Enhancing the Employability of Humanities Postgraduates: a Students as Academic Partners Project Report

In an increasingly competitive employment market, postgraduates need to demonstrate more than the ‘skills, knowledge, attitudes and experiences that are closely associated with the research process’ (Golovushkina & Milligan, 2013: 199). Yet results indicate that Worcester postgraduate students remain unaware of the full range of opportunities that exist alongside postgraduate study, and how this affects their subsequent employability. This research, undertaken with humanities post-graduate students at University of Worcester, aims to contribute to discussions about how to enhance the employability of humanities postgraduates through extra-curricular activities. The project was implemented as a Students -As-Partners-in-Learning-Project, using action research; the issue was identified, base-line data collected and this resulted in the creation of a postgraduate blog incorporating suggestions of possible opportunitie s and links to relevant websites for further information. Informed by this research, the student partners then took active roles in the organization of the Women’s History Network National Conference, ‘Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict’, hosted at the University of Worcester in September 2014, to broaden their existing skills base and then to connect this involvement to their professional development through a group CV review. The participants’ own experiences of wider engagement can therefore illuminat e new ways for understanding employability in relation to humanities postgraduate students

Consensus nomenclature for dyneins and associated assembly factors.

Dyneins are highly complex, multicomponent, microtubule-based molecular motors. These enzymes are responsible for numerous motile behaviors in cytoplasm, mediate retrograde intraflagellar transport (IFT), and power ciliary and flagellar motility. Variants in multiple genes encoding dyneins, outer dynein arm (ODA) docking complex subunits, and cytoplasmic factors involved in axonemal dynein preassembly (DNAAFs) are associated with human ciliopathies and are of clinical interest. Therefore, clear communication within this field is particularly important. Standardizing gene nomenclature, and basing it on orthology where possible, facilitates discussion and genetic comparison across species. Here, we discuss how the human gene nomenclature for dyneins, ODA docking complex subunits, and DNAAFs has been updated to be more functionally informative and consistent with that of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a key model organism for studying dyneins and ciliary function. We also detail additional nomenclature updates for vertebrate-specific genes that encode dynein chains and other proteins involved in dynein complex assembly

Emergency ambulance service involvement with residential care homes in the support of older people with dementia : an observational study

© 2014 Amador et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.BACKGROUND: Older people resident in care homes have a limited life expectancy and approximately two-thirds have limited mental capacity. Despite initiatives to reduce unplanned hospital admissions for this population, little is known about the involvement of emergency services in supporting residents in these settings.METHODS: This paper reports on a longitudinal study that tracked the involvement of emergency ambulance personnel in the support of older people with dementia, resident in care homes with no on-site nursing providing personal care only. 133 residents with dementia across 6 care homes in the East of England were tracked for a year. The paper examines the frequency and reasons for emergency ambulance call-outs, outcomes and factors associated with emergency ambulance service use. RESULTS: 56% of residents used ambulance services. Less than half (43%) of all call-outs resulted in an unscheduled admission to hospital. In addition to trauma following a following a fall in the home, results suggest that at least a reasonable proportion of ambulance contacts are for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. An emergency ambulance is not likely to be called for older rather than younger residents or for women more than men. Length of residence does not influence use of emergency ambulance services among older people with dementia. Contact with primary care services and admission route into the care home were both significantly associated with emergency ambulance service use. The odds of using emergency ambulance services for residents admitted from a relative's home were 90% lower than the odds of using emergency ambulance services for residents admitted from their own home. CONCLUSIONS: Emergency service involvement with this vulnerable population merits further examination. Future research on emergency ambulance service use by older people with dementia in care homes, should account for important contextual factors, namely, presence or absence of on-site nursing, GP involvement, and access to residents' family, alongside resident health characteristics.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Estimation of trabecular bone parameters in children from multisequence MRI using texture-based regression

PURPOSE: This paper presents a statistical approach for the prediction of trabecular bone parameters from low-resolution multisequence magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in children, thus addressing the limitations of high-resolution modalities such as HR-pQCT, including the significant exposure of young patients to radiation and the limited applicability of such modalities to peripheral bones in vivo. METHODS: A statistical predictive model is constructed from a database of MRI and HR-pQCT datasets, to relate the low-resolution MRI appearance in the cancellous bone to the trabecular parameters extracted from the high-resolution images. The description of the MRI appearance is achieved between subjects by using a collection of feature descriptors, which describe the texture properties inside the cancellous bone, and which are invariant to the geometry and size of the trabecular areas. The predictive model is built by fitting to the training data a nonlinear partial least square regression between the input MRI features and the output trabecular parameters. RESULTS: Detailed validation based on a sample of 96 datasets shows correlations >0.7 between the trabecular parameters predicted from low-resolution multisequence MRI based on the proposed statistical model and the values extracted from high-resolution HRp-QCT. CONCLUSIONS: The obtained results indicate the promise of the proposed predictive technique for the estimation of trabecular parameters in children from multisequence MRI, thus reducing the need for high-resolution radiation-based scans for a fragile population that is under development and growth

Radiation damage in macromolecular crystallography: what is it and why should we care?

