Playing social justice: How do early childhood teachers enact the right to play through resistance and subversion?

In this paper we narrate how two teachers enact playful pedagogies by resisting the single story of formalised learning discourses in early childhood education and care. Playful learning is well established in international literature and children have the right to play. Yet in contemporary outcomes-driven policy, adult-led formalised teaching has become normalised at the expense of child-initiated play. Play is thus marginalised; positioned as a privilege rather than as a right and dependent on views of children as capable holders of rights. Here, we position play in relation to democracy, equity and social justice by storying how teachers’ circumvent scrutiny to facilitate the right to play and we argue this as a fruitful sub-context for resistance. From this perspective, teachers’ resistances do not just enable play, they embody and enact representative and democratic justice. Firstly, teachers story representative forms of social justice as ‘being the right thing’ in making play happen.  Secondly, teachers enact democratic forms of social justice through resistance actions of ‘doing the right thing’ that entangle an emotional vulnerability to scrutiny. Adopting alternative resistance positions shifts play beyond a privilege and creates transformational spaces for social justice where time, space and materiality have a role to play. We call on teachers and educators to deepen their critical awareness of the narrowness of a single story of learning and the rich relationships between rights and play agendas. We assert that teachers’ resistances can enable playful pedagogies and act as hopeful storytelling of social justice as serious play.   

Storying hopeful resistances to datafication:Cracks, spacetimematterings and figurations of agency within the more-than-human ecologies of early childhood education and care

In this paper, we ponder the ecologies of spacetimematterings folded into resistance practices and its relationality with figurations of agency outside and beyond datafication agendas. Accountability cultures bound up with datafication have consequences that include a diminished agency for both children and educators. According to Holloway (2010) enactments of resistance can cause cracks to appear that forge creative spaces where different kinds of doings related to agency emerge. The context, potentiality and storyings of cracking encounters is where our interest lies. To ponder crackings, we play with feminist posthuman and materialist theorising with research-creation approaches to notice resistances as material-discursive intra-actions amongst the lively materiality of educational life. From there we notice resistance practices as ecologies. Those ecologies are complex and lively yet often concealed in more-than-human cracks by the grand narrative of datafication. Through storytelling, we re-imagine these cracks as dynamic resistances, often unresolving the relationality between power and the collective more-than-human modes of resistance we witnessed. Different kinds of noticing mattered and amplifying the sharing of resistance stories brings attention to hopeful agencies already and always at work. Sharing stories can strengthen the connectivity of resistances to datafication and build a stronger autonomy and agency for early childhood education and care. Our provocation is to pay attention to the spacetimematterings of ecologies where resistance practices are already at work cracking cracks for different doings. From there, further activisms can mobilise a larger fracturing to the dominance of datafication narratives

Modeling enzyme processivity reveals that RNA-Seq libraries are biased in characteristic and correctable ways

Experimental procedures for preparing RNA-seq and single-cell (sc) RNA-seq libraries are based on assumptions regarding their underlying enzymatic reactions. Here, we show that the fairness of these assumptions varies within libraries: coverage by sequencing reads along and between transcripts exhibits characteristic, protocol-dependent biases. To understand the mechanistic basis of this bias, we present an integrated modeling framework that infers the relationship between enzyme reactions during library preparation and the characteristic coverage patterns observed for different protocols. Analysis of new and existing (sc)RNA-seq data from six different library preparation protocols reveals that polymerase processivity is the mechanistic origin of coverage biases. We apply our framework to demonstrate that lowering incubation temperature increases processivity, yield, and (sc)RNA-seq sensitivity in all protocols. We also provide correction factors based on our model for increasing accuracy of transcript quantification in existing samples prepared at standard temperatures. In total, our findings improve our ability to accurately reflect in vivo transcript abundances in (sc)RNA-seq libraries

Advocacy and activism in early childhood

The literature on 'advocacy and activism in early childhood' spans across multiple disciplines including those related to the care, development and education of children from birth to eight years of age. Advocacy can be defined as the proactive promotion or awareness-raising of a cause or barriers (e.g., barriers to participation, inclusion and equity). Advocacy aims to influence change in ways of thinking, being and doing, across micro- to macro- level contexts (for example, within family-educator relationships and at the policy level). This literature overlaps with scholarship on 'activism'. However, there are also many tensions and conceptual differences in understandings of 'advocacy' and 'activism', with writers suggesting that advocacy involves working 'within' systems and structures, whilst activism involves an element of resistance (e.g., protest, civil disobedience, etc). Given the synergistic nature of overlaps, for the purposes of this review, key works that focus on the intersection of activism and advocacy have been included. However, we acknowledge that the broader literature on concepts related to activism such as resistance (unpacked by seminal scholars - most notably, Peter Moss, Glenda Mac Naughton, Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, and others), are not the focus of this piece as they constitute a closely related, but separate body of literature. The review therefore remains focused only on activism and advocacy in early childhoo

