An institutional approach: education for sustainable development at the University of Leeds

Central to the strategic vision of the University of Leeds is the reaffirmation of the University’s commitment to provide an exceptional student experience centred on inspirational learning and teaching, grounded in world-class research. A key component of this vision is a major curriculum enhancement project. This chapter outlines the intent of this project, which reinforces existing provision that challenges undergraduate students to broaden their academic horizons and develop their capacity for critical thought. The chapter explores the project’s implications for sustainability education and notes the mutually reinforcing effects of the Curriculum Enhancement Project and a range of other institutional initiatives, including the staff-student Education for Sustainable Development Network, and groups reviewing the university’s own environmental impact

African Challenges to the International Criminal Court: An Example of Populism?

Recent global efforts of the United States and England to withdraw from international institutions, along with recent challenges to human rights courts from Poland and Hungary, have been described as part of a growing global populist backlash against the liberal international order. Several scholars have even identified the recent threat of mass withdrawal of African states from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as part of this global populist backlash. Are the African challenges to the ICC part of a global populist movement developing in Africa? More fundamentally, how are the African challenges to the ICC examples of populism, if at all? In this paper, I show that, while there is considerable overlap between the strategies used by particular African leaders to challenge the ICC and those typically considered populist, as well as a discernible thin populist ideology to sustain them, there is insufficient evidence of a larger anti-ICC populist movement in Africa. Although Africa is not as united against the ICC as the populist narrative suggests, the recent challenges to the Court from Africa pose a significant challenge to the Court, as the institution is still in the early stages of building its legitimacy

Energy Content of Colliding Plane Waves using Approximate Noether Symmetries

This paper is devoted to study the energy content of colliding plane waves using approximate Noether symmetries. For this purpose, we use approximate Lie symmetry method of Lagrangian for differential equations. We formulate the first-order perturbed Lagrangian for colliding plane electromagnetic and gravitational waves. It is shown that in both cases, there does not existComment: 18 pages, accepted for publication in Brazilian J Physic

Isabelle Modelchecking for insider threats

The Isabelle Insider framework formalises the technique of social explanation for modeling and analysing Insider threats in infrastructures including physical and logical aspects. However, the abstract Isabelle models need some refinement to provide sufficient detail to explore attacks constructively and understand how the attacker proceeds. The introduction of mutable states into the model leads us to use the concepts of Modelchecking within Isabelle. Isabelle can simply accommodate classical CTL type Modelchecking. We integrate CTL Modelchecking into the Isabelle Insider framework. A running example of an IoT attack on privacy motivates the method throughout and illustrates how the enhanced framework fully supports realistic modeling and analysis of IoT Insiders

Impact of shortened crop rotation of oilseed rape on soil and rhizosphere microbial diversity in relation to yield decline

Oilseed rape (OSR) grown in monoculture shows a decline in yield relative to virgin OSR of up to 25%, but the mechanisms responsible are unknown. A long term field experiment of OSR grown in a range of rotations with wheat was used to determine whether shifts in fungal and bacterial populations of the rhizosphere and bulk soil were associated with the development of OSR yield decline. The communities of fungi and bacteria in the rhizosphere and bulk soil from the field experiment were profiled using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP) and sequencing of cloned internal transcribed spacer regions and 16S rRNA genes, respectively. OSR cropping frequency had no effect on rhizosphere bacterial communities. However, the rhizosphere fungal communities from continuously grown OSR were significantly different to those from other rotations. This was due primarily to an increase in abundance of two fungi which showed 100% and 95% DNA identity to the plant pathogens Olpidium brassicae and Pyrenochaeta lycopersici, respectively. Real-time PCR confirmed that there was significantly more of these fungi in the continuously grown OSR than the other rotations. These two fungi were isolated from the field and used to inoculate OSR and Brassica oleracea grown under controlled conditions in a glasshouse to determine their effect on yield. At high doses, Olpidium brassicae reduced top growth and root biomass in seedlings and reduced branching and subsequent pod and seed production. Pyrenochaeta sp. formed lesions on the roots of seedlings, and at high doses delayed flowering and had a negative impact on seed quantity and quality

HAGE (DDX43) is a biomarker for poor prognosis and a predictor of chemotherapy response in breast cancer

