Liquid Dramaturgy in Aotearoa: Interview with Nisha Madhan and Julia Croft

This article examines the dramaturgical vision and composition processes of the performance artists Nisha Madhan and Julia Croft. Using the term/idea/practice of liquid dramaturgy (Grochala 2017) I investigate how their innovative and award-winning work offers new dramaturgical strategies that can support the development of New Zealand / Aotearoa and Australian performance. Their processes are deliberately open, chaosmotic and changing, the form is fragmented, nonlinear and interrupted, time is collapsed or repeated, performers remain situated and visible. It is a feminist and intersectional approach that draws upon their experience of race and gender to challenge colonialism, heteronormativity and patriarchal power structures

The Abundance of Kaluza-Klein Dark Matter with Coannihilation

In Universal Extra Dimension models, the lightest Kaluza-Klein (KK) particle is generically the first KK excitation of the photon and can be stable, serving as particle dark matter. We calculate the thermal relic abundance of the KK photon for a general mass spectrum of KK excitations including full coannihilation effects with all (level one) KK excitations. We find that including coannihilation can significantly change the relic abundance when the coannihilating particles are within about 20% of the mass of the KK photon. Matching the relic abundance with cosmological data, we find the mass range of the KK photon is much wider than previously found, up to about 2 TeV if the masses of the strongly interacting level one KK particles are within five percent of the mass of the KK photon. We also find cases where several coannihilation channels compete (constructively and destructively) with one another. The lower bound on the KK photon mass, about 540 GeV when just right-handed KK leptons coannihilate with the KK photon, relaxes upward by several hundred GeV when coannihilation with electroweak KK gauge bosons of the same mass is included.Comment: 38 pages, 4 figure

The Scientific Legacy Of WW1

An exhibition and talk disseminating multi-disciplinary work at Hawthorn crater on the Somme as part of the wider exhibition on the scientific legacy or WW1. The project combines work in the field of chemical analysis, archaeology, anthropology, forensics, heritage preservation, digital scanning, recording and dissemination. The Hawthorn crater is a relatively untouched site and the current investigations are the first time this type of work has been carried out. Our work records the intentions, discoveries and process of both preserving the site, making it accessible to the public and its historical legacy

The relationship between medicine and the public: the challenge of concordance

Concordance is based on the idea that patients and practitioners should work together towards an agreement on treatment choice. This requires a redefinition of the relations and encounters between doctors and their patients. This redefinition emphasizes the need for patient involvement and participation. In this article we examine concordance against the background of wider social change, structural as well as interpersonal. We focus in particular on challenges to trust, noting that the almost instinctive trust that people formerly had for professional experts has for many reasons diminished. One consequence of this, we suggest, is that concordance is being espoused at a time when its accomplishment may be particularly threatened. In fact there are strong grounds for claiming that support for the notion of concordance could possibly result in a growth of ‘hidden’ communication pathologies by means of what the social theorist Habermas (1984) has termed ‘systematically distorted communication’

Evolution and change in palliative care around the world

Palliative care developed in the later part of the 20th century as a social movement and medical speciality. Central to its modern development were the ideas of Dr Cicely Saunders, whose vision for improving the care of the dying encompassed the physical, psychological, social and spiritual domains while emphasizing the importance of rigorous clinical practice, training and research. St Christopher’s Hospice, which she founded, inspired generations of practitioners and influenced the expansion of hospices nationally and internationally. Terminal care evolved into the discipline of palliative care, which applied holistic principles to the care of those earlier in their disease trajectory and in different settings, such as hospitals and the community. Some countries now have national strategies for palliative care that are supported by government. Palliative care attracts increasing attention as an aspect of the public health system and there are calls for access to it to be recognized as a human right. Yet around the world, palliative care is not uniformly developed and it needs to press hard to secure full integration with prevailing health policies. Palliative care still reaches only a tiny proportion of those who could benefit from it, especially those with diseases other than cancer. The global challenge for palliative care in the 21st century is to develop models and coverage appropriate to those in need, whatever their diagnosis, income or setti

Likelihood of death within one year among a national cohort of hospital inpatients in Scotland

No abstract available

Mixed metal nanoparticle assembly and the effect on surface enhanced raman scattering

Here we report the assembly of mixed metal nanoparticles using an oligonucleotide-templated approach. Substitution of one of the gold nanoparticle probes with an analagous silver probe to produce a hetero-metal duplex permitted surface enhanced Raman scattering of the dye label, exploiting the improved surface enhancement properties of silver nanoparticles whilst maintaining the surface chemistry benefits of gold nanoaprticle