Transgressive learning communities: Transformative spaces for underprivileged, underserved, and historically underrepresented graduate students at their institutions

In this article, we propose a new vision of educational development that reimagines how graduate instructors are socialized and professionalized in academic settings. We describe a transgressive learning community that empowers graduate instructors with tools to reveal, mitigate, and disrupt oppressive structures in higher education. Our learning community is founded on critical race and feminist conceptualizations of pedagogical inquiry in its design, implementation, and assessment to serve underprivileged, underserved, and historically underrepresented graduate students. We argue that the intersections of marginalized and graduate student identities create distinct experiences of discrimination, marginalization, tokenism, isolation, and impostor syndrome due to a lack of sustained teaching mentorship within the academy. The transgressive learning community model that we propose in this article functions to create spaces of transgressive and transformational pedagogical engagement for graduate students who exist at the intersections of these identities

Creating change in government to address the social determinants of health: how can efforts be improved?

Background - The evidence base for the impact of social determinants of health has been strengthened considerably in the last decade. Increasingly, the public health field is using this as a foundation for arguments and actions to change government policies. The Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach, alongside recommendations from the 2010 Marmot Review into health inequalities in the UK (which we refer to as the ‘Fairness Agenda’), go beyond advocating for the redesign of individual policies, to shaping the government structures and processes that facilitate the implementation of these policies. In doing so, public health is drawing on recent trends in public policy towards ‘joined up government’, where greater integration is sought between government departments, agencies and actors outside of government. Methods - In this paper we provide a meta-synthesis of the empirical public policy research into joined up government, drawing out characteristics associated with successful joined up initiatives. - We use this thematic synthesis as a basis for comparing and contrasting emerging public health interventions concerned with joined-up action across government. Results - We find that HiAP and the Fairness Agenda exhibit some of the characteristics associated with successful joined up initiatives, however they also utilise ‘change instruments’ that have been found to be ineffective. Moreover, we find that – like many joined up initiatives – there is room for improvement in the alignment between the goals of the interventions and their design. Conclusion - Drawing on public policy studies, we recommend a number of strategies to increase the efficacy of current interventions. More broadly, we argue that up-stream interventions need to be ‘fit-for-purpose’, and cannot be easily replicated from one context to the next

Reproduction, growth and early life history of the Antarctic gammarid amphipod Paramoera walkeri

The gammarid Paramoera walkeri is one of the most abundant amphipods in near-shore Antarctic waters. There has been increasing interest in P. walkeri as a test species for ecotoxicology studies and bio-monitoring for contaminants in Antarctica, but further information is needed to improve understanding of its biology including reproduction, growth and early life history. Female P. walkeri brooding late-stage embryos were collected in summer from coastal waters in the Vestfold Hills region, East Antarctica, and were maintained in the laboratory. Timing of neonate release, brood size and early post-marsupial survival and growth (total length) of juveniles were recorded. Brood size ranged from 26 to 86 neonates per female, and juvenile survival rates were high (96 %). The increase in body length of juveniles ranged from 0.017 to 0.043 mm/day with a mean growth rate of 0.028 mm/day (0.94 % per day) over 11 weeks with strong evidence for exponential growth over time. The body lengths of laboratory-raised juveniles were not significantly different to those of wild-caught juveniles with the same number of segments (15) in the first antennae, indicating that growth may have progressed at a similar rate in vivo and in situ. Juvenile growth was similar when modelled over time or by addition of first antennal segments. This study provides new information on the reproductive biology and early life history of P. walkeri, with further evidence that Antarctic amphipods exhibit slow growth, even when food is not a limiting factor, compared with species from lower latitudes

An evaluation of the factors affecting the quality of highway runoff in the Austin, Texas area

Center for Research in Water Resource

Lethal and behavioural impacts of diesel and fuel oil on the Antarctic amphipod Paramoera walkeri

Toxicity testing with Antarctic species is required for risk assessment of fuel spills in Antarctic coastal waters. The lethal and sub-lethal (movement behaviour) sensitivity of adults and juveniles of the Antarctic amphipod Paramoera walkeri to the water accommodated fractions (WAF) of three fuels were estimated in extended duration tests at -1°C to 21 d. Response of P. walkeri for lethal hydrocarbon concentrations was slow, with LC50s first able to be estimated at 7 d for adults exposed to Special Antarctic Blend diesel (SAB), which had the highest hydrocarbon concentrations of the three fuel WAFs. Juveniles showed greater response to marine gas oil (MGO) and intermediate residual fuel oil (IFO 180) at longer exposure durations and were most sensitive at 21 d to IFO 180 (LC50 = 12 µg/L). Adults were initially more sensitive than juveniles; however, at 21 d juveniles were more than twice as sensitive as adults to SAB (LC50 = 153 µg/L and 377 µg/L respectively). Significant effects on movement behaviour were evident at earlier time points and lower concentrations than was mortality in all three fuel WAFs, and juveniles were highly sensitive to sub-lethal effects of MGO. These first estimates of Antarctic amphipod sensitivity to diesel and fuel oils in seawater contribute to development of ecologically relevant water quality guidelines for management of hydrocarbon contamination in the region. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved