Providing Undergraduates with Opportunities to Explicitly Reflect on How News Articles Promote the Public (Mis)understanding of Science

Science & Education - A well-informed populace is vitally important for the proper functioning of democracy. Media news articles constitute an essential means by which the public comes into...     

Biomechanical properties of red blood cells in health and disease towards microfluidics

Red blood cells (RBCs) possess a unique capacity for undergoing cellular deformation to navigate across various human microcirculation vessels, enabling them to pass through capillaries that are smaller than their diameter and to carry out their role as gas carriers between blood and tissues. Since there is growing evidence that red blood cell deformability is impaired in some pathological conditions, measurement of RBC deformability has been the focus of numerous studies over the past decades. Nevertheless, reports on healthy and pathological RBCs are currently limited and, in many cases, are not expressed in terms of well-defined cell membrane parameters such as elasticity and viscosity. Hence, it is often difficult to integrate these results into the basic understanding of RBC behaviour, as well as into clinical applications. The aim of this review is to summarize currently available reports on RBC deformability and to highlight its association with various human diseases such as hereditary disorders (e.g., spherocytosis, elliptocytosis, ovalocytosis, and stomatocytosis), metabolic disorders (e.g., diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, obesity), adenosine triphosphate-induced membrane changes, oxidative stress, and paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria. Microfluidic techniques have been identified as the key to develop state-of-the-art dynamic experimental models for elucidating the significance of RBC membrane alterations in pathological conditions and the role that such alterations play in the microvasculature flow dynamics.     

‘It’s good enough that our children are accepted’: Roma mothers’ views of children’s education post migration

The discrimination of Roma groups across Europe has been highlighted by several international organisations. For many, poverty, racism and their children’s systematic exclusion from education are ‘push’ factors when deciding to migrate. This study explores Roma mothers’ views of their children’s education post migration and their attitudes to education more broadly, by adopting an intersectional framework and examining issues of difference and belonging as experienced by Roma mothers and their children. While Roma mothers recognised the value of education for social mobility, they remained aware of the limited resources they could draw upon, in the absence of desirable economic and cultural capitals, and as a result of their ethnicity, social class, gender and ‘undesirable migrant’ status. There was a perceived hopelessness in relation to the chances that Roma children have to overcome their marginalisation through schooling, pointing to the need for dedicated policy interventions when working with Roma families.     

Inhibition of exploratory behavior in the rat by handling

The effect of tail-handling on exploratory behavior of the rat, measured as step-through latency in a well-lighted, two-box apparatus, was investigated. Male adult Wistar rats, aged 60 days, were employed in all three experiments. Experiment 1, in which the subjects were handled at different times after entering the goal chamber (0, 10, 30, 60, 300, and 600 sec), showed that immediate handling, relative to detention in the goal chamber (delay of handling) had an inhibitory effect on exploration. Experiment 2 showed that groups handled immediately after entering the goal chamber but then detained there for different durations all showed the same progressive inhibition of exploration. Experiment 3 showed that the inhibition of exploration (very long step-through latencies) due to tail-handling immediately after entering the goal chamber could be significantly decreased by further trials in which handling was delayed for a sufficient duration (30 sec or more). Handling is discussed as a stimulus that is aversive enough to elicit conditioned passive-avoidance responses (inhibition of exploratory behavior), although it is subject to rapid extinction.     

Catégories et fonctions dans l’appareil de l’état au temps des Barmécides: un sondage sur le glissement entre les rôles

This essay is part of a wider research project aiming to define the components of the élite in power during the first ?Abbāsid period. Our present purpose is to verify if, and to what extent, the sliding among different public roles must be related with the “arbitraire” of the caliph or rather if it would be reasonable to discern in it some automatisms, some unregulated, although already applied paths. For this purpose, we carried out a survey of the figures who had offices in the administration of the ?Abbāsid state during the second half of the 2nd/8th century, i.e. the Barmakids and those who evolved with them on the political scene. In the initial stage, we confined our survey to the figures appearing in the Kitāb al-wuzarā’ wa'l-kuttāb by al-Jahshiyārī (d. 331/942), that is, with al-?ūlī's one, the most ancient collection of akhbār devoted to the vizirs. We actually think that this work has a historical as well as a symbolic significance. In our opinion the fact of having been produced inside the official milieu of the 4th/10th century increases its value as a source for the social history of the first ?Abbāsid period. Facing the problem of the sliding among different public roles, we tried to fix some criteria for the statistical analysis of this phenomenon, as well as to deduce how this could be used for the study of the social components of the ?Abbāsid élite.