The Children\u27s Hair Turned White (Original play)

This thesis is an original play, set on the Jornada del Muerto (now known as White Sands Missile Range), about five people who witnessed the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945. The play deals with the long term effects of radiation exposure, with the issues of private versus public responsibility, while at the same time being a love story. As the characters (Webb, Ellen, Sage, Thorn, and Frosty) work out their fate, they are confronted by the god of death. The play features use of Butoh dance, which is to be freshly choreographed with each production, a post-nuclear art form

What matters to children living in kinship care: "another way of being a normal family"

Background: Kinship care is the long-term caring arrangement within the family constellation for children who cannot remain with their birth parents. Despite being the most prevalent alternative care arrangement for children worldwide, there is a lack of research into kinship care. Few studies focus on the child's perspectives, and very few explicitly focus on the meaning of permanence for the children. These children often have similar needs as others that have experienced abuse and neglect. Additionally, they must manage complex dislocated family relationships, and most experience financial hardship with very little support. The little kinship care research that has been done reflects a preoccupation with comparing kinship care as an alternative to state care rather than a family set up within its own right. Also, research, legislation and practice for kinship care has been founded on the concerns and debates for adoption and fostering processes. This typically produces a range of atheoretical, descriptive outcome studies that often provide conflicting answers by focussing on the what rather than the how. This can cause ambivalence for practitioners, academics, and policymakers. Objective: This is the first study that has solely sought the views of children in kinship care in England. It explores the lived experiences of 19 children in such arrangements. More specifically, it focuses on kinship care as a permanence option. The study does not presuppose certain theories of permanence, childhood, or family. Instead, theoretical explanations emerge from the children's own valuations of their family lives. This can enable social workers to find more attuned ways to support, protect, and permanency plan for children out with the traditional concepts of permanence, family, childhood, and care that are often taken for granted. Methodology/methods: The study's innovative approach utilises critical realism as an underlabourer, and Sayer's (2011) work on reasoning in particular. By using a dialogical participative approach, different methods such as child-led tours, photo-elicitation, and visual methods were used to capture the children's valuations of their lives. Utilising a range of theories provided empirical certainty with an interpretivist awareness of subjectivities. Results: In their family lives, children in kinship care navigate the in-between of the purported binary positions often ascribed to care, kinship, permanence, autonomy, and recognition. Through thematic analysis and retroduction, it was found that the children manage the mechanisms of 'Connection/Separation', 'Recognition/(Mis)recognition', 'Care & Protection/Independence & Risk'. Conclusions/Implications: By using a range of methods, children are competent in giving nuanced and sophisticated understandings of their own experiences, needs, and intentions. Also, privileging children's accounts of family, care and childhood, reinvigorates the current policy and practice debates in UK social work. Children's views challenge the dominant adult-centric framing of the social work debates that emphasise the professionalisation of kinship care as a placement and a process-driven service. The study also reinvigorates the debates regarding permanence. The children show that kinship care arrangements disrupt both notions of substitute care and also birth family care. They provide insight into the fluidity inherent in their family's composition and the roles and responsibilities for their ongoing care across it. The children navigate and manage these relationships, their sense of autonomous interdependence, and their sense of permanence across the family network and, at times, away from it. Traditional notions of placement, contact, and life-story work are (mis)recognitions of their family lives. Therefore, more attuned recognition can provide more meaningful support for children in kinship care where multiple family relationships endure but are also often in flux

An Opportunistic Assessment of the Impact of Squirrelpox Disease Outbreaks upon a Red Squirrel Population Sympatric with Grey Squirrels in Wales

SIMPLE SUMMARY: In Europe, squirrelpox virus is carried by non-native grey squirrels and spread into native red squirrel populations. The virus causes a large proportion of infected red squirrels to die and contributes to local declines and the replacement by grey squirrels. There are relatively few published studies quantifying the impact of disease amongst red squirrels. We present findings from a short-term study in north Wales, United Kingdom. ABSTRACT: Native red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) persisted in the coastal mainland woodlands of northern Gwynedd whilst sympatric with an invasive grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) population suppressed by culling. Squirrelpox disease in the red squirrel population was recorded in 2017 and 2020/21. An autumn 2020 outbreak was associated with only 17.4% of animals caught and marked in the preceding June known to be present in March 2021. Despite an opportunistic data collection lacking the rigour of empirical experimental design, we observed low local survival rates similar to previously published accounts reported during major squirrelpox outbreaks. The use of a conservation dog to detect red squirrel carcasses resulted in positive detection and confirmation of a temporal and spatial expansion of one disease outbreak. The study is the first in Wales to use conservation dogs and the findings reinforce the vital strategic importance of geographical isolation reducing sympatry of red with grey squirrels in European regions where the introduced congener is a source of the squirrelpox infection

2-Pyridyl substituents enhance the activity of palladium-phospha-adamantane catalysts for the methoxycarbonylation of phenylacetylene

The pyridyl-N in Pt and Pd complexes of CgP(2-py) can be protonated or can coordinate to form a P,N-chelate; these features are linked with the carbonylation catalysis results.</p

Palladium–catalysed alkyne alkoxycarbonylation with P,N chelating ligands revisited : a density functional theory study

Authors thank EaStCHEM and the School of Chemistry for support. The Bristol Chemical Synthesis Centre for Doctoral Training (BCS CDT) funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/G036764/1) and the University of Bristol are thanked for a PhD studentship (to T. A. S.).A revised in situ base mechanism of alkyne alkoxycarbonylation via a Pd catalyst with hemilabile P,N-ligands (PyPPh2, Py = 2-pyridyl) has been fully characterised at the B3PW91-D3/PCM level of density functional theory. Key intermediates on this route are acryloyl (η3-propen-1-oyl) complexes that readily undergo methanolysis. With two hemilabile P,N-ligands and one of them protonated, the overall computed barrier is 24.5 kcal mol-1, which decreases to 20.3 kcal mol-1 upon protonation of the second P,N-ligand. This new mechanism is consistent with all of the experimental data relating to substituent effects on relative reaction rates and branched/linear selectivities, including new results on the methoxycarbonylation of phenylacetylene using (4-NMe2Py)PPh2 and (6-Cl-Py)PPh2 ligand. This ligand is found to decrease catalytic activity over PyPPh2, thus invalidating a formerly characterised in situ base mechanism.PostprintPeer reviewe

Adenovirus: an emerging factor in red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris conservation

1. Adenovirus is an emerging threat to red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris conservation, but confirming clinically significant adenovirus infections in red squirrels is challenging. Rapid intestinal autolysis after death in wild animals frequently obscures pathology characteristic of the disease in animals found dead. 2. We review the available literature to determine current understanding of both subclinical and clinically significant adenovirus infections in free-living wild and captive red squirrel populations. 3. Benefits of scientific testing for adenovirus incorporating both transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technologies are compared and contrasted. We favour viral particle detection using TEM in animals exhibiting enteropathy at post-mortem and the use of PCR to detect subclinical cases where no enteric abnormalities are observed. 4. Adenoviral infections associated with re-introduction studies are evaluated by examination of sporadic cases in wild populations and of data from captive collections used to service such studies. 5. The paucity of data available on adenovirus infection in grey squirrel Sciurus carolinensis populations is documented, and we highlight that although subclinical virus presence is recorded in several locations in Great Britain and in Italy, no clinically significant disease cases have been detected in the species thus far. 6. Current speculation about potential interspecific infection between sciurids and other woodland rodents such as wood mice Apodemus sylvaticus is examined. Where subclinical adenovirus presence has been detected in sympatric populations using the same point food sources, husbandry methods may be used to diminish the potential for cross-infection. 7. Our findings highlight the importance of controlling disease in red squirrel populations by using clearly defined scientific methods. In addition, we propose hypothetical conservation benefits of restricting contact rates between red squirrels and sympatric grey squirrels and of limiting competition from other woodland rodent species

The South American Land Data Assimilation System (SALDAS) 5-Year Retrospective Atmospheric Forcing Datasets

The definition and derivation of a 5-year, 0.125deg, 3-hourly atmospheric forcing dataset for the South America continent is described which is appropriate for use in a Land Data Assimilation System and which, because of the limited surface observational networks available in this region, uses remotely sensed data merged with surface observations as the basis for the precipitation and downward shortwave radiation fields. The quality of this data set is evaluated against available surface observations. There are regional difference in the biases for all variables in the dataset, with biases in precipitation of the order 0-1 mm/day and RMSE of 5-15 mm/day, biases in surface solar radiation of the order 10 W/sq m and RMSE of 20 W/sq m, positive biases in temperature typically between 0 and 4 K, depending on region, and positive biases in specific humidity around 2-3 g/Kg in tropical regions and negative biases around 1-2 g/Kg further south

Mutational activation of BRAF confers sensitivity to transforming growth factor beta inhibitors in human cancer cells

Recent data implicate elevated transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) signalling in BRAF inhibitor drug-resistance mechanisms, but the potential for targeting TGFβ signalling in cases of advanced melanoma has not been investigated. We show that mutant BRAFV600E confers an intrinsic dependence on TGFβ/TGFβ receptor 1 (TGFBR1) signalling for clonogenicity of murine melanocytes. Pharmacological inhibition of the TGFBR1 blocked the clonogenicity of human mutant BRAF melanoma cells through SMAD4-independent inhibition of mitosis, and also inhibited metastasis in xenografted zebrafish. When investigating the therapeutic potential of combining inhibitors of mutant BRAF and TGFBR1, we noted that unexpectedly, low-dose PLX-4720 (a vemurafenib analogue) promoted proliferation of drug-naïve melanoma cells. Pharmacological or pharmacogenetic inhibition of TGFBR1 blocked growth promotion and phosphorylation of SRC, which is frequently associated with vemurafenib-resistance mechanisms. Importantly, vemurafenib-resistant patient derived cells retained sensitivity to TGFBR1 inhibition, suggesting that TGFBR1 could be targeted therapeutically to combat the development of vemurafenib drug-resistance