Design and wellbeing: Bridging the empathy gap between neurotypical designers and autistic adults

This paper is focused on the wellbeing of people with autism spectrum disorders, who are often excluded from design research. Drawing upon on-going design research collaboration between The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design and the autism charity The Kingwood Trust, this paper reflects upon a neurotypical (i.e. not on the autism spectrum) designer’s experience of working with adults with autism who have limited verbal speech and additional learning disabilities. The hypothesis under investigation is that, by interacting with and observing a person in conjunction with his or her physical environment, the designer can unravel clues and insights to develop empathy and better understanding of a person with autism’s everyday experiences, which can thereby inform empathic designs that enhance and sustain a state of wellbeing. The conclusion explores how the inclusion of autistic people within the design process creates a shared experience, which helps to develop trust and empathy between the designer and the person with autism, enabling the designer to understand and appreciate different ways of being in the world

Characterisation of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis alternative sigma factor SigG: its operon and regulon.

A major step in the pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the ability to survive inside macrophages, where it is exposed to a number of DNA damaging agents. The alternative sigma factor SigG has been shown to be upregulated by DNA damaging agents and by macrophage infection, but not to regulate genes of the DNA repair pathway. Here we show that SigG is expressed from at least two promoters, the most dominant of these being the DNA damage inducible RecA_Ndp promoter. This promoter is located within the annotated coding region of SigG and so the correct translational start site was determined experimentally and found to be 114 bp downstream of the annotated start site. Examining the gene expression profile of a SigG over-expression strain found a small number of genes to up-regulated, two of these encoded proteins containing glyoxylase-like domains

Discord and the Pentagon\u27s Watchdog: Countering Extremism in the U.S. Military

In his 2022 book, Ward Farnsworth crafts a metaphor from the lead-pipe theory for the fall of Rome to consider how rage and misinformation traveling through today’s technology-enabled pipes are poisoning our civic engagement and threatening our governmental structures: “We have built networks for the delivery of information––the internet, and especially social media. These networks too, are a marvel. But they also carry a kind of poison with them. The mind fed from those sources learns to subsist happily on quick reactions, easy certainties, one-liners, and rage.”1 This Article carries the metaphor into a new context and considers what should be done when the poison being transported through the digital pipes is directed at members of the U.S. military. While extremism in the U.S. military is not a new threat, the events of January 6, 2021, brought the threat into much sharper focus. It exposed three preexisting trends, each sitting in plain sight but not yet woven together. These trends include a growing acceptance of extremist views and ideologies in U.S. military and veteran communities, an increase in violent extremist acts committed by individuals with military backgrounds, and the enhanced use of digital platforms by extremist groups to target their messaging to and strengthen their recruitment of individuals with military experience. To return to the metaphor, the extremist poison is teeming through the pipes at an alarming rate, and the number of pipes has increased to include social media platforms, encrypted chat tools, gaming platforms, podcasts, and music streaming apps, including YouTube, Discord, Gab, Telegram, and WhatsApp, among many others. In offering these observations, the author is mindful of not overstating the threat and takes seriously warnings as to the adverse consequences that follow from hyperbole and exaggeration. Indeed, a fundamental difficulty is the lack of understanding as to scope and scale of the extremism threat in the U.S. military. This Article attempts to draw the contours of that threat, exposes the structural and legal obstacles that make countering extremism in the military such a fraught exercise, and identifies actors, tools, and mechanisms—beyond the conventional options––able to overcome these long-standing structural and institutional obstacles

Exploring Race and Racism in the Law School Curriculum: An Administrator\u27s View on Adopting an Antiracist Curriculum

