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ISIS is a system for detecting sub-millimetric particles impacts in Earth orbit, based on piezoelectric sensors. The hardware has already been built, while the software relevant to the system microcontroller is presently being developed. The system should be tested on board a microsatellite built at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in the frame of the UNISAT programme. However, as ISIS has been designed with an own microcontroller, it is easily adaptable to be flown on other satellites. This paper describes the system in detail.

COSMO-SkyMed is an Earth Observation space program conducted by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in conjunction with It-MoD. In the framework of the current programmatic phase concerning the operational management of the constellation, a set of qualified teams was introduced in order to perform technical, operational and engineering activities on the system, and tailored information flows were developed among ASI, It- MoD and Industrial staff in order to continuously guarantee the performances and the availability of the system and to identify potential enhancements and changes for the optimization of the overall cost/benefit ratio and the increase of the performances with respect to the original specification. Aim of this paper is to describe the conceived organization oriented to perform maintenance, operations and sustaining engineering activities in the frame of the operational management of the COSMO-SkyMed system, and to assess the tasks performed and the capabilities assured by the instituted teams, showing in detail the anomalies and non-conformances management process, the process assumed to keep the system performances inside the thresholds, to measure and validate the availability, effectiveness and efficiency figures of COSMO-SkyMed system, and to continuously figure out lessons learnt, trend analyses and optimization strategies. The efficiency of the conceived organization and processes in performing such activities is assessed in this paper through specific test cases and examples.

COSMO-SkyMed is an Earth Observation space program funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and Italian Ministry of Defence (It-MoD) and conducted by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in conjunction with It-MoD. In the framework of the programmatic phase concerning the maintenance of the constellation in operational conditions, already in place, new parameters have been conceived in order to automatically monitor end-to-end system performances and engineering support efficiency. Aim of this paper is to describe all the parameters currently used to measure availability, effectiveness and efficiency figures of COSMO-SkyMed system, the lessons learned and optimization strategies concerning the parameters used during the development phase, with a particular focus on the new parameters recently designed and introduced to assess anomalies and non conformance management process efficiency. Methodologies, process architecture solutions, parameters detailed algorithms, test cases and validation strategy will be assessed in this paper, pointing out how the conceived frame gives the system owner the right confidence of an automatic monitoring of the end-to-end performances of the COSMO-SkyMed system.

COSMO-SkyMed is an Earth Observation space programme funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and Italian Ministry of Defence (It-MoD) and conducted by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in conjunction with It-MoD. In November 2010 the fourth and last COSMO-SkyMed satellite was successfully launched. It was integrated into the operational constellation after the positive conclusion of the commissioning phase in January 2011. The four satellites are placed in the same sun-synchronous dawn-dusk frozen orbit, designed in such a way to fulfil dual needs and to optimize the performances for a wide range of Civilian applications (e.g. risks management, agriculture/forestry, marine/coastal, geology) and Defence applications (surveillance, intelligence, crisis management, mission planning). The baseline four-satellite constellation configuration foresees that the satellites are placed on the same orbital plane with a difference of 90, 180, 270 and 360 deg in their respective anomalies. Currently the orbital configuration is composed of three satellites (namely PFM, FM#2 and FM#4) placed with a difference of 0, 180, and 270 deg in their respective anomalies, while a fourth satellite (namely FM#3) is placed in a tandem-like configuration with FM#2 (i.e. one-day temporal decorrelation). The aim of this paper is to analyze the orbital flexibility of COSMO-SkyMed constellation by performing a survey of the possible orbital interferometric configurations which could be achieved by the full COSMO-SkyMed constellation (e.g. tandem, tandem-like, double one-day tandem configuration, etc), focusing on their main features (e.g. temporal decorrelation, degradation of the temporal performances respect to the nominal equi-phased configuration, etc), highlighting the manoeuvres required for orbital configuration changes.

