Conditions of mass displacement and other complex crises create a need for widely accessible teacher professional development opportunities. This article reports on the forms of value created for ...participants through a scaled-up collaborative online peer-sharing experience developed to support teachers in challenging environments to become transformative educators. This is an approach we have conceptualised as a co-designed, massive open online collaboration (CoMOOC), since it uses massive open online course (MOOC) platforms, but extends the concept of a traditional MOOC. The CoMOOC was co-designed with teachers and teacher educators in Lebanon and hosted on two platforms to create an equivalent co-learning experience in two languages (Arabic and English). To assess the impact of the CoMOOC, we adopt a value creation approach to evaluation. This approach considers how educators’ perception of their participation in the CoMOOC can support and enhance their professional practice in the long term, creating value for themselves and those affected by their practice (for example, learners, colleagues and institutions). We present evidence of the forms of value created during and after participation, collected through impact survey responses and interviews with CoMOOC participants.
Zimbabwe is one of the countries most affected by HIV/AIDS, and as elsewhere in southern Africa, the impact on children and young people living in affected households is significant. Loss is highly ...complex and dependent on developmental stage, resilience, quality of care, and social support networks, and often includes a progression of experiences from the onset of a parent's or caregiver's illness, through to the aftermath of death. For several reasons, AIDS-related bereavement is likely to be especially complicated and difficult to accommodate. Understandings of bereavement and grief among African children, and adults’ responses to orphans’ psychological difficulties, remain under-developed. This paper focuses on the narratives of older children in their teens, who have experienced parental AIDS-related illness and death in six sites in Zimbabwe. A key finding is that, while many orphaned teenagers desire direct communication with adults about parental illness and death, adults themselves—whether the sick parent, other relatives in the household or a caregiver following parental loss—are often ill-equipped to identify and manage children's distress positively. While most existing psychosocial interventions focus on bereaved children, this paper suggests that, in order to create an enabling environment for orphans, building the capacity of key adults in orphans’ lives, particularly surviving relatives, caregivers, and teachers to address emotional issues relating to parental loss constructively is an essential, but neglected, area of programming.
The 'RNA world' hypothesis holds that during evolution the structural and enzymatic functions initially served by RNA were assumed by proteins, leading to the latter's domination of biological ...catalysis. This progression can still be seen in modern biology, where ribozymes, such as the ribosome and RNase P, have evolved into protein-dependent RNA catalysts ('RNPzymes'). Similarly, group I introns use RNA-catalysed splicing reactions, but many function as RNPzymes bound to proteins that stabilize their catalytically active RNA structure. One such protein, the Neurospora crassa mitochondrial tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase (TyrRS; CYT-18), is bifunctional and both aminoacylates mitochondrial tRNATyr and promotes the splicing of mitochondrial group I introns. Here we determine a 4.5-Å co-crystal structure of the Twort orf142-I2 group I intron ribozyme bound to splicing-active, carboxy-terminally truncated CYT-18. The structure shows that the group I intron binds across the two subunits of the homodimeric protein with a newly evolved RNA-binding surface distinct from that which binds tRNATyr. This RNA binding surface provides an extended scaffold for the phosphodiester backbone of the conserved catalytic core of the intron RNA, allowing the protein to promote the splicing of a wide variety of group I introns. The group I intron-binding surface includes three small insertions and additional structural adaptations relative to non-splicing bacterial TyrRSs, indicating a multistep adaptation for splicing function. The co-crystal structure provides insight into how CYT-18 promotes group I intron splicing, how it evolved to have this function, and how proteins could have incrementally replaced RNA structures during the transition from an RNA world to an RNP world.
The structure of a neutralizing immunoglobulin (monoclonal antibody mAb17-IA), bound to human rhinovirus 14 (HRV14), has been determined by cryo-electron microscopy and image reconstruction. The ...antibody bound bivalently across icosahedral twofold axes of the virus, and there were no detectable conformational changes in the capsid. Thus, bivalently bound IgGs do not appear to cause gross deformations in the capsid. Differences between the electron density of the constant domains of the bound Fab fragment and IgG structures suggested that conformational changes occur about elbow axes upon bivalent attachment as was previously predicted. No significant density was observed for the Fc fragment, which adds further evidence for a high degree of mobility about the hinge region.
The hepatitis delta virus (HDV) ribozyme uses a cytosine to facilitate general acid−base catalysis. Biochemical studies suggest that C75 has a pK a perturbed to near neutrality. To measure this pK a ...directly, Raman spectra were recorded on single ribozyme crystals using a Raman microscope. A spectral feature arising from a single neutral cytosine was identified at 1528 cm-1. At low pH, this mode was replaced with a new spectral feature. Monitoring these features as a function of pH revealed pK a values for the cytosine that couple anticooperatively with Mg2+ binding, with values of 6.15 and 6.40 in the presence of 20 and 2 mM Mg2+, respectively. These pK a values agree well with those obtained from ribozyme activity experiments in solution. To correlate the observed pK a with a specific nucleotide, crystals of C75U, which is catalytically inactive, were examined. The Raman difference spectra show that this mutation does not affect the conformation of the ribozyme. However, crystals of C75U did not produce a signal from a protonatable cytosine, providing strong evidence that protonation of C75 is being monitored in the wild-type ribozyme. These studies provide the first direct physical measurement of a pK a near neutrality for a catalytic residue in a ribozyme and show that ribozymes, like their protein enzyme counterparts, can optimize the pK a of their side chains for proton transfer.
Previous research has shown increased vulnerability to teenage parenthood for young people with experience of local authority care. This study explored factors contributing to early pregnancy and ...parenthood among young people in and leaving care; the types of support available; and the extent to which services are perceived as accessible. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 63 young people. The study findings suggest that young people's experiences both prior to, and during care, influence their decisions in relation to pregnancy and impact on how they view and engage with services. The implications of these findings are discussed in the light of recent changes in legislation and services throughout England.
This report evaluates the extent of perceived and enacted HIV/AIDS-related stigma in a rural setting in Zambia. Stigmatisation is abundant, ranging from subtle actions to the most extreme ...degradation, rejection and abandonment. Women with HIV and pregnant women assumed to be HIV positive are repeatedly subjected to extensive forms of stigma, particularly once they become sick or if their child dies. Despite increasing access to prevention of mother to child transmission initiatives, including anti-retroviral drugs, the perceived disincentives of HIV testing, particularly for women, largely outweigh the potential gains from available treatments. HIV/AIDS related stigma drives the epidemic underground and is one of the main reasons that people do not wish to know their HIV status. Unless efforts to reduce stigma are, as one peer educator put it, “written in large letters in any HIV/AIDS campaign rather than small”, stigma will remain a major barrier to curbing the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Internationally, as well as here in the UK, the concept of 'peer pressure' is widely used in analysing the factors influencing young people's experiences of sex and pregnancy - illustrated, for ...instance, by the following strapline from a recent English government-funded teenage pregnancy national media campaign: 'Should I let my friends control my sex life?' Through a focused interrogation of relevant literature alongside findings from two studies recently conducted by the authors, this paper critically examines some of the complexities of the concept of 'peer pressure', and how it may reveal itself in different contexts. Focusing on young people's narratives of sex and pregnancy, it argues that notions of 'peer pressure' may be inadequate to enable a full appreciation of the range of real pressures that two different groups of young people - those in public care, and a wider cross-section of youth living in the same geographical area - experience. The paper concludes by suggesting that a more sophisticated understanding of how (peer) pressure might operate requires that the concept be contextualised and seen as interacting with other factors influencing young people's experiences of sex and pregnancy. The implications of this analysis in relation to sex and relationships education are discussed.
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