Crossing The Line

Crossing The Line brought together 3 of Europe’s leading theatre companies who make professional touring theatre with learning disabled artists. This chapter investigates their 27 month collaboration, which incorporated residency exchanges, the making of new stage productions, wider industry engagement and a culminating 3-day Festival in Roubaix, France. Operating as project dramaturg, Meth argues that Learning disabled theatre is not simply a subset of theatre made by physically or sensorily disabled people, but rather calls for different approaches; which could productively include the intercultural

A weighted blanket increases pre-sleep salivary concentrations of melatonin in young, healthy adults

Weighted blankets have emerged as a potential non-pharmacological intervention to ease conditions such as insomnia and anxiety. Despite a lack of experimental evidence, these alleged effects are frequently attributed to a reduced activity of the endogenous stress systems and an increased release of hormones such as oxytocin and melatonin. Thus, the aim of the present in-laboratory crossover study (26 young and healthy participants, including 15 men and 11 women) was to investigate if using a weighted blanket (similar to 12% of body weight) at bedtime resulted in higher salivary concentrations of melatonin and oxytocin compared with a light blanket (similar to 2.4% of body weight). We also examined possible differences in salivary concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, salivary alpha-amylase activity (as an indicative metric of sympathetic nervous system activity), subjective sleepiness, and sleep duration. When using a weighted blanket, the 1 hour increase of salivary melatonin from baseline (i.e., 22:00) to lights off (i.e., 23:00) was about 32% higher (p = 0.011). No other significant differences were found between the blanket conditions, including subjective sleepiness and total sleep duration. Our study is the first to suggest that using a weighted blanket may result in a more significant release of melatonin at bedtime. Future studies should investigate whether the stimulatory effect on melatonin secretion is observed on a nightly basis when frequently using a weighted blanket over weeks to months. It remains to be determined whether the observed increase in melatonin may be therapeutically relevant for the previously described effects of the weighted blanket on insomnia and anxiety

Integrating social science into conservation planning

A growing body of literature has highlighted the value of social science for conservation, yet the diverse approaches of the social sciences are still inconsistently incorporated in conservation initiatives. Building greater capacity for social science integration in conservation requires frameworks and case studies that provide concrete guidance and specific examples. To address this need, we have developed a framework aimed at expanding the role for social science in formal conservation planning processes. Our framework illustrates multiple ways in which social science research can contribute to four stages of such processes: 1) defining the problem and project team; 2) defining goals; 3) identifying impact pathways and designing interventions; and 4) developing and evaluating indicators of success (or failure). We then present a timely case study of wolf reintroduction in Colorado, U.S.A., to demonstrate the opportunities, challenges, and complexities of applying our framework in practice

Decadent Plays

While commonly associated with hedonism and excess, the word ‘decadence’ has a much richer set of connotations, including a taste for decay, delight in uncommon sexual and cultural practices, and the upturning of moral hierarchies. For this event, we selected some of the most innovative scenes from Remy de Gourmont’s Lilith (1892), in a new translation by Dan Rebellato; the first act of Jean Lorrain’s Ennoïa (1905), translated into English for the first time by Jennifer Higgins; Djuna Barnes’s brilliant one-act play The Dove (1923); and a little-known text that was well ahead of its time by Izumi Kyōka called Kerria Japonica (1923). The curators and translators also offered short introductions to each of the performed texts. The night was an unusual and expansive evening filled with femme fatales, sadomasochistic pleasures, queer desires, and the fall of humankind

Association of Daily Eating Duration and Day-To-Day Variability in the Timing of Eating With Fatal Cancer Risk in Older Men

Meal timing has significant effects on health. However, whether meal timing is associated with the risk of developing and dying of cancer is not well-researched in humans. In the present study, we used data from 941 community-dwelling men aged 71 years who participated in the Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Adult Men to examine the association of meal timing with cancer morbidity and fatal cancer. The following meal timing variables were derived from 7-day food diaries: (i) daily eating duration, i.e., the time between the first and last eating episode of an arbitrary day; (ii) the calorically weighted midpoint of the daily eating interval, a proxy of when the eating window typically occurs during an arbitrary day; and (iii) the day-to-day variability in the timing of eating. We also assessed the reported daily energy intake reliability using the Goldberg method. During a mean observational period of 13.4 years, 277 men (29.4%) were diagnosed with cancer. Furthermore, 191 men (20%) died from cancer during 14.7 years of follow-up. As shown by Cox regression adjusted for potential confounders (e.g., smoking status and daily energy intake), men with reliable dietary reports whose daily eating intervals were on average 13 h long had a 2.3-fold greater fatal cancer risk than men whose daily eating windows were on average about 11 h long. We also found that men with an average day-to-day variability in the timing of eating of 48 to 74 min had a 2- to 2.2-fold higher fatal cancer risk than those with the lowest average day-to-day variability in the timing of eating (i.e., 23 min). No clear associations were found in men with inadequate dietary reports, emphasizing the need to consider the reliability of dietary records in nutritional epidemiology. To fully unlock its potential, studies are needed to test whether recommendations to time-restrict the 24-h eating interval and reduce day-to-day variability in the timing of eating can meaningfully alter the risk of death due to cancer

A weighted blanket increases pre-sleep salivary concentrations of melatonin in young, healthy adults

Weighted blankets have emerged as a potential non-pharmacological intervention to ease conditions such as insomnia and anxiety. Despite a lack of experimental evidence, these alleged effects are frequently attributed to a reduced activity of the endogenous stress systems and an increased release of hormones such as oxytocin and melatonin. Thus, the aim of the present in-laboratory crossover study (26 young and healthy participants, including 15 men and 11 women) was to investigate if using a weighted blanket (~12% of body weight) at bedtime resulted in higher salivary concentrations of melatonin and oxytocin compared with a light blanket (~2.4% of body weight). We also examined possible differences in salivary concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, salivary alpha-amylase activity (as an indicative metric of sympathetic nervous system activity), subjective sleepiness, and sleep duration. When using a weighted blanket, the 1 hour increase of salivary melatonin from baseline (i.e., 22:00) to lights off (i.e., 23:00) was about 32% higher (p = 0.011). No other significant differences were found between the blanket conditions, including subjective sleepiness and total sleep duration. Our study is the first to suggest that using a weighted blanket may result in a more significant release of melatonin at bedtime. Future studies should investigate whether the stimulatory effect on melatonin secretion is observed on a nightly basis when frequently using a weighted blanket over weeks to months. It remains to be determined whether the observed increase in melatonin may be therapeutically relevant for the previously described effects of the weighted blanket on insomnia and anxiety

De novo point mutations in patients diagnosed with ataxic cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy is a sporadic disorder with multiple likely aetiologies, but frequently considered to be caused by birth asphyxia. Genetic investigations are rarely performed in patients with cerebral palsy and there is little proven evidence of genetic causes. As part of a large project investigating children with ataxia, we identified four patients in our cohort with a diagnosis of ataxic cerebral palsy. They were investigated using either targeted next generation sequencing or trio-based exome sequencing and were found to have mutations in three different genes, KCNC3, ITPR1 and SPTBN2. All the mutations were de novo and associated with increased paternal age. The mutations were shown to be pathogenic using a combination of bioinformatics analysis and in vitro model systems. This work is the first to report that the ataxic subtype of cerebral palsy can be caused by de novo dominant point mutations, which explains the sporadic nature of these cases. We conclude that at least some subtypes of cerebral palsy may be caused by de novo genetic mutations and patients with a clinical diagnosis of cerebral palsy should be genetically investigated before causation is ascribed to perinatal asphyxia or other aetiologies