Introducing Ross Chambers

This article introduces the following one by Ross Chambers, with a personal and intellectual appreciation of Chambers' work and contribution to the field of cultural studies

From Criticism to Research: The 'Textual' in the Academy

When the first joint workshop on cultural research between the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) and the Department of Cultural Studies at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University (LU) began in July 2002, I had to admit to a little uncertainty in opening the proceedings. It was a novel experience for me to speak in Sydney as a member of a foreign delegation, and I spent an anxious moment wondering how to pitch my remarks: should I be telling old friends from UWS about what we do at Lingnan, or introducing new friends from Hong Kong to the Sydney—no, the Parramatta-based environment where we would spend the next few days

INVESTIGATION INTO THE FUNCTIONAL ROLES OF TAU AND ALPHA-SYNUCLEIN IN NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE

Tau and α-synuclein (SYN) are two intrinsically disordered proteins that aggregate in several common neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). We investigated the functional roles and interactions of tau and SYN in mouse models of neurodegenerative disease. We first determined that reduction and ablation of tau in aging mice is benign, validating tau reduction as a safe potential therapeutic target. Tau ablation prevents many AD-like behavioral and biochemical alterations in the human amyloid precursor protein mouse model (hAPP-J20) of AD, but how tau mediates these phenotypes is unknown. Using mass spectrometry to identify and quantify endogenous post-translational modifications of tau, we found similar levels of tau modifications in hAPP-J20 and wildtype mice suggesting that abnormal tau modification may not mediate AD-like phenotypes in hAPP-J20 mice. Because hyperphosphorylated and aggregated tau can also found in PD, we explored whether tau mediated PD-like phenotypes in a mouse model of toxic dopaminergic cell death and a wildtype SYN transgenic mouse model. Tau knockout tended to worsen toxicity in the dopaminergic cell death model and did not affect motor impairments in SYN transgenic mice, implying that tau does not mediate PD-like deficits in these models. We went on to describe SYN-induced cortical network dysfunction by electroencephalography and compared it to network dysfunction in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), a disease closely related to PD. We identified two types of neural network dysfunction in SYN transgenic mice: a shift in power from higher to lower frequency brain oscillations and seizures. Human DLB patients show a similar shift in oscillatory power and signs of aberrant network excitability, implying that SYN accumulation may contribute to neural network dysfunction in DLB. Tau ablation and acute anti-epileptic treatment reduced epileptiform activity in SYN mice, but did not affect the oscillatory shift. We propose that tau mediates aberrant network excitability induced by Aβ in hAPP-J20 mice, however, SYN can induce oscillatory and motor network dysfunction independently of tau function. In human dementia patients, tau lowering therapies may benefit patients with Aβ pathology but additional SYN-targeted therapies would be required for patients with SYN pathology

Evaluation of the impact of a school gardening intervention on children's fruit and vegetable intake: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Current academic literature suggests that school gardening programmes can provide an interactive environment with the potential to change children’s fruit and vegetable intake. This is the first cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) designed to evaluate whether a school gardening programme can have an effect on children’s fruit and vegetable intake. Methods: The trial included children from 23 schools; these schools were randomised into two groups, one to receive the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS)-led intervention and the other to receive the less involved Teacher-led intervention. A 24-hour food diary (CADET) was used to collect baseline and follow-up dietary intake 18 months apart. Questionnaires were also administered to evaluate the intervention implementation. Results: A total of 641 children completed the trial with a mean age of 8.1 years (95% CI: 8.0, 8.4). The unadjusted results from multilevel regression analysis revealed that for combined daily fruit and vegetable intake the Teacher-led group had a higher daily mean change of 8 g (95% CI: −19, 36) compared to the RHS-led group -32 g (95% CI: −60, −3). However, after adjusting for possible confounders this difference was not significant (intervention effect: −40 g, 95% CI: −88, 1; p = 0.06). The adjusted analysis of process measures identified that if schools improved their gardening score by 3 levels (a measure of school gardening involvement - the scale has 6 levels from 0 ‘no garden’ to 5 ‘community involvement’), irrespective of group allocation, children had, on average, a daily increase of 81 g of fruit and vegetable intake (95% CI: 0, 163; p = 0.05) compared to schools that had no change in gardening score. Conclusions: This study is the first cluster randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate a school gardening intervention. The results have found very little evidence to support the claims that school gardening alone can improve children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake. However, when a gardening intervention is implemented at a high level within the school it may improve children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake by a portion. Improving children’s fruit and vegetable intake remains a challenging task