Young People, Biographical Narratives and the Life Grid: Young People's Accounts of Parental Substance Use

Research into potentially sensitive issues with young people presents numerous methodological and ethical challenges. While recent studies have highlighted the advantages of task-based activities in research with young people, the literature on life history research provides few suggestions as to effective and appropriate research tools for encouraging young people to tell their stories. This paper explores the contribution that may be made to such research by the life grid, a visual tool for mapping important life events against the passage of time and prompting wide-ranging discussion. Critical advantages of the life grid in qualitative research include: its visual element which can help to engage interviewer and interviewee in a process of constructing and reflecting on a concrete life history record; its role in creating a more relaxed research encounter supportive of the respondent’s ‘voice’; and facilitating the discussion of sensitive issues. In addition, the way in which use of the grid anchors such narratives in accounts of everyday life, often revealing interesting tensions, is explored. These points are discussed with reference to an exploratory study of young people’s experience of parental substance use

A classification of tasks for the systematic study of immune response using functional genomics data

A full understanding of the immune system and its responses to infection by different pathogens is important for the development of anti-parasitic vaccines. A growing number of large-scale experimental techniques, such as microarrays, are being used to gain a better understanding of the immune system. To analyse the data generated by these experiments, methods such as clustering are widely used. However, individual applications of these methods tend to analyse the experimental data without taking publicly available biological and immunological knowledge into account systematically and in an unbiased manner. To make best use of the experimental investment, to benefit from existing evidence, and to support the findings in the experimental data, available biological information should be included in the analysis in a systematic manner. In this review we present a classification of tasks that shows how experimental data produced by studies of the immune system can be placed in a broader biological context. Taking into account available evidence, the classification can be used to identify different ways of analysing the experimental data systematically. We have used the classification to identify alternative ways of analysing microarray data, and illustrate its application using studies of immune responses in mice to infection with the intestinal nematode parasites Trichuris muris and Heligmosomoides polygyrus

Spectroscopy of 28^{28}Na: shell evolution toward the drip line

Excited states in $^{28}$Na have been studied using the $\beta$-decay of implanted $^{28}$Ne ions at GANIL/LISE as well as the in-beam $\gamma$-ray spectroscopy at the NSCL/S800 facility. New states of positive (J$^{\pi}$=3,4$^+$) and negative (J$^{\pi}$=1-5$^-$) parity are proposed. The former arise from the coupling between 0d$\_{5/2}$ protons and a 0d$\_{3/2}$ neutron, while the latter are due to couplings with 1p$\_{3/2}$ or 0f$\_{7/2}$ neutrons. While the relative energies between the J$^{\pi}$=1-4$^+$ states are well reproduced with the USDA interaction in the N=17 isotones, a progressive shift in the ground state binding energy (by about 500 keV) is observed between $^{26}$F and $^{30}$Al. This points to a possible change in the proton-neutron 0d$\_{5/2}$-0d$\_{3/2}$ effective interaction when moving from stability to the drip line. The presence of J$^{\pi}$=1-4$^-$ negative parity states around 1.5 MeV as well as of a candidate for a J$^{\pi}$=5$^-$ state around 2.5 MeV give further support to the collapse of the N=20 gap and to the inversion between the 0f$\_{7/2}$ and 1p$\_{3/2}$ levels below Z=12. These features are discussed in the framework of Shell Model and EDF calculations, leading to predicted negative parity states in the low energy spectra of the $^{26}$F and $^{25}$O nuclei.Comment: Exp\'erience GANIL/LISE et NSCL/S80

Signaling via interleukin-4, receptor alpha chain is required for successful vaccination against schistosomiasis in BALB/c mice

Radiation-attenuated (RA) schistosome larvae are potent stimulators of innate immune responses at the skin site of exposure (pinna) that are likely to be important factors in the development of Th1-mediated protective immunity. In addition to causing an influx of neutrophils, macrophages, and dendritic cells (DCs) into the dermis, RA larvae induced a cascade of chemokine and cytokine secretion following in vitro culture of pinna biopsy samples. While macrophage inflammatory protein 1 and interleukin-1 (IL-1) were produced transiently within the first few days, the Th1-promoting cytokines IL-12 and IL-18 were secreted at high levels until at least day 14. Assay of C3H/HeJ mice confirmed that IL-12 secretion was not due to lipopolysaccharide contaminants binding Toll-like receptor 4. Significantly, IL-12 p40 secretion was sustained in pinnae from vaccinated mice but not in those from nonprotected infected mice. In contrast, IL-10 was produced from both vaccinated and infected mice. This cytokine regulates IL-12-associated dermal inflammation, since in vaccinated IL-10/ mice, pinna thickness was greatly increased concurrent with elevated levels of IL-12 p40. A significant number of IL-12 p40 cells were detected as emigrants from in vitro-cultured pinnae, and most were within a population of rare large granular cells that were Ia, consistent with their being antigen-presenting cells. Labeling of IL-12 cells for CD11c, CD205, CD8, CD11b, and F4/80 indicated that the majority were myeloid DCs, although a proportion were CD11c F4/80, suggesting that macrophages were an additional source of IL-12 in the skin

Prostate Cancer Risk by BRCA2 Genomic Regions.

A BRCA2 prostate cancer cluster region (PCCR) was recently proposed (c.7914 to 3') wherein pathogenic variants (PVs) are associated with higher prostate cancer (PCa) risk than PVs elsewhere in the BRCA2 gene. Using a prospective cohort study of 447 male BRCA2 PV carriers recruited in the UK and Ireland from 1998 to 2016, we estimated standardised incidence ratios (SIRs) compared with population incidences and assessed variation in risk by PV location. Carriers of PVs in the PCCR had a PCa SIR of 8.33 (95% confidence interval [CI] 4.46-15.6) and were at a higher risk of PCa than carriers of other BRCA2 PVs (SIR = 3.31, 95% CI 1.97-5.57; hazard ratio = 2.34, 95% CI 1.09-5.03). PCCR PV carriers had an estimated cumulative PCa risk of 44% (95% CI 23-72%) by the age of 75 yr and 78% (95% CI 54-94%) by the age of 85 yr. Our results corroborate the existence of a PCCR in BRCA2 in a prospective cohort. PATIENT SUMMARY: In this report, we investigated whether the risk of prostate cancer for men with a harmful mutation in the BRCA2 gene differs based on where in the gene the mutation is located. We found that men with mutations in one region of BRCA2 had a higher risk of prostate cancer than men with mutations elsewhere in the gene

Asexuality: Classification and characterization

This is a post-print version of the article. The official published version can be obtaineed at the link below.The term “asexual” has been defined in many different ways and asexuality has received very little research attention. In a small qualitative study (N = 4), individuals who self-identified as asexual were interviewed to help formulate hypotheses for a larger study. The second larger study was an online survey drawn from a convenience sample designed to better characterize asexuality and to test predictors of asexual identity. A convenience sample of 1,146 individuals (N = 41 self-identified asexual) completed online questionnaires assessing sexual history, sexual inhibition and excitation, sexual desire, and an open-response questionnaire concerning asexual identity. Asexuals reported significantly less desire for sex with a partner, lower sexual arousability, and lower sexual excitation but did not differ consistently from non-asexuals in their sexual inhibition scores or their desire to masturbate. Content analyses supported the idea that low sexual desire is the primary feature predicting asexual identity