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Using Donna Haraway’s notion of “response-ability”, or the cultivation of the capacity for response, this paper seeks to understand seed saving and plant breeding as politically and ethically charged modes of interspecies communication. In Brittany, France, a region known for its industrial-scale fresh vegetable production, peasant farmers and organic plant breeders question the modernist plant breeding and agro-industrial paradigm, cross-pollinating ideas to produce new understandings of genotype-environment interaction, biodiversity and heredity. Plant liveliness is understood as politically transformative, constitutive of an agriculture that supports peasant farmer and crop plant creativity and self-determination. In contrast to F1 hybrids, open-pollinated semences paysannes (peasant seed) retain the ability to respond to environmental changes, adapt and evolve over (human and plant) generations. Farmers must in turn engage specific modes of attention, interpreting plant expressions and shaping future generations through rouging and crossing, selecting and saving, watching and learning from their crops. Mutual response is the foundation of interdependence, in which nonconspecific partners adjust to one another’s ways of being and doing in order to labor together. In remaining response-able, farmers reckon with the liveliness and agential capacities of plants, qualities that work against their subsumption into factory-like methods of cultivation. These communicative practices hint at the radical potential for interspecies resistance to monoculture within plant breeding and cultivation, practices that are so often molded by the interests of agro-industrial capital.

Our chapter builds upon feminist understandings of the more-than-human, using our experiences of working with peasant farmers involved in seed saving (Leila) and activists’ relation to individual environmental practices (Karijn). Through a dialogue around our experiences, we reflect on feelings of discomfort, and how, rather than resolving our anxieties, discomfort has the potential to open up conventional ways of being a researcher. Focusing on relationality through embodied and processual research challenges the notion of method as a tool used by a disembodied researcher observing an inert or external world, a central concern of feminist-oriented research. We show how participating in plural and more-than-human worlds also challenges multiple binary positionings and allows for unwarranted surprises that might undo the assumptions and categories underpinning our research.

Aims Infective endocarditis (IE) remained a potentially fatal disease with high rate of mortality and morbidity. The epidemiology and global burden of IE are largely different between the countries. We aimed to address the epidemiological aspects of IE in a tertiary hospital in Tehran, Iran. Methods and Results Between 2006–2018, all adults patients with diagnosis of IE were enrolled in the Iranian Registry of Infective Endocarditis (IRIE). The data were analyzed using the χ2, Kolmogorov–Smirnov, and Mann–Whitney U tests. Overall, 602 patients, 407 (67.6%) men, mean age 46 ± 16 years were recruited. Positive blood culture found in 49%.The most common underlying heart diseases were: Congenital heart diseases (CHD) particularly bicuspid aortic valves (BAV) and ventricular septal defects (VSD) in 37%, followed by degenerative heart diseases :flail and mitral valve prolapse (16.3%), intravenous drug user in 12.6%, prosthetic valves in 11.1%, previous IE (8.9%), rheumatic heart diseases (RHD) in 8.4%. The most causative microorganisms were Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococci, coagulase-negative staphylococci and Streptococcus viridans. Cardiac or extra cardiac complications occurred in 56.6% of the patients. Conclusions Based on IRIE, IE occurs in the younger population in Iran with high rates of blood culture-negative IE. RHD are not the main cause of IE in Iran, CHD including BAV and VSDs, followed by prolaptic or flail mitral valve were the most common. These 2 groups can be considered a high-risk group for IE. More than half of the patients with IE had cardiac or extra cardiac complications.

Health psychologists have succeeded in identifying theory-congruent behaviour change techniques (BCTs) to prevent and reduce lifestyle-related illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, cancers and diabetes. Obesity management discussions between doctors and patients can be challenging and are often avoided. Despite a clear training need, it is unknown how best to tailor BCT research findings to inform obesity-management training for future healthcare professionals. The primary objective of this descriptive study was to gather information on the feasibility and acceptability of delivering and evaluating health psychology-informed obesity training to UK medical students. Medical students (n = 41) attended an obesity management session delivered by GP tutors. Sessions were audio-recorded to enable fidelity checks. Acceptability of training was explored qualitatively. Tutors consistently delivered training according to the intervention protocol; and students and tutors found the training highly acceptable. This psychology-informed training can be delivered successfully by GP tutors and further research is warranted to explore its efficacy.