Social vulnerability in Williams syndrome

This thesis focused on the high levels of social vulnerability experienced by individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS). The investigation began with parent interviews about social approach behaviour, with parents emphasising the lack of awareness of social boundaries that many individuals with WS display. The qualitative analysis also highlighted the within-syndrome variability in the parental accounts, prompting discussion on the heterogeneity of the WS social profile. Based on the atypical social approach behaviour described by parents, the subsequent studies addressed issues of personal space and interpersonal distance. Using a parent report questionnaire, it was found that children with WS were more likely to violate the personal space of others. This was followed up with a stop-distance paradigm which showed that children with WS failed to regulate their distance based on familiarity, and stood the same distance from a stranger as they did their parent, which was not the case for typically developing individuals. Given these findings, the research progressed to explore the issue of trust in WS. It was found that children with WS displayed higher levels of trust behaviour, compared to their mental age matched typically developing peers and struggled to decipher trustworthiness from faces. Taken together, these findings seem to suggest that children with WS could be experiencing high levels of social vulnerability on a daily basis. It is widely accepted that this social vulnerability continues into adulthood, with increased levels of both independence and isolation posing a new set of challenges. The subsequent chapter probed the level of insight that adults with WS had about their own vulnerability. Using the Social Vulnerability Questionnaire, it was found that adults with WS consistently reported lower levels of vulnerability, compared to parent reports. This emphasised the need for multi-informant methods, and called for interventions which target self-awareness in order to increase intervention efficacy. The final chapters looked at how this social vulnerability manifests in the online environment. It was found that adults with WS frequently use the Internet and the majority visit social networking sites every day or almost every day, with little parental supervision or oversight. These individuals were more likely to agree to engage in socially risky behaviours (e.g. meeting an “online friend” in person) compared to risky behaviours that were not social in nature when online (e.g. giving out passwords). A case study interview with an adult with WS and their parent highlighted that this individual held a broad definition of what a friend was and found they used the Internet as a tool to expand their social network, which was of great concern to their parent. The findings included in this thesis provide in-depth information relating to social vulnerability in WS and offer the first insights into online social behaviour and online vulnerability in adults with WS. The theoretical and real-world implications of these findings are emphasised throughout and a number of suggestions are made to help the research progress towards intervention development

Power, agency and rights : a critical participatory action research study on the transformational potential of human rights education

This thesis examines the value of a Community Development approach to enhancing the transformative potential of community-based models of Human Rights Education (HRE). The UN’s definition of HRE builds on the idea of human rights as a set of accepted standards and the purpose of pedagogical spaces to build a culture in which they are normalised and respected. Yet since the recent proliferation of HRE, growing numbers of accounts take a critical perspective that confronts the conservatism and historicism of HRE in its traditional “declarationist” form (Keet, 2007, p. 7). This critical orientation calls for a pedagogical “renewal” to return HRE to its emancipatory purpose and positions Critical Human Rights Education (CHRE) as a route forward (Keet, 2012, p. 7). Yet given the relatively recent interest in this field, there is a comparative lack of practice-based studies that explore the critical position, and consequently the viability of CHRE as an alternative to the “declarationist” model. In this study, I use a Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) methodology to explore the ways in which an approach to HRE modelled on Margaret Ledwith’s (2020) framework for Community Development may enhance its potential to create spaces for critical learning and transformative action. I do so by examining the way in which a UKbased Civil Society Organisation (CSO) piloted an HRE initiative with four community-activists over a six-month period. I suggest that, while there is need for more practice-based studies, Community Development is well positioned to advance CHRE through its direct engagement with issues around power and agency and argue for a closer alignment between the two fields with opportunities to strengthen both the theoretical and practical learnings between the two

Marginal Reefs Under Stress: Physiological Limits Render Galápagos Corals Susceptible to Ocean Acidification and Thermal Stress

Ocean acidification (OA) and thermal stress may undermine corals' ability to calcify and support diverse reef communities, particularly in marginal environments. Coral calcification depends on aragonite supersaturation (Ω » 1) of the calcifying fluid (cf) from which the skeleton precipitates. Corals actively upregulate pHcf relative to seawater to buffer against changes in temperature and dissolved inorganic carbon, which together control Ωcf. Here we assess the buffering capacity of modern and fossil corals from the Galápagos Islands that have been exposed to sub-optimal conditions, extreme thermal stress, and OA. We demonstrate a significant decline in pHcf and Ωcf since the pre-industrial era, trends which are exacerbated during extreme warm years. These results suggest that there are likely physiological limits to corals' pH buffering capacity, and that these constraints render marginal reefs particularly susceptible to OA

Sexual Size Dimorphism and Body Condition in the Australasian Gannet

Funding: The research was financially supported by the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment. Acknowledgments We thank the Victorian Marine Science Consortium, Sea All Dolphin Swim, Parks Victoria, and the Point Danger Management Committee for logistical support. We are grateful for the assistance of the many field volunteers involved in the study.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals

During 2015–2016, record temperatures triggered a pan-tropical episode of coral bleaching, the third global-scale event since mass bleaching was first documented in the 1980s. Here we examine how and why the severity of recurrent major bleaching events has varied at multiple scales, using aerial and underwater surveys of Australian reefs combined with satellite-derived sea surface temperatures. The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year. Water quality and fishing pressure had minimal effect on the unprecedented bleaching in 2016, suggesting that local protection of reefs affords little or no resistance to extreme heat. Similarly, past exposure to bleaching in 1998 and 2002 did not lessen the severity of bleaching in 2016. Consequently, immediate global action to curb future warming is essential to secure a future for coral reefs

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM