Women's leadership in the Asian Century: does expansion mean inclusion?

This paper draws on British Council commissioned research in response to concerns about women's absence from senior leadership positions in higher education in South Asia. The study sought existing knowledge from literature, policies, and available statistics and collected original interview data from 30 academics in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. A central finding was that gender is not a category of analysis in higher education policy, research or statistical data in the region. Our interview data suggest that leadership was frequently not an object of desire for women. Being associated with particular types of masculinities, leadership often carried a heavy affective load for those women who transgressed patriarchal socio-cultural norms and disrupted the symbolic order of women being led by men. Leadership was frequently perceived and experienced by women in terms of navigating a range of ugly feelings and toxicities that depleted aspirations, well-being and opportunities

Stem Cells Commitment on Graphene-Based Scaffolds

none8siIn the last years, a rapid development in production, and functionalization of graphene give rise to several products that have shown great potentials in many fields, such as nanoelectronics, energy technology, sensors, and catalysis. In this context we should not forget the biomedical application of graphene that became a new area with outstanding potential. The first study on graphene for biomedical applications has been performed by Dai in 2008 that reported the use of graphene oxide as an efficient nanocarrier for drug delivery. This pioneristic study opened the doors for the use of graphene in widespread biomedical applications such as drug/gene delivery, biological sensing and imaging, antibacterial materials, but also as biocompatible scaffold for cell culture and tissue engineering. The application of graphene-based scaffolds for tissue engineering applications is confirmed by the many exciting and intriguing literature reports over the last few years, that clearly confirm that graphene and its related substrates are excellent platforms for adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation of various cells such as human Mesenchymal stem cells, human neuronal stem cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells. Since most of the papers on this fields are related to in vitro studies, several future in vivo investigations need to be conducted in order to lead to its utilization as implantable tissue engineering material.mixedBuggio, Maurizio; Tatullo, Marco; Sivolella, Stefano; Gardin, Chiara; Ferroni, Letizia; Mijiritsky, Eitan; Piattelli, Adriano; Zavan, BarbaraBuggio, Maurizio; Tatullo, Marco; Sivolella, Stefano; Gardin, Chiara; Ferroni, Letizia; Mijiritsky, Eitan; Piattelli, Adriano; Zavan, Barbar