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Systems biology and Nutrition
No full textSystems biology has established itself as a paradigm which has been adopted in order to integrate a wealth of omics data which has been generated in the last few decades. Nutrition research has gradually embraced the systems biology approach, and this holistic way of investigating biological systems is beginning to pay dividends for our understanding of diet and its relationship with health. This chapter presents an overview of the key strands of systems biology; these include, genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics and computational modelling. I discuss how these techniques are being used to gain new insights into nutrition research. Moreover, I reveal how computational modelling is being used to unravel how ageing effects cholesterol and folate metabolism. The chapter concludes by providing an insight into how systems biology will be applied to nutrition research in the future
Personality and behavioral changes in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) following the death of herd members
Get PDFThis is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Rutherford, L., & Murray, L.E. (2020). Personality and behavioral changes in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) following the death of herd members. Integrative Zoology., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1749-4877.12476. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-ArchivingElephants are highly social beings with complex individual personalities. We know that elephants have a general interest in death, investigating carcasses, not just limited to kin; however, research does not explore in depth whether individuals change their behavior or personality following traumatic events, such as the death of a conspecific. Within a captive herd of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) housed at Chester Zoo, UK, we measured social behavior and proximity and personality using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, and found age-related and relationship-related changes in both behavior and personality following the deaths of herd members. Overall, the herd spent less time socializing and engaging in affiliative behaviors following the death of the adult female when compared to baseline data, yet spent more time engaging in these behaviors after the death of two calves. The death of the central female had a dramatic impact on her infant calf, resulting in increasingly withdrawn behavior, yet had the opposite effect on her adult daughter, who subsequently established a more integrated role within the herd. Emotional Stability fell in the motherless calf but rose in an adult female, who had lost her adult daughter, but
had a new calf to care for. We suggest that the greater impact on the behavior and personality of surviving herd members following the deaths of calves, compared to an adult member, attests to the significance of the unifying role played by calves within an elephant herd
Plants as persons: perceptions of the natural world in the North European Mesolithic
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Time and Mind on 8th September 2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2020.1815292Amongst many hunter-gatherer communities, plants, animals and other aspects of the ‘natural’ environment, are bound up in, and gain significance and meaning from, specific cultural traditions. These traditions intricately bind the natural world into broader ontological understandings, which include concepts of animacy, the origins of the world, its structure and composition, and the behaviour of supernatural beings. Through these traditions, elements of the environment are imbued with an ontological significance that informs the way people perceive them, and how they interact with them through economic or ritual practice. There is a growing body of evidence that comparable traditions also structured the ways that hunter-gatherers interacted with their environment during the European Mesolithic. Much of the research has focused on the significance of animals, but this paper argues that plants were perceived in a similar way. Through a series of case studies from the North European Mesolithic, it shows how trees in particular were understood as powerful forces, playing active roles in people’s lives, and how interactions with them were mediated through prescribed forms of social practic
‘It’s more than confusing our b’s and d’s’: a commentary on the lack of understanding of the needs of social work students who have dyslexia
Get PDFThis is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an article published in [insert name of relevant Policy Press journal here]. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Hewson, M. & Gant, V. (2020). ‘It’s more than confusing our b’s and d’s’: a commentary on the lack of understanding of the needs of social work students who have dyslexia. Critical and Radical Social Work, 8(2), 273–281 is available online at: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/crsw/2020/00000008/00000002/art00011;jsessionid=gh3fs7nql0er.x-ic-live-03 See more at: http://www.policypress.co.uk/info_archiving.asp?#sthash.NANITUAy.dpufDrawing on principles of auto-ethnography, this commentary offers for discussion reflections on a personal reaction to some of the struggles experienced when navigating the English social work placement landscape for a student who has a diagnosis (or label) of dyslexia/dyspraxia. Commenting on some of the challenges faced in order to try and survive the placement experience necessary to complete the programme, this account makes recommendations and suggestions for educators in university and in practice
How downplaying or exaggerating crime severity in a confession affects perceived guilt
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Psychiatry, Psychology and Law on forthcoming, available online: doi to be added when publishedThis study investigated how judgments of guilt are influenced by factual errors in confessions that either amplified or downplayed the severity of the crime. Participants read a confession statement and a police report. Information in the confession statement either was consistent with the facts of the crime in the police report, the suspect admitted to a worse crime than described in the police report, or the suspect admitted to a lesser crime than described in the police report. Mediation analyses showed that, compared to consistent confessions, both types of directional errors reduced judgments of guilt. Inconsistencies that made the suspect look better—but not those that made the suspect look worse—also increased judgments of guilt via a direct effect. Confessions that contain errors that appear to exaggerate the severity of the crime prompt no higher judgments of suspect guilt than confessions that are consistent with the facts of the crime. However, errors in confessions that are perceived to downplay the severity of the crime can prompt an increased perception of suspect guilt, when compared to a consistent confession
A systematic review of the organizational, environmental, professional and child and family factors influencing the timing of admission to hospital for children with serious infectious illness
Get PDFBackground: Infection, particularly in the first 5 years of life, is a major cause of childhood deaths globally, many deaths from infections such as pneumonia and meningococcal disease are avoidable, if treated in time. Some factors that contribute to morbidity and mortality can be modified. These include organisational and environmental factors as well as those related to the child, family or professional. Objective: Examine what organizational and environmental factors and individual child, family and professional factors affect timing of admission to hospital for children with a serious infectious illness. Design: Systematic review. Data sources: Key search terms were identified and used to search CINAHL Plus, Medline, ASSIA, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, Joanna Briggs Institute Database of Systematic Review. Study appraisal methods: Primary research (e.g. quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods studies) and literature reviews (e.g., systematic, scoping and narrative) were included if participants included or were restricted to children under 5 years of age with serious infectious illnesses, included parents and/or first contact health care professionals in primary care, urgent and emergency care and where the research had been conducted in OECD high income countries. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool was used to review the methodological quality of the studies. Main findings: Thirty-six papers were selected for full text review; 12 studies fitted the inclusion criteria. Factors influencing the timing of admission to hospital included the variability in children’s illness trajectories and pathways to hospital, parental recognition of symptoms and clinicians non-recognition of illness severity, parental help-seeking behaviour and clinician responses, access to services, use and non-use of ‘gut feeling’ by clinicians, and sub-optimal management within primary, secondary and tertiary services. Conclusions: The pathways taken by children with a serious infectious illness to hospital are complex and influenced by a variety of potentially modifiable individual, organisational, environmental and contextual factors. Supportive, accessible, respectful services that provide continuity, clear communication, advice and safety-netting are important as is improved training for clinicians and a mandate to attend to ‘gut feeling’. Implications: Relatively simple interventions such as improved communication have the potential to improve the quality of care and reduce morbidity and mortality in children with a serious infectious illness
Risk governance of emerging technologies demonstrated in terms of its applicability to nanomaterials
Get PDF© 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, WeinheimNanotechnologies have reached maturity and market penetration that require nano-specific changes in legislation and harmonization among legislation domains, such as the amendments to REACH for nanomaterials (NMs) which came into force in 2020. Thus, an assessment of the components and regulatory boundaries of NMs risk governance is timely, alongside related methods and tools, as part of the global efforts to optimise nanosafety and integrate it into product design processes, via Safe(r)-by-Design (SbD) concepts. This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art regarding risk governance of NMs and lays out the theoretical basis for the development and implementation of an effective, trustworthy and transparent risk governance framework for NMs. The proposed framework enables continuous integration of the evolving state of the science, leverages best practice from contiguous disciplines and facilitates responsive re-thinking of nanosafety governance to meet future needs. To achieve and operationalise such framework, a science-based Risk Governance Council (RGC) for NMs is being developed. The framework will provide a toolkit for independent NMs' risk governance and integrates needs and views of stakeholders. An extension of this framework to relevant advanced materials and emerging technologies is also envisaged, in view of future foundations of risk research in Europe and globally. [Abstract copyright: © 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.
The Gravitational Pull of Identity: Professional Growth in Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychologists
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Sport Psychology in Action on 07/10/2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21520704.2020.1825024Theories based in symbolic interactionism and narrative psychology can help us understand practitioner identity. Drawing on theories from these approaches, our purpose in this article is to distil research on sport psychologist growth, argue professional identity is a central goal in practitioner development, and offer applied implications. Professional growth includes movement from the self as an expert, who solves clients’ problems, to the self as a facilitator, who works alongside clients. Practitioners strive towards being authentic and along the way, develop self-awareness, learn to manage anxiety, and choose their preferred ways of working. A key feature of being authentic is an articulated professional identity. Practitioners can shape their professional identities by interacting with helpful people, consuming various genres of literature, and engaging in different types of writing
Social network analysis of a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) group in captivity following the integration of a new adult member
Get PDFManagement of primates in captivity often presents the challenge of introducing new individuals into a group, and research investigating the stability of the social network in the medium-term after the introduction can help inform management decisions. We investigated the behavior of a group of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) housed at Chester Zoo, UK over 12 months (divided into three periods of four months) following the introduction of a new adult female. We recorded grooming, proximity, other affiliative behaviors and agonistic behaviors and used Social Network Analysis to investigate the stability, reciprocity and structure of the group, to examine the effect of rearing history on grooming network position and the role of sex in agonistic behavior. Both the grooming and agonistic networks correlated across all three periods, while affiliative networks correlated only between periods two and three. Males had significantly higher out-degree centrality in agonistic behaviors than females, indicating that they carried out agonistic behaviors more often than females. There was no significant difference in centrality between hand-reared and mother-reared chimpanzees. Overall, the group structure was stable and cohesive during the first year after the introduction of the new female, suggesting that this change did not destabilize the group. Our findings highlight the utility of Social Network Analysis in the study of primate sociality in captivity, and how it can be used to better understand primate behavior following the integration of new individuals
COVID-19: the impact of a global crisis on sustainable development teaching
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global crisis, one which also influences the ways sustainability is being taught at universities. This paper undertakes an analysis of the extent to which COVID-19 as a whole and the lockdown it triggered in particular, which has led to the suspension of presence-based teaching in universities worldwide and influenced teaching on matters related to sustainable development. By means of a worldwide survey involving higher education institutions across all continents, the study has identified a number of patterns, trends and problems. The results from the study show
that the epidemic has significantly affected teaching practices. The lockdowns have led to a surge in the use of on-line communication tools as a partial replacement to normal lessons. In addition, many faculty teaching sustainability in higher education have strong competencies in digital literacy. The sampled higher education educations have -as a
whole- adequate infrastructure to continue to teach during the lockdowns. Finally, the majority of the sample revealed that they miss the interactions via direct face-to-face student engagement, which is deemed as necessary for the effective teaching of
sustainability content. The implications of this paper two-fold. Firstly, it describes how sustainability teaching on sustainable development has been affected by the lockdown. Secondly, it describes some of the solutions deployed to overcome the problem. Finally, the paper outlines the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic may serve the purpose of showing how university
teaching on sustainability may be improved in the future, taking more advantage of modern information technologies
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