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Victims in climate litigation
No full textAlleged victims have often played a central role in litigation aimed at prompting climate change mitigation. Courts have identified such victims in order to grant plaintiffs standing to sue, justify their invocation of individual rights, and consider claims for compensation. However, this article observes, no individual can really be a victim of someone else’s failure to mitigate climate change. This is because, while a climate wrong may certainly harm society, it does not harm specific individuals in a sufficiently direct and proximate way. This observation has major implications for climate litigation, but it is not a fatal flaw: standing, for instance, can often be established on sounder grounds
Creating an inclusive real estate industry: assessing the enrolment, experiences and career prospects of female students in an African higher education institution
No full textPurpose – Workspace equality and inclusivity remain critical in promoting diversity and dynamism across all
sectors of the economy. Despite recent progress, gender disparities persist in the real estate sector, including
education and training programmes.This study employs a quantitative research design to assess gender diversity
of real estate education at Federal Polytechnic Ede in Nigeria. The study focuses on female students’ enrolment in
real estate programmes, their experiences, perceptions and any potential effect on real estate career prospects.
Design/methodology/approach – A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 138 out
of all the 150 female students currently enrolled in the real estate programmes. Descriptive statistics and a
one-sample t-test were utilised for the data analysis.
Findings – The findings indicate an increased number of females enrolled in real estate programmes. Female
students face a lack of access to mentorship opportunities and perceive gender discrimination and bias in the
real estate industry. However, these industry factors would not deter female students’ decision to pursue a
career in the real estate industry after graduation.
Originality/value – This study to the best knowledge of the researchers is the first to investigate gender
dimensions of real estate programmes in the context of African higher education institutions; thereby
contributing to the body of knowledge on gender diversity in this field
Negative verbal probabilities undermine communication of climate science
No full textThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends describing low-probability outcomes using negative verbal probability terms such as unlikely, rather than positive terms such as a small probability. However, we propose that this choice of probability terms might undermine public perception and understanding of climate science. Across eight pre-registered experiments (N = 4,150), we find that participants perceive outcomes described with negative low probability terms as reflecting lower scientific consensus than probabilistically equivalent but positively framed terms. The effect persists after controlling for beliefs in climate change, familiarity with the IPCC, and political orientation, although it weakens when the projected values exceeded participants’ personal expectations. Participants also associate negative low-probability terms more strongly with extreme outcomes and judge them as less evidence-based than their positive counterparts. We recommend using positive verbal probabilities to communicate comparable levels of uncertainty without undermining perceptions of scientific consensus and evidence
Held in common: science fiction and collective spaces
No full textThe world is on fire and our walls do not shelter us. As an architect confronted by the crises of architectural futures this author turns to the spaces of science fiction (sf) to act as critical companions, those who imagine alongside us in sf CoFuture narratives “of solidarities for possible futures” (Chattopadhyay 2020:339). This article is impelled by Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ M-Archive (2018) to address architecture’s complicity in injustice and iniquity, and guided by sf narratives that depict alternative futures of common space: Harry Josephine Giles’ Deep Wheel Orcadia (2021); M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi’s Everything for Everyone (2022); Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994) and Becky Chamber’s Record of a Spaceborn Few (2018). These imagined worlds are held alongside spatial theory, architectural practice, and acts of collaborative making to consider the commons as a site of collective possibility.
In 2023 these fictions were shared in two public workshops, written onto pieces of fabric alongside scholarly works and personal experiences, and combined to create a patchwork quilt. This quilt is both source and method for this article, an act of collective making used to explore the commons as place and practice. Similarly, each of the article’s four sections draws together fiction, making, theory and practice to address an interlinked aspect of the commons: acts of commoning; common land; commoner; and commonwealth. Throughout, it extols the possibility of sf as a site of collective action, potent and present, through which we might imagine and construct architectural CoFutures
Biological evaluation of halogenated flavone derivatives as antiangiogenic and anticancer agents
Get PDFThe key role of angiogenesis in the growth and metastasis of cancer has led to the
inclusion of antiangiogenic therapy in cancer treatments, which has proved clinically
beneficial when combined with cytotoxic effects in a multi-targeting approach (e.g.
sunitinib is first line therapy for renal cancer). However, current multi-targeting therapies
(administered as drug combinations or single drug) suffer from increased adverse events.
