Cartographies of Power: Unequal Urban Development and the Racialization of Space in São Paulo

This work aims first and foremost to add to the literature on urban politics and race in Brazil. Where other scholars have not so explicitly addressed the ever present ideology of whiteness in regards to spatial organization and displacement in Brazil, this piece aims to do so. I build off of the work of past scholars in reinforcing that the belief in the racial democracy of Brazil is in fact a myth. I do so by illustrating the processes of the racialization of space that occur in São Paulo’s favelas and their development. The right to the city —a Brazilian federal statute, —insecure land and housing rights and its consequences, as well as an analysis of the São Paulo transit system and bus fares will help me to explore how racial politics affect urban space in Brazil, specifically in the favelas of São Paulo. These three objects will then be analyzed through a critical space and race studies approach that will enable the reader to link the two concepts, thus operationalizing the racialization of space. This will prove that legacies of mestiçagem, the whitening of Brazilian society, informs whiteness manifested in the unequal urban development that spans the nation. This unequal development is evident in the creation and maintenance of São Paulo’s favelas as racialized spaces with unequal access to opportunity and infrastructure

Women Farmers and E-Commerce Opportunities for 21st Century Marketing

Adding the Internet to your Business Recipe: Opportunity for Marketing in the 21st Century. In the fall of 2006, the Center for Rural Studies (CRS) and Women’s Agricultural Network (WAgN) piloted a curriculum for agricultural entrepreneurs interested in incorporating e-commerce features – e.g. email lists, Web sites, online marketing, online ordering – into their operations. This broad definition of e-commerce reflects the integration of information technology and the Internet into business and marketing planning. The workshops were held from 2006 to 2009. Each of the cycles provided insight into how to make future sessions more beneficial to participants. Offering the course even once/year during a period of rapid change in the available technology guaranteed that significant adjustments had to be made to the content each session. This working paper addresses why we took on this challenge, why women farmers became the target audience, how the course was structured, and an overview of the results of the classes to date. Also included are lessons learned from the experience and next steps

Catastrophizing, rumination, and reappraisal prospectively predict adolescent PTSD symptom onset following a terrorist attack: Jenness et al.

Disruptions in emotion regulation are a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. However, scant research has examined whether emotion regulation strategies are related to the onset of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among youths exposed to trauma. We investigated whether pretrauma emotion regulation strategies prospectively predicted PTSD symptom onset after the 2013 Boston Marathon terrorist attack among adolescents and whether these associations were moderated by the degree of exposure to media coverage of the attack

The prevalence of potentially modifiable functional deficits and the subsequent use of occupational and physical therapy by older adults with cancer

Occupational and physical therapy (OT/PT) services seek to reduce morbidity, mortality, and improve the quality of life of individuals; however, little is known about the needs and use of OT/PT for older adults with cancer. The goal of this study was to describe the functional deficits and their associations with other factors, and to examine the use of OT/PT after a noted functional deficit

Isolation of the Bacteriophage DinoHI from Dichelobacter nodosus and its Interactions with other Integrated Genetic Elements

The Gram-negative anaerobic pathogen Dichelobacter nodosus carries several genetic elements that integrate into the chromosome. These include the intA, intB, intC and intD elements, which integrate adjacent to csrA and pnpA, two putative global regulators of virulence and the virulence-related locus, vrl, which integrates into ssrA. Treatment of D. nodosus strains with ultraviolet light resulted in the isolation of DinoHI, a member of the Siphoviridae and the first bacteriophage to be identified in D. nodosus. Part of the DinoHI genome containing the packaging site is found in all D. nodosus strains tested and is located at the end of the vrl, suggesting a role for DinoHI in the transfer of the vrl by transduction. Like the intB element, the DinoHI genome contains a copy of regA which has similarity to the repressors of lambdoid bacteriophages, suggesting that the maintenance of DinoHI and the intB element may be co-ordinately controlled

Quality of Life Changes during the Pre- to Post-Diagnosis Period and Treatment-Related Recovery Time in Older Women with Breast Cancer

Healthcare providers have little population-based evidence about health-related quality of life (HRQOL) changes, from the pre- to post-diagnosis period, and treatment-related recovery time for women ages 65 and older diagnosed with breast cancer

