After Same-Sex Marriage: Emerging Quaker Perspectives on Further Questions About Sexuality and Gender

This paper was first presented at the American Academy of Religion in Boston in 2017. What follows incorporates some responses to questions which were asked there. In particular, it seems appropriate to preface the main text with a personal comment. The respondent for the session, Sa’ed Atshan, asked about the speakers’ relationships to Quakerism, and I answered that although in this paper I say that I am describing possible arguments rather than real positions taken by Quakers, I am a Quaker and I would—at the time of writing!— make points something like these if asked to describe my personal understanding. This paper focuses on what can coherently be said within a Quaker theological framework, but my comments here, especially those regarding gender, also arise from my ongoing process of listening carefully and prayerfully to the experiences of trans and nonbinary Friends. At that level, this paper can also be taken as a contribution to the discussion it describes

Being Fluent in Two Religions

This article uses George Lindbeck's cultural-linguistic model of religion and the subsequent analogy between religion and language to explore issues arising from practices of dual or multiple religious belonging. Taking the concept of 'fluency' in religion as a way of thinking about degrees of belonging, it looks at the available sociological evidence about dual religious (mainly Buddhist-Christian) belonging and seeks to reinterpret the issues involved in light of the religion-as-language analogy. This analogy opens up new perspectives on sociological information about multiple religious belonging and reframes potential theological issues with it. The article weaves together sociological observations and theoretical ideas coming from a theological background to show how seeing 'belonging' in the light of 'fluency' can usefully reshape understandings of multiple religious belonging.This article uses George Lindbeck's cultural-linguistic model of religion and the subsequent analogy between religion and language to explore issues arising from practices of dual or multiple religious belonging. Taking the concept of 'fluency' in religion as a way of thinking about degrees of belonging, it looks at the available sociological evidence about dual religious (mainly Buddhist-Christian) belonging and seeks to reinterpret the issues involved in light of the religion-as-language analogy. This analogy opens up new perspectives on sociological information about multiple religious belonging and reframes potential theological issues with it. The article weaves together sociological observations and theoretical ideas coming from a theological background to show how seeing 'belonging' in the light of 'fluency' can usefully reshape understandings of multiple religious belonging

Building hepatocytes a home: new frontiers in bioactive scaffolding techniques for liver tissue engineering

Liver disease is one of the top five leading causes of premature death in the UK, with incidence rising sharply by 20% over the last decade, and mortality increasing over 400% since 1970. Liver disease incidence and mortality is rising in stark contrast to trends in the other top healthcare burdens, with stroke, cancer, heart disease and lung disease incidence and mortality rates plummeting and continuing to fall. Liver disease’s hallmark pathology of late diagnosis and rapid acute disease progression leads to an urgent need for donor organs; the only curative treatment for end stage liver disease. However, a chronic and ongoing shortage of suitable organs for transplant means many die before a donor liver can be found, and countless others live with severe, debilitating symptoms at a high cost to both the patient and the healthcare system. As part of the push for a solution to this problem, tissue engineers are focussing on creating niche microenvironments for hepatocytes which support their survival and function in as close to an in vivo like state as possible; addressing the need for an ideal in vitro model of the human liver and for lab created ‘organoids’ which could be used to treat patients. Such an environment would allow for the study of new pharmaceuticals, disease biology and hepatocyte behaviour in the laboratory and lead to more effective treatments for patients. While research to date is making inroads into this dilemma, we are yet to see a lab created environment which accurately recapitulates the complex, finely tuned and responsive extracellular matrix (ECM) of the liver. In an effort to address this, researchers have been incorporating bioactivity into scaffold environments for hepatocytes. This thesis presents three methods of incorporating bioactivity into scaffolds for liver tissue engineering; drug induced ECM biodecoration, synthetically derived ECM biodecoration and decellularized human liver ECM incorporation. Scaffolds were seeded with hepatocyte cells and their response to their microenvironment analysed. Mechanical characterisation and immunohistochemical analyses demonstrated the differences between the scaffold and the ECM biodecoration, as well as retention of ECM proteins through the manufacturing process. Each method altered the protein production and gene expression of hepatocytes, indicating that these methods provide a viable, translatable platform for creating a niche microenvironment for hepatocytes, supporting and manipulating phenotype and function. These scaffolds offer great potential for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine strategies for liver and a translatable method for other whole organ tissue engineering

An estimate of the prevalence of epilepsy in Sub-Saharan Africa:A systematic analysis