COSMO-SkyMed is an Earth Observation space program funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and Italian Ministry of Defence (It-MoD) and conducted by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in conjunction with It-MoD, which was designed in order to fulfill Dual-Use requirements in terms of different needs of Defence and Civilian Users, such as different requirements in data products, system performances, security needs, response time, request priority management and data accessibility/confidentiality, being a pioneer program in the frame of the Civil and Military Space Duality and representing a reference for future Earth Observation space programs. Furthermore, COSMO-SkyMed was designed in order to achieve Interoperability, Expandability with respect to additional Defence and Civilian Partners and Multi-Mission features, which are the bases for the establishment of international cooperation programs that have been set up by ASI and It-MoD or are going-on, such as the Italian-French cooperation named ORFEO (Optical and Radar Federated Earth Observation) and the Italian-Argentinean cooperation named SIASGE (Sistema Ítalo Argentino de Satélites para la Gestión de Emergencias). In such a context, a significant example of successful COSMO-SkyMed international partnership is the recent French Defence User Ground Segment (F-DUGS) integration within COSMO-SkyMed system. The aim of this paper is to show the COSMO-SkyMed conceived architecture, the experienced operational implications collected in operating the system from the launch of the first COSMO-SkyMed satellite until the completion of the constellation and the integration of the French Partner into the system, highlighting the lessons learned and the experienced challenges to fulfill very innovative and demanding requirements.

COSMO-SkyMed is an Earth Observation space program funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and Italian Ministry of Defence (It-MoD) and conducted by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in conjunction with It-MoD. In November 2010 the fourth and last COSMO-SkyMed satellite was successfully launched and integrated into the constellation after the positive conclusion of the commissioning phase in January 2011. The four satellites are placed in the same sun-synchronous dawn-dusk frozen orbit, designed in such a way to fulll dual needs and to optimize the performances for a wide range of Civilian applications (e.g. risks management, agriculture/forestry, marine/coastal, geology) and Defence applications (surveillance, intelligence, crisis management, mission planning). Currently the orbital configuration is composed of three satellites (namely PFM, FM#2 and FM#4) with a dierence of 90 deg in their respective anomalies, and a fourth satellite (namely FM#3) in tandem-like conguration with FM#2 (i.e. one-day temporal decorrelation). The aim of this paper is to analyze the orbital fexibility of COSMO- SkyMed constellation by performing a survey of the possible orbital interferometric congurations which could be achieved by the full COSMO-SkyMed constellation (e.g. tandem, tandem-like, double one-day tandem conguration, etc), focusing on their main features (e.g. interferometric data takes opportunities, temporal decorrelation, degradation of the temporal performances respect to the nominal equi-phased conguration, etc), highlighting the propellant required for orbital conguration changes and the ways to minimize it, associating them with the main state-of-the-art Civilian and Defence applications that would benefit from them and providing a preliminary quantitative assessment of the interferometric products quality improvement for each orbital configuration.

Khoo (2010) defines academic mobbing as “a non-violent, sophisticated, ‘ganging up’ behaviour adopted by academicians to ‘wear and tear’ a colleague down emotionally through unjustified accusation, humiliation, general harassment and emotional abuse” (p. 61). Academic mobbing involves the cultivation of norms that reinforce a sense of belonging that is explicitly connected with a concomitant consciousness – and validation – of “othering.” While the behaviors associated with academic mobbing must be identified and addressed, without focusing on the underlying cultural contexts, the problem will not be resolved. Case story analysis offers the potential to examine and ameliorate academic mobbing in ways that complicate the roles of participants and provide a safe means of investigating causal forces without essentializing (or revealing) identities. This article offers an explanation of case story analysis, particularly as it applies to academic mobbing. The analysis will be coupled with “on the ground” experiences of academic mobbing and conclude with the possibilities of using case story analysis as a means of reculturing, with the ultimate aim of creating workplaces that reflect principles of social justice., Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, No 24 (2014): Academic Bullying & Mobbing

The observatory will host two telescopes, with diameter of 30 cm and 40 cm, equipped with CCD and moved by robotic mounts. The 40 cm telescope is a Cassegrain-like configuration, modified to get a short focal length (focal ratio: f/1.8) thus permitting a wide field of view and a good stability on the mount which permits fast LEO objects tracking. The design of optical tube, completely manufactured by students of GAUSS, is shown in the paper. The 30 cm telescope is a Baker-Schmidt (f/2.8). The CCD is equipped with a 4096x4096, 9 μm square, pixels sensor (54 mm diagonal) and will be used for searching campaign and for accurate astrometry measures. The robotic mounts permit full autonomous tracking mode and remote control. The dome has also been designed and manufactured by GAUSS and the design is depicted in the paper, showing solutions adopted in order to achieve transportability and remote control. Whereas the observatory is completely autonomous a large amount of data can be achieved, therefore a lot of efforts have been directed to image processing automation, to screen pictures, separating catalogued targets from uncatalogued ones. The observatory design is described in the paper.