This article provides a candid assessment of the demanding, and rewarding, work that is required to put into action the written words of institutional support for implementing an Antiracist curriculum. This article starts by describing the two Penn State Dickinson Law faculty resolutions that committed the faculty to condemn racism and bias against our Black and Brown brothers and sisters, while committing to teach and learn according to Antiracist pedagogy and best practices. It then describes the resolve to become Antiracist teachers, discusses the investments in curricular policy and reform, and details the bureaucratic processes to accomplish the following: adding a first-year required course on the history of racism and the concept of equal protection of the laws in the United States; adding a J.D. degree requirement that every student take at least one course beyond the first year with subject matter focused on civil rights, equal protection, or social justice; adding a certificate program in Civil Rights, Equal Protection, and Social Justice; and encouraging faculty to re-envision their courses to identify opportunities to integrate discourse about racial equality. The article then explores the knotty but essential task of equipping faculty and staff with the tools needed to deliver an Antiracist curriculum. The law school initiated this task by launching a summer workshop series designed to conduct an honest assessment of the educational community’s past failings while providing the resources needed to alter the law school’s future course. To accomplish these objectives, the workshops embraced a model that encouraged risk taking, allowed for blunt feedback, and created plenty of space for mistakes. In closing, this article offers guidance on how to ensure a sustainable commitment to the delivery of an Antiracist curriculum, including the importance of sharing the implementation work with faculty committees and student organizations. The path from commitment to implementation has involved bumps and curves, some anticipated and others unexpected. As the path continues, a guiding principle remains: to fulfil our responsibilities as legal educators uniquely positioned at “the nexus of power and understanding necessary for change.”This article is one of three interdependent articles authored by Penn State Dickinson Law faculty and staff, and all three articles will be included in a forthcoming volume of the Rutgers Race & The Law Review. These articles are meant to be read together to chart the vision and implementation for building an Antiracist law school and providing a template for an Antiracist legal academy and legal profession. The other two articles in the trilogy are: Danielle M. Conway, Rebekah Saidman-Krauss & Rebecca Schreiber, Building an Antiracist Law School: Inclusivity in Admissions and Retention of Diverse Students—Leadership Determines DEI Success ; and Dermot Groome, Exploring Race and Racism in the Law School Curriculum: Educating Anti-Racist Lawyers

Striving for excellence in maternity care: The Maternity Stream of the City of Sanctuary.

yesAsylum-seeking and refugee (AS&R) women living in the UK often have complex health and social care needs, with poor underlying mental and physical health and an increased risk of negative pregnancy outcomes. Despite this, AS&R women are less likely to attend for timely maternity care and when they do, care may be poor, with staff not understanding their specific needs and displaying poor attitudes. This article discusses the Maternity Stream of the City of Sanctuary and how this charity aims to work with statutory and voluntary sector maternity-related services and groups to develop services that are inclusive for AS&R women and meet their specific needs. Volunteer AS&R women are central to the activities of the Maternity Stream and this article discusses how they engage with midwives and other maternity workers to facilitate the development of services that may ultimately improve pregnancy outcomes for AS&R women

Answering the Cyber Oversight Call

In the past few years, a revised cyber strategy, a spate of new cyber authorities, and revamped presidential directives have significantly expanded the cyber capabilities of the U.S. military. This expansion has coincided with a weakening and dispersion of traditional congressional oversight mechanisms, creating a separation of powers mismatch. This mismatch, and the necessarily stealthy features that characterize cyberoperations, inhibit Congress’s ability to gain a comprehensive understanding of the use and deployment of these cyber powers, while obscuring the use of such powers from the public as well. Put bluntly, the traditional congressional oversight mechanisms are not suited to the cyber oversight task. There is a need to find alternative players able to answer the cyber oversight call. To fill this gap, scholars have proposed various “surrogates” and “intermediaries” including foreign allies, local governments, technology companies, and other private sector actors. This Article urges a different approach by examining the consequential role of the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) from the cyber oversight perspective. Although often maligned and misunderstood as the bean counters of the federal government, inspectors general serve critical functions in our constitutional scheme, both as internal checks on abuses of executive power and as conduits of information to the legislative branch. The DoD OIG is uniquely positioned and equipped to fill the gaps in the cyber oversight framework, and to ensure that the political branches are working together to appropriately limit and guide the use of these vast new cyber powers. In sum, this Article explores the DoD OIG’s distinctive ability to answer the cyber oversight call

Book Review: This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2020) by Nicole Perlroth

In the book, Perlroth traces the development and use of cyber capabilities, focusing on the U.S. government’s unintended role in creating a market for these cyber goods. Her purpose is a straightforward one: to illuminate. Perlroth explains that her goal is to “help shine even a glimmer of light on the highly secretive and largely invisible cyberweapons industry so that we, a society on the cusp of this digital tsunami called the Internet of Things, may have some of the necessary conversations now, before it is too late.”7 She seeks to accomplish this purpose by offering a treatise-like treatment of the subject, defining terms, tracking the historical development of governmental cyber capabilities and the parallel growth of a vulnerability broker industry, identifying key players and entities in the market, and profiling a slew of cyber operations and events. Despite the length and breadth of the book, her thesis is precise and blunt: the U.S. government’s practice of purchasing vulnerabilities for use in law enforcement, intelligence collection, and military operations led to a black market for these tools and an arms race between governments and an array of questionably-motivated private actors. She argues that the U.S. government’s myopic focus on the offensive use of these cyber tools, and its corresponding failure to anticipate or consider the consequences of that offensive focus, led to unexpected and negative results for the United States and the world