No Working Title

Drawing on a history of instructional practice in art, No Working Title is an example of large‑scale co‑operation at Higher Education level. Now in its 8th year the project continues to provoke dialogue between approximately forty artists and academics from four BA Fine Art courses. With their own practice at the centre of the process, the artists exchange instructions for making artworks with a partner who they have never met before. Whilst the instructions are bespoke, the terms of exchange are highly choreographed and the result of this dialogue is what was witnessed publicly as part of Tate Exchange, where the partners met for the first time and presented their work to one another. This year, as part of Tate Exchange* the participants devised instructions especially for visitors. These could be seen scrolling on one of the screens and were heard broadcast throughout the space. Visitors were invited to make a contribution of their own by writing an instruction which in turn became part of the the display. *Tate Exchange is an open experiment that seeks to explore the role of art in society. It includes international artists , contributors from different fields, the public, and over 50 associates, who work within and beyond the arts, on creating participatory programmes, workshops, activities and debates

The effects of phonological transparency on reading derived words

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine whether poor readers have more pronounced problems than average-reading peers reading derived words whose base forms undergo a phonological shift when a suffix is added (i.e., shift relations as in natural), as compared to derived words whose forms are phonologically and orthographically transparent (i.e., "stable" relations, as in cultural). Two computer-based word recognition tasks (Naming and Lexical Decision) were administered to children with reading disability (RD), peers with average reading ability, and adults. Across tasks, there was an effect for transparency (i.e., better performance on stable than shift words) for both child groups and the adults. For the children, a significant interaction was found between group and word type. Specifically, on the naming task, there was an advantage for the stable words, and this was most noteworthy for the children with RD. On the lexical decision task, trade-offs of speed and accuracy were evident for the child reader groups. Performances on the nonwords showed the poor readers to be comparable to the average readers in distinguishing legal and illegal nonwords; further analyses suggested that poor readers carried out deeper processing of derived words than their average reading peers. Additional study is needed to explore the relation of orthographic and phonological processing on poor readers' memory for and processing of derived words

Genetic diversity fuels gene discovery for tobacco and alcohol use

Tobacco and alcohol use are heritable behaviours associated with 15% and 5.3% of worldwide deaths, respectively, due largely to broad increased risk for disease and injury(1-4). These substances are used across the globe, yet genome-wide association studies have focused largely on individuals of European ancestries(5). Here we leveraged global genetic diversity across 3.4 million individuals from four major clines of global ancestry (approximately 21% non-European) to power the discovery and fine-mapping of genomic loci associated with tobacco and alcohol use, to inform function of these loci via ancestry-aware transcriptome-wide association studies, and to evaluate the genetic architecture and predictive power of polygenic risk within and across populations. We found that increases in sample size and genetic diversity improved locus identification and fine-mapping resolution, and that a large majority of the 3,823 associated variants (from 2,143 loci) showed consistent effect sizes across ancestry dimensions. However, polygenic risk scores developed in one ancestry performed poorly in others, highlighting the continued need to increase sample sizes of diverse ancestries to realize any potential benefit of polygenic prediction.Peer reviewe

An immune dysfunction score for stratification of patients with acute infection based on whole-blood gene expression

Dysregulated host responses to infection can lead to organ dysfunction and sepsis, causing millions of global deaths each year. To alleviate this burden, improved prognostication and biomarkers of response are urgently needed. We investigated the use of whole-blood transcriptomics for stratification of patients with severe infection by integrating data from 3149 samples from patients with sepsis due to community-acquired pneumonia or fecal peritonitis admitted to intensive care and healthy individuals into a gene expression reference map. We used this map to derive a quantitative sepsis response signature (SRSq) score reflective of immune dysfunction and predictive of clinical outcomes, which can be estimated using a 7- or 12-gene signature. Last, we built a machine learning framework, SepstratifieR, to deploy SRSq in adult and pediatric bacterial and viral sepsis, H1N1 influenza, and COVID-19, demonstrating clinically relevant stratification across diseases and revealing some of the physiological alterations linking immune dysregulation to mortality. Our method enables early identification of individuals with dysfunctional immune profiles, bringing us closer to precision medicine in infection.peer-reviewe

Shifting the Locus of Control: Why the Common Core State Standards and Emerging Standardized Tests May Reshape College Writing Classrooms

In 2010 the Common Core State Standards, a set of outcomes-based standards detailing core skills for K-12 English Language Arts and Math classrooms across the US, were released. This was followed by the release of related standards-based assessments, most notably the large-scale standardized tests developed through the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). Because the Standards and their attendant standardized tests are limited to the K-12 curriculum, they are generally thought of as something happening within our elementary and secondary schools, not something that may have a direct effect on how we teach writing at the college level. By mapping the increased control of professional development networks for teachers by private philanthropists and testing companies, vertical alignment of K-20 standardized tests, and new approaches to funding education reform and research, we can begin to see how and why the Standards and emerging standardized tests will reshape our college writing classrooms. Understanding this shift is crucial to reasserting teacher agency at all levels of the curriculum and reinforcing assessment as primarily a teaching and learning practice, not a system of accountability and control

Emancipatory research and composition studies: Feminist postmodern, cultural studies, and teacher research methodologies

This work focuses on developing a theoretical and practical justification within the field of Composition for the use of emancipatory research in marginalized academic settings; it uses basic writing as its marginalized site. Broadly understood, emancipatory research is action based empirical work that is committed to bringing about social change through the empowering potential of the radicalization of marginalized peoples, or a realization that what is often constructed as individual failure is actually a socio-political hegemonic construct that can be acted against. Emancipatory research is action based, grounded theoretically as a critical and collaborative interaction between researchers and participants, aims to revise the researcher/researched (or subject/object) relationship, and has important implications for issues of data analysis, subject representation, reliability and validity, and future research and pedagogy. Chapter One outlines the potential importance of emancipatory research to Composition Studies through advocating a view of classrooms as sites of cultural and ideological struggle. It argues that empirical work is needed which not only addresses the political nature of education, but in marginalized sites can also act as a catalyst for change in the lives of the research participants. Chapter Two details the complex relationships that ground this understanding of emancipatory research: (a) feminist postmodernism; (b) cultural studies; and (c) teacher research. Chapter Three focuses on crucial issues of data analysis and subject representation in relation to emancipatory research emphasizing the role of the research participants in these processes. This involves redefining validity and reliability from both a practical and critical hermeneutics perspective, developing efficient means of documenting data sources, and critically examining and redefining the issues of subjectivity, resistance and collaboration from an emancipatory research perspective. Chapter Four addresses the potential uses of emancipatory research in basic writing through linking the work of the previous chapters explicitly to research in the area of basic writing as well as presenting examples of my own preliminary emancipatory research project in an urban basic writing classroom

No working title

1 day symposium followed by 2 week participatory exhibition. In a climate of economic instability, and at a time when artistic practices are continuing to diversify, the symposium aimed to explore a number of modes of studio practice. How does exposure to different models of the studio within art school impact on how artists use a studio upon graduation? How do studio groups differ in their support of artist’s practices? What is the relationship between artists and their assistants? In preparation for the event artists were invited to contribute instructions on how to behave in the physical, digital, or psychological spaces in which their art is made. During the following 2 weeks, groups of UK art students from 6 different institutions were invited to come to blip blip blip to enact the instructions in the space, forming part of the public exhibition. Speakers include a number of prominent art educators; studio groups from a range of different cities; artists and academics who discussed the practices of artists who employ teams of assistants within their studios