‘It’s my right to play too!’ Play for disabled children in Taiwan and Hong Kong

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The Emergent Role of the Social Designer

This paper responds to the Academic Design Management Conference, Design Management Futures theme. It answers questions relating to the way in which we think about the future of Design Management, and the way in which Design Management may need to adapt to the changing nature of design and new management theories. This piece draws on the work of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the fields of Engineering, Sociology and Graphic Design, and their experience in the areas of user-engagement, anti-oppressive education/pedagogy and inclusive design. This position paper is a reflective piece that examines the value of designers, engineers and sociologists working together. It puts forward the question ‘What can designers and engineers learn from the emancipatory paradigm of the Social Scientist?’ Reflections from a UK-based team of undergraduate designers and engineers provide insight to their experience of engaging with the user through an inclusive design project. They cast light upon their experience of cross-faculty studies, interdisciplinary collaborations and both the challenges and benefits to working with different user groups. This paper concludes by examining the practical implications for Design Management, providing insights for Design Management education, research and practice

Structural insights into loss of function of a pore forming toxin and its role in pneumococcal adaptation to an intracellular lifestyle.

The opportunistic pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae has dual lifestyles: one of an asymptomatic colonizer in the human nasopharynx and the other of a deadly pathogen invading sterile host compartments. The latter triggers an overwhelming inflammatory response, partly driven via pore forming activity of the cholesterol dependent cytolysin (CDC), pneumolysin. Although pneumolysin-induced inflammation drives person-to-person transmission from nasopharynx, the primary reservoir for pneumococcus, it also contributes to high mortality rates, creating a bottleneck that hampers widespread bacterial dissemination, thus acting as a double-edged sword. Serotype 1 ST306, a widespread pneumococcal clone, harbours a non-hemolytic variant of pneumolysin (Ply-NH). Performing crystal structure analysis of Ply-NH, we identified Y150H and T172I as key substitutions responsible for loss of its pore forming activity. We uncovered a novel inter-molecular cation-π interaction, governing formation of the transmembrane β-hairpins (TMH) in the pore state of Ply, which can be extended to other CDCs. H150 in Ply-NH disrupts this interaction, while I172 provides structural rigidity to domain-3, through hydrophobic interactions, inhibiting TMH formation. Loss of pore forming activity enabled improved cellular invasion and autophagy evasion, promoting an atypical intracellular lifestyle for pneumococcus, a finding that was corroborated in in vivo infection models. Attenuation of inflammatory responses and tissue damage promoted tolerance of Ply-NH-expressing pneumococcus in the lower respiratory tract. Adoption of this altered lifestyle may be necessary for ST306 due to its limited nasopharyngeal carriage, with Ply-NH, aided partly by loss of its pore forming ability, facilitating a benign association of SPN in an alternative, intracellular host niche

The social model of disability as an oppositional device

This article engages with debates about the UK Disabled People’s Movement’s ‘Big Idea’ – the social model of disability - positioning this as an ‘oppositional device’. This concept is adapted from the work of the art activist and theorist Brian Holmes, elaborated using insights from Foucault and others. The model’s primary operation is introducing contingency into the present, facilitating disabled people’s resistance-practices. We recognise, however, that the device can operate in a disciplinary manner when adopted by a machinery of government. Whilst our primary goal is to understand the character and operation of the social model, by providing a more general definition of an oppositional device as the concrete operation of technologies of power, we also propose a concept potentially useful for the analysis of the resistance-practices of activists involved in a wide variety of struggles. This concept may thus have implications for wider social and political analysis