Introduction: 'Changing Parenting Culture'

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Synthesis and bioactivity of a conjugate composed of green tea catechins and hyaluronic acid

(-)-Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) is a green tea polyphenol that has several biological activities, including anti-cancer activity and anti-inflammation. Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a naturally-occurring polysaccharide that is widely used as a biomaterial for drug delivery and tissue engineering due to its viscoelastic, biocompatible and biodegradable properties. By conjugating HA with EGCG, the resulting HA-EGCG conjugate is expected to exhibit not only the inherent properties of HA but also the bioactivities of EGCG. Toward this end, we report the synthesis of an amine-functionalized EGCG as an intermediate compound for conjugation to HA. EGCG was reacted with 2,2-diethoxyethylamine (DA) under acidic conditions, forming ethylamine-bridged EGCG dimers. The EGCG dimers were composed of four isomers, which were characterized by HPLC, high-resolution mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy. The amine-functionalized EGCG dimers were conjugated to hyaluronic acid (HA) through the formation of amide bonds. HA-EGCG conjugates demonstrated several bioactivities which were not present in unmodified HA, including resistance to hyaluronidase-mediated degradation, inhibition of cell growth and scavenging of radicals. The potential applications of HA-EGCG conjugates are discussed

The Energies of Activism: Rethinking Agency in Contemporary Climate Change Activism

This thesis is concerned with the energies of activism, and uses an exploration of the concept of ‘energy’ to rethink the agency of activism, rethinking: what counts as an act, who counts as an actor, and in particular how action is produced in activism. This process of rethinking brings recent theorising around agency more broadly, specifically in relation to non-representational theory, the more-than-human, and affect, into conversation with the practice of activism. The empirical aspect of this research involved three case studies of UK climate change activism, each of which demonstrates a particular form of activism: activism in the form of ‘direct’ action through the protest camps of Camp for Climate Action, activism as a more mundane and regular part of life through the meetings and events of a Transition Town group, and activism as a lifestyle in itself through the low-impact living and building practices of the Lammas eco-village. The methodology involved an immersive participatory approach consisting of periods of observant participation, alongside in-depth interviews with activists, the material from which was then developed into immersive narratives (Summers-Effler, 2010). These narratives aim to illuminate: the role of the more-than-human (Bennett, 2010) in the act of activism, and that emotions and affects are not simply “straightforward ‘prompts’ for activism” (Horton and Kraftl, 2009: 17) in line with emerging activism literature, but instead, alongside the human, the more-than-human, and the act of activism itself, emotions and affect are part of the ‘conditions’ (Ahmed, 2010) for action in activism. In this research, rather than action being literally and linearly produced, the potential for action emerged as a process of aligned and openness to action, and therefore always pivots on the relations between elements rather than the properties of a single element or actor

Designing critical, humanizing writing instruction : exploring possibilities for positioning writers as designers

The purpose of this study was to better understand how teachers across elementary, middle, and secondary grade-levels (re)imagine possibilities and translate them into critical, humanizing writing instruction. Across the study, I drew on sociocultural theories of identity, learning, and language while considering perspectives on interdisciplinary design, humanizing pedagogies, and teachers as curriculum-makers. Following multicase study and participatory design research traditions, I met with four teachers in a cross grade-level inquiry group and followed them into classrooms for one academic year. I generated data through recording conversations and teaching, creating fieldnotes, collecting artifacts, and conducting interviews with teachers and students. I analyzed data using inductive qualitative analysis and then, using theory alongside emerging findings, selected examples to closely examine using discourse analytic methods. The following questions guided this study’s design and analysis: How do teachers in a cross grade-level inquiry group (re)design humanizing writing instruction together? What aspects of writing and writing instruction are most visible in teachers' discussion about design and writing? And how do teachers’ discussions of design and writing translate into their classroom practice? Analysis revealed that teachers’ inquiry group discussions explored connections between design and writing while reflecting on current writing instruction and ways teachers and students were positioned within schools. Co-constructing this “figured world” made space to reimagine possibilities and reframe constraints as design conditions. As teachers took up design work, they also appropriated narratives of students that illustrated the “love, faith, and humility” Freire (1970/2005, p. 91) noted as necessary for collective effort towards humanization. The findings also highlighted the emergence of purpose and audience as central concepts for rethinking writing and writing instruction. These terms were redefined within the group space to include embedded subject positions for students as active designers. In classrooms, one teacher used these tools to transform units to center purpose and audience for writers; another used them as entry points into new practices and subject positions within her growing critical, humanizing writing pedagogy. Overall, findings contribute to understandings of generative, humanizing teacher learning experiences for teachers and for researchers/teacher educators. Additionally, findings suggest tenets for enacting critical, humanizing writing instruction.Curriculum and Instructio

Post-training unilateral amygdala lesions selectively impair contextual fear memories.

The basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the dorsal hippocampus (dHPC) are both structures with key roles in contextual fear conditioning. During fear conditioning, it is postulated that contextual representations of the environment are formed in the hippocampus, which are then associated with foot shock in the amygdala. However, it is not known to what extent a functional connection between these two structures is required. This study investigated the effect on contextual and cued fear conditioning of disconnecting the BLA and dHPC, using asymmetrically placed, excitotoxic unilateral lesions. Post-training lesions selectively impaired contextual, but not cued, fear, while pretraining lesions resulted in a similar but nonsignificant pattern of results. This effect was unexpectedly observed in both the contralateral disconnection group and the anticipated ipsilateral control, which prompted further examination of individual unilateral lesions of BLA and dHPC. Post-training unilateral dHPC lesions had no effect on contextual fear memories while bilateral dHPC lesions and unilateral BLA lesions resulted in a near total abolition of contextual fear but not cued conditioned fear. Again, pretraining unilateral BLA lesions resulted in a strong but nonsignificant trend to the impairment of contextual fear. Furthermore, an analysis of context test-induced Fos protein expression in the BLA contralateral to the lesion site revealed no differences between post-training SHAM and unilateral BLA lesioned animals. Therefore, post-training unilateral lesions of the BLA are sufficient to severely impair contextual, but not cued, fear memories

Physiological and genetic description of dissimilatory perchlorate reduction by the novel marine bacterium Arcobacter sp. strain CAB.

