Do I Tell My Boss?: Disclosing My Mental Health Condition at Work [English, Spanish and Vietnamese versions]

Spanish and Vietnamese translations of this publication are available for download under Additional Files below. This publication provides some guidance to young adults living with a mental health condition as to whether or not to disclose that information in the workplace

My Mental Health Rights on Campus [English, Spanish and Vietnamese versions]

Spanish and Vietnamese translations of this publication are available for download under Additional Files below. Tip sheet for youth and young adults with mental health conditions which provides information about mental health rights, rules, and resources for college students. Originally published as: Transitions RTC Tip Sheet 5, Jan. 2012

Ser/Thr Phosphatases: The New Frontier for Myeloid Leukemia Therapy?

Myeloid leukemias are characterised by mutation and altered expression of a range of tyrosine kinases. Over 90% of chronic myeloid leukemias (CML) harbour the Philadelphia chromosome, resulting in expression of the BCR/ABL fusion protein, a constitutively active tyrosine kinase that is essential for survival of the CML cells. Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous disease characterised by mutations and dysregulation of a range of tyrosine kinases including the receptors Fms-like tyrosine kinase (Flt-3), c-KIT and platelet derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR). Tyrosine kinases represent powerful therapeutic targets, as the archetypical example of imatinib has shown for CML. However, many patients develop resistance to imatinib and other second generation inhibitors. Furthermore, trials of tyrosine kinase inhibitors for AML have thus far proven disappointing. Thus novel therapeutic targets are needed in order to improve the survival of myeloid leukemia patients. Oncogenic tyrosine kinases induce activation of a variety of signaling pathways required for the growth and survival of leukemia cells, such as the Ras/MAPK, PI3K/Akt, and JAK/STAT pathways. In addition to protein kinases, the rate and duration of protein phosphorylation is tightly regulated by the activity of protein phosphatases, and in normal cells the reversal of protein phosphorylation by phosphatases is essential for providing the fine-tuning of signaling pathways and maintaining a balance in cellular physiology. While much of the focus for targeted therapies in leukemia therapy has concentrated on the kinases responsible for phosphorylation events, relatively little attention has been given to the role that protein phosphatases play. However, research over the past decade has now begun to highlight the importance of protein phosphatases in leukemia and their potential as targets for novel therapies. In particular, the ser/thr phosphatase PP2A has emerged as an important tumor suppressor in myeloid leukemias and strategies aimed at reactivating this complex enzyme show great promise for a new generation of leukemia therapies

Amazonian Cartographies: Mapping Novels and the Production of Space in Twentieth-Century Latin America

The decline of the first Amazonian Rubber Boom in 1912 was only the beginning of Amazonia’s emergence as an important literary territory. This dissertation explores how Latin American intellectuals throughout the twentieth century grapple in their novels with the ways that extractive processes at different historical moments surveyed, transformed, and devastated Amazonia and how their resulting literary cartographies have intervened in Amazonian spaces. Scholars have recently begun to consider the representation of Amazonia across Latin American fiction, addressing the void in literary criticism on this region commonly relegated to anthropological, biological, and geographical studies. However, the role that literature has played in shaping Amazonia has not received sufficient attention. My research focuses on authors from Amazonian countries whose work writes against processes such as state mapping, geographic curriculum, railroad construction, and extractivism that have codified Amazonia for integration into cultural and economic projects. I examine how their novels try to account for geographic experiences elided for the sake of those projects as well as how their efforts to design what they see as more faithful literary “maps” often produce other problematic omissions. I engage the problem of the translation of space from observation to representation—literary and otherwise—and I theorize how these representations work to create Amazonia in their image. The first chapter unpacks La vorágine (1924) as a response to José Eustasio Rivera’s participation in the Colombian-Venezuelan border commission from 1921-1922. Chapter 2 departs from Rómulo Gallegos’s 1935 novel Canaima to illustrate the ways that literature, geographic curriculum, and shamanism have overlapped in mapping Guayana. The third chapter shows how the destruction of railroad records presents an opportunity for Brazilian author Márcio Souza in Mad Maria (1980) to reinvent the spaces of American capitalism along the Madeira and Mamoré Rivers. Finally, my last chapter considers the transformation of Iquitos into a shamanic retreat center via César Calvo’s Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo y otros brujos de la Amazonía (1981). Together, these chapters demonstrate the complex interplay between various modes of spatial representation and the crucial role played by literature in negotiating and producing Amazonian spaces

Becoming an Adult: Challenges for Those with Mental Health Conditions [English and Spanish versions]

