Duchenne's muscular dystrophy (DMD), which affects 1/3500 live male births, involves a progressive degeneration of skeletal and cardiac muscle, leading to early death. The protein dystrophin is lacking in DMD and present, but defective, in the allelic, less severe, Becker muscular dystrophy and is also missing in the mdx mouse. Experiments on the mdx mouse have suggested two possible therapies for these myopathies. Implantation of normal muscle precursor cells (mpc) into mdx skeletal muscle leads to the conversion of dystrophin‐negative fibres (...) to ‐positive, with consequent improvement in muscle histology. Direct injectidn of dystrophin cDNA into skeletal or cardiac muscle also gives rise to dystrophin‐positive fibres. Although both appear promising, there are a number of questions to be answered and refinements to be made before either technique could be considered possible as treatments for myopathies in man. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Professor Margaret Archer discusses a variety of aspects of her work, academic career and influences, beginning with the role the study of education systems played in...

This paper draws from critical data studies and related fields to investigate police officer-involved homicide data for Los Angeles County. We frame police officer-involved homicide data as a rhetorical tool that can reify certain assumptions about the world and extend regimes of power. We highlight the possibility that this type of sensitive civic data can be investigated and employed within local communities through creative practice. Community involvement with data can create a countervailing force to powerful dominant narratives and supplement activist (...) projects that hold local officials accountable for their actions. Our analysis examines four Los Angeles County police officer-involved homicide data sets. First, we provide accounts of the semantics, granularity, scale and transparency of this local data. Then, we describe a “counter data action,” an event that invited members of the community to identify the limits and challenges present in police officer-involved homicide data and to propose new methods for deriving meaning from these indicators and statistics. (shrink)

Models as Mediators discusses the ways in which models function in modern science, particularly in the fields of physics and economics. Models play a variety of roles in the sciences: they are used in the development, exploration and application of theories and in measurement methods. They also provide instruments for using scientific concepts and principles to intervene in the world. The editors provide a framework which covers the construction and function of scientific models, and explore the ways in which they (...) enable us to learn about both theories and the world. The contributors to the volume offer their own individual theoretical perspectives to cover a wide range of examples of modelling, from physics, economics and chemistry. These papers provide ideal case-study material for understanding both the concepts and typical elements of modelling, using analytical approaches from the philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

There is growing interest in tissue procurement for cancer research through autopsy. Establishing an autopsy/tissue donation programme for breast cancer research within an academic medical centre i...

We agree with Grossmann that fear often builds cooperative relationships. Yet he neglects much extant literature. Prior researchers have discussed how fear (and other emotions) build cooperative relationships, have questioned whether fear per se evolved to serve this purpose, and have emphasized that human cooperation takes many forms. Grossmann's theory would benefit from a wider consideration of this work.

Morrison and Morgan argue for a view of models as 'mediating instruments' whose role in scientific theorising goes beyond applying theory. Models are partially independent of both theories and the world. This autonomy allows for a unified account of their role as instruments that allow for exploration of both theories and the world.

This study contributes simultaneously to research on women board members and competitive dynamics by investigating two unresolved research questions: What is the effect of female directors on the firm’s competitive repertoire? Under what conditions is this effect more pronounced? Leveraging the “Awareness-Motivation-Capability” (AMC) framework, we predict that having women on the board of directors should impact the complexity, heterogeneity, and volume of the firm’s competitive moves. Relying upon a sample of U.S. pharmaceutical firms for the years 2000 to 2017, we (...) find that adding female directors on the board positively affects the complexity and volume of a firm’s competitive moves, but negatively impacts the heterogeneity of competitive actions. In addition, the presence of a female CEO moderates these effects, leading to more complex competitive actions and increased volume. Thus, our study lends a greater understanding of how female board members influence competitive dynamics and shape the strategic direction of the firm. (shrink)

This study analyzes interview data from 37 science and engineering faculty involved in university-industry relations. Faculty are particularly concerned about how these relations affect their work with graduate students. Our analysis is guided by ritual exchange theory and network theory. First, we explore the ways faculty define and redefine what makes industrial or corporate research appropriate or inappropriate for training graduates. Second, we examine difficulties and tensions faculty face when they work with students on industrial or corporate projects. These difficulties (...) and tensions center on intellectual property and we look at how faculty negotiate with industry over restrictions on publication of graduate student and faculty research results, on faculty and graduate student involvement in start-up companies, and on faculty and graduate student ownership of intellectual property. (shrink)

