Overcoming the collective action problems facing Chinese workers: lessons from four protests against Walmart

In contrast to various structural accounts of collective inaction or short-lived contention of Chinese workers, the authors take an agency-centered approach to explain how the few sustained labor protests during closure bargaining develop against long odds. They suggest that workers’ capacity to resolve collective action problems is essential to understanding why a few contending workers are able to sustain protests whereas many others fail to do so. They argue that workplace representatives and external labor activists are crucial for helping Chinese workers resolve the collective action problems that prevent the formation of sustained labor protests. Their comparative analysis of four protests against Walmart store closures—including one unusually long, one relatively sustained, and two short-lived—shows how presence and strategic capacity of workplace representatives and external labor activists shape protest duration. The authors conclude by discussing lessons learned from these cases of closure bargaining for future development of labor contention in China

From insurgency to movement: an embryonic labor movement undermining hegemony in South China

This article provides a new analysis of Chinese labor politics. Most scholars suggest that China has no labor movement because Chinese labor protests are apolitical, cellular, and short-lived, and thus inconsistent with the properties of social movements identified in the political process model. By contrast, the author draws on Antonio Gramsci’s ideas regarding movements undermining hegemony and on ethnographic and archival research to demonstrate that the activities of movement-oriented labor nongovernmental organizations (MLNGOs) coupled with associated labor protests since 2011 constitute the embryo of a counterhegemonic labor movement. MLNGOs have reworked the hegemonic labor law system to undermine the regime’s legal fragmentation of workers, nurtured worker leaders who speak for and represent migrant workers to temporarily substitute for impotent workplace unions, and developed alternative organizational networks of labor organizing that challenged the union’s monopoly. This incipient counterhegemonic movement persisted several years after state repression in late 2015 but was curtailed by another wave of repression in January 2019. The very severity of state repression suggests that a movement countering hegemony has been formed

Support Vector Machine Algorithm for Real-Time Detection of VF Signals

AbstractAn algorithm for detecting ventricular fibrillation (VF) by the method of support vector machine is presented. The algorithm first extracts the feature of electrocardiogram in every 4s sliding window by the improved time delay method and the parameter d is obtained as feature; the support vector machine method is used to realize the discrimination of VF and non-VF signals. For evaluating the new algorithm, the complete BIH-MIT arrhythmia database and the CU database were used to simulate without any pre-selection. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictability and accuracy were calculated and compared these values with results from an earlier investigation of several different ventricular fibrillation detection algorithms. It shows that the new algorithm has good performance and has greater advantages in real-time execution

Treatment of berberine alleviates diabetic nephropathy by reducing iron overload and inhibiting oxidative stress

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) has become one of the major fatal factors in diabetic patients. The aim of this study was to elucidate the function and mechanism by which berberine exerts renoprotective effects in DN. In this work, we first demonstrated that urinary iron concentration, serum ferritin and hepcidin levels were increased and total antioxidant capacity was significantly decreased in DN rats, while these changes could be partially reversed by berberine treatment. Berberine treatment also alleviated DN-induced changes in the expression of proteins involved in iron transport or iron uptake. In addition, berberine treatment also partially blocked the expression of renal fibrosis markers induced by DN, including MMP2, MMP9, TIMP3, β-arrestin-1, and TGF-β1. In conclusion, the results of this study suggest that berberine may exert renoprotective effects by ameliorating iron overload and oxidative stress and reducing D

Field opacity and practice-outcome decoupling: private regulation of labor standards in global supply chains

Although firms in diverse industries increasingly adopt private regulation of labor standards for workers in their global supply chains, growing scholarly evidence suggests that this approach has not generated sustainable improvements in working conditions for those workers. The authors draw on recent developments in institutional theory regarding the development of opaque institutional fields that cause the decoupling between practices and outcomes to develop a new explanation for the lack of sustainable improvement in labor practices in supply chains. Using qualitative and quantitative data from a global apparel supplier and a global home products retailer, they demonstrate the various ways in which opacity causes decoupling between private regulation practices of global firms and outcomes for workers in supply chains