The basic causes of the radiation damage inflicted on macromolecular crystals during diffraction experiments are summarized, as well as the current state of research which attempts to understand and to mitigate it

SARS-CoV-2-specific immune responses and clinical outcomes after COVID-19 vaccination in patients with immune-suppressive disease

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) immune responses and infection outcomes were evaluated in 2,686 patients with varying immune-suppressive disease states after administration of two Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines. Overall, 255 of 2,204 (12%) patients failed to develop anti-spike antibodies, with an additional 600 of 2,204 (27%) patients generating low levels (<380 AU ml−1). Vaccine failure rates were highest in ANCA-associated vasculitis on rituximab (21/29, 72%), hemodialysis on immunosuppressive therapy (6/30, 20%) and solid organ transplant recipients (20/81, 25% and 141/458, 31%). SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses were detected in 513 of 580 (88%) patients, with lower T cell magnitude or proportion in hemodialysis, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and liver transplant recipients (versus healthy controls). Humoral responses against Omicron (BA.1) were reduced, although cross-reactive T cell responses were sustained in all participants for whom these data were available. BNT162b2 was associated with higher antibody but lower cellular responses compared to ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination. We report 474 SARS-CoV-2 infection episodes, including 48 individuals with hospitalization or death from COVID-19. Decreased magnitude of both the serological and the T cell response was associated with severe COVID-19. Overall, we identified clinical phenotypes that may benefit from targeted COVID-19 therapeutic strategies

Pawn Shops and the 'Never Never': Poverty on the Home Front in the Second World War

Pawn Shops and the ‘Never Never’: Poverty on the Home Front in the Second World War The Second World War is often depicted in popular history as a time of equality of sacrifice and fair shares for a common good: a ‘Peoples War’ for the defeat of Nazism. Academic history has shown otherwise. Contrary to the myth of the ‘People’s War’ poverty and deprivation remained a very real lived experience for the ‘submerged tenth’ in society. Although experiences of the depression of the 1930s varied geographically, unemployment in Britain never dropped below 10% nationally and in places such as Jarrow was double or triple that figure with many jobless for life. Whilst wartime conscription and limited absorption into industry helped to partially relieve the situation (being a privates wife was actually a principle cause of poverty) poverty did not disappear during the war. During the course of the Second World War, as previously experienced in the nineteenth century, those living in poverty were held morally responsible for their plight with the ‘inefficiency of the mother’ together with a higher than average birth rate and old age pensioners who needed assistance from the Public Assistance Board regarded as being at the centre of the problem. Indeed Mary Douglas in her book Purity and Danger likened these mothers and their children to ‘pollution’. Solutions such as training for mothers in domesticity aimed to lift them from this ignominy whilst recourse to the Poor Law and Public Assistance was a fate many dreaded but sometimes found unavoidable. Despite the growth of labour exchanges (often viewed with suspicion due to their association with ‘the dole’ and the humiliation of means testing) most found any work obtained by casual means through contacts and family. Together with poor housing, health and clothing, rising food prices helped to compound the misery. Before price controls were in place, the first eighteen months of the war saw inflation hit poorer groups hard with arguably the greatest price rises in poorer districts for cheaper food. In a period when the country was supposedly pulling together and never more united this paper will consider the implications for the ‘underclass’ in society and how rationing and shortages impacted on their lives including the use of pawn shops, W.V.S. clothing centres and charities

‘A People’s War’?

A paper discussing how much the Second World War was actually a war involving everyone making an equal sacrifice for the desired result

Home Front Diaries: Over Representations of the Chattering Classes?

The use of diaries, memoirs and personal journals as primary sources has grown exponentially over the last few years, not least with the re-emergence of Mass Observation as a popular and possibly dominant source of personal memories particularly of the Home Front in the Second World War. However these sources have also become items of controversy and debate over the narrow social group they represent. For those beyond the chattering classes, long hours of war work, coupled with domestic responsibilities in increasingly difficult circumstances, as the privations of war increased were not conducive to diary and journal keeping. This paper will look at these sources and consider them in the light of their limitations and the sometimes condescending and patronising attitudes shown towards the few sources where the working classes had a voice

The Second World War, Material Cultures and Making Do: A Golden Age of Self Help?

This paper will draw upon the insights provided by two examples of material culture: women’s Magazines and Kay shopping catalogues to discuss the British Home Front Second World War. It will be suggested that making do and getting by came to dominate many women’s lives in the Second World War. Keeping a family well fed and reasonably clothed in the face of increasing workloads and shortages became a war of attrition, tenacity and sheer determination for many housewives. After the growth in consumerism and house ownership for some during the 1930s new skills and ways of homemaking had to be found; the contents of magazines and catalogue shopping became two routes to achieving this. Arguably the war was the golden age of magazines as a self-help tool. They jumped on the bandwagon of making-do and creativity and were full of hints and tips, sewing ideas and of course knitting patterns. Shortages of print meant they were also widely circulated amongst friends, family and others making their readers feel part of an ‘imagined community’ all reading the same articles and perhaps making the same boys suit out of a mans suit. Catalogue Shopping available through for example Kay’s of Worcester became a means of getting essentials on the ‘never never’. Kay’s somehow kept going during the war, albeit with a decreasing range of stock; they offered everything from clothing to wedding rings and even to start-up-chicken- keeping kits. However much of the ability to use these mediums was both class and wealth determined thus creating a more complex picture of self help in the war years that might reasonably be supposed from the popular histories of equal sacrifice and ‘all in it together’