Initial Commitment Research Articles

What price public health? Funding the local public health system in England post-2013

ABSTRACT In April 2013 the local public health function in England was returned from the National Health Service (NHS) to local government, reversing the transfer to the NHS made in 1974 with the abolition of the medical officer of health. Although many in the field had long felt that local government was the appropriate home for public health given its wide-ranging responsibilities for the social determinants of health, the timing was poor. Local government was in the third year of what continued to be an unprecedented ten-year period of austerity imposed by central government with cumulative cuts of the order of 40% for many local authorities. And despite an initial commitment to a ring-fenced public health grant, this grant has been cut each year since 2015–2016 in addition to the wider local authority funding cuts which have had inevitable knock-on effects on the public health function. Crucial public health services such as early years, smoking cessation and sexual health services have all been cut. Despite these cuts the UK government continues to claim a commitment to improving public health and tackling inequalities in health. This study examines the government’s discourse on funding local public health services, and the ways in which it has responded to critics through a detailed documentary analysis of key government white papers, ministerial statements and its responses to criticisms, particularly from parliamentary select committees and professional bodies. The paper concludes by considering the implications for effective local public health action in a national regime of austerity.

BMP Inhibition in the Presence of LIF Differentiates Murine Embryonic Stem Cells to Early Neural Stem Cells

Early mouse neural stem cells (NSCs) first appear in embryonic day E5.5 and express pluripotency markers Oct4, Sox2, Nanog and early neural marker Sox1. Early NSCs are a good model for understanding the role of various pathways that control initial neural commitment. However, a protocol for differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) into early NSCs by adherent monolayer culture has not yet been established. Hence, in this study, we identified the combination of growth factors and small molecules that differentiated mouse ESCs into early NSCs and supported their proliferation. Leukaemia inhibitory factor (LIF) was the first factor to be tested and it was found that ESCs can differentiate into early neurogenic lineage in the presence of LIF. However, we found that the induction is weaker in the presence of LIF as compared to cells differentiated in its absence. GSK-3 inhibitor, along with BMP and TGF-β pathway inhibitor (dual SMAD inhibition), are commonly used to sequentially direct ESCs towards NSCs. However, when we used this combination, mouse ESCs failed to differentiate into early NSCs. We observed that by adding Wnt inhibitor to the combination of GSK-3 inhibitor, BMP inhibitor, TGF-β inhibitor and LIF, it was possible to differentiate ESCs into early NSCs. qRT-PCR analysis of early NSCs illustrated that they expressed key pluripotency genes Oct4 and Nanog, albeit at levels lower than non-differentiated ESCs, along with early neural markers Sox1 and Pax6.

Die Luther-Gesellschaft 1918–2018. Beiträge zu ihrem hundertjährigen Jubiläum ed. by Johannes Schilling and Martin Treu

Reviewed by: Die Luther-Gesellschaft 1918–2018. Beiträge zu ihrem hundertjährigen Jubiläum ed. by Johannes Schilling and Martin Treu Robert Kolb Die Luther-Gesellschaft 1918–2018. Beiträge zu ihrem hundertjährigen Jubiläum. Edited by Johannes Schilling and Martin Treu. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2018. 351 pp. For a century the Luther-Gesellschaft has served as an important institution for conveying Luther's life and thought among both professional and lay audiences. Writing a history of an institution is a delicate task, filled with the danger of external criticism in the service of an ulterior agenda or the weakness of internal bragging. This sober assessment of the Society's development avoids both dangers even though it is written by a team of insiders. The editors, the current president of the Society, Johannes Schilling, retired professor of Reformation history at the University of Kiel, and Martin Treu, the Society's business manager, retired from long years of service at the Luther House in Wittenberg, marshalled eleven others to assist them in reviewing the activities of the Society in the turbulent century since its founding in the last days of World War I. The authors render careful assessments of how scholarship and culture are interwoven in the practice of the scholarly task. Essays focused on the presidents of the Society provide a chronological thread that highlights how the general atmosphere of German culture shaped the agenda and activities of the Society at each stage. In addition, the current editors of the Society's scholarly periodical, the Lutherjahrbuch, Christopher Spehr, and its more popular journal, Luther, Helmut Zschoch, trace the development of their publications, revealing how cultural pressures from German nationalism, National Socialism, and the concerns of a divided Germany, with the necessity of taking Marxist Reformation scholarship seriously in the 1960s–1980s, stood in tension with the ever-present concern to preserve text-driven scholarship while providing aid for parish pastors and laypeople through exposition of Luther's way of thinking. [End Page 461] Further essays explore the vital work of regional groups organized to conduct seminars and conferences dedicated to fostering Luther's theology through good scholarship brought to the popular level. The regional groups have come and gone in various parts of Germany but have provided a forum for demonstrating the relevance of Wittenberg thought. Other essays treat recently developed prizes and the valuable Luther bibliography of the Lutherjahrbuch. Personal recollections of two presidents, Schilling and Bishop Gerhard Müller, provide insights into the challenges of fulfilling the goals of the Society, among which scholarship in its purest form sometimes took second place to bringing Luther's insights to the educated public. Müller's and Schilling's particular perspectives lend depth and color to reviews by others of other leading personalities, including Karl Holl, who served briefly as president; Paul Althaus, whose thirty-seven years as president (1927–1964) spanned the break in the Society's existence caused by National Socialist crackdown and the collapse of 1945; Walther von Löwenich; Reinhard Schwarz; and also the founder and organizer of the Society, Rudolf Eucken, a philosopher, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, and ardent German nationalist. Eucken devoted the Society to making his vision of the German Luther speak to contemporaries in the dreary days after the German defeat of 1918. Eucken soon abandoned the Society, but in the 1920s the concern for the German Volk and nation that drove Karl Holl into Luther scholarship continued to influence the activities of the Society. The long, dedicated service of Theodor Knolle, pastor in Wittenberg and Hamburg, as vice-president held the Society together from the 1920s to the 1950s. His rejection of his initial commitment to the German Christian movement sympathetic to National Socialism and his later activities in the Confessing Church embody the tensions that all Germans felt throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The post-war situation revived earlier desires to attract participation from those outside Germany, particularly the Nordic lands and North America. Details of the pressures placed upon Luther scholars and those who used his thinking in preaching and teaching enrich the feel of the book for the interaction of...

