Understanding Online Audio-Visual Content: A European Initiative, Media Literacy and the User

Recent debates about media literacy and the internet have begun to acknowledge the importance of active user-engagement and interaction. It is not enough simply to access material online, but also to comment upon it and re-use. Yet how do these new user expectations fit within digital initiatives which increase access to audio-visual-content but which prioritise access and preservation of archives and online research rather than active user-engagement? This article will address these issues of media literacy in relation to audio-visual content. It will consider how these issues are currently being addressed, focusing particularly on the high-profile European initiative EUscreen. EUscreen brings together 20 European television archives into a single searchable database of over 40,000 digital items. Yet creative re-use restrictions and copyright issues prevent users from re-working the material they find on the site. Instead of re-use, EUscreen instead offers access and detailed contextualisation of its collection of material. But if the emphasis for resources within an online environment rests no longer upon access but on user-engagement, what does EUscreen and similar sites offer to different users?

Science Literacy and media Literacy: a missing link?

The study of science in the media is increasingly highlighted within science programmes and represents an authentic context for interdisciplinary collaboration. Yet the literature on ‘media across the curriculum’ makes surprisingly little mention of links to science and cross-curricular approaches to teaching about and with science-based media resources is an area that is under-explored. This research study focuses on science in the news. The project involved 28 teachers from seven schools and brought together science and English teachers to explore collaborative working with the aim of promoting critical engagement with media reports with a science component. Teachers planned, developed and implemented a school-based activity with an emphasis on ‘connected learning’ rather than the compartmentalised learning that tends to accompany the discrete treatment of science matters in science class and media matters in English class. Not only did the project raise teachers’ awareness of science in the media as a potential, purposeful and profitable area for collaborative working, but it demonstrated how the synergy of the different experiences and expertise of science and English teachers produced very varied approaches to a programme of activities with an enhanced capacity to promote criticality in relation to science literacy and media literacy.

A randomised control trial evaluation of a literacy after-school programme for struggling beginning readers

While there is evidence for effective in-school programmes
for struggling beginning readers, the evidence in relation to after-schools
interventions focusing on academic outcomes is particularly weak. This study
seeks to contribute to this body of evidence through a randomized trial (n=464)
of an after-school literacy programme (DoodleDen) for struggling beginning readers in a deprived area of Dublin, Ireland.

The programme based on a balanced literacy framework, was delivered in group
settings, and had a strong focus on staff development. Doodle Den was found to improve the children’s overall literacy (d=+0.17), teacher assessments of their literacy ability (d=+0.28) and to positively impact on problem behaviours in regular school class (d=-0.18). The implications for
the development of after-school programmes are discussed.

Development of a method to quantify the DNA content in DNA- cationic peptide nanoparticles

Gene therapy has the potential to provide safe and targeted therapies for a variety of diseases. A range of intracellular gene delivery vehicles have been proposed for this purpose. Non-viral vectors are a particularly attractive option and among them cationic peptides have emerged as promising candidates. For the pharmaceutical formulation and application to clinical studies it is necessary to quantify the amount of pDNA condensed with the delivery system. There is a severe deficiency in this area, thus far no methods have been reported specifically for pDNA condensed with cationic peptide to form nanoparticles. The current study seeks to address this and describes the evaluation of a range of disruption agents to extract DNA from nanoparticles formed by condensation with cationic fusogenic peptides RALA and KALA. Only proteinase K exhibited efficient and reproducible results and compatibility with the PicoGreen reagent based quantification assay. Thus we report for the first time a simple and reliable method that can quantify the pDNA content in pDNA cationic peptide nanoparticles.

High content analysis: A sensitive tool to detect and quantify the cytotoxic, synergistic and antagonistic effects of chemical contaminants in foods

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), ochratoxin A (OTA) and fumonisin B1 (FB1) are important mycotoxins in terms of
human exposure via food, their toxicity and regulatory limits that exist worldwide. Mixtures of toxins can frequently be present in foods, however due to the complications of determining their combined toxicity,
legal limits of exposure are determined for single compounds, based on long standing toxicological
techniques. High content analysis (HCA) may be a useful tool to determine total toxicity of complex
mixtures of mycotoxins. Endpoints including cell number (CN), nuclear intensity (NI), nuclear area (NA),
plasma membrane permeability (PMP), mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and mitochondrial
mass (MM) were compared to the conventional 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5 diphenyltetrazolium
bromide (MTT) and neutral red (NR) endpoints in MDBK cells. Individual concentrations of each
mycotoxin (OTA 3mg/ml, FB1 8mg/ml and AFB11.28mg/ml) revealed no cytotoxicity with MTTor NR but
HCA showed significant cytotoxic effects up to 41.6% (p0.001) and 10.1% (p0.05) for OTA and AFB1,
respectively. The tertiary mixture (OTA 3mg/ml, FB1 8mg/ml and AFB1 1.28mg/ml) detected up to 37.3%
and 49.8% more cytotoxicity using HCA over MTT and NR, respectively. Whilst binary combinations of
OTA (3mg/ml) and FB1 (8mg/ml) revealed synergistic interactions using HCA (MMP, MM, NI endpoints)
not detected using MTT or NR. HCA is a highly novel and sensitive tool that could substantially help
determine future regulatory limits, for single and combined toxins present in food, ensuring legislation is based on true risks to human health exposure.

