Implementing creative methods in baby loss research: Exploring stillbirth bereaved parents’ journeys through collage

Grieving the loss of a baby may feel excruciatingly painful for parents. The rate of stillbirth in the United Kingdom is approximately eight babies per day. However, the rate of stillbirth disproportionally affects Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) families. This paper explores an ongoing doctoral project which incorporates collage-making as a creative method to explore how BAME stillbirth bereaved parents access bereavement support. Creative methods may generate findings that can better reach public audiences to spark transformational change. Collage is a visual interpretive tool that is generally accessible to the public. Collages are often created by selecting images from magazines or newspapers or textured paper mediums, where the participants cut or alters the images and arranges and attaches them to mediums such as cardboard or paper. Incorporating collage in research can serve as a useful method when engaging with participants who are perhaps not comfortable communicating their thoughts about sensitive subjects. In addition to using collage as a creative research method, this study also features collage as a reflexive tool. Collage is an efficient tool for uncovering what is not said out loud about grief, but which is very much present within a grieving person. Breaking the silence and sharing the loss of a child through creative methods enhances the understanding of the experience of perinatal loss and provides a voice to those who would otherwise remain unheard

Aspen Regeneration and Response to Fire in the Intermountain West

The history of Populus tremuloides regeneration in the Intermountain West, particularly western Wyoming, is one of prolific vegetative reproduction following wildland fire. The reproductive physiology of aspen and its disturbance-response characteristics are explored through a review of previous studies. The combination of fire suppression and increased herbivory on aspen by wild and domestic ungulates is likely facilitating conifer invasion of areas historically dominated by aspen as has been observed in parts of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado over the past 100 years. A case study of the regenerative response of aspen to wildland fire in western Wyoming demonstrates how physiology, life history characteristics, and disturbance regimes affect the presence and distribution of aspen across the western landscape. The regenerative response of aspen, Populus tremuloides, was monitored following two spatially overlapping wildland fire events on Shadow Mountain that occurred 6 years apart. The fires left a landscape mosaic of unburned, once-burned, and twice-burned sites ranging in size from approximately 0.1 to 12.0 hectares. Aspen suckering response in burned areas was significantly greater than that observed in unburned areas. Less regeneration occurred on plots that reburned than on those that burned only once; however, by the second year post-fire sucker numbers on the reburned plots were not statistically significantly lower than they were on the plots that burned only once. Self-thinning of suckers observed on the plots burned only in the first fire suggests that sucker numbers on once-burned and twice-burned plots will converge over a 6- to 10-year period. Sucker numbers on burned plots appear sufficient for stand replacement, while those on unburned plots are very low, potentially consistent with seral aspen stands that may be subject to conifer encroachment

Making the Grade in Memphis

Catholic schools achieved the greatest social transformation in American history, pulling impoverished Irish immigrants out of the underclass and into the working and middle classes, writes Patrick McCloskey, author of The Street Stops Here —an account of a year in the life of a Catholic school in Harlem. These schools now provide a lifeline for disadvantaged, non-Catholic minorities in urban America, boosting graduation and college acceptance rates, and outperforming many equivalent public schools. But they are also disappearing from the very neighborhoods that need them most. McCloskey reports on how one diocese has bucked the trend, what it means to one family, and what it could mean for America

Visualizing the Law: Methods for Mapping the Legal Landscape and Drawing Analogies

Visualization of information is currently touted in many major disciplines as the best way to manage large amounts of data and make information intuitively accessible. The law suffers from the same information complexity as other disciplines, but has heretofore failed to investigate the possibilities of approaching the law visually. This Comment employs the metaphor of legal map-making as a way to introduce the concept of visualizing the law. It presents two methods for making legal maps. The first is based on visualizing the law\u27s organizing metaphors, using examples of Evidence as a Bridge and Negligence as an Eight-Armed Balancing Scale. The second provides a template approach to case synthesis, illustrated by an analysis of the copyright case Sony Corporation ofAmerica v. Universal City Studios, Inc. Each example is a map of the law, in that it provides visual guidance for understanding legal concepts. The methods and examples presented are intended to provide a starting place for legal thinkers to investigate the possibilities of visualizing the law as a way to increase clarity and efficiency when analyzing and communicating legal issues