Essential role of the initial activation signal in isotype selection upon deletion of a transcriptionally committed promoter

Class switch recombination (CSR), which targets exclusively the constant region of the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) locus, plays an important role in humoral immunity by generating different antibody effector functions. The IgH constant locus contains multiple genes controlled by isotype (I) promoters induced by extracellular signals that activate specific I promoters, leading to B cell commitment. However, it is unknown whether after initial commitment to one promoter, non-responsive I promoters are irreversibly silent or if they can be activated after exposure to their specific inducers. Here, we studied the murine cell line CH12, which is committed to produce IgA in response to TGF-β. We show that, although other promoters than Iα are transcriptionally inactive, they are not irreversibly silent. Following deletion of the committed Iα promoter by CRISPR/Cas9, other I promoters display a complex transcriptional pattern largely dependent on the initial committing signal.

Impact of a Mobile App-Based Health Coaching and Behavior Change Program on Participant Engagement and Weight Status of Overweight and Obese Children: Retrospective Cohort Study.

BackgroundEffective treatment of obesity in children and adolescents traditionally requires frequent in-person contact, and it is often limited by low participant engagement. Mobile health tools may offer alternative models that enhance participant engagement.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to assess child engagement over time, with a mobile app–based health coaching and behavior change program for weight management, and to examine the association between engagement and change in weight status.MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort study of user data from Kurbo, a commercial program that provides weekly individual coaching via video chat and supports self-monitoring of health behaviors through a mobile app. Study participants included users of Kurbo between March 2015 and March 2017, who were 5 to 18 years old and who were overweight or obese (body mass index; BMI ≥ 85th percentile or ≥ 95th percentile) at baseline. The primary outcome, engagement, was defined as the total number of health coaching sessions received. The secondary outcome was change in weight status, defined as the change in BMI as a percentage of the 95th percentile (%BMIp95). Analyses of outcome measures were compared across three initial commitment period groups: 4 weeks, 12 to 16 weeks, or 24 weeks. Multivariable linear regression models were constructed to adjust outcomes for the independent variables of sex, age group (5-11 years, 12-14 years, and 15-18 years), and commitment period. A sensitivity analysis was conducted, excluding a subset of participants involuntarily assigned to the 12- to 16-week commitment period by an employer or health plan.ResultsA total of 1120 participants were included in analyses. At baseline, participants had a mean age of 12 years (SD 2.5), mean BMI percentile of 96.6 (SD 3.1), mean %BMIp95 of 114.5 (SD 16.5), and they were predominantly female 68.04% (762/1120). Participant distribution across commitment periods was 26.07% (292/1120) for 4 weeks, 61.61% (690/1120) for 12-16 weeks, and 12.32% (138/1120) for 24 weeks. The median coaching sessions (interquartile range) received were 8 (3-16) for the 4-week group, 9 (5-12) for the 12- to 16-week group, and 19 (11-25) for the 24-week group (P<.001). Adjusted for sex and age group, participants in the 4- and 12-week groups participated in –8.03 (95% CI –10.19 to –5.87) and –9.34 (95% CI –11.31 to –7.39) fewer coaching sessions, compared with those in the 24-week group (P<.001). Adjusted for commitment period, sex, and age group, the overall mean change in %BMIp95 was –0.21 (95% CI –0.25 to –0.17) per additional coaching session (P<.001).ConclusionsAmong overweight and obese children using a mobile app–based health coaching and behavior change program, increased engagement was associated with longer voluntary commitment periods, and increased number of coaching sessions was associated with decreased weight status.

