emulator is used to preview patient interactions with a range of prostheses, while objective data related to effort, stability, speed and preference are collected, all prior to prescription. Results from pilot testing with a prototype emulator system demonstrate accurate haptic rendering of a wide range of prosthesis classes and differentiation of user performance across these classes. Eventually, emulation-based prescription could reduce bias, cost and waste in the prescription process, while simultaneously improving patient outcomes.</p

Instilling reflective practice – The use of an online portfolio in innovative optometric education Accepted as: e‐poster Paper no. 098

At UCLAN we are breaking the mould and have developed a blended learning MSci optometry programme which is the first blended learning course in optometric education in the UK and the first to use a practice-based online portfolio. Optometry has traditionally been taught as a 3‐year undergraduate programme. Upon successful graduation, students are required to complete a year in practice and meet the General Optical Council's (GOC) “ability to” core competencies. However, a recent study by the GOC found that 76% of students felt unprepared for professional practice with insufficient clinical experience and in response, the GOC is currently undertaking an educational strategic review. To ensure the students receive high-quality clinical experience in the workplace, we have developed an online logbook and portfolio. Students log their experiences, learning points and reflections. The portfolio is closely monitored both by the student's mentor in practice and by academic staff. The content and reflections logged by the students then helps to drive the face to face teaching, small group discussions and clinical experiences provided by the university

“Never towing a line” : Les Murray, autism, and Australian literature

Australian poet Les Murray regularly identified as autistic, and stated that his autism was a primary source of his poetry. However, Australian critics rarely consider his autism when discussing his work and, when they do, usually treat it negatively. By contrast, this thesis adopts a nuanced conception of autism, and examines its creative impact on Murray’s writing. Through close analysis of a range of Murray’s poems and his second verse novel Fredy Neptune, I demonstrate the centrality to Murray’s writing of a number of poetic techniques which have been associated with autistic experience, and with the experience of disablement more generally. In particular, I utilise the characteristics of Jim Ferris’s “crip poetics” and posit two others – “enhanced audience awareness” and “resisting erasure”. I also make use of the autistic poetic techniques defined by Julia Rodas and suggest Murray’s “line scan” and “cross resonance” as possible additions. Similarly, Murray’s poetic topics resonate with common autistic and disabled considerations. Throughout his six-decade career he wrote of his own and his son Alexander’s experiences of autism, as the cultural awareness of autism was transformed from negligible to ubiquitous. He also regularly referred to the Nazi genocide of disabled people, seeking to comprehend its implications and reverberations for his own kind. Surrounding and infusing his treatment of these concerns is a delight in disabled kinship, a simultaneously awkward and wondrous engagement with the world, and a life-long devotion to language. Murray’s writing affirms the centrality of disabled authors to Australian literature, and exemplifies the importance of recognising disability as a critical category. Furthermore, since it is currently understood that the first autistic author was published in 1985, Murray’s collections, beginning in 1965, extend autistic writing history by twenty years

Incapacity, Indebtedness and Illegality: Everyday Experiences of Poverty and Barriers to Better Life and Mobility for a Migrant Community in Delhi, India.

This research offers an ethnographic account of what can be learned about poverty and mobility from Bhatu people’s biographical narratives and everyday experiences. Historically nomadic and labelled a ‘criminal caste’ and ‘backward class’, this migrant community from village Rajasthan now lives in a ‘slum’ resettlement colony on the margins of Delhi. The findings show that Bhatu people’s experiences are shaped by accumulative, interlinked barriers of incapacity, illegality and indebtedness, which leave them most concerned with meeting their basic needs in everyday life. Influenced by cultural norms, their main opportunities for learning are earning and caring roles through which boys and girls prepare for adult life. However, these apprenticeships leave people unable to apply for government posts, unprepared for the formal job market and unskilled for more regular work with higher earnings. In addition, joint-family living perpetuates hierarchy and dependency between household members. The extreme inequalities of power that result not only feed children’s obligations to take on roles and meet responsibilities, but also fuel parent’s rights to expect their children to shoulder their roles and responsibilities on top of their own as they get older. Bhatu people’s illegality of status is intimately linked with their caste, class and gender identities. These are in turn the bases for discrimination, stigmatisation and corruption in their interactions with state representatives while accessing places to live and earn. Marginalised and isolated, their reliance on deviant and criminal activity is an expression of the extent of their needs, indicating the variation with which different peoples in India are able to access constitutional rights or pursue societal approved goals. Bhatu people’s ways of living and earning are further challenged by substance misuse and dependency, which are escalating particularly among men. The deterioration in health, followed by their premature deaths means women increasingly take on supplementary or sole earning roles while at the same time facing marital estrangement or widowhood. In desperate, often tragic circumstances people in general and women in particular turn to unrelenting community saving and borrowing schemes which attract high interest rates and late payment penalties. Such struggles lead households spiralling into indebtedness and leave them unable to create and maintain the conditions for life to continue, let alone pursue a better life. Only in a few cases are women and men successful in their pursuit of more subtle, culturally embedded claims to mobility. However, they are only recognised and legitimised within the Bhatu community and frequently challenged in everyday life

The student-produced electronic portfolio in craft education

The authors studied primary school students’ experiences of using an electronic portfolio in their craft education over four years. A stimulated recall interview was applied to collect user experiences and qualitative content analysis to analyse the collected data. The results indicate that the electronic portfolio was experienced as a multipurpose tool to support learning. It makes the learning process visible and in that way helps focus on and improves the quality of learning. © ISLS.Peer reviewe

You Can\u27t Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque

This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the possibility of agency; William Gibson\u27s Sprawl and Bridge trilogies are rife with negations of human agency at the metaphorical hands of various aspects and incarnations of what Fredric Jameson terms the technological sublime. This dissertation puts forth the argument that a group of post-Eighties SF texts all participate in a spontaneous revival of the picaresque mode, using the picaresque journey and related motifs to re-authenticate subjects whose identity and agency are being erased by powerful social and economic forces exterior to and normally imperceptible by the individual. This dissertation is organized around three loosely connected parts. Part 1 attempts to define Movement SF by separating the various, often confusing marketing labels (such as cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, etc.) and extracting a cluster of core characteristics that have shaped the genre since its inception in the early 80s. Part 1 further examines how these core characteristics (or premises) of Movement SF provide fertile ground for picaresque narrative strategies. Part 2 describes in detail the picaresque as it appears in Movement SF, examining worldbuilding strategies, the persistence and evolution of tropes and motifs common to the traditional picaresque, and the generation of new tropes and motifs unique to Movement picaresques. Part 3 examines the spatial tactics used in Movement picaresque narratives to enable picaresque marginality in totalized, globalized environments. Furthermore, Part 3 examines the use of psychological plurality as an internal tactic to escape closed environments