Recently, we reported that melanoma risk in redheads is linked not only to pale skin, but also to the synthesis of the pigment – called pheomelanin – that gives red hair its color. We demonstrated that pheomelanin synthesis is associated with increased oxidative stress in the skin, yet we have not uncovered the chemical pathway between the molecule pheomelanin and the DNA damage that drives melanoma formation. Here, we hypothesize two possible pathways. On one hand, pheomelanin might generate reactive oxygen (...) species (ROS) that directly or indirectly cause oxidative DNA damage. On the other hand, pheomelanin synthesis might consume cellular antioxidant stores and make the cell nucleus more vulnerable to other endogenous ROS. Uncovering the mechanistic pathway between pheomelanin and oxidative DNA damage will be an important step in developing strategies to lower melanoma risk in redheads. (shrink)

Disturbances of consciousness, including fluctuations in attention and awareness, are a common and clinically important symptom in dementia with Lewy bodies. In the present study we investigate potential mechanisms of such disturbances of consciousness in a clinicopathological study evaluating specific components of the cholinergic system. [3H]Epibatidine binding to the high-affinity nicotinic receptor in the temporal cortex differentiated DLB cases with and without DOC, being 62–66% higher in those with DOC. The were no differences between DLB patients with or without DOC (...) in 125I-labeled α-bungaratoxin binding to the low-affinity nicotinic receptor, [3H]pirenzepine binding to the muscarinic M1 receptor, or in choline acetyltransferase activity. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that cholinergic activity is an important neural correlate if consciousness and suggest a mechanism of DOC in DLB involving alterations in the nicotinic receptor, composed of predominantly α4 and β2 subunits. (shrink)

The progression of research and scholarly inquiry does not occur in isolation and is wholly dependent on accurate reporting of methods and results, and successful replication of prior work. Without mechanisms to correct the literature, much time and money is wasted on research based on a crumbling foundation. These guidelines serve to outline the respective responsibilities of researchers, institutions, agencies, and publishers or editors in maintaining the integrity of the research record. Delineating these complementary roles and proposing solutions for common (...) barriers provide a foundation for best practices. (shrink)

Colonialism and Its Legacy brings together essays by leading scholars in both the fields of political theory and the history of political thought about European colonialism and its legacies, and postcolonial social and political theory. The essays explore the ways in which European colonial projects structured and shaped much of modern political theory, how concepts from political philosophy affected and were realized in colonial and imperial practice, and how we can understand the intellectual and social world left behind by a (...) half-millennium of European empires. (shrink)

This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

Warming temperatures in the circumpolar north have led to new discussions around climate-driven frontiers for agriculture. In this paper, we situate northern food systems in Canada within the corporate food regime and settler colonialism, and contend that an expansion of the conventional, industrial agriculture paradigm into the Canadian North would have significant socio-cultural and ecological consequences. We propose agroecology as an alternative framework uniquely accordant with northern contexts. In particular, we suggest that there are elements of agroecology that are already (...) being practiced in northern Indigenous communities as part of traditional hunter-gatherer food systems. We present a framework for agroecology in the North and discuss its components of environmental stewardship, economies, knowledge, social dimensions and governance using examples from the Dehcho region, Northwest Territories, Canada. Finally, we discuss several challenges and cautions in creating policy around agroecology in the North and encourage community-based research in developing and testing this framework moving forward. (shrink)

Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians is an invaluable resource to educators seeking to bring history alive for students at all levels. Filled with insightful reflections on teaching oral history, it offers practical suggestions for educators seeking to create curricula, engage students, gather community support, and meet educational standards. By the close of the book, readers will be able to successfully incorporate oral history projects in their own classrooms.

