An analytical ethnography of sickness absence in an English primary school

Medical sociology has characteristically dealt with children as inactive In the processes of their own illness and health. In part this reflects the treatment of children in sociology generally. It Is intensified by typically studying childhood sickness from the point of view of clinical settings where children's active role and voice are muted. There Is a tendency to ignore the wider social context sickness in children's own lives, especially schooling. It Is suggested that an ethnography of sickness absence, and children's part in its production, might begin to remedy some of these problems. The remainder of the thesis reports such a study. The fieldwork for the study took place in a primary school and looked at sickness absence among a class of fourth year children in the term immediately preceding their transition to secondary school. A variety of methods were used, including direct observation and interviews with parents, teachers and children. The material gathered is described in five parts: a) the social lives of children at school b) children's accounts of sickness and absence c) parent's (mainly maternal) accounts d) teacher perspectives and practices on sickness and absence e) the overall pattern of sickness absence during the term and its relationship to rhythms of schoolwork, especially as they concerned the transition to secondary school. The final chapter discusses childhood sickness as a cultural performance. The 'stage' for this performance is the transition to secondary school and the constitution of childhood in the age-grades of the schooling system. Two theoretical frameworks are used to approach the notion of performance: that of 'trajectory', suggested by Strauss et al; and that of 'symbolic transitional process', derived from Turner's work on liminality. Children's performance of sickness is understood in relation to ideologies and practices of work, gender and leisure

Hearing Voices: User Involvement in Public Services

Modern public services demand greater awareness of who they are trying to serve. Managing relationships in the service of the public therefore requires the ability to ‘tune in’ to who public service users are, and what they are trying to say. This article examines the nature of the relationships between service users and providers through various mechanisms of voice. It suggests that if the user voice is to be recognised and acknowledged, a range of channels should be provided that cater for the values, norms and attitudes of a differentiated user constituency. Beyond this, however, it suggests that the simple provision of a range of channels is insufficient. Resistance to hearing the user voice through one or other of these channels can result in counterproductive ‘culture clashes’ and/or withdrawal. The article argues that this should be avoided through a combination of appropriate institutional design and the commitment of institutional effort to ensure that service cultures fit better with users’ expectations

Barndommens kroppe: Konstruktion, handling og hybriddannelse

Alan Prout: Childhood bodies: construction, agency and hybridity This paper explores the relationship between the sociology of childhood and the sociology of the body. Noting that the two fields are marked by mutual neglect, it reviews some of the theoretical issues that underlie the enterprise of bringing them together. Three key themes emerge from this discussion. The first concerns social constructionism. Both fields draw on this theoretical approach and, it is argued, both meet its limits. The paper argues that social constructionist accounts of both childhood and the body tend to exclude (or at least de-emphasize) the possibility that social life has a material as well as discursive (or representational) component. The second theme is that of children’s agency in the interpretation, negotiation and utilisation of their bodies. Seeing children as social actors balances a former emphasis on the socialization of children by highlighting the ways in which they are also agents, participants shaping as well as being shaped by society. However, it is argued that the sociology of childhood has tended to essentialise children’s agency rather than decentering it and analyzing it as an effect. The third theme draws on actor network theory in order to unravel some of the ways in which children’s bodies are inextricably interwoven with other aspects of the material environment – artifacts, machines and technologies. Children’s bodies emerge as hybrid entities. They are inseparable from, produced in, represented by and performed through their connections with other material objects. This line of enquiry feeds back into the question of children’s agency by reconstituting it less as an essential attribute of children and more as an effect of the connections made between a heterogeneous array of materials including bodies, representations and technologies

Improving Breast Cancer Control via the Use of Community Health Workers in South Africa: A Critical Review

Breast cancer is a growing concern in low- and middle-income countries (LMCs). We explore community health worker (CHW) programs and describe their potential use in LMCs. We use South Africa as an example of how CHWs could improve access to breast health care because of its middle-income status, existing cancer centers, and history of CHW programs. CHWs could assume three main roles along the cancer control continuum: health education, screening, and patient navigation. By raising awareness about breast cancer through education, women are more likely to undergo screening. Many more women can be screened resulting in earlier-stage disease if CHWs are trained to perform clinical breast exams. As patient navigators, CHWs can guide women through the screening and treatment process. It is suggested that these roles be combined within existing CHW programs to maximize resources and improve breast cancer outcomes in LMCs

Enhancing rAAV production by HEK293 cells via metabolic profiling

Viral vector manufacturing is expensive and time-consuming. Demand for rAAV-based vectors has risen massively in the past decade and continues to rise thanks to urgent healthcare supply demand. The industry is, however, currently missing a cost-effective and robust manufacturing strategy. One of the major downsides of rAAV production is the high percentage of “empty” vector particles being produced and harvested. In addition to complicating downstream purification processes, this characteristic limits the efficiency of rAAV manufacture and presents uncertainties for scale-up. Efficiency of the manufacturing process is largely dependent on the productivity of the production cell line. Much emphasis has been put into understanding the effects of recombinant protein production on mammalian cell lines (e.g., CHO, HeLa, HEK293) but relatively little is known about the effects of viral vector production on cell biology and behaviour. Over the years, many clones have been derived, isolated and engineered from HEK293 to induce improvements in productivity and efficiency. However, the high cost of production and licensing, the expression of potentially undesired elements (e.g., T-antigen) and regulatory approval processes for next generation cell lines, hinders their use in clinical manufacturing. Increased understanding of HEK293 in relation to existing processes and process control offers realistic opportunity to enhance the efficiency of rAAV manufacturing. Our aim is to identify and understand the critical parameters that contribute to setting the productivity in HEK293 cells (in terms of final yield and abundance of full capsids), ranging from the metabolic requirements prior to and during viral vector production, to cell culture parameter optimisation to maintain the cells in an optimal state of health. We tested several commercially available media for rAAV9 production and selected the candidate that provided the best yield and quality of viral vector. With this medium as our baseline, we investigated the metabolism during a period of culture via extracellular metabolic profiling of control and rAAV producing cells. The analysis revealed the rapid use of several amino acids over the first 24 hr post-inoculation and the subsequent generation of metabolites indicative of metabolic profiles associated with cell growth. rAAV9 producing cells show lower rates of amino acid and glucose consumption than control cells but the profile of metabolism was not significantly changed as a result of transfection/production of rAAV9. These data were used to design medium supplements and the effect of supplement addition on cell proliferation, viability and rAAV production/quality was assessed. Specific combinations of amino acids generated an increased cell density (up to 9.3x106 cells/mL at 5 days post-inoculation compared to 4.4x106 cells/mL for cells in non-supplemented medium). This was associated with retention of improved viability in the presence of the supplement. In addition, the metabolic profiling we undertook indicated the build-up of potentially toxic/growth inhibitory metabolites during the period of stock cell preparations prior to setting up transfections. In various dilution experiments we were able to optimise the pre-treatment, cell density and dilution protocol to generate predictable and reproducible efficiencies of transfection, cell growth and rAAV production. Overall, our data contributes metabolic insights to process conditions that generate HEK293 cells of appropriate health and defined parameters to robust and enhanced production of rAAV, providing work schemes that are also appropriate to the manufacture of further types of viral vectors

Anarchy in the UK: Reading Beryl the Peril via historic conceptions of childhood

© 2014 Taylor & Francis. Much work within the field of childhood studies has focused on the social discourses through which childhood is understood. This article draws on this work in developing a critical framework for considering the appeal of Beryl the Peril. The article examines the influence of conceptualisations of childhood prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These theorised children as disruptive and requiring restraint. Approved literature for children sought to socialise them into the adult order. However, a more subversive strain, identifiable in Lewis Carroll's Alice novels, celebrated an anarchic vision of childhood. This article examines how Beryl the Peril negotiated these conflicting conceptions of childhood. Beryl is an unruly force; her opponent, and representative of social authority, is Dad. Their clashes play out the tensions in these articulations of childhood. The development of Beryl over nearly 60 years provides an opportunity to examine how her subversive spirit has remained appealing

Conceptual framework and rationale

The sterile insect technique (SIT) has been shown to be an effective and sustainable genetic approach to control populations of selected major pest insects, when part of area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) programmes. The technique introduces genetic sterility in females of the target population in the field following their mating with released sterile males. This process results in population reduction or elimination via embryo lethality caused by dominant lethal mutations induced in sperm of the released males. In the past, several field trials have been carried out for mosquitoes with varying degrees of success. New technology and experience gained with other species of insect pests has encouraged a reassessment of the use of the sterility principle as part of integrated control of malaria vectors. Significant technical and logistic hurdles will need to be overcome to develop the technology and make it effective to suppress selected vector populations, and its application will probably be limited to specific ecological situations. Using sterile males to control mosquito vector populations can only be effective as part of an AW-IPM programme. The area-wide concept entails the targeting of the total mosquito population within a defined area. It requires, therefore, a thorough understanding of the target pest population biology especially as regards mating behaviour, population dynamics, dispersal and level of reproductive isolation. The key challenges for success are: 1) devising methods to monitor vector populations and measuring competitiveness of sterile males in the field, 2) designing mass rearing, sterilization and release strategies that maintain competitiveness of the sterile male mosquitoes, 3) developing methods to separate sexes in order to release only male mosquitoes and 4) adapting suppression measures and release rates to take into account the high reproductive rate of mosquitoes. Finally, success in area-wide implementation in the field can only be achieved if close attention is paid to political, socio-economic and environmental sensitivities and an efficient management organization is established taking into account the interests of all potential stakeholders of an AW-IPM programme

Child studies multiple – collaborative play for thinking through theories and methods

This text is an exploration of collaborative thinking and writing through theories, methods, and experiences on the topic of the child, children, and childhood. It is a collaborative written text (with 32 authors) that sprang out of the experimental workshop Child Studies Multiple. The workshop and this text are about daring to stay with mess, “un-closure” , and uncertainty in order to investigate the (e)motions and complexities of being either a child or a researcher. The theoretical and methodological processes presented here offer an opportunity to shake the ground on which individual researchers stand by raising questions about scientific inspiration, theoretical and methodological productivity, and thinking through focusing on process, play, and collaboration. The effect of this is a questioning of the singular academic ‘I’ by exploring and showing what a plural ‘I’ can look like. It is about what the multiplicity of voice can offer research in a highly individualistic time. The article allows the reader to follow and watch the unconventional trial-and-error path of the ongoing-ness of exploring theories and methods together as a research community via methods of drama, palimpsest, and fictionary

Procalcitonin Is Not a Reliable Biomarker of Bacterial Coinfection in People With Coronavirus Disease 2019 Undergoing Microbiological Investigation at the Time of Hospital Admission

Abstract Admission procalcitonin measurements and microbiology results were available for 1040 hospitalized adults with coronavirus disease 2019 (from 48 902 included in the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium World Health Organization Clinical Characterisation Protocol UK study). Although procalcitonin was higher in bacterial coinfection, this was neither clinically significant (median [IQR], 0.33 [0.11–1.70] ng/mL vs 0.24 [0.10–0.90] ng/mL) nor diagnostically useful (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.56 [95% confidence interval, .51–.60]).</jats:p