Managing the disconnect: A critical case study of neoliberalism in youth development practice

Aims This critical ethnography interrogates the influence of neoliberalism on youth development practice as instituted by the evidence-based practice and positive youth development movements. Methods I employed participant observation and grounded theory analyses in my role as facilitator of a youth participatory action research program in the context of violence prevention work at a large urban youth development agency. Results The disconnect between professionalized youth development and the lived experience of youth manifested in organizational policies and practices and meant that the agency had to balance competing interests and worldviews, reconcile the need for funding with social justice aims, and cope with the consequences of such conflicts. Conclusions Neoliberalism exacerbates a disconnect between youth development practice and youth experience, contributing to an epistemic form of violence. Results are discussed in relation to Martín-Baró liberation framework, which emphasizes the recovery of historical memory, deideologizing everyday experience, and utilizing the virtues of oppressed people

Preparation for cancer care: perceptions of newly qualified health care professionals

The present paper is derived from a larger survey which examined the perceptions of recently qualified health care professionals’ experience on evidence-based practice, team working and cancer care. This study reports solely on the findings relating to cancer care. The perceptions of recently qualified professionals in relation to their initial educational input on issues such as confidence, anxiety, communication skills and practice in cancer care as well as adequacy of support, professional supervision and use of reflection were gathered using a cross-sectional postal survey design. A total of 50 graduates from each professional category in nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and social work were sampled yielding a total sample of 200. Eighty-five questionnaires were returned yielding a response rate of 43%. Twenty-eight (33%) respondents stated that they were currently involved in working with people with cancer. These were as follows: 5 nurses, 8 physiotherapists, 9 occupational therapists and 6 social workers. Despite the low response rate, the findings suggest that health care professionals’ educational input and experiences of working with people with cancer were overall positive; for example, in the respondents’ confidence, communication skills, decrease in anxiety and application of knowledge gained in classroom to professional practice. Moreover, most respondents learnt about caring for cancer patients through practice rather than classroom teaching. A high percentage (i.e. 64%;18) across all groups felt supported when caring for people with cancer and reported receiving professional supervision as well as being able to actively reflect on their practice. The implications for education and practice were discussed particularly as there have been few studies conducted in relation to the specific needs and collaborative learning of these health care professional groups

Black Hole Final State Conspiracies

The principle that unitarity must be preserved in all processes, no matter how exotic, has led to deep insights into boundary conditions in cosmology and black hole theory. In the case of black hole evaporation, Horowitz and Maldacena were led to propose that unitarity preservation can be understood in terms of a restriction imposed on the wave function at the singularity. Gottesman and Preskill showed that this natural idea only works if one postulates the presence of "conspiracies" between systems just inside the event horizon and states at much later times, near the singularity. We argue that some AdS black holes have unusual internal thermodynamics, and that this may permit the required "conspiracies" if real black holes are described by some kind of sum over all AdS black holes having the same entropy.Comment: Various minor improvements, references added, 25 page

Ignoring History, Denying Racism: Mounting Evidence for the Marley Hypothesis and Epistemologies of Ignorance

In demonstration of the Marley hypothesis, Nelson, Adams, and Salter showed that differences in critical historical knowledge (i.e., knowledge of past racism) and motivation to protect group esteem predicted present-day racism perceptions among Whites and Blacks attending different, racially homogenous universities. The present Study 1 conceptually replicates these findings among Whites and Blacks attending the same racially diverse university. Consistent with previous findings, Whites (vs. Blacks) displayed less critical historical knowledge, explaining their greater denial of systemic racism. Moreover, stronger racial identity among Whites predicted greater systemic racism denial. A brief Study 2 intervention boosts Whites’ racism perceptions. People who learned the critical history of U.S. housing policy (vs. a control group) acknowledged more systemic racism. The present work interrupts seemingly normal and neutral dominant perspectives, provides mounting evidence for an epistemologies of ignorance framework, and suggests that learning critical history can help propel anti-racist understandings of the present

Atomic force microscopy differentiates discrete size distributions between membrane protein containing and empty nanolipoprotein particles

AbstractTo better understand the incorporation of membrane proteins into discoidal nanolipoprotein particles (NLPs) we have used atomic force microscopy (AFM) to image and analyze NLPs assembled in the presence of bacteriorhodopsin (bR), lipoprotein E4 n-terminal 22k fragment scaffold and DMPC lipid. The self-assembly process produced two distinct NLP populations: those containing inserted bR (bR-NLPs) and those that did not (empty-NLPs). The bR-NLPs were distinguishable from empty-NLPs by an average increase in height of 1.0 nm as measured by AFM. Streptavidin binding to biotinylated bR confirmed that the original 1.0 nm height increase corresponds to br-NLP incorporation. AFM and ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) measurements suggest that NLP size did not vary around a single mean but instead there were several subpopulations, which were separated by discrete diameters. Interestingly, when bR was present during assembly the diameter distribution was shifted to larger particles and the larger particles had a greater likelihood of containing bR than smaller particles, suggesting that membrane proteins alter the mechanism of NLP assembly

Unitarity at Infinity and Topological Holography

Recently it has been suggested that non-gaussian inflationary perturbations can be usefully analysed in terms of a putative dual gauge theory defined on the future conformal infinity generated by an accelerating cosmology. The problem is that unitarity of this gauge theory implies a strong constraint [the "Strominger bound"] on the matter fields in the bulk. We argue that the bound is just a reflection of the equation of state of cosmological matter. The details motivate a discussion of the possible relevance of the ``dS/CFT correspondence" to the resolution of the Big Bang singularity. It is argued that the correspondence may require the Universe to come into existence along a non-singular spacelike hypersurface, as in the theories of ``creation from nothing" discussed by Firouzjahi, Sarangi, and Tye, and also by Ooguri et al. The argument makes use of the unusual properties of gauge theories defined on topologically non-trivial spaces.Comment: 18 pages including 2 eps file

Vimentin DNA methylation predicts survival in breast cancer

The Vimentin gene plays a pivotal role in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and is known to be overexpressed in the prognostically poor basal-like breast cancer subtype. Recent studies have reported Vimentin DNA methylation in association with poor clinical outcomes in other solid tumors, but not in breast cancer. We therefore quantified Vimentin DNA methylation using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in breast tumors and matched normal pairs in association with gene expression and survival in a hospital-based study of breast cancer patients. Gene expression data via qRT-PCR in cell lines and oligomicroarray data from breast tissues were correlated with percent methylation in the Vimentin promoter. A threshold of 20 percent average methylation compared with matched normal pairs was set for bivariate and multivariate tests of association between methylation and tumor subtype, tumor histopathology, and survival. Vimentin was differentially methylated in luminal breast cancer cell lines, and in luminal A, luminal B, and HER2-enriched breast tumor subtypes, but was rare in basal-like cell lines and tumors. Increased methylation was strongly correlated with decreased mRNA expression in cell lines, and had a moderate inverse correlation in breast tumors. Vimentin methylation predicted poor overall survival independent of race, subtype, stage, nodal status, or metastatic disease and holds promise as a new prognostic biomarker for breast cancer patients