Epilepsy is a leading serious neurological condition worldwide and has particularly significant physical, economic and social consequences in Sub–Saharan Africa. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of epilepsy prevalence in this region and how this varies by age and sex so as to inform understanding of the disease characteristics as well as the development of infrastructure, services and policies

Wittgensteinian investigations of contemporary Quaker religious language

This thesis uses ideas from the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and a variety of Wittgensteinian thinkers to shed light on the ways in which religious language functions in contemporary British Quakerism. It does this by looking in detail at examples from published British Quaker literature. In the process of considering genuine modern examples of religious language within their community context, I uncover assumptions which enable these ways of speaking to make sense within that community. These include ideas about how language works, such as an assumption that it follows on from (rather than being prior to) religious experience, and beliefs about the relationship between other religions and Quakerism. The complexities of these examples and the multiple relevant contextual factors enable me to refine the philosophical and theological claims which I draw from Wittgenstein and others. These incude the understanding of meaning as use in context and the model of religion as like a language or culture. In the first part of the thesis, a series of tools – philosophical perspectives which can be applied to examples in order to gain insights – are developed, then used to illuminate a set of examples. In the second half of the thesis, factors discovered to be underlying the patterns of use found in British Quaker religious language are explored in more detail and finally considered in relation to some further examples. As a whole, the thesis explains the community processes which create and maintain some central patterns of Quaker speech, and demonstrates the usefulness of Wittgensteinian ideas and methods. In particular, it utilises the turn towards observing the ways in which religious language is used rather than focusing on the truth-value of claims abstracted from their roles in religious life. I conclude that patterns of Quaker speech not only make sense within a community where certain assumptions are held, but also that they fulfil a role in the maintenance of the community as a single theologically diverse and inclusive Religious Society

Dimensionality Matters:Exploiting UV-Photopatterned 2D and Two-Photon-Printed 2.5D Contact Guidance Cues to Control Corneal Fibroblast Behavior and Collagen Deposition

In the event of disease or injury, restoration of the native organization of cells and extracellular matrix is crucial for regaining tissue functionality. In the cornea, a highly organized collagenous tissue, keratocytes can align along the anisotropy of the physical microenvironment, providing a blueprint for guiding the organization of the collagenous matrix. Inspired by this physiological process, anisotropic contact guidance cues have been employed to steer the alignment of keratocytes as a first step to engineer in vitro cornea-like tissues. Despite promising results, two major hurdles must still be overcome to advance the field. First, there is an enormous design space to be explored in optimizing cellular contact guidance in three dimensions. Second, the role of contact guidance cues in directing the long-term deposition and organization of extracellular matrix proteins remains unknown. To address these challenges, here we combined two microengineering strategies-UV-based protein patterning (2D) and two-photon polymerization of topographies (2.5D)-to create a library of anisotropic contact guidance cues with systematically varying height (H, 0 µm ≤ H ≤ 20 µm) and width (W, 5 µm ≤ W ≤ 100 µm). With this unique approach, we found that, in the short term (24 h), the orientation and morphology of primary human fibroblastic keratocytes were critically determined not only by the pattern width, but also by the height of the contact guidance cues. Upon extended 7-day cultures, keratocytes were shown to produce a dense, fibrous collagen network along the direction of the contact guidance cues. Moreover, increasing the heights also increased the aligned fraction of deposited collagen and the contact guidance response of cells, all whilst the cells maintained the fibroblastic keratocyte phenotype. Our study thus reveals the importance of dimensionality of the physical microenvironment in steering both cellular organization and the formation of aligned, collagenous tissues.</p

Blended electrospinning with human liver extracellular matrix for engineering new hepatic microenvironments

Abstract Tissue engineering of a transplantable liver could provide an alternative to donor livers for transplant, solving the problem of escalating donor shortages. One of the challenges for tissue engineers is the extracellular matrix (ECM); a finely controlled in vivo niche which supports hepatocytes. Polymers and decellularized tissue scaffolds each provide some of the necessary biological cues for hepatocytes, however, neither alone has proved sufficient. Enhancing microenvironments using bioactive molecules allows researchers to create more appropriate niches for hepatocytes. We combined decellularized human liver tissue with electrospun polymers to produce a niche for hepatocytes and compared the human liver ECM to its individual components; Collagen I, Laminin-521 and Fibronectin. The resulting scaffolds were validated using THLE-3 hepatocytes. Immunohistochemistry confirmed retention of proteins in the scaffolds. Mechanical testing demonstrated significant increases in the Young’s Modulus of the decellularized ECM scaffold; providing significantly stiffer environments for hepatocytes. Each scaffold maintained hepatocyte growth, albumin production and influenced expression of key hepatic genes, with the decellularized ECM scaffolds exerting an influence which is not recapitulated by individual ECM components. Blended protein:polymer scaffolds provide a viable, translatable niche for hepatocytes and offers a solution to current obstacles in disease modelling and liver tissue engineering

