Deep learning extends de novo protein modelling coverage of genomes using iteratively predicted structural constraints

The inapplicability of amino acid covariation methods to small protein families has limited their use for structural annotation of whole genomes. Recently, deep learning has shown promise in allowing accurate residue-residue contact prediction even for shallow sequence alignments. Here we introduce DMPfold, which uses deep learning to predict inter-atomic distance bounds, the main chain hydrogen bond network, and torsion angles, which it uses to build models in an iterative fashion. DMPfold produces more accurate models than two popular methods for a test set of CASP12 domains, and works just as well for transmembrane proteins. Applied to all Pfam domains without known structures, confident models for 25% of these so-called dark families were produced in under a week on a small 200 core cluster. DMPfold provides models for 16% of human proteome UniProt entries without structures, generates accurate models with fewer than 100 sequences in some cases, and is freely available.Comment: JGG and SMK contributed equally to the wor

The bottom line: an ethnography of for-profit elderly residential care

In the last 20 years the UK’s elderly residential care system has become progressively more privatised with an increase in the number of for-profit organisations delivering these services. This study is a participant observation of care work in one privatised elderly residential care home (‘Meadowvale’), owned and operated by a large provider of such services (‘Moonlight Care’). It provides a rich ethnographic depiction of life at Meadowvale both from the point of view of the workers and the residents. The thesis frames these ethnographic findings against pro-privatisation discourses which argue that serious raises in standards of service delivery are to be made from instilling profit motives within social care systems. I argue that there were a series of contradictions which prevented Moonlight Care from both achieving convincing levels of profitability whilst simultaneously improving the nature of elderly residential care. The fact that the revenue received was largely determined by the local government and the distinctive nature of care work inhibited the company from transforming the service for the better. Regulation, although crucial to ensuring that a base level of service quality was ensured, also represented a constraint on any possible restructuring. Greater gains could therefore only be increased through slashing the costs of production and enlarging the economies of scale. Both processes defined the business plan of Moonlight Care. This thesis, therefore, argues that privatisation was incongruent with quality of elderly residential care at Meadowvale. Privatisation led to a form of ‘parasitic’ production where efficiency gains and innovation were absent but business objectives were met by lowering the standards of living for the people who use the service and the wages and working conditions of the people who deliver the service. Cost rationalisation took an extreme form at Meadowvale with repercussions for both care workers and residents. Primarily the ethnographic data looks at the everyday effects of delivering care in this under-resourced labour process. The tasks of care were highly routinised within a system of bureaucratic control which emphasised the physical, “dirty” tasks of care and necessitated that all tasks were recorded. However, the numbers of workers always fell short of the workload leading to widespread falsification in the records. The high intensity of work at Meadowvale embedded various forms of mistreatment, abuse and neglect within the working routine. The system of bureaucratic control also emphasised the physical, ‘dirty’ tasks of care work, leaving little time for relational work. This instituted a particular form of emotional work which emphasised suppressing emotions in order to move from one task to the next as quickly as possible. This was considered problematic for many of the workers who felt that care work should be underpinned by emotional warmth and intimacy. The organisation of care labour at Meadowvale also ran contrary to the regulatory policy discourse which constructed quality care as personalised to each recipient, supporting lifestyle choice and personal preferences. This ‘personalisation agenda’ was a major component of the regulatory framework, but was impossible to implement under the strict routine which permeated care home existence. The responsibility of implementing the personalisation agenda was also constructed in training courses and official documentation as located with the workers, rather than with organisational structures, regimes or motives. This suggests an individualising process in which regulatory authorities and care companies attempt pass the responsibility and risk associated with providing these poorly resourced care services on to each individual worker. The thesis also explores the implications of the system of production in structuring the inequality experienced both by care workers and residents. The process of accumulation at Meadowvale could be described as ‘parasitic’ because profit arises from reducing the cost of production. Two major strategies for reducing expenditure that Moonlight Care utilised was securing a cheap, highly exploitable workforce and reducing the costs associated with care. The search for a cheap workforce has led to the employment of large numbers of migrant workers. Many of the migrant workers at Meadowvale were unable to find alternative employment because their visa’s either tied them to working in the social care sector, or in some cases, specifically to Moonlight Care. I also argue that immigration status supported higher levels of exploitation by denying welfare rights to migrant workers and their families. At the same time the residents at Meadowvale were subject to a system of care which often failed to cater for their needs. Not only were there were few luxuries associated with life at Meadowvale even basic care rights were frequently denied to the residents. During my time at Meadowvale the conditions for both staff and workers seemed to be deteriorating reflecting the endemic problems in the industry. The demand for cheap highly exploitable forms of labour and the denial of basic care rights for the residents can be theorised as interrelated processes connecting to the current system of residential care provision. At Meadowvale, the search for profit did not, as the proponents of privatisation suggest, lead to a system defined by choice, efficiency or quality

Performative Compliance and the State–Corporate Structuring of Neglect in a Residential Care Home for Older People

AbstractThe abuse and neglect of older people in care homes is widespread across England, but current causative explanations are limited and frequently fail to highlight the economic and political factors underpinning poor care. Informed by social harm and state–corporate crime perspectives, this study uses ethnographic data gathered through a nine-month period of working in an older person’s residential care home to show how neglect is embedded in working routines. Three aspects of care are interrogated to reveal the embedded nature of harm in the home; all reveal the rift between official, regulatory rules and informal working practices shaped by material constraints of the labor process. This article explores the role of regulatory regimes in actively legitimizing sectors, such as the residential care industry, even in the face of routine violence, by bureaucratically ensuring the appearance of compliance with formal rules. While the harms of contemporary institutionalized care for older people have its roots in material conditions, performative compliance through regulation guarantees that these injurious outcomes are concealed. This article contends that malpractice (and harm) can be explained with reference to conjoint state–corporate relationships and practices.</jats:p

The bottom line: an ethnography of for-profit elderly residential care

In the last 20 years the UK’s elderly residential care system has become progressively more privatised with an increase in the number of for-profit organisations delivering these services. This study is a participant observation of care work in one privatised elderly residential care home (‘Meadowvale’), owned and operated by a large provider of such services (‘Moonlight Care’). It provides a rich ethnographic depiction of life at Meadowvale both from the point of view of the workers and the residents. The thesis frames these ethnographic findings against pro-privatisation discourses which argue that serious raises in standards of service delivery are to be made from instilling profit motives within social care systems. I argue that there were a series of contradictions which prevented Moonlight Care from both achieving convincing levels of profitability whilst simultaneously improving the nature of elderly residential care. The fact that the revenue received was largely determined by the local government and the distinctive nature of care work inhibited the company from transforming the service for the better. Regulation, although crucial to ensuring that a base level of service quality was ensured, also represented a constraint on any possible restructuring. Greater gains could therefore only be increased through slashing the costs of production and enlarging the economies of scale. Both processes defined the business plan of Moonlight Care. This thesis, therefore, argues that privatisation was incongruent with quality of elderly residential care at Meadowvale. Privatisation led to a form of ‘parasitic’ production where efficiency gains and innovation were absent but business objectives were met by lowering the standards of living for the people who use the service and the wages and working conditions of the people who deliver the service. Cost rationalisation took an extreme form at Meadowvale with repercussions for both care workers and residents. Primarily the ethnographic data looks at the everyday effects of delivering care in this under-resourced labour process. The tasks of care were highly routinised within a system of bureaucratic control which emphasised the physical, “dirty” tasks of care and necessitated that all tasks were recorded. However, the numbers of workers always fell short of the workload leading to widespread falsification in the records. The high intensity of work at Meadowvale embedded various forms of mistreatment, abuse and neglect within the working routine. The system of bureaucratic control also emphasised the physical, ‘dirty’ tasks of care work, leaving little time for relational work. This instituted a particular form of emotional work which emphasised suppressing emotions in order to move from one task to the next as quickly as possible. This was considered problematic for many of the workers who felt that care work should be underpinned by emotional warmth and intimacy. The organisation of care labour at Meadowvale also ran contrary to the regulatory policy discourse which constructed quality care as personalised to each recipient, supporting lifestyle choice and personal preferences. This ‘personalisation agenda’ was a major component of the regulatory framework, but was impossible to implement under the strict routine which permeated care home existence. The responsibility of implementing the personalisation agenda was also constructed in training courses and official documentation as located with the workers, rather than with organisational structures, regimes or motives. This suggests an individualising process in which regulatory authorities and care companies attempt pass the responsibility and risk associated with providing these poorly resourced care services on to each individual worker. The thesis also explores the implications of the system of production in structuring the inequality experienced both by care workers and residents. The process of accumulation at Meadowvale could be described as ‘parasitic’ because profit arises from reducing the cost of production. Two major strategies for reducing expenditure that Moonlight Care utilised was securing a cheap, highly exploitable workforce and reducing the costs associated with care. The search for a cheap workforce has led to the employment of large numbers of migrant workers. Many of the migrant workers at Meadowvale were unable to find alternative employment because their visa’s either tied them to working in the social care sector, or in some cases, specifically to Moonlight Care. I also argue that immigration status supported higher levels of exploitation by denying welfare rights to migrant workers and their families. At the same time the residents at Meadowvale were subject to a system of care which often failed to cater for their needs. Not only were there were few luxuries associated with life at Meadowvale even basic care rights were frequently denied to the residents. During my time at Meadowvale the conditions for both staff and workers seemed to be deteriorating reflecting the endemic problems in the industry. The demand for cheap highly exploitable forms of labour and the denial of basic care rights for the residents can be theorised as interrelated processes connecting to the current system of residential care provision. At Meadowvale, the search for profit did not, as the proponents of privatisation suggest, lead to a system defined by choice, efficiency or quality

