Meaning Making in Early Childhood Research asks readers to rethink research in early childhood education through qualitative research practices reflective of arts-based pedagogies. This collection explores how educators and researchers can move toward practices of meaning making in early childhood education. The text’s narrative style provides an intimate portrait of engaging in research that challenges assumptions and thinking in a variety of international contexts, and each chapter offers a way to engage in meaning making based on the experiences of young children, their families, and educators.
Working from the intriguing hypothesis that Alzheimer's dementia is the result of a renegade protein-beta amyloid-Tanzi and others set out to find the gene responsible for its production. Decoding Darkness takes us deep into the minds and far-flung labs of many a prominent researcher, offering an intimate view of the high stakes of molecular genetics, the revolution that propels it, the obstacles that threaten to derail it, and the families whose lives are so dependent upon it. Tanzi and Parson ultimately reveal that Alzheimer's, like heart disease, may be effectively treated-even prevented.
"[Kolata] is a gifted storyteller. Her account of the Baxleys... is both engrossing and distressing... Kolata's book raises crucial questions about knowledge that can be both vital and fatal, both pallative and dangerous." —Andrew Solomon, The New York Review of Books New York Times science reporter Gina Kolata follows a family through genetic illness and one courageous daughter who decides her fate shall no longer be decided by a genetic flaw. The phone rings. The doctor from California is on the line. “Are you ready Amanda?” The two people Amanda Baxley loves the most had begged her not to be tested—at least, not now. But she had to find out. If your family carried a mutated gene that foretold a brutal illness and you were offered the chance to find out if you’d inherited it, would you do it? Would you walk toward the problem, bravely accepting whatever answer came your way? Or would you avoid the potential bad news as long as possible? In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times science reporter and bestselling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an almost archetypal family in a small town in South Carolina. A proud and determined clan, many of them doctors, they are struck one by one with an inscrutable illness. They finally discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of events that many saw as providential. Meanwhile, science, progressing for a half a century along a parallel track, had handed the Baxleys a resolution—not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease and who did not. And science would offer another dilemma—fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children through an expensive process. A work of narrative nonfiction, Mercies in Disguise is the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when the medical world abandoned them. It’s a story of a family that had to deal with unspeakable tragedy and yet did not allow it to tear them apart. And it is the story of a young woman—Amanda Baxley—who faced the future head on, determined to find a way to disrupt her family’s destiny.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A powerfully engaging, scrupulously researched, and deeply empathetic narrative of the history of Alzheimer’s disease, how it affects us, and the search for a cure. Afflicting nearly half of all people over the age of 85, Alzheimer’s disease kills nearly 100,000 Americans a year as it insidiously robs them of their memory and wreaks havoc on the lives of their loved ones. It was once minimized and misunderstood as forgetfulness in the elderly, but Alzheimer’s is now at the forefront of many medical and scientific agendas, for as the world’s population ages, the disease will touch the lives of virtually everyone. David Shenk movingly captures the disease’s impact on its victims and their families, and he looks back through history, explaining how Alzheimer’s most likely afflicted such figures as Jonathan Swift, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Willem de Kooning. The result is a searing and graceful account of Alzheimer’s disease, offering a sobering, compassionate, and ultimately encouraging portrait.
The author, a 1997 recipient of the Noble Prize in medicine, describes the years he spent researching and demonstrating how the infectious proteins known as prions were responsible for brain diseases and how his theory has now become widely accepted in the science establishment.
A historical exploration of scientific disputes on the causation of so-called ‘prion diseases’, this fascinating book covers diseases including Scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Firstly tracing the twentieth-century history of disease research and biomedicine, the text then focuses on the relations between scientific practice and wider social transformations, before finally building upon the sociologically informed methodological framework. Incisive and thought-provoking, The Social Construction of Disease provides a valuable contribution to that well-established tradition of social history of science, which refers primarily to the theoretical works of the sociology of scientific knowledge.
The editor of this volume, having research interests in the field of ROS production and the damage to cellular systems, has identified a number of enzymes showing ·OH scavenging activities details of which are anticipated to be published in the near future as confirmatory experiments are awaited. It is hoped that the information presented in this book on NDs will stimulate both expert and novice researchers in the field with excellent overviews of the current status of research and pointers to future research goals. Clinicians, nurses as well as families and caregivers should also benefit from the material presented in handling and treating their specialised cases. Also the insights gained should be valuable for further understanding of the diseases at molecular levels and should lead to development of new biomarkers, novel diagnostic tools and more effective therapeutic drugs to treat the clinical problems raised by these devastating diseases.
A collection of the Nobel lectures delivered by the prizewinners in physiology or medicine for the period 1996-2000. Each lecture is based on the work for which the laureate was awarded the prize. The following is a list of the Nobel laureates during 1996-2000 with a description of the works that won them their prizes: P.C. Doherty and R.M. Zinkernagel (1996) - for their discoveries concerning the specificity of the cell mediated immune defence; S.B. Prusiner (1997) -for his discovery of "prisons - a new biological principle of infection"; R.F. Furchgott, L.J. Ignarro and F. Murad (1998) - for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system; G. Blobel (1999) - for the discovery that "proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell"; A. Carlsson, P. Greengard and E.R. Kandel (2000) - for their discoveries concerning "signal transduction in the nervous system".
This book stands as the first unified overview of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying higher-order learning and memory. It integrates modern discoveries concerning learning and memory disorders such as mental retardation syndromes and Alzheimer's Disease, while also emphasizing the results gained from the cutting-edge research methodologies of genetic engineering, complex behavioral characterization, proteomics, and molecular biology. This book provides a foundation of experimental design that will be useful to all students pursuing an interest in laboratory research. This book is an enlightening and invaluable resource for anyone concerned with memory mechanisms.* Presents a unified view of memory mechanisms from behavior to genes and drawing examples from many different brain regions, types of learning, and various animal model systems* Includes numerous practical examples for the new investigator on how to implement research program in the area of learning and memory* Provides a balanced treatment of the strengths and weaknesses in modern experimental design
In the search for an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease, APP is a unique model protein that illustrates the wide array of basic and sophisticated characterization techniques available. Exploring a variety of biological techniques to clarify the structure and function of this transmembrane protein, this text presents each method with detail
