Box Of Tricks Research Articles

Pandemics past, present, and future

Pandemics past, present, and future

Microbial genetics: Phages' box of tricks for CRISPR.

Microbial genetics: Phages' box of tricks for CRISPR.

Viral infection: Phages' box of tricks for CRISPR.

A new study characterizes three anti-CRISPR proteins to provide the first mechanistic insights into phage evasion of CRISPR–Cas immunity.

'To me, it's like a little box of tricks': Breaking the depressive interlock as a programme participant in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

Mindfulness meditation practices have become increasingly popular in clinical therapies, changing patterns of depressogenic thinking for individuals who experience consecutive episodes of depression. We were interested in finding out how mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) worked for programme participants by focussing on how meditative practices changed their relationships with their thoughts. Data for the study came from six semi-structured research interviews carried out with individuals who had taken part in an 8-week MBCT programme. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to analyse the experiential accounts. We report on two superordinate themes - Engaging the Neutral Mind (with subordinate themes 'breaking the paralysis of worry' and 'choosing to think differently') and Experiencing the Neutral Mind (with subordinate themes of 'reflection on previous thinking styles' and 'becoming psychologically self-reliant'). Themes from the present study offer support to the assertion that mindfulness meditation helps facilitate a different mode of meta-cognitive processing with which to handle depression-related cognitions. Participants reported that they experienced an enhanced capacity to differentiate between their thought processes, experiencing an ability to tolerate some more uncomfortable thoughts, and experiencing a/more choice in how to respond to thoughts. Participants recognized that ruminating over negative thoughts was related to depressive states and experienced a shift in meta-cognitive processes that actively challenged depressogenic cognitions. Participants became more psychologically self-reliant and therapeutically independent following MBCT. Integrating mindfulness-based practices in therapy may be a mediating factor in sustaining psychological well-being and may help clients develop self-compassion. Future research looks to examining exit cases to understand elements of MBCT which are experienced as less successful by clients.

The Past and Memory in "Archive of Lives": Justyna Łuczaj-Salefs Impressionist Historical Documentary

The documentary film Archiwum istnień tells the story of research by Nazi anthropologists searching among the population of occupied Poland for representatives of the Aryan race. In her film, the director makes use of archival materials from World War Two (above all, photographs, propaganda film chronicles and letters). Not only does Justyna Łuczaj-Salej incorporate the above into the cinematographer’s box of tricks, but most of all, she exploits them counter to their authors’ intentions, thereby initiating a process that de-contextualises and re-contextualises these archives in a deconstruction of the past.

Turning Tourists into Performers: Revaluing agency, action and space in sites of heritage tourism

This paper describe a transition from specialised performance interventions – for example, GeoQuest and A Tour of Sardine Street (both 2010) – in heritage sites to a handing over of the tactics of those performances to general tourists and visitors for the making of their own performance-like counter-touristic visits. This change is based on a re-valuing; moving away from assumptions that tourists are essentially passive in making their visits and that the sites of those visits are neutral spaces to a valorisation of tourist visits as constructive and agentive and of the sites as places of ‘chorastic’ potential. The paper describes the use of a multi-modal research methodology; predominantly mixing participant observation and practice-as-research. It narrates the key moments of transition in the research: a double movement of exorcism and spectral return on a ‘mis-guided tour’ (Water Walk, 2010), the discovery that volunteer panel members were not simply observing tours but beginning to re-perform them, the shift from a dispersal of specialised, technical knowledge to a more generally accessible toolkit model exemplified by the publication of A Sardine Street Box of Tricks in 2011, and a series of experimental visits by the author (some accompanied by panel members) to heritage sites on which ‘tactics’ were both tested and new ones devised. The paper sets the emergence of a performative counter-tourism strategy as a development of practices and ideas informed by or originating in site-specific performance, contemporary Performance Studies and Tourism Studies, walking arts (including disrupted versions of the standard guided tour), and mythogeography.

Wherever I may roam: Protein and membrane trafficking in P. falciparum-infected red blood cells

Quite aside from its immense importance as a human pathogen, studies in recent years have brought to light the fact that the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is an interesting eukaryotic model system to study protein trafficking. Studying parasite cell biology often reveals an overrepresentation of atypical cell biological features, possibly driven by the parasites’ need to survive in an unusual biological niche. Malaria parasites possess uncommon cellular compartments to which protein traffic must be directed, including secretory organelles such as rhoptries and micronemes, a lysosome-like compartment referred to as the digestive vacuole and a complex (four membrane-bound) plastid, the apicoplast. In addition, the parasite must provide proteins to extracellular compartments and structures including the parasitophorous vacuole, the parasitophorous vacuolar membrane, the Maurer's clefts and both cytosol and plasma membrane of the host cell, the mature human red blood cell. Although some of these unusual destinations are possessed by other cell types, only Plasmodium parasites contain them all within one cell.Here we review what is known about protein and membrane transport in the P. falciparum-infected cell, highlighting novel features of these processes. A growing body of evidence suggests that this parasite is a real “box of tricks” with regards to protein traffic. Possibly, these tricks may be turned against the parasite by exploiting them as novel therapeutic targets.

Reversible Insertion of Aldehydes and Ketones into C sp 3H Bonds of Chiral Bis(oxazoline)/Iridium Complexes

BOX of tricks: Facile, reversible, and diastereoselective functionalizations of methylene CH bonds with carbonyl compounds have been observed within chiral bis(oxazoline)/iridium complexes (see structure; O red, N blue, P orange, Ir purple). These reactions are described and discussed together with the classic CH oxidative additions to iridium that occur within these same compounds. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

Time to take control

The remote control seems to epitomise how we relax at home in the modern environment, so much that we take the humble little box of electronics for granted. Virtually all of the audio and video devices in the home can be controlled by remote. However, despite many efforts by home-automation enthusiasts, extending the remote realm beyond these entertainment devices has been less successful. The extension of remote control functionality throughout the average dwelling requires the engagement of a custom installation company, which will for a price enable all your white goods, brown goods, lights, curtains, and garage doors to be controlled by a single box of tricks. The modern reality of course is that we all have a handful of remotes jostling for position on our chair arms. The one drawback when we do finally slump down after a hard day's work, is the inevitable fumble down the side of the sofa for the right remote. Not only this, but they all look the same. And when you finally chance upon the right one, the complexity of modern electrical hardware means the buttons are numerous, tiny and covered in unfathomable iconography.

The Strategic Commissioner's box of tricks

Commissioning is the Government's preferred method of driving improvement in both health and local government. Commissioning occurs at several levels, from strategic, high‐level visioning to more intimate purchase by or on behalf of individuals who need services. While there is much written about commissioning as an organisational concept, the skills, knowledge and attitudes required to aid strategic commissioners do an excellent job are still not well articulated. This article looks at some of the key knowledge to be acquired in the near future that will assist strategic commissioners in getting to grips with their massive agenda. It charts key moments in recent policy development to reiterate their strategic role, acknowledges cross‐cutting themes and seeks to define some of the more developed thinking that commissioning strategists will have in their box of tricks.

Music and the computer: Some anthropological considerations

Abstract To outsiders it can often appear, with some justification, that those of us working in the field of computers and music are less interested in making discoveries about music itself and much more interested in the programming and internal workings of that ever more conspicuous electronic box of tricks. It would therefore seem appropriate to examine momentarily our directions and objectives, for if that criticism is even only partly true then we risk losing the power to communicate about general issues amongst ourselves, let alone with sceptics who view computational approaches with unease and suspicion. The anthropological approach to studying music as a human cognitive phenomenon reminds us of two things: one, that music is not an acoustical fact, but a social one; and two, that the investigative process is one that sheds as much if not more light on our own knowledge and expectations than it does on our subject. So, simply, do we pay enough attention to social factors in the construction of our ...

Perspective Today

It is 5½ centuries since Brunelleschi added perspective drawing to the architect's box of tricks or tools. As a trick, it no longer astonishes; is it still useful as a tool? The overwhelming majority of American schools of architecture or, to be precise, 63 out of 68 member schools of ACSA, who replied to a questionnaire sent them by Mr. Beal, evidently believe that it is. At any rate, they require it of their students one way or another—65 percent in conjunction with architectural design, 18 percent as part of a graphics course, 17 percent as a separate course. The time devoted to it and the store set by it vary widely from school to school—in clock hours, where it is taught in conjunction with other subjects, from a few to over 300 (with the mean about 48), and in semester credit hours, where it is taught separately, from 1 to 3. Here the author discusses the implications of these and other statistics, relating to the methods used in making descriptive drawings, obtained by his questionnaire.

Science in Education

ON p. 432 of your issue for February 1 it is stated in an unsigned article that “in the early fifties of the nineteenth century a little experimental science crept in almost shamefacedly, introduced by the peripatetic teacher with his box of tricks”. Then after mentioning Queenwood in 1847 it goes on: “But it was not until twenty years later that this example was followed in other schools. Then Clifton took the lead in 1867, and was followed immediately by the Manchester Grammar School.”