Nano Nagle. The Life and the Legacy , by Deirdre Raftery, Catriona Delaney, Catherine Nowlan-Roebuck (review)

working class’ – not least Seán O’Casey’s redoubtable tenement dwelling unionist, Bessie Burgess. The volume is not without its lighter side in the contributions of Caleb Richardson on ‘the nature of humour and the Southern Irish Protestant’ in the work of Patrick Campbell (‘Quidnunc’ of The Irish Times) and Felix Larkin’s fine (illustrated) piece on the depiction of Southern Irish Protestants in Irish Cartoons (especially C E Kelly’s classic ‘Ceilidhe in the Kildare Street Club’ from Dublin Opinion). In truth, Campbell’s cool, detached style very much mirrors that of the editors in their relaxed approach to the essays in their care, as they chart the complex journey of southern Protestants to their ‘place in the new dispensation [in which they] are now more or less “uncomplicatedly Irish.”’ As Roy Foster notes in his preface, the various contributions in Protestant and Irish reflect ‘a certain vibrancy and combativeness … within the ostensibly dusty and downbeat image of Southern Irish Protestantism’. As the editors conclude, the sixteen essays speak for themselves; they also speak for their authors and for the editors, as well as for the minority under review – and they do so with much eloquence. Declan O’Keeffe is Assistant Archivist and College Historian, Clongowes Wood College. Nano Nagle. The Life and the Legacy, Deirdre Raftery, Catriona Delaney, Catherine Nowlan-Roebuck (Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2019), xix+294 pages. In the course of the Second Vatican Council, religious congregations were encouraged to return to the original inspiration of their founders, to study how this inspiration was articulated in the course of their histories. This was a vast, long-term project of accessing and cataloguing archives, in particular for those congregations whose archives were situated in different areas, either within individual countries or dispersed in various corners of the world. It required on-going planning in order to find a balance between centralising archival material internationally and retaining local archival material in parts of the world. This continues to be a work in progress. In their book, Nano Nagle. The Life and the Legacy, the authors have made Autumn 2019: Book Reviews Studies • volume 108 • number 431 353 Studies_layout_AUTUMN-2019.indd 121 21/08/2019 09:14 a truly significant contribution to the history of the Presentations Sisters. They based their research on the archives of the congregation in Ireland and in those parts of the world where the congregation is located. A daunting task in terms of time and travel, research and writing. The book begins with the life of the founder of the Presentation Sisters, Nano Nagle, 1718–1784. She was born into a prosperous Catholic gentry family, a family which had long roots in Ireland, indeed from Norman times. Down the centuries generations of the Nagles had been shaped by successive events, the Tudor and Stuart Plantations, the Reformation and then the Counter-Reformation. More closely to Nano’s lifetime, the Nagle family was directly impacted by the defeat of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and his subsequent exile in France, in St Germain-en-Laye. Nano’s granduncle , Richard Nagle, was Secretary of War to James II and after the defeat joined the Court of James II in France. There he married and had a large family, which in time provided welcome space for visits from Irish members of the family. This included Nano, when she was sent to France to further her education. There she was brought into contact with several religious communities of women, among them the Ursulines. In time she would invite this community to Cork. Life for the Nagle family in Ireland was burdened by the restrictions of the Penal Laws. Nano was acutely aware of the dire poverty in the Catholic community and wished to address this. From 1750, using her personal family wealth, she determined to provide schools for the poor girls and boys in Cork city. By 1769 she had set up five schools for girls and two schools for boys. This initial commitment to work with poor children in Cork led in time to her founding a new community, the Presentation Sisters. And yet, as Nano Nagle. The Life and the...

Riding Out the Storm: Out-of-Field Teaching Practice in Indonesia

As out-of-field teachers existence led to change in teachers, this research aimed to explore their commitment to learning and teaching, and how their schools supported them. Five Indonesian teachers who started teaching as out-of-field teachers and their school leaders were interviewed for this research. The qualitative case study was employed to explore the problem through interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. The findings reveal that the initial commitment to teaching, learning, and growing is an investment for further actions throughout the teaching practice. The schools provide necessary assistance through the induction and during their in-service in the provided and requested professional learning, being trusted and acknowledged by school leaders, and having resourceful colleagues. From their schools’ support, the out-of-field teachers become more knowledgeable and remain as teachers for an extended time.

