Safe Spaces and Good Places: The contribution of safety to community sites and social change

This project explores the contribution of considerations of safety to communities and sites of social change. In this thesis, the concept of safety is grounded in contemporary conceptualizations and ongoing debates about safety found in discussions of safe space practices in universities. In these debates, understandings and definitions of safety are frequently displaced in favour of further discussion of violence and freedom, to which safety is often defined as the absence or opposite of these concepts. However, contemporary practices and demands for safety are often rooted in longer histories and broader contexts of LGBT+, antiracist, and feminist grassroots activism. Furthermore, forms of safety that are frequently under-interrogated include normalized and mundane practices such as health, hygiene, and safety, which also have histories grounded in radical social movements. To discuss contemporary forms of safety contextualised by these longer histories, I turn to two case studies of communities who share a participatory ethics and a pursuit of social change: a community bakery/café and zine community and culture. These communities’ work is situated within and understood through a broader political context of their ongoing contestations with forms of socio-economic inequality which are, in this thesis, focused on barriers to cultural democracy, political agency, and basic material needs: art, work, and food. Using a combination of participatory observation and textual-material analysis, I focus on modes of community and spatial formation in these sites, and the tensions that emerge here. Through discussions of community representation, temporality, and labour, this project makes visible overlooked and underexamined forms of vulnerability and practices of safety in everyday activities and community contexts. These practices are then used to intervene in and re-evaluate limited conceptualizations of safety in contemporary debates about safe space practices. Developed through a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and a broader theoretical framework that draws upon utopian theories, particularly theories of utopia in the everyday, the case studies demonstrate how contemporary practices of safety can be understood as prefigurative practices that contribute to demands for social change and the transformation of the everyday

Recovery of respiratory function in mdx mice co-treated with neutralizing interleukin-6 receptor antibodies and Urocortin-2

The mdx mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy shows evidence of hypoventilation and pronounced diaphragm dysfunction. Six‐week‐old male mdx (n = 32) and wild‐type (WT; n = 32) mice received either saline (0.9% w/v) or a co‐administration of neutralizing interleukin‐6 receptor antibodies (xIL‐6R; 0.2 mg/kg) and corticotrophin‐releasing factor receptor 2 agonist (Urocortin‐2; 30 μg/kg), subcutaneously over 2 weeks. Breathing and diaphragm muscle contractile function (ex vivo) were examined. Diaphragm structure was assessed using histology and immunofluorescence. Muscle cytokine concentration was determined using a multiplex assay. Minute ventilation and diaphragm muscle peak force at 100 Hz were significantly depressed in mdx compared with WT. Drug treatment completely restored ventilation in mdx mice during normoxia and significantly increased mdx diaphragm force‐ and power‐generating capacity. The number of centrally‐nucleated muscle fibres and the areal density of infiltrates and collagen content were significantly increased in mdx diaphragm; all indices were unaffected by drug co‐treatment. The abundance of myosin heavy chain (MyHC) type IIx fibres was significantly decreased in mdx diaphragm; drug co‐treatment preserved MyHC type IIx complement in mdx muscle. Drug co‐treatment increased the cross‐sectional area of MyHC type I and IIx fibres in mdx diaphragm. The cytokines IL‐1β, IL‐6, KC/GRO and TNF‐α were significantly increased in mdx diaphragm compared with WT. Drug co‐treatment significantly decreased IL‐1β and increased IL‐10 in mdx diaphragm. Drug co‐treatment had no significant effect on WT diaphragm muscle structure, cytokine concentrations or function. Recovery of breathing and diaphragm force in mdx mice was impressive in our studies, with implication for human dystrophinopathies

Understanding the circumgalactic medium is critical for understanding galaxy evolution

Galaxies evolve under the influence of gas flows between their interstellar medium and their surrounding gaseous halos known as the circumgalactic medium (CGM). The CGM is a major reservoir of galactic baryons and metals, and plays a key role in the long cycles of accretion, feedback, and recycling of gas that drive star formation. In order to fully understand the physical processes at work within galaxies, it is therefore essential to have a firm understanding of the composition, structure, kinematics, thermodynamics, and evolution of the CGM. In this white paper we outline connections between the CGM and galactic star formation histories, internal kinematics, chemical evolution, quenching, satellite evolution, dark matter halo occupation, and the reionization of the larger-scale intergalactic medium in light of the advances that will be made on these topics in the 2020s. We argue that, in the next decade, fundamental progress on all of these major issues depends critically on improved empirical characterization and theoretical understanding of the CGM. In particular, we discuss how future advances in spatially-resolved CGM observations at high spectral resolution, broader characterization of the CGM across galaxy mass and redshift, and expected breakthroughs in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations will help resolve these major problems in galaxy evolution.Comment: Astro2020 Decadal Science White Pape

Ultraviolet Perspectives on Diffuse Gas in the Largest Cosmic Structures

Large scale structure and cosmolog

Proceedings of the 13th annual conference of INEBRIA

CITATION: Watson, R., et al. 2016. Proceedings of the 13th annual conference of INEBRIA. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 11:13, doi:10.1186/s13722-016-0062-9.The original publication is available at https://ascpjournal.biomedcentral.comENGLISH SUMMARY : Meeting abstracts.https://ascpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13722-016-0062-9Publisher's versio