Mutation screening of the SLC26A4 gene in a cohort of 192 Chinese patients with congenital hypothyroidism

ABSTRACT Objective: Pendred syndrome (PS) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterised by sensorineural hearing loss and thyroid dyshormonogenesis. It is caused by biallelic mutations in the SLC26A4 gene encoding for pendrin. Hypothyroidism in PS can be present from birth and therefore diagnosed by neonatal screening. The aim of this study was to examine the SLC26A4 mutation spectrum and prevalence among congenital hypothyroidism (CH) patients in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China and to establish how frequently PS causes hearing impairment in our patients with CH. Subjects and methods: Blood samples were collected from 192 CH patients in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, and genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leukocytes. All exons of the SLC26A4 gene together with their exon-intron boundaries were screened by nextgeneration sequencing. Patients with SLC26A4 mutations underwent a complete audiological evaluation including otoscopic examination, audiometry and morphological evaluation of the inner ear. Results: Next generation sequencing analysis of SLC26A4 in 192 CH patients revealed five different heterozygous variations in eight individuals (8/192, 4%). The prevalence of SLC26A4 mutations was 4% among studied Chinese CH. Three of the eight were diagnosed as enlargement of the vestibular aqueduct (EVA), no PS were found in our 192 CH patients. The mutations included one novel missense variant p.P469S, as well as four known missense variants, namely p.V233L, p.M147I, p.V609G and p.D661E. Of the eight patients identified with SLC26A4 variations in our study, seven patients showed normal size/location of thyroid gland, and one patients showed a decreased size one. Conclusions: The prevalence of SLC26A4 pathogenic variants was 4% among studied Chinese patients with CH. Our study expanded the SLC26A4 mutation spectrum, provided the best estimation of SLC26A4 mutation rate for Chinese CH patients and indicated the rarity of PS as a cause of CH. Arch Endocrinol Metab. 2016;60(4):323-

Current state of Fusarium wilt of banana in the subtropics

The original publication is available at https://www.actahort.org/books/1272/1272_7.ht

Mutation screening of the SLC26A4 gene in a cohort of 192 Chinese patients with congenital hypothyroidism

ABSTRACT Objective: Pendred syndrome (PS) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterised by sensorineural hearing loss and thyroid dyshormonogenesis. It is caused by biallelic mutations in the SLC26A4 gene encoding for pendrin. Hypothyroidism in PS can be present from birth and therefore diagnosed by neonatal screening. The aim of this study was to examine the SLC26A4 mutation spectrum and prevalence among congenital hypothyroidism (CH) patients in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China and to establish how frequently PS causes hearing impairment in our patients with CH. Subjects and methods: Blood samples were collected from 192 CH patients in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, and genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leukocytes. All exons of the SLC26A4 gene together with their exon-intron boundaries were screened by next-generation sequencing. Patients with SLC26A4 mutations underwent a complete audiological evaluation including otoscopic examination, audiometry and morphological evaluation of the inner ear. Results: Next generation sequencing analysis of SLC26A4 in 192 CH patients revealed five different heterozygous variations in eight individuals (8/192, 4%). The prevalence of SLC26A4 mutations was 4% among studied Chinese CH. Three of the eight were diagnosed as enlargement of the vestibular aqueduct (EVA), no PS were found in our 192 CH patients. The mutations included one novel missense variant p.P469S, as well as four known missense variants, namely p.V233L, p.M147I, p.V609G and p.D661E. Of the eight patients identified with SLC26A4 variations in our study, seven patients showed normal size/location of thyroid gland, and one patients showed a decreased size one. Conclusions: The prevalence of SLC26A4 pathogenic variants was 4% among studied Chinese patients with CH. Our study expanded the SLC26A4 mutation spectrum, provided the best estimation of SLC26A4 mutation rate for Chinese CH patients and indicated the rarity of PS as a cause of CH