Jennifer Pike (1920-2016) was a major artist whose practice traversed the disciplines of painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, photography, jewellery-making, poetry and performance. ...Although a fuller appreciation of the scale and range of her achievements has been recently enabled by the making of a film about her life and work by Holly Antrum (Catalogue, 2013) and the publication of two volumes of selected works by Veer books (The Conglomerization of Wot and Scrunch, both 2010), her work has still yet to be the subject of extended academic consideration. One aspect of Pike's practice which is of particular interest to my larger project of examining the relationships between poetry and movement (2011, 2012, 2013), is her dance and movement work which was often conducted in the context of collaborative performance with sound and visual poet Bob Cobbing and musicians such as Veryan Weston, Lol Coxhill and Hugh Metcalfe. This article introduces this aspect of Pike's practice and offers some theoretical framing from Dee Reynolds' work on economies of effort (2007) and Daniel Stern's work on vitality dynamics (2010) before analysing recordings of performances from 2002 and 2007. An earlier draft of this article was presented as a paper at 'Outside-in / Inside-out: A Festival of Outside and Subterranean Poetry' at the University of Glasgow, 5-8 October, 2016. See Ellen Dillon's conference report in JBIIP 9.1. This article is dedicated to the memory of Jennifer Pike.
Place-based arts initiatives are regarded as rooted in local need and as having capacity to engage local assets. However, many place-based arts initiatives remain poorly funded and short-lived, ...receiving little attention on how to scale up and sustain their activities. In this study we make a unique contribution to knowledge about scaling up place-based arts initiatives that support mental health and wellbeing through focusing on the example of 'Arts for the Blues', an arts-based psychological group intervention designed to reduce depression and improve wellbeing amongst primary care mental health service users in deprived communities. Methodologically, we used realist evaluation to refine the study's theoretical assumptions about scaling up, drawing on the lived and professional experiences of 225 diverse stakeholders' and frontline staff through a series of focus groups and evaluation questions at two stakeholders' events and four training days. Based on our findings, we recommend that to scale up place-based arts initiatives which support mental health and wellbeing: (i) the initiative needs to be adaptable, clear, collaborative, evidence-based, personalised and transformative; (ii) the organisation has to have a relevant need, have an understanding of the arts, has to have resources, inspiration and commitment from staff members, relevant skillsets and help from outside the organisation; (iii) at a policy level it is important to pay attention to attitude shifts towards the arts, meet rules, guidelines and standards expected from services, highlight gaps in provision, seek out early intervention and treatment options, and consider service delivery changes. The presence of champions at a local level and buy-in from managers, local leaders and policy makers are also needed alongside actively seeking to implement arts initiatives in different settings across geographical spread. Our theoretically-based and experientially-refined study provides the first ever scaling up framework developed for place-based arts initiatives that support the mental health and wellbeing, offering opportunities for spread and adoption of such projects in different organisational contexts, locally, nationally and internationally.
Conference Report: Poetry & Care Nissel, Joanna; Thurston, Scott; Fitzsimons, Mélisande ...
Journal of British and Irish innovative poetry,
2023, Letnik:
15, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The following multi-authored report provides an account of the Poetry & Care conference held at the University of Plymouth, 7-8 September 2023. Many thanks to the organisers: Anthony Caleshu, Mandy ...Bloomfield, and Russell Evans.
Clostridium difficile has rapidly emerged as the leading cause of antibiotic-associated diarrheal disease, with the transcontinental spread of various PCR ribotypes, including 001, 017, 027 and 078. ...However, the genetic basis for the emergence of C. difficile as a human pathogen is unclear. Whole genome sequencing was used to analyze genetic variation and virulence of a diverse collection of thirty C. difficile isolates, to determine both macro and microevolution of the species. Horizontal gene transfer and large-scale recombination of core genes has shaped the C. difficile genome over both short and long time scales. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrates C. difficile is a genetically diverse species, which has evolved within the last 1.1–85 million years. By contrast, the disease-causing isolates have arisen from multiple lineages, suggesting that virulence evolved independently in the highly epidemic lineages.
M. africanum West African 2 constitutes an ancient lineage of the M. tuberculosis complex that commonly causes human tuberculosis in West Africa and has an attenuated phenotype relative to M. ...tuberculosis.
In search of candidate genes underlying these differences, the genome of M. africanum West African 2 was sequenced using classical capillary sequencing techniques. Our findings reveal a unique sequence, RD900, that was independently lost during the evolution of two important lineages within the complex: the "modern" M. tuberculosis group and the lineage leading to M. bovis. Closely related to M. bovis and other animal strains within the M. tuberculosis complex, M. africanum West African 2 shares an abundance of pseudogenes with M. bovis but also with M. africanum West African clade 1. Comparison with other strains of the M. tuberculosis complex revealed pseudogenes events in all the known lineages pointing toward ongoing genome erosion likely due to increased genetic drift and relaxed selection linked to serial transmission-bottlenecks and an intracellular lifestyle.
The genomic differences identified between M. africanum West African 2 and the other strains of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex may explain its attenuated phenotype, and pave the way for targeted experiments to elucidate the phenotypic characteristic of M. africanum. Moreover, availability of the whole genome data allows for verification of conservation of targets used for the next generation of diagnostics and vaccines, in order to ensure similar efficacy in West Africa.
The fish pathogen Aliivibrio salmonicida is the causative agent of cold-water vibriosis in marine aquaculture. The Gram-negative bacterium causes tissue degradation, hemolysis and sepsis in vivo.
In ...total, 4 286 protein coding sequences were identified, and the 4.6 Mb genome of A. salmonicida has a six partite architecture with two chromosomes and four plasmids. Sequence analysis revealed a highly fragmented genome structure caused by the insertion of an extensive number of insertion sequence (IS) elements. The IS elements can be related to important evolutionary events such as gene acquisition, gene loss and chromosomal rearrangements. New A. salmonicida functional capabilities that may have been aquired through horizontal DNA transfer include genes involved in iron-acquisition, and protein secretion and play potential roles in pathogenicity. On the other hand, the degeneration of 370 genes and consequent loss of specific functions suggest that A. salmonicida has a reduced metabolic and physiological capacity in comparison to related Vibrionaceae species.
Most prominent is the loss of several genes involved in the utilisation of the polysaccharide chitin. In particular, the disruption of three extracellular chitinases responsible for enzymatic breakdown of chitin makes A. salmonicida unable to grow on the polymer form of chitin. These, and other losses could restrict the variety of carrier organisms A. salmonicida can attach to, and associate with. Gene acquisition and gene loss may be related to the emergence of A. salmonicida as a fish pathogen.
Acute hepatitis C virus and cardiac surgeons Thurston, R. Scott, MD, FACS
Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery/The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery/The journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery,
03/2009, Letnik:
137, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Video creation skills would allow pharmacists to create content tailored to their patients’ needs and include relevant aspects of cultural competency to achieve the goal of improved health literacy. ...Video recording exercises can provide students with an opportunity to build their drug knowledge and health literacy skills.
Conflict of Interest
None
Type: Commentary
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