79 research outputs found

    ‘Students that just hate school wouldn’t go’: educationally disengaged and disadvantaged young people’s talk about university education

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    This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people’s imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, specifically how they imagined universities and university participation. For these young people, universities were imagined as ‘big’, ‘massive’ alienating schools. The paper explores how the elements of schooling from which these young people disengaged became tangible barriers to imagining and pursuing participation in university education. The primary barrier they described was their relationships with school teachers. Our analysis shows how relationships with teachers can impact the imagined improbability/probability of university participation. We offer suggestions for how barriers to university created by poor relationships with teachers may be overcome

    Current Review of In Nivo GBM Rodent Models: Emphasis on the CNS-1 Tumour Model

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    GBM (glioblastoma multiforme) is a highly aggressive brain tumour with very poor prognosis despite multi-modalities of treatment. Furthermore, recent failure of targeted therapy for these tumours highlights the need of appropriate rodent models for preclinical studies. In this review, we highlight the most commonly used rodent models (U251, U86, GL261, C6, 9L and CNS-1) with a focus on the pathological and genetic similarities to the human disease. We end with a comprehensive review of the CNS-1 rodent model

    Chapter 4, Challenging the myth that ‘the parents don’t care’: Family teachings about education for ‘educationally disengaged’ young people,

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    This chapter focuses on families as sites of pedagogical work. We take up a focus on the pedagogical work of families in relation to formal education and educational exclusion. When describing families' pedagogical work in relation to formal education, we pay particular attention to their teachings about the school and university. Family pedagogies that impact upon educational participation and exclusion are important to consider in parallel with this book's focus on family pedagogies in relation to health. This is because there is a close relationship between levels of educational attainment and health; the more years of formal education that a person experiences, the better their health outcomes (ABS, 2013; Cutler and L1eras-Muney, 2010; Egerter et al, 2006). Our aim is to demonstrate that family pedagogies of formal education are key to practices of educational inclusion and exclusion and as such they are important to understand, and to reconsider in educational theory. It is simply not the case that all young people who are disengaged from education (either not attending at all or attending sporadically) have a background lacking in family pedagogies connected with education. Young people who are educationally disengaged or at the margins of formal education are rarely consulted in educationalliterature and policy-making (Bland, 2012; Duffy and Elwood, 2013; Harwood and Allan, 2014; Morgan et al, 2008). It is not surprising, therefore, to find that while there is a rich literature on families' pedagogical work on young people's position in education (Brooks, 2003; Lucey et al, 2006), less iIterature is available on pedagogical work of families of young people not engaged in education (Stein, 2006). This lack of attention is gradually being redressed. Yet there are assumptions we encounter anecdotally in our experience with teacher education students (in the UK and Australia), that these parents 'don't care' or they set 'bad examples'. Such anecdotes echo literature that describes teachers' deficit understandings of socioeconomically disadvantaged and 'disengaged' children and young people (Comber and Kamler, 2004; D'Addio, 2007; Machin, 1999). This chapter seeks to contribute an understanding of the pedagogical work of families of young people who are currently disengaged from or at the margins of formal education. The young people in our study are, hereafter, summarily described as 'disengaged' from education because they all experienced precarious relationships with mandatory schooling, further and higher education. The school-aged participants were not attending school or attending sporadically, they were excluded from schools, or they were pursuing alternative education programmes. Those participants who were legally old enough not to attend school were also not participating in further or higher education. Whilst we are not claiming that post-school pursuits other than further or higher education lack value, we can state that participants were not involved in post-school formal education options and so may still be described as not educationally engaged. We discuss how these educationally disengaged participants' family pedagogies relating to education are not homogenously negative. We will argue that their pedagogical work is varied, complex and often positive. Following a brief description of the study, the chapter is structured into three sections that reflect the findings from our data: families as sites of pedagogy and learning about 'education'; families' implicit teaching about education; and lastly, families' explicit teaching about education. Theoretically, we use Cambourne's (1995) Conditions of Learning to think through the family's explicit and implicit teachings

    Parents' agendas in paediatric clinical trial recruitment are different from researchers' and often remain unvoiced: a qualitative study

