‘Becoming your best’: student perspectives on community in the pursuit of aspirations

Achieving equitable schooling outcomes for young people living in communities of low socio-economic status is a prominent issue that assumes focus in educational policy, theory and practice both in Australia and internationally. This paper draws upon the narratives of five secondary school students living in the northern urban fringe of Adelaide in South Australia, a region that is characterised by socio-economic challenge (Prosser et al. in Connecting lives and learning: Renewing pedagogy in the middle years, 2010). Specifically, the participants’ understandings and perspectives about community are used to examine their aspirations through the analysis of qualitative data obtained from a focus group, visual methods, a storying activity and semi-structured interviews. Discussion on students’ construction and pursuit of aspirations is framed by Appadurai’s (Culture and public action: 59–84, 2004, p. 67) conceptualisation of aspiration as a cultural capacity influenced by one’s social, cultural and economic contexts. This paper demonstrates that students from low socio-economic backgrounds have aspirations for their future which are influenced by their schooling experiences and the positive trust relationships they develop with teachers in community. As such, connections between place and learning are highlighted as critical factors in achieving more equitable schooling outcomes. The research identifies factors in ‘community’ that shape young people’s aspirations and ways in which young people can be supported in navigating toward their aspirations

Lipid from Infective L. donovani Regulates Acute Myeloid Cell Growth via Mitochondria Dependent MAPK Pathway

The microbial source, which includes live, attenuated, or genetically modified microbes or their cellular component(s) or metabolites, has gained increasing significance for therapeutic intervention against several pathophysiological conditions of disease including leukemia, which remains an incurable disease till now despite recent advances in the medical sciences. We therefore took up the present study to explore if the leishmanial lipid (pLLD) isolated from L. donovani can play an anti-neoplastic role in acute myeloid leukemia cells by regulating cellular growth. Indeed pLLD significantly inhibited cell proliferation of four AML cell lines (HL-60, MOLT-4, U937, and K562). Scanning electron microscopy and DNA fragmentation analysis revealed that it significantly induced apoptosis of U937 cells through morphological alteration. Occurrence of apoptosis was checked by using Annexin exposure and this established that the cell cycle was arrested at G0/G1 phase in time-dependent manner. pLLD increased the intracellular ROS with alteration of mitochondrial membrane potential, as detected using DCFDA. It also regulated the expression of apoptosis-related proteins like Bax, Bcl2, Bad and t-Bid besides causing cleavage of PARP as determined by western blot analysis. Treatment of U937 cells with pLLD induced the activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)1/2, c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)1/2, p38, and caspases 9/3. The results suggest that pLLD induces apoptosis in acute myeloid leukemia cells possibly via increasing intracellular ROS and regulating the MAPK pathwa