p63 is an alternative p53 repressor in melanoma that confers chemoresistance and a poor prognosis.

The role of apoptosis in melanoma pathogenesis and chemoresistance is poorly characterized. Mutations in TP53 occur infrequently, yet the TP53 apoptotic pathway is often abrogated. This may result from alterations in TP53 family members, including the TP53 homologue TP63. Here we demonstrate that TP63 has an antiapoptotic role in melanoma and is responsible for mediating chemoresistance. Although p63 was not expressed in primary melanocytes, up-regulation of p63 mRNA and protein was observed in melanoma cell lines and clinical samples, providing the first evidence of significant p63 expression in this lineage. Upon genotoxic stress, endogenous p63 isoforms were stabilized in both nuclear and mitochondrial subcellular compartments. Our data provide evidence of a physiological interaction between p63 with p53 whereby translocation of p63 to the mitochondria occurred through a codependent process with p53, whereas accumulation of p53 in the nucleus was prevented by p63. Using RNA interference technology, both isoforms of p63 (TA and ΔNp63) were demonstrated to confer chemoresistance, revealing a novel oncogenic role for p63 in melanoma cells. Furthermore, expression of p63 in both primary and metastatic melanoma clinical samples significantly correlated with melanoma-specific deaths in these patients. Ultimately, these observations provide a possible explanation for abrogation of the p53-mediated apoptotic pathway in melanoma, implicating novel approaches aimed at sensitizing melanoma to therapeutic agents

Diagnostic accuracy of non-specialist versus specialist health workers in diagnosing hearing loss and ear disease in Malawi.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a non-specialist health worker can accurately undertake audiometry and otoscopy, the essential clinical examinations in a survey of hearing loss, instead of a highly skilled specialist (i.e. ENT or audiologist). METHODS: A clinic-based diagnostic accuracy study was conducted in Malawi. Consecutively sampled participants ≥ 18 years had their hearing tested using a validated tablet-based audiometer (hearTest) by an audiologist (gold standard), an audiology officer, a nurse and a community health worker (CHW). Otoscopy for diagnosis of ear pathologies was conducted by an ENT specialist (gold standard), an ENT clinical officer, a CHW, an ENT nurse and a general nurse. Sensitivity, specificity and kappa (κ) were calculated. 80% sensitivity, 70% specificity and kappa of 0.6 were considered adequate. RESULTS: Six hundred and seventeen participants were included. High sensitivity (>90%) and specificity (>85%) in detecting bilateral hearing loss was obtained by all non-specialists. For otoscopy, sensitivity and specificity were >80% for all non-specialists in diagnosing any pathology except for the ENT nurse. Agreement in diagnoses for the ENT clinical officer was good (κ = 0.7) in both ears. For other assessors, moderate agreement was found (κ = 0.5). CONCLUSION: A non-specialist can be trained to accurately assess hearing using mobile-based audiometry. However, accurate diagnosis of ear conditions requires at least an ENT clinical officer (or equivalent). Conducting surveys of hearing loss with non-specialists could lower costs and increase data collection, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where ENT specialists are scarce

Distant agricultural landscapes

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11625-014-0278-0This paper examines the relationship between the development of the dominant industrial food system and its associated global economic drivers and the environmental sustainability of agricultural landscapes. It makes the case that the growth of the global industrial food system has encouraged increasingly complex forms of “distance” that separate food both geographically and mentally from the landscapes on which it was produced. This separation between food and its originating landscape poses challenges for the ability of more localized agricultural sustainability initiatives to address some of the broader problems in the global food system. In particular, distance enables certain powerful actors to externalize ecological and social costs, which in turn makes it difficult to link specific global actors to particular biophysical and social impacts felt on local agricultural landscapes. Feedback mechanisms that normally would provide pressure for improved agricultural sustainability are weak because there is a lack of clarity regarding responsibility for outcomes. The paper provides a brief illustration of these dynamics with a closer look at increased financialization in the food system. It shows that new forms of distancing are encouraged by the growing significance of financial markets in global agrifood value chains. This dynamic has a substantial impact on food system outcomes and ultimately complicates efforts to scale up small-scale local agricultural models that are more sustainable.The Trudeau Foundation || Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

