Self-advocacy and families: co-researching with people with learning difficulties

This thesis examines how adults with learning difficulties experience self-advocacy in their families. I take a qualitative approach, using in-depth interviewing. My work explores participatory research with people with learning difficulties, involving a small group of people with learning difficulties as co-researchers. I use a dialectical materialist understanding of disability, based on the social model. The thesis adds to the recent theorising of learning difficulty. People with learning difficulties are discussed as an oppressed group. The social identity of adults with learning difficulties is that they need care and control, and are like children. Self-advocacy is shown to claim autonomy and adulthood. This thesis argues that self-advocacy challenges the social identity of learning difficulty, but that the oppression of people with learning difficulties is such that their attempts to self-organise are limited. The thesis examines the challenge to family roles implicit in this. While the principles of self-advocacy apply to home life, in my research practice did not consciously transfer self-advocacy to home. Service influence and the role of advisers were significant. Nevertheless, for my respondents, self-advocacy did impact at home. Day-to-day control at home seemed to be allowed, with real control still resting with parents. The thesis uses models from family literature to illuminate control and autonomy at home. The traditional concept of the 'handicapped family is undermined by my research. Stereotypes of controlling parents holding back their adult children were not found, but the values of independence and separateness are not desirable to all families or adults with learning difficulties. My work links adult status to the identity of learning difficulty itself, exploring how people define themselves

Optical frequency tripling with improved suppression and sideband selection

Journal Article, Impact factor:3.749A novel optical dispersion tolerant millimetre-wave radio-over-fibre system using optical frequency tripling technique with enhanced and selectable sideband suppression is demonstrated. The implementation utilises cascaded optical modulators to achieve either an optical single sideband (OSSB) or double sideband-suppressed carrier (DSB-SC) signal with high sideband suppression. Our analysis and simulation results indicate that the achievable suppression ratio of this configuration is only limited by other system factors such as optical noise and drifting of the operational conditions. The OSSB transmission system performance is assessed experimentally by the transport of 4 WiMax channels modulating a 10 GHz optical upconverted RF carrier as well as for optical frequency doubling and tripling. The 10 GHz and tripled carrier at 30 GHz are dispersion tolerant resulting both in an average relative constellation error (RCE) of -28.7 dB after 40 km of fibre. (C)2011 Optical Society of AmericaFundação para a Ciência e Tecnologi

From Both Sides Now: The Job Talk’s Role in Matching Candidates with Law Schools

In the heavily competitive law school teaching job market, the so-called “job talk” has assumed increasing importance in the ultimate hiring decision. Nevertheless, there is little published information to assist a law school faculty in structuring or evaluating the job talk and a similar paucity of information for candidates to guide them in creating and preparing for the presentation of their talk. This article is intended to fill that void. The article guides the preparation of faculty and candidates for both the job talk itself and for the crucial Q&A period that follows the talk. The article represents the authors’ collective 87 years of experience seeing both successful and unsuccessful job talks, as well as the experience of 15 colleagues around the country who reviewed our initial draft and commented on it from the perspective of their various law schools

Greening disaster risk management: Issues at the interface of disaster risk management and low carbon development

This paper explores the links between DRM and low carbon development and thereby sheds light on a new and emerging research and development agenda. It elaborates the carbon and greenhouse gas implications of DRM interventions and post-disaster reconstruction practices, drawing on case studies from flood risk reduction, coastal protection and drought risk reduction and considers how post-disaster housing and energy supply reconstruction can be 'greened'. The paper makes suggestions about how the carbon implications of DRM measures could be accounted for in a coherent manner

Executing the Will of the Voters?: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle

Since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, California taxpayers have spent roughly $4 billion to fund a dysfunctional death penalty system that has carried out no more than 13 executions. The current backlog of death penalty cases is so severe that most of the 714 prisoners now on death row will wait well over 20 years before their cases are resolved. Many of these condemned inmates will thus languish on death row for decades, only to die of natural causes while still waiting for their cases to be resolved. Despite numerous warnings of the deterioration of California’s capital punishment system and its now imminent collapse, the Legislature has repeatedly failed to enact measures that would improve this death row deadlock. At the same time, voters have continued to expand the death penalty through the direct voter initiative process to increase the number of death-eligible crimes. This Article uncovers the true costs of administering the death penalty in California by tracing how much taxpayers are spending for death penalty trials versus non–death penalty trials and for costs incurred due to the delay from the initial sentence of death to the execution. In addition, the Article examines how the voter initiative process has misled voters into agreeing to the wasteful expenditure of billions of dollars on a system that has been ineffective in carrying out punishment against those who commit the worst of crimes. Our research reveals that in every proposition expanding the list of deatheligible crimes between 1978 and 2000, the information provided by the Legislative Analyst’s Office in the Voter Information Guides told voters that the fiscal impact of these initiatives would be “none,” “unknown,” “indeterminable,” or “minor.” Relying, at least in part, on this information, Californians have used the voter initiative process to enact “tough on crime” laws that, without adequate funding from the Legislature to create an effective capital punishment system, have wasted immense taxpayer resources and created increasingly serious due process problems. Finally, this Article analyzes corrective measures that the Legislature could take to reduce the death row backlog, and proposes several voter initiatives that California voters may wish to consider if the Legislature continues to ignore the problem. It is the authors’ view that unless California voters want to tolerate the continued waste of billions of tax dollars on the state’s now-defunct death penalty system, they must either demand meaningful reforms to ensure that the system is administered in a fair and effective manner or, if they do not want to be taxed to fund the needed reforms, they must recognize that the only alternative is to abolish the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole

From Both Sides Now: The Job Talk’s Role in Matching Candidates with Law Schools

In the heavily competitive law school teaching job market, the so-called “job talk” has assumed increasing importance in the ultimate hiring decision. Nevertheless, there is little published information to assist a law school faculty in structuring or evaluating the job talk and a similar paucity of information for candidates to guide them in creating and preparing for the presentation of their talk. This article is intended to fill that void. The article guides the preparation of faculty and candidates for both the job talk itself and for the crucial Q&A period that follows the talk. The article represents the authors’ collective 87 years of experience seeing both successful and unsuccessful job talks, as well as the experience of 15 colleagues around the country who reviewed our initial draft and commented on it from the perspective of their various law schools

Women in Control: Pioneering Diabetes Self-Management Medical Group Visits in the Virtual World

Background: The current state of diabetes self-management (DSM) education and support for diabetic patients is inadequate, especially for minority women who experience disproportionately high rates of diabetes mellitus (DM) in the US. While DSM education and support enables individuals with diabetes to make positive lifestyle choices and achieve clinical goals, this type of support is difficult to deliver in medical practice settings. Virtual reality can assist DM patients and their clinical teams by providing effective educational tools in an engaging, learner-centered environment that fosters self-efficacy and skill proficiency. Methods: Our prior research demonstrated that virtual worlds are suitable for supporting DSM education. Building upon this success, we are now investigating whether DSM virtual world medical group visits lead to similarly effective health and educational outcomes compared to face-to-face medical group visits. Currently in year one of a five year randomized controlled trial, we aim to compare the effectiveness of a virtual world DSM medical group visit format versus a face-to-face DSM medical group visit format to increase physical activity and improve glucose control (HbA1c) among Black/African American and Hispanic women with uncontrolled DM. We will also conduct a qualitative study of participant engagement with the virtual world platform to characterize learners’ interactions with the technology and assess its correlation with DSM behaviors and diabetes control. Discussion: Novel methods to promote diabetes self-management are critically needed, and the use of virtual world technology to conduct medical group visits offers a unique approach to such issue. If successful, our intervention will increase access to culturally-sensitive diabetes care and improve patient engagement in online DSM learning, leading to higher uptake of DSM behaviors and better diabetes control. Importantly, the program can be easily expanded to other chronic disease areas and scaled for widespread use

Effects of Differences in Lipid A Structure on TLR4 Pro-Inflammatory Signaling and Inflammasome Activation

The vertebrate immune system exists in equilibrium with the microbial world. The innate immune system recognizes pathogen-associated molecular patterns via a family of Toll-like receptors (TLR) that activate cells upon detection of potential pathogens. Because some microbes benefit their hosts, mobilizing the appropriate response, and then controlling that response is critical in the maintenance of health. TLR4 recognizes the various forms of lipid A produced by Gram-negative bacteria. Depending on the structural form of the eliciting lipid A molecule, TLR4 responses range from a highly inflammatory endotoxic response involving inflammasome and other pro-inflammatory mediators, to an inhibitory, protective response. Mounting the correct response against an offending microbe is key to maintaining health when exposed to various bacterial species. Further study of lipid A variants may pave the way to understanding how TLR4 responses are generally able to avoid chronic inflammatory damage

Broadening conceptions of curriculum for young people : reports from three student - teachers on exchange

Research reports prepared by three Australian preservice teachers Paula Shaw, Chris Sharp and Scott McDonald undertaking their teacher education practicum in Canada, form the basis of this paper. The reports provide critical insights into three aspects of education for young people in both Canada and Australia. They also provide critical insight into the ways in which a practicum research project, along with the opportunities afforded through an international experience, enabled the preservice teachers to broaden their understanding of the curriculum for young people, of issues relevant to the diverse needs of young people, and of themselves and their priorities as teachers. The preservice teachers investigated three topics: attempts to reduce homophobia in schools; the presence or absence of Aboriginal content in the school curricula in British Columbia and Queensland; and “schools-within-schools” as a means to meet the needs of diverse student populations. Linda Farr Darling from the University of British Columbia provides a response to the three reports