Teaching about development: some professional issues

"This paper discusses the teaching of development studies in Western academic institutions, with illustrations and comments drawn from the Australian and British experience. It does not attempt to scrutinise any specific course or courses, nor to provide any systematic tabulation of course offerings. Rather it seeks to raise some general issues for consideration ..." - page

'Gambang' Techniques: Aspects of Regionalism in Java and Bali

This thesis investigates the use of wood and bamboo keyed xylophones, often known by the name gambang, throughout the islands of Java and Bali; analysing playing styles in the dominant cultural centres of Java (Solo and Yogyakarta), Sunda (Bandung), and of the gambang areas of Bali (Negara and Tenganan), and thus to create broad divisions within the thesis; examining playing patterns from lessons and transcriptions and placing those variations and developments in an historico-cultural context; and examining in particular the xylophone practices of the border regions of Banyuwangi and Cirebon, comparing them with general models for the regions surrounding them, thus seeking signatures distinctive to each area. In so doing the thesis investigates issues of local, regional and national identity, and questions in what ways these have affected the distinctive styles of each area, and whether any dominant cultures (including the West) have changed the old and new traditions of Indonesian gambang playing. In the process of this investigation guidelines to understanding and creating gambang variations are established that might assist future researchers

Lifecycle Design: A method for supporting design decision-making with LCA knowledge in an interdisciplinary research project

This paper presents interim progress of the HEREWEAR project in developing a method for designing out impacts as part of a collaborative and ongoing process between design researchers, commercial designers and environmental scientists. The aim is to support optimal and iterative decision making concerning materials and processes, acknowledging their high levels of uncertainty in relation to design choices. This work explores bridging the methodological gaps between environmental science and product development in brands through design research interventions

The Siren Subverted: The Role of Violetta Valery in Giuseppe Verdi's 'La traviata' (1853)

This thesis addresses a two-fold proposition: that Giuseppe Verdi used the term 'posizione' as a concept for which he designed musical strategies and that, in relation to Verdi's 'La traviata', the term 'posizione' can also be viewed within the broader context of its social implications for the character of the courtesan, Violetta, and for the singer of the role. Verdi's musical strategies provide signifiers for the social space as well as the emotional states and responses of Violetta as her 'posizione' changes throughout the opera. They also demand from the singer of the role a variety of vocal techniques as these changes occur. The initial necessity of virtuosic 'coloratura' control is relinquished by degrees and replaced by the necessity for other tactics during the course of the opera. It is my argument that there is an historical correlation between the social space of the courtesan and that of the female singer. The power of each has relied on the ability to seduce client or audience through elements of display which have also involved vocal virtuosity. This has assisted in causing a conflation of the identities of courtesan and female singer to be made by audiences of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The narrative and musical strategies of 'La traviata' as revealed by critical analysis require novel tactical responses from both singer and audience as the expected seductive qualities of the singer-as-courtesan have been overturned. The possibility arises that Verdi's use of these strategies functioned as a refutation of criticism and suspicion regarding female singers in general and his mistress Giuseppina Strepponi in particular

A systematic review of methods to immobilise breast tissue during adjuvant breast irradiation

Greater use of 3D conformal, Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) and external beam partial breast irradiation following local excision (LE) for breast cancer has necessitated a review of the effectiveness of immobilisation methods to stabilise breast tissue. To identify the suitability of currently available breast (rather than thorax) immobilisation techniques an appraisal of the literature was undertaken. The aim was to identify and evaluate the benefit of additional or novel immobilisation approaches (beyond the standard supine, single arm abducted and angled breast board technique adopted in most radiotherapy departments). A database search was supplemented with an individual search of key radiotherapy peer-reviewed journals, author searching, and searching of the grey literature. A total of 27 articles met the inclusion criteria. The review identified good reproducibility of the thorax using the standard supine arm-pole technique. Reproducibility with the prone technique appears inferior to supine methods (based on data from existing randomised controlled trials). Assessing the effectiveness of additional breast support devices (such as rings or thermoplastic material) is hampered by small sample sizes and a lack of randomised data for comparison. Attention to breast immobilisation is recommended, as well as agreement on how breast stability should be measured using volumetric imaging. Keywords: Breast, immobilisation, positioning, reproducibility, review.</p

Mutations in Mll2, an H3K4 methyltransferase, result in insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance in mice.

We employed a random mutagenesis approach to identify novel monogenic determinants of type 2 diabetes. Here we show that haplo-insufficiency of the histone methyltransferase myeloid-lineage leukemia (Mll2/Wbp7) gene causes type 2 diabetes in the mouse. We have shown that mice heterozygous for two separate mutations in the SET domain of Mll2 or heterozygous Mll2 knockout mice were hyperglycaemic, hyperinsulinaemic and developed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Consistent with previous Mll2 knockout studies, mice homozygous for either ENU mutation (or compound heterozygotes) died during embryonic development at 9.5-14.5 days post coitum. Heterozygous deletion of Mll2 induced in the adult mouse results in a normal phenotype suggesting that changes in chromatin methylation during development result in the adult phenotype. Mll2 has been shown to regulate a small subset of genes, a number of which Neurod1, Enpp1, Slc27a2, and Plcxd1 are downregulated in adult mutant mice. Our results demonstrate that histone H3K4 methyltransferase Mll2 is a component of the genetic regulation necessary for glucose homeostasis, resulting in a specific disease pattern linking chromatin modification with causes and progression of type 2 diabetes, providing a basis for its further understanding at the molecular level

A novel cover material improves cooling energy and fertigation efficiency for glasshouse eggplant production

