Young people constructing identities in the transition to higher education

The research is a study of 12 young people constructing identities in the transition between sixth form college and university. Identity is conceptualised as fluid and self-reflective. Giddens’ (1991) work on the reflexive project focuses on both narrative and reflexivity in the construction of identity, and this research uses the tool of narrative to capture the subjective experiences of the young people. Narrative methodology is shown to produce rich and detailed data and it both constructs as well as captures stories. The research process itself becomes part of the young people’s identity work. The young people are embedded in a social and historical context of late modernity and I endeavour to interrogate how structural forces shape and constrain identities. Some analysis of agency and choice in relation to identity is forwarded. The research findings foreground the student identities of the young people and explore what being a student means for the young people. Being in transition and issues of liminality are associated with this student status. The nature of transition is interrogated drawing on literature from anthropology and psychoanalytic theory among others. Transition is experienced by the young people as a space of betwixt and between-ness which has four particular effects on identity. Firstly, transition encapsulates a quality of temporality which concerns both the present and the future. It pushes the young people to conceive of making the transition to university as an opportunity to make a ‘fresh start’, and the new identity is future-oriented; transition shapes future as well as present selves. Secondly, transition disrupts the normal flow of life and often involves choice-making. Making choices, particularly those which will have future implications, brings identity into sharp relief through reflexive processes. Thirdly, transition to university involves moving into a broader landscape bringing encounters with a wider range of people. This forces issues of similarity, difference and otherness into the frame. Identities are reflexively constructed through understanding of similarity and difference, and transition provides the space where the young people are faced with both possibilities and limitations. On the one hand the broad social mix of university students provides an awareness of heterogeneity that the young people had not experienced before, with all the potential for new identities this opens up. But on the other hand, butting up against otherness and difference in this way solidifies and limits identities. Fourthly, transition precipitates mechanisms for connectedness. Connectedness- that is, the all-pervading and on-going relating with others; peers, friends and family- dominates the narratives of the young people and is significant in both social capital and support, and also identity. Cross-gender friendships are prevalent and are shown to have significant effects on identity. The role of emotion in social interaction is also analysed drawing on concepts of emotional capital and emotional literacy. Links are made between emotion and narrative and the place of emotions in the research process is also discussed. Giddens’ work on identity emphasises the role of reflexivity and yet the concept is not well analysed. Professional discourse is drawn on to open up the concept. The different ways the young people engage in reflexivity are demonstrated and reflexivity is found to be both contextdependent and also related to self-learning. The need for reflexivity is also applied to the research process. Narratives are co-productions and research authenticity calls for transparency and reflexivity of the researcher

The aesthetic and cultural pursuits of patients with stroke

peer-reviewedTables to accompany this article on second fileGOAL: There has been an increasing interest in the arts in healthcare, with a suggestion that the arts and aesthetics can augment patient outcomes in stroke and other illnesses. Designing such programmes requires better knowledge of the artistic, aesthetic and cultural pursuits of people affected by stroke. The aim of this study was to obtain the insights of this group about the profile of arts and aesthetics activities in their lives as well as the influence of stroke on these aspects. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients attending a stroke service were administered questions adapted from the Irish Arts Council’s 2006 questionnaire on participation in aesthetics and cultural pursuits, Information was also collected on stroke type and present functional and cognitive status. Thirty-eight patients were interviewed. Of these, twenty were inpatients in hospital at the time of the interview and eighteen were interviewed in an outpatient setting. FINDINGS: Popular activities included mainstream cinema, listening to music, dancing, attending plays or musicals and being outdoors. Many patients ceased these activities after their stroke, mostly due to health issues and inaccessibility. The majority of patients valued the importance of the arts in the healthcare setting. CONCLUSION: This study gives a perspective for the first time on the aesthetic and cultural pursuits of stroke patients prior to their stroke. It portrays a wide variety of cultural and leisure activities, and the cessation of these post-stroke. It revealed the restrictions patients felt on gaining access to leisure pursuits both while in hospital and following discharge.Acceptedpeer-reviewe

Eating Paradise: Food as Coloniality and Leisure

Sandals Resorts’ Gourmet Discovery Dining programme continues the company’s practice of marketing difference by combining tourism with the commodification of food from non-Western cultures (Dodman and Rhiney 2008). The article draws on bell hooks’ (1992) concept of ‘eating the other’ and the analysis undertakes an interdisciplinary approach that combines visual analysis with Anibal Quijano’s (2007) concept of modernity/coloniality. The discussion explores the trends of global multiculturalism that have been adopted by Sandals in a hybridized cut and mix approach to selling a packaged ideal of the Caribbean. The visual techniques devised to create a culinary holiday package are overlaid onto a manufactured and homogenised or McDonaldized (Ritzer and Liska 1997) Caribbean that provides insight into the way in which global neoliberal multiculturalism is framed by ongoing colonial relations after formal colonial rule has ended in the Caribbean region

Pump it Up workshop report

Workshop held 28-29 September 2017, Cape Cod, MAA two-day workshop was conducted to trade ideas and brainstorm about how to advance our understanding of the ocean’s biological pump. The goal was to identify the most important scientific issues that are unresolved but might be addressed with new and future technological advances

An evaluation of pharmacology curricula in Australian science and health-related degree programs