The Use of High Surface Area Silica and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide to Enhance Solubility of Poorly Water-Soluble Drugs

Purpose Poor water-solubility of BCS class II drugs can limit their commercialization because of reduced oral bioavailability. It has been reported that loading of drug by adsorption onto porous silica would enhance drug solubility due to the increased surface area available for solvent diffusion. In this work, solid dispersions are formed using supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2). The aim of this research was to characterise the solid-state properties of scCO2 dispersion and to investigate the impact of altering scCO2 processing conditions on final amorphous product performance that could lead to enhancement of drug dissolution rate for BCS class II drugs. Methods Indomethacin (IND) was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (Dorset, UK) and was used as a model drug with two grades of high surface area silica (average particle sizes 3&[micro] and 7&[micro]), which were obtained directly from Grace-Davison (Germany). Material crystallinity was evaluated using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD, Rigaku™, miniflex II, Japan) and high-speed differential scanning calorimetry (Hyper-DSC 8000, Perkin Elmer, USA). Materials were placed in a high-pressure vessel consisting of a CO2 cylinder, a Thar™ Technologies P50 high-pressure pump and a 750 ml high-pressure vessel (Thar, USA). Physical mixtures were exposed to CO2 gas above its critical conditions. SEM imaging and elemental analysis were conducted using a Jeol 6500 FEGSEM (Advanced MicroBeam Inc., Austria). Drug release was examined using USP type II dissolution tester (Caleva™, UK). Results The two grades of silica were found to be amorphous using PXRD and Hyper-DSC. Using PXRD, it was shown that an increase in incubation time and pressure resulted in a decrease in the crystalline content. Drug release profiles from the two different silica formulations prepared under the same conditions are shown in Figure 1. It was found that there was a significant enhancement in drug release, which was influenced, by silica type and other experiment conditions such as temperature, pressure and exposure time. SEM imaging and elemental analysis showed drug deposited inside silica pores as well as on the outer surface. Conclusion This project has shown that silica carrier platforms may be used as an alternative approach to generating polymeric solid dispersions of amorphous drugs exhibiting enhanced solubility.

Effects of defined mixtures of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) on multiple cellular responses in the human hepatocarcinoma cell line, HepG2, using high content analysis screening

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are toxic substances, highly resistant to environmental degradation, which can bio-accumulate and have long-range atmospheric transport potential. Most studies focus on single compound effects, however as humans are exposed to several POPs simultaneously, investigating exposure effects of real life POP mixtures on human health is necessary. A defined mixture of POPs was used, where the compound concentration reflected its contribution to the levels seen in Scandinavian human serum (total mix). Several sub mixtures representing different classes of POP were also constructed. The perfluorinated (PFC) mixture contained six perfluorinated compounds, brominated (Br) mixture contained seven brominated compounds, chlorinated (Cl) mixture contained polychlorinated biphenyls and also p,p'-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene, hexachlorobenzene, three chlordanes, three hexachlorocyclohexanes and dieldrin. Human hepatocarcinoma (HepG2) cells were used for 2h and 48h exposures to the seven mixtures and analysis on a CellInsight™ NXT High Content Screening platform. Multiple cytotoxic endpoints were investigated: cell number, nuclear intensity and area, mitochondrial mass and membrane potential (MMP) and reactive oxygen species (ROS). Both the Br and Cl mixtures induced ROS production but did not lead to apoptosis. The PFC mixture induced the ROS production and likely induced cell apoptosis accompanied by the dissipation of MMP. Synergistic effects were evident for ROS induction when cells were exposed to the PFC+Br mixture. No significant effects were detected in the Br+Cl, PFC+Cl or total mixtures, which contain the same concentrations of chlorinated compounds as the Cl mixture plus additional compounds; highlighting the need for further exploration of POP mixtures in risk assessment.