Signalling C-Type Lectins in Antimicrobial Immunity

Funding: This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council and the University of Aberdeen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Transformative Grassroots Leadership: Understanding the Role of Rojiroti's Women Leaders in Supporting Social Change

Many have argued that supporting women’s leadership is an important pathway to women’s empowerment. However, there is still a need for better understanding of how women become leaders, particularly at the grassroots level, and how they support social change. This article explores women’s leadership as part of a grassroots microfinance organisation, Rojiroti. Through interviews and focus group discussions, it finds that Rojiroti’s women leaders were motivated to become leaders to create better opportunities for their families and communities, and that they lead in line with frameworks of transformative leadership by supporting relationship building, by facilitating and guiding knowledge transfer and by providing space for reflection and skills for action (Wakefield, 2017). In particular, their situated knowledge was essential for inspiring shared vision for challenging unequal power relations. Overall, better understanding their leadership, that particularly nurtures relationships and collaboration, due to their position as being from the social groups they sought to support, is critical to the current challenges facing interventions and activism that seek to promote women’s empowerment and contribute to social change

Exploring Rojiroti’s influence on girls’ education in rural India: Understanding the mechanisms and pathways for change

Microfinance, the idea of giving small loans to those without access to formalised financial services, has been a widely adopted intervention since the 1990s. However, debates about the impacts of microfinance are ongoing and arguably intensifying. Critics argue that many of the mechanisms through which microfinance is delivered can lead to higher levels of poverty. Additionally, the fact that microfinance predominantly focuses on women has led to widespread feminist critiques that it does not consider wider structural constraints facing women. Increasingly, there have been calls to better understand the mechanisms through which microfinance organisations operate. This research explores Rojiroti microfinance, a grassroots and community-led organisation, designed by and for its members to support women from the most socio-economically marginalised groups in rural Bihar, India. This has led to a number of distinct operating mechanisms which differentiate it from the microfinance organisations subject to mainstream critique. This study seeks to assess whether Rojiroti’s distinct mechanisms have enabled positive changes for its women members. It aims to do this through looking at girls’ education, recognising that changes in girls’ education could be indicative of more widespread and longer-term shifts in gender equality. Theories of empowerment, with a foundation in the capability approach, are used to conceptualise pathways through which change may have occurred for Rojiroti members in relation to being able to support girls’ education. These pathways are firstly that, through membership, women may experience a change in their financial, social and cultural resources. They may then experience shifts in individual and collective agency which could influence their ability to support girls’ education. Secondary panel data were analysed and found that Rojiroti members experienced significant positive impacts on their spending on children’s education. Choosing to spend on education indicates a shift in women’s financial position, as well as a commitment to support children’s education. Subsequently, to understand in more depth the impact on girls’ education in particular, whether Rojiroti’s operating mechanisms had facilitated this change, and the pathways through which this change had occurred, twenty one-on-one interviews with Rojiroti staff and thirty focus group discussions with Rojiroti self-help group members were conducted. Findings demonstrate that Rojiroti’s low interest rates and flexible repayment mechanisms had particularly supported women to build up financial resources, which they then used to support girls’ education. Rojiroti’s focus on group cohesion and solidarity, and the fact it was predominantly women-led, led to increased social resources, and individual and collective agency that contributed to women’s increased ability to take decisions to support girls’ education and to challenge inequality in their homes and communities. Significant for those involved in microfinance, it appears that Rojiroti’s deep understanding of the context, and flexibility to adapt to the needs of its members, enabled positive change. In terms of longer-term gender transformative changes, the study cautions against interventions that focus purely on building up women’s financial resources. Social resources were essential for building skills which enabled women to advocate for, and challenge barriers inhibiting, girls’ education

Influence of the Fitbit Charge HR on physical activity, aerobic fitness and disability in non-specific back pain participants

BACKGROUND: Increasing levels of physical activity (PA) and aerobic fitness can reduce non-specific chronic low back pain (NSCLBP) yet patient’s physical activity 1 and aerobic fitness 2 have been shown to be lower than healthy counterparts. Pedometers are effective at promoting PA 3, yet more ‘advanced consumer level activity monitors’ (AAMs) can provide greater feedback to the user. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of new advances in commercially available wearable technology on PA, aerobic fitness and disability of low back pain participants. METHODS: Seventeen participants volunteered and were provided with Fitbit Charge HR (FIT n=9) or pedometer (PED n=8). Participants completed a 6- week, multi-component, physical activity programme lasting two hours per week. All activities were designed to be relevant to activities of daily living. RESULTS: Non-significant (P>0.05) increases in step count were identified from pre to post intervention in both FIT, (23%) and PED (29%) groups. At one month follow up, aerobic fitness significantly (P0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest feedback on user exercise intensity provided by AAMs, may show promise in improving aerobic fitness. AAMs were not more effective than pedometers at increasing the volume of PA, or reducing disability in NSCLP participants

Exploring Post-secondary Students’ Perceptions of the Quality of their Summer Tourism Jobs

This exploratory study captures job quality perceptions of 14 post-secondary school students employed in summer tourism jobs. Students that lacked training, managerial support and consistent work hours saw their job as low quality and were less committed to their employer