Politics of recognition: what can a human rights perspective contribute to understanding users' experiences of involvement in mental health services?

This historically situated, UK-based review of New Labour's human rights and mental health policy following the 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA) and 2007 Mental Health Act (MHA), draws on Klug's identification of three waves of human rights. These occurred around the American and French Revolutions, after World War II, and following the collapse of state communism in 1989, and the article assesses impacts on mental health policy up to and including the New Labour era. It critiques current equality and rights frameworks in mental health and indicates how they might be brought into closer alignment with third wave principles

Obituary: Arthur Cruickshank 1932 - 2011. A native Gondwanan, who studied the former continent's fossil tetrapods

Dr Arthur Richard Ivor Cruickshank died on 4th December 2011, aged 79, in the Borders General Hospital, Melrose, Scotland. Arthur Cruickshank was part of the post-war generation of palaeontologists who laid the foundations on which today’s researchers build. Appropriately for someone from an expatriate Scots family living in Kenya, much of his work was on the extinct reptiles of the great southern palaeocontinent of Gondwana

OLES: An instrument for refining the design of e-learning environments

Designing and implementing effective e-learning is a complex process, which involves many factors. Lecturers need to constantly consider, evaluate and adjust these factors to provide effective e-learning environments for students. In this paper, we report on the design and development of the Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES), an instrument which can be used to gather and represent data on students' ‘actual’ (experienced) and ‘preferred’ (ideal) learning environments. We describe the use of this instrument in blended learning environments with university classes, illustrating how OLES can be used by educators striving for good practice in the design of effective online learning environments

Exploring the contribution of animal companionship to human wellbeing: A three-country study

While it is often assumed that animal companions unilaterally contribute to the wellbeing of their human companions, research has to date been equivocal. At best it appears to be that animal companionship may add an extra dimension to human lives, and thus human wellbeing. In this paper we report on a quantitative study conducted in 2021 that surveyed 2090 people with animal companions living in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Participants responded to measures asking about their wellbeing and psychological distress, their connectedness to other humans, and their interactions with and attachment to animals. Regression analysis found that relationships with humans was associated with reduced psychological distress (β = -.594, p = .001), while relationships with animals (β = .205, p = .001), particularly cats (β = .077, p = .001), was associated with increased psychological distress. Regression analysis also found that relationships with other humans (β = .522, p = .001), interactions with animals (β = .142, p = .001), and bonds with animal companions (β = .128, p = .001) were associated with increased wellbeing. We conclude by considering the groups for whom relationships with animals are most likely to offer unique benefits, and suggest the importance of continuing to examine why it is that relationships with animals are both intertwined with, yet distinct from, human-human relationships

Digital-is-Physical : How Functional Fabrication Disrupts Ubicomp Design Principles

Ubiquitous computing has long explored design through the conceptual separation of digital and physical materials. We describe how the emergence of the fabrication community in HCI will challenge these conceptual principles. The idea of digital material in ubicomp ‘hides’ lower level abstractions such as physical architectures and materials from designers. As new fabrication techniques make these abstractions accessible to makers, physical materials are being used to encode digital functionality. Form (traditionally physical) and function (traditionally digital) can be mutually expressed within material design. We outline how emerging printed electronics techniques will enable functional fabrication, current limitations and opportunities for end-user fabrication of functional devices, and implications for new principles that emphasise combined physical design of form and function

Understanding parent experiences of end-of-life care for children: a systematic review and qualitative evidence synthesis

Background: An estimated 21 million children worldwide would benefit from palliative care input and nearly 8 million die each year. For parents of these children this is an intensely emotional and painful time through which they will need support. There is a lack of synthesised research about how parents experience the care delivered to their child at the end of life. Aim: To systematically identify and synthesise qualitative research on parents’ experiences of end-of-life care of their child. Design: A qualitative evidence synthesis was conducted. The review protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021242946). Data sources: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO and Web of Science databases were searched for qualitative studies published post-2000 to April 2020. Studies were appraised for methodological quality and data richness. Confidence in findings was assessed by GRADE-CERQual. Results: 95 studies met the eligibility criteria. A purposive sample of 25 studies was taken, of good-quality papers with rich data describing the experience of over 470 parents. There were two overarching themes: parents of children receiving end-of-life care experienced a profound need to fulfil the parental role; and care of the parent. Subthemes included establishing their role, maintaining identity, ultimate responsibility, reconstructing the parental role, and continuing parenting after death. Conclusions: Services delivering end-of-life care for children need to recognise the importance for parents of being able to fulfil their parental role and consider how they enable this. What the parental role consists of, and how it’s expressed, differs for individuals. Guidance should acknowledge the need to enable parents to parent at their child’s end of life

Skin-derived dendritic cells acquire and degrade the scrapie agent following in vitro exposure

The accumulation of the scrapie agent in lymphoid tissues following inoculation via the skin is critical for efficient neuroinvasion, but how the agent is initially transported from the skin to the draining lymph node is not known. Langerhans cells (LCs) are specialized antigen-presenting cells that continually sample their microenvironment within the epidermis and transport captured antigens to draining lymph nodes. We considered LCs probable candidates to acquire and transport the scrapie agent after inoculation via the skin. XS106 cells are dendritic cells (DCs) isolated from mouse epidermis with characteristics of mature LC cells. To investigate the potential interaction of LCs with the scrapie agent XS106 cells were exposed to the scrapie agent in vitro. We show that XS106 cells rapidly acquire the scrapie agent following in vitro exposure. In addition, XS106 cells partially degrade the scrapie agent following extended cultivation. These data suggest that LCs might acquire and degrade the scrapie agent after inoculation via the skin, but data from additional experiments demonstrate that this ability could be lost in the presence of lipopolysaccharide or other immunostimulatory molecules. Our studies also imply that LCs would not undergo maturation following uptake of the scrapie agent in the skin, as the expression of surface antigens associated with LC maturation were unaltered following exposure. In conclusion, although LCs or DCs have the potential to acquire the scrapie agent within the epidermis our data suggest it is unlikely that they become activated and stimulated to transport the agent to the draining lymph node