In October 2006, the Italian Space Agency, in the framework of a contract which involves many italians groups working on space debris, gave to GAUSS the task to manufacture a small, easy to transport, observatory completely dedicated to space debris monitoring. The observatory will host three telescopes, with different diameters, focal lengths and optical configuration, all of them can be equipped with two CCDs and moved by robotic mounts. A deep analysis of optical properties of the complete system has been carried out in order to evaluate instruments features, constraints and capabilities. Particularly difficult is the a priori assessment and evaluation of the performances of optical system for LEO or GEO objects tracking and orbit determination The paper presents the expected orbit determination results keeping into account different orbital regimes, different orbital determination strategies and instruments configurations, sketching numerical simulation results.

Space debris are a concern for operative satellites and human missions. A large amount of debris is located in Low Earth Orbit and in Geostationary Orbit, and several institutes all around the world monitor the growth of the debris population. Since a few years, GAUSS (Group of Astrodynamics of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”) has been carrying out space debris observation campaigns exploiting amateur astronomers’ facilities. Presently GAUSS is making up, in the frame of a contract with Italian Space Agency (ASI), the first Italian optical observa-tory completely addressed to space debris detection. During the optical campaigns, a large number of images is expected to be archived. This is the reason why a software is needed to process the images in order to automatically detect the objects and correlate them with the catalogue. The algorithm is based mainly on single-frame handling to make the noise level as flat as possible, with a successive two-image comparison which allows removing stars and bi-ases. In the object detection procedure a shape identification algorithm has been avoided, in order to reduce calculation time. The last step is the object identification by comparison with the Two-Line Elements catalogue. The actual position of the detected objects is compared with the propagated positions of the catalogued ones. In conclusion, both the image processing itself and the object identification are performed automatically. The paper describes the logic of the developed algorithm as well as the preliminary results of the software.

In September 2003 the Group of Astrodynamics of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (GAUSS) carried out a two-site optical observation campaign addressed to the orbit determination of objects in the geosynchronous region without a priori information. Two 40 cm aperture Ritchey-Chretien telescopes were employed: the f /7.5 “Collepardo Automatic Telescope” (CAT, located in Collepardo, Italy) and an f /5 tube of the “Observatori Astronomic de Mallorca” (OAM, located in Mallorca, Spain). The baseline between the sites is about 1000 km. Three second long, 1 min apart exposures were simultaneously taken in sidereal tracking mode, looking at the same arcs of the geosynchronous ring. The size of the fields of view allowed to see a few satellites in two successive frames from both sites. The Lambert theorem has been exploited to determine the orbits, averaging the data with the least square method in the case that more than 2 points were available. Of course, the longer the time interval between the positions, the lower the effect of measuring errors. Nevertheless, the only way to have quite distant points would be tracking the satellite, but following-up is typically time demanding thus not suitable for a surveillance campaign, hence not very interesting from a practical standpoint. In the paper the results of the orbit determination from the September 2003 campaign are reported. More in detail, the outcomes of some classical methods for solving the Lambert theorem, are compared with solutions based on the measurements fitted with the least squares method, with the circular orbit assumption results, with the one-site complete orbit determination and with the TLEs.

In the recent years more and more countries around the world have been concerned with space debris detection and monitoring. In Italy, although satellites and debris have been definitely, though not intentionally, detected by astronomers in the last decades, dedicated observations have never been performed before April 2002. In this month the Group of Astrodynamics of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (GAUSS) started an optical survey of the geostationary ring from the Campo Catino Astronomical Observatory. This observatory, owned by the “Associazione Astronomica Frusinate” (Frosinone Astronomical Society), is one of the best amateur astronomers’ facilities in Italy: his dome hosts an 80 cm aperture Ritchey-Chrétien telescope, a 25 cm Baker-Schmidt and a 15 cm refractor, while a 40 cm Ritchey-Chrétien is going to be operated in another dome; two CCD sensors are available for such telescopes. For this first GEO campaign, the 25 cm Baker-Schmidt device was chosen, in order to have a wide field of view: the telescope was coupled with an AP-8 10241024 CCD, resulting in a 1°, 50’ FOV. The first nights of observation were dedicated to a survey of the GEO ring: about 90 degrees of right ascension were spanned, collecting several hundreds images and detecting about 100 objects; as the CCD read-out time is about 35 seconds, a relatively long exposure time (20 seconds) was selected, to improve the ratio of exposure time to gap time between frames. The telescope was pointed in a star-tracking mode, so the Earth satellites are easily detected as stripes on a dot-shaped background of stars; hence, two points of the track (lead and trailing edges) per image are generally identified in terms of topocentric right ascension and declination. Moreover, the observed star field is kept constant along some hours of observation, letting the GEO ring cross such field. The data processing, presently managed off-line, is now being carried out, in order to identify the objects and determine their orbits. Of course other observations will be performed in the next months. In the paper the campaign status is described in detail and the results are presented.

Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice, Vol 20 (2013): Education for Revolution

Unlike some who point to faculty, students, administration or governance as the sources of the changing conditions within higher education and how the conditions impact the academic labor market and graduate students, the contributors and editors of this special issue recognize how the dominant ideological doctrine at today’s historical moment – neoliberalism – is largely responsible for the corporate nature of education, the rise and dominance of contingent faculty, and the withdrawal of the state resources from institutions of higher education. Some contributors to this issue elucidate how neoliberalism is responsible for their experiences as contingent faculty members and debt-ridden, freshly minted PhDs. Other authors provide critical historical insight as to how neoliberalism has come to impact intellectual contributions in the academy, whereas some scholars provide theoretical insight to lay bare the discursive systems that keep graduate students, academics, and citizens from confronting institutional structures, practices, and systems of knowledge, leading to the marginalization of academics and hobbling higher education from being equitable for all. Additionally, the collective scholarship in this special issue provides necessary guideposts and recommendations so that higher education becomes a “humanizing force in society, where the value of people is always a priority” (Giroux, 2001, p. 47), instead of a corporate force where greed, competition, vulnerability and suffering is the stark reality., Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, No 22 (2013): The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students

We consider the problem of finding distinctive social interactions involving groups of agents embedded in larger social gatherings. Given a pre-defined gallery of short exemplar interaction videos, and a long input video of a large gathering (with approximately-tracked agents), we identify within the gathering small sub-groups of agents exhibiting social interactions that resemble those in the exemplars. The participants of each detected group interaction are localized in space, the extent of their interaction is localized in time, and when the gallery of exemplars is annotated with group-interaction categories, each detected interaction is classified into one of the pre-defined categories. Our approach represents group behaviors by dichotomous collections of descriptors for (a) individual actions, and (b) pair-wise interactions, and it includes efficient algorithms for optimally distinguishing participants from by-standers in every temporal unit and for temporally localizing the extent of the group interaction. Most importantly, the method is generic and can be applied whenever numerous interacting agents can be approximately tracked over time. We evaluate the approach using three different video collections, two that involve humans and one that involves mice.

En el presente trabajo sobre “Evaluación de la calidad del desempeño profesional docente y directivo de educación básica y bachillerato del Colegio Técnico Particular Nocturno “Carlos Crespi II” de la parroquia Hermano Miguel de la ciudad de Cuenca durante el año lectivo 2012 – 2013”, se plantea como objetivo visualizar el real desempeño de docentes y directivos en la institución. Se aplicaron instrumentos y técnicas de evaluación dirigidas a recolectar información necesaria de toda la comunidad educativa, como para la observación de clases demostrativas. Como resultado se determina que el Colegio “Carlos Crespi II” se encuentra en la categoría de excelente de acuerdo a los estándares de calidad educativa. Se concluye que hay aspectos que deben ser optimizados sustancialmente en el aspecto estudiantil y abordados en forma responsable y profesional, frente a lo cual se plantea una propuesta de mejoramiento educativo por medio de talleres de capacitación a los docentes en la dimensión de atención a los estudiantes con necesidades individuales, para alcanzar y mantener la excelencia de la educación en la institución.

