Embodied Discourses of Literacy in the Lives of Two Preservice Teachers

This study examines the emerging teacher literacy identities of Ian and A.J., two preservice teachers in a graduate teacher education program in the United States. Using a poststructural feminisms theoretical framework, the study illustrates the embodiment of literacy pedagogy discourses in relation to the literacy courses’ discourse of comprehensive literacy and the literacy biographical discourses of Ian and A.J. The results of this study indicate the need to deconstruct how the discourse of comprehensive literacy limits how we, as literacy teacher educators, position, hear and respond to our preservice teachers and suggests the need for differentiation in our teacher education literacy courses

Prolonged but not short-duration blast waves elicit acute inflammation in a rodent model of primary blast limb trauma

BackgroundBlast injuries from conventional and improvised explosive devices account for 75% of injuries from current conflicts; over 70% of injuries involve the limbs. Variable duration and magnitude of blast wave loading occurs in real-life explosions and is hypothesised to cause different injuries. While a number of in vivo models report the inflammatory response to blast injuries, the extent of this response has not been investigated with respect to the duration of the primary blast wave. The relevance is that explosions in open air are of short duration compared to those in confined spaces.MethodsHindlimbs of adult Sprauge-Dawley rats were subjected to focal isolated primary blast waves of varying overpressure (1.8–3.65 kPa) and duration (3.0–11.5 ms), utilising a shock tube and purpose-built experimental rig. Rats were monitored during and after the blast. At 6 and 24 h after exposure, blood, lungs, liver and muscle tissues were collected and prepared for histology and flow cytometry.ResultsAt 6 h, increases in circulating neutrophils and CD43Lo/His48Hi monocytes were observed in rats subjected to longer-duration blast waves. This was accompanied by increases in circulating pro-inflammatory chemo/cytokines KC and IL-6. No changes were observed with shorter-duration blast waves irrespective of overpressure. In all cases, no histological damage was observed in muscle, lung or liver. By 24 h post-blast, all inflammatory parameters had normalised.ConclusionsWe report the development of a rodent model of primary blast limb trauma that is the first to highlight an important role played by blast wave duration and magnitude in initiating acute inflammatory response following limb injury in the absence of limb fracture or penetrating trauma. The combined biological and mechanical method developed can be used to further understand the complex effects of blast waves in a range of different tissues and organs in vivo

Biomechanics and osteoarthritis: a novel rat model

This thesis has made a number of significant contributions to the evaluation of rodent joint biomechanics, and the relationship between these biomechanics and osteoarthritic pathology. It has presented the first use of static optimization based techniques to evaluate in vivo muscle and joint contact forces in the rat, with model outputs comparing well to experimentally collected kinematics and joint kinetics. The sensitivity of the model to errors in marker placement, muscle geometry and segmental properties was evaluated using elementary effects methods. It was found that errors in marker placement had the largest effect on most model outputs, with the exception of muscle forces, which showed far greater sensitivity to changes in muscle geometry. After validating the model ouputs and their sensitivity to potential sources of experimental error, the effect of inclination and speed on joint kinetics and kinematics was investigated. This was undertaken both to predict the potential of the techniques to differentiate pathologically different gait and to evaluate whether variations in speed and/or inclination could increase medial joint loading to provide a non-invasive method to accelerate osteoarthritic progression in future disease models. It was found that increasing inclination increased the total knee joint contact forces, whereas increasing speed preferentially increased medial side loading. Finally a novel surgical model of malalignment induced osteoarthritis in rats was developed via a high tibial osteotomy (HTO). Biomarkers of cartilage turnover as well as tibial compressive loading in the medial knee compartment measured via musculoskeletal modelling were shown to be significantly higher in HTO operated animals and correlated well with histological grading. This model demonstrates the fact that increasing medial joint loading alone is enough to induce the development of OA and future work will hope to develop the idea of malalignment induced osteoarthritis as a distinct disease phenotype.Open Acces