122 research outputs found
Improved resistance to root pests: final report to Grape and Wine Research & Development Corporation
No full textThere were two major aims of this project, which was jointly funded by GWRDC and CRCV2. The first aim was to identify and characterise grapevine genes involved in the plantâ s interaction
with phylloxera and/or root-knot nematode. This information could be used to design strategies for engineering novel resistance to these pests in grapevine. The second aim of the project was to develop and use systems to rapidly assess candidate genes for preventing infestation of vine roots by phylloxera and/or root-knot nematode. Progress towards both goals was achieved despite premature termination of the project after 4, instead of 7 years.Project Leader: Dr. Robyn van Heeswijck until her retirement in July, 2002, then Prof. Steve Tyerman (in an administrative capacity); Author Details: Dr Tricia Franks (using text from the original application by Dr. Robyn van Heeswijck
Population mitogenomics provides insights into evolutionary history, source of invasions and diversifying selection in the House Crow (<i>Corvus splendens</i>)
No full textThe House Crow (Corvus splendens) is a useful study system for investigating the genetic basis of adaptations underpinning successful range expansion. The species originates from the Indian subcontinent, but has successfully spread through a variety of thermal environments across Asia, Africa and Europe. Here, population mitogenomics was used to investigate the colonisation history and to test for signals of molecular selection on the mitochondrial genome. We sequenced the mitogenomes of 89 House Crows spanning four native and five invasive populations. A Bayesian dated phylogeny, based on the 13 mitochondrial protein-coding genes, supports a mid-Pleistocene (~630,000 years ago) divergence between the most distant genetic lineages. Phylogeographic patterns suggest that northern South Asia is the likely centre of origin for the species. Codon-based analyses of selection and assessments of changes in amino acid properties provide evidence of positive selection on the ND2 and ND5 genes against a background of purifying selection across the mitogenome. Protein homology modelling suggests that four amino acid substitutions inferred to be under positive selection may modulate coupling efficiency and proton translocation mediated by OXPHOS complex I. The identified substitutions are found within native House Crow lineages and ecological niche modelling predicts suitable climatic areas for the establishment of crow populations within the invasive range. Mitogenomic patterns in the invasive range of the species are more strongly associated with introduction history than climate. We speculate that invasions of the House Crow have been facilitated by standing genetic variation that accumulated due to diversifying selection within the native range.</p
'Making its own history': New Zealand historical fiction for children,1862-2008
No full textThis thesis considers historical fiction for children and young people dealing with New Zealand history from the arrival of the first Polynesian settlers to the end of the nineteenth century. It provides both a comprehensive survey of historical novels published between 1862 and the end of 2008, and an analysis of the way the same historical events and periods have been depicted in historical novels written at different times. Individual chapters discuss books set during specific historical periods or dealing with particular events - the pre-European period, early contact, nineteenth century immigration, the New Zealand Wars, the gold rushes, and the colonial period - in chronological order of publication. Since children's literature is particularly adept at reflecting and promoting the dominant ideas of the society in which it is produced, the chronological consideration of these texts reveals contemporary attitudes to such issues as race relations, gender roles, class, war and conflict, and concepts of national identity, as well as the way historical fiction has responded to societal changes since the 1860s.
The predominant themes of historical fiction set prior to 1900 are: the arrival of settlers in New Zealand; encounters with the country's indigenous inhabitants; the taming of the often hostile landscape; the assertion of the settlers' claims to 'belong' in their new land; and the establishment of New Zealand as a nation with distinctive characteristics. There are perceptible nuances and differences in the way these themes are discussed depending on the historical moment in which individual authors are writing. Novels of the Victorian period and early twentieth century reflect the imperialistic and evangelistic ethos of the time, and present the British settlers' right to colonize the land and the ensuing dispossession of Māori as largely unproblematic. Subsequent historical novels, particularly those written since the 1960s, offer a more inclusive version of New Zealand history, although the lack of historical fiction for children by Māori writers means that Eurocentric views of history continue to dominate, and that all representations of Māori and their history are mediated through Pakeha writers.
Shifts in social attitudes have resulted in changes in the treatment of Māori in historical novels for children, and similar changes have occurred in the portrayal of gender, class, and ethnicity. The passage of time has seen increased agency and a wider variety of roles allocated to Māori, female and working class characters, as well as greater ethnic diversity. Developments in New Zealand historiography are also reflected in fiction, although at times historical fiction prefigures written histories, or provides alternative views by depicting the experience of women, children and Māori, who often did not feature in conventional histories. While many historical novels for children, especially the earlier texts, are adventure stories set in the past and are not necessarily concerned with historical verisimilitude, an increasing number attempt to present authentic recreations of historical periods, including accounts of actual people and events, based on extensive research, and reinforced with peritextual material in the form of historical notes, bibliographies, maps and photographs.
The role of New Zealand historical fiction for children and young people has been not only to entertain young readers and inform them about their country's past, but to create and foster a sense of national identity
Realizing the right to health through the use of health print materials in the Western Cape, South Africa
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.This qualitative study was conducted in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. It examines the effectiveness of promotional educational pamphlets on the awareness, understandings and practice of the right to health among eight civil society organizations and their constituents
Investigating the impact of NHS based ovarian cancer screening
No full textthe UK ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in females and after uterine cancer, the second most common gynaecological cancer. There were 6,596 new cases diagnosed in the UK in 2006. The majority of women who develop ovarian cancer have few symptoms until the cancer has spread. A systematic review of published literature was performed to include randomised control trials, case control or cohort studies. It is apparent from the literature on ovarian cancer screening that internationally extensive research is performed however, there is lack of consensus on who to offer screening to, and the most efficacious way of offering it. Annual screening was found to be inadequate for early cancer detection as several studies report advanced stage disease or found that women were developing symptoms in the interim period of screening visits.
The retrospective studies performed at Milton Keynes Hospital demonstrated that ovarian cancer affects a wide age range with many women having no family history of ovarian or breast cancer. Many cases were found to have early stage ovarian cancer however, the largest group of women were found to have extensive metastatic disease at time of diagnosis. 80% of cases reviewed experienced abdominal or pelvic pains often with distension. Five patients were found to have a CA125 value in the normal range, one of which had advanced disease, indicating the limitations of this biomarker. The impact and costs associated with screening in the NHS setting vary considerably with inclusion criteria used. The UK National Screening Committee will have to decide once the findings of UKCTOCS are published in 2010/11 as to the cost benefit of offering NHS based ovarian cancer screening. An annual cost of at least £1.3 million should be expected per NHS trust, in addition to individual trusts needs for equipment, staff and additional facilities required to offer such screening
The C. elegans Male Exercises Directional Control during Mating through Cholinergic Regulation of Sex-Shared Command Interneurons
No full textabstract: Background
Mating behaviors in simple invertebrate model organisms represent tractable paradigms for understanding the neural bases of sex-specific behaviors, decision-making and sensorimotor integration. However, there are few examples where such neural circuits have been defined at high resolution or interrogated.
Methodology/Principal Findings
Here we exploit the simplicity of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to define the neural circuits underlying the male’s decision to initiate mating in response to contact with a mate. Mate contact is sensed by male-specific sensilla of the tail, the rays, which subsequently induce and guide a contact-based search of the hermaphrodite’s surface for the vulva (the vulva search). Atypically, search locomotion has a backward directional bias so its implementation requires overcoming an intrinsic bias for forward movement, set by activity of the sex-shared locomotory system. Using optogenetics, cell-specific ablation- and mutant behavioral analyses, we show that the male makes this shift by manipulating the activity of command cells within this sex-shared locomotory system. The rays control the command interneurons through the male-specific, decision-making interneuron PVY and its auxiliary cell PVX. Unlike many sex-shared pathways, PVY/PVX regulate the command cells via cholinergic, rather than glutamatergic transmission, a feature that likely contributes to response specificity and coordinates directional movement with other cholinergic-dependent motor behaviors of the mating sequence. PVY/PVX preferentially activate the backward, and not forward, command cells because of a bias in synaptic inputs and the distribution of key cholinergic receptors (encoded by the genes acr-18, acr-16 and unc-29) in favor of the backward command cells.