Flavonoids present advantageous polypharmacological anticancer properties and are
well tolerated. Hence, this study explores the bi-modal antiangiogenic and cytotoxic
efficacy of a group of synthetic flavonoids as potential anticancer agents.
First, reported data on the antiangiogenic activities of flavonoids was analyzed via
systematic and quantitative analyses, establishing their antiangiogenic effectiveness.
Antiangiogenic structure activity relationship (SAR) data was extracted from the
conducted analysis. Cytotoxic SARs were gathered from reported studies and combined
with the antiangiogenic SAR, resulting in the design of two sets of 5,7/7,8-disubstituted-4’-chloro/bromophenyl flavones (Chapter 2). The designed flavones (7-14) were
synthesized and spectroscopically characterized with good yields (60-97%) and purities
(>90%). Compounds 9, 11, 12 and 14 particularly showed significant in vitro angiogenic
inhibition against endothelial cell (EC) vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-induced
tube formation and migration (>50% and 25-37%, respectively, at 10 μM). The 4-thio
derivatives 11 and 12 inhibited VEGFR2 phosphorylation (57 and 37% at 10 μM,
respectively) in western blotting and were oriented in a favorable position inside its ATP
binding site in a molecular docking study (Chapter 3).
Further optimization of the test compounds was investigated through ruthenium (Ru) or
iridium (Ir) metal complexation based on their reported antiangiogenic/cytotoxic
effectiveness. The novel Ru(II)-p-cymene complexes (19 and 20) of flavones 11 and 13
were successfully synthesized and spectroscopically confirmed with 46 and 30% yields,
respectively (Chapter 4). The bi-modal anticancer effects of 11 and 13 in addition to the
impact of Ru complexation on the measured effects were evaluated in vitro (Chapter 5).
The lead thioflavone 11 displayed strong cytotoxic (IC50=1.2 ± 0.8 and 43.06 ± 1.29 µM
on MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231, respectively) and antimigratory activities (43% inhibition at
1 µM on MDA-MB-231) on breast cancer cells, in addition to the notable antiangiogenic
effects on EC (e.g. 42% tube formation inhibition at 1 µM). These effects were comparable
to reported values for the drug sunitinib in the same assays (e.g. IC50=5 µM on MCF-7,
50% tube formation inhibition at 10 µM). Complexation with Ru negatively impacted the
tube formation inhibitory effects of 11 and 13. Ru chelation diminished 11’s cytotoxicity
against MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells whereas the antimigratory activity
against MDA-MB-231 was equivalent to the parent flavone. In contrast, Ru complexation
enhanced the cytotoxic and antimigratory effects of the oxoflavone 13 against breast
cancer cells (e.g. 50 versus 33% inhibition of MCF-7 migration, p<0.05). Finally, the test
derivatives showed a presumably non-intercalative binding with VEGF and c-myc i-motif
DNA, as novel anticancer targets, in UV-Vis spectroscopic studies (Chapter 5).
