Enhancing the practice of social work

This account of practice focuses on my learning and development as a new Action Learning Facilitator. It reflects on my thoughts and feelings as I began to facilitate my own sets a year or so ago. It will discuss and reflect on topics such as communication, feedback, expectations (both mine, the set members and the organisations), values, ethics, power and confidentiality. It opens with a personal reflection on my experience of becoming a set facilitator and then explores other aspects of my learning. It draws out, in particular, the links between Action Learning and social work and the ways in which the principles that underpin each of these are complementary and mutually enhancing.     

Knowledge is Power—Unitarians,gender and education in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

This article attempts to show the importance of education to gender equality in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and in particular, the relevance of the progressive views and practice of the Unitarians whose attitudes affected women generally both through their educational endeavours, especially in higher education, and through their pioneering efforts on women's rights. There were a number of limitations, however, to the Unitarians’ contribution, not least their paternalistic attitudes to the working class coupled with their genuine upholding of the status and responsibility of motherhood which led them to restrict working‐class women's role in practice even whilst promoting for them a better and wider education. Nevertheless, Unitarians made an outstanding early contribution to gender equality by seeking to provide women with the education which would enable them to develop their full potential and prove their equality.     

Convergent genomic signatures of high-altitude adaptation among domestic mammals

Abundant and diverse domestic mammals living on the Tibetan Plateau provide useful materials for investigating adaptive evolution and genetic convergence. Here, we used 327 genomes from horses, sheep, goats, cattle, pigs and dogs living at both high and low altitudes, including 73 genomes generated for this study, to disentangle the genetic mechanisms underlying local adaptation of domestic mammals. Although molecular convergence is comparatively rare at the DNA sequence level, we found convergent signature of positive selection at the gene level, particularly the EPAS1 gene in these Tibetan domestic mammals. We also reported a potential function in response to hypoxia for the gene C10orf67, which underwent positive selection in three of the domestic mammals. Our data provide an insight into adaptive evolution of high-altitude domestic mammals, and should facilitate the search for additional novel genes involved in the hypoxia response pathway.     

Metacognition and Human Performance Improvement Originally published in 1988, PIQ 1.1

An understanding of the uses of metacognition provides a powerful tool toward developing quality and efficiency in task learning and performance. Metacognition is the executive controller of cognitive processes responsible both for self regulated learning and work performance outcomes. Comprehension monitoring and motivation are two prime components of metacognition which are responsible for commitment to, and definition of, goals, monitoring progress toward goals, and activating the appropriate thinking skills to achieve goals. Specific thinking skill categories of attention, organization, and elaboration are described with examples of how specific techniques in each category can optimize learning and job performance. Research on training of metacognitive skills through both detached and embedded skill-development programs is reviewed. In addition, ways to compensate for metacognitive skills when training is not cost-effective are described. The relationship between metacognitive skills and effective management of work performance is stressed.     

Impact of age on host responses to diet-induced obesity:Development of joint damage and metabolic set points

Background:Osteoarthritis is one of the leading causes of pain and disability worldwide,and a large percentage of patients with osteoarthritis are individuals who are also obese.In recent years,a series of animal models have demonstrated that obesity-inducing diets can result in synovial joint damage(both with and without the superimposition of trauma),which may be related to changes in percentage of body fat and a series of low-level systemic inflammatory mediators.Of note,there is a disparity between whether the dietary challenges commence at weaning,representing a weanling onset,or at skeletal maturity,representing an adult onset of obesity.We wished to evaluate the effect ofthe dietary exposure time and the age at which animals are exposed to a high-fat and high-sucrose(HFS) diet to determine whether these factors may result in disparate outcomes,as there is evidence suggesting that these factors result in differential metabolic disturbances.Based on dietary exposure time,we hypothesized that rats fed an HFS diet for 14 weeks from weaning(HFS Weanling) would demonstrate an increase in knee joint damage scores,whereas rats exposed to the HFS diet for 4 weeks,starting at 12 weeks of age(HFS Adult) and rats exposed to a standard chow diet(Chow)would not display an increase in knee joint damage scores.Methods:Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed either an HFS diet for 14 weeks from weaning(HFS Weanling) or an HFS diet for 4 weeks,starting at 12 weeks of age(HFS Adult).At sacrifice,joints were scored using the modified Mankin Criteria,and serum was analyzed for a defined subset of inflammatory markers(Interleukin-6,leptin,monocyte chemoattractant protein-1,and tumor necrosis factorα).Results:When the HFS Weanling and HFS Adult groups were compared,both groups had a similar percent of body fat,although the HFS Weanling group had a significantly greater body mass than the HFS Adult group.The HFS Weanling and HFS Adult animals had a significant increase in body mass and percentage of body fat when compared to the Chow group.Although knee joint damage scores were low in all 3 groups,we found,contrary to our hypothesis,that the HFS Adult group had statistically significant greater knee joint damage scores than the Chow and HFS Weanling groups.Furthermore,we observed that the HFS Weanling group did not have significant differences in knee joint damage scores relative to the Chow group.Conclusion:These findings indicate that the HFS Weanling animals were better able to cope with the dietary challenge of an HFS diet than the HFS Adult group.Interestingly,when assessing various serum proinflammatory markers,no significant differences were detected between the HTS Adult and HFS Weanling groups.Although details regarding the mechanisms underlying an increase in knee joint damage scores in the HFS Adult group remain to be elucidated,these findings indicate that dietary exposure time maybe less important than the age at which an HFS diet is introduced.Moreover,increases in serum proinflammatory mediators do not appear to be directly linked to knee joint damage scores in the HFS Weanling group animals but may be partially responsible for the observed knee joint damage in the adults over the very short time of exposure to the HFS diet.