An approach to familial lymphoedema.

Lymphoedema is the build-up of lymphatic fluid leading to swelling in the tissues. Most commonly it affects the peripheries. Diagnosis is based on clinical assessment and imaging with lymphoscintigraphy. Treatment is supportive with compression garments, massage, good skin hygiene and prompt use of antibiotics to avoid the complication of cellulitis. Most commonly, lymphoedema occurs as a result of damage to the lymphatic system following surgery, trauma, radiation or infection. However, it can be primary, often associated with a genetic defect that causes disruption to the development of the lymphatic system. Common genetic conditions associated with lymphoedema include Turner syndrome and Noonan syndrome; however, there are numerous others that can be classified based on their clinical presentation and associated features. Herein we discuss how to diagnose and classify the known primary lymphoedema conditions and how best to investigate and manage this group of patients

Familiarity affects social network structure and discovery of prey patch locations in foraging stickleback shoals

Numerous factors affect the fine-scale social structure of animal groups, but it is unclear how important such factors are in determining how individuals encounter resources. Familiarity affects shoal choice and structure in many social fishes. Here, we show that familiarity between shoal members of sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) affects both fine-scale social organization and the discovery of resources. Social network analysis revealed that sticklebacks remained closer to familiar than to unfamiliar individuals within the same shoal. Network-based diffusion analysis revealed that there was a strong untransmitted social effect on patch discovery, with individuals tending to discover a task sooner if a familiar individual from their group had previously done so than if an unfamiliar fish had done so. However, in contrast to the effect of familiarity, the frequency with which individuals had previously associated with one another had no effect upon the likelihood of prey patch discovery. This may have been due to the influence of fish on one another's movements; the effect of familiarity on discovery of an empty ‘control’ patch was as strong as for discovery of an actual prey patch. Our results demonstrate that factors affecting fine-scale social interactions can also influence how individuals encounter and exploit resources.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Il barone rampante di Italo Calvino: una lettura “didattica”

Il barone rampante di Italo Calvino non è semplicemente una fiaba, ma un testo composito che si presta a varie interpretazioni e appare ricco di implicazioni di natura “formativa”. In questo intervento, pur facendo cenno a molte possibili chiavi di lettura dell’opera, se ne propone un approccio finalizzato alla discussione del problema della ribellione adolescenziale e giovanile, partendo dalla riflessione sul significato pedagogico che l’atto di ribellione di Cosimo può assumere. L’opera di Calvino infatti appare adatta ad affrontare, nel vivo del contesto scolastico ma in forma mediata, una delle questioni che si presentano costantemente quasi in ogni classe e in ogni livello di scuola, quella del rifiuto, da parte di uno o più allievi, dello studio, dell’istituzione scolastica, delle istituzioni in genere.Not a mere fable, Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees is a multifaceted text which may have various interpretations and many implications for its “formative” nature. While touching on the many possible readings of Calvino’s novel, this essay aims, above all, to highlight and discuss the issue of youth rebellion, as exemplified by an analysis of Cosimo’s act of rebellion and its pedagogical meaning. Thus, Calvino’s novel can be seen as an ideal medium for tackling one of the more common issues found in schools at almost every stage within the school system, that is, students’ refusal of schooling, educational systems and institutions

Representation of Africa online: sourcing practice and frames of reference

The dominant perspective on the representation of Africa in the western media claims that western media coverage is bias and crisis orientated and the liberal perspective claims that the coverage of Africa is not as negative as is often assumed. However, there is a paucity of literature on the representation of Africa online. This research enquiry is relevant because literature claims that the Internet has the potential to resolve the journalistic predicament of representing other culture through political participation and deliberation. But this requires a re-orientation of the sourcing practice of news organization to embrace sensitivity to and knowledge of African cultures. Moreover, the journalistic predicament can be resolved or not depending on the news gathering approach adopted by the news organization. Literature has identified two approaches, that is, ‘gatekeeping’ used mainly by dominant traditional media and ‘gatewatching’ used by alternative media in their quest to counter mainstream ideology. This study examines the impacts of the ‘gatewatching’ approach adopted by Africa Have Your Say (AHYS) website on its representation and frames of reference of Africa. It uses on-site observation, in-depth interviews and textual analysis to gather data. The study found that although the sourcing practice at the AHYS is elaborate and complex, the ‘gatewatching’ approach makes its susceptible to second level agenda setting. Hence, its frame repeats the attributes and tone used by the mainstream traditional media. However, a minority of users did not use repeat this frame in their comments

Community and Communion Radio: Listening to Evangelical Programmes in a Brazilian Favela

According to academics and regulators, Evangelical and community radio belong to different sectors. Yet, in the favela, the urban environment and set of airwaves were saturated with religious sounds and programmes. On the basis of an ethnographic study of community radio in the everyday life of a favela, this research indicates that the two are often one and the same as the community radio stations would frequently broadcast Evangelical programming. This article argues that rather than trying to discover community radio's functions a priori, it is more helpful do so organically, step by step. What emerges is that such functions are multiple—religious, commercial, political—and not necessarily perceived as being paradoxical by their listeners

Bayesian Model Selection with Network Based Diffusion Analysis

A number of recent studies have used Network Based Diffusion Analysis (NBDA) to detect the role of social transmission in the spread of a novel behavior through a population. In this paper we present a unified framework for performing NBDA in a Bayesian setting, and demonstrate how the Watanabe Akaike Information Criteria (WAIC) can be used for model selection. We present a specific example of applying this method to Time to Acquisition Diffusion Analysis (TADA). To examine the robustness of this technique, we performed a large scale simulation study and found that NBDA using WAIC could recover the correct model of social transmission under a wide range of cases, including under the presence of random effects, individual level variables, and alternative models of social transmission. This work suggests that NBDA is an effective and widely applicable tool for uncovering whether social transmission underpins the spread of a novel behavior, and may still provide accurate results even when key model assumptions are relaxed

Asking the readers: audience research into alternative journalism

Alternative forms of journalism are said to challenge the passive role of audience members as receivers and to foster active citizenship among alternative journalists and audiences. Yet the scholarly literature on alternative journalism contains more assertions about than evidence from the audience. Downing has described the audience for alternative media as “the virtually unknown”, prompting him to urge journalism scholars to undertake more audience research to help increase our understanding of this allegedly active and civic-minded public. This exploratory study of the people who regularly read a contemporary example of alternative journalism—an investigative local blog covering one UK city—is intended to contribute towards filling the gap identified by Downing. Audience views are explored by means of questionnaires and focus groups, providing some evidence that individuals are attracted to alternative journalism by their dissatisfaction with mainstream media; that they see alternative media as helping them make sense of the world; and that, to an extent, engaging with such media is both a prompt to, and a reflection of, readers’ democratic engagement as citizens. Recognising the limitations of this small study, the article concludes by reiterating Downing's call for further research

Survival or Sustainability? Contributions of Innovatively-Managed News Ventures to the Future of Egyptian Journalism

In the repressive political climate prevailing in Egypt in 2013-15, news ventures aspiring to high standards of reporting were forced to innovate. This paper analyses three Egyptian start-ups that experimented with novel revenue streams and news services during that period, to gain insights into their approaches to managing journalism. In the process it compares different criteria for assessing sustainability and concludes that, in adverse political environments, narrow economic measures of profitability and survival may give a misleading picture as to the sustainability of the kind of journalism conducive to democratic practice. Operating collaboratively, transparently and ethically may slow productivity and profitability in the short term while laying stronger foundations for durable relations among media teams, as well as with readers and advertisers, in the long run

Alternative Journalism as Monitorial Citizenship? A case study of a local news blog

Recent years have seen claims that some examples of online alternative journalism in the form of hyperlocal and local blogs are helping to address society’s “democratic deficit” by subjecting the actions of the powerful to increased public scrutiny, in a process that has been described as “monitorial citizenship”. To explore how this might work in practice, this study examines the origins, motivations and practices of one such site in the United Kingdom: the Leeds Citizen. The aim is to provide the sort of detailed consideration in depth that is almost by definition missing from wider surveys of the field. To this end, the case study is based on a series of interviews with the site’s creator, augmented by analysis of content, all discussed within the context of scholarly literature on how alternative, non-commercial forms of journalism operate in the digital age. The article concludes that this contemporary form of alternative journalism may indeed be described as an example of monitorial citizenship in action, but there is also a need for further research