This work identified compound 11 as a promising anticancer agent with dual
antiangiogenic and cytotoxic activities. Its structural features and interaction with the
VEGF/VEGFR2 pathway provides a suitable base for extension towards novel anticancer
applications in the future, such as the development of dual antiangiogenic and
immunomodulatory agents (Chapter 6)
Term time: a revolutionary lexicon for mother-demics: a performance text
Get PDFTerm/Time/A Revolutionary Lexicon for Mother-Demics was first performed as part of the ResearchWorks Series at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, England, on Monday, February 24, 2025. In this written publication following the performance, we begin with a note on the fonts readers will encounter herein. Taking a cue from the typographical polyvocality of mothering in Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers (1998), the performers, Dr. Laura Bissell and Dr. Lucy Tyler, express themselves in three typefaces. Lucy’s typeface (and her speech acts in performance) is a font often used in children’s literature: Gill Sans. Laura’s typeface is Grotesque, acknowledging the historical connotations of this term with birthing bodies. A third typeface, Segoe UI, is used to demonstrate the mother-demics’ collective speech. Segoe UI is the typeface of the web and desktop app Microsoft Teams, the forum for the mother-demics’ communications. Herein, we appropriate Segoe UI as a speculative organizing typography of mother-demics. We begin the performance now
Even as a probation officer, we’re all very much aware that we’re Black first:” an intersectional examination of how probation officers experience system legitimacy
Get PDFThis study focuses on how 27 frontline and supervisory probation officers (71% women, 67% Black) view the criminal legal system (CLS), utilizing intersectionality as an analytical framework. We present two themes: probation as ‘minor,’ and the CLS is a manifestation of societal racial oppression. Within each theme we detail sub-themes and highlight where we noted differences for probation officers across the intersections of race/gender/and institutional position. Findings indicate Black women, in particular,
recognize the harm of the omnipresence of probation and exercise care with clients. Our findings puncture the illusion that workforce diversification alone is enough to achieve system legitimacy
Gellan gum in drug delivery
No full textGellan gum is an anionic microbially derived polysaccharide which produced via fermentation of Sphingomonas elodea. The chemical structure of gellan gum composes of four repeating monosaccharide units such as two glucose units (1,3-β-D-glucose and 1,4-β-D-glucose), 1,4-α-L-rhamnose, and 1,4-β-D-glucuronic acid with molar ratio of 2: 1:1. The native gellan gum structure contains two different types of acyl substituents, including high acyl and low acyl types. So far, gellan gum is widely used in food industry as an emulsifier, a thickener, and stabilizer instead of agar-agar. However, recently, in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications, gellan gum-based drug delivery systems have gained more attention for delivery of various therapeutic drugs via different drug administration routes to control and sustain drug release into target site. Gellan gum has unique favorable features such as its biodegradability, thermal, mechanical, and acid stability, low cost, biocompatibility, nontoxicity, mucoadhesiveness, hypoallergenicity, simple and mild processing preparation, and high transparency. Therefore, it offers an effective and safe drug delivery carrier in various dosage forms including tablets, microparticles, nanoparticles, beads, films, hydrogels, etc. This chapter focuses on recent modified gellan gum-based microparticles, nanoparticles, and hydrogels for drug delivery, especially, through different drug administration routes: nasal, ocular, oral, and buccal routes
The impact of pre-weaning nutrition and a methane-suppressing feed additive on Holstein heifer development
No full textHigh-moisture extrusion in plant-based meat: challenges and emerging trends
Get PDFThe global protein demand is predicted to double by 2050, driving the rise in the adaptation of plant-based meat alternatives(PBMAs), which replicate traditional meat textures while reducing environmental impact. This review examines challenges and opportunities in producing and adopting PBMAs, with a particular focus on high-moisture extrusion (HME) technology. Anisotropic structure control during HME remains a major challenge due to the varied physicochemical properties of plant proteins. Additionally, nutrient composition variability complicates standardization, which affects dietary adequacy and consumeracceptance, while understanding the effects of antinutrients on nutrient absorption is also crucial. The review further explores the nutritional profiles, health implications, environmental impacts, labelling practices, and marketing strategies of PBMAs, identifying research gaps. It highlights the need for cross-sector collaboration to advance sustainable plant-based diets. Eco-friendly plant protein production can be achieved through efficient agroecosystem management and dry fractionation, in contrast to water- and chemical-intensive wet extraction. Life cycle assessments consistently show a lower environmental footprint of plant-based diets versus meat-inclusive diets, although more comprehensive methodologies are required. Market challenges, including costs and consumer acceptance influenced by demographics and culture, remain key challenges. Policy interventions, such as carbon taxation, could reduce meat consumption, but socioeconomic impacts must be carefully considered. Reducing production costs and effectively communicating the sustainability benefits of PBMAs seem crucial for widespread adaptation. Advances in fermentation and genomic technologies hold promise for enhancing nutrient bioavailability sustainably. Ongoing evaluation of PBMA production processes is crucial to addressing nutritional variability, health impacts, and environmental concerns