Young people living in the YMCA

This article presents interim findings and reflections from a case study of multiply excluded homeless people in Stoke-on-Trent. The article focuses on the experiences reported by a group of twelve such people living in the YMCA hostel. From the interviews, a large number of thematic structures were identified, of which only a few are outlined here, due to restrictions on the article length. The article concludes that the YMCA has had an important impact on their lives, mostly for the better, but the nature of this impact is complex and far from being fully understood

Apostolic priests : releasing the lay planters

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/2726/thumbnail.jp

Nutrient stripping: the global disparity between food security and soil nutrient stocks

1. The Green Revolution successfully increased food production but in doing so created a legacy of inherently leaky and unsustainable agricultural systems. Central to this are the problems of excessive nutrient mining. If agriculture is to balance the needs of food security with the delivery of other ecosystem services, then current rates of soil nutrient stripping must be reduced and the use of synthetic fertilisers made more efficient. 2. We explore the global extent of the problem, with specific emphasis on the failure of macronutrient management (e.g. nitrogen, phosphorus) to deliver continued improvements in yield and the failure of agriculture to recognise the seriousness of micronutrient depletion (e.g. copper, zinc, selenium). 3. Nutrient removals associated with the relatively immature, nutrient-rich soils of the UK are contrasted with the mature, nutrient-poor soils of India gaining insight into the emerging issue of nutrient stripping and the long-term implications for human health and soil quality. Whilst nutrient deficiencies are rare in developed countries, micronutrient deficiencies are commonly increasing in less-developed countries. Increasing rates of micronutrient depletion are being inadvertently accomplished through increasing crop yield potential and nitrogen fertiliser applications. 4. Amongst other factors, the spatial disconnects caused by the segregation and industrialisation of livestock systems, between rural areas (where food is produced) and urban areas (where food is consumed and human waste treated) are identified as a major constraint to sustainable nutrient recycling. 5. Synthesis and applications. This study advocates that agricultural sustainability can only be accomplished using a whole-systems approach that thoroughly considers nutrient stocks, removals, exports and recycling. Society needs to socially and environmentally re-engineer agricultural systems at all scales. It is suggested that this will be best realised by national-scale initiatives. Failure to do so will lead to an inevitable and rapid decline in the delivery of provisioning services within agricultural systems

Asymmetry analysis of the arm segments during forward handspring on floor

Asymmetry in gymnastics underpins successful performance and may also have implications as an injury mechanism; therefore, understanding of this concept could be useful for coaches and clinicians. The aim of this study was to examine kinematic and external kinetic asymmetry of the arm segments during the contact phase of a fundamental skill, the forward handspring on floor. Using a repeated single subject design six female National elite gymnasts (age: 19 ± 1.5 years, mass: 58.64 ± 3.72 kg, height: 1.62 ± 0.41 m), each performed 15 forward handsprings, synchronised 3D kinematic and kinetic data were collected. Asymmetry between the lead and non-lead side arms was quantified during each trial. Significant kinetic asymmetry was observed for all gymnasts (p < 0.005) with the direction of the asymmetry being related to the lead leg. All gymnasts displayed kinetic asymmetry for ground reaction force. Kinematic asymmetry was present for more gymnasts at the shoulder than the distal joints. These findings provide useful information for coaching gymnastics skills, which may subjectively appear to be symmetrical. The observed asymmetry has both performance and injury implications

Integrating personality research and animal contest theory: aggressiveness in the green swordtail <i>Xiphophorus helleri</i>

&lt;p&gt;Aggression occurs when individuals compete over limiting resources. While theoretical studies have long placed a strong emphasis on context-specificity of aggression, there is increasing recognition that consistent behavioural differences exist among individuals, and that aggressiveness may be an important component of individual personality. Though empirical studies tend to focus on one aspect or the other, we suggest there is merit in modelling both within-and among-individual variation in agonistic behaviour simultaneously. Here, we demonstrate how this can be achieved using multivariate linear mixed effect models. Using data from repeated mirror trials and dyadic interactions of male green swordtails, &lt;i&gt;Xiphophorus helleri&lt;/i&gt;, we show repeatable components of (co)variation in a suite of agonistic behaviour that is broadly consistent with a major axis of variation in aggressiveness. We also show that observed focal behaviour is dependent on opponent effects, which can themselves be repeatable but were more generally found to be context specific. In particular, our models show that within-individual variation in agonistic behaviour is explained, at least in part, by the relative size of a live opponent as predicted by contest theory. Finally, we suggest several additional applications of the multivariate models demonstrated here. These include testing the recently queried functional equivalence of alternative experimental approaches, (e. g., mirror trials, dyadic interaction tests) for assaying individual aggressiveness.&lt;/p&gt

Impact of target site distribution for Type I restriction enzymes on the evolution of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) populations.

A limited number of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clones are responsible for MRSA infections worldwide, and those of different lineages carry unique Type I restriction-modification (RM) variants. We have identified the specific DNA sequence targets for the dominant MRSA lineages CC1, CC5, CC8 and ST239. We experimentally demonstrate that this RM system is sufficient to block horizontal gene transfer between clinically important MRSA, confirming the bioinformatic evidence that each lineage is evolving independently. Target sites are distributed randomly in S. aureus genomes, except in a set of large conjugative plasmids encoding resistance genes that show evidence of spreading between two successful MRSA lineages. This analysis of the identification and distribution of target sites explains evolutionary patterns in a pathogenic bacterium. We show that a lack of specific target sites enables plasmids to evade the Type I RM system thereby contributing to the evolution of increasingly resistant community and hospital MRSA

The Discovery of a Potent, Selective, and Peripherally Restricted Pan-Trk Inhibitor (PF-06273340) for the Treatment of Pain

The neurotrophin family of growth factors, comprised of nerve growth factor (NGF), brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), neurotrophin 3 (NT3), and neurotrophin 4 (NT4), is implicated in the physiology of chronic pain. Given the clinical efficacy of anti-NGF monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies, there is significant interest in the development of small molecule modulators of neurotrophin activity. Neurotrophins signal through the tropomyosin related kinase (Trk) family of tyrosine kinase receptors, hence Trk kinase inhibition represents a potentially “druggable” point of intervention. To deliver the safety profile required for chronic, nonlife threatening pain indications, highly kinase-selective Trk inhibitors with minimal brain availability are sought. Herein we describe how the use of SBDD, 2D QSAR models, and matched molecular pair data in compound design enabled the delivery of the highly potent, kinase-selective, and peripherally restricted clinical candidate PF-06273340

Antarctic climate change and the environment: an update

We present an update of the ‘key points’ from the Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment (ACCE) report that was published by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) in 2009. We summarise subsequent advances in knowledge concerning how the climates of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean have changed in the past, how they might change in the future, and examine the associated impacts on the marine and terrestrial biota. We also incorporate relevant material presented by SCAR to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, and make use of emerging results that will form part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Repor

FastHPOCR: pragmatic, fast, and accurate concept recognition using the human phenotype ontology.

MOTIVATION: Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)-based phenotype concept recognition (CR) underpins a faster and more effective mechanism to create patient phenotype profiles or to document novel phenotype-centred knowledge statements. While the increasing adoption of large language models (LLMs) for natural language understanding has led to several LLM-based solutions, we argue that their intrinsic resource-intensive nature is not suitable for realistic management of the phenotype CR lifecycle. Consequently, we propose to go back to the basics and adopt a dictionary-based approach that enables both an immediate refresh of the ontological concepts as well as efficient re-analysis of past data. RESULTS: We developed a dictionary-based approach using a pre-built large collection of clusters of morphologically equivalent tokens-to address lexical variability and a more effective CR step by reducing the entity boundary detection strictly to candidates consisting of tokens belonging to ontology concepts. Our method achieves state-of-the-art results (0.76 F1 on the GSC+ corpus) and a processing efficiency of 10 000 publication abstracts in 5 s. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: FastHPOCR is available as a Python package installable via pip. The source code is available at https://github.com/tudorgroza/fast_hpo_cr. A Java implementation of FastHPOCR will be made available as part of the Fenominal Java library available at https://github.com/monarch-initiative/fenominal. The up-to-date GCS-2024 corpus is available at https://github.com/tudorgroza/code-for-papers/tree/main/gsc-2024