Hated on Both Sides of the Aisle: Overcoming the Tension between Christian Foundation and Present-day Social Advocacy

Heeding the imperative of recent social movements calling for racial justice, university educators are faced with the challenge of developing curriculum that eliminates cultural stereotypes and mobilizes students toward social action. There is an imperative (Smith, 2015) to increase Anti-Racist Pedagogy (ARP) (Ladson- Billings, 2005) and refine Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) (Gay, 2000) in our education systems, leaving university faculty and administration with the daunting task of designing curriculum that reflects both an understanding of and respect for all students’ identities. The author shares how she blends the social justice research she conducts, the education courses she teaches, and her Christian faith in order to forego her passive nature for the greater urgency of eradicating prejudices that are rampant in our society. How she has done this has not been easy, but the results have exceeded expectations

Ensuring Legal Boundaries With Religiosity in Public Schools

With varying sources recognizing significant religious shifts in recent years and years to come, teachers are faced with the task of developing curricula that include religious discussions more than ever before (Banks & Banks, 2004). At the same time, in our increasingly multicultural world, we are teaching to a more religiously diverse student population than ever before. This paper will articulate an investigation that is two-fold: first, the authors will gauge how educators employed at public K – 12 schools engage their students in discussions and activities pertaining to religion while upholding all legal and constitutional guidelines, and second, to relate what Teacher Education Programs (TEPS) may/may not be doing to prepare pre-service teachers for designing curriculum with the increasing religious shifts in mind

Parents with learning disabilities - the lived experience - a study for equal say, Glasgow

In order to more clearly identify the key issues with regard to parents with learning disabilities, Equal Say commissioned the Glasgow School of Social Work to undertake a small pilot study which aimed to: identify the likely demand for advocacy services to support parents with a learning disability living in the community, illustrate the lived experiences of parents with a learning disability and to highlight examples of good practice in terms of what works in supporting parents with a learning disability. A short survey questionnaire was sent to 94 relevant social work, health and voluntary sector organisations within Glasgow City. Five parents from within the Equal Say service who had the capacity to give informed consent were selected at random and interviewed to discuss a range of issues in relation to their parenting. Their experiences of being a parent were also discussed as were the range of support services and mechanisms in place to assist them with this role

A Test of Future Planning Ability in the Rat

The aim of this study was to investigate the planning abilities of nonhumans, specifically rats. This was assessed by the animals’ tendency to behave in response to future rather than present motivations. For the purposes of this study the future motivation in question was anticipatory sensory specific satiety, i.e., the animals were trained to expect satiating exposure to a certain flavour of rat pellet in the near future. At the testing phase of the study the animals were offered an unexpected choice of two flavours prior to being exposed to the excess of the experimental flavour. This unexpected flavour choice consisted of the flavour that the animal was about to receive (the flavour congruous with the animal’s expectation), and an alternative flavour, of equal familiarity and palatability (the incongruous flavour). The consumption of the congruous and incongruous flavours was recorded. When faced with this choice, an animal successfully anticipating satiation to the upcoming flavour would be expected to consume proportionally more of the alternative (incongruous) flavour, in order to maintain the pleasantness of the anticipated flavour. However the results were inconclusive: there was no significant difference between the proportion of the congruous and the incongruous flavours consumed, suggesting that the current group of animals was not capable of spontaneously anticipating the upcoming flavour. An altered procedure then investigated whether the animals were capable of learning to anticipate the upcoming flavour by introducing regular (and therefore expected) flavour choices. Under these new circumstances the animals consumed significantly higher proportions of the congruous compared to the incongruous flavour. Taken together, these results suggest both that the animals were unable to spontaneously anticipate being satiated by an upcoming flavour, and were unable to learn to anticipate this satiation following repeated trials. The results and certain assumptions of the study are discussed

BRD4 associates with p53 in DNMT3A-mutated leukemia cells and is implicated in apoptosis by the bromodomain inhibitor JQ1

