The way of partnership

All around the globe, citizens of higher education embarked on a quest. They did so on the promise of a better future: one where they became fuller versions of themselves, empowered to be authentic, confident, passionate, articulate individuals in meaningful, trusting relationships with each other. And yet the terrain they had to cross was swampy—an uncertain, confusing, risky place that required courage and collaboration to stay their paths. The teachers had to shed their need for authority and control; the students needed to find their voice and agency. It was terrain they could not cross alone but only in the company of the other—for in sharing and listening and being there was the promise of understanding. Not all made it, for some the promise failed; but those that did saw differently and would never be the same again. They came to realise that partnership was a way of being, permeating our souls and changing the ways we learn and teach and relate; a way that lets us fully be

The research journey: Travels across the idiomatic and axiomatic toward a better understanding of complexity

In this paper, seven researchers reflect on the journeys their research projects have taken when they engage with and synthesize complex problems. These journeys embody an adaptive approach to tackling problems characterized by their interconnectedness and emergence, and that transcend traditional units of analysis such as ecosystems. In this paper we argue that making such a process deliberate and explicit will help researchers better combine different research paradigms such as expert-driven and participant-directed work, thus resulting in both broad explanations and specific phenomenon; research tensions traditionally defined as oppositional must be approached as complimentary. This paper includes researchers. personal journeys as they dealt with the emergent properties of complex problems and participant involvement. This paper argues that that research journey should be more than accidental but is a methodological necessity and should guide the theoretical and practical approaches to complex problems

A population of highly energetic transient events in the centres of active galaxies

Recent all-sky surveys have led to the discovery of new types of transients. These include stars disrupted by the central supermassive black hole, and supernovae that are 10–100 times more energetic than typical ones. However, the nature of even more energetic transients that apparently occur in the innermost regions of their host galaxies is hotly debated1,2,3. Here we report the discovery of the most energetic of these to date: PS1-10adi, with a total radiated energy of ~2.3 × 1052 erg. The slow evolution of its light curve and persistently narrow spectral lines over ∼ 3 yr are inconsistent with known types of recurring black hole variability. The observed properties imply powering by shock interaction between expanding material and large quantities of surrounding dense matter. Plausible sources of this expanding material are a star that has been tidally disrupted by the central black hole, or a supernova. Both could satisfy the energy budget. For the former, we would be forced to invoke a new and hitherto unseen variant of a tidally disrupted star, while a supernova origin relies principally on environmental effects resulting from its nuclear location. Remarkably, we also discover that PS1-10adi is not an isolated case. We therefore surmise that this new population of transients has previously been overlooked due to incorrect association with underlying central black hole activity

Selecting superluminous supernovae in faint galaxies from the first year of the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey

The Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) survey has obtained imaging in five bands (griz yP1) over 10 Medium Deep Survey (MDS) fields covering a total of 70 square degrees. This paper describes the search for apparently hostless supernovae (SNe) within the first year of PS1 MDS data with an aim of discovering superluminous supernovae (SLSNe). A total of 249 hostless transients were discovered down to a limiting magnitude of MAB ∼ 23.5, of which 76 were classified as Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). There were 57 SNe with complete light curves that are likely core-collapse SNe (CCSNe) or type Ic SLSNe and 12 of these have had spectra taken. Of these 12 hostless, non-Type Ia SNe, 7 were SLSNe of type Ic at redshifts between 0.5 and 1.4. This illustrates that the discovery rate of type Ic SLSNe can be maximized by concentrating on hostless transients and removing normal SNe Ia. We present data for two possible SLSNe; PS1-10pm (z = 1.206) and PS1-10ahf (z = 1.1), and estimate the rate of type Ic SLSNe to be between 3+3−2×10−5 and 8+2−1×10−5 that of the CCSN rate within 0.3 ≤ z ≤ 1.4 by applying a Monte Carlo technique. The rate of slowly evolving, type Ic SLSNe (such as SN2007bi) is estimated as a factor of 10 lower than this range

Diabetic gastroparesis: Therapeutic options

Gastroparesis is a condition characterized by delayed gastric emptying and the most common known underlying cause is diabetes mellitus. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal fullness, and early satiety, which impact to varying degrees on the patient’s quality of life. Symptoms and deficits do not necessarily relate to each other, hence despite significant abnormalities in gastric emptying, some individuals have only minimal symptoms and, conversely, severe symptoms do not always relate to measures of gastric emptying. Prokinetic agents such as metoclopramide, domperidone, and erythromycin enhance gastric motility and have remained the mainstay of treatment for several decades, despite unwanted side effects and numerous drug interactions. Mechanical therapies such as endoscopic pyloric botulinum toxin injection, gastric electrical stimulation, and gastrostomy or jejunostomy are used in intractable diabetic gastroparesis (DG), refractory to prokinetic therapies. Mitemcinal and TZP-101 are novel investigational motilin receptor and ghrelin agonists, respectively, and show promise in the treatment of DG. The aim of this review is to provide an update on prokinetic and mechanical therapies in the treatment of DG

Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology

notes: As the primary author, O’Malley drafted the paper, and gathered and analysed data (scientific papers and talks). Conceptual analysis was conducted by both authors.publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticlePhilosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations