Teacher education for diversity

This research reports the findings from three Queensland universities regarding preservice teachers' attitudes towards people with disabilities. The Interactions With Disabled Persons Scale (Gething, 1991) was administered to investigate the effect of personal attributes on preservice teachers' acceptance of and social interactions with people with disabilities. The findings indicate that only four percent of preservice teachers surveyed had undertaken any compulsory courses and only 18 percent had taken elective units in teaching children with special needs. Preservice teachers who had at least weekly contact with people with disabilities perceived less discomfort with such interactions than did those who had less contact. Additionally, postgraduate students experienced greater discomfort than undergraduates did. The implications of these findings for the development of compulsory preservice courses that focus on diversity and for subsequent changes in content at the participating universities are discussed

Creating sustainable digital community heritage resources using linked data.

The CURIOS project investigates how digital archives can support interest in local heritage and, in doing so, can contribute to community regeneration and strengthened community cohesion. Software tools that utilise semantic web/ linked data technology are being developed to build a general, flexible and 'future proof' software platform to assist remote rural communities to collaboratively maintain and present information about their cultural heritage. Under this broad programme of research we are investigating how online cultural communities are transforming the ways in which local history is 'written' and remembered. Empirically, we focus on digital cultural heritage resources managed by community groups in remote and rural parts of the UK. Researching community-led initiatives enables us to explore how locally managed digital heritage resources can support sustainable rural areas

Evaluation of nipple aspirate fluid as a diagnostic tool for early detection of breast cancer

YesThere has been tremendous progress in detection of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, resulting in two-thirds of women surviving more than 20 years after treatment. However, breast cancer remains the leading cause of cancerrelated deaths in premenopausal women. Breast cancer is increasing in younger women due to changes in life-style as well as those at high risk as carriers of mutations in high-penetrance genes. Premenopausal women with breast cancer are more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive tumours and therefore have a lower survival rate. Mammography plays an important role in detecting breast cancer in postmenopausal women, but is considerably less sensitive in younger women. Imaging techniques, such as contrast-enhanced MRI improve sensitivity, but as with all imaging approaches, cannot differentiate between benign and malignant growths. Hence, current well-established detection methods are falling short of providing adequate safety, convenience, sensitivity and specificity for premenopausal women on a global level, necessitating the exploration of new methods. In order to detect and prevent the disease in high risk women as early as possible, methods that require more frequent monitoring need to be developed. The emergence of “omics” strategies over the last 20 years, enabling the characterisation and understanding of breast cancer at the molecular level, are providing the potential for long term, longitudinal monitoring of the disease. Tissue and serum biomarkers for breast cancer stratification, diagnosis and predictive outcome have emerged, but have not successfully translated into clinical screening for early detection of the disease. The use of breast-specific liquid biopsies, such as nipple aspirate fluid (NAF), a natural secretion produced by breast epithelial cells, can be collected non-invasively for biomarker profiling. As we move towards an age of active surveillance, home-based liquid biopsy collection kits are increasingly being applied and these could provide a paradigm shift where NAF biomarker profiling is used for routine breast health monitoring. The current status of established and newly emerging imaging techniques for early detection of breast cancer and the potential for alternative biomarker screening of liquid biopsies, particularly those applied to high-risk, premenopausal women, will be reviewed.Proteomics research was supported by Yorkshire Cancer Research projects, BPP047 and B381PA, and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Research Promotion Foundation projects ΥΓΕΙΑ/ΒΙΟΣ/0311(ΒΙΕ/07) and NEKYP/0311/17

Cultural resilience:The production of rural community heritage, digital archives and the role of volunteers

The following paper addresses a lacuna in the literature relating to the concept of resilience. To date, cultural activity in relation to resilient communities has been given little attention and this paper will highlight how the lens of community heritage activities and the ‘bottom-up’ role of volunteer labour can act as a catalyst for building more resilient communities in rural areas. This develops from rural areas that have strong place identities, formed through the reproduction of traditional cultural practices alongside contemporary influences. These identities are performed and constructed through a varied repertoire of knowledges, histories, and customs. Their on-going production can be central to community identity as they attempt to make visible their own accounts of history and place. Beyond this, community heritage organisations have also begun to have grounded ‘impacts’ that move away from heritage interests alone, often revitalising buildings and providing community services. This will be used to highlight how such cultural heritage activity builds collective resilience. A further trend (in the UK) has been for community heritage groups to digitise collections, due to the perceived transformational effect for community regeneration, the strengthening of community cohesion and the potential socio-economic benefits. In partnership with community heritage groups, the CURIOS (Cultural Repositories and Information Systems) project explores two case studies in rural Scotland asking how community activity, connectivity and digital archives can support interest in local heritage as well as help develop moreresilient communities

Linking to the past: an analysis of community digital heritage initiatives.

Purpose Community initiatives to collate and manage different kinds of cultural forms and resources are a popular way for local people to engage with the heritage of their area. These initiatives are often heavily dependent, however, upon short-term funding and long-term efforts of a few dedicated individuals. This paper aims to explore how community digital archives offer scope to widen participation in cultural activities and to investigate the sustainability of these initiatives. Design/methodology/approach A case study approach was taken of Hebridean Connections, which is a community managed, online historical resource. This paper is primarily based on interview data with key stakeholders, all of whom are based in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Findings Participation in Hebridean Connections was reported in positive terms by respondents and many cited that it was a good way to reconnect with diasporic populations and that they believed that this would encourage tourism. It was also reported that the system of linked records added value to the collections as previously undiscovered connections could be made that would not be possible without the electronic resource. Originality/value Few studies have been undertaken examining community digital archives. The multidisciplinary nature of the study also brings together different perspectives on the area of enquiry

CD49d Is the strongest flow cytometry–based predictor of overall survival in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Purpose Although CD49d is an unfavorable prognostic marker in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), definitive validation evidence is lacking. A worldwide multicenter analysis was performed using published and unpublished CLL series to evaluate the impact of CD49d as an overall (OS) and treatment-free survival (TFS) predictor. Patients and Methods A training/validation strategy was chosen to find the optimal CD49d cutoff. The hazard ratio (HR) for death and treatment imposed by CD49d was estimated by pooled analysis of 2,972 CLLs; Cox analysis stratified by center and stage was used to adjust for confounding variables. The importance of CD49d over other flow cytometry–based prognosticators (eg, CD38, ZAP-70) was ranked by recursive partitioning. Results Patients with ≥ 30% of neoplastic cells expressing CD49d were considered CD49d+. Decrease in OS at 5 and 10 years among CD49d+ patients was 7% and 23% (decrease in TFS, 26% and 25%, respectively). Pooled HR of CD49d for OS was 2.5 (2.3 for TFS) in univariate analysis. This HR remained significant and of similar magnitude (HR, 2.0) in a Cox model adjusted for clinical and biologic prognosticators. Hierarchic trees including all patients or restricted to those with early-stage disease or those age ≤ 65 years always selected CD49d as the most important flow cytometry–based biomarker, with negligible additional prognostic information added by CD38 or ZAP-70. Consistently, by bivariate analysis, CD49d reliably identified patient subsets with poorer outcome independent of CD38 and ZAP-70. Conclusion In this analysis of approximately 3,000 patients, CD49d emerged as the strongest flow cytometry–based predictor of OS and TFS in CLL

MinkApp: generating spatio-temporal summaries for nature conservation volunteers.

We describe preliminary work on generating contextualized text for nature conservation volunteers. This Natural Language Generation (NLG) differs from other ways of describing spatio-temporal data, in that it deals with abstractions on data across large geographical spaces (total projected area 20,600 km2), as well as temporal trends across longer time frames (ranging from one week up to a year). We identify challenges at all stages of the classical NLG pipeline

A System F accounting for scalars

The Algebraic lambda-calculus and the Linear-Algebraic lambda-calculus extend the lambda-calculus with the possibility of making arbitrary linear combinations of terms. In this paper we provide a fine-grained, System F-like type system for the linear-algebraic lambda-calculus. We show that this "scalar" type system enjoys both the subject-reduction property and the strong-normalisation property, our main technical results. The latter yields a significant simplification of the linear-algebraic lambda-calculus itself, by removing the need for some restrictions in its reduction rules. But the more important, original feature of this scalar type system is that it keeps track of 'the amount of a type' that is present in each term. As an example of its use, we shown that it can serve as a guarantee that the normal form of a term is barycentric, i.e that its scalars are summing to one

Gene expression in intestinal mucosal biopsy specimens obtained from dogs with chronic enteropathy

Objective—To characterize mucosal gene expression in dogs with chronic enteropathy (CE). Animals—18 dogs with CE and 6 healthy control dogs. Procedures—Small intestinal mucosal biopsy specimens were endoscopically obtained from dogs. Disease severity in dogs with CE was determined via inflammatory bowel index scores and histologic grading of biopsy specimens. Total RNA was extracted from biopsy specimens and microchip array analysis (approx 43,000 probe sets) and quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR assays were performed. Results—1,875 genes were differentially expressed between dogs with CE and healthy control dogs; 1,582 (85%) genes were downregulated in dogs with CE, including neurotensin, fatty acid–binding protein 6, fatty acid synthase, aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 family member B1, metallothionein, and claudin 8, whereas few genes were upregulated in dogs with CE, including genes encoding products involved in extracellular matrix degradation (matrix metallopeptidases 1, 3, and 13), inflammation (tumor necrosis factor, interleukin-8, peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor γ, and S100 calcium-binding protein G), iron transport (solute carrier family 40 member 1), and immunity (CD96 and carcinoembryonic antigen–related cell adhesion molecule [CEACAM] 18). Dogs with CE and protein-losing enteropathy had the greatest number of differentially expressed genes. Results of quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR assay for select genes were similar to those for microchip array analysis. Conclusions and Clinical Relevance—Expression of genes encoding products regulating mucosal inflammation was altered in dogs with CE and varied with disease severity. Impact for Human Medicine—Molecular pathogenesis of CE in dogs may be similar to that in humans with inflammatory bowel disease