Strategies to support the psychosocial well-being of older adults living in aged-care are needed; and evidence points toward music listening as an effective, non-pharmacological tool with many benefits to quality of life and well-being. Yet, the everyday listening practices (and their associated specific psychosocial benefits) of older adults living in residential aged-care remain under-researched. The current study explored older adults' experiences of music listening in their daily lives while living in residential aged-care and considered how music listening might support their well-being. Specifically, what might go into autonomous listening activities? 32 Australian residents (aged 73-98) living in two Australian care facilities participated in semi-structured interviews. The results of a qualitative thematic analysis revealed three themes pertaining to "previous music experiences and interest," "current music listening," and "barriers to listening." While an interest in and access to music did not necessarily result in everyday listening practices, of those participants who did listen to music, perceived benefits included outcomes such as entertainment, enjoyment, relaxation, and mood regulation. Drawing on Ruud's notion of music as a "cultural immunogen" supporting well-being and Self-Determination Theory, theoretical implications of the findings are addressed, relating to how to create and support music activities in aged-care facilities so that they are engaging, meaningful, and promote emotional regulation, community, and well-being.

The intestinal lymphatic system plays an important role in the pathophysiology of multiple diseases including lymphomas, cancer metastasis, autoimmune diseases, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. It is thus an important compartment for delivery of drugs in order to treat diseases associated with the lymphatic system. Lipophilic prodrug approaches have been used in the past to take advantage of the intestinal lymphatic transport processes to deliver drugs to the intestinal lymphatics. Most of the approaches previously adopted were based on very bulky prodrug moieties such as those mimicking triglycerides (TG). We now report a study in which a lipophilic prodrug approach was used to efficiently deliver bexarotene (BEX) and retinoic acid (RA) to the intestinal lymphatic system using activated ester prodrugs. A range of carboxylic ester prodrugs of BEX were designed and synthesised and all of the esters showed improved association with chylomicrons, which indicated an improved potential for delivery to the intestinal lymphatic system. The conversion rate of the prodrugs to BEX was the main determinant in delivery of BEX to the intestinal lymphatics, and activated ester prodrugs were prepared to enhance the conversion rate. As a result, an 4-(hydroxymethyl)-1,3-dioxol-2-one ester prodrug of BEX was able to increase the exposure of the mesenteric lymph nodes (MLNs) to BEX 17-fold compared to when BEX itself was administered. The activated ester prodrug approach was also applied to another drug, RA, where the exposure of the MLNs was increased 2.4-fold through the application of a similar cyclic activated prodrug. Synergism between BEX and RA was also demonstrated in vitro by cell growth inhibition assays using lymphoma cell lines. In conclusion, the activated ester prodrug approach results in efficient delivery of drugs to the intestinal lymphatic system, which could benefit patients affected by a large number of pathological conditions.

Animals play a significant role in the production of film and television in Australia and globally. Given this, regulating and monitoring their welfare on- and off-set is imperative. We therefore aim to compare Australia’s state and territory-based legislation and regulation to those in the United States and the United Kingdom and assess regulations against the Five Domains Model of animal welfare. Historical examples of animal incidents in Australian film are used to illustrate potential deficiencies. We reviewed archived media for animal welfare incidents on and off production sets. We demonstrate a lack of uniformity, with 37.5% (3/8) of states and territories providing targeted Codes of Practice for animals in filmed media, and partially addressing behavioural interactions or mental state within the Five Domains Model. Three themes of welfare concerns were identified including incidents on-set, incidents off-set, and effects of portrayal on perception or ownership of specific species. This highlights the need for standardised national legislation and improved monitoring and regulation. Further research should quantify the number of animals used in productions, describe the type and duration of the work the animals undertake, investigate the frequency of animal welfare incidents, and explore alternative methods to the use of live animals in film and television.

This essay discusses the material agency of clothing in the celebrated documentary classic Grey Gardens (David and Albert Maysles, USA 1975). Drawing on the extraordinary relationship between the protagonists, their clothing, the filming location, and the filmmakers, the essay shows how the protagonists of the documentary “think up” costumes that enable them to temporarily exceed difficult living conditions. The essay names the thought-up costumes fabulous folds and accounts for the ways in which costumes activate novel possibilities in the body’s relationship to its environment.

German playwright Bertolt Brecht writes and was later quoted by Cuban Nueva Trova musician Silvio Rodríguez in the opening to his song Sueño con serpientes: “There are men1 who struggle for a day and they are good. There are men who struggle for a year and they are better. There are men who struggle many years, and they are better still. But there are those who struggle all their lives: these are the indispensable ones.” Those that struggle all their lives, to borrow Brecht’s phrasing, occupy modes of resistance that largely occur clandestinely in relation to dominant discourse. They do not necessarily fit within dominant understandings of what it means to take publicaction, initiate interventions or call for social change. Creating sites of resistance means to interrogate the usual markers of resistance in relation to social-structural change. ...