The purpose of the study was to develop an understanding of how nursing students gained perspective on nursing care of diverse populations through watching documentaries in a cultural diversity course. The basis of this paper is our analyses of students’ written responses and reactions to documentaries viewed in class. The guiding theoretical frameworks for the course content and the study included postcolonial feminism, Foucauldian thought, and cultural safety. Krathwohl's Taxonomy of the Affective Domain was used to identify themes and determine (...) how undergraduate nursing students were progressing in achieving learning outcomes. Our findings suggest that while the use of documentaries serves as a tool for deepening students’ understanding of the realities of various populations, this activity, in the absence of critical reflection, may inadvertently promote stereotypes and further marginalize different people groups. Even though nursing students reflected on the importance of cultural safety in nursing, our findings indicate that their actions may not reflect this, especially since these students are in the early stages of the nursing program. Students need to be provided with a space where they can explore implicit biases evoked by exposure to new information about different people groups as a way of enhancing culturally safe care. (shrink)

Background Studies describing physicians’ experiences with sedation at the end of life are indispensible for informed palliative care practice, but they are scarce. We describe the accounts of physicians from the USA and the Netherlands, two countries with different regulations on end-of-life decisions regarding their use of sedation.Methods Qualitative face-to-face interviews were held in 2007–2008 with 36 physicians , including primary care physicians and specialists. We applied purposive sampling and conducted constant comparative analyses.Results In both countries, the use of sedation (...) was described in diverse terms, especially in the USA, and was often experienced as emotionally challenging. Respondents stated different and sometimes multiple intentions for their use of sedation. Besides alleviating severe suffering, most Dutch respondents justified its use by stating that it does not hasten death, while most American respondents indicated that it might hasten death but that this was justifiable as long as that was not their primary intention. While many Dutch respondents indicated that they initiated open discussions about sedation proactively to inform patients about their options and to allow planning, the accounts of American respondents showed fewer and less-open discussions, mostly late in the dying process and with the patient's relatives.Conclusions The justification for sedation and the openness with which it is discussed were found to differ in the accounts of respondents from the USA and the Netherlands. Further clarification of practices and research into the effect and effectiveness of the use of sedation is recommended to enhance informed reflection and policy making. (shrink)

Two studies document that people are more willing to express emotions that reveal vulnerabilities to partners when they perceive those partners to be more communally responsive to them. In Study 1, participants rated the communal strength they thought various partners felt toward them and their own willingness to express happiness, sadness and anxiety to each partner. Individuals who generally perceive high communal strength from their partners were also generally most willing to express emotion to partners. Independently, participants were more willing (...) to express emotion to particular partners whom they perceived felt more communal strength toward them. In Study 2, members of romantic couples independently reported their own felt communal strength toward one another, perceptions of their partners’ felt communal strength toward them, and willingness to express emotions to each other. The communal strength partners reported feeling toward the participants predicted the participants’ willingness to express emotion to those partners. This link was mediated by participants’ perceptions of the partner’s communal strength toward them which, itself, was a joint function of accurate perceptions of the communal strength partners had reported feeling toward them and projections of their own felt communal strength for their partners onto those partners. (shrink)

Pets often factor in older adults’ health behaviors and decisions. However, the degree to which issues related to pet ownership are encountered or addressed by professionals working with this population remains unknown. The aim of this study was to identify specific issues stemming from pet ownership professionals had encountered in their work with older adults, people living with dementia, and care partners. An interdisciplinary sample completed an online survey addressing pet ownership issues encountered in their work. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and (...) repeated measures ANOVAs were used to analyze quantitative data. A conventional content analysis was used to analyze open-ended responses to an item asking about “other” issues encountered in their work with these populations. The professionals estimated 46.29% of clients had been pet owners, 41.23% regularly asked about pets, and 79.22% had encountered issues related to pet ownership. Specific issues raised to the professionals varied by type of client. The professionals reported older adults most often raised getting pet items into the home and concerns about their pets’ health. The issues most often raised by people living with dementia to the professionals were planning for the pet due to a housing transition and basic pet care. Care partners focused on basic pet care and planning for the pet due to a housing transition. The professionals themselves most often raised the issues of basic pet care, concerns about falling, and the pets’ behavior. Professionals who entered clients’ homes were more likely to raise issues stemming from pet ownership compared to those who reported they did not enter clients’ homes in their current job, t = 5.59, p < 0.00001. The eleven new issues identified by the content analysis underscored how the health and wellbeing of people and their pets are linked. The results of this study provide strong evidence that professionals do encounter issues related to pet ownership. Including issues stemming from pet ownership into procedures, policies, and programs is likely to have positive impacts on those served by and working in the geriatric workforce. (shrink)

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

ABSTRACT In this wide-ranging interview Professor Douglas V. Porpora discusses a number of issues. First, how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure. Second, drawing on his Reconstructing Sociology, his take on the current state of American sociology. This leads to discussion of the broader range of his work as part of Margaret Archer’s various Centre for Social Ontology projects, and on moral-macro reasoning and the concept of truth in political discourse.

