Live Reality Television: care structures within the production and reception of talent shows

This article focuses on production and reception practices for live reality television, using critical theory and empirical research to question how producers and audiences co-create and limit live experiences. The concept of care structures is used to make visible hidden labour in the creation of mood, in particular audiences as participants in the management of live experiences. In the case of Got to Dance there was a play off between the value and meaning of the live events as a temporary experience captured by ratings and social media, and the more enduring collective-social experience of this reality series over time

Progress and current trends in the synthesis of novel polymers with enhanced mucoadhesive properties

Mucoadhesion is defined as the adherence of a synthetic or natural polymer to a mucosal membrane via physical or chemical interactions. Mucoadhesive materials are widely used to develop dosage forms for transmucosal drug delivery via ocular, nasal, esophageal, oral, vaginal, rectal, and intravesical routes of administration. This review will discuss some of the most prominent and recent synthetic methodologies employed to modify polymeric materials in order to enhance their mucoadhesive properties. This includes chemical conjugation of polymers with molecules bearing thiol‐, catechol‐, boronate‐, acrylate‐, methacrylate‐, maleimide‐, and N‐hydroxy(sulfo)succinimide ester‐ groups

Automated reasoning on feature models

Software Product Line (SPL) Engineering has proved to be an effective method for software production. However, in the SPL community it is well recognized that variability in SPLs is increasing by the thousands. Hence, an automatic support is needed to deal with variability in SPL. Most of the current proposals for automatic reasoning on SPL are not devised to cope with extra– functional features. In this paper we introduce a proposal to model and reason on an SPL using constraint programming. We take into account functional and extra–functional features, improve current proposals and present a running, yet feasible implementation

Socially-marketed rapid diagnostic tests and ACT in the private sector: ten years of experience in Cambodia.

Whilst some populations have recently experienced dramatic declines in malaria, the majority of those most at risk of Plasmodium falciparum malaria still lack access to effective treatment with artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) and others are already facing parasites resistant to artemisinins.In this context, there is a crucial need to improve both access to and targeting of ACT through greater availability of good quality ACT and parasitological diagnosis. This is an issue of increasing urgency notably in the private commercial sector, which, in many countries, plays an important role in the provision of malaria treatment. The Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) is a recent initiative that aims to increase the provision of affordable ACT in public, private and NGO sectors through a manufacturer-level subsidy. However, to date, there is little documented experience in the programmatic implementation of subsidized ACT in the private sector. Cambodia is in the unique position of having more than 10 years of experience not only in implementing subsidized ACT, but also rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) as part of a nationwide social marketing programme. The programme includes behaviour change communication and the training of private providers as well as the sale and distribution of Malarine, the recommended ACT, and Malacheck, the RDT. This paper describes and evaluates this experience by drawing on the results of household and provider surveys conducted since the start of the programme. The available evidence suggests that providers' and consumers' awareness of Malarine increased rapidly, but that of Malacheck much less so. In addition, improvements in ACT and RDT availability and uptake were relatively slow, particularly in more remote areas.The lack of standardization in the survey methods and the gaps in the data highlight the importance of establishing a clear system for monitoring and evaluation for similar initiatives. Despite these limitations, a number of important lessons can still be learnt. These include the importance of a comprehensive communications strategy and of a sustained and reliable supply of products, with attention to the geographical reach of both. Other important challenges relate to the difficulty in incentivising providers and consumers not only to choose the recommended drug, but to precede this with a confirmatory blood test and ensure that providers adhere to the test results and patients to the treatment regime. In Cambodia, this is particularly complicated due to problems inherent to the drug itself and the emergence of artemisinin resistance

International Stem Cell Collaboration: How Disparate Policies between the United States and the United Kingdom Impact Research

As the scientific community globalizes, it is increasingly important to understand the effects of international collaboration on the quality and quantity of research produced. While it is generally assumed that international collaboration enhances the quality of research, this phenomenon is not well examined. Stem cell research is unique in that it is both politically charged and a research area that often generates international collaborations, making it an ideal case through which to examine international collaborations. Furthermore, with promising medical applications, the research area is dynamic and responsive to a globalizing science environment. Thus, studying international collaborations in stem cell research elucidates the role of existing international networks in promoting quality research, as well as the effects that disparate national policies might have on research. This study examined the impact of collaboration on publication significance in the United States and the United Kingdom, world leaders in stem cell research with disparate policies. We reviewed publications by US and UK authors from 2008, along with their citation rates and the political factors that may have contributed to the number of international collaborations. The data demonstrated that international collaborations significantly increased an article's impact for UK and US investigators. While this applied to UK authors whether they were corresponding or secondary, this effect was most significant for US authors who were corresponding authors. While the UK exhibited a higher proportion of international publications than the US, this difference was consistent with overall trends in international scientific collaboration. The findings suggested that national stem cell policy differences and regulatory mechanisms driving international stem cell research in the US and UK did not affect the frequency of international collaborations, or even the countries with which the US and UK most often collaborated. Geographical and traditional collaborative relationships were the predominate considerations in establishing international collaborations

Jean Briggs's Never in Anger as an Ethnography of Experience

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66542/2/10.1177_0308275X9301300406.pd

Interactions between growth-dependent changes in cell size, nutrient supply and cellular elemental stoichiometry of marine Synechococcus

The factors that control elemental ratios within phytoplankton, like carbon:nitrogen:phosphorus (C:N:P), are key to biogeochemical cycles. Previous studies have identified relationships between nutrient-limited growth and elemental ratios in large eukaryotes, but little is known about these interactions in small marine phytoplankton like the globally important Cyanobacteria. To improve our understanding of these interactions in picophytoplankton, we asked how cellular elemental stoichiometry varies as a function of steady-state, N- and P-limited growth in laboratory chemostat cultures of Synechococcus WH8102. By combining empirical data and theoretical modeling, we identified a previously unrecognized factor (growth-dependent variability in cell size) that controls the relationship between nutrient-limited growth and cellular elemental stoichiometry. To predict the cellular elemental stoichiometry of phytoplankton, previous theoretical models rely on the traditional Droop model, which purports that the acquisition of a single limiting nutrient suffices to explain the relationship between a cellular nutrient quota and growth rate. Our study, however, indicates that growth-dependent changes in cell size have an important role in regulating cell nutrient quotas. This key ingredient, along with nutrient-uptake protein regulation, enables our model to predict the cellular elemental stoichiometry of Synechococcus across a range of nutrient-limited conditions. Our analysis also adds to the growth rate hypothesis, suggesting that P-rich biomolecules other than nucleic acids are important drivers of stoichiometric variability in Synechococcus. Lastly, by comparing our data with field observations, our study has important ecological relevance as it provides a framework for understanding and predicting elemental ratios in ocean regions where small phytoplankton like Synechococcus dominates

Productivity in Electricity Retail after Market Liberalisation: Analysing the Effects of Ownership and Firm's Governance Structure

This paper, which is one of the first to estimate productivity in retail electricity for a European country after liberalisation, analyses the effect of ownership and governance structure by using a unique dataset of German electricity retailers from 2003 to 2012. An innovative service production function for the retail sector is derived with labour and external services as the main inputs. A structural model is used with a proxy function for productivity to overcome the endogeneity of input choice. Ownership is controlled for in the law of motion for productivity. The results of the dataset used to validate the model show that firm-level productivity did not increase after 2008 and that ownership had no effect on productivity. The results provide useful insights into the link between ownership and productivity in modern public enterprises after liberalisation