Background: Pharmacology is a biomedical discipline taught in basic science and professional degree programs. In order to provide information that would facilitate pharmacology curricula to be refined and developed, and approaches to teaching to be updated, a national survey was undertaken in Australia that investigated pharmacology course content, teaching and summative assessment methods. Methods: Twenty-two institutions participated in a purpose-built online questionnaire, which enabled an evaluation of 147 courses taught in 10 different degrees. To enable comparison, degrees were grouped into four major degree programs, namely science, pharmacy, medicine and nursing. The pharmacology content was then classified into 16 lecture themes, with 2-21 lecture topics identified per theme. The resultant data were analysed for similarities and differences in pharmacology curricula across the degree programs. Results: While all lecture themes were taught across degree programs, curriculum content differed with respect to the breadth and hours of coverage. Overall, lecture themes were taught most broadly in medicine and with greatest coverage in pharmacy. Reflecting a more traditional approach, lectures were a dominant teaching method (at least 90% of courses). Sixty-three percent of science courses provided practical classes but such sessions occurred much less frequently in other degree programs, while tutorials were much more common in pharmacy degree programs (70%). Notably, problem-based learning was common across medical programs. Considerable diversity was found in the types of summative assessment tasks employed. In science courses the most common form of in-semester assessment was practical reports, whereas in other programs pen-and-paper quizzes predominated. End-of-semester assessment contributed 50-80% to overall assessment across degree programs. Conclusion: The similarity in lecture themes taught across the four different degree programs shows that common knowledge- and competency-based learning outcomes can be defined for pharmacology. The authors contend that it is the differences in breadth and coverage of material for each lecture theme, and the differing teaching modes and assessment that characterise particular degree programs. Adoption of pharmacology knowledge-based learning outcomes that could be tailored to suit individual degree programs would better facilitate the sharing of expertise and teaching practice than the current model where pharmacology curricula are degree-specific.Hilary Lloyd, Tina Hinton, Shane Bullock, Anna-Marie Babey, Elizabeth Davis, Lynette Fernandes, Joanne Hart, Ian Musgrave and James Zioga

Gene Amplification, ABC Transporters and Cytochrome P450s: Unraveling the Molecular Basis of Pyrethroid Resistance in the Dengue Vector, Aedes aegypti

Dengue is the most rapidly spreading arboviral infection of humans and each year there are 50–100 million cases of dengue fever. There is no vaccine or drug to prevent dengue infection so control of the mosquitoes that transmit this virus is the only option to reduce transmission. Removing mosquito habitats close to human homes can be effective but in reality most dengue control programmes rely on a small number of chemical insecticides. Therefore, when the mosquito vectors develop resistance to the available insecticides, dengue control is jeopardized. In this study we examined the causes of resistance to the insecticide class most commonly used in mosquito control, the pyrethroids. We found that a group of genes, which have been implicated in detoxifying these insecticides in other populations of dengue vectors, were highly over expressed in both these Caribbean populations and we investigated the molecular basis of this increased expression. The next steps, which will be a considerable challenge, are to utilize this information to develop effective means of restoring insecticide susceptibility in dengue vectors

Protocol for a mixed methods study investigating the impact of investment in housing, regeneration and neighbourhood renewal on the health and wellbeing of residents: the GoWell programme

Background: There is little robust evidence to test the policy assumption that housing-led area regeneration strategies will contribute to health improvement and reduce social inequalities in health. The GoWell Programme has been designed to measure effects on health and wellbeing of multi-faceted regeneration interventions on residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. Methods/Design: This mixed methods study focused (initially) on 14 disadvantaged neighbourhoods experiencing regeneration. These were grouped by intervention into 5 categories for comparison. GoWell includes a pre-intervention householder survey (n = 6008) and three follow-up repeat-cross sectional surveys held at two or three year intervals (the main focus of this protocol) conducted alongside a nested longitudinal study of residents from 6 of those areas. Self-reported responses from face-to-face questionnaires are analysed along with various routinely produced ecological data and documentary sources to build a picture of the changes taking place, their cost and impacts on residents and communities. Qualitative methods include interviews and focus groups of residents, housing managers and other stakeholders exploring issues such as the neighbourhood context, potential pathways from regeneration to health, community engagement and empowerment. Discussion: Urban regeneration programmes are 'natural experiments.' They are complex interventions that may impact upon social determinants of population health and wellbeing. Measuring the effects of such interventions is notoriously challenging. GoWell compares the health and wellbeing effects of different approaches to regeneration, generates theory on pathways from regeneration to health and explores the attitudes and responses of residents and other stakeholders to neighbourhood change

Sequencing of Culex quinquefasciatus establishes a platform for mosquito comparative genomics

Culex quinquefasciatus (the southern house mosquito) is an important mosquito vector of viruses such as West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis virus, as well as of nematodes that cause lymphatic filariasis. C. quinquefasciatus is one species within the Culex pipiens species complex and can be found throughout tropical and temperate climates of the world. The ability of C. quinquefasciatus to take blood meals from birds, livestock, and humans contributes to its ability to vector pathogens between species. Here, we describe the genomic sequence of C. quinquefasciatus: Its repertoire of 18,883 protein-coding genes is 22% larger than that of Aedes aegypti and 52% larger than that of Anopheles gambiae with multiple gene-family expansions, including olfactory and gustatory receptors, salivary gland genes, and genes associated with xenobiotic detoxification

What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature