Modelling the impact of women’s education on fertility in Malawi

Many studies have suggested that there is an inverse relationship between education and number of children among women from sub-Saharan Africa countries, including Malawi. However, a crucial limitation of these analyses is that they do not control for the potential endogeneity of education. The aim of our study is to estimate the role of women’s education on their number of children in Malawi, accounting for the possible presence of endogeneity and for nonlinear effects of continuous observed confounders. Our analysis is based on micro data from the 2010 Malawi Demographic Health Survey, and uses a flexible instrumental variable regression approach. The results suggest that the relationship of interest is affected by endogeneity and exhibits an inverted U-shape among women living in rural areas of Malawi, whereas it exhibits an inverse (nonlinear) relationship for women living in urban areas

Myosin Light Chain Phosphorylation Is Critical for Adaptation to Cardiac Stress

Cardiac hypertrophy is a common response to circulatory or neurohumoral stressors as a mechanism to augment contractility. When the heart is under sustained stress, the hypertrophic response can evolve into decompensated heart failure, although the mechanism(s) underlying this transition remain largely unknown. Because phosphorylation of cardiac myosin light chain 2 (MLC2v), bound to myosin at the head-rod junction, facilitates actin-myosin interactions and enhances contractility, we hypothesized that phosphorylation of MLC2v plays a role in adaptation of the heart to stress. We previously identified an enzyme that predominantly phosphorylates MLC2v in cardiomyocytes, cardiac-MLCK (cMLCK); yet the role(s) played by cMLCK in regulating cardiac function in health and disease remain to be determined

Remembering Africanization: two conversations among elderly science workers about the perpetually promissory

Abstract The ‘Africanization’ of science after decolonization was replete with dreams. Claims to Africa's place in the high-modern world, expectations of national technological and economic progress, and individual dreams of scientific discovery, professional development and fulfilled careers drove scientific work and lives. The term Africanization, coined by the colonizers, reproduced colonial notions of race but also stimulated the imagination of mid-twentieth-century African scientists, who hotly debated and enthusiastically embraced it. Half a century later, some dreams have failed, but many more remain unfulfilled. This article examines two reunions of Tanzanian and European science workers – in Amani in 2015 and in Cambridge in 2013 – who had worked together in the decades after Tanzania's independence at Amani Hill Research Station, then one of Africa's foremost laboratories for research on malaria and other tropical diseases. It explores ideas of good science and experiences of social differentiation, divergent dreams and persistent tensions – and the role of joking in remembering these

Myosin Light Chain Phosphorylation Is Critical for Adaptation to Cardiac Stress

BACKGROUND: Cardiac hypertrophy is a common response to circulatory or neurohumoral stressors as a mechanism to augment contractility. When the heart is under sustained stress, the hypertrophic response can evolve into decompensated heart failure, although the mechanism(s) underlying this transition remain largely unknown. Because phosphorylation of cardiac myosin light chain 2 (MLC2v), bound to myosin at the head-rod junction, facilitates actin-myosin interactions and enhances contractility, we hypothesized that phosphorylation of MLC2v plays a role in adaptation of the heart to stress. We previously identified an enzyme that predominantly phosphorylates MLC2v in cardiomyocytes, cardiac-MLCK (cMLCK); yet the role(s) played by cMLCK in regulating cardiac function in health and disease remain to be determined. METHODS AND RESULTS: We found that pressure-overload induced by transaortic constriction in wildtype mice reduced phosphorylated-MLC2v levels by ~40% and cMLCK levels by ~85%. To examine how a reduction in cMLCK and the corresponding reduction in pMLC2v affect function, we generated Mylk3 gene-targeted mice as well as transgenic mice overexpressing cMLCK specifically in cardiomyocytes. Pressure-overload led to severe heart failure in cMLCK knockout mice, but not in mice with cMLCK overexpression in which cMLCK protein synthesis exceeded degradation. The reduction in cMLCK protein during pressure-overload was attenuated by inhibition of ubiquitin-proteasome protein degradation systems. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest the novel idea that accelerated cMLCK-protein turnover by the ubiquitin-proteasome system underlie the transition from compensated hypertrophy to decompensated heart failure due to reduced phosphorylation of MLC2v

Unpacking Empowerment in ICT4D Research

Information and communication technology is said to provide paths to empowerment, yet the current ICT4D literature weakly conceptualises how this occurs. This article questions the conceptual alignment between the empowerment concept and the actual empowerment outcome attained through technology. We use Alsop and Heinsohn’s measuring empowerment framework and Zimmerman’s individual empowerment framework to analyse the missing links between empowerment and technology within current ICT4D research. We argue that research on empowerment in ICT4D needs to (1) be more specific about what type of empowerment takes place; (2) take into account both agency level changes and socio-institutional structures, (3) consider the dual effect of both empowerment and disempowerment