Results from the centers for disease control and prevention's predict the 2013-2014 Influenza Season Challenge

Background: Early insights into the timing of the start, peak, and intensity of the influenza season could be useful in planning influenza prevention and control activities. To encourage development and innovation in influenza forecasting, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) organized a challenge to predict the 2013-14 Unites States influenza season. Methods: Challenge contestants were asked to forecast the start, peak, and intensity of the 2013-2014 influenza season at the national level and at any or all Health and Human Services (HHS) region level(s). The challenge ran from December 1, 2013-March 27, 2014; contestants were required to submit 9 biweekly forecasts at the national level to be eligible. The selection of the winner was based on expert evaluation of the methodology used to make the prediction and the accuracy of the prediction as judged against the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet). Results: Nine teams submitted 13 forecasts for all required milestones. The first forecast was due on December 2, 2013; 3/13 forecasts received correctly predicted the start of the influenza season within one week, 1/13 predicted the peak within 1 week, 3/13 predicted the peak ILINet percentage within 1 %, and 4/13 predicted the season duration within 1 week. For the prediction due on December 19, 2013, the number of forecasts that correctly forecasted the peak week increased to 2/13, the peak percentage to 6/13, and the duration of the season to 6/13. As the season progressed, the forecasts became more stable and were closer to the season milestones. Conclusion: Forecasting has become technically feasible, but further efforts are needed to improve forecast accuracy so that policy makers can reliably use these predictions. CDC and challenge contestants plan to build upon the methods developed during this contest to improve the accuracy of influenza forecasts. © 2016 The Author(s)

The Democratic Biopolitics of PrEP

PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is a relatively new drug-based HIV prevention technique and an important means to lower the HIV risk of gay men who are especially vulnerable to HIV. From the perspective of biopolitics, PrEP inscribes itself in a larger trend of medicalization and the rise of pharmapower. This article reconstructs and evaluates contemporary literature on biopolitical theory as it applies to PrEP, by bringing it in a dialogue with a mapping of the political debate on PrEP. As PrEP changes sexual norms and subjectification, for example condom use and its meaning for gay subjectivity, it is highly contested. The article shows that the debate on PrEP can be best described with the concepts ‘sexual-somatic ethics’ and ‘democratic biopolitics’, which I develop based on the biopolitical approach of Nikolas Rose and Paul Rabinow. In contrast, interpretations of PrEP which are following governmentality studies or Italian Theory amount to either farfetched or trivial positions on PrEP, when seen in light of the political debate. Furthermore, the article is a contribution to the scholarship on gay subjectivity, highlighting how homophobia and homonormativity haunts gay sex even in liberal environments, and how PrEP can serve as an entry point for the destigmatization of gay sexuality and transformation of gay subjectivity. ‘Biopolitical democratization’ entails making explicit how medical technology and health care relates to sexual subjectification and ethics, to strengthen the voice of (potential) PrEP users in health politics, and to renegotiate the profit and power of Big Pharma

Rapid appearance and local toxicity of amyloid-beta plaques in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

Senile plaques accumulate over the course of decades in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. A fundamental tenet of the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease is that the deposition of amyloid-β precedes and induces the neuronal abnormalities that underlie dementia(1). This idea has been challenged, however, by the suggestion that alterations in axonal trafficking and morphological abnormalities precede and lead to senile plaques(2). The role of microglia in accelerating or retarding these processes has been uncertain. To investigate the temporal relation between plaque formation and the changes in local neuritic architecture, we used longitudinal in vivo multiphoton microscopy to sequentially image young APPswe/PS1d9xYFP (B6C3-YFP) transgenic mice(3). Here we show that plaques form extraordinarily quickly, over 24 h. Within 1–2 days of a new plaque’s appearance, microglia are activated and recruited to the site. Progressive neuritic changes ensue, leading to increasingly dysmorphic neurites over the next days to weeks. These data establish plaques as a critical mediator of neuritic pathology

Cardiopulmonary Function and Age-Related Decline Across the Breast Cancer Survivorship Continuum

To evaluate cardiopulmonary function (as measured by peak oxygen consumption [VO2peak]) across the breast cancer continuum and its prognostic significance in women with metastatic disease