From ‘Effortful Use’ to ‘Contextual Improvisation’: Skill Acquisition Theory and Program Planning

This paper brings together two bodies of theoretical work—program planning and skill acquisition—to suggest a new way to think about how adult educators become expert program planners

Place, Time and Doing the Right Thing: The Moral Geographies of Adult Education

This study explores the relationships between the spatial-temporal locations of adult education faculty during key points in their development and the moral imperatives and ethical frameworks that inform their teaching in graduate programs around the world

Ethics in the Curriculum: A Study of Ethical Frameworks and Moral Imperatives Embedded in Adult Education Graduate Programs

This study concerns the ways in which programs designed to prepare adult educators for practice represent moral imperatives and ethical frameworks in the curriculum. Preliminary findings support the central role of social and political context and personal biography of faculty in determining which imperatives and frameworks are reflected in the curriculum

Communities of Lifelong Learning: Social Justice and Social Territories

Under the larger umbrella of “communities of lifelong learning,” in this paper we explore the themes of social justice and social territories building on our particular professional and academic experiences. Shauna discusses her experiences with a partnership project with a Filipino women’s organization, and Tom draws on his interest in program planning, and offers some observations and reflective questions about how these changes may influence our practic

Changing Relations: Power, Ethics and Responsibility In Graduate Supervision

This paper continues the dialogue between a feminist graduate student and non-feminist male advisor in an adult education graduate program: they each define the power relations inherent in the relationship, and raise questions about their ethical and moral responsibilities

Adult Education for Social Change: Deconstructing Programs and Services for Adult Immigrants

This research examines the role of adult education in bringing about social change through community development initiatives at SUCCESS, an immigrant community organization in Vancouver. It focuses on: the historical development of SUCCESS, the provision of programs and services, major changes in SUCCESS, and the social forces behind the changes

The Kitchen Table: Alternative Perspectives on Program Planning

The literature on program planning in adult education has been dominated by the technical-rational perspectives of a largely white, male, North American group of scholars. We note why this gap is problematic for the field and introduce a new generative metaphor, the kitchen table. This metaphor opens up a space for deliberation about aesthetic and feminist considerations, as well as directing attention to non-Western approaches, particularly ideas about community collaboration from an Indigenous perspectiv

Communities of Lifelong Learning [2]: Social Dialogue: Exchanges Shaping Learning Experiences

Social Dialogues discussed in this paper are the learning exchanges that develop in structured adult learning activities and essential communities of lifelong learning. Social dialogues, Social Justice and Social Territories and Borders (Session 1) are topics essential to the development of communities of lifelong learning. They provide the scaffolding critical to the professional and policy discourses shaping lifelong learning and educational opportunities over the adult life course in diverse social communities of practice

Profiling and exploiting lipid-based nanoparticles in vitro and in vivo

One of the major hurdles for therapeutic applications is the efficient delivery of bioactive molecules to the site of action. The high flexibility and biosafety of lipid-based nanoparticles has greatly enhanced their employment as delivery systems not only for synthetic but also for natural molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. This thesis was brought about to investigate the nucleic acid delivery potential of synthetic lipid-based nanoparticles as well as to look into the composition and delivery patterns of their natural counterparts, extracellular vesicles (EVs), in order to set ground for future lipid-based therapeutic interventions. Firstly, in Paper I we explored the potency of a lipid-based delivery agent, Lipofectamine 2000 which after being frozen and thawed showed orders of magnitude higher nucleic acid delivery efficiency in vitro and in vivo than the non-frozen counterpart. This effect was consistent across different cryo-manipulations, cell lines and also various types of nucleic acid. Further analysis with different methodologies revealed that the underlying potency plausibly relies on the elevated sedimentation and spreading of the complexes and/or relates to the specific structure or composition of the carrier. These findings illustrate that a simple freeze-thawing procedure allows to drastically reduce the amount of transfection reagent for cellular nucleic acid delivery, whilst not losing the desired activity. Secondly, we shifted our focus to natural lipid-based carriers, EVs in order to shed light on the vesicular and non-vesicular (non-EV) small RNA patterns and their relation to the EV proteome (Paper II and III). Though the studies exploited different EV enrichment methods the relative depletion of vesicular small RNAs was confirmed in both instances. A detailed analysis of the secretory repertoire of small RNAs showed a significant depletion of microRNA (miRNA) sequences, matching well with the depletion of “miRNA related” proteins in EVs. The relative expression level of cellular, EV and non-EV miRNAs correlated well and though some differentially expressed (DE) miRNAs were detected, these had a relatively low expression in both the source cells as well as in the secretory fractions. We also quantified the total level of selected miRNAs in EVs and non-EV fraction investigating both the basal as well as overexpressed levels and could verify that the vast majority of mature miRNA is secreted to the non-EV portion of the secretome. Paper IV was brought about to gain a comprehensive overview of the biodistribution of exogenous EVs. This study confirmed that fluorescent lipophilic dyes are suitable for membrane labelling and in vivo tracking of EVs. The general biodistribution pattern of EVs was seen to follow a common mononuclear phagocytic system (MPS) uptake pattern with the majority of EVs accumulating in the liver, spleen and lungs. Nevertheless, depending on the cell source, administration route, dose and the presence of targeting moieties this distribution could be altered. The present findings are important to gain a thorough understanding of the nucleic acid delivery capacity of lipid-based nanoparticles, especially EVs and thereby progress their employment as therapeutic nucleic acid carriers

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http://www.ester.ee/record=b4605581*es