Made by hand

Although the mainstream animation industry has adopted digital production methods, the attraction of laborious hand-made methods for making animation persists in the independent sector. The chapter considers how ‘craftivist’ opposition to mechanical, technological and digital techniques is validated in this community of practice through ideas that haptic knowledge by skilled physical labour and an exploration of materiality, autographic mark-making and imperfection (Wabi-sabi) are guarantors of authenticity and individuality that can only be carried out by hand. Why is this? What ideas and assumptions can be seen to underpin the notions of craft and crafting? Tracing connections between craft and activism since the Industrial Revolution, this chapter critically reflects on discourses of craft and the handmade through reference to Ruskin (1851), Morris (1892), Hobsbawm (2000), Thompson (1980), Benjamin (1935), Krauss (2000) and Takahashi (2005). Whereas the experimental animation community privileges analogue, handmade processes that appear to oppose and critique commercial animation production, building upon Warburton (2016) and Frayling (2017) it is argued here that this approach is underpinned by nostalgia and often faked. What looks like a hand-painted animation could actually be a simulation that was ‘painted’ in a software package: a pastiche of manual labour. Aesthetics alone do not guarantee that a work of art opposes the mainstream. Instead of recycling the past to create ‘artistic’ animation, it is argued in the conclusion that contemporary practitioners can equally investigate issues of labour and materiality through digital tools and virtual materials such as in the ‘ugly’ CGI animation of Nikita Daikur (2017)

A large scale hearing loss screen reveals an extensive unexplored genetic landscape for auditory dysfunction

The developmental and physiological complexity of the auditory system is likely reflected in the underlying set of genes involved in auditory function. In humans, over 150 non-syndromic loci have been identified, and there are more than 400 human genetic syndromes with a hearing loss component. Over 100 non-syndromic hearing loss genes have been identified in mouse and human, but we remain ignorant of the full extent of the genetic landscape involved in auditory dysfunction. As part of the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, we undertook a hearing loss screen in a cohort of 3006 mouse knockout strains. In total, we identify 67 candidate hearing loss genes. We detect known hearing loss genes, but the vast majority, 52, of the candidate genes were novel. Our analysis reveals a large and unexplored genetic landscape involved with auditory function

Geographic and temporal trends in the molecular epidemiology and genetic mechanisms of transmitted HIV-1 drug resistance:an individual-patient- and sequence-level meta-analysis

Regional and subtype-specific mutational patterns of HIV-1 transmitted drug resistance (TDR) are essential for informing first-line antiretroviral (ARV) therapy guidelines and designing diagnostic assays for use in regions where standard genotypic resistance testing is not affordable. We sought to understand the molecular epidemiology of TDR and to identify the HIV-1 drug-resistance mutations responsible for TDR in different regions and virus subtypes.status: publishe

Will, you’ve got to share : disputes during family mealtime

Purposes: The overall aim of the chapter is to explore how disputes between family members are accomplished and how the actions of co-present members (the mother and elder brother) contribute to the unfolding dispute. Methodology: Selected from video-recordings of the family breakfast, three extended sequences of mealtime talk were transcribed using the Jeffersonian system and analysed using the analytic resources of conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. Findings: This analysis establishes how both the mother and elder sibling intervene in matters to do with who has access to some bookclub brochures. Appeals to rules such as 'you've got to share' are used by the mother to manage the local issue of the dispute. In intervening to resolve and settle disputes, the mother makes visible particular moral orders, such as sharing. Intervention is accomplished through directions, increasing physical proximity to the dispute, topic shift and physical intervention in the dispute, such as gently removing a child's hand from the brochures. Justifications for sharing proffered by the mother that work to establish an alignment with one child are challenged by the other sibling, thus contributing to an escalation of the dispute. Also explicated is how an older sibling buys into the dispute, making visible his view about how sharing is accomplished; that is, 'you just cope with it.' Practical implications: This chapter has some practical implications for adults who interact with children (teachers, parents) highlighting that in some way, adults, through their actions may contribute to the continuation of a dispute and secondly, how adult attempts to settle or end a dispute may result only in a temporary settlement rather than a cessation of the dispute. Value of paper: The chapter contributes understandings about how family members manage disputes interactionally and how social and moral orders are accomplished during family mealtime. Additionally, it shows how some disputes are temporarily settled and connected across a section of action rather than ended

The social orders of family mealtime

This study examined the everyday practices of families within the context of family mealtime to investigate how members accomplished mealtime interactions. Using an ethnomethodological approach, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, the study investigated the interactional resources that family members used to assemble their social orders moment by moment during family mealtimes. While there is interest in mealtimes within educational policy, health research and the media, there remain few studies that provide fine-grained detail about how members produce the social activity of having a family meal. Findings from this study contribute empirical understandings about families and family mealtime. Two families with children aged 2 to 10 years were observed as they accomplished their everyday mealtime activities. Data collection took place in the family homes where family members video recorded their naturally occurring mealtimes. Each family was provided with a video camera for a one-month period and they decided which mealtimes they recorded, a method that afforded participants greater agency in the data collection process and made available to the analyst a window into the unfolding of the everyday lives of the families. A total of 14 mealtimes across the two families were recorded, capturing 347 minutes of mealtime interactions. Selected episodes from the data corpus, which includes centralised breakfast and dinnertime episodes, were transcribed using the Jeffersonian system. Three data chapters examine extended sequences of family talk at mealtimes, to show the interactional resources used by members during mealtime interactions. The first data chapter explores multiparty talk to show how the uniqueness of the occasion of having a meal influences turn design. It investigates the ways in which members accomplish two-party talk within a multiparty setting, showing how one child "tells" a funny story to accomplish the drawing together of his brothers as an audience. As well, this chapter identifies the interactional resources used by the mother to cohort her children to accomplish the choralling of grace. The second data chapter draws on sequential and categorical analysis to show how members are mapped to a locally produced membership category. The chapter shows how the mapping of members into particular categories is consequential for social order; for example, aligning members who belong to the membership category "had haircuts" and keeping out those who "did not have haircuts". Additional interactional resources such as echoing, used here to refer to the use of exactly the same words, similar prosody and physical action, and increasing physical closeness, are identified as important to the unfolding talk particularly as a way of accomplishing alignment between the grandmother and grand-daughter. The third and final data analysis chapter examines topical talk during family mealtimes. It explicates how members introduce topics of talk with an orientation to their co-participant and the way in which the take up of a topic is influenced both by the sequential environment in which it is introduced and the sensitivity of the topic. Together, these three data chapters show aspects of how family members participated in family mealtimes. The study contributes four substantive themes that emerged during the analytic process and, as such, the themes reflect what the members were observed to be doing. The first theme identified how family knowledge was relevant and consequential for initiating and sustaining interaction during mealtime with, for example, members buying into the talk of other members or being requested to help out with knowledge about a shared experience. Knowledge about members and their activities was evident with the design of questions evidencing an orientation to coparticipant’s knowledge. The second theme found how members used topic as a resource for social interaction. The third theme concerned the way in which members utilised membership categories for producing and making sense of social action. The fourth theme, evident across all episodes selected for analysis, showed how children’s competence is an ongoing interactional accomplishment as they manipulated interactional resources to manage their participation in family mealtime. The way in which children initiated interactions challenges previous understandings about children’s restricted rights as conversationalists. As well as making a theoretical contribution, the study offers methodological insight by working with families as research participants. The study shows the procedures involved as the study moved from one where the researcher undertook the decisions about what to videorecord to offering this decision making to the families, who chose when and what to videorecord of their mealtime practices. Evident also are the ways in which participants orient both to the video-camera and to the absent researcher. For the duration of the mealtime the video-camera was positioned by the adults as out of bounds to the children; however, it was offered as a "treat" to view after the mealtime was recorded. While situated within family mealtimes and reporting on the experiences of two families, this study illuminates how mealtimes are not just about food and eating; they are social. The study showed the constant and complex work of establishing and maintaining social orders and the rich array of interactional resources that members draw on during family mealtimes. The family’s interactions involved members contributing to building the social orders of family mealtime. With mealtimes occurring in institutional settings involving young children, such as long day care centres and kindergartens, the findings of this study may help educators working with young children to see the rich interactional opportunities mealtimes afford children, the interactional competence that children demonstrate during mealtimes, and the important role/s that adults may assume as co-participants in interactions with children within institutional settings

"What does it say about it?": Doing reading and doing writing as part of family mealtime

How children acquire knowledge about and use written language has been examined in a range of disciplines and fields

Evidence-based practice

An integral part of teaching and a principle underpinning professional practice in the early years is the importance of reflecting on and researching our own practice. For example, in Australia, the Early Years Learning Framework: Belonging, Being and Becoming identifies “ongoing learning and reflective practice” (DEEWR, 2009, p. 13) as one of the five principles distilled from theories and research evidence that underpin professional practice in the early years. Recognising teaching as encompassing the role of researching pedagogical practice highlights that teaching is not simply practical or procedural but requires intellectual work. This chapter details evidence based practice (EBP) in early years education and highlights four questions: 1. What is evidence based practice?; 2. What evidence do I draw on?; 3. How might I discern relevant evidence?; and 4. What is my part in generating research evidence