Preface: In Search of Peace in a Culture of War Antonia Darder. Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction: Framing Peace and War Within the Educational Project: Willful (Dis)Engagement and Meaning (and Cost) of Conflict Paul R. Carr and Brad J. Porfilio Section I: Theorizing Peace, War and Peace 2. Militaristic Privilege in Schools and Beyond: Challenges for Peace Educators Laura L. Finley 3. Saying "No!": The Power of Transformative Learning Ilhan Kucukaydin and Patricia Cranton 4. "Why Do Students Call Me 'The War Teacher?" Problematizing Militarism in Education as a Freireian Codification Mike Klein 5. Re-Examining the Role of Intellectuals in Times of War Through the Lens of Edward Said's Work: A Call for Action to Social Justice Educators Pierre W. Orelus Section II: Scanning the War in Our Daily (and Educational) Lives 6. A Pedagogy of Ceaseless War: JROTC and the Military Occupation of US Schools Shannon K. McManimon, Brian D. Lozenski and Zachary A. Casey 7. The Way of the Soldier - Jarheads and Hurt Lockers: Perpetual War, Identity and Critical Media Literacy William M. Reynolds Section III: The Curriculum of War and Peace 8. Moving from a Curriculum of Compliance to a Curriculum of Possibility: Militarization of Schools, State Curricular Standards, and Creating Democratic Spaces for Teaching Military Conflict Christopher Leahey 9. The Military-Industrial-University Complex and Social Science: A Brief history and Current Update of a Professional Contribution to War Randle W. Nelsen 10. Art and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy vs. Warring Words in a Race to the Frontline Mary F. Wright, Brenda M. Wright and Matthew P. McMillan Section IV: Internationalizing Peace and the Trauma of War and Conflict 11. Who Owns Education for Peace and for War? Peace/War Industry and Ethnic Stratification: The Case of One Underprivileged School in Israel Dalya Yafa Markovich 12. Open the Doors, Paint the Walls and Ignore the Bells: Refashioning the Post-Movimiento Classroom to Foment "Civic Space" Ties Stephen T. Sadlier and Ignacio Rogelio Morales Sanchez 13. Swimming Against the Current: Educating for Peace in the University Classroom in Turkey Antonia Mandry Section V: Resisting the Militarization of Education 14. Building a Movement: Counter-Recruitment Organizing in US Public Schools Seth Kershner and Scott Harding 15. Creating Peaceful and Nonviolent Schools in the Midst of a Culture of War and Violence Tom Cavanagh 16. War and the Sectarian Mind: Education and the Development of Consciousness in the Age of "Permanent War" John M. Elmore. Afterword: Reflecting on Critical Perspectives of Peace Education Zvi Bekerman

Objective of this study was to compare the maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) on players that participates of three basis categories of a football club. Methodology: Study participants were 61 athletes from category basis of a football club professional. The athletes were divided into three groups, according to the chronological age and the category of football that competes; S13 (n = 23) age 12.5±0.7 and BMI 21.1±6.2, S15 (n = 19) age 14,5 ± 0.7 and BMI 18.45 ± 2.0; and S17 (n = 19) age 16.5 ± 0.7 and BMI 20.75 ± 2.0. It was determined the relative VO2max of athletes through the protocol of Bruce in treadmill until exhaustion.Results: The average VO2max on the group S13 of 55.87 ± 6.5 ml.kg.min, group S15 of 62.23 ± 7.6 ml.kg.min and group S17 of 68.14 ± 3.9 ml.kg.min. The S17 group showed significant differences (p

COSMO-SkyMed is the Italian Remote Sensing program which foresees the utilization of a constellation of four SAR Satellites in Low Earth Orbit, dedicated to the management, control and exploitation of Earth resources for civil and defense applications. The Program is completely funded by the Italian Government, mainly through the Italian Ministry of Research (MIUR) and the Ministry of Defense (I-AD). Thales Alenia Space Italia is responsible for the design, development and verification of the complete constellation. The complete constellation has been deployed in orbit (June 2007, December 2007, November 2008, and October 2010), the commissioning and the operative qualification (at satellite and constellation levels) with the achievement of full performance has been completed, too. From the very early days of the mission images were generated as nominal products by both the operational systems and the calibrationv these were performed in the a few ground segment processor releases of which the last took place at the conclusion of the operative qualification. From there on, all data takes and SAR products from spotlight (ES), stripmap (HIMAGE), alternating polarization (PP) and scansar (WR and HR) modes are considered as “operational” in terms of commanding, processing, product format and performance. This paper presents the different product types and the achieved product performance parameters. While product characterization and calibration measurements started early, the final SAR verification had to wait for the complete verification of all input products (specifically the orbit and attitude data) and the finalization of the overall SAR system performance and verification. Thus more than thousands “operational” products of all modes and variants have been used for final verification of basic characteristics like format, saturation degree, scene location and extent. A subset of specific acquisitions over calibration sites were processed to various product variants and analyzed with respect to point target responses and radiometry. These measurements confirmed the very excellent COSMO-SkyMed product performance in terms of: • focusing quality and resolution: since the overall SAR system performance and stability are outstanding, some margins in the spotlight azimuth beam steering sequence and processing have been invested in an improved IRF performance. This yields ratios to spatial resolution in azimuth and ground range, over an access region [20° ‥ 60°], better than 1m • sensitivity: the NEσ° is always better than the specified value (-22dB) for all the operation modes as well as the ambiguity to signal ratios • radiometry: the calibration effort, the pointing accuracy and the operational pattern correction and normalization result in products with a radiometric accuracy better than 1 dB.

