Occasional Paper 13 - What role do maintained nursery schools play in Early Years sector improvements?

The thing that really concerns me is that once MNSs have gone, that level of expertise and social service will also. It seems that there’s a sort of double quality to the MNS, which is constantly evolving, high level pedagogy and providing areas of expertise, like special needs, and so on. But also support for the family. There's very specific expertise that's going to go to waste… (Leader of a Maintained Nursery School

Enacting the 'civilian plus':International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction

The civilian-combatant frame persists as the main legal lens through which lawyers organize the relationships of conflict zone actors. As a result, little attention has been paid in international legal scholarship to different gradations of ‘civilianness’ and the ways in which some civilians might compete to distinguish themselves from each other. Drawing attention to international humanitarian actors – particularly those working for NGOs – this article explores the micro-strategies these actors engage in to negotiate their relative status in war. Original qualitative empirical findings from South Sudan illuminate the way in which humanitarians struggle over distinction with individuals working for the UN peacekeeping mission, UNMISS. As is shown, humanitarian actors are doing away with a static civilian-combatant binary in their daily practice. A more fluid logic informs both their self-conceptualization and their interactions with others who share the operational space. Humanitarian actors envision civilianness as a contingent concept, and they operate according to a continuum along which everything is a matter of degree and subtle gradation. As civilianness is detached from the civilian, any given actor might acquire or shed civilian-like, or combatant-like, characteristics at any moment. The distinction practices that humanitarian actors enact can be understood as a bid for legibility, so that they might be rendered intelligible in international law and in the eyes of other actors as a special kind of civilian – the ‘civilian plus’

Trusting Others to ‘Do the Math’

Researchers effectively trust the work of others anytime they use software tools or custom software. In this article I explore this notion of trusting others, using Digital Humanities as a focus, and drawing on my own experience. Software is inherently flawed and limited, so its use in scholarship demands better practices and terminology, to review research software and describe development processes. It is also important to make research software engineers and their work more visible, both for the purposes of review and credit

Investigating the possible mechanisms and gender effects of Omega-3 fatty acids on neuroblastoma, breast and prostate cancers

Cancer is a worldwide disease characterised by uncontrollable cell division and tumour growth making it a leading cause of death worldwide. The use of dietary products such a poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to reduce cancer growth is a current area of interest in research. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and Arachidonic acid (AA) are examples of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids found to play a role in carcinogenesis, for example DHA has previously been shown to induce apoptosis in cancer cells without influencing healthy cells. In neuroblastoma cancer development has been delayed by DHA treatment as a result of in vitro mechanisms involving intracellular peroxidation. A further protective effect of omega-3 fatty acids was found in breast cancer patients following high fish consumption and in prostate cancer development the role of omega-3 fatty acids have been highlighted in animal studies, though the later remains a conflicted area of research. Both prostate and breast cancers are gender specific and influenced by hormones, therefore the success of treatments in both these cancers may elicit gender differences. For this reason, neuroblastoma, breast and prostate cancer cell lines have been investigated in the current research to see if PUFAs or gender effects play a role in cancer development. The supplementation of DHA, ALA and AA were investigated across the three cancer cell lines (SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma, MCF-7 breast, PC-3 prostate) using a dose range of 0-1000M to produce dose-response curves displaying the effects on cell viability. A concentration of 800M was found to produce an optimal reduction in cell viability across the three cell lines. DHA was found to decrease cell viability of all three cells lines following 24hr and 48hr treatment periods. In this study antagonists of calcium-independent phospholipase A2 (iPLA2), G-protein coupled receptor 40 (GPR40), retinoid-X-receptor (RxR) and nuclear receptors (NR) (bexarotene, tamoxifen, mifepristone, nilutamide) were investigated as pharmacological targets to see if these specific receptors were involved in PUFA effects on cancer cell viability. The antagonists investigated had differing effects on the different cell lines, with certain antagonists eliciting significant cell viability differences in select cell lines. iPLA2 antagonists acting on the SH-SY5Y and MCF-7 lines whereas RxR induced changes in cell viability across all the cell lines. In conclusion, this research has shown IPLA2, GRP40, RxR and nuclear receptors all have an involvement across the three cancer cell lines (SH-SY5Y, MCF-7, PC-3) by significantly affecting cell viability. The prostate cancer cell line did not respond as well to PUFA treatment when compared to the other two cell lines suggesting there may be gender differences, which is in line with previous research displaying no consistent evidence. This research supports the role of PUFAs in prevention and causation of neuroblastoma, breast and prostate cancer

