UCC Journals (Univ. College Cork)
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Chaos Into Order: Cartography and the Amorphous Blob
No full textSome years ago while tutoring in the Geography Department of U.C.C., an irate second year student came up to me and said, \u27Ronan, look what some bastard tutors\u27 put as a comment on my cartography practical\u27. He pointed to a comment I had written beside his work implying that, despite his best efforts, his traffic flow map of European imports and exports still looked like a great amorphous blob! Needless to say I immediately blamed my brother, a fellow tutor at the time. Cartographic techniques have changed a lot since then and doubtless in a few years time students everywhere will be capable of creating amorphous blobs on computer screens as well. This paper will seek to outline some of the differences between traditional and computer-based cartography. It will also attempt to discuss some of the underlying assumptions about cartography itself, about the scientific and philosophical basis of cartographic data and about the future of the subject in the years when GIS (Geographic Information Systems) will rule the worl
Postgraduate Research in Progress at U.C.C. 1990/91
Get PDFPostgraduate Research in Progress at U.C.C. 1990/9
An exploration of gut hormone therapy to treat infertility caused by Type 2 Diabetes
Get PDFBackground
Type II Diabetes Mellitus is a common disease associated with multiple debilitating symptoms, including reduced fertility in women of reproductive age. Gut hormone therapies have shown promise in improving fertility in these patients.
Objectives:
To identify the relationship between the human gut microbiota and the successful functioning of the female reproductive system.
To explore treatments to improve bacteria culture in the gut, and to examine if these improvements affect fertility in female patients with Type II Diabetes.
Method:
A systematic search was undertaken; studies were collected from PubMed and The Diabetology and Metabolic Syndrome Journal. Searches were performed between January, 2023 and March, 2023. Studies focused on female patients suffering simultaneously from Type II Diabetes Mellitus and fertility complications. Ten papers that met criteria were appraised and included.
Results:
There is evidence to suggest a causative relationship between the gut microbiome and reproductive functioning. Infertile patients had increased abundance of the phylum Verrucomicrobia and Phascolarctobacterium in the gastrointestinal tract, and decreased amounts of genera Stenotrophomonas, Streptococcus, and Roseburia. These abnormalities were associated with depleted circulating oestrogen concentrations, irregular menstrual cycling, and hyperandrogenism.
Evidence authenticates the use of probiotics and hormone therapy in treatment of Type II Diabetes and its associated symptoms. Supplements studied included metformin, GIP agonists, and GLP-1 receptors. Across studies, patients showed significant improvements in Type II Diabetes management following treatment.
Conclusion
Alterations to the composition of the gut microbiome are associated with improvements in glycemic control as well as improvements in fertility in female patients with Type II Diabetes Mellitus
Calprotectin as a marker of disease activity in spondyloarthritis
Get PDFIntroduction: Spondyloarthritis is a group of arthritic diseases that classically manifest as inflammation of the sacroiliac and limb joints, as well as the axial skeleton. Microscopic bowel inflammation is identifiable in over 50% of these patients. Calprotectin measured in the serum and stool is an emerging surrogate marker of disease activity and/or bowel inflammation in spondyloarthritis.
Objective: This article aims to review published literature to determine the accuracy of serum and faecal calprotectin levels for use in monitoring bowel inflammation and spondyloarthritis disease activity.
Methods: Boolean operator strategy was used to search two databases (Embase and PubMed) and 52 relevant articles were identified. Duplicate results were eliminated, inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied.
Results: Ten studies met the inclusion criteria and were summarized and analyzed. The EBL Validity questionnaire was applied to determine study quality. All research articles found calprotectin to be elevated in spondyloarthritis patients when compared to controls. Faecal calprotectin was superior in detecting disease activity and correlated with disease activity questionnaires, radiology and endoscopy results. Only one study assessed the effect of treatment on calprotectin and its correlation to bowel inflammation.
Conclusion: Faecal calprotectin shows promise as a surrogate marker for disease activity and bowel inflammation in spondyloarthritis. Future studies should focus on the effect of treatment on faecal calprotectin and whether some treatments are better at preventing the progression of bowel inflammation in addition to treating spondyloarthritis. Supplementary investigations are needed to identify whether faecal calprotectin is useful as a marker of disease activity in response to treatment
Risk assessment of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in rural Maharashtra, India
Get PDFThe research question I addressed was - “To what extent do socioeconomic factors influence the risk of developing lifestyle diseases such as Obesity, Hypertension and Type II Diabetes Mellitus in Rural and Urban Indian women aged 35-55 years?”. Having lived in the urban parts of India for the majority of my life, this opportunity exposed me to healthcare in rural India and language barriers due to the diversity of subIndian cultures
Immunogenicity and safety of Cervarix HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvant vaccine against HPV induced cervical cancer in women (15+ years)
Get PDFBackground: The incidence of cervical cancer has decreased by over 50% from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. This is due in part to an increase in screening, which can identify cervical changes before they turn cancerous. Decreasing incidence rates in young women may be due to the use of the HPV vaccine. There are currently three types of HPV vaccines on the market: bivalent, quadrivalent and nine-valent HPV vaccines. These are administered in three-doses to both sexes from age 15 upwards to prevent HPV infection. Many medical systems support the vaccination of teenage girls and boys with HPV vaccines during their secondary school years in order to reduce the incidence of HPV-related cervical cancer in women. Despite the discovery of the link between HPV and cervical cancer in 1985, the beginning of vaccine production in 2002, and promotion of screening procedures since the 1960’s, cervical cancer is still the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide today.
Objective: This review aims to analyse the immunogenicity and safety of Cervarix®, also known as HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvant vaccine, in women (15+ years) against cervical cancer.
Methods: The literature review analysing the effectiveness and immunogenicity of HPV-16/18 AS04-ADJUVANTED Vaccine against cervical cancer, was conducted by using two main databases: EbescoHost (Medline and Academic Search) and PubMed. Advanced searches were conducted using specific key words, various filters and Boolean operators ‘OR’ and ‘AND’ to find the most suitable literature. This process resulted in over 100 results. From this cohort, clinical trials were selected in accordance with the specific inclusion and exclusion criteria determined for the review. After duplicates from both databases were removed, the studies were assessed in order or title, population and objective relevance, and the top 10 most relevant articles to the title of the literature review, were selected for the literature review.
Results: The 10 clinical trials selected all obtained a minimum of 10 out of the 11 CASP requirements indicating good study quality. All 10 studies were successful in proving the immunogenicity and safety of the HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvant vaccine in protecting women 15+ (15-55 years) from developing HPV-induced cervical cancer [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24]. This confers that vaccination against HPV-16/18 virus proves to be effective in preventing HPV-induced CIN and cervical cancer and is a safe to administer vaccine.
Recuperating Racebending as a Worthwhile Practice in an Imperfect Entertainment Industry
No full textThis article examines and uses the music video for JAY-Z’s song "Moonlight" (2017) and its remaking and recasting of Friends (NBC 1994 – 2004) to think about how recast remakes and their repetition with a race-difference might be more than just a superficial play for diversity. It seems that the music video itself, as well as its creators and commentators, deem the act of replacing White actors with Black ones in remakes as producing only, what Kristen J. Warner (2017, p. 34) calls, “plastic representation”. This article uses the shot-by-shot recast scene of "Moonlight" to consider how such recastings with a race difference might in fact nevertheless be productive for decentering whiteness. It argues that there is something worthwhile in Alan Yang’s re-reading and re-making of Friends with Black actors within the music video, and in this recasting practice — which one can call “racebending” — more generally. Firstly, racebending can be seen as a type of “viewing as if” (Laugalyte, 2020) and “reparative reading” (Eve Sedgwick, 2003, p. 150), both concepts framing the practice as an impulse to “repair” cultural texts that are perceived to somehow be lacking, in this case, in terms of the types of bodies that are and are not represented. Secondly, by considering the music video within the context of Friends and other adults-living-with-friends sit-coms, such as Living Single (Fox, 1993– 1998), this article argues that racebending is a part of the adaptation and adoption process, always mirroring the racial politics of the time. Though the entertainment industry needs to go through some truly radical changes to become decolonised, this article contends that racebending is not the answer to the White-centric U.S. entertainment landscape, but an important practice in an imperfect system
A Timely Tragedy: Deviant Women and Cultural Dissonance in Kim Ki-young’s \u27The Housemaid\u27
No full textIn recent history, the Korean peninsula has endured change at a remarkable pace, transitioning from an insular unified entity to a battleground of cultural encounters and political upheaval. This article examines the renowned Korean director Kim Ki-young’s (1919–1998) film The Housemaid (1960) as an expression of the culturally contingent anxieties surrounding modernisation in post-war South Korea. This film serves an allegory for the dissonant socio-political climate during the early 1960s, presented through a narrative of a fatal affair between an emasculated husband and a young housemaid. Kim explores themes concerning Korean patriarchal norms, the state’s paranoia regarding the West and the role of women in a rapidly modernising Korean society. Central to The Housemaid’s narrative is the presentation of deviant women as symbolic of broader societal concerns, embodied by an industrious housewife whose material ambitions signal a departure from the state-sponsored ideal of personal frugality. The housemaid is hired to compensate for the housewife’s inability to fulfil her expected domestic and maternal responsibilities, and her introduction heralds the destruction of the Korean family. Kim’s portrayal of the housemaid’s unpredictable behaviour and her manipulation of the patriarch illustrates the destabilising force of modernisation. The underlying cultural tensions surrounding the undermining of gender roles in the traditional Confucian family are also evident in Kim’s depiction of an emasculated husband. This article highlights the multifaceted anxieties of post-colonial, post-war Korean society surrounding the erosion of traditional values, the liberation of women and the looming threat of ideological intrusions from the West. By examining Kim Ki-young’s writing and his unique cinematic approach, this article offers valuable insights into the cultural, social and psychological aspects of this period of South Korea’s modernisation process. Ultimately, The Housemaid serves as a compelling and provocative reflection of the prevailing sentiments concerning modernity and the patriarchal family