Conclusion/Significance
Our interrogation of male neural circuits reveals that a sex-specific response to the opposite sex is conferred by a male-specific pathway that renders subordinate, sex-shared motor programs responsive to mate cues. Circuit modifications of these types may make prominent contributions to natural variations in behavior that ultimately bring about speciation.The article is published at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.006059
The urban environment : agendas and problems
No full textThe United Nations estimate that by 2025 there will be around 5 billion people living in urban areas, more than the total world population 20 years ago. Currently, the developed nations are the most urbanised with, on average around three-quarters of their population living in cities, but this is changing. Increased levels of economic growth, of migration, of population expansion and, in some cases, of unprecedented industrial growth, mean that Asia and Africa will be the regions most radically affected by urban development over the next twenty years. Increasing debate on issues of urban sustainability has led to the consolidation of environmental agendas and the definition of a specific body of problems and policy issues on two levels. The first involves green agenda problems occupying the concerns of many in the developed nations such as global warming, ozone-layer depletion, loss of bio-diversity, deforestation, and the exhaustion of non-renewable resources. For the developing world, however, these global environmental problems are less immediate than the need to resolve acute problems relating to poverty and the so-called brown agenda problems of air and water pollution, inadequate waste management, the lack of basic services and green areas, declining infrastructure, and poor housing conditions, as well as issues of health, crime, violence, and social exclusion. It is now a commonly held belief that the green agenda cannot be addressed until the urgent problems of urban social deprivation and inequalities are resolved. This paper reviews the scale and character of contemporary urbanisation and the rapid growth of cities, particularly within the developing nations, and examines associated implications with respect to the physical arrangement of cities, their resource consumption and their environmental impact
PW376 A pilot study of a post-discharge nurse-led, educational intervention on cardiac self-efficacy and anxiety in post-PCI patients
No full textAuthor version made available in accordance with the publisher's policy for non-mandated open access submission. Under Elsevier's copyright, non-mandated authors are permitted to make work available in an institutional repository.
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in GLOBAL HEART. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in GLOBAL HEART, [VOL9, ISSUE1, (2014)] DOI:10.1016/j.gheart.2014.03.243
Journeys and battles: Spatial and gendered discourses of obsessive-compulsive disorder
No full textObsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a (mental) health condition that, despite its highly spatial characteristics and high prevalence, has been largely overlooked by human geographers. This thesis seeks to help rectify this oversight by examining the ways in which OCD is gendered, especially in relation to the metaphors used to describe the condition. A conceptual model for a “radical body politics” provides the theoretical framework for this research. Semi-structured interviews, critical reading of stories published by and about people with OCD, and autobiography are used in order to investigate the ways in which men and women utilise discourse in order to represent and make sense of their experiences with OCD. I argue that the ways in which men and women choose to represent through discourse their experiences of OCD have profound implications for their sense of self. Two over-arching discourses are discussed: that of the journey and that of the battle. The more feminised discourse of a journey suggests that the experience of women with OCD is a cathartic pathway of self-realisation with the end-goal of recovery. The more masculinised discourse of battle positions OCD as being both Other to the self and a struggle within the self. Both discourses invoke spatial imagery and have profound implications for how individuals with OCD experience and manage the condition. I also suggest some possible avenues for further geographic research into OCD
Sign language interpreters’ ethical discourse and moral reasoning patterns
No full textThis study investigates the ethical reasoning abilities of sign language interpreters in the
US using two data sources, one that is qualitative and one that is quantitative. The
twenty-five participants involved in this study were recruited after their completion of an
online training session on interpreting ethics (unrelated to this study or the author). Their
responses to six ethical scenarios (e.g., what would you do and why) were analysed
through the lens of James Rest’s three tacit moral schemas: personal interest schema,
maintaining norms schema, and post-conventional schema. These data were then
compared to the results of Rest’s standardised instrument of moral reasoning, the
Defining Issues Test, also based on these three schema preferences.
These data show that the interpreter participants have a preference for a maintaining
norms schema on both qualitative and quantitative data sources. This moral reasoning
pattern found in the interpreter cohort is more typical of adolescent reasoning – a much
younger profile than the actual age and education level of the participant pool.
Furthermore, this reasoning preference does not coincide with the justice claims often
made in the profession (e.g. the ally model). Justice as defined by collaboration by both
moral psychologists and translation scholars is only weakly evident in the ethical
discourse of the interpreter participants.
These reasoning patterns that reveal an adolescent and non-collaborative approach are
also evident in ethical documents and literature of the sign language interpreting
profession. How the profession has come to conceive of and articulate ethics is explored
as a potential limiting factor on the study participant’s abilities to express more
sophisticated reasoning. In addition to moral judgement patterns evident in the
quantitative and qualitative data, the study cohort’s qualitative data are examined for
other psychological aspects of Rest’s Four Component Model (FCM). Findings indicate
that sign language interpreters make many assumptions about service users’ needs,
actions, and intentions. Further, they are more concerned for how decisions might impact
them than the potential impact on service users. As a result, education interventions are
indicated particularly for moral sensitivity and moral judgement
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