An extension and application of the Leontief pollution model for waste generation and disposal in Scotland

Solid waste generation, treatment and disposal are important policy concerns for the Scottish Parliament. As a result of the Environment Act 1995, a National Waste Strategy for Scotland was introduced with the general aim of reducing the amount of waste produced and dealing with what is produced in more sustainable ways. This implies the need for an empirical framework to inform policymakers regarding the relationship between economic activity and waste generation, treatment and disposal and the likely impacts of any policy actions or other disturbances on all types of sustainability indicators. In this paper we report on a study to develop an extended input-output (IO) system of the type originally proposed in the seminal paper by Leontief (1970). This involves extending the standard IOaccounts to take account of pollution or waste generation as an additional output accompanying production and consumption activities in the economy and of the activity required to clean up (or prevent) these unwanted outputs. The extension of IO tables to take account of pollution/waste generation is relatively widespread in the literature. It is usually achieved through the introduction of physical pollution/waste-output coefficients, and has been previously applied to Scotland for the case ofair pollution (see McNicoll & Blackmore, 1993, McGregor et al, 2001). Such an approach allows us to examine the impact of the economy on the environment, in terms of the amount of pollution/waste emitted as a result of economic activity. However, it does not allow us to track the feedback from the environment to the economy in terms of the resources used in environmental cleaning. If we areinterested in this aspect, we need to identify the input structure of any pollution abatement or waste disposal activities and identify columns in the IO tables representing cleaning activities

Activation of the Farnesoid X-receptor in breast cancer cell lines results in cytotoxicity but not increased migration potential

Breast cancer is the commonest form of cancer in women, but successful treatment is confounded by the heterogeneous nature of breast tumours: Effective treatments exist for hormone-sensitive tumours, but triple-negative breast cancer results in poor survival. An area of increasing interest is metabolic reprogramming, whereby drug-induced alterations in the metabolic landscape of a tumour slow tumour growth and/or increase sensitivity to existing therapeutics. Nuclear receptors are transcription factors central to the expression of metabolic and transport proteins, and thus represent potential targets for metabolic reprogramming. We show that activation of the nuclear receptor FXR, either by its endogenous ligand CDCA or the synthetic GW4064, leads to cell death in four breast cancer cell lines with distinct phenotypes: MCF-10A (normal), MCF-7 (receptor positive), MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468 (triple negative). Furthermore, we show that the mechanism of cell death is predominantly through the intrinsic apoptotic pathway. Finally, we demonstrate that FXR agonists do not stimulate migration in breast cancer cell lines, an important potential adverse effect. Together, our data support the continued examination of FXR agonists as a novel class of therapeutics for the treatment of breast cancer

A discourse analysis of trainee teacher identity in online discussion forums

Teacher education involves an identity transformation for trainees from being a student to being a teacher. This discourse analysis examined the online discussion board communications of a cohort of trainee teachers to better understand the situated identities of the trainees and how they were presented online. Their discussion board posts were the primary method of communication during placement periods and, as such, provided insight into how the trainees situated their identities in terms of being a student or being a teacher. During the analysis, the community boundaries, language and culture were explored along with the tutor's power and role in the identity transformation process. This involved looking at the lexis used by the students, the use of pronouns to refer to themselves and others such as teachers and pupils, the types of messages allowed in the community and the effect of the tutor's messages on their communication. The research found that the trainees felt comfortable with teaching but did not feel like teachers during the course. Tutors and school teachers need to develop an awareness of the dual nature of trainees' identities and help promote the transition from student to teacher. In the beginning of the course, trainees should be familiarised with teacher vocabulary and practical concepts in addition to pedagogical theory. Towards the end of the course, trainee identity as teachers could be promoted through the use of authentic assessments that mirror real teacher tasks and requirements

Distribution and abundance of fish and crayfish in a Waikato stream in relation to basin area

The aim of this study was to relate the longitudinal distribution of fish and crayfish to increasing basin area and physical site characteristics in the Mangaotama Stream, Waikato region, North Island, New Zealand. Fish and crayfish were captured with two-pass removal electroshocking at 11 sites located in hill-country with pasture, native forest, and mixed land uses within the 21.6 km2 basin. Number of fish species and lineal biomass of fish increased with increasing basin area, but barriers to upstream fish migration also influenced fish distribution; only climbing and non-migratory species were present above a series of small waterfalls. Fish biomass increased in direct proportion to stream width, suggesting that fish used much of the available channel, and stream width was closely related to basin area. Conversely, the abundance of crayfish was related to the amount of edge habitat, and therefore crayfish did not increase in abundance as basin area increased. Densities of all fish species combined ranged from 17 to 459 fish 100 m-2, and biomass ranged from 14 to 206 g m-2. Eels dominated the fish assemblages, comprising 85-100% of the total biomass; longfinned eels the majority of the biomass at most sites. Despite the open access of the lower sites to introduced brown trout, native species dominated all the fish communities sampled

Supervision and Scholarly Writing: Writing to Learn - Learning to Write

This paper describes an action research project on postgraduate students’ scholarly writing in which I employed reflective approaches to examine and enhance my postgraduate supervisory practice. My reflections on three distinct cycles of supervision illustrate a shift in thinking about scholarly writing and an evolving understanding of how to support postgraduate students’ writing. These understandings provide the foundation for a future-oriented fourth cycle of supervisory practice, which is characterised by three principles, namely the empowerment of students as writers, the technological context of contemporary writing, and ethical issues in writing

Nuclear receptors in vascular biology

Nuclear receptors sense a wide range of steroids and hormones (estrogens, progesterone, androgens, glucocorticoid, and mineralocorticoid), vitamins (A and D), lipid metabolites, carbohydrates, and xenobiotics. In response to these diverse but critically important mediators, nuclear receptors regulate the homeostatic control of lipids, carbohydrate, cholesterol, and xenobiotic drug metabolism, inflammation, cell differentiation and development, including vascular development. The nuclear receptor family is one of the most important groups of signaling molecules in the body and as such represent some of the most important established and emerging clinical and therapeutic targets. This review will highlight some of the recent trends in nuclear receptor biology related to vascular biology

The social cognition of medical knowledge, with special reference to childhood epilepsy

This paper arose out of an engagement in medical communication courses at a Gulf university. It deploys a theoretical framework derived from a (critical) sociocognitive approach to discourse analysis in order to investigate three aspects of medical discourse relating to childhood epilepsy: the cognitive processes that are entailed in relating different types of medical knowledge to their communicative context; the types of medical knowledge that are constituted in the three different text types analysed; and the relationship between these different types of medical knowledge and the discursive features of each text type. The paper argues that there is a cognitive dimension to the human experience of understanding and talking about one specialized from of medical knowledge. It recommends that texts be studied in medical communication courses not just in terms of their discrete formal features but also critically, in terms of the knowledge which they produce, transmit and reproduce

Games as (not) culture: a critical policy analysis of the economic agenda of Horizon 2020

This article presents a critical examination of European policy in relation to gamification. We begin by describing how gamification “traveled” as an idea, evolving from controversial yet persuasive buzzword to legitimate policy priority. We then focus on how gamification was represented in Horizon 2020: the flagship European Research & Development program from 2014 to 2020, worth nearly €80 billion of funding. The article argues that the ethically problematic aspects of gamification were removed through a process of policy capture that involved its assimilation in an established European network of research and small and medium enterprise (SME) actors. This process of “ethical neutering” is also observable in the actual funding calls, where the problematic assumptions of gamification around agency and manipulation are made invisible through a superficial commitment to vague and ill-defined criteria of responsible research and innovation