Women\u27s Textile Graffiti: An Aesthetic Staging of Public/Private Dichotomies

The cultural performance of textile graffiti, or yarnbombing, dramatizes women’s contested relationship to the public/privates dichotomies that constitute neoliberal capitalism as well as liberal democracies. Across both of these institutions, privatized matters are problematically excluded from political consideration, and private sphere values—such are nurturance, interdependence, and communalism—are denied their necessity and legitimacy as public goods. Textile graffiti artists furnish an association between public and private life by placing signifiers of domesticity and caregiving onto the public streets, and adorning those nurturant signifiers with political and/or feminist messages. In so doing, textile graffiti functions to politicize caregiving, to highlight its gendered dimensions, and to remind city-goers of caregiving as a public issue and a public good that is necessary to the overall health of a functioning liberal democracy. This study explores textile graffiti from various political, aesthetic, and historical angles in order to situate it within an enduring feminist struggle to re-imagine public/private binaries through valorization of the artifacts, values, and communicative practices that are associated with the private sphere of the home

Psychosocial impact of undergoing prostate cancer screening for men with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.

OBJECTIVES: To report the baseline results of a longitudinal psychosocial study that forms part of the IMPACT study, a multi-national investigation of targeted prostate cancer (PCa) screening among men with a known pathogenic germline mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. PARTICPANTS AND METHODS: Men enrolled in the IMPACT study were invited to complete a questionnaire at collaborating sites prior to each annual screening visit. The questionnaire included sociodemographic characteristics and the following measures: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Impact of Event Scale (IES), 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36), Memorial Anxiety Scale for Prostate Cancer, Cancer Worry Scale-Revised, risk perception and knowledge. The results of the baseline questionnaire are presented. RESULTS: A total of 432 men completed questionnaires: 98 and 160 had mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, respectively, and 174 were controls (familial mutation negative). Participants' perception of PCa risk was influenced by genetic status. Knowledge levels were high and unrelated to genetic status. Mean scores for the HADS and SF-36 were within reported general population norms and mean IES scores were within normal range. IES mean intrusion and avoidance scores were significantly higher in BRCA1/BRCA2 carriers than in controls and were higher in men with increased PCa risk perception. At the multivariate level, risk perception contributed more significantly to variance in IES scores than genetic status. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to report the psychosocial profile of men with BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations undergoing PCa screening. No clinically concerning levels of general or cancer-specific distress or poor quality of life were detected in the cohort as a whole. A small subset of participants reported higher levels of distress, suggesting the need for healthcare professionals offering PCa screening to identify these risk factors and offer additional information and support to men seeking PCa screening

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Politicians and the Judiciary : a changing relationship. by Diana Woodhouse

Britain's constitutional arrangements have traditionally marginalised the role of the courts and the place of the law within the process of government. Ministers and officials must, of course, act within the powers prescribed by law

Ministerial Responsibility: something old, something new. by Diana Woodhouse

tag=1 data=Ministerial Responsibility: something old, something new. by Diana Woodhouse tag=2 data=Woodhouse, Diana tag=3 data=Public Law, tag=6 data=Summer 1997 tag=7 data=262-282. tag=8 data=MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY tag=10 data=This article examines the draft resolution put before the House of Commons and other developments that have implications for the convention of individual ministerial responsibility. tag=11 data=1997/3/6 tag=12 data=97/0172 tag=13 data=CABThis article examines the draft resolution put before the House of Commons and other developments that have implications for the convention of individual ministerial responsibility

Ministerial responsibility in the 1990s : when do ministers resign? by Diana Woodhouse

In the Westminster system of government, where responsibility is channelled through ministers to Parliament, ministerial resignations are an important element in accountability. [United Kingdom

Changing patterns of accountability in Westminster systems: a UK perspective

Patterns of accountability in Westminster systems of government are changing to reflect the diversification of government responsibilities through privatisation, contracting out, public-private agreements, and the creation of partnerships across and beyond government departments and agencies. While ministerial responsibility remains a dominant feature of the accountability landscape, it is supplemented, or even supplanted, by managerial accountability. In this paper Diana Woodhouse examines the emerging patterns