What is the Value of Home? NOT FOR SALE - West End Interventions

Many Australians today are image consumers. We fail to question the importance of lifestyle imagery created and promoted by Real Estate Agencies whom have no actual part in the physical creation of house, or indeed the intimate making of "home" through our experiences of place. Real Estate Markets dictate how, where, when and what we buy. Re-sale values, profit-making, and value-adding interfere with the crafting of a home over time as a tangible, individual, collaborative, and rich lived experience of dwelling. The "NOT FOR SALE" project is a response and critique of the dominance of real estate forces in West End within the context and unshakable presence of a booming inner-city property market. This proposal originated from an experimental dwelling in Avebury St., West End. This project has been fashioned over a period of several years primarily from recycled local materials, interconnected with the changing needs and spatial requirements of the occupants and project participants. The influence of property markets is of little concern in this home "making". The "NOT FOR SALE" project attempts to question and critique the purely financial value that we as a society place upon our homes. By appropriating and re-coding the Real Estate Signage typologies, we aim to provoke social commentary on the dominance of real estate forces in the West End suburb. There is a strong and rich tradition of anti-consumerist activist graffiti in West End. Activists re-code signs and property with political commentary and critique. The "NOT FOR SALE" project draws upon this tradition through our RRESign (Recodified Real Estate Signs): we aim to redress the dominant commercial forces associated with the single house/property. Collectively, at the scale of the street, these RRESigns will reflect a critique of street scale, amenity, and character. Finally, at the scale of the suburb, the network of RRESigns will reflect a critique of the idea of place making. Collectively, the aim of the "NOT FOR SALE" RRESign interventions is to highlight the idea of making and the material characteristics of dwelling that challenges the cultural value of commodified property, re-defining and prioritising the idea of "home". Conventional Real Estate signs use images and text to sell an idea of home: our proposed interventions sell nothing, and are rather celebrations of the joy of making tactile, handcrafted objects, and by extension, the making and crafting of home. The intimate and experiential understanding of home will be harnessed through the engagement of local residents. Community groups within West End such as Local Push can further disseminate the RRESign interventions. The signs will be constructed West End-specific materials (old signs purchased from inexpensive second-hand material merchant Reverse Garbage in Montague Rd.): turning post-consumer waste into objects of material beauty and social critique. Residents and community groups will be encouraged to place their RRESigns outside their properties and adjacent real estate signs, frustrating and recoding the existing For-Sale signs that currently dominate the West End street scape. The project is dependent on the support of the local residents, extending from a few signs in Avebury St. to a network of RRESigns throughout West End. A commentary on people's responses to the project will be linked to the www.apbv.com.au website. What is the value of home

Front Porch, Small House: A Longitudinal Study of Team and University Identification Among Incoming Students at a Division III University

In this longitudinal study, the authors examined the relationship between team identification and university identification for 37 incoming college first year students at a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III institution. After collecting four waves of data from the same participants over the course of two years, the authors utilized growth curve analysis to examine the development and trajectories of the students’ levels of identification with both the university and the intercollegiate sport teams. Furthermore, the authors empirically measured if identifying with the athletic teams on campus explained any variance in one’s identification with the larger university. Finally, this study was explicitly conducted within the context of a Division III institution to increase understanding of the social value of Division III athletics for students not directly participating as student-athletes. The presented findings provide a longitudinal account of the psychological and social value of Division III sport teams in terms of building a stronger connection between new students and the larger university

Picoradian deflection measurement with an interferometric quasi-autocollimator using weak value amplification

We present an "interferometric quasi-autocollimator" that employs weak value amplification to measure angular deflections of a target mirror. The device has been designed to be insensitive to all translations of the target. We present a conceptual explanation of the amplification effect used by the device. An implementation of the device demonstrates sensitivities better than 10 picoradians per root hertz between 10 and 200 hertz.Comment: To be published in Optics Letter

The phosphatase laforin crosses evolutionary boundaries and links carbohydrate metabolism to neuronal disease

Lafora disease (LD) is a progressive myoclonic epilepsy resulting in severe neurodegeneration followed by death. A hallmark of LD is the accumulation of insoluble polyglucosans called Lafora bodies (LBs). LD is caused by mutations in the gene encoding the phosphatase laforin, which reportedly exists solely in vertebrates. We utilized a bioinformatics screen to identify laforin orthologues in five protists. These protists evolved from a progenitor red alga and synthesize an insoluble carbohydrate whose composition closely resembles LBs. Furthermore, we show that the kingdom Plantae, which lacks laforin, possesses a protein with laforin-like properties called starch excess 4 (SEX4). Mutations in the Arabidopsis thaliana SEX4 gene results in a starch excess phenotype reminiscent of LD. We demonstrate that Homo sapiens laforin complements the sex4 phenotype and propose that laforin and SEX4 are functional equivalents. Finally, we show that laforins and SEX4 dephosphorylate a complex carbohydrate and form the only family of phosphatases with this activity. These results provide a molecular explanation for the etiology of LD

CRISPR Knockout of the HuR Gene Causes a Xenograft Lethal Phenotype.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, whereas colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer. The RNA-binding protein HuR (ELAVL1) supports a pro-oncogenic network in gastrointestinal (GI) cancer cells through enhanced HuR expression. Using a publically available database, HuR expression levels were determined to be increased in primary PDA and colorectal cancer tumor cohorts as compared with normal pancreas and colon tissues, respectively. CRISPR/Cas9 technology was successfully used to delete the HuR gene in both PDA (MIA PaCa-2 and Hs 766T) and colorectal cancer (HCT116) cell lines. HuR deficiency has a mild phenotype

The environmental security debate and its significance for climate change

Policymakers, military strategists and academics all increasingly hail climate change as a security issue. This article revisits the (comparatively) long-standing “environmental security debate” and asks what lessons that earlier debate holds for the push towards making climate change a security issue. Two important claims are made. First, the emerging climate security debate is in many ways a re-run of the earlier dispute. It features many of the same proponents and many of the same disagreements. These disagreements concern, amongst other things, the nature of the threat, the referent object of security and the appropriate policy responses. Second, given its many different interpretations, from an environmentalist perspective, securitisation of the climate is not necessarily a positive development