Textile Trajectories: How can textile making enhance the employability of homeless and vulnerably housed residents?

This paper discusses how textile community activities can enhance the employability of homeless and vulnerably housed residents as well as their mental health and wellbeing. The author uses the Londonbased ‘Home and Belonging’ textile programme as an action research case study to explore new methods for design engagement activities. As part of the two-year project a group of homeless and vulnerably housed residents took part in a number of bespoke textile and art workshops to support their personal development. The author initiated a new textile / arts programme in collaboration with the Crisis Skylight Centre in the London borough of Brent, based in Harlesden, one of the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) most economically deprived areas. The project included 35 Crisis members who have been affected by homelessness over the past two years. Participants reflected on their personal journeys of belonging and responded to the diverse findings through textile making. All participants are local residents who took part in a series of textile workshops between Spring 2017 – Summer 2018 developing a collection of T-Shirts and bags, upcycled tapestry designs, and embroidery badges as well as textile animations. The communal making activities were mapped through data collection, which demonstrates the increased self-esteem of the participants, leading to enhanced team working and communication skills, as well as creative and employability skills. The paper analyses the specific benefits of communal making and reviews existing methods. The author’s conclusion is to recommend the value of creative activities as part of life-long adult learning in order to develop transferrable professional and specific textile skills as well as increasing the well-being of inner-city communities

Material Boundaries

Published paper from the Future Scan 3 Conference in October 2015. Portray of the journey of a collaborative research project crossing the boundaries of textiles and ceramics

Technology and Textile with Responsibility

This chapter in the Techstyle 1.0 publication discusses 'Technology and Textile with Responsibility' through case studies from different Textiles Futures Research Centre researchers and their wide ranging understanding of sustainability and textiles

The Fabric of Belonging:Place-based textile community engagement

This article discusses how textile making can enhance the mental health and wellbeing of homeless and vulnerably housed residents as well as stimulating greater community exchange. The author uses the London-based ‘Home and Belonging’ arts programme as an action research case study to explore new methods for place-based textile engagement activities and how they can be utilised to enhance the social capital of urban neighbourhoods. As part of the programme a group of homeless and vulnerably housed residents mapped their personal journeys, explored their local neighbourhood and created a collection of upcycled chairs as well as bespoke textile designs. The positive effect of communal making activities becomes evident through visual data collection which demonstrates the increased confidence and self-esteem of the participants leading to reduced isolation as well as increased community engagement. The paper concludes to recommend the importance of community visibility in order to facilitate holistic urban fabric exchange

Adoption and impact of index-insurance and credit for smallholder farmers in developing countries: A systematic review

Farmers in most developing countries are mainly smallholders, with average farm size of 1-2 hectares. They tend to be constrained in investing in productivity-enhancing technologies because of limited household resources combined with lack of access to external finance on which they depend (Tadesse 2014). Smallholders often do not have access to credit provided by banks or special rural credit institutions. One of the constraints on such lending is the limited amount of collateral to securitize the repayment of the loan. This means that banks will have little recourse against defaulting borrowers. As a result, high-return economic cropping activities that typically require significant up-front investments (e.g. enhanced seeds and fertilizers) may be hampered by these credit constraints (Boucher et al., 2008). Provision of insurance can encourage higher supply of credit, both the implied demand for credit and supply thereof, and thus enhance agricultural inputs use. However, there is a lack of growth due to underdeveloped and imperfect markets for inputs, insurance and credit (Carter and Barrett, 2006; Cole et al., 2012) causing among others credit rationing. In the environment of underdeveloped and imperfect markets, a combined approach is needed (Alderman and Haque, 2007), as separate access to each of these is seriously restricted. More insight into the impact of linking insurance and credit is needed since there is limited information in the literature regarding the potential effect of bundling insurance and credit, for example on the extent to which insurance would reduce the cost of borrowing and make credit more accessible to the smallholder farmers (Tadesse et al., 2015). In this paper we review the most recent scientific literature on one specific form of insurance: index-insurance. As is well known; important advantages of index insurance are low administrative costs and the elimination of moral hazard. An important disadvantage is basis risk (see below). In this review paper we discuss the determinants of demand for index-insurance, the impact of index-insurance on smallholder livelihoods, and the existing links between index-insurance and credit. In this meta-analysis, we identify key discoveries on the potential of index-insurance in enhancing credit supply for smallholders and thus farm productivity. We focus on index-based insurance products since it offers a tentative potential for coping with losses in lower income countries (Skees, 2008)

Digital image analysis using video microscopy of human-derived prostate cancer vs normal prostate organoids to assess migratory behavior on extracellular matrix proteins

The advent of perpetuating living organoids derived from patient tissue is a promising avenue for cancer research but is limited by difficulties with precise characterization. In this brief communication, we demonstrate via time-lapse imaging distinct phenotypes of prostate organoids derived from patient material– without confirmation of cellular identity. We show that organoids derived from histologically normal tissue more readily spread on a physiologic extracellular matrix (ECM) than on pathologic ECM (p<0.0001), while tumor-derived organoids spread equally on either substrate (p=0.2406). This study is an important proof-of-concept to defer precise characterization of organoids and still glean information into disease pathology

Phenotype plasticity and altered sensitivity to chemotherapeutic agents in aggressive prostate cancer cells

In 2023, approximately 288,300 new diagnoses of prostate cancer will occur, with 34,700 disease-related deaths. Death from prostate cancer is associated with metastasis, enabled by progression of tumor phenotypes and successful extracapsular extension to reach Batson’s venous plexus, a specific route to the spine and brain. Using a mouse-human tumor xenograft model, we isolated an aggressive muscle invasive cell population of prostate cancer, called DU145J7 with a distinct biophysical phenotype, elevated histone H3K27, and increased matrix metalloproteinase 14 expression as compared to the non-aggressive parent cell population called DU145WT. Our goal was to determine the sensitivities to known chemotherapeutic agents of the aggressive cells as compared to the parent population. High-throughput screening was performed with 5,578 compounds, comprising of approved and investigational drugs for oncology. Eleven compounds were selected for additional testing, which revealed that vorinostat, 5-azacitidine, and fimepinostat (epigenetic inhibitors) showed 2.6-to-7.5-fold increases in lethality for the aggressive prostate cancer cell population as compared to the parent, as judged by the concentration of drug to inhibit 50% cell growth (IC50). On the other hand, the DU145J7 cells were 2.2-to-4.0-fold resistant to mitoxantrone, daunorubicin, and gimatecan (topoisomerase inhibitors) as compared to DU145WT. No differences in sensitivities between cell populations were found for docetaxel or pirarubicin. The increased sensitivity of DU145J7 prostate cancer cells to chromatin modifying agents suggests a therapeutic vulnerability occurs after tumor cells invade into and through muscle. Future work will determine which epigenetic modifiers and what combinations will be most effective to eradicate early aggressive tumor populations

Wildlife as Source of Zoonotic Infections

Zoonoses with a wildlife reservoir represent a major public health problem, affecting all continents