Blind Advocacy: Blind Readers, Disability Theory, and Accessing John Gower

Toward the end of his life, medieval poet John Gower (d. 1408) composed Latin poetry about his own progressive blindness, and later nineteenth-century Blind readers appropriated Gower’s work as part of a platform to advocate for changed perceptions and opportunities for the blind and other people with disabilities. In this essay, I approach nineteenth-century narrative compilations of blind lives (which include Gower’s) as transformative acts of literary historiography. These compilers not only appropriate the medieval blind poet to advance their own social and political ends, but they also create a new disability-centered approach to the entire Western artistic tradition. I furthermore argue that Gower’s own poetry, when taken seriously as the writing of a self-identified blind poet, adopts highly innovative formal and rhetorical strategies for representing visual impairment, and his writing anticipates aspects of modern disability activism and critical theory. The essay ends by considering the discourses of present-day online venues that seek to make Gower’s work more accessible to blind and low vision readers. Such websites invite a more careful consideration of the activist-oriented mode of Gower’s blindness poetry and his work as a whole, and these online venues profoundly reorient how we think about the social construction of Blind identity and heterogeneous modes of access in our digital age

BCR-ABL mutational studies for predicting the response of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia to second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors after imatinib fail

Imatinib is the standard treatment for chronic myeloid leukaemia. BCR-ABL kinase domain mutation is the commonest mechanism implicated in imatinib resistance. In in-vitro studies, kinase domain mutations are variably resistant to second-line agents. We performed BCR-ABL kinase domain mutational studies in 25 patients in five institutions who failed imatinib and were treated with either nilotinib or dasatinib, to see if their mutational status would predict their clinical responses. Kinase domain mutations involving 11 amino acid substitutions were found in 12 (48%) patients. Most patients showed single kinase domain mutations. There was some concordance between reported drug sensitivity patterns and patient responses. Discordant responses could be related to drug dosage variations and unknown BCR-ABL independent mechanisms. The response prediction for patients with multiple kinase domain mutations was challenging and their mutational patterns could change after tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy. Although BCR-ABL kinase domain mutational analysis has limitations as a means of predicting the clinical response to second-line tyrosine kinase inhibitors, it helps inform therapy decisions in the management of chronic myeloid leukaemia after imatinib failure.published_or_final_versio

Global Chaucers: Reflections on Collaboration and Digital Futures

Global Chaucers, our multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-year project, intends to locate, catalog, translate, archive, and analyze non-Anglophone appropriations and translations of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Since its founding in 2012, this project has rapidly changed in response to scholars’ diverse interests and our expanding discoveries. Almost all these changes were prompted and made possible by our online presence (including a blog and Facebook group), and digital media comprises our primary means for gathering information, disseminating our findings, advertising conferences and events, and promoting the resource to other scholars. Because digital media can help disparate people traverse geographical and linguistic barriers, Global Chaucershas been able to exceed its initial intent to create an archive by developing a network of scholars, translators, and students seeking to engage in manifold ways with non-Anglophone reworkings of Chaucerian material from around the world. Reflecting on our project undertakings to date, this discussion presents some of the practical challenges we face and future directions our efforts might take, and we hope this discussion will help serve others who seek to launch group endeavors that traverse academic and nonacademic communities

Treatment outcome and prognostic factor analysis in transplant-eligible Chinese myeloma patients receiving bortezomib-based induction regimens including the staged approach, PAD or VTD

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Next-generation sequencing with a myeloid gene panel in core-binding factor AML showed KIT activation loop and TET2 mutations predictive of outcome

Clinical outcome and mutations of 96 core-binding factor acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients 18-60 years old were examined. Complete remission (CR) after induction was 94.6%. There was no significant difference in CR, leukemia-free-survival (LFS) and overall survival (OS) between t(8;21) (N=67) and inv(16) patients (N=29). Univariate analysis showed hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at CR1 as the only clinical parameter associated with superior LFS. Next-generation sequencing based on a myeloid gene panel was performed in 72 patients. Mutations in genes involved in cell signaling were associated with inferior LFS and OS, whereas those in genes involved in DNA methylation were associated with inferior LFS. KIT activation loop (AL) mutations occurred in 25 patients, and were associated with inferior LFS (P=0.003) and OS (P=0.001). TET2 mutations occurred in 8 patients, and were associated with significantly shorter LFS (P=0.015) but not OS. Patients negative for KIT-AL and TET2 mutations (N=41) had significantly better LFS (P<0.001) and OS (P=0.012) than those positive for both or either mutation. Multivariate analysis showed that KIT-AL and TET2 mutations were associated with inferior LFS, whereas age ⩾40 years and marrow blast ⩾70% were associated with inferior OS. These observations provide new insights that may guide better treatment for this AML subtype.published_or_final_versio

Brendan meets Columbus: A more commodious islescape

This paper proposes that we can reimagine insular literatures and medieval islescapes as commodious seas of cultural and intellectual loci that span time, culture, and text alike. By moving beyond the rhetoric of insular separation or connectivity, we can see that islands connect even when medieval minds saw separation. The essay focuses on the Brendan legend and the commodious cultural ‘sea of islands’ that it inhabits, a space that connects the modern reader to a history of other connections, fact to fancy, and the real and the imaginary. When sailing in this sea, Brendan meets Columbus, and the late medieval idea of a lost island spreads though space and time

Application of Data-Logging Technology in Secondary School Science Classrooms: A case Study

Facilitator : Mr. James HENRI, Deputy Director, CITEpublished_or_final_versionCentre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kon

Optimum structure for a uniform load over multiple spans

This paper presents a new half-plane Michell structure that transmits a uniformly distributed load of infinite horizontal extent to a series of equally-spaced pinned supports. Full kinematic description of the structure is obtained for the case when the maximum allowable tensile stress is greater than or equal to the allowable compressive stress. Although formal proof of optimality of the solution presented is not yet available, the proposed analytical solution is supported by substantial numerical evidence, involving the solution of problems with in excess of 10 billion potential members. Furthermore, numerical solutions for various combinations of unequal allowable stresses suggest the existence of a family of related, simple, and practically relevant structures, which range in form from a Hemp-type arch with vertical hangers to a structure which strongly resembles a cable-stayed bridge

Mobile devices for learning in Malaysia: Then and now

Since 2010, there has been a visible increase in the amount of research focused on mobile learning in higher education in Malaysia. To determine if this increase corresponds to an increase in the use of mobile devices to support student learning, data from two surveys conducted in 2008 and 2013 were compared to determine the changes in rates of ownership and use of mobile devices among students. In 2008, although all students owned feature phones very few had access to other mobile devices and rarely used them to support their learning. In 2013, the picture had changed significantly, with some 80 per cent of students owning smart phones and all had access to mobile devices of some sort. Additionally, students were using these devices to support their learning in a number of ways. The paper concludes with indications and implications for future research

Cirsium tatakaense (Compositae), a new species from Taiwan

A new species of Cirsium, Cirsium tatakaense Y.H.Tseng &amp;amp; C.Y.Chang, from central-southern Taiwan is described and illustrated. This species is similar to C. kawakamii Hayata in leaf shape, achene and chromosome number (2n = 64), but can be readily distinguished from C. kawakamii by the narrower leaf lobes, usually higher number of florets and phyllaries, the purplish-red corolla (vs. white) and larger pollen grains. A key to the species of Cirsium in Taiwan is also presented