Retelling tales: The (missed?) representation of working class women’s stories of leisure

Reflecting on an undergraduate dissertation, Rhiannon Lord became increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations on understanding and communication imposed by the conventional form of presentation usually expected of undergraduate students. Here we seek to transgress the boundaries of the author-evacuated realist tale form and offer a re-presentation of original data in the form of creative fiction, drawing extensively upon the work of Sparkes (2002). Renewed insights are generated into the lives of young women via two short stories, presented in an effort to further communicate their leisure experiences. Consideration is given to new ways of constructing and presenting understanding at the undergraduate dissertation level and the research process in general

Cruelty - Free Design

A vegan designer does not incorporate any products, materials, or fabrics that contain, harm, torture, or exploit any conscious living being. Vegan design acknowledges that all living creatures have emotions, feelings, experience pain, and should not be used for the sake of luxury

Synthesis, Phylogenetic Analysis, and Assessment of Climatic Limitations for the Compelling Global Lichen Genus Cladonia (Lichenized Ascomycetes)

Cladonia is a large, globally distributed genus of lichenized fungi that has captured the interest of mycologists for centuries. While there are already nearly 500 species in the genus, new species are constantly being described. Furthermore, there are expansive areas of the world that have not been surveyed for Cladonia species, and assuredly will provide new species and variations for lichenologists that conduct targeted surveys to these regions in the future. Despite being one of the most well researched lichen genera on Earth, there are still gaps in knowledge of Cladonia. One of the reasons Cladonia has remained such a point of interest in lichenology is also the reason it can be confounding to study&mdash;the genus displays extraordinary variety in all aspects, such as morphology, chemistry, ecology, and distribution. In this work, we focus on three overarching aims: 1) synthesizing existing Cladonia research to date to uncover persistent unknowns and contradictions that still stymy progress in Cladonia research. We found that even some problems noted more than one hundred years ago still persist today, and contradictory research is frequent in the genus. We argue that Cladonia is well-suited to be positioned as a model lichen genus towards the goal of focusing collaborative efforts on answering persistent questions in Cladonia that are widely applicable to fungal biology as a whole. 2) We inferred phylogenetic relationships in Cladonia using RADseq (reduced representation) genomic data towards the goal of assessing whether this efficient method of sequencing can be used to recover clades as delimited in a large, long-term phylogenetic study using traditional Sanger sequencing. In comparison, we found that that most clades are recovered, and found support that traditionally problematic clades and taxa still present taxonomic problems requiring focused revision. We support the use of RADseq as a powerful tool for efficiently inferring phylogenetic relationships with more comprehensive taxon sampling and species replicates in the future. 3) We assessed a variety of climate variables for correlations to clades within the genus and to the genus as a whole using a free, global dataset of geolocated Cladonia observations as well as climate data normals over a 30-year timespan. We found that temperature variables tend to be more predictive of clade structure and existence in Cladonia. We also found that aridity&mdash;a measure of water availability to water need, and thought to be the major obstacle to Cladonia existence&mdash;isn&rsquo;t necessarily the defining limitation for the genus, and instead found that potential evaporation specifically represents the barrier to existence.</p

Unraveling Gender and Non-Accidental Violence in Women’s Gymnastics Research: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis

Non-accidental violence in women’s gymnastics has gained significant attention, and is a sport where gender is clearly differentiated. Despite the volume of gymnastics research on these themes it seemingly had little impact in preventing harm. We conducted a critical interpretative synthesis of 45 articles to reexamine the literature for understanding of, and connections between, gender and violence. We found that where gender viewed as a structure was explicit, violence was not. Conversely where violence was explicit, gender was implicit and viewed in individualist terms. Only one article explicitly connected gender and violence recognizing violence as a gendered outcome. We encourage researchers to incorporate gender as a structure in analytical inquiries and identify the wider contexts and associated mechanisms through which gender intersects with violence. Doing so can help to develop prevention measures that align with international definitions of gender-based violence