Yeast m6 A methylated mRNAs are enriched on translating ribosomes during meiosis, and under rapamycin treatment

Interest in mRNA methylation has exploded in recent years. The sudden interest in a 40 year old discovery was due in part to the finding of FTO’s (Fat Mass Obesity) N6-methyladenosine (m6 A) deaminase activity, thus suggesting a link between obesity-associated diseases and the presence of m6 A in mRNA. Another catalyst of the sudden rise in mRNA methylation research was the release of mRNA methylomes for human, mouse and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However, the molecular function, or functions of this mRNA ‘epimark’ remain to be discovered. There is supportive evidence that m6 A could be a mark for mRNA degradation due to its binding to YTH domain proteins, and consequently being chaperoned to P bodies. Nonetheless, only a subpopulation of the methylome was found binding to YTHDF2 in HeLa cells.The model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has only one YTH domain protein (Pho92, Mrb1), which targets PHO4 transcripts for degradation under phosphate starvation. However, mRNA methylation is only found under meiosis inducing conditions, and PHO4 transcripts are apparently non-methylated. In this paper we set out to investigate if m6 A could function alternatively to being a degradation mark in S. cerevisiae; we also sought to test whether it can be induced under non-standard sporulation conditions. We find a positive association between the presence of m6 A and message translatability. We also find m6 A induction following prolonged rapamycin treatment

Minimal climate impacts from short-lived climate forcers following emission reductions related to the COVID-19 pandemic

We present an assessment of the impacts on atmospheric composition and radiative forcing of short-lived pollutants following worldwide decrease in anthropogenic activity and emissions comparable to what has occurred in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, using the global composition-climate model UKCA. Emission changes reduce tropospheric hydroxyl radical and ozone burdens, increasing methane lifetime. Reduced SO2 emissions and oxidising capacity lead to a decrease in sulphate aerosol and increase in aerosol size, with accompanying reductions to cloud droplet concentration. However, large reductions in black carbon emissions increase aerosol albedo. Overall, the changes in ozone and aerosol direct effects (neglecting aerosol-cloud interactions which were statistically insignificant but whose response warrants future investigation) yield a radiative forcing of -33 to -78 mWm-2. Upon cessation of emission reductions the short-lived climate forcers rapidly return to pre-COVID levels, meaning these changes are unlikely to have lasting impacts on climate assuming emissions return to pre-intervention levels

L'investissement formation : un mythe utile

International audienceLa notion d’investissement formation est séduisante par la valorisation qu’elle offre tant aux formateurs auxquels elle permet de situer leur pratique dans le champ de l’économique, qu’aux dirigeants à qui elle donne le moyen d’afficher la dimension humaine de leur engagement dans la préparation de l’avenir. La métaphore de l’investissement joue un rôle utile et positif en dynamisant les partenaires de la formation, mais il faut être vigilant sur les conditions du passage de la métaphore à la réalité

Priming from within: TLR2 dependent but receptor independent activation of the mammary macrophage inflammasome by Streptococcus uberis

Introduction: Streptococcus uberis is a member of the pyogenic cluster of Streptococcus commonly associated with intramammary infection and mastitis in dairy cattle. It is a poorly controlled globally endemic pathogen responsible for a significant cause of the disease worldwide. The ruminant mammary gland provides an atypical body niche in which immune cell surveillance occurs on both sides of the epithelial tissue. S. uberis does not cause disease in non-ruminant species and is an asymptomatic commensal in other body niches. S. uberis exploits the unusual niche of the mammary gland to initiate an innate response from bovine mammary macrophage (BMMO) present in the secretion (milk) in which it can resist the host immune responses. As a result – and unexpectedly - the host inflammatory response is a key step in the pathogenesis of S.uberis, without which colonisation is impaired. In contrast to other bacteria pathogenic to the bovine mammary gland, S. uberis does not elicit innate responses from epithelial tissues; initial recognition of infection is via macrophages within milk.Methods: We dissected the role of the bacterial protein SUB1154 in the inflammasome pathway using ex vivo bovine mammary macrophages isolated from milk, recombinant protein expression, and a panel of inhibitors, agonists, and antagonists. We combine this with reverse-transcription quantitative real-time PCR to investigate the mechanisms underlying SUB1154-mediated priming of the immune response.Results: Here, we show that SUB1154 is responsible for priming the NLRP3 inflammasome in macrophages found in the mammary gland. Without SUB1154, IL-1β is not produced, and we were able to restore IL-1β responses to a sub1154 deletion S. uberis mutant using recombinant SUB1154. Surprisingly, only by blocking internalisation, or the cytoplasmic TIR domain of TLR2 were we able to block SUB1154-mediated priming.Discussion: Together, our data unifies several contrasting past studies and provides new mechanistic understanding of potential early interactions between pyogenic streptococci and the host