A community of teachers: Using Activity Theory to investigate the implementation of ICTE in a remote Indigenous school

In 2001-2002, an innovative project entitled Reach In-Reach Out has been conducted in Far North Queensland. Its aim was to use telecommunications and Internet tools to facilitate communication between the children of Lockhart River who attend secondary school in such centres as Cairns, Townsville and Herberton and their families. This study was the first (of three) to investigate the impact of this project. Its focus is on the teachers of Lockart River State School and the changes made to their practice by the implementation of the project. The study described in this paper was conducted in Lockhart River which is situated on Kanthanumpu (Southern Kuuku Ya'u) land in Far North Queensland. The current population is estimated between 650 (Education Queensland, 2001a) and 800 (Lockhart River Land and Sea Management Agency, 2001) residents. The student population of Lockhart River State School in 2001was 26 (Kindy), 105 (Primary) and 30 (Alternate secondary/VET) programs) (Education Queensland, 2001a). At the end of 1999, the secondary school of Lockhart River was closed following a community decision to do so. This necessitated the majority of post-primary students having to leave Lockhart River to continue their education at boarding school. At the beginning of 2002, 38 students left the Lockhart River Community to attend boarding schools (and 8 remained to take part in the Alternate Secondary/VET program offered at the school). Table 1 details the secondary enrolments of Lockhart River students from 1998 to 2001, including the period covered by this study (2001)

Regulatory Challenges at the Intersection of Cellular and Medical Device Therapies in Europe: The Case of the Bioartificial Pancreas

Regenerative medicine solutions for type 1 diabetes are a rapidly developing field of medical technology. So far, these solutions have been principally cell-based treatments and, at present, in Europe, are regulated under the European Union regulations for Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs). But now, new, emerging technology combining cellular therapy with medical devices is under development. The potential of this novel hybrid model to create a bioartificial pancreas is tantalising. However, incorporating medical devices creates a further layer of complexity to an already challenging product development process. Moreover, it raises important questions about how bioartificial organs should be regulated. This article seeks to expose the complexity of the legal and regulatory landscape relating to such products, focusing on the laws of the European Union and, where appropriate, bringing in examples from other jurisdictions. We set out the role of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and review the classification of existing ATMPs and those proposed for type 1 diabetes to highlight the potential consequences and effects of nomenclature and classifications. We argue that emerging hybrid regenerative medicine solutions at the intersection of cellular and medical device therapies, in which medical devices are integral to and facilitate the cell therapy mechanism of action, are not satisfactorily accounted for in the existing legal paradigm regulating regenerative medical therapies. We suggest that these functional hybrid products, currently in their infancy, may yet have far-reaching implications for the interface of law, regulation and technology. For example, they are likely to challenge the conventional discourse related to a market in (bioartificial) organs. We recommend that the EMA, national competent authorities for medical devices, national transplantation authorities and those responsible for overseeing translational clinical research respond to this by developing the existing regulatory framework in such a way that captures the essence of these hybrid products as a single entity. Issuing guidance on updated regulations to researchers engaged in this emerging technology will be key to the success of its translation into human therapies

Involving young people in cyberbullying research: the implementation and evaluation of a rights-based approach.

Background: Cyberbullying is an international Public Health concern. Efforts to understand and address it can be enhanced by involving young people. This paper describes a rights‐based collaboration with young people in a qualitative exploration of cyberbullying. It describes the establishment, implementation and evaluation of a Young Person's Advisory Group as well as identifying the impact on the research process and the young people involved. Methods: Sixteen post primary school students met with researchers on five occasions in a youth centre. Sessions focused on building the young people's capacity to engage with the research, designing the qualitative study, interpreting study findings and evaluating the collaboration process. Results: The Advisory Group highlighted a lack of understanding and appropriate action with regard to cyberbullying but believed that their involvement would ultimately help adults to understand their perspective. Evaluation findings indicate that members were supported to form as well as express their views on the design, conduct and interpretation of the research and that these views were acted upon by adult researchers. Their involvement helped to ensure that the research was relevant and reflective of the experiences, interests, values and norms of young people. Conclusion: Young people can contribute a unique perspective to the research process that is otherwise not accessible to adult researchers. The approach described in this study is a feasible and effective way of operationalizing young people's involvement in health research and could be adapted to explore other topics of relevance to young people

Clinical Translation of Bio-Artificial Pancreas Therapies:Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Interdisciplinary Considerations and Key Recommendations

The field of regenerative medicine offers potential therapies for Type 1 Diabetes, whereby metabolically active cellular components are combined with synthetic medical devices. These therapies are sometimes referred to as “bioartificial pancreases.” For these emerging and rapidly developing therapies to be clinically translated to patients, researchers must overcome not just scientific hurdles, but also navigate complex legal, ethical and psychosocial issues. In this article, we first provide an introductory overview of the key legal, ethical and psychosocial considerations identified in the existing literature and identify areas where research is currently lacking. We then highlight two principal areas of concern in which these discrete disciplines significantly overlap: 1) individual autonomy and 2) access and equality. Using the example of beta-cell provenance, we demonstrate how, by harnessing an interdisciplinary approach we can address these key areas of concern. Moreover, we provide practical recommendations to researchers, clinicians, and policymakers which will help to facilitate the clinical translation of this cutting-edge technology for Type 1 Diabetes patients. Finally, we emphasize the importance of exploring patient perspectives to ensure their responsible and acceptable translation from bench to body.</p

Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Ventilation and Perfusion in the Lung

