An Educational Imperative: The Role of Ethical Codes and Normative Prohibitions in CBW-applicable Research

This paper examines the role of ethics in research with potentialapplicability to chemical and biological warfare. It focuses uponbiological warfare research, and examines the ethical dilemmas faced bythose working with dual-use potential technologies. It discusses thenormative, legal and ethical prohibitions against participation inchemical and biological warfare programmes from a Western perspective.It examines the motivations of individuals participating in CBW researchand concludes with recommendations for increasing awareness aboutethical and normative prohibitions. An appendix lists the results of asurvey of ethical codes in relevant scientific disciplines conducted viathe Internet.     

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¡No cierren nuestra escuela! farm worker mothers as cultural citizens in an educational community mobilization effort

Mexican immigrant farm-worker mothers’ class, race, citizenship status, and jurisdictional status of their town in a Northern California community rendered them invisible. However, when the school board decided to close the elementary school the mothers mobilized. Drawing on these mothers’ fototestimonios we examine how they, as cultural citizens, resisted local practices of educational inequity. They wanted to ensure an education for their children. The fototestimonios reveal how farm-worker mothers: (1) negotiated as a collective with the school board; (2) sought negotiation and schooling alternatives; and (3) expressed cultural citizenship through collective efforts to be included within the US polity.     

Researchers Apply Lesson Study: A Cycle of Lesson Planning,Implementation, and Revision

Scripted lesson plans and/or professional development alone may not be sufficient to encourage teachers to reflect on the quality of their teaching and improve their teaching. One learning tool that teachers may use to improve their teaching is Lesson Study (LS). LS is a collaborative process involving educators, based on concepts of iteration and revision, to improve instruction. The initial use of an adapted version of LS referred to as a microteaching lesson study (MLS) is described in this article. Our purpose is to illustrate the process of MLS used by a group of researchers when developing lesson plans for teaching students with learning disabilities. We describe MLS, and then (1) share an application of MLS used by a research team in developing a writing intervention, and (2) discuss how the MLS format was mirrored with K‐12 teachers during professional development training.     

The hidden benefits of part-time higher education study to working practices: is there a case for making them more visible?

Within the UK, part-time study is now seen as important in meeting wider government objectives for higher education (HE) and for sustainable economic growth through skills development. Yet, measures to capture the impact of HE may not be wholly appropriate to part-time study. In particular, the continuing focus on tangible, economic measures may be down-playing, or even completely overlooking, other gains. Data from a longitudinal study of part-time students show that irrespective of whether graduates had changed job or employer, or had stayed in the same job, individuals reported substantial work-related gains from their HE studies. We suggest that current research questions that focus on job moves and progression within the labour market, may well be the wrong questions to ask to gauge measures of benefits/returns to HE. Further research is needed to develop measures to fully capture the social returns of skills acquisition through part-time study.     

Sustainability science and education in the neoliberal ecoprison

As part of the general ‘greening’ of prisons in the last decade of neoliberalization and the formation of institutionalized programs to provide science and environmental education opportunities for the incarcerated, the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP), a partnership between Evergreen State College and the Washington State Department of Corrections, has become the most vibrant partnership in the US to mesh the cultures and institutions of environmental science and corrections. Drawing attention to the SPP’s anchoring mission, which is ‘to bring science and nature into prisons,’ this article looks at environmental science education in the contemporary prison in light of recent discussions of neoliberal science and ecobiopolitical theory, with the final aim of developing what amounts to a carceral political ecology of environmental education amid an ever expanding neoliberal penal State.     

High efficiency vortex trapping of circulating tumor cells

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are important biomarkers for monitoring tumor dynamics and efficacy of cancer therapy. Several technologies have been demonstrated to isolate CTCs with high efficiency but achieve a low purity from a large background of blood cells. We have previously shown the ability to enrich CTCs with high purity from large volumes of blood through selective capture in microvortices using the Vortex Chip. The device consists of a narrow channel followed by a series of expansion regions called reservoirs. Fast flow in the narrow entry channel gives rise to inertial forces, which direct larger cells into trapping vortices in the reservoirs where they remain circulating in orbits. By studying the entry and stability of particles following entry into reservoirs, we discover that channel cross sectional area plays an important role in controlling the size of trapped particles, not just the orbital trajectories. Using these design modifications, we demonstrate a new device that is able to capture a wider size range of CTCs from clinical samples, uncovering further heterogeneity. This simple biophysical method opens doors for a range of downstream interventions, including genetic analysis, cell culture, and ultimately personalized cancer therapy.