A Distributed Framework for Solving and Benchmarking Security Constrained Unit Commitment With Warm Start

This paper discusses several methods to improve commercial optimization solver performance on day-ahead security constrained unit commitment through warm start and lazy constraint settings. Data analytics is performed to greatly improve the quality of the initial commitment solution and lazy constraint setting. A distributed optimization framework is proposed to take advantage of the diversity from prevalent solvers (GUROBI and CPLEX) and different warm start strategies. A systematic distribution profile based benchmarking method is also proposed.

Middle Manager’s Commitment to Change: a Qualitative Study

Abstract In times of change, it is very important for middle managers to commit to change because middle managers have a strategic role in the formulation and implementation of change. This study aims to explore the middle manager’s commitment to change at the beginning of the change period and one year after the initiation of change. This research uses a phenomenological qualitative approach and the longitudinal method. Data was taken using semi-structured interviews at nine middle managers. The result shows three main themes: (1) Middle managers' initial commitment to change is influenced by their views on the importance of change and middle managers experience at the beginning of change, (2) there is a change in commitment to change after one year of organizational change, (3) factors that are influenced change in middle manager’s commitment to changes. The findings in this study are expected to be a meaningful contribution to understanding the commitment to change among middle managers. Keywords : Organizational changes, agents of changes, qualitative study.

Trends in contraceptive prevalence rates in sub-Saharan Africa since the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning: results from repeated cross-sectional surveys

SummaryBackgroundThe Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) initiative, launched at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, aims to enable 120 million additional women to use modern contraceptive methods by 2020 in the world's 69 poorest countries. It will require almost doubling the pre-2012 annual growth rate of modern contraceptive prevalence rates from an estimated 0·7 to 1·4 percentage points to achieve the goal. We examined the post-Summit trends in modern contraceptive prevalence rates in nine settings in eight sub-Saharan African countries (Burkina Faso; Kinshasa, DR Congo; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Niamey, Niger; Kaduna, Nigeria; Lagos, Nigeria; and Uganda). These settings represent almost 73% of the population of the 18 initial FP2020 commitment countries in the region.MethodsWe used data from 45 rounds of the Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020) surveys, which were all undertaken after 2012, to ascertain the trends in modern contraceptive prevalence rates among all women aged 15–49 years and all similarly aged women who were married or cohabitating. The analyses were done at the national level in five countries (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda) and in selected high populous regions for three countries (DR Congo, Niger, and Nigeria). We included the following as modern contraceptive methods: oral pills, intrauterine devices, injectables, male and female sterilisations, implants, condom, lactational amenorrhea method, vaginal barrier methods, emergency contraception, and standard days method. We fitted design-based linear and quadratic logistic regression models and estimated the annual rate of changes in modern contraceptive prevalence rates for each country setting from the average marginal effects of the fitted models (expressed in absolute percentage points). Additionally, we did a random-effects meta-analysis to summarise the overall results for the PMA2020 countries.FindingsThe annual rates of changes in modern contraceptive prevalence rates among all women of reproductive age (15–49 years) varied from as low as 0·77 percentage points (95% CI −0·73 to 2·28) in Lagos, Nigeria, to 3·64 percentage points (2·81 to 4·47) in Ghana, according to the quadratic model. The rate of change was also high (>1·4 percentage points) in Burkina Faso, Kinshasa (DR Congo), Kaduna (Nigeria), and Uganda. Although contraceptive use was rising rapidly in Ethiopia during the pre-Summit period, our results suggested that the yearly growth rate stalled recently (0·92 percentage points, 95% CI −0·23 to 2·07) according to the linear model. From the meta-analysis, the overall weighted average annual rate of change in modern contraceptive prevalence rates in all women across all nine settings was 1·92 percentage points (95% CI 1·14 to 2·70). Among married or cohabitating women, the annual rates of change were higher in most settings, and the overall weighted average was 2·25 percentage points (95% CI 1·37–3·13).InterpretationsOverall, the annual growth rates exceeded the 1·4 percentage points needed to achieve the FP2020 goal of 120 million additional users of modern contraceptives by 2020 in the select study settings. Local programme experiences can be studied for lessons to be shared with other countries aiming to respond to unmet demands for family planning. The findings of this study have implications for the way progress is tracked toward achieving the FP2020 goal.FundingThe Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Pengaruh Karakteristik Personal dan Karakteristik Pekerjaan terhadap Komitmen Organisasional Perawat

&lt;em&gt;This study aims to examine the effect of personal characteristics and job characteristics on organizational commitment of hospital nurses. Employee organiza-tional commitment can be influenced by many factors, including personal charac-teristics and job characteristics. They are the factors form the initial organizational commitment that can affect the ups and downs of employee organizational commitment. The population in this study were hospital nurses in Gombong, Indonesia and the sample of this study was 75 respondents taken by a simple random sampling technique. The data collection technique in this study used a questionnaire with a Likert scale. The main instrument used to obtain data is arranged systematically containing several statements given to respondents who have met the requirements for validity and reliabi-lity. Data analysis used multiple linear regression and the hypothesis testing analysis applied partial significance test. The results showed a positive and significant influence of personal characteristics and job characteristics partially on organizational commit-ment. The implications of the results of this study can be applied in hospitals to build the commitment of nurses through job characteristics and personal characteristics.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;Further research should use other independent variables outside of this study with a larger number of respondents.&lt;/em&gt;

