The Labour of Home

The city of Cape Town's history of designed inequality has continued to maintain and extend barriers to accessing affordable housing for poor and working-class families. This work explores the emergence of occupation as a working-class housing and survival strategy that innovatively addresses these barriers to accommodation. Through intimate one on one conversations and shared experiences, this research unpacks the home-making journeys of a small group of residents at Cissie Gool House in Woodstock, investigating their grapplings with citizenship, past pursuits of home, and the rebuilding and reimagining of space undertaken as they continue to transform a hospital into a home. This thesis has found that occupied spaces such as Cissie Gool House have empowered residents to create fulfilling, central, home spaces for themselves that innovatively address the shortcomings of state housing schemes, while additionally developing social networks and programs that uplift, educate and support residents

Mosquitoes Put the Brake on Arbovirus Evolution: Experimental Evolution Reveals Slower Mutation Accumulation in Mosquito Than Vertebrate Cells

Like other arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses), mosquito-borne dengue virus (DENV) is maintained in an alternating cycle of replication in arthropod and vertebrate hosts. The trade-off hypothesis suggests that this alternation constrains DENV evolution because a fitness increase in one host usually diminishes fitness in the other. Moreover, the hypothesis predicts that releasing DENV from host alternation should facilitate adaptation. To test this prediction, DENV was serially passaged in either a single human cell line (Huh-7), a single mosquito cell line (C6/36), or in alternating passages between Huh-7 and C6/36 cells. After 10 passages, consensus mutations were identified and fitness was assayed by evaluating replication kinetics in both cell types as well as in a novel cell type (Vero) that was not utilized in any of the passage series. Viruses allowed to specialize in single host cell types exhibited fitness gains in the cell type in which they were passaged, but fitness losses in the bypassed cell type, and most alternating passages, exhibited fitness gains in both cell types. Interestingly, fitness gains were observed in the alternately passaged, cloned viruses, an observation that may be attributed to the acquisition of both host cell–specific and amphi-cell-specific adaptations or to recovery from the fitness losses due to the genetic bottleneck of biological cloning. Amino acid changes common to both passage series suggested convergent evolution to replication in cell culture via positive selection. However, intriguingly, mutations accumulated more rapidly in viruses passed in Huh-7 cells than in those passed in C6/36 cells or in alternation. These results support the hypothesis that releasing DENV from host alternation facilitates adaptation, but there is limited support for the hypothesis that such alternation necessitates a fitness trade-off. Moreover, these findings suggest that patterns of genetic evolution may differ between viruses replicating in mammalian and mosquito cells

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Portraits of contemplative teaching: A third way

Contemplative teaching is a third way of teaching. It extends beyond teaching as technique (hand) and teaching as reflection (head) to the inclusion of one's inner teacher or wisdom (heart). Technique emphasizes the how of teaching. Reflection interrogates the what and the why, while contemplation focuses on the who. Contemplative teaching originates from a teacher's core, from his or her compassion, integrity, and mindful awareness. Technical knowledge and skill and reflective understanding are utilized and embraced with a compassionate, integrated and mindful presence by a contemplative teacher. This study examined the principles and practices of three teachers working in a K-2 contemplative elementary school through the method of portraiture. Portraiture served as an appropriate method to study contemplative teaching practices because of its emphasis on connection rather than separation, on seeing the universal through the particular, and on self-awareness and transformation of both participant and portraitist. Portraiture, like case study, attempts to detail an individual story with the underlying premise that "…as one moves closer to the unique characteristics of a person or place, one discovers the universal" (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Hoffman-Davis, 1997, 14). The portraits presented detail descriptions and analyses of (a) the experiences influencing one's teaching presence, (b) the teacher's representation of his or her teaching, and (c) the classroom ethos exhibited by each contemplative educator. A contemplative approach to education focuses on understanding humans' basic goodness, how to be of service in the world, the importance of being who you are and a focused attention in the present moment. The three portraits of contemplative teachers offer readers an opportunity to glimpse the transformative potential of contemplative teaching for educational communities. Contemplative education begins with the most intimate relationship possible, relationship with oneself. It is a journey that moves both outward into the world and inward into one's own mind, body and heart. It is a journey of knowledge and self-knowledge leading toward transformation