Fourier and Agriculture

Charles Fourier has been disdained or ignored by social scientists. Some of his ideas were “mad,” but so many others were brilliant. Now we can see that even some “mad” ideas were simply premature, for example, global warming. His works are a “whole earth catalog” of solutions to today's most intractable problems, such as agricultural labor in a democracy, environmental degradation, consumerism, loneliness, the decline of the family, the gradual disappearance of nutritious meals (and shared mealtimes), eldercare, boredom at work, unemployment, and the fragmentation of communities by “identity” politics. In 19th-century United States, Fourierist and Owenite communitarian models for settling the country were taken very seriously by intellectuals, and more than 100 communities existed. In 1909, the US Commission on Country Life found persistent problems in our largely isolated farming system: the “idiocy of rural life” and environmental degradation. Yet despite reforms, the agricultural sector today offers few options other than self-exploitation family farms, chemicalized agribusiness, brutalized migrant labor, or those questionable imports. Furthermore, labor-saving devices have not eliminated the time and thought required to obtain and prepare nutritious meals; even the affluent often resort to junk food. Fourier's solutions illuminate our rural dysfunctions and also suggest some not-so-fantastic ideas for remediating the situation

Effectiveness and characteristics of interventions to improve work participation in adults with chronic physical conditions: a systematic review

Purpose: Chronic physical conditions often negatively affect work participation. The objective of this systematic review is to investigate the effectiveness and characteristics of vocational rehabilitation interventions for people with a chronic physical condition. Methods: Searches in five databases up to April 2020 identified 30 studies meeting our inclusion criteria. Two reviewers independently assessed and extracted data. The Grading of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework was used to evaluate quality of evidence for three outcome measures related to work participation. Results: All vocational rehabilitation interventions consisted of multiple components, but their characteristics varied widely. Analysis of 22 trials yielded a moderate positive effect with moderate certainty of interventions on work status; analysis of five trials with low risk of bias showed a large positive effect with moderate certainty (risk ratio 1.33 and 1.57, respectively). In addition, in eight studies we found a moderate to small positive effect with low certainty on work attitude (standardized mean difference = 0.59 or 0.38, respectively). We found no effect on work productivity in nine studies. Conclusion: The systematic review of the literature showed positive effects of vocational rehabilitation interventions on work status and on work attitude; we found no effect on work productivity.Implications for rehabilitation In rehabilitation, addressing work participation of persons with a chronic physical condition using targeted inte

Foundation funding and the boundaries of journalism

Private foundations are an important source of funding for many news outlets. It has even been suggested that they may offer a partial solution to journalism’s economic crisis. Yet we do not know how foundation funding shapes journalistic practice. In this article, we show that foundation funding has a significant effect on the ‘boundaries of journalism’. That is, the ways in which journalists understand, value and practice their journalism. This argument is based on 74 interviews with the most active foundations funding international non-profit news and the journalists they support. In general, we found that these foundations did not try to directly influence the content of the journalism they funded. However, their involvement did make a difference. It created requirements and incentives for journalists to do new, non-editorial tasks, as well as longer-form, off-agenda, ‘impactful’ news coverage in specific thematic areas. As a result, foundations are ultimately changing the role and contribution of journalism in society. We argue that these changes are the result of various forms of ‘boundary work’, or performative struggles over the nature of journalism. This contrasts with most previous literature, which has focused on the effects of foundation funding on journalistic autonomy

