From accountability to digital data: the rise and rise of educational governance

Research interest in educational governance has increased in recent years with the rise to prominence of transnational organisations such as the OECD and the importance attached to international comparison of educational systems. However, rarely do educational researchers consider the historical antecedents that have attended these developments. Yet to more fully appreciate where we are now it is necessary to examine the national and global events that have shaped the current policy context. This paper presents a review of educational governance in the UK from the 1970s seeing in this a trajectory from the emergence of accountability to today’s overriding concern with digital data. In doing this, the paper aims to go beyond providing a historical account, rather its purpose is to shed light on educational change; and further, to analyse the contribution of educational research to an understanding of events as they have unfolded over the past five decades. While it is necessarily rooted within the particular historical context of the UK it can be read as an analysis of the factors influencing educational change in the context of globalised policy spaces more broadly. A recurrent theme is the appearance of the ‘unanticipated consequence’, one of the most important issues the social sciences has to contend with. Thus a tentative theory of ironic reversal as a source of policy failure emerges which is not only of relevance to educational policy but of wider significance

The Function of Saffron and its Constituent in Gastroenterological Tissues

Japan has been moving towards a super aging society, resulting in a rapidly increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases, including colon cancer. Japanese patients survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reported 235,000 colon cancer patients in 2015, and this number is quickly increasing due to the change of dietary life style from the typical Japanese food to the westernized style food. Although the cancer chemotherapy has been widely developing recently, some natural product support, having wide spectra of bioactivity, however mild, are required. Saffron finds use as folk medicines as well as a flavoring and a coloring agent. Saffron consists of three main chemical components; red color, crocetin glycosides; a bitter taste, picrocrocin; and spicy aroma, safranal. In this chapter, we evaluate the activities of saffron extracts and a major crocetin glycoside, crocin. against colorectal cancer in in vitro and in vivo trials. Saffron crude extracts, which contain approximately 40% of crocin, significantly inhibited the growth of colorectal cancer cell lines HCT-116, HT-29 and SW-480, although crocin did not affect for non-cancer cells. Crocin significantly inhibited the development of colonic adenocarcinomas induced by azoxymethane and dextran sodium sulfate in mice during 18 weeks feeding. The crocin feeding experiment for 4 weeks evidently inhibits the dextran sodium sulfate induced colitis and, then, the clear suppression for the mRNA expression of tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin- (IL-) 1β,IL-6, interferon γ, NF-κB, cyclooxygenase-2, and inducible nitric oxide synthase, and the increase of Nrf2 mRNA expression in the colorectal mucosa occurred. From these results we suggest that crocin can suppress chemically induced colitis and colitis-related colon carcinogenesis in mice mainly through the inhibition of inflammation related cytokines, indicating that saffron and crocin are suitable candidates for the prevention of colitis and inflammation-associated colon carcinogenesis. We further review the supporting phenomena like strong anti-oxidant and anti-inflammation activities of crocin using our previous publications