Between a rock and a hard place: corporate elites in the context of religion and secularism in Turkey

Drawing on discourse analyses of 36 in-depth interviews with elite business people from Turkey, the study identifies the networking patterns of new and established business elites in the context of economic liberalization and socioreligious transformation of the country. Through a comparative analysis of the so-called secular and religious elite networks, we demonstrate the role of institutional actors such as the government, and identity networks, based on religion and place of birth in shaping the form and content of social networks among business elites in Turkey. In order to achieve this, we operationalize Bourdieu's notion of theory of practice and Granovetter's theory of social networks, illustrating the utility of combining these approaches in explicating the form and content of social networks in their situated contexts, in which power and divergent interests are negotiated.Galatasaray University Research Fund [grant number 12.102.005]

Street-scale air quality modelling for Beijing during a winter 2016 measurement campaign

We examine the street-scale variation of NOx, NO2, O3 and PM2.5 concentrations in Beijing during the Atmospheric Pollution and Human Health in a Chinese Megacity (APHH-China) winter measurement campaign in November–December 2016. Simulations are performed using the urban air pollution dispersion and chemistry model ADMS-Urban and an explicit network of road source emissions. Two versions of the gridded Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC v1.3) are used: the standard MEIC v1.3 emissions and an optimised version, both at 3 km resolution. We construct a new traffic emissions inventory by apportioning the transport sector onto a detailed spatial road map. Agreement between mean simulated and measured pollutant concentrations from Beijing's air quality monitoring network and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) field site is improved when using the optimised emissions inventory. The inclusion of fast NOx–O3 chemistry and explicit traffic emissions enables the sharp concentration gradients adjacent to major roads to be resolved with the model. However, NO2 concentrations are overestimated close to roads, likely due to the assumption of uniform traffic activity across the study domain. Differences between measured and simulated diurnal NO2 cycles suggest that an additional evening NOx emission source, likely related to heavy-duty diesel trucks, is not fully accounted for in the emissions inventory. Overestimates in simulated early evening NO2 are reduced by delaying the formation of stable boundary layer conditions in the model to replicate Beijing's urban heat island. The simulated campaign period mean PM2.5 concentration range across the monitoring network (∼15 µg m−3) is much lower than the measured range (∼40 µg m−3). This is likely a consequence of insufficient PM2.5 emissions and spatial variability, neglect of explicit point sources, and assumption of a homogeneous background PM2.5 level. Sensitivity studies highlight that the use of explicit road source emissions, modified diurnal emission profiles, and inclusion of urban heat island effects permit closer agreement between simulated and measured NO2 concentrations. This work lays the foundations for future studies of human exposure to ambient air pollution across complex urban areas, with the APHH-China campaign measurements providing a valuable means of evaluating the impact of key processes on street-scale air quality

Changing youth? : continuities and ruptures in transitions into adulthood among Catalan young people

The globalisation process has an impact at the micro-level on life-course patterns: concretely, the trajectories of young people into adulthood are being sharply modified. At a European level, the extension, de-linearisation, reversibility and diversification of youth trajectories have been identified as major changes. However, the extent to which these changes affect young people within each country depends on their respective welfare regimes. This article analyses how the Mediterranean welfare regime shapes youth trajectories among Catalan young people and explores the hypothesis that these constraints will make those trajectories less sensitive to the general trends of change identified at a European level. The research is based on an analysis of the Catalan Youth Survey, an official statistic that contains retrospective data on Educational, Work, Housing and Family transitions. The results offer an integrated typology of youth transitions in Catalonia and show how the persistence of traditional patterns of transition are the logical result of the particular articulation of the welfare regime and cultural patterns among Catalan young people

Arduous implementation: Does the Normalisation Process Model explain why it's so difficult to embed decision support technologies for patients in routine clinical practice

Background: decision support technologies (DSTs, also known as decision aids) help patients and professionals take part in collaborative decision-making processes. Trials have shown favorable impacts on patient knowledge, satisfaction, decisional conflict and confidence. However, they have not become routinely embedded in health care settings. Few studies have approached this issue using a theoretical framework. We explained problems of implementing DSTs using the Normalization Process Model, a conceptual model that focuses attention on how complex interventions become routinely embedded in practice.Methods: the Normalization Process Model was used as the basis of conceptual analysis of the outcomes of previous primary research and reviews. Using a virtual working environment we applied the model and its main concepts to examine: the 'workability' of DSTs in professional-patient interactions; how DSTs affect knowledge relations between their users; how DSTs impact on users' skills and performance; and the impact of DSTs on the allocation of organizational resources.Results: conceptual analysis using the Normalization Process Model provided insight on implementation problems for DSTs in routine settings. Current research focuses mainly on the interactional workability of these technologies, but factors related to divisions of labor and health care, and the organizational contexts in which DSTs are used, are poorly described and understood.Conclusion: the model successfully provided a framework for helping to identify factors that promote and inhibit the implementation of DSTs in healthcare and gave us insights into factors influencing the introduction of new technologies into contexts where negotiations are characterized by asymmetries of power and knowledge. Future research and development on the deployment of DSTs needs to take a more holistic approach and give emphasis to the structural conditions and social norms in which these technologies are enacte

