Learning from teenage boys from low-income families : attitudes towards expressing emotions and seeking support in times of distress

This portfolio thesis comprises three parts: a systematic literature review, an empirical study and a set of appendices.Part One: A systematic literature review featuring the available research regarding barriers to help-seeking for mental health difficulties in low-income populations.Part Two: A qualitative empirical paper exploring the attitudes of boys from low-income families around emotional expression and help-seeking in times of distress. Inductive Thematic Analysis is used to analyse the results.Part Three: Appendices including all relevant documents for the systematic literature and the empirical paper. Epistemological and reflective statements can be found here

Kids Growing: Implementing School-Community Gardens in Ontario

Cultivating land surrounding schools provides opportunities for children and youth to experience growing, tasting and preparing fresh food. This creates openings for deeper understanding of environmental and social sustainability and can transform early learning. The literature supports evidence of a variety of social and educational benefits of school gardens. School gardens are recommended in policy frameworks but are not actually supported in practice in the province of Ontario, Canada. This paper reviews gaps between policy and practice. Using Social Cognitive Theory, this paper contributes to the discussion of benefits to students and to teachers, and barriers to implementation of school gardens. It is situated in wider discussions about food literacy and environmental literacy in school-based interventions. In the comparative case study, teachers in two schools discuss the benefits of school gardens and barriers relating to implementation. Teachers' attitudes are compared with the literature. Teachers in one of the two schools have the assistance of a community-based non-profit partner helping to create, maintain and support teaching in the school garden. Teacher attitudes towards policy and practice in each school are examined in a collaborative inquiry, with the researcher as participant through founding the community-based group. The paper concludes that school food gardens can be pivotal to the practice of a rich, multilayered and transformative pedagogy in the face of climate change, economic polarization and urbanization. If education for sustainability is to have more traction in Ontario, the means must be fostered by a more universal and intentional approach from a young age. School gardens present an opportunity to realize benefits for the whole community across intersecting indicators: health, including physical and mental health, sustainability education and authentic academic learning. However, to more adequately and equitably realize their benefits, efforts to bridge gaps in training and resources must be stepped up. This paper intends to support policymaking regarding school gardens, by examining the conditions required for success. Recommendations for pathways to implementation are included in the Efficiency-Substitution-Redesign matrix

Accommodating repair actions into gas turbine prognostics

Elements of gas turbine degradation, such as compressor fouling, are recoverable through maintenance actions like compressor washing. These actions increase the usable engine life and optimise the performance of the gas turbine. However, these maintenance actions are performed by a separate organization to those undertaking fleet management operations, leading to significant uncertainty in the maintenance state of the asset. The uncertainty surrounding maintenance actions impacts prognostic efficacy. In this paper, we adopt Bayesian on-line change point detection to detect the compressor washing events. Then, the event detection information is used as an input to a prognostic algorithm, advising an update to the estimation of remaining useful life. To illustrate the capability of the approach, we demonstrated our on-line Bayesian change detection algorithms on synthetic and real aircraft engine service data, in order to identify the compressor washing events for a gas turbine and thus provide demonstrably improved prognosis

The influence of microbial physiology on biocatalyst activity and efficiency in the terminal hydroxylation of n-octane using Escherichia coli expressing the alkane hydroxylase, CYP153A6

Biocatalyst improvement through molecular and recombinant means should be complemented with efficient process design to facilitate process feasibility and improve process economics. This study focused on understanding the bioprocess limitations to identify factors that impact the expression of the terminal hydroxylase CYP153A6 and also influence the biocatalytic transformation of n–octane to 1-octanol using resting whole cells of recombinant E. coli expressing the CYP153A6 operon which includes the ferredoxin (Fdx) and the ferredoxin reductase (FdR). Results: Specific hydroxylation activity decreased with increasing protein expression showing that the concentration of active biocatalyst is not the sole determinant of optimum process efficiency. Process physiological conditions including the medium composition, temperature, glucose metabolism and product toxicity were investigated. A fed-batch system with intermittent glucose feeding was necessary to ease overflow metabolism and improve process efficiency while the introduction of a product sink (BEHP) was required to alleviate octanol toxicity. Resting cells cultivated on complex LB and glucose-based defined medium with similar CYP level (0.20 μmol gDCW -1) showed different biocatalyst activity and efficiency in the hydroxylation of octane over a period of 120 h. This was influenced by differing glucose uptake rate which is directly coupled to cofactor regeneration and cell energy in whole cell biocatalysis. The maximum activity and biocatalyst efficiency achieved presents a significant improvement in the use of CYP153A6 for alkane activation. This biocatalyst system shows potential to improve productivity if substrate transfer limitation across the cell membrane and enzyme stability can be addressed especially at higher temperature. Conclusion: This study emphasises that the overall process efficiency is primarily dependent on the interaction between the whole cell biocatalyst and bioprocess conditions

Increased Expression of SVCT2 in a New Mouse Model Raises Ascorbic Acid in Tissues and Protects against Paraquat-Induced Oxidative Damage in Lung