A novel dissimilatory perchlorate-reducing bacterium (DPRB), Arcobacter sp. strain CAB, was isolated from a marina in Berkeley, CA. Phylogenetically, this halophile was most closely related to Arcobacter defluvii strain SW30-2 and Arcobacter ellisii. With acetate as the electron donor, strain CAB completely reduced perchlorate (ClO4(-)) or chlorate (ClO3(-)) [collectively designated (per)chlorate] to innocuous chloride (Cl(-)), likely using the perchlorate reductase (Pcr) and chlorite dismutase (Cld) enzymes. When grown with perchlorate, optimum growth was observed at 25 to 30°C, pH 7, and 3% NaCl. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) preparations were dominated by free-swimming straight rods with 1 to 2 polar flagella per cell. Strain CAB utilized a variety of organic acids, fructose, and hydrogen as electron donors coupled to (per)chlorate reduction. Further, under anoxic growth conditions strain CAB utilized the biogenic oxygen produced as a result of chlorite dismutation to oxidize catechol via the meta-cleavage pathway of aerobic catechol degradation and the catechol 2,3-dioxygenase enzyme. In addition to (per)chlorate, oxygen and nitrate were alternatively used as electron acceptors. The 3.48-Mb draft genome encoded a distinct perchlorate reduction island (PRI) containing several transposases. The genome lacks the pcrC gene, which was previously thought to be essential for (per)chlorate reduction, and appears to use an unrelated Arcobacter c-type cytochrome to perform the same function. IMPORTANCE The study of dissimilatory perchlorate-reducing bacteria (DPRB) has largely focused on freshwater, mesophilic, neutral-pH environments. This study identifies a novel marine DPRB in the genus Arcobacter that represents the first description of a DPRB associated with the Campylobacteraceae. Strain CAB is currently the only epsilonproteobacterial DPRB in pure culture. The genome of strain CAB lacks the pcrC gene found in all other DPRB tested, demonstrating a new variation on the (per)chlorate reduction pathway. The ability of strain CAB to oxidize catechol via the oxygenase-dependent meta-cleavage pathway in the absence of external oxygen by using the biogenic oxygen produced from the dismutation of chlorite provides a valuable model for understanding the anaerobic degradation of a broad diversity of xenobiotics which are recalcitrant to anaerobic metabolism but labile to oxygenase-dependent mechanisms

Affecting Terrorism: Laughter, lamentation, and detestation as drives to terrorism knowledge

The contemporary fascination with terrorism in Anglo-American popular culture, political discourse, news reportage, and beyond is boundless and well documented. In this article, we explore contemporary productions of terrorism as the outcome of three drives to knowledge: laugher, lamentation, and detestation. Drawing on a range of social and cultural practices—including jokes, street art, film, memorial projects, elite rhetoric, and abuse scandals—we make two arguments. First, that humor, grief, and hatred underpin and saturate the contemporary desire to know terrorism. And, second, that—although these drives function in multiple and ambiguous ways—they serve to institute a distance between the subject and object of terrorism knowledge, not least by encouraging us to laugh at those punished for terrorism, mourn for those lost in attacks, and direct our hatred toward those responsible. This analysis not only opens fresh insight into the workings of terrorism discourse in the post-9/11 period, it also points to connections between contemporary “critical” work on terrorism and debate on the role of emotions and affect in international politics more broadly

Topic- and Stance-based Style Shift of North Korean Speakers Living in South Korea

We investigate to what extent North Korean refugee (NK) speakers shift their stop production across topic and stance in conversational speech. The twenty-two NK speakers (F:16, M:6) were engaged in a sociolinguistic interview. A total of 5042 stops were identified and analyzed for VOT and F0 in the following vowel. Stops in the sociolinguistic interview data were coded for topic-stance: contingent upon the topic, North (NK) or South Korean (SK) related topics, they responded with a positive, negative, or neutral stance. Based on previous findings, we predicted that NK speakers would produce more SK-like stops when speaking about South Korea with a positive stance (Nycz 2018). Results of mixed-effects models showed that the NK speakers produced more SK-like stops in terms of VOT when talking about NK and SK topics with emotional stance (negative and positive). This is inconsistent with the idea that speaking about the second dialect region with a positive stance typically results in more second dialect-like speech (Nycz 2018). Unlike the VOT results, the NK F0 patterns were consistent across topic-stance. We interpreted that the consistent F0 patterns might be due to prosodic mitigation (Idemaru et al. 2019, Hübscher et al. 2017). Given that speakers tend not to fluctuate F0 in polite speech, the NK speakers might also try to speak more politely because the NK speakers communicated with an unfamiliar SK interviewer (the first author), using honorific speech forms. Taken together, the findings show NK speakers\u27 mixed pattern of stop productions across topic-stance. Effects of interlocutor and speech address form can be examined in order to further shed light on the complex pattern in a future study