South Lanarkshire Council (Scottish Gaelic: Comhairle Siorrachd Lannraig a Deas) is the unitary authority serving the South Lanarkshire council area in Scotland. The council has its headquarters in Hamilton, has 16,000 employees, and a budget of almost £1bn. The large and varied geographical territory takes in rural and upland areas, market towns such as Lanark, Strathaven and Carluke, the urban burghs of Rutherglen, Cambuslang, and East Kilbride which was Scotland's first new town. The area was formed in 1996 from the areas of Clydesdale, Hamilton and East Kilbride districts, and some outer areas of Glasgow district (Rutherglen/Fernhill, Cambuslang/Halfway and part of King's Park/Toryglen); all were previously within the Strathclyde region from 1975 but in historic Lanarkshire prior to that.
Circadian clocks orchestrate tissue homeostasis by gating cell cycle, DNA repair, metabolism, and immune responses in time. However, the precise form, strength, and tissue specificity of this gating—and how it fails in cancer—remain poorly characterised. Here we introduce PAR(2), a stability-constrained, phase-dependent autoregressive framework of order two that systematically quantifies temporal coupling between core clock genes and downstream targets across diverse tissues and conditions. We applied PAR(2) to over 28,000 clock–target expression time series drawn from 22 publicly available circadian transcriptomic datasets spanning mouse liver, heart, cerebellum, intestinal organoids, and additional tissues. For each pair, PAR(2) jointly estimates phase-dependent linear coupling (via sinusoidal Fourier expansion of autoregressive coefficients) and eigenvalues summarising dynamical stability and oscillatory character. Residual-based permutation testing (\(\:B=1,000\)) and cross-tissue replication criteria control false discoveries; hits are classified into three confidence tiers. PAR(2) recovers known circadian gating relationships and reveals new candidate architectures. In mouse liver, Wee1 emerges as the most robustly gated target—a Tier 0 hit achieving FDR significance across two independent datasets (GSE54650 and GSE11923) and replicating in heart and cerebellum, with inferred eigenperiods of 22.8–24.5 hours consistent with circadian periodicity. In heart, Tead1 /YAP1-linked gating connects circadian timing with Hippo pathway regulation; in cerebellum, Cdk1 and related cell-cycle regulators form the primary circadian-coupled module. In intestinal organoids, Apc mutation increases FDR-significant gating density (3.8% to 6.7%) and elevates target-gene eigenvalues, collapsing the clock/target hierarchy gap (\(\:+0.35\) wild-type, \(\:-0.025\) ApcKO), while Bmal1 loss destroys the hierarchy through clock gene suppression (gap \(\:-0.04\)). Strikingly, the Apc/Bmal1 double mutant paradoxically restores the hierarchy gap (\(\:+0.11\)) through non-additive compensatory effects. Phase-gating terms consistently improved in-sample fit but did not reliably improve out-of-sample prediction, confirming PAR(2) as a descriptive discovery framework rather than a predictive model. PAR(2) provides a principled, permutation-tested approach to mapping clock–target gating architectures across tissues and perturbations, yielding testable hypotheses about circadian temporal organisation and its disruption in cancer. All analyses are reproducible via the PAR(2) Discovery Engine (https://par2-discovery-engine.replit.app).
Schools strive to respond compassionately to disadvantaged families. However, barriers to authentic home-school relationships persist because the concept of parental engagement at home is not well enough understood. Socio-cultural stereotyping still contributes to schools' fixed impressions of what parental engagement should consist of, and the abilities of disadvantaged parents to support their children's learning. This qualitative case study provides new and unique insights into learning at home. A child-centred study was undertaken in a small Primary school, in a deprived area of Scotland, exploring the importance of home learning with young children. The findings indicate the young participants had an acute understanding of the significance of home learning for their ongoing and future development.
The International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC) is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles in the field of integrated care on a continuous basis.IJIC has an Impact Factor of 2.913 (2021 JCR, received in June 2022)The IJIC 20th Anniversary Issue was published in 2021.
This research evaluated the impact of Give us a break! (GUAB!) - a programme for children and young people who have experienced bereavement or negative change including the impact of divorce/separation; experiences around ill health and circumstances leading to individuals being 'looked after'. A repeated measures design was utilised to measure the pre-post difference in the factors which contribute to young people's resilience following intervention. Additionally, as the programme is based on a model of Solution Focused Brief Therapy - which aims to develop a positive orientation towards the future - optimistic thinking was closely evaluated. Young people completed the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents (Prince-Embury, 2006) and, to increase the rigour of data collection, parents/carers and teachers completed the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (LeBuffe, Shapiro & Naglieri, 2009). The findings provide evidence that the programme positively impacted on young people in terms of their Sense of Relatedness to others, Sense of Mastery, Social and Emotional Competence and Optimistic Thinking. Furthermore, these findings were not contingent upon the type of loss experienced (bereaved/non-bereaved). Some methodological limitations are highlighted and directions for future research considered.