Creating the cultures of the future: cultural strategy, policy and institutions in Gramsci. Part two: Cultural strategy and institutions in Gramsci’s early writings and political practice

In this article, I consider Gramsci’s pre-prison writings and political practice in relation to questions of cultural strategy and institutions. I argue that the analysis of these early texts, which were written in the years in which Gramsci was active in party organisation and leadership, is fundamental not only for understanding the nature of Gramsci’s early and continued involvement with questions of cultural strategy and institutions, but also as a key for interpreting cultural policy themes that he later developed in the prison notebooks, and which originated in earlier debates

A modified fluorescent sensor for reporting glucose concentration in the airway lumen.

We have modified the periplasmic Escherichia coli glucose/galactose binding protein (GBP) and labelled with environmentally sensitive fluorophores to further explore its potential as a sensor for the evaluation of glucose concentration in airway surface liquid (ASL). We identified E149C/A213R GBP labelled with N,N'-Dimethyl-N-(iodoacetyl)-N'-(7-nitrobenz-2-oxa-1,3-diazol-4-yl)ethylenediamine (IANBD, emission wavelength maximum 536nm) with a Kd for D-glucose of 1.02mM and a fluorescence dynamic range of 5.8. This sensor was specific for D-glucose and exhibited fluorescence stability in experiments for several hours. The use of E149C/A213R GBP-IANBD in the ASL of airway cells grown at air-liquid-interface (ALI) detected an increase in glucose concentration 10 minutes after raising basolateral glucose from 5 to 15mM. This sensor also reported a greater change in ASL glucose concentration in response to increased basolateral glucose in H441 airway cells compared to human bronchial epithelial cells (HBEC) and there was less variability with HBEC data than that of H441 indicating that HBEC more effectively regulate glucose movement into the ASL. The sensor detected glucose in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALf) from diabetic db/db mice but not normoglycaemic wildtype mice, indicating limited sensitivity of the sensor at glucose concentrations <50μM. Using nasal inhalation of the sensor and spectral unmixing to generate images, E149C/A213R GBP-IANBD fluorescence was detected in luminal regions of cryosections of the murine distal lung that was greater in db/db than wildtype mice. In conclusion, this sensor provides a useful tool for further development to measure luminal glucose concentration in models of lung/airway to explore how this may change in disease

Entrepreneurial sons, patriarchy and the Colonels' experiment in Thessaly, rural Greece

Existing studies within the field of institutional entrepreneurship explore how entrepreneurs influence change in economic institutions. This paper turns the attention of scholarly inquiry on the antecedents of deinstitutionalization and more specifically, the influence of entrepreneurship in shaping social institutions such as patriarchy. The paper draws from the findings of ethnographic work in two Greek lowland village communities during the military Dictatorship (1967–1974). Paradoxically this era associated with the spread of mechanization, cheap credit, revaluation of labour and clear means-ends relations, signalled entrepreneurial sons’ individuated dissent and activism who were now able to question the Patriarch’s authority, recognize opportunities and act as unintentional agents of deinstitutionalization. A ‘different’ model of institutional change is presented here, where politics intersects with entrepreneurs, in changing social institutions. This model discusses the external drivers of institutional atrophy and how handling dissensus (and its varieties over historical time) is instrumental in enabling institutional entrepreneurship

Meta-Analysis of the Association between Transforming Growth Factor-Beta Polymorphisms and Complications of Coronary Heart Disease

Objective: To investigate the association between common transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and significant complications of coronary heart disease (CHD).\ud \ud Method: We performed a meta-analysis of published case-control studies assessing the association of TGF-β SNPs with a range of CHD complications. A random effects model was used to calculate odds ratios and confidence intervals. Analyses were conducted for additive, dominant and recessive modes of inheritance.\ud \ud Results: Six studies involving 5535 cases and 2970 controls examining the association of common SNPs in TGF-β1 with CHD were identified. Applying a dominant model of inheritance, three TGF-β1 SNPs were significantly associated with CHD complications: The T alleles of rs1800469 (OR = 1.125, 95% CI 1.016–1.247, p = 0.031) and rs1800470 (OR = 1.146, 95% CI 1.026–1.279, p = 0.021); and the C allele of rs1800471 (OR = 1.207, 95% CI 1.037–1.406, p = 0.021).\ud \ud Conclusion: This meta-analysis suggests that common genetic polymorphisms in TGF-β1 are associated with complications of CHD