A new transgenic mouse model for global increases in the Sodium Dependent Vitamin C transporter 2 (SVCT2) has been generated. The SVCT2-Tg mouse shows increased SVCT2 mRNA levels in all organs tested and correspondingly increased ascorbic acid (ASC) levels in all organs except liver. The extent of the increase in transporter mRNA expression differed among mice and among organs. The increased ASC levels did not have any adverse effects on behavior in the SVCT2-Tg mice, which did not differ from wild-type mice on tests of locomotor activity, anxiety, sensorimotor or cognitive ability. High levels of SVCT2 and ASC were found in the kidneys of SVCT2-Tg mice and urinary albumin excretion was lower in these mice than in wild-types. No gross pathological changes were noted in kidneys from SVCT2-Tg mice. SVCT2 immunoreactivity was detected in both SVCT2 and wild-type mice, and a stronger signal was seen in tubules than in glomeruli. Six treatments with Paraquat (3x10 and 3x15 mg/kg i.p.) were used to induce oxidative stress in mice. SVCT2-Tg mice showed a clear attenuation of Paraquat-induced oxidative stress in lung, as measured by F2-isoprostanes. Paraquat also decreased SVCT2 mRNA signal in liver, lung and kidney in SVCT2-Tg mice

The influence of microbial physiology on biocatalyst activity and efficiency in the terminal hydroxylation of n-octane using Escherichia coli expressing the alkane hydroxylase, CYP153A6

BACKGROUND: Biocatalyst improvement through molecular and recombinant means should be complemented with efficient process design to facilitate process feasibility and improve process economics. This study focused on understanding the bioprocess limitations to identify factors that impact the expression of the terminal hydroxylase CYP153A6 and also influence the biocatalytic transformation of n-octane to 1-octanol using resting whole cells of recombinant E. coli expressing the CYP153A6 operon which includes the ferredoxin (Fdx) and the ferredoxin reductase (FdR). RESULTS: Specific hydroxylation activity decreased with increasing protein expression showing that the concentration of active biocatalyst is not the sole determinant of optimum process efficiency. Process physiological conditions including the medium composition, temperature, glucose metabolism and product toxicity were investigated. A fed-batch system with intermittent glucose feeding was necessary to ease overflow metabolism and improve process efficiency while the introduction of a product sink (BEHP) was required to alleviate octanol toxicity. Resting cells cultivated on complex LB and glucose-based defined medium with similar CYP level (0.20mumol gDCW-1) showed different biocatalyst activity and efficiency in the hydroxylation of octane over a period of 120h. This was influenced by differing glucose uptake rate which is directly coupled to cofactor regeneration and cell energy in whole cell biocatalysis. The maximum activity and biocatalyst efficiency achieved presents a significant improvement in the use of CYP153A6 for alkane activation. This biocatalyst system shows potential to improve productivity if substrate transfer limitation across the cell membrane and enzyme stability can be addressed especially at higher temperature. CONCLUSION: This study emphasises that the overall process efficiency is primarily dependent on the interaction between the whole cell biocatalyst and bioprocess conditions

Clonal analysis reveals multiple functional defects of aged murine hematopoietic stem cells

As shown using clonal assays, the mouse HSC population undergoes quantitative as well as qualitative changes with age, including lineage differentiation, HSC pool size, marrow-homing efficiency, and self-renewal

The diversity, evolution and ecology of Salmonella in venomous snakes

BACKGROUND: Reptile-associated Salmonella bacteria are a major, but often neglected cause of both gastrointestinal and bloodstream infection in humans globally. The diversity of Salmonella enterica has not yet been determined in venomous snakes, however other ectothermic animals have been reported to carry a broad range of Salmonella bacteria. We investigated the prevalence and diversity of Salmonella in a collection of venomous snakes and non-venomous reptiles. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPLE FINDINGS: We used a combination of selective enrichment techniques to establish a unique dataset of reptilian isolates to study Salmonella enterica species-level evolution and ecology and used whole-genome sequencing to investigate the relatedness of phylogenetic groups. We observed that 91% of venomous snakes carried Salmonella, and found that a diverse range of serovars (n = 58) were carried by reptiles. The Salmonella serovars belonged to four of the six Salmonella enterica subspecies: diarizonae, enterica, houtanae and salamae. Subspecies enterica isolates were distributed among two distinct phylogenetic clusters, previously described as clade A (52%) and clade B (48%). We identified metabolic differences between S. diarizonae, S. enterica clade A and clade B involving growth on lactose, tartaric acid, dulcitol, myo-inositol and allantoin. SIGNIFICANCE: We present the first whole genome-based comparative study of the Salmonella bacteria that colonise venomous and non-venomous reptiles and shed new light on Salmonella evolution. Venomous snakes examined in this study carried a broad range of Salmonella, including serovars which have been associated with disease in humans such as S. Enteritidis. The findings raise the possibility that venomous snakes could be a reservoir for Salmonella serovars associated with human salmonellosis

Total synthesis of dehaloperophoramidine using a highly diastereoselective Hosomi-Sakurai reaction

The authors would like to acknowledge EPSRC for PhD funding through the Doctoral Training Schemes.The synthesis of dehaloperophoramidine, a non-halogenated derivative of the marine natural product perophoramidine, is reported. The key steps included a [3,3]-Claisen rearrangement and an epoxide opening/allylsilylation (modified Hosomi-Sakurai) reaction to install the contiguous all-carbon quaternary stereocentres with the required relative stereochemistry. The first five steps were carried out on seventy gram scale without the need for chromatography. Resolution of the [3,3]-Claisen product gave samples of the highly enantiomerically-enriched ketones which are flexible starting points for the synthesis of a number of complex ring structures. A regio- and diastereo-selective iodocyclisation was then used to differentiate between two allyl groups enabling the synthesis of the target molecule by two different routes. A detailed comparison of the trifluoroacetic acid salt of the synthetic dehaloperophoramidine with authentic material was carried out including a key doping experiment. Biological testing showed that (±)-dehaloperophoramidine was cytotoxic to HCT116, HT29 and LoVo colorectal carcinoma cells with comparable activity to that reported for the halogenated perophoramidine. This demonstrated for the first time that the halogens are not essential for the biological activity of this alkaloid class.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe