Critical Thinking and Culturally-Sustaining Teaching: Developing the Historical Literacy of Māori and Pasifika Undergraduates in Aotearoa/New Zealand

In this paper, we explore critical thinking in the context of developing culturally-sustaining historical literacy in Māori and Pasifika students at a large, multicultural university in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Critical thinking and culturally-sustaining historical literacy might seem like an odd couple insofar as critical thinking tends to be associated with liberal Western (academic) culture. Students can resist developing their critical thinking, not least because culturally-sustaining ‘critical being’ is a threshold concept, requiring a flexible, yet clearly structured pedagogical approach. But the development of critical being is vital to culturally-sustaining teaching because of the role the associated skills and dispositions play in supporting cultural autonomy and voice. We talked with nineteen teachers of a range of ethnicities from across the historical disciplines at the University of Auckland to document the pedagogical strategies they used to develop the critical thinking skills of their Māori and Pasifika students in a culturally-sustaining way: fostering peer dialogue that draws on personal experience; practising perspective-taking; drawing on popular culture for its contemporary and cultural relevance; drawing on one’s culture in choosing relevant topics; and creating learning spaces conducive to critical being.We are grateful to the New Zealand Council for Educational Research for Teaching and Learning Research Initiatives funding, which enabled research for this article.November, N.; Sturm, S.; Wolfgramm-Foliaki, '. (2020). Critical Thinking and Culturally-Sustaining Teaching: Developing the Historical Literacy of Māori and Pasifika Undergraduates in Aotearoa/New Zealand. En 6th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'20). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. (30-05-2020):949-957. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd20.2020.11179OCS94995730-05-202

Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Sustainable Development Goals: Lessons from Tonga

Tonga faces distinctive environmental, economic and social challenges emanating from increasing development pressures. In recognition of the sustainable development challenges faced by many nations around the world, the United Nations Development Programme adopted a new sustainability perspective in 2015, commonly known as the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a systematic process that integrates environmental considerations into decision making and aims to help achieve sustainable development. This study aimed to find context specific approaches for using SEA to integrate the SDGs into national policy and planning processes of Tonga. An institutional analysis was conducted to understand the current policy planning and decision making processes in response to incorporating the SDGs from the global to the national level of implementation. Key informant interviews with representatives from government, business and communities involved in national planning and decision making processes were conducted in Tonga. From the interviews it is clear that although the SEA concept is fairly new to most of the informants, some of the elements of SEA are already in practice. However, SDGs are not fully understood within government, business and communities. While this research resonates with key findings of Polido et al.,(2014) who advocated linking and promoting the SEA process to enable a change in decision making paradigm and supporting good governance, distinctive cultural and temporal factors are also emerging, supporting the key argument that SEA needs to be context specific in order to advance the sustainability agenda in Tonga

Siblings, asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema: a worldwide perspective from the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood.

BACKGROUND: Associations of larger families with lower prevalences of hay fever, eczema and objective markers of allergic sensitization have been found fairly consistently in affluent countries, but little is known about these relationships in less affluent countries. METHODS: Questionnaire data for 210,200 children aged 6-7 years from 31 countries, and 337,226 children aged 13-14 years from 52 countries, were collected by Phase Three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC). Associations of disease symptoms and labels of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema were analysed by numbers of total, older and younger siblings, using mixed (multi-level) logistic regression models to adjust for individual covariates and at the centre level for region, language and national affluence. RESULTS: In both age groups, inverse trends (P < 0.0001) were observed for reported 'hay fever ever' and 'eczema ever' with increasing numbers of total siblings, and more specifically older siblings. These inverse associations were significantly (P < 0.005) stronger in more affluent countries. In contrast, symptoms of severe asthma and severe eczema were positively associated (P < 0.0001) with total sibship size in both age groups. These associations with disease severity were largely independent of position within the sibship and national GNI per capita. CONCLUSIONS: These global findings on sibship size and childhood asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema suggest at least two distinct trends. Inverse associations with older siblings (observations which prompted the 'hygiene hypothesis' for allergic disease) are mainly a phenomenon of more affluent countries, whereas greater severity of symptoms in larger families is globally more widespread

Electrophysiological Investigations of Prion Protein Roles in Health and Disease

Prion diseases are transmissible and fatal neurological disorders associated with the misfolding of cellular prion protein (PrPC) into disease-causing isoforms (PrPD) in the central nervous system. The diseases have three etiologies; acquired through exposure to the infectious PrPD, sporadic, arising from no known cause, and hereditary due to familial mutations within the PRNP gene. The manifestation of clinical signs is associated with the disruption of neuronal activity and subsequent degeneration of neurons. To generate insight into the mechanisms by which neuronal activity becomes disrupted in prion diseases, electrophysiological techniques have been applied to closely study the electrical signaling properties of neurons that lack functional PrPC as well as neurons that are developing pathological features of prion diseases due to infection or genetic mutation. In this review, we will compile the electrophysiological evidences of neurophysiological roles of PrPC, how those roles are changed in neurons that are developing prion diseases, and how disease-associated effects are exacerbated during the clinical stage of disease

Prevalence of HPV infection and other risk factors in a Fijian population.

BACKGROUND: Cancer is among the leading contributors to morbidity and mortality in the Pacific, but the magnitude of the problem and the potential for prevention have not been comprehensively studied. Over the past decade, cervical cancer has been the most common cancer among women in Fiji with an age standardised cervical cancer incidence rate of 51 per 100,000. This rate is among the highest in the South Pacific region and in the world. This high cervical cancer incidence rate is likely linked to the low cervical screening rate, but it points also to the possibility of a high burden of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. METHODS: We conducted a population-based survey in Fiji to provide information on human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence, and the distribution of individual HPV types in a Fijian health-sub-district. We included 1,261 women aged between 16 and 64 years. A general primer GP5+/6+ mediatedpolymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay was used for HPV testing of 44 HPV types. RESULTS: The crude HPV prevalence in 1,244 women with an adequate HPV sample was 24.0% (95% confidence interval (CI), 21.7-26.4%) and the corresponding age standardised prevalence was 25.5% (95% CI, 23.1-28.1%). The prevalence of high-risk HPV types was 13.6% (95% CI, 11.8-15.6%). Among 1,192 women with adequate cytological results, 13 (1.1%) showed cervical abnormalities, the majority of which were high-grade intraepithelial lesions or worse. HPV prevalence declined from 35.8% in women aged <25 years to 18.6% in those aged 55-64 years of age. After adjustment, the only variables significantly associated with HPV-positivity were age (ranging from odds ratio (OR) 0.57 (95% CI, 0.36-0.89) for 25-34 year-old-women to OR 0.43 (95% CI, 0.20-0.89) for 55-64 year-old-women) and 'husband's extramarital sexual relationships' (OR 1.69; 95% CI, 1.17-2.34). CONCLUSION: These findings on HPV provide key information for future policy decisions on the most appropriate methods of cervical cancer prevention in Fiji and in the Pacific region

Global variation in the prevalence and severity of asthma symptoms : phase three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC)

Background: Phase Three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) measured the global prevalence and severity of asthma symptoms in children. Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey of 798 685 children aged 13–14 years from 233 centres in 97 countries, and 388 811 children aged 6–7 years from 144 centres in 61 countries, was conducted between 2000 and 2003 in .90% of the centres. Results: The prevalence of wheeze in the past 12 months (current wheeze) ranged from 0.8% in Tibet (China) to 32.6% in Wellington (New Zealand) in the 13–14 year olds, and from 2.4% in Jodhpur (India) to 37.6% in Costa Rica in the 6–7 year olds. The prevalence of symptoms of severe asthma, defined as >4 attacks of wheeze or >1 night per week sleep disturbance from wheeze or wheeze affecting speech in the past 12 months, ranged from 0.1% in Pune (India) to 16% in Costa Rica in the 13–14 year olds and from 0% to 20.3% in the same two centres, respectively, in the 6–7 year olds. Ecological economic analyses revealed a significant trend towards a higher prevalence of current wheeze in centres in higher income countries in both age groups, but this trend was reversed for the prevalence of severe symptoms among current wheezers, especially in the older age group. Conclusion: Wide variations exist in the symptom prevalence of childhood asthma worldwide. Although asthma symptoms tend to be more prevalent in more affluent countries, they appear to be more severe in less affluent countries.peer-reviewe

Value of individual surgeon performance metrics as quality assurance measures in oesophagogastric cancer surgery

Background Surgeon‐level operative mortality is widely seen as a measure of quality after gastric and oesophageal resection. This study aimed to evaluate this alongside a compound‐level outcome analysis. Methods Consecutive patients who underwent treatment including surgery delivered by a multidisciplinary team, which included seven specialist surgeons, were studied. The primary outcome was death within 30 days of surgery; secondary outcomes were anastomotic leak, Clavien–Dindo morbidity score, lymph node harvest, circumferential resection margin (CRM) status, disease‐free (DFS), and overall (OS) survival. Results The median number of annual resections per surgeon was 10 (range 5–25), compared with 14 (5–25) for joint consultant teams (P = 0·855). The median annual surgeon‐level mortality rate was 0 (0–9) per cent versus an overall network annual operative mortality rate of 1·8 (0–3·7) per cent. Joint consultant team procedures were associated with fewer operative deaths (0·5 per cent versus 3·4 per cent at surgeon level; P = 0·027). The median surgeon anastomotic leak rate was 12·4 (range 9–20) per cent (P = 0·625 versus the whole surgical range), overall morbidity 46·5 (31–60) per cent (P = 0·066), lymph node harvest 16 (9–29) (P < 0·001), CRM positivity 32·0 (16–46) per cent (P = 0·003), 5‐year DFS rate 44·8 (29–60) per cent and OS rate 46·5 (35–53) per cent. No designated metrics were independently associated with DFS or OS in multivariable analysis. Conclusion Annual surgeon‐level metrics demonstrated wide variations (fivefold), but these performance metrics were not associated with survival

Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease infected human cerebral organoids retain the original human brain subtype features following transmission to humanized transgenic mice

Human cerebral organoids (COs) are three-dimensional self-organizing cultures of cerebral brain tissue differentiated from induced pluripotent stem cells. We have recently shown that COs are susceptible to infection with different subtypes of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) prions, which in humans cause different manifestations of the disease. The ability to study live human brain tissue infected with different CJD subtypes opens a wide array of possibilities from differentiating mechanisms of cell death and identifying neuronal selective vulnerabilities to testing therapeutics. However, the question remained as to whether the prions generated in the CO model truly represent those in the infecting inoculum. Mouse models expressing human prion protein are commonly used to characterize human prion disease as they reproduce many of the molecular and clinical phenotypes associated with CJD subtypes. We therefore inoculated these mice with COs that had been infected with two CJD subtypes (MV1 and MV2) to see if the original subtype characteristics (referred to as strains once transmitted into a model organism) of the infecting prions were maintained in the COs when compared with the original human brain inocula. We found that disease characteristics caused by the molecular subtype of the disease associated prion protein were similar in mice inoculated with either CO derived material or human brain material, demonstrating that the disease associated prions generated in COs shared strain characteristics with those in humans. As the first and only in vitro model of human neurodegenerative disease that can faithfully reproduce different subtypes of prion disease, these findings support the use of the CO model for investigating human prion diseases and their subtypes