This paper focuses on doctoral research which explored relationships and interpersonal learning through group dramatherapy and creative interviewing with adolescents in special education. A constructivist grounded theory study, positioning adolescents with intellectual/developmental disabilities as experts of their own relational experiences, revealed a tendency to “copy others.” The final grounded theory presented “copying” as a tool which participants consciously employed “to play with,” “learn from,” and “join in with” others. Commonly experiencing social ostracism, participants reflected awareness of their tendency to “copy others” being underpinned by a need to belong. Belonging was therefore expressed as the ultimate therapeutic experience participants wished to have. Participant responses which link dramatic imitation to a self-identified tendency “to copy,” are discussed with regard to how imitation provides an accessible point of dramatic entry from which adolescents in special education begin to explore new ways of being and inter-relating. Recommendations for how dramatherapists might centralize imitative aspects of the dramatic process to achieve therapeutic intent when working alongside adolescents in special education are discussed with specific focus on creating a space of belonging.

Tasked with creating a work through disembodied and disconcerting means, this piece became focussed on illuminating dancing that emanates from often imperceptible spaces, and the volume of the body’s interior. As each dancer engaged with their own “unseen” movement capacities, more of their individually embodied dancing was revealed. The practice of revealing and concealing according to context weaves the dancers’ individual lineages into the work, questioning perceptions of what it is that is “seen” and how this is authenticated…individually, communally and societally.

OBJECTIVE: High concentrations of circulating glucose are believed to contribute to defective insulin secretion and beta-cell function in diabetes and at least some of this effect appears to be caused by glucose-induced beta-cell apoptosis. In mammalian cells, apoptotic cell death is controlled by the interplay of proapoptotic and antiapoptotic members of the Bcl-2 family. We investigated the apoptotic pathway induced in mouse pancreatic islet cells after exposure to high concentrations of the reducing sugars ribose and glucose as a model of beta-cell death due to long-term metabolic stress. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Islets isolated from mice lacking molecules implicated in cell death pathways were exposed to high concentrations of glucose or ribose. Apoptosis was measured by analysis of DNA fragmentation and release of mitochondrial cytochrome c. RESULTS: Deficiency of interleukin-1 receptors or Fas did not diminish apoptosis, making involvement of inflammatory cytokine receptor or death receptor signaling in glucose-induced apoptosis unlikely. In contrast, overexpression of the prosurvival protein Bcl-2 or deficiency of the apoptosis initiating BH3-only proteins Bim or Puma, or the downstream apoptosis effector Bax, markedly reduced glucose- or ribose-induced killing of islets. Loss of other BH3-only proteins Bid or Noxa, or the Bax-related effector Bak, had no impact on glucose-induced apoptosis. CONCLUSIONS: These results implicate the Bcl-2 regulated apoptotic pathway in glucose-induced islet cell killing and indicate points in the pathway at which interventional strategies can be designed.

Digital technologies and pre/peri-natal apps are transforming maternity care as women use consumer-oriented communications technologies to obtain information and support. These technologies have introduced a new set of politics into health communication, as information asymmetries embedded into apps and their platforms disrupt traditional concepts of health literacy and consumer participation that have been key concepts in community health advocacy. The development of cultural safety and cultural competence has been one impetus for health professionals to adapt their models of care to address information and support gaps for service users from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, by asking clinicians to address the operations of power at work in their cultural norms of practice. However, consumer apps appropriate the cultural interface that has historically been managed by clinicians, raising questions about how participatory these technologies can be for women from marginalised groups. Given the black-boxed nature of many health technologies that by design do not enable adequate description by end users, new modes of research are necessary to both stimulate dialogue on health literacy and health participation as a part of a discovery process around CALD women’s experiences and perceptions.

Artistic research has sought to gain academic legitimacy through adapting to scientific methods, while also retaining the mandate of the humanities in the reproduction of culture. In both cases, Western epistemologies have structured what constitutes knowledge and how it is circulated and shared. The contemporary university is far more connected to its local environment, bringing the potential of engaging broad publics in the life of the institution. Innovation and experimentation with local artistic forms is one way that artistic research can powerfully animate the 21st century university mission in the Asia Pacific.

Maenad is an aleatoric musical composition, written in the form of instructions for an improvisation. It imaginatively follows the trajectory of Sylvia Plath’s seven-part “Poem for a Birthday” (1959), which, in its mystical density and complexity, prefigures the narrative of alchemical self-transformation that propels the later Ariel. Maenad is composed in seven episodes, each of which is named, in sequence, after one of the parts of Plath’s “Poem for a Birthday,” and each of which seeks freely to unknot and unravel one or more element in Plath’s extraordinarily rich weave of imagery and associative meaning. The title of the improvisation as a whole—Maenad—takes its name from the third poem in Plath’s sequence, which the female speaker is instructed to declaim in its entirety. Maenad is conceived with the members of Melbourne-based new music ensemble Forest Collective in mind.