British Society of Haematology, Slide Session presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting, Brighton 2009

P>Seven cases were discussed by an expert panel at the 2009 Annual Scientific Meeting of the British Society of Haematology. These cases are presented in a similar format to that adopted for the meeting. There was an initial discussion of the presenting morphology, generation of differential diagnoses and then, following display of further presenting and diagnostic information, each case was concluded with provision of a final diagnosis.

Archiving Qualitative Data in the Context of a Society Coming out of Conflict: Some Lessons from Northern Ireland.

ARK (‘Access Research Knowledge’) was set up with a single goal: to make social science information on Northern Ireland available to the widest possible audience. The most well-known and widely used part of the ARK resource is CAIN (Conflict Archive on the INternet), which is one of the largest on-line collections of source material and information and about the Northern Ireland conflict. The compilation of CAIN's new Remembering: Victims, Survivors and Commemoration section raised issues related to the sensitivity of the material, as it feeds into the fundamental debate on the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict. It also fundamentally raises the question to what extent archiving is a neutral or political activity and necessitates a discourse on responsibility and ethics among social researchers. Experiences from the establishment of the Northern Ireland Qualitative Archive (NIQA) shed light on future possibilities with regard to qualitative archives on the Northern Ireland conflict.

Leadership for inclusion: Conceptualising and enacting inclusion in integrated schools in a troubled society

Inclusion is increasingly understood as an educational reform that responds to the diversity of all learners, challenging the marginalization, exclusion and underachievement which may result from all forms of ‘difference’. Leadership for inclusion is conceptualized here as driving a constant struggle to create shared meanings of inclusion and to build collaborative practice, an effort that needs to be rooted in critical practice lest it risk replicating existing patterns of disadvantage. In response to calls for further research that challenge how school leaders conceptualize inclusion and for research that investigates how leaders enact their understandings of inclusion, this paper aims to increase our understanding of the extent to which leadership vision can map onto a school’s culture and of the organizational conditions in schools that drive responses to diversity. We investigate the enactment of leadership for inclusion in the troubled context of Northern Ireland by looking at two schools that primarily aim to integrate Catholic and Protestant children but which are also sites for a range of other dimensions of student ‘difference’ to come together. Whilst the two schools express differing visions of the integration of Catholics and Protestants, leadership vision of inclusion is enacted by members of the school community with a consensus around this vision brought about by formal and informal aspects of school culture. Multiple and intersecting spheres of difference stimulate a concerted educational response in both schools but integration remains the primary focus. In this divided society, religious diversity poses a significant challenge to inclusion and further support is required from leaders to enable teachers to break through cultural restraints.

Education for global citizenship in a divided society? Young people's views and experiences

Global citizenship education has been suggested as a means of overcoming the limitations of national citizenship in an increasingly globalised world. In divided societies, global citizenship education is especially relevant and problematic as it offers the opportunity to explore identities and conflict in a wider context. This paper therefore explores young people's understandings of global citizenship in Northern Ireland, a divided society emerging from conflict. Results from focus groups with primary and post-primary pupils reflect some theoretical conceptualisations of global citizenship, including an awareness of global issues, understandings of environmental interdependence and global responsibility, though other elements appear to be less well understood. We argue that global citizenship education will fail to overcome engrained cultural divisions locally and may perpetuate cultural stereotypes globally, unless local and global controversial issues are acknowledged and issues of identity and interdependence critically examined at both levels.

Sharing Classes between Separate Schools: a mechanism for improving inter-group relations in Northern Ireland?

One manifestation of division and the history of conflict in Northern Ireland is the parallel education system that exists for Protestants and Catholics. Although recent decades have seen some advances in the promotion of integrated education, around 95% of children continue to attend schools separated on ethno-religious lines. In 2007 a programme for sharing education was established. Underpinned by intergroup contact theory, and reflecting educational priorities shared by all school sectors, the programme seeks to offer children from different denominational schools an opportunity to engage with each other on a sustained basis. In this article the authors adopt a quantitative approach to examining the impact of participation in the Sharing Education Programme on a range of outcomes (out-group attitudes, positive action tendencies and out-group trust) via, first, intergroup contact (cross-group friendships) and, second, intergroup anxiety. Their findings confirm the value of contact as a mechanism for promoting more harmonious relationships, and affirm the Sharing Education Programme as an initiative that can help promote social cohesion in a society that remains deeply divided.

Building bridging social capital in a divided society: The role of participatory citizenship education

Participatory citizenship education has been highlighted as a strategy to promote social cohesion in divided societies whereby collaborations with Non-Governmental Organisations and inter-school links have been proposed as tools to improve social networks between schools and communities. This article explores the role and meaning of citizenship education and cross-community participation in promoting social capital and social cohesion. School survey findings, focus groups and interviews with young people and educators indicated that differences between school sectors and established allegiances with particular communities and NGOs may limit the potential for citizenship education to produce bridging social capital and serve to reproduce bonding social capital. It is argued that the introduction of citizenship curricula into segregated schools systems in divided societies may be useful to promote citizenship values and positive attitudes to the other but insufficient to promote the development of bridging social capital and, ultimately, social cohesion in the long term.

WASP-25b: a 0.6 MJ planet in the Southern hemisphere

We report the detection of a 0.6 MJ extrasolar planet by WASP-South, WASP-25b, transiting its solar-type host star every 3.76 d. A simultaneous analysis of the WASP, FTS and Euler photometry and CORALIE spectroscopy yields a planet of Rp= 1.22 RJ and Mp= 0.58 MJ around a slightly metal-poor solar-type host star, [Fe/H]=- 0.05 ± 0.10, of R*= 0.92 Rsun and M*= 1.00 Msun. WASP-25b is found to have a density of ?p= 0.32 ?J, a low value for a sub-Jupiter mass planet. We investigate the relationship of planetary radius to planetary equilibrium temperature and host star metallicity for transiting exoplanets with a similar mass to WASP-25b, finding that these two parameters explain the radii of most low-mass planets well.

WASP-41b: A Transiting Hot Jupiter Planet Orbiting a Magnetically Active G8V Star

We report the discovery of a transiting planet with an orbital period of 3.05 days orbiting the star TYC 7247-587-1. The star, WASP-41, is a moderately bright G8 V star (V=11.6) with a metallicity close to solar ([Fe/H]=-0.08±0.09). The star shows evidence of moderate chromospheric activity, both from emission in the cores of the Ca ii H and K ines and photometric variability with a period of 18.4 days and an amplitude of about 1%. We use a new method to show quantitatively that this periodic signal has a low false-alarm probability. The rotation period of the star implies a gyrochronological age for WASP-41 of 1.8 Gyr with an error of about 15%. We have used a combined analysis of the available photometric and spectroscopic data to derive the mass and radius of the planet (0.92±0.06 M, 1.20±0.06 R). Further observations of WASP-41 can be used to explore the connections between the properties of hot Jupiter planets and the level of chromospheric activity in their host stars.