CONNECTING ARTS ACTIVISM, DIVERSE CREATIVITIES AND EMBODIMENT THROUGH PRACTICE AS RESEARCH

Environmental artists are ecologically and politically motivated to change the way we view our world. Artists undertake the production of art and activism, where the art-making becomes more than art; it becomes activism; a way that allows for raising awareness; a way to retrieve, express and communicate a political message. Here, diverse creativities (including intercultural, interdisciplinary, and artistic creativity) enable forms of authorship with particular kinds of power and capacity. In this chapter, We draw on three activist enquiry practices which embody: (i) intercultural creativity through an activist choreographic practice involving a Greenlandic and Scandinavian dance company; (ii) transdisciplinary creativity through an arts-based environmental education practice inspired by an activist sculpture involving a primary school in the UK; and (ii) artistic creativity inspired by an artist activist residency practice in a Higher Education setting in the UK. Each practice features artist-researcher collaborations. Each practice involves arts as activism. Each practice makes explicit an understanding of the body as inscriptor, where the relationship between the body, power and the authoring of diverse creativities is crucial in the embodiment of arts practice as research and arts education. Each practice as research stimulates reflection and discussion by teachers, students, artists, researchers and policy makers interested in what it might mean to live the arts-as-political-as-embodiment in creating practice as research where arts activism, diverse creativities and embodiment is manifest

Money Talks, Patients Walk?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/71560/1/j.1525-1497.2001.10118.x.pd

Implications of growth factor alterations in the treatment of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer ranks fifth as a cause of cancer-related death in the world with an overall 5-year survival rate of less than 1% and a median survival of less than a year after tumour detection. Most of these patients have already metastases at the time of diagnosis. The oncologic strategies such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, antihormonal modalities or the systemic use of specific monoclonal antibodies have not achieved a significant improvement in the survival of pancreatic cancer patients. Recent studies suggest that alterations in molecular pathways, particularly in growth factor mediated mechanisms, that regulate cell proliferation and differentiation play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of this cancer. The molecular knowledge regarding changes in the expression of growth factors in pancreatic cancer has the potential to improve diagnostic and therapeutic treatment strategies in the near future

Infinite Monochromatic Sumsets for Colourings of the Reals.

N. Hindman, I. Leader and D. Strauss proved that it is consistent that there is a finite colouring of R so that no infinite sumset X + X is monochromatic. Our aim in this paper is to prove a consistency result in the opposite direction: we show that, under certain set-theoretic assumptions, for any finite colouring c of R there is an infinite X ⊆ R so that c ↾ X + X is constant

The development of the Meaning in Life Index (MILI) and its relationship with personality and religious behaviours and beliefs among UK undergraduate students

The scales available for assessing meaning in life appear to be confounded with several related constructs, including purpose in life, satisfaction with life, and goal-directed behaviour. The Meaning in Life Index (MILI), a new instrument devised as a specific measure of meaning in life, was developed from responses to a pool of 22 items rated by a sample of 501 undergraduate students in Wales. The nine-item scale demonstrated sufficient face validity, internal consistency, and scale reliability to commend the instrument for future use. With respect to personality, the MILI scores were most strongly predicted by neuroticism (negatively), and less strongly by extraversion (positively) and psychoticism (negatively). With respect to several religious behavioural variables, those who attended church at least weekly returned significantly higher MILI scores than those who attended church less frequently. Intrinsic religiosity was the only orientation to be significantly associated with the MILI scale scores, although the magnitude of the association was smaller than anticipated. These results suggest that meaning in life is associated more strongly with individual differences in personality than with specific religious behaviours and attitudes. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of individual's personal values and attitudes that might underlie their experience of a meaning in life

Meaning behind measurement : self-comparisons affect responses to health related quality of life questionnaires

Purpose The subjective nature of quality of life is particularly pertinent to the domain of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) research. The extent to which participants’ responses are affected by subjective information and personal reference frames is unknown. This study investigated how an elderly population living with a chronic metabolic bone disorder evaluated self-reported quality of life. Methods Participants (n = 1,331) in a multi-centre randomised controlled trial for the treatment of Paget’s disease completed annual HRQOL questionnaires, including the SF-36, EQ-5D and HAQ. Supplementary questions were added to reveal implicit reference frames used when making HRQOL evaluations. Twenty-one participants (11 male, 10 female, aged 59–91 years) were interviewed retrospectively about their responses to the supplementary questions, using cognitive interviewing techniques and semi-structured topic guides. Results The interviews revealed that participants used complex and interconnected reference frames to promote response shift when making quality of life evaluations. The choice of reference frame often reflected external factors unrelated to individual health. Many participants also stated that they were unclear whether to report general or disease-related HRQOL. Conclusions It is important, especially in clinical trials, to provide instructions clarifying whether ‘quality of life’ refers to disease-related HRQOL. Information on selfcomparison reference frames is necessary for the interpretation of responses to questions about HRQOL.The Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorates, The PRISM funding bodies (the Arthritis Research Campaign, the National Association for the Relief of Paget’s disease and the Alliance for Better Bone Health)Peer reviewedAuthor final versio