A Spanish translation of this publication is available for download under Additional Files below. This brief will describe psychosocial development and family life cycle changes during the transition to adulthood in typical youth and youth with serious mental health conditions (SMHC). We also describe additional challenges this population faces, and what can be done to support them and improve their outcomes. Originally published as: Transitions RTC Research Brief 3, 2011

Re-thinking Personal Narrative in the Pedagogy of Writing Teacher Preparation

How can teacher educators mobilize contemporary understandings of personal narrative -- as socially and dialogically shaped in the context of culture and as instrumental to sociocultural processes of self-authoring -- in the teaching of narrative writing and, more specifically, in the work of teaching teachers to teach narrative writing? Rarely do teachers teach strategies that might result in good narratives. Rarely do narrative texts written in school (or any other kinds of texts written in school, for that matter) actually go anywhere beyond the teacher, thus failing to offer students experience in negotiating meanings with readers, working out the versions of self in context that narrative writing can foster. Teaching personal narrative well, in ways that are consistent with a social and dialogic view of personal narrative’s value and the identity work it can support, has proven challenging. This essay describes and reflects on one effort to do so in a teacher education setting. We introduce the example of a class-to-class partnership between teacher candidates and first-year college writers not as a success story or an exemplar, but rather as a problematic case to stimulate conversation about the challenges of narrative writing teacher preparation

Pharmacist-led management of chronic pain in primary care:results from a randomised controlled exploratory trial

To compare the effectiveness of pharmacist medication review, with or without pharmacist prescribing, with standard care, for patients with chronic pain

Nutrient Content of Beef Steaks as Influenced by USDA Quality Grade and Degree of Doneness

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of various degrees of doneness on the nutrient content of beef. Ten steaks were obtained from each of five USDA Prime, five USDA Choice, and five USDA Select strip loins and assigned to one of five degree of doneness treatments (two sets of treatments per strip loin): uncooked, medium rare (63 °C), medium (71 °C), well done (77 °C), and very well done (82 °C). Steaks then were dissected into separable tissue components consisting of lean, fat, and refuse. Lean tissue was used to obtain proximate analyses of protein, moisture, fat, and ash. This study showed that degree of doneness did influence (P < 0.05) the nutrient composition of beef steaks. As the degree of doneness increased, percent fat and protein increased, while percent moisture decreased. Thus, cooking steaks to a higher degree of doneness will result in a higher calorie steak

Clonal and microclonal mutational heterogeneity in high hyperdiploid acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

High hyperdiploidy (HD), the most common cytogenetic subtype of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), is largely curable but significant treatment-related morbidity warrants investigating the biology and identifying novel drug targets. Targeted deep-sequencing of 538 cancer-relevant genes was performed in 57 HD-ALL patients lacking overt KRAS and NRAS hotspot mutations and lacking common B-ALL deletions to enrich for discovery of novel driver genes. One-third of patients harbored damaging mutations in epigenetic regulatory genes, including the putative novel driver DOT1L (n=4). Receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK)/Ras/MAPK signaling pathway mutations were found in two-thirds of patients, including novel mutations in ROS1, which mediates phosphorylation of the PTPN11-encoded protein SHP2. Mutations in FLT3 significantly co-occurred with DOT1L (p=0.04), suggesting functional cooperation in leukemogenesis. We detected an extraordinary level of tumor heterogeneity, with microclonal (mutant allele fraction &lt;0.10) KRAS, NRAS, FLT3, and/or PTPN11 hotspot mutations evident in 31/57 (54.4%) patients. Multiple KRAS and NRAS codon 12 and 13 microclonal mutations significantly co-occurred within tumor samples (p=4.8x10-4), suggesting ongoing formation of and selection for Ras-activating mutations. Future work is required to investigate whether tumor microheterogeneity impacts clinical outcome and to elucidate the functional consequences of epigenetic dysregulation in HD-ALL, potentially leading to novel therapeutic approaches

Supporting the learning of deaf students in higher education: a case study at Sheffield Hallam University

This article is an examination of the issues surrounding support for the learning of deaf students in higher education (HE). There are an increasing number of deaf students attending HE institutes, and as such provision of support mechanisms for these students is not only necessary but essential. Deaf students are similar to their hearing peers, in that they will approach their learning and require differing levels of support dependant upon the individual. They will, however, require a different kind of support, which can be technical or human resource based. This article examines the issues that surround supporting deaf students in HE with use of a case study of provision at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), during the academic year 1994-95. It is evident that by considering the needs of deaf students and making changes to our teaching practices that all students can benefit