Working reflexively with ethical complexity in narrative research with disadvantaged young people

Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the contribution of all the young people who gave willingly of their time and enthusiasm to this research.Peer reviewedPostprin

Pussy Envy: Subversion of Androcentric Discourse in Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto

This project examines the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis and Aristotelianism on Valerie Solanas’ radical 1967 text, the SCUM Manifesto. Mapping out the future of women’s liberation from patriarchy, SCUM offers a blistering critique of the male-dominated social order and a plan of action for a women-led utopia devoid of the male species. The ingenious manifesto, however, was only introduced to the public the following year, after the author became notorious for shooting Andy Warhol. Solanas, who never intended for an association between SCUM and the shooting, was condemned by feminists of the second-wave movement as a madwoman, save for a few unexpected allies, and SCUM was dismissed as an extremist text. My writing on SCUM seeks to recast Solanas as an authoritative voice on critical theory and contextualize the text as a prepense work of discourse spanning psychology, biology, and philosophy. By examining SCUM in conjunction with the theories of Freud and Aristotle, as well as philosophical and feminist scholarship, the project analyzes how Solanas appropriates androcentric modes of discourse and parodies the phallogocentric arguments of male thinkers to serve the women’s liberation cause

We have the technology to save peer review - now it is up to our communities to implement it

Today marks the beginning of Peer Review Week 2017. Here on the Impact Blog, we’ll be featuring posts covering a variety of perspectives on and issues relating to peer review, and which also consider this year’s theme of “Transparency”. To kick things off, Jon Tennant, Daniel Graziotin and Sarah Kearns consider what can be done to address the various shortcomings and problems of the peer review process. While there is obviously substantial scope for improvement, none of the ideas proposed here are beyond our current technical and social means. The key challenge may lie in galvanising our scholarly communities

Mixed Methods Research – A Guide to the Field. Authors : Vicki Plano-Clark and Nataliya Ivankova Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc. (2016) pp. 368 Paperback £22.99 ISBN 978-1-483306-75-9

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Youth Work Practice, BASW Practical Social Work Series : 2nd Edition. Tony Jeffs & Mark. K. Smith (eds.) Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan (2010) pp. 208 Pbk. £17.99 ISBN 9780230543027 Edition

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Vulnerable Learners

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Mechanism of Cytoskeleton Modification by Histone Methyltransferase SETD2

In order for the busy and crowded cell to have a semblance of organization, it leverages a complex and dynamic network of polymers, the cytoskeleton, to provide structure and serve as molecular roads for cargo transport. Two main polymer systems, microtubules and actin filaments, provide long- and short-range transport, respectively. Additionally, microtubules form the mitotic spindle and primary cilia, while actin filaments are critical for cell migration and muscle contraction. How cytoskeletal elements have such diverse functional roles is in part due to post-translational modifications, where specific chemical modifications signal for protein interactions and particular motor protein motility. For example, tubulin methylation is only found on mitotic spindles, the microtubule-based bipolar structure that separates chromosomes during cell division and is enzymatically added by SETD2. SETD2 canonically modifies histones, specifically histone 3 at lysine 36, and is the only enzyme that can tri-methylate this residue. Knock-out of SETD2 results in histone- and/or microtubule-dependent genetic instability leading to cancer-driving mitotic defects like multipolar spindles and micronuclei formation. Mutations in SETD2 are implicated in cancer, most commonly in the kidney cancer clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), with SETD2 mutations occurring in 10-15% of all ccRCC cases. Thus far, the role of SETD2 in cancer has only been studied in a histone methylation context, but the contribution of cytoskeletal methylation remains unclear. Studies using tumor cells from ccRCC patients demonstrated that when the level of the SETD2 gene product is less than normal (haploinsufficiency), there is a loss of tubulin methylation and genomic instability, whereas total SETD2 inactivation results in a loss of histone methylation. This stepwise model for the loss of SETD2 functionality describes histone and tubulin methylation at the gene level but does not describe the enzymatic regulation of SETD2 amongst its substrates biochemically. Moreover, specific ccRCC mutations have a differential impact on either histone or tubulin methylation in cells, where a R2510H mutation, found in a domain important for regulating protein-protein interactions of SETD2 (the Set2 Rpb1 Interacting SRI domain), retains histone methylation but not tubulin methylation. As such, there remains a significant realm of tubulin-dependent processes that drive ccRCC pathologies that remain unexplored. In this study, I used in vitro biochemical reconstitution with recombinant proteins to determine how SETD2 recognizes and methylates tubulin in addition to actin. By exploiting known tubulin-targeting agents, I found that SETD2 preferentially methylates the dimeric form of tubulin over microtubule polymers and, using recombinant single-isotype tubulin, I demonstrated that methylation is restricted to lysine 40 of alpha-tubulin. Moreover, by introducing pathogenic mutations into SETD2 to probe the recognition of histone and tubulin substrates, I found that particular mutations within the SRI domain tune histone and tubulin methylation by regulating protein-protein interactions with tubulin or RNA Polymerase II. Lastly, I found that tubulin substrate recognition requires the negatively-charged C-terminal tail of alpha-tubulin. Curiously, the SRI domain does not play a similar regulatory role with actin substrate suggesting an alternative recognition site, but our collaborative work found that actin methylation by SETD2 is necessary for cell motility and actin dynamics at the cell periphery. Future studies into tubulin and actin chemical modifications are required to understand the nuanced interactions and crosstalk amongst histone, tubulin, and actin chemical codes in cells and their implications for cancer and disease progression.PHDChemical BiologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167990/1/skearns_1.pd

Educational potential, underachievement, and cultural pluralism

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Roman coloured glass in the Western provinces: the glass cakes and tesserae from West Clacton in England

A collection of tesserae and two fragments from rounded cakes of coloured glass, probably dating to the 2nd century AD, were found at West Clacton Reservoir, Essex, in the UK, by Colchester Archaeological Trust. A selection of the finds were analysed using SEM-EDS and ICP-MS. This paper provides data on the composition of the different glass colours and discusses how each colour was made. Colourants and opacifiers were added to a base glass, most often one of the transparent, naturally coloured (blue-green) natron glass types widely available at the time, but there appear to be preferences in the type of base glass used for certain colours, which affects the type of antimonate opacifier precipitated. Possible reasons for using different types of base glass to make strongly coloured Roman glass are discussed

Adult Environmental Education and the Cultural Commons: A Study of Community Practices for a Just and Sustainable World

Ecojustice adult education, an extension of adult environmental education, has been spurred on by international efforts to educate adults about environmental issues. It is a new and evolving arm of the adult education field that studies the ways that dominant views are impacting human/earth relationships. Ecojustice education teaches about the natural and cultural commons that sustain all life. In this symposiusm, doctoral students investigated their own communities to find examples of the cultural commons