Iscador Qu inhibits doxorubicin-induced senescence of MCF7 cells

Chemotherapy in patients with inoperable or advanced breast cancer inevitably results in low-dose exposure of tumor-cell subset and senescence. Metabolically active senescent cells secrete multiple tumor promoting factors making their elimination a therapeutic priority. Viscum album is one of the most widely used alternative anti-cancer medicines facilitating chemotherapy tolerance of breast cancer patients. The aim of this study was to model and investigate how Viscum album extracts execute additive anti-tumor activity with low-dose Dox using ER + MCF7 breast cancer cells. We report that cotreatment of MCF7 with Viscum album and Dox abrogates G2/M cycle arrest replacing senescence with intrinsic apoptotic program. Mechanistically, this switch was associated with down-regulation of p21, p53/p73 as well as Erk1/2 and p38 activation. Our findings, therefore, identify a novel mechanistic axis of additive antitumor activity of Viscum album and low dose-Dox. In conclusion, ER + breast cancer patients may benefit from addition of Viscum album to low-dose Dox chemotherapy due to suppression of cancer cell senescence and induction of apoptosis

Discourses of Collective Spirituality and Turkish Islamic Ethics:An Inquiry into Transcendence, Connectedness, and Virtuousness in Anatolian Tigers

Based on case studies and qualitative interviews conducted with 40 stakeholders in five SMEs, or so called Anatolian tigers, in Turkey, this article has explored what collective spirituality and Turkish Islamic business ethics entail and how they shape organizational values using diverse stakeholder perspectives. The study has revealed six emergent discourses around collective spirituality and Islamic business ethics: Flying with both wings; striving to transcend egos; being devoted to each other; treating people as whole persons; upholding an ethics of compassion; and leaving a legacy for future generations. These discourses are organized around three themes of collective spirituality, respectively: Transcendence, connectedness, and virtuousness

Networks relations and local economic development: some causes of differentiated network structures and intensities amoung Turkish industrial firms

The regional-growth literature emphasises the importance of positive network externalities as determinants of the long-run competitiveness of region, highlighting their role in reducing spatial transaction costs and facilitating collective learning and innovation. In this paper we contribute to this literature by presenting new evidence from a firm-based survey within three Turkish industrial centres about the causes of differentiated network activity. Using multivariate analysis, we show that locational rather than sectoral differences explain local-linkage intensities, but this is not the case for global links. Second, there is an important relationship between firm size and local-linkage and global-linkage densities; the density of local networks decreases with increasing firm size, whereas the density of global networks increases with firm size. Third, there is a positive relation between global-network density and firm productivity. We argue that the comparative and quantitative analysis we employ is a useful adjunct to case-study analysis, which could help avoid misconceptions and lead to a more realistic theory

Wearing class: A study on clothes, bodies and emotions in Turkey

This article examines how cultural capital shapes the ways Turkish women, both religiously covered and not covered, experience their presented self' in social interactions. The analysis draws on 44 in-depth interviews conducted as part of a larger project on embodiment of class in Turkey, using the parts where the interviewees reflect on the repercussions of different clothing and adornment tastes. It approaches clothing as an embodied practice and uses the conceptual tools Bourdieu offers to analyse the link between women's appearance-driven experiences and wider class-cultural processes. Consistent with its theoretical framework, it examines the experiencing of tastes by analysing women's emotions. The analysis demonstrates that, regardless of the volumes of capital they hold, the majority of the sample presume that the dressed body' does have value and enhances or limits opportunities, suggesting the relevance of the term capital' to refer to such embodied competence, as Bourdieu did. Moreover, some of the emotional responses are found to be more common among culturally cultivated interviewees of both Islamic-leaning and secular fractions while others only appear among those having limited access to cultural and economic resources. Interview excerpts show that the aesthetic categorisations made by the culturally advantaged, regardless of their religious orientation, are internalised by those who suffer from such hierarchies most, highlighting the role of class culture-driven symbolic violence in maintaining inequalities. The material is then contextualised within the class dynamics in Turkey, where self-fashioning has remained a value-laden domain since the beginning of the country's top-to-bottom modernisation. Focusing on how tastes are lived in the everyday, this article reveals the subtle processes that manifest and reproduce class privileges and calls for an emphasis on the repercussions of embodying particular tastes, which could enhance our understanding of taste, power and cultural exclusion more directly than interrogations of the correlations between taste and class position

Conceptualising Corporate Social Responsibility: 'Relational Governance' Assessed, Augmented, and Adapted

Academic interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be traced back to the 1930s. Since then an impressive body of empirical data and theory-building has been amassed, mainly located in the fields of management studies and business ethics. One of the most noteworthy recent conceptual contributions to the scholarship is Midttun's (Corporate Governance 5(3):159-174, 2005) CSR-oriented embedded relational model of societal governance. It re-conceptualises the relationships between the state, business, and civil society. Other scholars (In Albareda et al. Corporate Governance 6(4):386-400, 2006; Business Ethics: A European Review 17(4):347-363, 2008; Lozano et al., Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility, 2008) have recently successfully used the model as the basis for their analytical framework for researching CSR activities in a large number of western European countries. While this research offers valuable insights into how CSR is operationalised, it also suffers from a number of significant limitations. To develop a stronger analytical framework with which to explore CSR, this article draws more deeply on political science literature concerned with governance and public policy analysis. This represents the main purpose of this article. In addition, this article also addresses a second and more modest aim: to reflect on the ways in which relational governance-inspired frameworks could be adapted and applied to politico-economic systems where state-industry-third sector relations differ from those found in North America and Western Europe. Both lines of argument are illustrated using vignettes from a case study of the Evenkia Hydro-Electric Station building project in the Russian Federation

Using xanthated Lagenaria vulgaris shell biosorbent for removal of Pb(II) ions from wastewater

Chemically modified Lagenaria vulgaris shell was applied as a new sorbent for the removal of lead (II) ions from aqueous solution in a batch process mode. The influence of contact time, initial concentration of lead (II) ions, initial pH value, biosorbent dosage, particle size and stirring speed on the removal efficiency was evaluated. Biosorbent characterization was performed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Four kinetic models (pseudo-first order, pseudo-second order, Elovich model and Intraparticle diffusion model) were used to determine the kinetic parameters. The experimental results were fitted to the Langmuir, Freundlich, Dubinin–Radushkevich and Temkin models of isotherm. Pseudo-second order kinetic model and Langmuir isotherm model best fitted the experimental data. Sorption process is obtained to be fast and equilibrium was attained within 40 min of contact time. The maximum sorption capacity was 33.21 mg g−1. Biosorption was highly pH-dependent where optimum pH was found to be 5. The results of FTIR and SEM analysis showed the presence of new sulfur functional groups. This study indicated that xanthated Lagenaria vulgaris shell could be used as an effective and low-cost biosorbent for the removal of lead (II) ions from aqueous solution