A Class Action on Behalf of Federally-Sentenced Women with Mental Health Issues

The inquiry into Ashley Smith’s in-custody death is playing a crucial role in opening up the typically inscrutable prison system and forcing the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) to defend its policies and practices under intense public scrutiny. Yet there is a risk that Smith will be understood as an extreme outlier, rather than an indicator of a deeper problem. There remains a broader need for concrete and systemic reform of the prison system as it treats Federally-Sentenced Women (FSW) with mental health issues. In this analysis I will consider how civil litigation might be used in creative ways to seek remedies for this segment of the prison populations. Specifically, I will explore the viability of a class action lawsuit against CSC on behalf of FSW with mental health issues, with a sub-class of Aboriginal female prisoners. While there are admittedly a number of practical obstacles to bringing this type of lawsuit, a class action against the Crown offers an interesting combination of private and public law advantages as well as the potential for both individual recourse and systemic chang

There’s No Place Like a Refugee Camp? Urban Planning and Participation in the Camp Context

The past half-century of urban studies has demonstrated that the design of human settlements is a potent tool of governance. Active involvement in place shaping has also been shown to be a key empowerment mechanism for citizens and a strong means of creating cohesion in communities. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugee camps are a unique form of human habitation, temporary spaces created “between war and city.” Drawing from urban planning theory, camp management tools, and migrant narratives, this paper will explore the dynamics of the spatial relationship between camp residents and the international governance bodies who manage them. As we will demonstrate, this approach offers important insights into how the relationships between camp residents and aid agencies are negotiated, and the implications for governance in societies camp inhabitants later (re)settle in.Les études d’urbanisme des cinquante dernières années ont démontrés que la planification d’établissements humains est un outil potentiel de gouvernance. Il a été également montré que l’organisation active de l’espace peut être un mécanisme d’implication des citoyens et un moyen puissant de créer les cohésions communautaires. Les camps de personnes déplacées localement et de réfugiés sont une forme spécifique d’habitation humaine, correspondant à des espaces créés temporairement « à mi-chemin entre la ville et la guerre ». En se basant sur des théories de planification urbaine, des outils de gestion de camp, et des récits de migrants, cet article explore les dynamiques des relations spatiales entre les résidents de camp et les organisations gouvernementales internationales qui les gèrent. On y montre que cette approche permet de mieux saisir comment se déroule les relations entre les résidents de camp et les agences humanitaires, ainsi que les conséquences que cela implique pour la gouvernance des sociétés dans les-quelles s’installent ensuite ces résidents de camps

The American Dream: Starting and Growing a Business as an Immigrant Case Study: Maria Empanada

This case details Lorena Cantarovici’s experiences with starting and growing her award-winning restaurant: Maria Empanada. While visiting a friend in Colorado, Lorena (an Argentinian immigrant) fell in love with the mountains and stayed. Homesick for her childhood empanadas, she made empanadas and sold them to her friends. To meet increasing demand, she opened several restaurants. Lorena addressed the pandemic by closing some restaurants and changing her business model. The case provides insights into issues immigrants might encounter when starting and growing businesses in dynamic environments while maintaining the values of their homeland cultures. Much of the following is based on our interview with Lorena Cantarovici and Victor Arango

“What is left…?”: the implications of losing maintained nursery schools for vulnerable children and families in England

This TACTYC funded research highlights the role that Maintained Nursery Schools (MNS) play in supporting families within areas of extreme social deprivation in the UK. Data collected through survey and interview demonstrated the positive impact that these schools have upon disadvantaged children and their families, providing a breadth and depth of ongoing care, against a backdrop of ongoing fiscal cuts and uncertainty. Often this provision was in lieu of the reported minimisation of other social services support for struggling families. We argue in this paper that the loss of these state institutions could be highly detrimental to the families that they currently support

The international humanitarian actor as 'civilian plus': the circulation of the idea of distinction in international law

This socio-legal study reconceptualizes the principle of distinction in international humanitarian law (IHL). Moving away from the dominant vision of fixed civilian and combatant entities separated by a bright line, it introduces an alternative vision of how distinction works in different places and at different times, or what we might think of as ‘a new law of distinction’. This account is grounded in the practices of international actors across a number of global sites: from Geneva and The Hague to civil–military training programmes in Europe and the operational context of South Sudan. The main character of interest is the international humanitarian actor, who is situated alongside other international actors, such as NATO soldiers, UN peacekeepers and UN civilian actors. As is shown, the everyday interactions of these actors are shaped by contests over distinction. In the law of distinction that is distilled from these practices, qualities of ‘civilianness’ and ‘combatantness’ float around in the air, able to attach to any individual at any given moment, depending upon their self-presentation, behaviour and context. Three new figures emerge around these qualities: the ‘civilian plus’, the ‘mere civilian’ and the ‘civilian minus’. The ‘civilian plus’, this study proposes, represents a special status that international humanitarian actors disseminate on a daily basis. This special status relies upon a concept of civilianness that is relative, contingent and aligned with an alreadyfragmented civilian category in IHL. The distinction practices of humanitarian actors also have an important performance component, designed to influence the perceptions of an omnipresent observer – the ‘phantom local’. The overarching aim of this inquiry is to uncover and contend with distinction’s perpetually disrupted nature. The study dismantles the idea of distinction as we know it, enabling us to recognize distinction in strange and unfamiliar forms