… SCENES Lever Press

ScenesLever Press: An interview with Marta Brunner Marta Brunner Could you briefly describe your press's history? The Lever Press was founded by member institutions of the Oberlin Group of liberal arts college libraries. The impetus was to establish a platinum open access publishing venue for scholarly monographs that align with the mission and ethos of liberal arts colleges. The initiative was launched in 2013. An Oberlin Group task force worked with the Amherst College Press and the University of Michigan Press to craft a governance structure, editorial program, and business plan. The Press officially launched in 2015 with governance provided by member institutions—tenured scholars comprise the editorial board, and library directors serve on an oversight committee. The editorial side of the house is based at Amherst College and production is based at the University of Michigan. The nearly sixty supporting member institutions provide the operating budget for the entire enterprise (0.5-1% of each library's annual acquisitions budget), with infrastructure and staffing contributed by Michigan and Amherst. Member institutions made an initial five-year commitment to get the project off the ground. In starting a new press from scratch, we had significant ramp-up time. This fact really challenged many of us when we considered the financial model we'd adopted at the outset. We had assumed we would generate more publications by this point but recognize now that there was a lot more involved in creating the infrastructure than we had anticipated. The reality is that we have now reached the point where we are shifting the funding model from a venture capital investment to more direct financial support for titles coming through the pipeline, and that is exciting. Lever's inaugural director was the Amherst College Press head Mark Edington. He left Lever this past spring and our acquisitions editor, Beth Bouloukos, stepped into the director role with enthusiastic support from the Oversight Committee and Editorial Board. How would you characterize the work you publish? Lever Press books are published on the Fulcrum platform, which allows for multimedia and experimental formats besides more traditional long-form scholarly monographs. We seek out scholarship that emerges from creative dialogue within and between traditional fields of inquiry, engages with issues of social and civic importance, transcends inherited divisions between research and teaching by drawing from new modes of collaborative inquiry, and addresses a broad audience. We have published two books, have three in production, and more in the pipeline. Our first book was Promissory Notes: On the Literary Conditions of Debt (2018) by Robin Truth Goodman, professor of English at Florida State University. Promissory Notes explores the historical role that literature played in defining and teaching debt to the public, and addresses how neoliberal finance has depended upon a historical linking of geopolitical inequality and financial representation that positions the so-called "Third World" as negative value or debt. Starting with an analysis of Anthony Trollope's novel, The Eustace Diamonds (1871), Goodman shows how colonized spaces came to inhabit this negative value. Promissory Notes argues that the twentieth century continues to apply literary innovations in character, subjectivity, temporal and spatial representation to construct debt as the negative creation of value not only in reference to objects, but also houses, credit cards, students, and, in particular, "Third World" geographies, often leading to crisis. Yet, late twentieth-century and early twenty-first literary texts, such as Soyinka's The Road (1965) and Ngugi's Wizard of the Crow (2006), address the negative space of the indebted world also as a critique of the financial take-over of the postcolonial developmental state. Looking to situations like the Puerto Rican debt crisis, Goodman demonstrates how financial discourse is articulated through social inequalities and how literature can both expose and contest the imposition of a morality of debt as a mode of anti-democratic control. Our second book was History without Chronology (2019) by Stefan Tanaka, professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego. Although numerous disciplines recognize multiple ways of conceptualizing time, Tanaka argues that scholars still overwhelmingly operate on chronological and linear Newtonian or classical time that emerged during the Enlightenment. This short, approachable book implores...

Narratology Beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life by David Herman

Reviewed by: Narratology Beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life by David Herman Susan Mchugh David Herman. Narratology Beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life. Oxford UP, 2018. xiii + 400 pp. Nonhuman animals appear in the literatures of virtually all cultures and times, so it stands to reason that no literary form would be free of them either. Yet there seems to be something special about animal stories, as indicated by their overrepresentation in the fast-growing subfield of literary animal studies. What makes narrating the lives of the most obviously animate beings besides humans so especially compelling for literary scholars in the twenty-first century? In his new book, David Herman pursues a bold thesis: stories are an essential tool to transform understandings of as well as to inspire actions that secure survival in more-than-human worlds. Carefully building the argument through an astonishing array of fictional and nonfictional examples and high theory across a range of disciplines, Narratology beyond the Human is a must-read for seasoned scholars and newcomers to the field. Herman revolutionized the study of narrative in the 1990s, coining the term "postclassical narratology" (339) to account for the profound changes that follow movement of the scope of narrative analysis beyond the literary, to encompass concepts and media that were not initially conceived of or valued by the structuralist pioneers of narratology. The book's broad range of subjects—film, fiction, memoirs, graphic narratives, speculative biology—and Herman's adeptness at transcoding among theories of these subjects might be [End Page 557] accounted for by his initial commitment to framing narrative studies beyond the literary: like postclassical narratology, interdisciplinary animal studies is distinguished by its freedom from any one governing discipline, so nonhuman narratology would seem like an obvious choice. Part of what makes this book so compelling, however, is that Herman himself calls attention to the fact that he didn't see it coming. Less than a decade ago, he supported narratology's overwhelmingly anthropocentric faith that stories model exclusively human lives. So what happened? Herman's chapters take readers on the journey toward recognizing that the lives of animals and even whole species themselves shape and are shaped by stories and the worlds that they do and don't make possible. Visualization is a key element, Herman asserts, and the introduction lays out these stakes in part through a comparative reading of Julia Leigh's 1999 novel The Hunter alongside its very different 2011 film adaptation. The book is then divided into two parts, the first of which clarifies the relationship between storytelling and different senses of selfhood. Chapters in that section focus on narratives that depict movements from parsimonious to prolific ontologies regarding the selfhood of other animals; that question or reconfigure human-animal dichotomies through representations of cross-species hybridity or metamorphosis; and that establish kinship networks across species lines. Whereas the first two kinds of stories are developed through literary and graphic-narrative examples, the illustration of the third primarily through autism memoirs demonstrates the applicability of Herman's theory far beyond the ordinary scope of literary studies, and his extraordinary abilities to synthesize concepts from "multispecies ethnography, critical animal studies, disability studies, and narratological work on character and characterization" (87). The book's second part delves deeper into what happens when "storyworlds, or worlds projected via storytelling practices" (100), engage still more directly with possibilities for more-than-human worlds. What follows from these chapters is a compelling case for "rethinking … paradigms for narrative analysis" (117). Graphic narrative emerges as the paramount form for engaging nonhuman subjectivity, and Herman demonstrates how through comparison with influential modernist experimental fiction and contemporary norm-challenging narratives that evoke animal experiences and conceptualize animal minds in complex ways. Knowing already most of the arguments against taking animal stories seriously made Herman's skillful parrying with them in [End Page 558] granular detail all the more gratifying, for it is easy to imagine where students will go with such a strong foundational argument for the value of animal stories. The book's coda, "Toward a Bionarratology; or, Storytelling at Species Scale," offers a foretaste by looking beyond the familiar sense of stories as...

Bone Morphogenetic Protein 9 Regulates Early Lymphatic-Specified Endothelial Cell Expansion during Mouse Embryonic Stem Cell Differentiation.

SummaryExogenous cues involved in the regulation of the initial steps of lymphatic endothelial development remain largely unknown. We have used an in vitro model based on the co-culture of vascular precursors derived from mouse embryonic stem cell (ESC) differentiation and OP9 stromal cells to examine the first steps of lymphatic specification and expansion. We found that bone morphogenetic protein 9 (BMP9) induced a dose-dependent biphasic effect on ESC-derived vascular precursors. At low concentrations, below 1 ng/mL, BMP9 expands the LYVE-1-positive lymphatic progeny and activates the calcineurin phosphatase/NFATc1 signaling pathway. In contrast, higher BMP9 concentrations preferentially enhance the formation of LYVE-1-negative endothelial cells. This effect results from an OP9 stromal cell-mediated VEGF-A secretion. RNA-silencing experiments indicate specific involvement of ALK1 and ALK2 receptors in these different BMP9 responses. BMP9 at low concentrations may be a useful tool to generate lymphatic endothelial cells from stem cells for cell-replacement strategies.

Factors involved in the development of pituitary and hypothalamus: a short review

Abstract A large amount of complex hormone associated processes occurring continuously in the human organism is necessary to maintain homeostasis in response to various internal and external conditions. In the same time, as the hormones use the bloodstream as their transmission medium, it is essential that their expression is strictly controlled to maintain their activity only when it is required. Because of that, the endocrine system evolved complex, self-regulating machinery that allows for precise signalling to the glands to initiate hormone expression, as well as equally quick negative feedback in the moment of reaching the optimal blood hormone concentration. The pituitary gland serves as the true endocrine part of that system, expressing a range of hormones that mostly serve as regulators of sub-systems serving different functions, scattered around organisms. The hypothalamus is the neuroendocrine part of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis, meaning it integrates the neuronal and hormonal signals, effectively linking the nervous and endocrine systems. The processes of hypothalamus and pituitary development share some significant similarities, which is unsurprising considering their close association and anatomical proximity at the base of the brain. Arising in highly overlapping developmental timeframes, they are both initially patterned by the gradients of extrinsic signalling molecules. After the initial lineage commitment, in both of those structures, intrinsic factors expressed by the distinct cell populations sustain the morphogenesis to result in a final complexly patterned structure. In this short review, the processes of the pituitary and hypothalamus development are described, with the most important factors driving them discussed.

Graft-Versus-Host Disease Impairs the Histone Methyltransferase Dot1l-Regulated Reconstitution of Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells in Mice Undergoing Allo-HSCT

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) derived either from adoptive transfer from the donor graft or stem cell reconstitution can attenuate and prevent graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in both pre-clinical and clinical settings. However, the reconstitution of donor pDCs is severely impaired during GVHD via an unknown mechanism. Here we demonstrate that the histone methyltransferase Dot1l, which specifically catalyzes methylation of histone H3 at lysine 79 (H3K79me), is critical for regulating the commitment and differentiation of pDCs from hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and we observed its function was severely impaired in GVHD mice. We have previously demonstrated that Flt3L-induced DCs can program allogeneic T cells to reduce their GVHD toxicity (Blood 2016). Using this platform, we explored candidate histone methyltransferase(s) that affected pDC development. We found the inhibitor specific to Dot1l dramatically decreased the frequency and number of pDCs in cultures compared to other chemical probes that inhibit Ezh2, MLL1, G9a and Jmjd3, respectively. Under steady-state condition, pDCs develop from HSCs through successive steps of lineage commitment and differentiation: multiple potent progenitors (MPP) → macrophage and DC progenitors (MDP) → common DC progenitors (CDP). Upon culturing in the presence of Flt3L+SCF, MPP produced 2-fold and 5-fold more pDCs than MDP and HSCs, respectively, over 6 days' incubation. For this reason, we focused on evaluating the effect of Dot1l deletion on pDC development from MPP and CDP, which represent the early and later stage of pDC progenitors, respectively. To examine the specific role of Dot1l in DC development, we crossed Dot1l conditional knock mice (Dot1lf/f) to ER-Cre B6 mice to generate ER-Cre.Dot1lf/f B6 mice. We administered tamoxifen to ER-Cre.Dot1lf/f B6 mice at day 0 and day +1 to delete Dot1l, highly purified MPP and CDP, and cultured them in the presence of Flt3L+SCF. Deletion of Dot1l led to significant decrease of (3- to 5-fold) pDCs from MPP but marginally decreased CDP production of pDCs. These results suggest that Dot1l is required for the initial commitment and differentiation of MPP into pDCs or the expansion of selected pDCs. To test it, we added Dot1l inhibitor SGC to the cultures containing wild-type (WT) mouse-derived MPP, CDP and pDCs. Inhibiting Dot1l with SGC decreased both the frequency (3-fold) and number (5-fold) of pDCs in the MPP culture compared to control, however, it did not affect the generation of pDCs from the cultures of either CDP or pDCs. Thus, Dot1l regulates the commitment and differentiation of pDCs during the MPP stage. To understand the molecular mechanism by which Dot1l regulates pDC commitment and differentiation, we examined the expression of transcription factor Tcf4, which promotes pDC development, and Id2, which antagonizes Tcf4 effects on pDCs. Dot1l inhibition led to 2-fold reduction of Tcf4 expression and 5-fold increase of Id2 in Flt3L-induced bone marrow cells. ChIP assays confirmed the presence of high amount of Dot1l-catalyzed H3K79me2 at the promoter regions of Id2 and Tcf4 loci. Retroviral introduction of Tcf4 into hematopoietic progenitors lacking Dot1l restored their capacity to produce pDCs in cultures. These findings clearly establish that Tcf4 is the down-stream effector of Dot1l to control pDC development. Building on these observations, we finally examined whether GVHD may impair the reconstitution of donor pDCs through a mechanism of reducing Dot1l expression and function. Using the C57BL/6 (B6) into Balb/c mouse GVHD model, we confirmed the loss of donor pDCs in GVHD recipients at day 14 and day 21 after transplantation and, observed that these GVHD mice had 3- to 12-fold fewer MPP and CDP compared to normal donor mice. Additionally, both HSCs and MPP derived from GVHD mice showed significant reduction of H3K79me2 compared to their normal counterparts. Finally, adoptive transfer of donor BM-derived pDCs attenuated the incidence and severity of GVHD in Balb/c mice receiving B6 T cells. Collectively, these data suggest that GVHD-mediated inflammation profoundly decreases Dot1l function in engrafted donor DC progenitors, leading to damaged reconstitution of donor pDCs. Novel strategies that target Dot1l and its-regulated transcriptional programs may improve the reconstitution of donor pDCs to inhibit GVHD while also promoting anti-leukemia activity in recipients undergoing allo-HSCT. DisclosuresNo relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Equity Audits as a Tool of Critical Data-Driven Decision Making: Preparing Teachers to See Beyond Achievement Gaps and Bubbles

