9,631 research outputs found
Narratives great and small: neighbourhood change, place and identity in Notting Hill
The area of Notting Hill in west London has been subject to much media coverage in recent years, which, along with substantial gentrification, has given rise to an image of the area as the epitome of fashionable London. This study investigates the views of those marginal to gentrification and mediated representation on their feelings about the local area, its image and their changing neighbourhoods. Many participants in the research resented some of the more recent changes in Notting Hill and the area's representation in the media. However, in contrast to expectations, most of the more working-class respondents involved in the research did not articulate much emotional attachment to the area. They were more concerned with what might be termed the material aspects of life in Notting Hill: convenience, facilities, safety and so on. In contrast, the more middle-class respondents frequently spoke of their regret of the changes to the area, such as the loss of independent shops, and the reduction in diversity. Paradoxically, the loss of working-class landscapes seems a relatively middle-class worry. The symbolically important landscapes described by working-class respondents were related to more immediate, material issues, in which gentrification was only a relatively minor concern.
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"Ordinary people only": knowledge, representativeness and the publics of public participation in healthcare
Public involvement in healthcare is a prominent policy in countries across the economically developed world. A growing body of academic literature has focused on public participation, often presenting dichotomies between good and bad practice: between initiatives that offer empowerment and those constrained by consumerism, or between those which rely for recruitment on self-selecting members of the public, and those including a more broad-based, statistically representative group. In this paper I discuss the apparent tensions between differing rationales for participation, relating recent discussions about the nature of representation in public involvement to parallel writings about the contribution of laypeople’s expertise and experience. In the academic literature, there is, I suggest, a thin line between democratic justifications for involvement, suggesting a representative role for involved publics, and technocratic ideas about the potential ‘expert’ contributions of particular subgroups of the public. Analysing recent policy documents on participation in healthcare in England, I seek moreover to show how contemporary policy transcends both categories, demanding complex roles of involved publics which invoke various qualities seen as important in governing the interface between state and society. I relate this to social-theoretical perspectives on the relationship between governmental authority and citizens in late-modern society
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Beyond improvement skills: what do clinicians, managers, patients and others need to do to make improvement happen?
Plastid redox state and sugars: Interactive regulators of nuclear-encoded photosynthetic gene expression
Feedback regulation of photosynthesis by carbon metabolites has long been recognized, but the underlying cellular mechanisms that control this process remain unclear. By using an Arabidopsis cell culture, we show that a block in photosynthetic electron flux prevents the increase in transcript levels of chlorophyll a/b-binding protein and the small subunit of Rubisco that typically occurs when intracellular sugar levels are depleted. In contrast, the expression of the nitrate reductase gene, which is induced by sugars, is not affected. These findings were confirmed in planta by using Arabidopsis carrying the firefly luciferase reporter gene fused to the plastocyanin and chlorophyll a/b-binding protein 2 gene promoters. Transcription from both promoters increases on carbohydrate depletion. Blocking photosynthetic electron transport with 3-(3',4'-dichlorophenyl)-1,1'-dimethylurea prevents this increase in transcription. We conclude that plastid-derived redox signaling can override the sugar-regulated expression of nuclear-encoded photosynthetic genes. In the sugar-response mutant, sucrose uncoupled 6 (sun6), plastocyanin-firefly luciferase transcription actually increases in response to exogenous sucrose rather than decreasing as in the wild type. Interestingly, plastid-derived redox signals do not influence this defective pattern of sugar-regulated gene expression in the sun6 mutant. A model, which invokes a positive inducer originating from the photosynthetic electron transport chain, is proposed to explain the nature of the plastid-derived signal
Responsibilising managers and clinicians, neglecting system health? What kind of healthcare leadership development do we want?
Responding to Ruth McDonald’s editorial on the rise of leadership and leadership development programmes
in healthcare, this paper offers three arguments. Firstly, care is needed in evaluating impact of leadership
development, since achievement of organisational goals is not necessarily an appropriate measure of good
leadership. Secondly, the proliferation of styles of leadership might be understood in part as a means of
retaining control over public services while distributing responsibility for their success and failure. Thirdly,
it makes a plea for the continued utility of good administrative skills for clinicians and managers, which are
likely to become all-the-more important given recent developments in healthcare policy and governance
The Role of Osteocytes in Targeted Bone Remodeling: A Mathematical Model
Until recently many studies of bone remodeling at the cellular level have
focused on the behavior of mature osteoblasts and osteoclasts, and their
respective precursor cells, with the role of osteocytes and bone lining cells
left largely unexplored. This is particularly true with respect to the
mathematical modeling of bone remodeling. However, there is increasing evidence
that osteocytes play important roles in the cycle of targeted bone remodeling,
in serving as a significant source of RANKL to support osteoclastogenesis, and
in secreting the bone formation inhibitor sclerostin. Moreover, there is also
increasing interest in sclerostin, an osteocyte-secreted bone formation
inhibitor, and its role in regulating local response to changes in the bone
microenvironment. Here we develop a cell population model of bone remodeling
that includes the role of osteocytes, sclerostin, and allows for the
possibility of RANKL expression by osteocyte cell populations. This model
extends and complements many of the existing mathematical models for bone
remodeling but can be used to explore aspects of the process of bone remodeling
that were previously beyond the scope of prior modeling work. Through numerical
simulations we demonstrate that our model can be used to theoretically explore
many of the most recent experimental results for bone remodeling, and can be
utilized to assess the effects of novel bone-targeting agents on the bone
remodeling process
Towards a New Spatial Representation of Bone Remodeling
Irregular bone remodeling is associated with a number of bone diseases such
as osteoporosis and multiple myeloma.
Computational and mathematical modeling can aid in therapy and treatment as
well as understanding fundamental biology. Different approaches to modeling
give insight into different aspects of a phenomena so it is useful to have an
arsenal of various computational and mathematical models.
Here we develop a mathematical representation of bone remodeling that can
effectively describe many aspects of the complicated geometries and spatial
behavior observed.
There is a sharp interface between bone and marrow regions. Also the surface
of bone moves in and out, i.e. in the normal direction, due to remodeling.
Based on these observations we employ the use of a level-set function to
represent the spatial behavior of remodeling. We elaborate on a temporal model
for osteoclast and osteoblast population dynamics to determine the change in
bone mass which influences how the interface between bone and marrow changes.
We exhibit simulations based on our computational model that show the motion
of the interface between bone and marrow as a consequence of bone remodeling.
The simulations show that it is possible to capture spatial behavior of bone
remodeling in complicated geometries as they occur \emph{in vitro} and \emph{in
vivo}.
By employing the level set approach it is possible to develop computational
and mathematical representations of the spatial behavior of bone remodeling. By
including in this formalism further details, such as more complex cytokine
interactions and accurate parameter values, it is possible to obtain
simulations of phenomena related to bone remodeling with spatial behavior much
as \emph{in vitro} and \emph{in vivo}. This makes it possible to perform
\emph{in silica} experiments more closely resembling experimental observations.Comment: Math. Biosci. Eng., 9(2), 201
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Speaking up in resource-constrained settings: how to secure safe surgical care in the moment and in the future?
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