Making Out-of-School Time Matter: Evidence for an Action Agenda

Presents findings from a review of literature that identifies and addresses the level of demand for OST services, the effectiveness of the offerings, quality in OST programs, how to encourage participation, and how to build further community capacity

Thermochemical stability of low-iron, manganese-enriched olivine in astrophysical environments

Low-iron, manganese-enriched (LIME) olivine grains are found in cometary samples returned by the Stardust mission from comet 81P/Wild 2. Similar grains are found in primitive meteoritic clasts and unequilibrated meteorite matrix. LIME olivine is thermodynamically stable in a vapor of solar composition at high temperature at total pressures of a millibar to a microbar, but enrichment of solar composition vapor in a dust of chondritic composition causes the FeO/MnO ratio of olivine to increase. The compositions of LIME olivines in primitive materials indicate oxygen fugacities close to those of a very reducing vapor of solar composition. The compositional zoning of LIME olivines in amoeboid olivine aggregates is consistent with equilibration with nebular vapor in the stability field of olivine, without re-equilibration at lower temperatures. A similar history is likely for LIME olivines found in comet samples and in interplanetary dust particles. LIME olivine is not likely to persist in nebular conditions in which silicate liquids are stable

Addressing Barriers to Minority Ethnic Students’ Learning in a Performative Culture: Possible or Aan u SuuraGelin? Niemożliwe? Nemoguće? ناممکن?

© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York. This article, written by a research-active teacher of English with an academic partner, recounts the circumstances of forging a partnership way of working in an urban high school that is consistently targeted for closure in the north of England. This is connected to performance and achievement against Ofsted inspection criteria and school data benchmarked against national data. The article proceeds with a recollection of the teacher’s battle for professional recognition when it comes to the intellectual and practical arguments for curriculum and classroom practices that are tailored to the learning needs of different minority ethnic students, who have to negotiate language barriers to schooling. This more professional view of what is to be done draws on evidence built up in the course of a teacher inquiry project, which needed the sanction of the School Improvement Officer assigned by the Local Authority, who recommended a focus on achievement in the teacher’s bottom set Year 7 English class. The experience points toward research-informed teaching, which stands in marked distinction to being compelled to ‘teach to the test’ in classes that are set. The article illustrates a union argument that teachers’ professional responsibilities are linked to a struggle to reclaim the right to make professional decisions

Inhibitory responses mediated by vagal nerve stimulation are diminished in stomachs of mice with reduced intramuscular interstitial cells of Cajal

Intramuscular interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC-IM) are closely associated with enteric motor nerve terminals and electrically coupled to smooth muscle cells within the gastric musculature. Previous studies investigating the role of ICC-IM in motor neurotransmission have used indiscriminate electric field stimulation of neural elements within the gastric wall. To determine the role of ICC-IM in transduction of vagally-mediated motor input to gastric muscles electrical and mechanical responses to selective electrical vagal stimulation (EVS) were recorded from gastric fundus and antral regions of wild type and W/WV mice, which lack most ICC-IM. EVS evoked inhibitory junction potentials (IJPs) in wild type muscles that were attenuated or abolished by L-NNA. IJPs were rarely evoked in W/WV muscles by EVS, and not affected by L-NNA. EVS evoked relaxation of wild type stomachs, but the predominant response of W/WV stomachs was contraction. EVS applied after pre-contraction with bethanechol caused relaxation of wild type gastric tissues and these were inhibited by the nitric oxide synthase inhibitor L-NNA. Relaxation responses were of smaller amplitude in W/WV muscles and L-NNA did not attenuate relaxation responses in W/WV fundus muscles. These data suggest an important role for ICC-IM in vagally-mediated nitrergic relaxation in the proximal and distal stomach.Elizabeth A. H. Beckett, Kenton M. Sanders and Sean M. War

“Until We Are First Recognized as Humans”: The Killing of George Floyd and the Case for Black Life at the United Nations

Following the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, members of the human rights movement in the United States understood instantly that justice within the American legal system, which has a long history of shielding police officers and racist vigilantes from prosecution, was anything but certain. To enhance the chances of having the individual officers (Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao) prosecuted for Floyd’s death, but also to have demands for systemic change heard and amplified, the United States Human Rights Network (USHRN) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worked with the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and others to set in motion a process that gained the support of domestic and international human rights organizations; international human rights bodies, such as the African Group/Group of African States (GAFS), consisting of fifty-four African nations; and, finally, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) itself. In fact, the urgent debate held at the United Nations in Geneva in June 2020 marked an unprecedented moment in the institution’s long history. This was the first time that a Western country had been held accountable, at this level, for flagrant human rights violations occurring within their borders and at the hands of their government

The progression from contraction to contracture in Dupuytren's derived fibroblasts: a study of the cellular and molecular events.