A convenient fog?: the creation of new Labour 1982–2010

As with other organizations, political parties undergo continual evolution and reform; the process of reform may be undertaken in order to meet the changing circumstances of national and global economies. At the same time a political party may change so that it can more readily fulfil the needs and expectations of the electorate. The focus of this paper will be the reasons for the deliberate change undertaken by the British Labour Party (BLP) over a number of decades and through diverse electoral fortunes. The period to be investigated in this paper is the years between 1982 and 2010

Lesbians, nymphomaniacs, and enema specialists: nurses, horror, and agency

Nursing is the healing profession, established by Florence Nightingale on high-minded principles, to comfort and treat the sick. Films of her life and career, especially in the wards at Scutari, made in 1915, 1936 and 1951 showed her as this source of comfort (see Richard Bates’s chapter in this collection). Similarly, hospitals are (or should be) places of safety and healing. What therefore are the messages to taken from those media texts, primarily films, which situate menace not only among the ranks of the nursing profession but in the putatively safe spaces of hospitals? Pursuing these points, and focusing on the unsettling juxtaposition of the horrific and the healing, this chapter examines instances of horror where nurses, nursing and places of healing become sites of horror. It takes examples from English-language film and television productions extending from the 1970s to the present

Introduction

The image of the nurse is ubiquitous, both in life and in popular media. One of the earliest instances of nursing and media intersecting is the Edison phonographic recording of Florence Nightingale’s voice in 1890. Since then, a parade of nurses, good, bad or otherwise, has appeared on both cinema and television screens. How do we interpret the many different types of nurses— real and fictional, lifelike and distorted, sexual and forbidding—who are so visible in the public consciousness? This book is a comprehensive collection of unique insights from scholars across the Western world. Essays explore a diversity of nursing types that traverse popular characterizations of nurses from various time periods. The shifting roles of nurses are explored across media, including picture postcards, film, television, journalism and the collection and preservation of uniforms and memorabilia

The Nurse in Popular Media: Critical Essays

The image of the nurse is ubiquitous, both in life and in popular media. One of the earliest instances of nursing and media intersecting is the Edison phonographic recording of Florence Nightingale’s voice in 1890. Since then, a parade of nurses, good, bad or otherwise, has appeared on both cinema and television screens. How do we interpret the many different types of nurses— real and fictional, lifelike and distorted, sexual and forbidding—who are so visible in the public consciousness? This book is a comprehensive collection of unique insights from scholars across the Western world. Essays explore a diversity of nursing types that traverse popular characterizations of nurses from various time periods. The shifting roles of nurses are explored across media, including picture postcards, film, television, journalism and the collection and preservation of uniforms and memorabilia

Tough on the Causes: Religion and the Penitent in Prison Education

Historically, the education of not only prison populations but the population in general was religious in content and emphasis and was provided by religious organizations, with Sunday Schools being one of the few formal and widespread sources of education until the later 19th century. The education of prisoners has therefore long carried a religious emphasis; after all, to be a penitent in a penitentiary implied some degree of religious instruction and knowledge as well as the ability to hear, read and learn from the scriptures. For the incarcerated, religious instruction would be carried through a period of imprisonment, perhaps to a terminal exit, with a chaplain officiating on the gallows at execution

The Age of Rumpole Is Past? Legal History on British Television

On the release in 2016 of Sally Smith QC’s biography of Sir Edward Marshall Hall called A Law Unto Himself, members of the English bar were seen reading well-thumbed copies of this life of the famous Edwardian barrister. Smith’s biography is not the first time Marshall Hall has risen (figuratively) from the dead. In 1989, his life and courtroom theatrics were brought back to life in the television series Shadow of the Noose. Why however would his life be of appeal and interest to his modern successors and what is learnt from the dramatisation of the legal past, notably the courtroom action? Visions of legal history made in modern television are eclectic, including Garrow’s Law, Poldark, Shadow of the Noose, and Inspector Morse (specifically the episode 'The Wench is Dead'). Even programmes that, at the time of their production were set in the present day, now seem products of an earlier and vanished age such as Rumpole of the Bailey and Everyman’s recreation of the Gay News blasphemous libel trial. Nostalgia can and should be critiqued, but its emergence in television, in biography and in the hands of members of the legal professional also merits interpretation. In an era when the UK Ministry of Justice is criticised by the Bar Council for 'airbrushing' the barrister out of history, and a more general lament that the age of the characterful advocate is past, this chapter considers the range, meaning, impact and potency of a legal history evoked by popular culture