Methods, devices, and systems are disclosed for implementing a fully quantitative non-injectable contrast proton MRI technique to measure spatial ventilation-perfusion (VA/Q) matching and spatial distribution of ventilation and perfusion. In one aspect, a method using MRI to characterize ventilation and perfusion in a lung includes acquiring an MR image of the lung having MR data in a voxel and obtaining a breathing frequency parameter, determining a water density value, a specific ventilation value, and a perfusion value in at least one voxel of the MR image based on the MR data and using the water density value to determine an air content value, and determining a ventilation-perfusion ratio value that is the product of the specific ventilation value, the air content value, the inverse of the perfusion value, and the breathing frequency

Integrated synthesis of nucleotide and nucleosides influenced by amino acids

Research on prebiotic chemistry and the origins of nucleic acids and proteins has traditionally been focussed on only one or the other. However, if nucleotides and amino acids co-existed on the early Earth, their mutual interactions and reactivity should be considered explicitly. Here we set out to investigate nucleotide/nucleoside formation by simple dehydration reactions of constituent building blocks (sugar, phosphate, and nucleobase) in the presence of different amino acids. We demonstrate the simultaneous formation of glycosidic bonds between ribose, purines, and pyrimidines under mild conditions without catalysts or activated reagents, as well as nucleobase exchange, in addition to the simultaneous formation of nucleotide and nucleoside isomers from several nucleobases. Clear differences in the distribution of glycosylation products are observed when glycine is present. This work demonstrates that reaction networks of nucleotides and amino acids should be considered when exploring the emergence of catalytic networks in the context of molecular evolution

A recursive microfluidic platform to explore the emergence of chemical evolution

We propose that a chemically agnostic approach to explore the origin of life, using an automated recursive platform based on droplet microfluidics, could be used to induce artificial chemical evolution by iterations of growth, speciation, selection, and propagation. To explore this, we set about designing an open source prototype of a fully automated evolution machine, comprising seven modules. These modules are a droplet generator, droplet transfer, passive and active size sorting, splitter, incubation chamber, reservoir, and injectors, all run together via a LabVIEW(TM) program integration system. Together we aim for the system to be used to drive cycles of droplet birth, selection, fusion, and propagation. As a proof of principle, in addition to the working individual modules, we present data showing the osmotic exchange of glycylglycine containing and pure aqueous droplets, showing that the fittest droplets exhibit higher osomolarity relative to their neighbours, and increase in size compared to their neighbours. This demonstrates the ability of our platform to explore some different physicochemical conditions, combining the efficiency and unbiased nature of automation with our ability to select droplets as functional units based on simple criteria

Environmental control programs the emergence of distinct functional ensembles from unconstrained chemical reactions

Many approaches to the origin of life focus on how the molecules found in biology might be made in the absence of biological processes, from the simplest plausible starting materials. Another approach could be to view the emergence of the chemistry of biology as process whereby the environment effectively directs “primordial soups” toward structure, function, and genetic systems over time. This does not require the molecules found in biology today to be made initially, and leads to the hypothesis that environment can direct chemical soups toward order, and eventually living systems. Herein, we show how unconstrained condensation reactions can be steered by changes in the reaction environment, such as order of reactant addition, and addition of salts or minerals. Using omics techniques to survey the resulting chemical ensembles we demonstrate there are distinct, significant, and reproducible differences between the product mixtures. Furthermore, we observe that these differences in composition have consequences, manifested in clearly different structural and functional properties. We demonstrate that simple variations in environmental parameters lead to differentiation of distinct chemical ensembles from both amino acid mixtures and a primordial soup model. We show that the synthetic complexity emerging from such unconstrained reactions is not as intractable as often suggested, when viewed through a chemically agnostic lens. An open approach to complexity can generate compositional, structural, and functional diversity from fixed sets of simple starting materials, suggesting that differentiation of chemical ensembles can occur in the wider environment without the need for biological machinery

The EDGE-CALIFA survey: Molecular Gas and Star Formation Activity Across the Green Valley

We present a $^{12}$CO($J$=2-1) survey of 60 local galaxies using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Compact Array as part of the Extragalactic Database for Galaxy Evolution: the ACA EDGE survey. These galaxies all have integral field spectroscopy from the CALIFA survey. Compared to other local galaxy surveys, ACA EDGE is designed to mitigate selection effects based on CO brightness and morphological type. Of the 60 galaxies in ACA EDGE, 36 are on the star-formation main sequence, 13 are on the red sequence, and 11 lie in the ``green valley" transition between these sequences. We test how star formation quenching processes affect the star formation rate (SFR) per unit molecular gas mass, SFE$_{\rm mol}=$SFR/$M_{\rm mol}$, and related quantities in galaxies with stellar masses $10\leq$log[$M_\star/$M$_\odot$]$\leq11.5$ covering the full range of morphological types. We observe a systematic decrease of the molecular-to-stellar mass fraction ($R^{\rm mol}_{\star}$) with decreasing level of star formation activity, with green valley galaxies having also lower SFE$_{\rm mol}$ than galaxies on the main sequence. On average, we find that the spatially resolved SFE$_{\rm mol}$ within the bulge region of green valley galaxies is lower than in the bulges of main sequence galaxies if we adopt a constant CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor, $\alpha_{\rm CO}$. While efficiencies in main sequence galaxies remain almost constant with galactocentric radius, in green valley galaxies we note a systematic increase of SFE$_{\rm mol}$, $R^{\rm mol}_{\star}$, and specific star formation rate, sSFR, with increasing radius. Our results suggest that although gas depletion (or removal) seems to be the most important driver of the star-formation quenching in galaxies transiting through the green valley, a reduction in star formation efficiency is also required during this stage