The unfinished body: The medical and social reshaping of disabled young bodies

Stories about disability are heavily shaped by the narratives offered by medicine and society. Those narratives enact an 'anomalous' body that is constructed as distant from the norm and therefore 'damaged' but also fixable. In this paper we explore how such narratives, and the practices they encompass, influence the stories disabled young people tell about their bodies and impairment. We do so by drawing on narrative qualitative interviews and visual practices carried out with seventeen disabled young people in a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council that took place between 2011 and 2012 in the North East of England. The findings discussed here focus on how medical and societal responses to bodily difference become part of the stories disabled young people tell about their bodies, and influence the way they work with the body as something which remains 'unfinished' and therefore both fixable and flawed. Our conclusion is that a narrative of an unfinished body is produced, as young people manage their bodies as something that is integral to their emerging identity, but also as a potential threat that could undermine and give away their labour in making an 'ordinary' functioning body and life. The paper contributes to medical sociology and sociology of the body by producing new knowledge about how disabled embodiment is lived and framed by disabled young people in the context of ongoing attempts to change the body

Technology and the Politics of Mobility: Evidence Generation in Accessible Transport Activism

Digital technologies offer the possibility of community empowerment via the reconfiguration of public services. This potential relies on actively involved citizens engaging with decision makers to pursue civic goals. In this paper we study one such group of involved citizens, examining the evidencing practices of a rare disease charity campaigning for accessible public transport. Through fieldwork and interviews, we highlight the ways in which staff and volunteers assembled and presented different forms of evidence, in doing so reframing what is conceived as 'valid knowledge'. We note the challenges this group faced in capturing experiential knowledge around the accessibility barriers of public transport, and the trade-offs that are made when presenting evidence to policy and decision makers. We offer a number of design considerations for future HCI research, focusing on how digital technology might be configured more appropriately to support campaigning around the politics of mobility

Do-It-Yourself Empowerment as Experienced by Novice Makers with Disabilities

Recent HCI research has highlighted the potential afforded by maker technologies for supporting new forms of DIY Assistive Technology (DIY-AT) for people with disabilities. Furthermore, the popular discourse surrounding both the maker movement and disability is one of democratisation and empowerment. Despite this, critics argue that maker movement membership lacks diversity and that within DIY-AT, it is seldom the people with disabilities who are creating such designs. We conducted a qualitative study that explored how people with disabilities experience the empowering potential of making. We analysed online videos by makers with disabilities and conducted fieldwork at two makerspaces. These informed the design of DIY-Abilities, a series of workshops for people with disabilities in which participants could learn different maker technologies and complete their own maker project. Through analysis of participants’ narratives we contribute a new perspective on the specific social and material capacities of accessible maker initiatives

Mutations in HPV18 E1^E4 Impact Virus Capsid Assembly, Infectivity Competence, and Maturation.

The most highly expressed protein during the productive phase of the human papillomavirus (HPV) life cycle is E1^E4. Its full role during infection remains to be established. HPV E1^E4 is expressed during both the early and late stages of the virus life cycle and contributes to viral genome amplification. In an attempt to further outline the functions of E1^E4, and determine whether it plays a role in viral capsid assembly and viral infectivity, we examined wild-type E1^E4 as well as four E1^E4 truncation mutants. Our study revealed that HPV18 genomes containing the shortest truncated form of E1^E4, the 17/18 mutant, produced viral titers that were similar to wild-type virus and significantly higher compared to virions containing the three longer E1^E4 mutants. Additionally, the infectivity of virus containing the shortest E1^E4 mutation was equivalent to wild-type and significantly higher than the other three mutants. In contrast, infectivity was completely abrogated for virus containing the longer E1^E4 mutants, regardless of virion maturity. Taken together, our results indicate for the first time that HPV18 E1^E4 impacts capsid assembly and viral infectivity as well as virus maturation

Fresolimumab Treatment Decreases Biomarkers and Improves Clinical Symptoms in Systemic Sclerosis Patients

