The Health of Women and Girls in Urban Areas with a Focus on Kenya and South Africa: A Review

This thematic review focuses on a range of health challenges faced in particular by women and girls living in low-income urban settlements in expanding cities in Kenya and South Africa. The review has been compiled as part of a larger body of work being conducted by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and its partners on gender and international development and financed by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The review was preceded by a literature search (using keywords to reflect the thematic focus) of key databases of published literature, as well as a search for grey literature and documents describing interventions aimed at addressing these health challenges. An online discussion hosted by IDS gave a further indication of current debates and assisted in the identification of interventions.DFI

‘The show must go on!’ Fieldwork, mental health and wellbeing in Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Fieldwork is central to the identity, culture and history of academic Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES). However, in this paper we recognise that, for many academic staff, fieldtrips can be a profoundly challenging “ordeal,” ill‐conducive to wellness or effective pedagogic practice. Drawing on research with 39 UK university‐based GEES academics who self‐identify as having a mental health condition, we explore how mental health intersects with spaces and expectations of fieldwork in Higher Education. We particularly focus on their accounts of undertaking undergraduate residential fieldtrips and give voice to these largely undisclosed experiences. Their narratives run counter to normative, romanticised celebrations of fieldwork within GEES disciplines. We particularly highlight recurrent experiences of avoiding fieldwork, fieldwork‐as‐ ordeal, and “coping” with fieldwork, and suggest that commonplace anxieties within the neoliberal academy – about performance, productivity, fitness‐to‐work, self‐presentation, scrutiny and fear‐of‐falling‐behind – are felt particularly intensely during fieldwork. In spite of considerable work to make fieldwork more accessible to students, we find that field‐based teaching is experienced as a focal site of distress, anxiety and ordeal for many GEES academics with common mental health conditions. We conclude with prompts for reflection about how fieldwork could be otherwise

Academic motherhood and fieldwork: Juggling time, emotions and competing demands

The idea and practice of going ‘into the field’ to conduct research and gather data is a deeply rooted aspect of Geography as a discipline. For global North Development Geographers, amongst others, this usually entails travelling to, and spending periods of time in, often far-flung parts of the global South. Forging a successful academic career as a Development Geographer in the UK, is therefore to some extent predicated on mobility. This paper aims to critically engage with the gendered aspects of this expected mobility, focusing on the challenges and time constraints that are apparent when conducting overseas fieldwork as a mother, unaccompanied by her children. The paper emphasises the emotion work that is entailed in balancing the competing demands of overseas fieldwork and mothering, and begins to think through the implications of these challenges in terms of the types of knowledge we produce, as well as in relation to gender equality within the academy

An RNA interference-based screen of transcription factor genes identifies pathways necessary for sensory regeneration in the avian inner ear

Sensory hair cells of the inner ear are the mechano-electric transducers of sound and head motion. In mammals, damage to sensory hair cells leads to hearing or balance deficits. Non-mammalian vertebrates such as birds can regenerate hair cells after injury. In a previous study, we characterized transcription factor gene expression during chicken hair cell regeneration. In those studies, a laser micro-beam or ototoxic antibiotics were used to damage the sensory epithelia (SE). The current study focused on 27 genes that were up-regulated in regenerating SE compared to untreated SE in the previous study. Those genes were knocked down by siRNA, to determine their requirement for supporting cell proliferation and to measure resulting changes in the larger network of gene expression. We identified 11 genes necessary for proliferation and also identified novel interactive relationships between many of them. Defined components of the WNT, PAX and AP1 pathways were shown to be required for supporting cell proliferation. These pathways intersect on WNT4, which is also necessary for proliferation. Among the required genes, the CCAAT enhancer binding protein, CEBPG, acts downstream of Jun Kinase and JUND in the AP1 pathway. The WNT co-receptor LRP5 acts downstream of CEBPG as does the transcription factor BTAF1. Both of these genes are also necessary for supporting cell proliferation. This is the first large scale screen of its type and suggests an important intersection between the AP1 pathway, the PAX pathway and WNT signaling in the regulation of supporting cell proliferation during inner ear hair cell regeneration

Watershed Management on Range and Forest Lands Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop of the United States/Australia Rangelands Panel

Preface: The U.S.-Australia Cooperative Rangeland Science Program In October 1968 the governments of the United States and Australia entered into an agreement for the purpose of facilitating close cooperative activities between the scientific communities of the two countries. The joint communique issued at that time designated the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education and Science as the coordinating agencies. Both countries were to encourage binational teamwork in research, interchanges of scientists, joint seminars, and exchanges of information. A United States-Australia Rangeland Panel was established in December 1969 to further cooperation between the two countries in the rangeland sciences. The present panel includes the following

A Proposed Classification of the Immunological Diseases

The formal recognition and genetic understanding of the autoinflammatory diseases has defined mechanisms of self-directed inflammation that are independent of adaptive immunity

Information technology and the optimisation of experience – the role of mobile devices and social media in human-nature interactions

Information technologies have seeped their way into every aspect of our lives, mediating interactions between ourselves and our environments. They are becoming an important part of human-nature interactions, with smartphones, their apps and social media offering new ways to plan, navigate and share experiences. This article explores the changes that these mobile media technologies bring to human-nature interactions, focusing on the outdoor practices of experienced outdoor users. Drawing on observational and interview data gathered in the Scottish Highlands, we analysed hillwalkers', mountain bikers' and nature photographers' interactions with mobile media technology. Using social practice theory and the idea of technologies as 'scripts', we found that the increased availability of information reportedly enhanced access to, confidence in and knowledge about outdoor practices. Participants negotiated the use of devices within social norms of good practice, but generally showed enthusiasm for the ever-increasing access to information. The easy access to information and the ability to share one's performance, inscripted in the technology, guided the participants to optimise their experience. Paradoxically, this optimisation seemed to reduce the likelihood of encountering unanticipated situations that would have made their experience memorable, something our participants had previusly identified as an important aspect of their outdoor activities. Our findings illustrate the value of an in-depth empirical understanding of lived experiences, revealing how interactions between technological scripts, personal agency and social norms amplify some aspects of human-nature interactions while attenuating others. Although incremental, these changes fundamentally alter the character of our experience of nature

Longer First Introns Are a General Property of Eukaryotic Gene Structure

While many properties of eukaryotic gene structure are well characterized, differences in the form and function of introns that occur at different positions within a transcript are less well understood. In particular, the dynamics of intron length variation with respect to intron position has received relatively little attention. This study analyzes all available data on intron lengths in GenBank and finds a significant trend of increased length in first introns throughout a wide range of species. This trend was found to be even stronger when using high-confidence gene annotation data for three model organisms (Arabidopsis thaliana, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Drosophila melanogaster) which show that the first intron in the 5′ UTR is - on average - significantly longer than all downstream introns within a gene. A partial explanation for increased first intron length in A. thaliana is suggested by the increased frequency of certain motifs that are present in first introns. The phenomenon of longer first introns can potentially be used to improve gene prediction software and also to detect errors in existing gene annotations