The bromodomain and extra terminal (BET) family protein bromodomain containing protein 4 (BRD4) is an epigenetic regulator recently identified as a therapeutic target for several hematological cancers, notably mixed lineage leukemia-fusion acute myeloid leukemia (MLL-AML). Here, we show that the BRD4 bromodomain inhibitor JQ1 is highly active against the p53-wild-type Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI)-AML3 cell line which carries mutations in nucleophosmin (NPM1) and DNA methyltransferase 3 (DNMT3A) genes commonly associated with poor prognostic disease. We find that JQ1 causes caspase 3/7-mediated apoptosis and DNA damage response in these cells. In combination studies, we show that histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors, the HDM2 inhibitor Nutlin-3, and the anthracycline daunorubicin all enhance the apoptotic response of JQ1. These compounds all induce activation of p53 suggesting that JQ1 might sensitize AML cells to p53-mediated cell death. In further experiments, we show that BRD4 associates with acetylated p53 but that this association is not inhibited by JQ1 indicating that the protein-protein interaction does not involve bromodomain binding of acetylated lysines. Instead, we propose that JQ1 acts to prevent BRD4-mediated recruitment of p53 to chromatin targets following its activation in OCI-AML3 cells resulting in cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in a c-MYC-independent manner. Our data suggest that BET bromodomain inhibition might enhance current chemotherapy strategies in AML, notably in poor-risk DNMT3A/NPM1-mutated disease

Cole1, cer site-specific recombination

The multicopy, naturally occurring plasmid ColE1 is maintained stably under normal growth conditions, whereas plasmid cloning vectors related to it are relatively unstable. Summers and Sherratt (1984) presented evidence suggesting that ColE1 is partitioned randomly at cell division and that plasmid stability is inversely correlated with plasmid multimerization. Wild type ColE1 is stable as it utilizes a site-specific recombination system to breakdown multimers formed by homologous recombination. This increases the stability of ColE1 by maximising the number of independently segregating units. The ColE1 site-specific recombination system utilizes a site cer, contained in a 238bp fragment (3731-3969bp) and a recombinase xer, which is probably host encoded. To investigate if the recombinase acting at cer' was host encoded, mutants affecting cer-specific recombination were sought. A total of ten Tn5::xer mutants have been isolated, only three of which have been studied in any detail. These three host mutants are called DSX. 1, DSX. 2 and DSX. 300. DSX. 2 and probably DSX. 1 are spontaneous mutants, whereas DSX. 330 is a Tn5::xer mutant. These xer mutants have been used to demonstate: (i) a correlation between multimerization and instability for ColE1, (ii) that ColE1 cannot supply in trans any of the functions absent in the xer mutants and (iii) that the xer functions are used in the multimer resolution systems of the high copy number plasmids ColK, CloDF13, and perhaps ColE2 and CoIE3. The xerA gene mutant in DSX. 330 has been cloned and sequenced. Sequence analysis of the minimum complementing clone reveals an ORF, which would encode for a polypeptide of 17kd, whose presence has been confirmed using whole cell protein extracts and minicells. The xerA plasmid clone complements the Xer- phenotype of DSX. 300 but not that of DSX. 1 and 2, defining at least two host complementation groups necessary for cer-specific recombination. Classical genetic techniques were then used to determine the genetic map position of the xer genes. The data indicates that xerA mutant in DSX. 300 lies between 82 and 87mins, whereas the xer 1and 2 gene(s) mutant in DSX. 1 and 2 lie between 87 and 91mins. One of these xer genes is probably the recombinase, whereas the other may be a DNA binding protein, involved in the formation of higher order protein-DNA structures or in DNA bending

Review of Social Work Education : To What Extent Should Social Work Education have a Stronger Focus on Community Development and Engagement?

How is community development and community engagement currently taught within social work programmes in Scotland? How might this be strengthened across existing programmes as a means to support implementation of current Scottish Government policies around strong, resilient and supportive communities? What role do social workers adopt in community development and engagement in other countries and how is this supported by their education and training

Advocacy: Models and Effectiveness : Insight 20

Advocacy has existed in the UK for more than 30 years and throughout this time a range of models and schemes has emerged, appropriate for different groups of people who access support (Action for Advocacy, 2006). Key features of advocacy include: independence from services, empowerment, providing people who access support with a voice, supporting people who access support to achieve active citizenship, challenging inequality, promoting social justice, and supporting people who access support to challenge inequity and unfairness (Boylan and Dalrymple, 2011). Essentially, advocacy can help individuals get the information they need, understand their rights, make their own choices and perhaps, most importantly, voice their opinions. However, it should be noted that advocacy is not about mediation, counselling, befriending, taking complaints or giving advice, although elements of these can be found to varying degrees across the different models (Patient and Client Council, Northern Ireland, 2012). This Insight draws on evidence in relation to advocacy with both children and adults and on literature from the fields of health and social care. It outlines the key elements of the most prevalent models of advocacy and identifies good practice, as well as the limitations of advocacy models. The Insight will provide an overview of the evidence base of what works in relation to advocacy provision