A major oversight in Catholicism’s clergy abuse crisis is its failure to examine how assumptions about children and norms concerning adult-children interactions contributed to child sexual abuse and bishops’ systematic cover-up. An adequate response must include new practices based on a revised child-centered account of what constitutes justice for children. In this paper, I develop an account of justice drawing on four sources: 1) Margaret Farley’s account of justice; 2) research findings from my ethnographic study observing and interviewing Catholic (...) second graders about receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation; 3) the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies; and 4) the Catholic tradition. (shrink)

Chapter 15: "'What you do hurts all of us!' When women confront women through pro-life rhetoric." -/- In this chapter, I articulate a specific problem in the way the rhetoric and ideology of pro-life politics operates as a form of confrontation between women. This is a dilemma that emerges when women engage in the appearance of concern and solicitude while passively coercing other women as they may be ambivalent and vulnerable in forcing anti-abortion outcomes. This in a reinvestment in the (...) problem I raise in my prior work, The Pregnancy ≠ Childbearing Project: A Phenomenology of Miscarriage (2017), a dilemma that I think is essential to grapple with if not also to urgently reconcile: where is the solidarity among women as they are pregnant, independent of the outcomes or expectations of childbearing? Alongside of the testimony of my own personal experience, I analyze the substance of the confrontation narrated in Maisie Crow’s documentary Jackson (2016), juxtaposing it with the fictional hypothesis of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1998) to outline the character of harm in the confrontations between women through pro-life discourse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface In this issue, one cluster of articles presents scholarly and creative work focused on Latin American queer politics. Each article reveals queer challenges—theoretical, aesthetic, political, ideological, libidinal, corporeal—to prevailing logics of heteronormativity and neoliberalism, and to asymmetrical processes of knowledge production and circulation. Rafael de la Dehesa examines how political responses to AIDS in Brazil enabled surprising alliances between NGOs, activists, and the state, which produced radical social (...) change and, at times, engendered exclusion and vulnerability. Christine Keating and Amy Lind’s essay explores indigenous and transfeminist efforts to transform the Ecuadorian constitution, producing new conceptions of both state and family. Constanza Tabbush and Melina Gaona trace the rise and fall of a neighborhood organization in Argentina called Tupac Amaru, which provided a space of encounter for lesbian, non-gender normative, and marginalized women. In a review of recent work on Latin American sexualities, Juan Camilo Galeano Sánchez finds LGBT people across Latin America and the diaspora deploying “queer revolutionary gestures” as a form of resistance to social, political, and economic marginalization. María Amelia Viteri’s commentary examines the intellectual trajectories of a network of queer scholars from across the Americas. The art essay by Tara Daly engages Iquitos artist Christian Bendayán’s visual efforts to queer prevailing conceptions of the Amazon, and tatiana de la tierra’s* poems offer a deep celebration of female eroticism. * We have spelled tatiana de la tierra’s name in lower case in accordance with the wishes of her literary executors. 256Preface Another cluster of essays highlights reproductive rights and race in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Gabriela Arguedas Ramírez and Lynn M. Morgan study the tactics that right-wing, US-based organizations deploy against sexual and reproductive rights in Mexico and Central America. Jennifer L. Shoaff examines the Dominican cultural construction of the Haitian mother as “beggar-mother,” which shores up ideas of pathological black maternity. Ana-Maurine Lara’s article considers the gendered and sexual logics of anti-blackness, and anti-Haitianism, in the Dominican Republic. The provocation for our cluster on representations of queer identities and politics in Latin America came, broadly, from developments in Latin America in recent decades: the wave of LGBT organizing around issues from same-sex marriage to transgender rights, alongside the continued, if not escalated, violence against trans, travestis, and other queer people in countries throughout the region. More immediately, it came from a symposium on Latin American/Latin@ queer and sexuality studies, cosponsored by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS) and the Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), Amherst, in March 2013. Several of the papers published here were initially presented at that event and have been complemented and extended by other analytical essays and creative material on similar questions. Based on their familiarity with the debates, Sonia Alvarez, UMass CLACLS Director and professor of political science, and Amy Lind, head of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, offered invaluable input for this issue, and we thank them for their intellectual generosity and collaborative spirit. Three of the articles in the cluster take us inside the complex relations between queer movements and neoliberal institutions, illustrating the distinctive ways these dynamics play out in different national contexts and political configurations. In “NGOs, Governmentality, and the Brazilian Response to AIDS: A Multistranded Genealogy of the Current Crisis,” Rafael de la Dehesa argues that the AIDS crisis served as a “doorway to the state” for marginalized actors, such as sex workers and LGBT activists. These groups pushed for and won a national AIDS program that dramatically reduced rates of mortality and new infections in Brazil in the 1990s through universal access to treatment and a nonstigmatizing approach to prevention. Its success was based, in part, on World Bank Preface 257 loans and, in part, on a participatory model of public-private partnerships characteristic of neoliberal government. De la Dehesa argues that, “Far from encapsulating activism in a seamless web of biopolitical management... nodes of articulation between officials and activists became sites of conflict and productive tension.” However, while the alliances between NGOs... (shrink)

In this informative and important article, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby and her distinguished coauthors (2022) (hereafter referred to as BB) address the sensitive question of the place of philosophy i...

When education is jointly managed by a workplace and academia, causal mechanisms in the culture, structure and agency of these two contexts may unintentionally generate discourse that conveys conflicting messages for learners regarding some of the priorities of the profession. Using the concepts of culture, structure and agency as they are used in critical realism to analyse the discourse generated in two teaching and learning contexts (a radiography division in a university and a radiography workplace in a large state tertiary (...) academic hospital), this paper attempts (i) to identify possible causal mechanisms that generated discourse concerning the role and value of writing competency for radiographers, such that this discourse possibly influenced learners not to be motivated to improve their writing competency to their lecturers’ satisfaction; and (ii) to suggest what practices and influences might successfully generate an alternative emancipatory discourse. Drawing on Margaret Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach, the paper argues that the radiography lecturers have the primary agency to address this unsatisfactory situation, as it is through their interaction – both as a team and with other relevant stakeholders – that an alternative emancipatory discourse may be generated. (shrink)

This is the first collection dedicated to presenting research directly influenced by the innovative and groundbreaking ideas of the eminent linguist Ruqaiya Hasan. The collection offers an insight into the breadth and depth of Hasan's distinctive linguistic approaches and theoretical concerns. The chapters cover areas such as verbal art, context of situation, semantic networks, cohesive harmony, text structure and literacy education, contributed by well-known scholars in the field such as M.A.K. Halliday, Geoffrey Williams, David Butt, Donna Miller, Wendy L. Bowcher, (...) Tom Bartlett and Margaret Berry. The volume contains an interview with Ruqaiya Hasan by David Butt and Jennifer Yameng Liang, and a section in which the contributors describe their connection and/or history with Ruqaiya Hasan and her work. This book is of particular value to scholars and students working in sociolinguistics, literary criticism, stylistics, functional linguistic theories, literacy pedagogy, social semiotics, multimodality and applied linguistics. (shrink)

Volume 51, Issue 14, December 2019, Page 1541-1542.

Theories about what a mind is entail views about who (or what) has a mind and vice versa. This chapter reframes the classic problem of how the mind interacts with the body in terms of the question of mental attribution: Which bodies have minds? Critical social theorists’ descriptions of mental attribution associated with the bodies of women, Black people, colonized people, laborers, and others, reveals three metaphysical components of mental attribution that are respectively associated with experiences of immanence and non-being, (...) dehumanization, and objectification and hypermateriality: (1) the ratio component, (2) the comparison component, and (3) the constitution component. A theory’s approach to each of these components collectively forms its “attribution pattern.” Physicalist panpsychisms provide ready examples of attribution patterns that apply to the set of all bodies that exist. Russellian panpsychism illustrates a “selective” attribution pattern that attributes minds (or mentality) only to certain bodies, while Cavendishian panpsychism exhibits an “unrestricted” attribution pattern that attributes a mind to each and every body. These contrary views help to establish a taxonomy of mental attribution patterns that promises to inspire fresh theories of mind and liberatory configurations of the social. (shrink)