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    Ensuring parents make an informed decision about their child's participation in a clinical trial is a challenge for practitioners as a parent's comprehension of a trial may differ from that intended by the practitioners responsible for recruitment. We explored what issues parents consider important when making a decision about participation in a paediatric clinical trial and their comprehension of these issues to inform future recruitment practice. This qualitative interview and observational study examined recruitment in four placebo-controlled, double-blind randomised clinical trials of medicines for children. Audio-recorded trial recruitment discussions between practitioners and parents (N = 41) were matched with semi-structured interviews with parents (N = 41). When making a decision about trial entry parents considered clinical benefit, child safety, practicalities of participation, research for the common good, access to medication and randomisation. Within these prioritised issues parents had specific misunderstandings, which had the potential to influence their decisions. While parents had many questions and concerns about trial participation which influenced their decision-making, they rarely voiced these during discussions about the trials with practitioners. Those involved in the recruitment of children to clinical trials need to be aware of parents' priorities and the sorts of misunderstandings that can arise with parents. Providing trial information that is tailored to what parents consider important in making a decision about a clinical trial may improve recruitment practice and ultimately benefit evidence-based paediatric medicine. © 2013 Woolfall et al

    Communication about Children's Clinical Trials as Observed and Experienced: Qualitative Study of Parents and Practitioners

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    Recruiting children to clinical trials is perceived to be challenging. To identify ways to optimise recruitment and its conduct, we compared how parents and practitioners described their experiences of recruitment to clinical trials

    Identification of new drug targets and resistance mechanisms in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

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    Identification of new drug targets is vital for the advancement of drug discovery against Mycobacterium tuberculosis , especially given the increase of resistance worldwide to first- and second-line drugs. Because traditional target-based screening has largely proven unsuccessful for antibiotic discovery, we have developed a scalable platform for target identification in M. tuberculosis that is based on whole-cell screening, coupled with whole-genome sequencing of resistant mutants and recombineering to confirm. The method yields targets paired with whole-cell active compounds, which can serve as novel scaffolds for drug development, molecular tools for validation, and/or as ligands for co-crystallization. It may also reveal other information about mechanisms of action, such as activation or efflux. Using this method, we identified resistance-linked genes for eight compounds with anti-tubercular activity. Four of the genes have previously been shown to be essential: AspS, aspartyl-tRNA synthetase, Pks13, a polyketide synthase involved in mycolic acid biosynthesis, MmpL3, a membrane transporter, and EccB3, a component of the ESX-3 type VII secretion system. AspS and Pks13 represent novel targets in protein translation and cell-wall biosynthesis. Both MmpL3 and EccB3 are involved in membrane transport. Pks13, AspS, and EccB3 represent novel candidates not targeted by existing TB drugs, and the availability of whole-cell active inhibitors greatly increases their potential for drug discovery

    Half-Dead Colonies of Montastraea Annularis Release Viable Gametes On A Degraded Reef In The Us Virgin Islands

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    This article contributes to scholarship on Afroeurope by investigating the intersection of blackness, Africanness, and Europeanness in everyday discourses and social practices in the Netherlands and Italy. We examine how young African-descended Europeans are forging new ways of being both African and European through practices of self-making, which should be understood against both the historical background of colonialism and the contemporary politics of othering. Such practices take on an urgency for these youth, often encompassing a reinvention of Africanness and/or blackness as well as a challenge to dominant, exclusionary understandings of Europeanness. Comparing Afro-Dutch and Afro-Italian modes of self-making, centred on African heritage and roots, we discuss: 1) the emergence of a transnational, Afroeuropean imaginary, distinguished from both white Europe and African-American formations; and 2) the diversity of Afroeuropean modes of self-making, all rooted in distinct histories of colonialism, slavery, and immigration, and influenced by global formations of Africanness and blackness. These new Afro and African identities advanced by young Europeans do not turn away from Europeanness (as dominant identity models would assume: the more African, the less European), nor simply add to Europeanness (“multicultural” identities), nor even mix with Europeanness (“hybrid” identities), but are in and of themselves European
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