Dupuytren's disease is a debilitating fibroproliferative disorder of the palmar fascia affecting hand function. Clinically the appearance of nodules and cords is characterised by the deposition of excess extracellular matrix within the fascia. Progressive shortening of the matrix leads to increased stiffness and permanent tissue contracture. Surgical release of contracture is the only current treatment but despite this, recurrence rates are high. It has been postulated that contracture is a result of two separate processes occurring in parallel: a) Cell mediated contraction of the matrix - whereby fibroblasts act to cause a physical deformation within the resident tissue (Harris et al 1981), and b) Continuous matrix remodelling, leading to the permanence of contracture (Flint and Poole 1990 Tomasek et al 2002). A culture force monitor model was used to study the contractile properties of fibroblasts cultured in three dimensional collagen gels. Dupuytren's nodule and cord fibroblasts generated significantly greater forces in comparison to carpal ligament fibroblasts (p<0.001), and similar forces in comparison to dermal fibroblasts over a 48 hour period. Carpal ligament and dermal fibroblasts reached tensional homeostasis by 24 hours showing no further increase in contraction. Dupuytren's fibroblasts continued to contract with no plateau at 24 or 48 hours (jX 0.001). A reduction in external load applied to these fibroblasts resulted in an increase in cellular contraction by both Dupuytren's and control fibroblasts. Baseline tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase (TIMP) expression in both Dupuytren's and control fibroblasts without external mechanical stimulation was significantly greater than that of the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). There was no difference in expression between carpal ligament and Dupuytren's fibroblasts. Mechanical stimulation resulted in a significant up-regulation of MMP gene expression by Dupuytren's nodule fibroblasts (jXO.01). There was no up-regulation of MMPs by cord or carpal ligament derived fibroblasts. There was a reciprocal significant up- regulation of TIMP-1 expression by carpal ligament derived cells after mechanical stimulation (p<0.001), with a similar response by cord derived cells (p<0.005). This response was absent in nodule derived fibroblasts. The amount of permanent shortening of a collagen matrix, the residual matrix tension (RMT), was quantified over a 48 hour period using the culture force monitor model. Over a short time period residual matrix tension was minimal following disruption of the actin cytoskeleton by cytochalasin-D in all fibroblasts under investigation, indicating that no spatial remodeling of the collagen had occurred. However by 48 hours a permanent shortening of the collagen network was seen which was most marked for Dupuytren's and dermal fibroblasts, and which was significantly greater than that for carpal ligament fibroblasts (p<0.05). In summary, there appears to be a primary abnormality in the process of cellular contraction, leading to the progression of contracture seen in Dupuytren's disease. It is postulated that cellular contraction holds the matrix in a newly shortened state, while concurrently the cells act to remodel the surrounding matrix to hold it there permanently

Confidentiality and public protection: ethical dilemmas in qualitative research with adult male sex offenders

This paper considers the ethical tensions present when engaging in in-depth interviews with convicted sex offenders. Many of the issues described below are similar to those found in other sensitive areas of research. However, confidentiality and public protection are matters that require detailed consideration when the desire to know more about men who have committed serious and harmful offences is set against the possibility of a researcher not disclosing previously unknown sensitive information that relates to the risk of someone being harmed.</p

Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape: Remembering Kant, Forgetting Proust

This article draws on Samuel Beckett’s recently published letters and archival scholarship to consider the place of Immanuel Kant’s critical epistemology within Beckett’s early thinking and his subsequent works. Beginning from Beckett’s engagement with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, demonstrated by notes taken from Wilhelm Windelband’s A History of Philosophy between 1932 and 1933, excerpts from Jules de Gaultier’s From Kant to Nietzsche in the “Whoroscope” Notebook, and Beckett’s acquisition of Immanuel Kants Werke in 1938, I offer a close analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of Beckett’s parody of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu in Krapp’s Last Tape. The larger purpose of this article is to argue that a critique of metaphysical thought can be found in Beckett’s work and to demonstrate that Kant’s influence as a philosophical source of this critique has been largely overlooked in Beckett criticism