Acupuncture for whiplash-associated disorder following road traffic collision: a physiotherapy service evaluation

Background: Whiplash-associated disorder (WAD) is a common musculoskeletal condition that frequently occurs following a road traffic collision. Physiotherapy is often prescribed to help with the symptoms and injuries. Research evidence has demonstrated that acupuncture may be beneficial, but no studies have examined the routine clinical use of acupuncture by physiotherapists for treatment of WAD. Therefore, a physiotherapy service evaluation was conducted to examine the effects of acupuncture on WAD following a road traffic collision. Methods: This study involved 87 patients who attended a private physiotherapy practice following a road traffic collision after referral by their solicitor as part of a personal injury claim. Patients were included if they had been diagnosed with WAD (grades I–III) and received acupuncture as part of their treatment. An average of three sessions of acupuncture were received, which primarily involved needling of traditional acupuncture points and/or myofascial trigger points of the neck and upper/lower back. Results: Pain significantly reduced (p < 0.001). Musculoskeletal outcome measures including neck disability index, Oswestry low back pain scale and Quick disabilities of the arm, shoulder and hand (Quick-DASH) scale also significantly improved (all p < 0.001). Adverse events were minor. The majority of the patients (n = 66) were able to return to full-work duties following treatment. Conclusion: Acupuncture appears to be an effective clinical treatment for WAD following a road traffic collision and should be considered by physiotherapists working with such patient groups

Omega-3 DHA and Sleep in UK Children: Results From the DOLAB Study

Results from the DHA-Oxford-Learning-and-Behaviour study (DOLAB) on the benefits of DHA supplementation for childrens' sleep. See also the article: Fatty acids and sleep in UK children: subjective and pilot objective sleep results from the DOLAB study – a randomized controlled trial. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/jsr.12135/

Voice Practices to Support LGBTQIA+ Educators and Pupils

Contribution to chapter 8 titled: 'Voice Practices to Support LGBTQIA+ Educators and Pupils' - in Sewell, A. (ed) Diverse voices in educational practice: A workbook for promoting pupil, parent and professional voice. This chapter explores the implications of testimonial injustice in limiting the capacity of LGBTQIA+ educators, children, and young people as knowers and testifiers. Both LGBTQIA+ educators and pupils are subjected to this form of epistemic injustice. Testimony is a unique human experience; to speak our truth. We can view educational voice work as having undergone a process of initial theoretical understanding and practice embedding in the early twenty-first century, with the next developmental phase being a collected discussion of arising complexities and future-oriented solutions. Voice work and voice practices in educational contexts are arguably a nascent phenomenon. The development of meaningful voice practices will arguably only arise if educators take time to consider the role of classification by type and constructions of perceived social norms that voice practice activities may reinforce and/or create. The chapter concludes with some further considerations for the future of meaningful voice practices in educational contexts

Blood Omega-3 Concentrations are Associated With Reading, Working Memory and Behaviour in Healthy Children Aged 7-9 Years

Epidemiological results from the DHA-Oxford-Learning-and-Behaviour study (DOLAB). Presented at the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) conference 2012 in Vancouver

Support and costs for students with emotional problems referred to school-based counselling: findings from the ALIGN study

Effectiveness evidence supporting school-based counselling is increasing, yet little is known about its cost-effectiveness. Within an effectiveness trial we tested whether a cost-effectiveness evaluation was feasible and aimed to provide early indications of support and associated costs for students with emotional problems. A service use questionnaire was piloted. School-based services were a key source of support and used by more than half the students at each time point. Support costs were estimated for 63/64 participants using well-established methods and ranged between £0 (no services used) and £3562 per participant over the last school term. We found data collection was feasible and the principles of economic evaluation were appropriate but the small sample means results must be interpreted cautiously

MARDy : Mycology Antifungal Resistance Database

J.R. was supported by an Antimicrobial Research Collaborative (ARC) early career research fellowship, Imperial College London (RSRO_54990). T.S. and J.M.G.S. were supported by a Natural Environment Research Council grant awarded to MCF (NE/P001165/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Reversible oligonucleotide chain blocking enables bead capture and amplification of T-Cell receptor alpha and beta chain mRNAs