Neuropathology of 16p13.11 Deletion in Epilepsy

16p13.11 genomic copy number variants are implicated in several neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, autism, mental retardation, ADHD and epilepsy. The mechanisms leading to the diverse clinical manifestations of deletions and duplications at this locus are unknown. Most studies favour NDE1 as the leading disease-causing candidate gene at 16p13.11. In epilepsy at least, the deletion does not appear to unmask recessive-acting mutations in NDE1, with haploinsufficiency and genetic modifiers being prime candidate disease mechanisms. NDE1 encodes a protein critical to cell positioning during cortical development. As a first step, it is important to determine whether 16p13.11 copy number change translates to detectable brain structural alteration. We undertook detailed neuropathology on surgically resected brain tissue of two patients with intractable mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), who had the same heterozygous NDE1-containing 800 kb 16p13.11 deletion, using routine histological stains and immunohistochemical markers against a range of layer-specific, white matter, neural precursor and migratory cell proteins, and NDE1 itself. Surgical temporal lobectomy samples from a MTLE case known not to have a deletion in NDE1 and three non-epilepsy cases were included as disease controls. We found that apart from a 3 mm hamartia in the temporal cortex of one MTLE case with NDE1 deletion and known hippocampal sclerosis in the other case, cortical lamination and cytoarchitecture were normal, with no differences between cases with deletion and disease controls. How 16p13.11 copy changes lead to a variety of brain diseases remains unclear, but at least in epilepsy, it would not seem to be through structural abnormality or dyslamination as judged by microscopy or immunohistochemistry. The need to integrate additional data with genetic findings to determine their significance will become more pressing as genetic technologies generate increasingly rich datasets. Detailed examination of brain tissue, where available, will be an important part of this process in neurogenetic disease specifically

Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) Conference and Expo

Meeting Abstracts: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) Conference and Expo Clearwater Beach, FL, USA. 9-11 June 201

Effectiveness and characteristics of interventions to improve work participation in adults with chronic physical conditions: a systematic review

Purpose Chronic physical conditions often negatively affect work participation. The objective of this systematic review is to investigate the effectiveness and characteristics of vocational rehabilitation interventions for people with a chronic physical condition. Methods Searches in five databases up to April 2020 identified 30 studies meeting our inclusion criteria. Two reviewers independently assessed and extracted data. The Grading of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework was used to evaluate quality of evidence for three outcome measures related to work participation. Results All vocational rehabilitation interventions consisted of multiple components, but their characteristics varied widely. Analysis of 22 trials yielded a moderate positive effect with moderate certainty of interventions on work status; analysis of five trials with low risk of bias showed a large positive effect with moderate certainty (risk ratio 1.33 and 1.57, respectively). In addition, in eight studies we found a moderate to small positive effect with low certainty on work attitude (standardized mean difference = 0.59 or 0.38, respectively). We found no effect on work productivity in nine studies. Conclusion The systematic review of the literature showed positive effects of vocational rehabilitation interventions on work status and on work attitude; we found no effect on work productivity

Group-Schematherapy for Adolescents: Results from a Naturalistic Multiple Case Study

Personality disorders are complex mental health problems, associated with chronic dysfunction in several life domains. Adolescents suffer from these disorders as well. The present study is a naturalistic case study, investigating whether group schematherapy (GST) can be applied to adolescents with personality disorders or personality disorder traits. Four clinically referred patients were included and completed questionnaires on quality of life, symptoms of psychopathology, schema modes, early maladaptive schemas, and schema coping styles. Patients participated in weekly GST sessions complemented by weekly or 2-weekly individual sessions. The parents of the adolescents participated in a separate parent group. From pre- to post-treatment, results demonstrated improvements for some patients in quality of life and symptoms of psychopathology. Changes in a number of modes and schemas were observed in all patients from pre- to post-therapy. In addition to assessing changes from pre- to post-treatment, the current study investigated the temporal changes in modes during therapy as well. Results demonstrated that maladaptive modes decreased, whereas healthy modes increased for all patients across the course of therapy. The present study provides preliminary support for the applicability of GST for adolescents as well as the effectiveness of GST. It is a starting point for further research on this intervention

Foundations of Feminism: How Philanthropic Patrons Shaped Gender Politics

Although recent research has documented the contributions of philanthropic foundations as "patrons" of the major identity movements, scholars know very little about the specific ways foundations have influenced these movements' development and impact. This study examines the role of foundations in shaping the U.S. women's movement of the 1960s-1980s, in particular the role that foundations played in deciding which of its claimsmakers-and by extension, its claims-would be sustained. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.