Why Doesn’t a Pregnant Woman Reject her Fetus

Overview: Recurrent Pregnancy loss (RPL) occurs when a woman has three or more consecutive miscarriages; this phenomenon happens in about 1-3% of women. Why some women reject their unborn fetus and others carry theirs to term is still unclear. There are four main theories that exist regarding why some women reject their fetus and others do not: the maternal immune system might not be capable of responding to fetal antigens due to mechanisms that induce tolerance in responding maternal cells; a “barrier” may from between mother and fetus, preventing access of maternal immune cell to fetal antigens; fetal cells may suppress the expression of their antigens; and the fetus may generate site-specific immune suppression. We will look closely at two studies that ask the questions: does the non-specific immune response increase to compensate for the decrease in specific immunity? Is there a maternal cell-mediated immune response to the fetus which needs to be blocked, and do blocking antibodies develop in all successful pregnancies? Different aspects of each theory have proven that a maternal cell-mediated response is not acquired at any stage in pregnancy to the fetus but monocyte surface expression is increased. This proves that there is an increase in the innate immune response. Future studies will look more strictly at the differences between these main theories. Background Pregnancy has become a lot safer than in the past due to technology in medicine and a higher level of education for our health care professionals. Still little is known as to why pregnancies for some women are successful and for other women they are not. 50-60% of pregnancies have a common complication called spontaneous miscarriage, defined as the spontaneous end of a pregnancy that occurs prior to 20 weeks gestation where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving; a less common form of miscarriage is recurrent pregnancy loss, or RPL, which occurs in 1-3% of women and is defined as three or more consecutive miscarriages prior to 20 weeks gestation (Saini V., et al. 2011). There are four different theories experts have studied to understand why this occurs. First, due to mechanisms that induce anergy, reduction or lack of an immune response to a specific antigen, the maternal immune system might not be capable of responding to fetal antigens (Koch and Platt 2007). Second, an anatomical barrier may form that prevents access of maternal immune cell to fetal antigens between mother and fetus (Koch and Platt 2007). Third, fetal cells may suppress the manifestation of alloantigens; an alloantigen is any antigen, present in only some individuals of a species, which stimulates the production of antibodies in those that lack it (Koch and Platt 2007). Finally, the fetus may create site-specific immune suppression in which maternal immune cells would then be blocked, defending the fetus while permitting the cells to produce an immune response (Koch and Platt 2007)

On the Rabinowitz Floer homology of twisted cotangent bundles

Consider the cotangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ of dimension 2 or more, endowed with a twisted symplectic structure defined by a closed weakly exact 2-form $\sigma$ on $M$ whose lift to the universal cover of $M$ admits a bounded primitive. We compute the Rabinowitz Floer homology of energy hypersurfaces $\Sigma_{k}=H^{-1}(k)$ of mechanical (kinetic energy + potential) Hamiltonians $H$ for the case when the energy value k is greater than the Mane critical value c. Under the stronger condition that k>c_{0}, where c_{0} denotes the strict Mane critical value, Abbondandolo and Schwarz recently computed the Rabinowitz Floer homology of such hypersurfaces, by means of a short exact sequence of chain complexes involving the Rabinowitz Floer chain complex and the Morse (co)chain complex associated to the free time action functional. We extend their results to the weaker case k>c, thus covering cases where $\sigma$ is not exact. As a consequence, we deduce that the hypersurface corresponding to the energy level k is never displaceable for any k>c. Moreover, we prove that if dim M > 1, the homology of the free loop space of $M$ is infinite dimensional, and if the metric is chosen generically, a generic Hamiltonian diffeomorphism has infinitely many leaf-wise intersection points in $\Sigma_{k}$.Comment: V4 - final version, accepted for publication in CVPD

‘Gold, guns & goons’: the complexity of electoral irregularities in Nigeria, 1999-2007

Electoral irregularities have become an irritant but inseparable aspect of democratic development in several countries of the world. From the US Florida electoral crisis of 2000 to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004/2005, which was staged to protest perceived electoral malpractice, the story has been that of the inability of electoral bodies to conduct free and fair elections devoid of electoral malpractice, coupled with incompetence and numerous electoral flaws, unfairness and injustice. Although, Nigeria’s case of electoral irregularities may not be unique, their magnitude makes it a good subject of historical investigations. This work examines the impact of the illegal use of money, weapons and thugs as aspects of electoral irregularities in the conduct of elections in Nigeria between 1999 and 2007

Embedded Identities and Dialogic Consensus: Educational implications from the communitarian theory of Bhikhu Parekh

In this article the author will investigate the extent to which Bhikhu Parekh believes that a person's cultural/religious background must be preserved and whether, by implication, religious schooling is justified by his theory. His discussion will explore—by inference and implication—whether Parekh's carefully crafted multiculturalism, enriched and illuminated by numerous practical insights, is socially tenable. The author will also consider whether, by extension, it is justifiable, on his line of reasoning, to cultivate cultural and religious understandings among one's own children. Finally, the author will contend that Parekh, notwithstanding his cautious, even‐handed approach, commits several important errors, including conflating the culture of the parents with that of the children and insisting that cultural and religious persons ought to be allowed to defend their views in the public square on religious grounds

‘For the house her self and one servant’: Family and Household in Late Seventeenth-century London

The 1695 returns for the marriage duty tax provide a unique opportunity to investigate the composition of London’s domestic groups. Traditional schemes for the analysis of the early modern family and household fail to capture the complexities of metropolitan living, and a ‘London-specific’ methodology is outlined for use in the returns’ classification. Application of this scheme to returns from two contrasting areas of London, a cluster of wealthy city-centre parishes and a poorer suburban precinct, reveals a series of structural differences in their families and households that are attributable to the wealth and social status of their respective populations. However, some aspects of the domestic experience within the two areas are more comparable than previous accounts would suggest

Podcasts as a conversational pedagogy

The use of technology such as podcasts, social networking sites, wikis, and Google docs for communicating information which supports teaching and learning in tertiary institutions is well documented (Bates, 2005). These tools have been shown to enhance traditional lectures and tutorials (Salmon, 2007). Little attention, however, has been given to the use of conversational approaches when using these tools and their potential in developing alternative pedagogical approaches to teaching. This article examines the use of a conversational style podcast in an online pre-service early childhood teacher education programme. The podcasts were initially used to disseminate information and respond to the students’ needs, however, their conversational use revealed a number of unexpected outcomes. Analysis of the podcast conversations that occurred between the two lecturers, and the student feedback to these, were used to identify unexpected outcomes for students enrolled in the programme. These included the ‘humanising’ of the e-learning environment and the sense of community that emerged. This paper argues that the affordance of conversational podcasts personalises the e-learning environment, enhances students’ and lecturers’ motivation, and engenders a greater connectedness with the university context

Risk, Harm and Intervention: the case of child obesity

In this paper we aim to demonstrate the enormous ethical complexity that is prevalent in child obesity cases. This complexity, we argue, favors a cautious approach. Against those perhaps inclined to blame neglectful parents, we argue that laying the blame for child obesity at the feet of parents is simplistic once the broader context is taken into account. We also show that parents not only enjoy important relational prerogatives worth defending, but that children, too, are beneficiaries of that relationship in ways difficult to match elsewhere. Finally, against the backdrop of growing public concern and pressure to intervene earlier in the life cycle, we examine the perhaps unintended stigmatizing effects that labeling and intervention can have and consider a number of risks and potential harms occasioned by state interventions in these cases