To demonstrate that the Landers wide-field temporary keratoprosthesis (TKP) creates a watertight seal between the tightly opposing surfaces of the TKP flange and the anterior corneal surface.In 25 and 20 enucleated, porcine eyes, a 7.5-mm and 8.0-mm trephination corneal hole was made, respectively, followed by open-sky capsulorhexis and lensectomy. A wide-field TKP with 7.2 mm trunk diameter was sutured securely onto each eye. Testing for a watertight seal was performed at an intraocular pressure of 100 mmHg of pre- and post-pars plana vitrectomy.The Landers TKP maintained a watertight seal at an intraocular pressure of 100 mmHg in 45 of 45 eyes. After standard pars plana vitrectomy, 41 of 41 eyes maintained 100 mmHg of intraocular pressure without leakage.The seal between the TKP and cornea is established at the horizontal interface between the TKP flange and the anterior corneal surface, not between the corneal stroma and TKP trunk. The Landers wide-field TKP is a reusable model that provides a clear posterior-segment view and effectively forms a watertight eye at a sustained intraocular pressure of 100 mmHg. This TKP may be used in ocular trauma where the corneal defect is up to 0.8 mm greater in diameter than the 7.2-mm TKP trunk.

Chlamydiae are obligate intracellular pathogens that likely require type III secretion (T3S) to invade cells and replicate intracellularly within a cytoplasmic vacuole called an inclusion body. Chlamydia pneumoniae possess a YscL ortholog, CdsL, that has been shown to interact with the T3S ATPase (CdsN). In this report we demonstrate that CdsL down-regulates CdsN enzymatic activity in a dose-dependent manner. Using Pepscan epitope mapping we identified two separate binding domains to which CdsL binds viz. CdsN(221-229) and CdsN(265-270). We confirmed the binding domains using a pull-down assay and showed that GST-CdsN(221-270), which encompasses these peptides, co-purified with His-CdsL. Next, we used orthology modeling based on the crystal structure of a T3S ATPase ortholog from Escherichia coli, EscN, to map the binding domains on the predicted 3D structure of CdsN. The CdsL binding domains mapped to the catalytic domain of the ATPase, one in the central channel of the ATPase hexamer and one on the outer face. Since peptide mimetics have been used to disrupt essential protein interactions of the chlamydial T3S system and inhibit T3S-mediated invasion of HeLa cells, we hypothesized that if CdsL-CdsN binding is essential for regulating T3S then a CdsN peptide mimetic could be used to potentially block T3S and chlamydial invasion. Treatment of elementary body with a CdsN peptide mimetic inhibited C. pneumoniae invasion into HeLa cells in a dose-dependent fashion. This report represents the first use of Pepscan technology to identify binding domains for specific T3S proteins viz. CdsL on the ATPase, CdsN, and demonstrates that peptide mimetics can be used as anti-virulence factors to block bacterial invasion.

The purpose of this essay is to document a group of Canadian youth activists’ and artists’ perceptions and experiences with developing and sustaining an arts-based educational initiative that “undertakes public education and the promotion of civic participation of young people on social issues that frame their development within their communities.” Through the youth activists’ and artists’ narratives, we highlight the youths’ motivation to establish this organization, the methods they use to engage their audience in social commentary and activism, how they confront and overcome barriers in schools when implementing their pedagogical initiatives, and the challenges they face in keeping their project intellectually vibrant and culturally relevant to youth. Moreover, we argue that critical pedagogues must take seriously the cultural work proffered by youth-led social justice initiatives if critical pedagogy is to remain relevant in promoting equity and social justice in schools and in society., Critical Education, Vol 1 No 9 (2010)