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has proven to be an exceptionally powerful tool for studying genetic variation and differences in gene expression profiles between cell populations. However, these population-wide studies are limited by their inability to detect variation between individual cells within a population, inspiring the development of single-cell techniques such as Drop-seq, which add a unique barcode to the mRNA from each cell prior to sequencing. Current Drop-seq technology enables capture, amplification, and barcoding of the entire mRNA transcriptome of individual cells. NGS can then be used to sequence the 3′-end of each message to build a cell-specific transcriptional landscape. However, current technology does not allow high-throughput capture of information distant from the mRNA poly-A tail. Thus, gene profiling would have much greater utility if beads could be generated having multiple transcript-specific capture sequences. Here we report the use of a reversible chain blocking group to enable synthesis of DNA barcoded beads having capture sequences for the constant domains of the T-cell receptor α and β chain mRNAs. We demonstrate that these beads can be used to capture and pair TCRα and TCRβ sequences from total T-cell RNA, enabling reverse transcription and PCR amplification of these sequences. This is the first example of capture beads having more than one capture sequence, and we envision that this technology will be of high utility for applications such as pairing the antigen receptor chains that give rise to autoimmune diseases or measuring the ratios of mRNA splice variants in cancer stem cells

Reforming rural education : understanding teacher expectations for rural youth

The Chinese state\u27s commitment to improve teaching quality in rural regions is a key component of national efforts to close the rural–urban education gap. In this paper, we investigate an understudied but critical dimension of quality teaching: teacher expectations. We employ longitudinal data gathered in Gansu Province in 2000 and 2007 to first examine whether teacher expectations for rural youth are conditioned by students’ social origin and teacher background characteristics. Next, we determine the predictive accuracy of their expectations. Our results highlight the ways in which teacher expectations condition the sorting of rural children among different schooling tracks with distinct life trajectories. Significantly, teachers are more likely to hold lower expectations for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition, non-local teachers hold lower expectations for rural children compared to local teachers. Finally, a low percentage of teachers expect students to enroll in post-compulsory vocational education. We consider the implications of these results for both educational policy and social inequality

Engineering enhanced thermostability into the Geobacillus pallidus nitrile hydratase

Nitrile hydratases (NHases) are important biocatalysts for the enzymatic conversion of nitriles to industrially-important amides such as acrylamide and nicotinamide. Although thermostability in this enzyme class is generally low, there is not sufficient understanding of its basis for rational enzyme design. The gene expressing the Co-type NHase from the moderate thermophile, Geobacillus pallidus RAPc8 (NRRL B-59396), was subjected to random mutagenesis. Four mutants were selected that were 3 to 15-fold more thermostable than the wild-type NHase, resulting in a 3.4–7.6 ​kJ/mol increase in the activation energy of thermal inactivation at 63 ​°C. High resolution X-ray crystal structures (1.15–1.80 ​Å) were obtained of the wild-type and four mutant enzymes. Mutant 9E, with a resolution of 1.15 ​Å, is the highest resolution crystal structure obtained for a nitrile hydratase to date. Structural comparisons between the wild-type and mutant enzymes illustrated the importance of salt bridges and hydrogen bonds in enhancing NHase thermostability. These additional interactions variously improved thermostability by increased intra- and inter-subunit interactions, preventing cooperative unfolding of α-helices and stabilising loop regions. Some hydrogen bonds were mediated via a water molecule, specifically highlighting the significance of structured water molecules in protein thermostability. Although knowledge of the mutant structures makes it possible to rationalize their behaviour, it would have been challenging to predict in advance that these mutants would be stabilising.The Royal Society (UK) and the National Research Foundation (South Africa) in the form of a Collaborative Research Project grant; a UK Global Challenge Research Fund grant: START- Synchrotron Techniques for African Research and Technology.https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/current-research-in-structural-biologyhj2023BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

Recent ASA presidents and ‘top’ journals: observed publication patterns, alleged cartels and varying careers

It has been common for studies presented as about American sociology as a whole to rely on data compiled from leading journals (American Sociological Review [ASR] and American Journal of Sociology [AJS]), or about presidents of the American Sociological Association [ASA], to represent it. Clearly those are important, but neither can be regarded as providing a representative sample of American sociology. Recently, Stephen Turner has suggested that dominance in the ASA rests with a ‘cartel’ initially formed in graduate school, and that it favors work in a style associated with the leading journals. The adequacy of these ideas is examined in the light of available data on the last 20 years, which show that very few of the presidents were in the same graduate schools at the same time. All presidents have had distinguished academic records, but it is shown that their publication strategies have varied considerably. Some have had no ASR publications except their presidential addresses, while books and large numbers of other journals not normally mentioned in this context have figured in their contributions, as well as being more prominent in citations. It seems clear that articles in the leading journals have not been as closely tied to prestigious careers as has sometimes been suggested, and that if there is a cartel it has not included all the presidents