Glasshouses hold the potential to improve global food security, but high energy costs are an ongoing challenge in bringing them to the forefront of agriculture in warm climates. Here, the energy-saving potential of a ‘Smart Glass’ (SG), diffuse glass fitted with ULR-80 film which permits transmission of 85% of photosynthetically-active light and blocks heat-generating radiation, was characterised for a warm-climate glasshouse. Two consecutive 6-month trials of eggplant crops were grown in a high-tech glasshouse to compare SG to standard diffuse glass (control) in both cool and warm climate conditions. The SG reduced cooling energy use by 4.4% and fertigation demand by 29% in cooler months, and reduced cooling energy use by 4.4% and fertigation demand by 18% in warmer months. The SG did not significantly affect ventilation or heating energy use, but substantially reduced fruit yield. SG may be beneficial for reducing nutrient/water use alongside minor energy savings in commercial glasshouses. However, re-engineering the spectral characteristics of SG could improve eggplant fruit yield while maintaining reductions in energy, nutrient, and water use in the glasshouse

Satellite derived offshore migratory movements of southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) from Australian and New Zealand wintering grounds

Funding: Australian Marine Mammal Center Grant 13/48 AIM, SDG, DH, AL http://www.marinemammals.gov.au/ The Australian Marine Mammal Center was involved in study design and anlaysis through the involvement in the project by AMMC staff, Dr Mike Double and Dr Virgina Andrews-Goff Princess Melikoff Trust Marine Mammal Conservation Program KC New Zealand Department of Conservation SC.Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) migrate between Austral-winter calving and socialising grounds to offshore mid- to high latitude Austral-summer feeding grounds. In Australasia, winter calving grounds used by southern right whales extend from Western Australia across southern Australia to the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands. During the Austral-summer these whales are thought to migrate away from coastal waters to feed, but the location of these feeding grounds is only inferred from historical whaling data. We present new information on the satellite derived offshore migratory movements of six southern right whales from Australasian wintering grounds. Two whales were tagged at the Auckland Islands, New Zealand, and the remaining four at Australian wintering grounds, one at Pirates Bay, Tasmania, and three at Head of Bight, South Australia. The six whales were tracked for an average of 78.5 days (range: 29 to 150) with average individual distance of 38 km per day (range: 20 to 61 km). The length of individually derived tracks ranged from 645–6,381 km. Three likely foraging grounds were identified: south-west Western Australia, the Subtropical Front, and Antarctic waters, with the Subtropical Front appearing to be a feeding ground for both New Zealand and Australian southern right whales. In contrast, the individual tagged in Tasmania, from a sub-population that is not showing evidence of post-whaling recovery, displayed a distinct movement pattern to much higher latitude waters, potentially reflecting a different foraging strategy. Variable population growth rates between wintering grounds in Australasia could reflect fidelity to different quality feeding grounds. Unlike some species of baleen whale populations that show movement along migratory corridors, the new satellite tracking data presented here indicate variability in the migratory pathways taken by southern right whales from Australia and New Zealand, as well as differences in potential Austral summer foraging grounds.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

MARIS: Method for Analyzing RNA following Intracellular Sorting

Transcriptional profiling is a key technique in the study of cell biology that is limited by the availability of reagents to uniquely identify specific cell types and isolate high quality RNA from them. We report a Method for Analyzing RNA following Intracellular Sorting (MARIS) that generates high quality RNA for transcriptome profiling following cellular fixation, intracellular immunofluorescent staining and FACS. MARIS can therefore be used to isolate high quality RNA from many otherwise inaccessible cell types simply based on immunofluorescent tagging of unique intracellular proteins. As proof of principle, we isolate RNA from sorted human embryonic stem cell-derived insulin-expressing cells as well as adult human β cells. MARIS is a basic molecular biology technique that could be used across several biological disciplines.Howard Hughes Medical InstituteHarvard Stem Cell InstituteNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant 2U01DK07247307)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant RL1DK081184)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant 1U01HL10040804

Postcoloniality without race? Racial exceptionalism and south-east European cultural studies

The black Dutch feminist Gloria Wekker, assembling past and present everyday expressions of racialized imagination which collectively undermine hegemonic beliefs that white Dutch society has no historic responsibility for racism, writes in her book White Innocence that ‘one can do postcolonial studies very well without ever critically addressing race’ (p. 175). Two and a half decades after the adaptation of postcolonial thought to explain aspects of cultural politics during the break-up of Yugoslavia created important tools for understanding the construction of national, regional and socio-economic identities around hierarchical notions of ‘Europe’ and ‘the Balkans’ in the Yugoslav region and beyond, Wekker’s observation is still largely true for south-east European studies, where no intervention establishing race and whiteness as categories of analysis has reframed the field like work by Maria Todorova on ‘balkanism’ or Milica Bakić-Hayden on ‘symbolic geographies’ and ‘nesting orientalism’ did in the early 1990s. Critical race theorists such as Charles Mills nevertheless argue that ‘race’ as a structure of thought and feeling that legitimised colonialism and slavery (and still informs structural white supremacy) involved precisely the kind of essentialised link between people and territory that south-east European cultural theory also critiques: the construction of spatialised hierarchies specifying which peoples and territories could have more or less access to civilisation and modernity. South-east European studies’ latent racial exceptionalism has some roots in the race-blind anti-colonial solidarities of state socialist internationalism (further intensified for Yugoslavia through the politics of Non-Alignment) but also, this paper suggests, in deeper associations between Europeanness, whiteness and modernity that remain part of the history of ‘Europe’ as an idea even if, by the end of the 20th century, they were silenced more often than voiced