Seeking empathy in conscious cities

The vision of the conscious city has entered the radar. It takes as its heartland, the idea of a ‘conversation’ between inhabitants, digitally imbued objects and responsive architectural fabrics at the city scale. Can advances in the internet of everything, neuroscience, AI and big data enable social opportunities in a more sentient city? This chapter considers the ethics of an architectural dialogic — bringing questions of computational neutrality and democratic participation to the fore in the design and curation of ‘intelligent architecture’

3×4: a telematic/architectural hypersurface

In her 2004 publication ‘Virtual Theatres’ Gabriella Giannachi wrote on the processes of doubling presence in interactive artworks, from liquid architecture to telematic performance, where the physical and virtual realms meet and intersect at a place she termed the hypersurface. “Through the hypersurface, the viewer can enter the work of art, be part of it, as well as interact with it. Because the hypersurface is a liminal space, the viewer can double their presence and be in both the real and the virtual environment simultaneously.” Ten years on, the authors of this paper produced on three occasions a telematic/architectural installation. 3×4 metre ‘blue-box’ rooms linking public audiences at London’s Southbank Centre with residents in New Delhi’s Khirkee Extension, an informal settlement where Khoj International Artists’ Association is located. This installation reflected the changing spatial and digital fabric of both cities, as well as the prescribed dimensions of dwellings in some of Delhi’s new resettlement colonies. Whilst these audiences shared and compared these familiar dimensions across the global north/south, they explored a kinaesthetic experience of ‘doubling presence’. Through self-choreographed telematic performance within digital architectures with physical constraints, they crafted new social fictions, imaginings and happenings in the hypersurface. This paper discusses this juncture between telematic-kinaesthetic experience and the 3×4 metre dimensions to explore new hybrids of hypersurface space, as observed and experienced by public audiences. Reflecting on this doubling public presence, we conclude by considering their telepresent proprioception for future thinking on the interlacing of performance, architecture and telematic art forms. http://www.3x4m.or

Building social capital through breastfeeding peer support: Insights from an evaluation of a voluntary breastfeeding peer support service in North-West England

Background: Peer support is reported to be a key method to help build social capital in communities. To date there are no studies that describe how this can be achieved through a breastfeeding peer support service. In this paper we present findings from an evaluation of a voluntary model of breastfeeding peer support in North-West England to describe how the service was operationalized and embedded into the community. This study was undertaken from May, 2012 to May, 2013. Methods: Interviews (group or individual) were held with 87 participants: 24 breastfeeding women, 13 peer supporters and 50 health and community professionals. The data contained within 23 monthly monitoring reports (January, 2011 to February 2013) compiled by the voluntary peer support service were also extracted and analysed. Results: Thematic analysis was undertaken using social capital concepts as a theoretical lens. Key findings were identified to resonate with ’bonding’, ‘bridging’ and ‘linking’ forms of social capital. These insights illuminate how the peer support service facilitates ‘bonds’ with its members, and within and between women who access the service; how the service ‘bridges’ with individuals from different interests and backgrounds, and how ‘links’ were forged with those in authority to gain access and reach to women and to promote a breastfeeding culture. Some of the tensions highlighted within the social capital literature were also identified. Conclusions: Horizontal and vertical relationships forged between the peer support service and community members enabled peer support to be embedded into care pathways, helped to promote positive attitudes to breastfeeding and to disseminate knowledge and maximise reach for breastfeeding support across the community. Further effort to engage with those of different ethnic backgrounds and to resolve tensions between peer supporters and health professionals is warranted

The discovery of potent ribosomal S6 kinase inhibitors by high-throughput screening and structure-guided drug design.

The ribosomal P70 S6 kinases play a crucial role in PI3K/mTOR regulated signalling pathways and are therefore potential targets for the treatment of a variety of diseases including diabetes and cancer. In this study we describe the identification of three series of chemically distinct S6K1 inhibitors. In addition, we report a novel PKA-S6K1 chimeric protein with five mutations in or near its ATP-binding site, which was used to determine the binding mode of two of the three inhibitor series, and provided a robust system to aid the optimisation of the oxadiazole-substituted benzimidazole inhibitor series. We show that the resulting oxadiazole-substituted aza-benzimidazole is a potent and ligand efficient S6 kinase inhibitor, which blocks the phosphorylation of RPS6 at Ser235/236 in TSC negative HCV29 human bladder cancer cells by inhibiting S6 kinase activity and thus provides a useful tool compound to investigate the function of S6 kinases

Pan-ethnic carrier screening and prenatal diagnosis for spinal muscular atrophy: clinical laboratory analysis of >72 400 specimens

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a leading inherited cause of infant death with a reported incidence of ∼1 in 10 000 live births and is second to cystic fibrosis as a common, life-shortening autosomal recessive disorder. The American College of Medical Genetics has recommended population carrier screening for SMA, regardless of race or ethnicity, to facilitate informed reproductive options, although other organizations have cited the need for additional large-scale studies before widespread implementation. We report our data from carrier testing (n=72 453) and prenatal diagnosis (n=121) for this condition. Our analysis of large-scale population carrier screening data (n=68 471) demonstrates the technical feasibility of high throughput testing and provides mutation carrier and allele frequencies at a level of accuracy afforded by large data sets. In our United States pan-ethnic population, the calculated a priori carrier frequency of SMA is 1/54 with a detection rate of 91.2%, and the pan-ethnic disease incidence is calculated to be 1/11 000. Carrier frequency and detection rates provided for six major ethnic groups in the United States range from 1/47 and 94.8% in the Caucasian population to 1/72 and 70.5% in the African American population, respectively. This collective experience can be utilized to facilitate accurate pre- and post-test counseling in the settings of carrier screening and prenatal diagnosis for SMA

Ribonucleoprotein Assembly Defects Correlate with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Severity and Preferentially Affect a Subset of Spliceosomal snRNPs

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a motor neuron disease caused by reduced levels of the survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. SMN together with Gemins2-8 and unrip proteins form a macromolecular complex that functions in the assembly of small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) of both the major and the minor splicing pathways. It is not known whether the levels of spliceosomal snRNPs are decreased in SMA. Here we analyzed the consequence of SMN deficiency on snRNP metabolism in the spinal cord of mouse models of SMA with differing phenotypic severities. We demonstrate that the expression of a subset of Gemin proteins and snRNP assembly activity are dramatically reduced in the spinal cord of severe SMA mice. Comparative analysis of different tissues highlights a similar decrease in SMN levels and a strong impairment of snRNP assembly in tissues of severe SMA mice, although the defect appears smaller in kidney than in neural tissue. We further show that the extent of reduction in both Gemin proteins expression and snRNP assembly activity in the spinal cord of SMA mice correlates with disease severity. Remarkably, defective SMN complex function in snRNP assembly causes a significant decrease in the levels of a subset of snRNPs and preferentially affects the accumulation of U11 snRNP—a component of the minor spliceosome—in tissues of severe SMA mice. Thus, impairment of a ubiquitous function of SMN changes the snRNP profile of SMA tissues by unevenly altering the normal proportion of endogenous snRNPs. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that SMN deficiency affects the splicing machinery and in particular the minor splicing pathway of a rare class of introns in SMA