ABSTRACTAs schools and teachers utilize data-driven decision-making processes to identify and remediate struggling students, systemic conditions that contribute to students’ learning opportunities are often ignored. This longitudinal mixed-methods study examines the use of an equity audit as a critical data-driven decision-making tool in a graduate course for teachers on educational change. Findings indicate that through engagement in the equity audit process, teachers experienced increases in understanding of and skill with data, enhanced awareness of in/equity, and a greater sense of change agency. Interviews with participants one year later revealed the complexity in sustaining action related to equity in schools. Although findings suggest that teacher engagement with broader types of data with an explicit focus on equity in a university graduate program has the potential to reskill and empower teachers to address school-based opportunity gaps, support is needed beyond the university to maintain initial commitment and facilitate action.

Нормализация орфографического варьирования топонимов Тувы

В статье на материалах Государственного каталога географических названий, топографических карт и законодательных актов показывается явление орфографического варьирования в официальной топонимии Тувы, тесно связанного с общим вопросом нормализации тувинских топонимов в русском языке. Нормализация наименований географических объектов, под которой понимается определение их написания, является делом государственной важности и регламентируется российским законодательством.Рассматриваются типичные для тувинской топонимии виды орфографического варьирования: варьирование в русской передаче долготы тувинских гласных звуков, буквы ы после шипящих, йотированных гласных звуков, глухих и звонких согласных, дефисного и слитного написания составных топонимов. Если в Инструкции по передаче на картах географических названий Тувинской АССР 1964 г. издания передача долготы не предусматривалась, то в Инструкции по русской передаче географических названий Тувинской АССР от 1975 г. и в Своде правил по русской передаче тувинских наименований географических объектов в Республике Тыва 2015 г., предусматривается передача долготы гласных путем удвоения соответствующих букв во избежание ложной омонимии тувинских топонимов. Гласная ы после шипящих в русской передаче сменила букву и, рекомендуемую в данной позиции в первой инструкции 1964 г. Нормализация передачи йотированных звуков также последовала принципу сближения русской передачи с национальным написанием. Варьирование глухих и звонких согласных в русской передаче вызвано не только адаптацией тувинских топонимов в русском языке, но также и особенностями тувинского консонантизма. Варьирование дефисного и слитного написания составных тувинских топонимов в русском языке обусловлено различием правил передачи составных топонимов c тувинского и с других тюркских языков.В диахроническом плане при нормализации тувинских топонимов в русском языке первоначальная ориентация на орфографические нормы русского языка сменилась тенденцией передачи особенностей тувинского языка, что, по мнению автора, способствует сохранению тувинских топонимов как культурного и исторического наследия. В то же время, изменения правил передачи привели к тому, что в настоящее время одни и те же языковые явления передаются по-разному, и это является сдерживающим фактором при нормализации тувинских топонимов как на тувинском, так и на русском языках.

Transformative and troublesome: reflective blogging for professional learning about university teaching

ABSTRACTThe complexities of being an academic mean that there is often no time or space to reflect on teaching, and on academic life in general. In this study, four academics set up a private blog to share reflections on teaching. While initial commitment to the reflective blogging process was good, over time this declined. After 9 months of intermittent communication, we decided to wrap up the project and examine the experience. A qualitative analysis of the group’s reflective posts and related emails revealed themes related to emotions, space and time in academic experience. We discuss why the blog space did not work as anticipated, and how such ‘troublesome’ spaces may, paradoxically, be viewed as transformative.

Strengthening proenvironmental intentions: Intrinsic interest may support use of transport alternatives to driving alone

For many reasons, communities encourage citizens to reduce automobile use, often using incentives or competitions to encourage the change. While these programs may be effective in temporarily reducing vehicle use, psychological research suggests that such externally motivated behaviors are not likely to endure once the incentive program ends. This article proposes that use of alternative travel modes might be more durable if participants become internally motivated to maintain the behaviors. The study tests the hypothesis that participants who psychologically transform their commute modes into intrinsically interesting trips are more likely to report they intend to continue using their alternative modes. In a month-long Challenge to reduce single occupant vehicle (SOV) use, participants (N = 197) were randomly assigned to three different instruction groups: cognitive elaboration, cognitive dissonance, or community-based social marketing. Data were collected at 4 different times, including a final questionnaire 2 months after the Challenge ended. For all three groups, analyses supported the hypothesis and showed that the relationship from initial commitment to final attitude was mediated by intrinsic interest, specifically, by their reports that they had made their alternative travel modes interesting/fun or productive. The results encourage additional research asking how people can find ways to make transit use more attractive than driving alone.