Luminescence detection of latent fingermarks on non-porous surfaces with heavy-metal-free quantum dots

Current and proposed nanoparticle-based techniques for development of latent fingermarks suffer a number of drawbacks such as complicated, multi-step and time-consuming procedures, batch-to-batch variability, expensive reagents, large background noise and toxicity. Here, we introduce a promising green development technique based on heavy-metal-free quantum dots for the detection of latent fingermarks on non-porous surfaces. Red-near infrared luminescent CuInS2/ZnS core/shell quantum dots in aqueous solution were produced in large scales using a simple, fast, water-based method with N-acetylcysteine as a biocompatible surfactant to coat the particles. The coated quantum dots were applied to the successful development of latent fingermarks deposited on a variety of surfaces, including highly patterned polymer banknotes and the sticky side of adhesive tape

“Nobody knows, or seems to know how rheumatology and breastfeeding works”: Women's experiences of breastfeeding whilst managing a long-term limiting condition – A qualitative visual methods study

Background Only around 1% of babies in the UK are breastfed exclusively until six months of age as recommended by the World Health Organisation. One in ten women who have recently given birth in the UK have a long-term illness and they are at increased risk of stopping breastfeeding early. We considered women with autoimmune rheumatic diseases as an exemplar group of long term illnesses, to explore the barriers and enablers to breastfeeding Aim To understand the experiences of infant feeding among women with autoimmune rheumatic diseases and to identify potential barriers and enablers. Design Qualitative visual timeline-facilitated interviews. Participants and setting 128 women with autoimmune rheumatic diseases who were considering pregnancy, pregnant, or had young children took part in an online survey as part of the STAR Family Study. Of these, 13 women who had children were purposefully sampled to be interviewed. Interviews took place in person or on the telephone. Timeline-facilitated interviews were used to focus on lived experiences and topics important to the women, including early parenting. We conducted a focused thematic analysis of women's lived experiences of infant feeding. Results Three main themes were identified in relation to breastfeeding: lack of information about medication safety, lack of support in decision-making and maintaining breastfeeding, and maternal guilt. Conclusions Women with autoimmune rheumatic diseases found it difficult to access the information they needed about medications to make informed decisions about breastfeeding. They often also felt pressurised into breastfeeding and experienced feelings of guilt if they were unable, or did not wish to breastfeed. Tailored interventions are required that adopt a non-judgmental and person-centred approach to support decision-making in regard to infant feeding, providing women with information that can best enable them to make infant feeding choices

Genetic characterization of early renal changes in a novel mouse model of diabetic kidney disease

Genetic factors influence susceptibility to diabetic kidney disease. Here we mapped genes mediating renal hypertrophic changes in response to diabetes. A survey of 15 mouse strains identified variation in diabetic kidney hypertrophy. Strains with greater (FVB/N(FVB)) and lesser (C57BL/6 (B6)) responses were crossed and diabetic F2 progeny were characterized. Kidney weights of diabetic F2 mice were broadly distributed. Quantitative trait locus analyses revealed diabetic mice with kidney weights in the upper quartile shared alleles on chromosomes (chr) 6 and 12; these loci were designated as Diabetic kidney hypertrophy (Dkh)-1 and -2. To confirm these loci, reciprocal congenic mice were generated with defined FVB chromosome segments on the B6 strain background (B6.Dkh1/2f) or vice versa (FVB.Dkh1/2b). Diabetic mice of the B6.Dkh1/2f congenic strain developed diabetic kidney hypertrophy, while the reciprocal FVB.Dkh1/2b congenic strain was protected. The chr6 locus contained the candidate gene; Ark1b3, coding aldose reductase; the FVB allele has a missense mutation in this gene. Microarray analysis identified differentially expressed genes between diabetic B6 and FVB mice. Thus, since the two loci identified by quantitative trait locus mapping are syntenic with regions identified for human diabetic kidney disease, the congenic strains we describe provide a valuable new resource to study diabetic kidney disease and test agents that may prevent it