BACKGROUND. TGF-β has potent profibrotic activity in vitro and has long been implicated in systemic sclerosis (SSc), as expression of TGF-β–regulated genes is increased in the skin and lungs of patients with SSc. Therefore, inhibition of TGF-β may benefit these patients. METHODS. Patients with early, diffuse cutaneous SSc were enrolled in an open-label trial of fresolimumab, a high-affinity neutralizing antibody that targets all 3 TGF-β isoforms. Seven patients received two 1 mg/kg doses of fresolimumab, and eight patients received one 5 mg/kg dose of fresolimumab. Serial mid-forearm skin biopsies, performed before and after treatment, were analyzed for expression of the TGF-β–regulated biomarker genes thrombospondin-1 (THBS1) and cartilage oligomeric protein (COMP) and stained for myofibroblasts. Clinical skin disease was assessed using the modified Rodnan skin score (MRSS). RESULTS. In patient skin, THBS1 expression rapidly declined after fresolimumab treatment in both groups (P = 0.0313 at 7 weeks and P = 0.0156 at 3 weeks), and skin expression of COMP exhibited a strong downward trend in both groups. Clinical skin disease dramatically and rapidly decreased (P \u3c 0.001 at all time points). Expression levels of other TGF-β–regulated genes, including SERPINE1 and CTGF, declined (P = 0.049 and P = 0.012, respectively), and a 2-gene, longitudinal pharmacodynamic biomarker of SSc skin disease decreased after fresolimumab treatment (P = 0.0067). Dermal myofibroblast infiltration also declined in patient skin after fresolimumab (P \u3c 0.05). Baseline levels of THBS1 were predictive of reduced THBS1 expression and improved MRSS after fresolimumab treatment. CONCLUSION. The rapid inhibition of TGF-β–regulated gene expression in response to fresolimumab strongly implicates TGF-β in the pathogenesis of fibrosis in SSc. Parallel improvement in the MRSS indicates that fresolimumab rapidly reverses markers of skin fibrosis

Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 antibody seroprevalence in Northern Ireland during 2020–2021

BackgroundWith the spread of SARS-CoV-2 impacting upon public health directly and socioeconomically, further information was required to inform policy decisions designed to limit virus spread during the pandemic. This study sought to contribute to serosurveillance work within Northern Ireland to track SARS-CoV-2 progression and guide health strategy.MethodsSera/plasma samples from clinical biochemistry laboratories were analysed for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Samples were assessed using an Elecsys anti-SARS-CoV-2 or anti-SARS-CoV-2 S ECLIA (Roche) on an automated cobas e 801 analyser. Samples were also assessed via an anti-SARS-CoV-2 ELISA (Euroimmun). A subset of samples assessed via the Elecsys anti-SARS-CoV-2 ECLIA were subsequently analysed in an ACE2 pseudoneutralisation assay using a V-PLEX SARS-CoV-2 Panel 7 for IgG and ACE2 (Meso Scale Diagnostics).ResultsAcross three testing rounds (June–July 2020, November–December 2020 and June–July 2021 (rounds 1–3 respectively)), 4844 residual sera/plasma specimens were assayed for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Seropositivity rates increased across the study, peaking at 11.6 % (95 % CI 10.4%–13.0 %) during round 3. Varying trends in SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity were noted based on demographic factors. For instance, highest rates of seropositivity shifted from older to younger demographics across the study period. In round 3, Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant neutralising antibodies were most frequently detected across age groups, with median concentration of anti-spike protein antibodies elevated in 50–69 year olds and anti-S1 RBD antibodies elevated in 70+ year olds, relative to other age groups.ConclusionsWith seropositivity rates of <15 % across the assessment period, it can be concluded that the significant proportion of the Northern Ireland population had not yet naturally contracted the virus by mid-2021

The Changing of the Guard: The New American Labor Leader

This article analyzes recent changes in the leadership of international unions. There has been a trend toward leaders who are lifetime bureaucrats rather than rank-and-file members with charisma. This change toward more technocratic leadership is due to the different environment and new challenges that labor currently faces. The United Mine Workers is a good example of a union that has had many changes in the type of person who has become president, from the labor giant John L. Lewis to the 33-year-old lawyer Richard Trumka. The United Auto Workers is an example of a union whose leadership has been consistently drawn from the union hierarchy. The AFL-CIO has made a change in leadership from George Meany to the labor bureaucrat Lane Kirkland. There will probably be an increase in the number of women and minorities in top leadership positions in unions, but this will be a gradual increase.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66627/2/10.1177_000271628447300107.pd

The interactions of disability and impairment

Theoretical work on disability is going through an expansive period, built on the growing recognition of disability studies as a discipline and out of the political and analytical push to bring disability into a prominent position within accounts of the intersecting social categories that shape people's lives. A current debate within critical disability studies is whether that study should include impairment and embodiment within its focus. This article argues it should and does so by drawing from symbolic interactionism and embodiment literatures in order to explore how differences in what bodies can do-defined as impairments-come to play a role in how people make sense of themselves through social interaction. We argue that these everyday interactions and the stories we tell within them and about them are important spaces and narratives through which impairment and disability are produced. Interactions and stories are significant both in how they are shaped by wider social norms, collective stories and institutional processes, and also how they at times can provide points of resistance and challenges to such norms, stories and institutions. Therefore, the significance of impairment and interaction is the role they play in both informing self-identity and also broader dynamics of power and inequality