Vascular Plant Species Richness and Distribution in a Heterogeneous Landscape

The distribution of vascular plant species and species richness in a mid-elevation Rocky Mountain landscape can be attributed to a number of variables. The distribution of species with respect to physiognomic type, patch size, shape, and environmental heterogeneity was assessed for a mosaic landscape comprised of conifer forest, deciduous forest, and shrub-steppe physiognomic types in the southwest comer of Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. This vegetation is representative of that found in other montane landscapes of the central Rocky Mountains. The vegetation was mapped to physiognomic type; distinct vegetation patches were sampled using one or more small (50 m2) plots. This method allowed for sampling of very small as well as large vegetation patches. Species richness, distribution, and exotic species distribution were analyzed at the plot and patch level. A preference metric was developed and used to assess species preferences for each of the three physiognomic types. Species preference for physiognomic type was analyzed for all species occurring at least 10 times in the 276-plot data set. Each of these species occurred in more than one physiognomic type. The majority of species showed a significant preference for a single physiognomic type, while several species had dual preferences. Species distributions were modeled using physiognomic type as a predictor variable as well as slope and aspect; type was a significant predictor variable in 70% of the individual species models. Species richness was highest at both the plot and patch level in the shrub-steppe physiognomic type. Exotic species richness and proportion of exotic species present were also highest in the shrub-steppe vegetation. The deciduous forest vegetation is intermediate to the shrub-steppe and conifer vegetation in plot-level richness. Larger patches of deciduous forest had higher richness at both the plot and the patch level. Patch size did not impact plot level species richness in the other two vegetation types. The conifer physiognornic type had the lowest plot-level species richness, but high plot-to-plot variability (beta diversity). The species composition of the three physiognomic types is overlapping, but not nested - each contributes to the diversity of species found in this landscape

Directing Selectivity of Electrochemical Carbon Dioxide Reduction Using Plasmonics

Catalysts for electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction in aqueous electrolytes suffer from high energy input requirements, competition with hydrogen evolution from water reduction, and low product selectivity. Theory suggests that plasmonic catalysts can be tuned to selectively lower the energy barrier for a specific reaction in a set of competitive reactions, but there has been little experimental evidence demonstrating plasmon-driven selectivity in complicated multielectron electrochemical processes. Here, the photoactivity at a plasmonically active silver thin film electrode at small cathodic potentials selectively generates carbon monoxide while simultaneously suppressing hydrogen production. At larger cathodic potentials, the photoactivity promotes production of methanol and formate. Methanol production is observed only under illumination, not in dark conditions. The preference of the plasmonic activity for carbon dioxide reduction over hydrogen evolution and the ability to tune plasmonic activity with voltage demonstrates that plasmonics provide a promising approach to promote complex electrochemical reactions over other competing reactions

Unraveling the Cationic and Anionic Redox Reactions in a Conventional Layered Oxide Cathode

Increasing interest in high-energy lithium-ion batteries has triggered the demand to clarify the reaction mechanism in battery cathodes during high-potential operation. However, the reaction mechanism often involves both transition-metal and oxygen activities that remain elusive. Here we report a comprehensive study of both cationic and anionic redox mechanisms of LiNiO2 nearly full delithiation. Selection of pure LiNiO2 removes the complication of multiple transition metals. Using combined X-ray absorption spectroscopy, resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, and operando differential electrochemical mass spectrometry, we are able to clarify the redox reactions of transition metals in the bulk and at the surface, reversible lattice oxygen redox, and irreversible oxygen release associated with surface reactions. Many findings presented here bring attention to different types of oxygen activities and metal-oxygen interactions in layered oxides, which are of crucial importance to the advancement of a Ni-rich layered oxide cathode for high capacity and long cycling performance