Psychopolitics in the twenty first century

This special issue was inspired by our long standing interest in Sedgwick's work and our own – individual and collective – struggle with the questions he posed for a left-inspired politics of mental health. Specifically, it arose out of a national conference we collectively organized in June 2015 at Liverpool Hope University - PsychoPolitics in the Twenty First Century: Peter Sedgwick and radical movements in mental health. We do not necessarily agree, even amongst ourselves, about what constitutes his enduring legacy for a mental health politics. However, we do share the belief that his work offers a crucial starting point for discussion and debate. In the rest of this editorial we summarise the contents of this issue, and then outline some key areas that we think require further attentio

Reproduction, discipline, inequality: Critiquing East-Asian developmentalism through a strategic-relational examination of Singapore’s Central Provident Fund

The five ‘developmentalist’ welfare states of East Asia (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan) have been presented as successful projects of economic progress, positively aligning citizen-interests with business objective. Utilising Jessop’s Strategic-Relational Approach (SRA), we analyse the Central Provident Fund (CPF), Singapore’s ‘forced savings’ social policy which organises housing, healthcare, education and retirement. Through a myriad of eligibilities/ineligibilities, Singapore’s CPF administers desired social behaviours while sustaining a series of inequalities supporting certain classed and gendered interests over others. Our analysis breaks down the CPF into three social relational orientations: (1) heteronormative familial responsiblisation, (2) labour market activation and (3) class reproduction. The article highlights the function of CPF in institutionalising conservative and pro-market political interests. CPF reproduces material inequalities and fashions behaviours conducive with the dominant accumulation strategy while discouraging those which are not, privileging some interests over others. </jats:p

Regimes of Extreme Permission in Southeast Asia: Theorizing State-Corporate Crime in the Global South

Abstract Corporations’ profit-making objectives are a central force guiding development strategies in the Global South but contradictorily can be blamed for a range of social and environmental harms. This article brings a state-corporate crime lens to bear on the economic and political processes that shape Global South-located commodity production. It seeks to understand the functioning of neo-imperialist profiteering through elaborating the concept of regimes of extreme permission, described as modalities of ‘intense’ accumulation, defined by weaker or unstable forms of hegemony consolidation, illegal/illicit practices, state-sanctioned violence and various socio-environmental degradations. Through analyses of two regimes of extreme permission in the SE Asian context—Indonesian palm oil plantations and Export Processing Zones for garment production in the Greater Mekong Subregion—the paper describes the role of states and corporations in constructing the repressive socio-political space required for neo-colonial corporate accumulation. We contribute to ‘Southernizing’ criminology by re-articulating state-corporate crime theory within imperialist contexts. It also shows that neo-colonialism can be understood as the de-regulation of corporate accumulation.</jats:p

Services just for men? Insights from a national study of the well men services pilots.

Men continue to have a lower life expectancy in most countries compared to women. Explanations of this gendered health inequality tend to focus on male risk taking, unhealthy lifestyle choices and resistance to seeking help from health services. In the period 2005-2008 the Scottish Government funded a nationwide community health promotion programme aimed at improving men's health, called Well Men Service Pilots (henceforth WMS)

Moralising racial regimes: surveillance and control after Singapore’s ‘Little India riots’

This article examines the moral politics of state organised social control in bolstering racialisation in Singapore after the 2013 disturbances in ‘Little India’, when agencies mobilised morally charged discourses regarding alcohol consumption amongst low-income South Asian migrants. Appealing to moral constructions of the ‘riots’ discredited socio-political analyses of the events, after which the state developed a mass architecture of alcohol-related ‘governing through crime’, placing migrant lives under permanent and constant surveillance. The piece contributes to debates about moral economy approaches by connecting the strategic deployment and justification of crime control underpinning racial regimes and reveals inadequacies in critical thinking around ‘race’ in Singapore, most notably a preoccupation with interactional accounts of racism rather than institutional state power. </jats:p