Background: HAGE protein is a known immunogenic cancer-specific antigen. Methods: The biological, prognostic and predictive values of HAGE expression was studied using immunohistochemistry in three cohorts of patients with BC (n=2147): early primary (EP-BC; n=1676); primary oestrogen receptor-negative (PER-BC; n=275) treated with adjuvant anthracycline-combination therapies (Adjuvant-ACT); and primary locally advanced disease (PLA-BC) who received neo-adjuvant anthracycline-combination therapies (Neo-adjuvant-ACT; n=196). The relationship between HAGE expression and the tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in matched prechemotherapy and postchemotherapy samples were investigated. Results: Eight percent of patients with EP-BC exhibited high HAGE expression (HAGEþ) and was associated with aggressive clinico-pathological features (Ps<0.01). Furthermore, HAGEþexpression was associated with poor prognosis in both univariate and multivariate analysis (Ps<0.001). Patients with HAGE+ did not benefit from hormonal therapy in high-risk ER-positive disease. HAGE+ and TILs were found to be independent predictors for pathological complete response to neoadjuvant-ACT; P<0.001. A statistically significant loss of HAGE expression following neoadjuvant-ACT was found (P=0.000001), and progression-free survival was worse in those patients who had HAGE+ residual disease (P=0.0003). Conclusions: This is the first report to show HAGE to be a potential prognostic marker and a predictor of response to ACT in patients with BC

A moral economy of whiteness: behaviours, belonging and Britishness

This article outlines the complex stories through which national belonging is made, and some ways in which class mediates the racialisation process. It is based on fieldwork on the ways in which white UK people in provincial cities construct identities based on positioning vis-à-vis other groups, communities and the nation. I argue that this relational identity work revolves around fixing a moral-ethical location against which the behaviour and culture of Others is measured, and that this has a temporal and spatial specificity. First, attitudinal trends by social class emerge in our work as being to do with emphasis and life experience rather than constituting absolute distinctions in attitudes. Second, in an era supposedly marked by the hegemony of ‘new’ or ‘cultural’ racism, bloodlines and phenotypes are still frequently utilised in race-making discursive work. Third, in provincial urban England, there is a marked ambivalence towards Britishness (as compromised by Others) and an openness to Englishness as a more authentic source of identification

Gravitational collapse with tachyon field and barotropic fluid

A particular class of space-time, with a tachyon field, \phi, and a barotropic fluid constituting the matter content, is considered herein as a model for gravitational collapse. For simplicity, the tachyon potential is assumed to be of inverse square form i.e., V(\phi) \sim \phi^{-2}. Our purpose, by making use of the specific kinematical features of the tachyon, which are rather different from a standard scalar field, is to establish the several types of asymptotic behavior that our matter content induces. Employing a dynamical system analysis, complemented by a thorough numerical study, we find classical solutions corresponding to a naked singularity or a black hole formation. In particular, there is a subset where the fluid and tachyon participate in an interesting tracking behaviour, depending sensitively on the initial conditions for the energy densities of the tachyon field and barotropic fluid. Two other classes of solutions are present, corresponding respectively, to either a tachyon or a barotropic fluid regime. Which of these emerges as dominant, will depend on the choice of the barotropic parameter, \gamma. Furthermore, these collapsing scenarios both have as final state the formation of a black hole.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. v3: minor changes. Final version to appear in GR

Myocardial perfusion imaging with 99 mTc - tetrofosmin SPECT in breast cancer patients that received postoperative radiotherapy: a case-control study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Purpose</p> <p>To evaluate the cardiac toxicity of radiotherapy (RT) in breast cancer (BC) patients employing myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with Tc-99 m Tetrofosmin - single photon emission computer tomography (T-SPECT).</p> <p>Materials and methods</p> <p>We studied 46 BC female patients (28 patients with left and 18 patients with right BC) treated with postoperative RT compared to a control group of 85 age-matched females. The median time of RT to SPECT was 40 months (6-263).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Abnormalities in the summed stress score (SSS) were found in 54% of left BC patients, 44.4% of right BC patients, and 32.9% of controls. In left BC patients there were significantly more SSS abnormalities compared to controls (4.0 ± 3.5 vs 2.6 ± 2.0, p = 0.05) and possible trend of increased abnormalities of right BC patients (3.7 ± 3.0 vs 2.6 ± 2.0, p = 0.14). Multiple regression analysis showed more abnormalities in the MPI of left BC patients compared to controls (SSS, p = 0.0001); Marginal toxicity was also noted in right BC patients (SSS, p = 0.045). No additional toxicity was found in patients that received adjuvant cardiotoxic chemotherapy. All T-SPECT abnormalities were clinically silent.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The study suggests that radiation therapy to BC patients result in MPI abnormalities but without apparent clinical consequences.</p