Representative bureaucracy: does female police leadership affect gender-based violence arrests?

Representative bureaucracy theory postulates that passive representation leads to active representation of minority groups. This article investigates the passive representation of female police officers at leadership levels and the active representation of women vis-a-vis gender-based violence arrest rates in the UK. Much of the extant research on representative bureaucracy is located at street level, with evidence showing that discretionary power of minority bureaucrats can lead to active representation. This article is focused on leadership levels of a public bureaucracy. The empirical research is based upon a panel dataset of female police officers as an independent variable and gender-based violence arrest rates as a dependent variable. The analysis reveals that there is little evidence of active representation of women by female police leadership

Adoption of Food Safety Modernization Act: A Six Sigma Approach to Risk Based Preventive Controls for Small Food Facilities

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC, 2010), 17% of Americans are at risk from food borne illnesses leading to 325,000 hospitalizations and about 3000 deaths every year. There have been several occasions in past during which these outbreaks have posed serious health concerns such as E. coli 0157:H7 in spinach - 2006, Salmonella Saintpaul in pepper - 2008, Salmonella Typhimurium in peanut butter - 2008, and Salmonella Enteritidis in eggs - 2010 (Haglund, 2011; Pouliot, 2012). As a result food businesses have lost billions of dollars in recall of contaminated food such as 500,000 bushels of soybean had to be destroyed in a Nebraska elevator after contamination from 500 bushels of soybean already affected by engineering corn. Similarly Starlink corn, not approved for human consumption, entered the food supply chain triggering a recall of more than 300 food products affecting food supply chain seriously (Laux, Hurburgh & Mosher, 2008). These incidents suggest that the American food safety1 system at that time was unorganized and ill equipped to counter potential food hazards (Becker & Porter, 2007)

Role of Winged Helix Transcription Factor (WIN) in the Regulation of Sertoli Cell Differentiated Functions: WIN Acts as an Early Event Gene for Follicle-Stimulating Hormone

Members of the winged helix transcription factor family are known to regulate epithelial cell differentiation by regulating cell-specific gene expression. rWIN is a newly discovered member of the winged helix family shown to be present in the adult rat testis. In the testis the human homolog of rWIN, HFH-11, was localized to the germ cells (i.e. spermatocytes and spermatids) undergoing spermatogenesis. In the present study we show that rWIN is also expressed in testicular Sertoli cells. Sertoli cells are the epithelial component of the semi-niferous tubule and provide both the cytoarchitectural support and the microenvironment for developing germ cells. The presence of rWIN in Sertoli cells was confirmed by Northern blot and RT-PCR analysis. The rWIN transcript size in the Sertoli cells was different from the germ cell transcript that is probably due to alternative splicing or modifications of the 3-untranslated region. At least two spliced variants of rWIN were observed in the Sertoli cells corresponding to the deletion of an exon in the DNA-binding region. Long term stimulation of cultured Sertoli cells with the gonadotropin FSH down-regulated rWIN expression. In contrast, short-term stimulation (2 h) transiently up-regulated rWIN expression. The FSH-induced transient stimulation of rWIN precedes expression of the transferrin gene that is a marker of Sertoli cell differentiation. FSH-induced transferrin promoter activity was inhibited when cultured Sertoli cells were treated with an antisense oligonucleotide to rWIN. Interestingly , the constitutive overexpression of the DNA-binding domain of rWIN also down-regulated transferrin promoter activity. Analysis of the transferrin promoter with various deletion mutations suggested that rWIN acts at an upstream gene of the transferrin promoter. The results indicate that a transient up-regulation of rWIN in part mediates the ability of FSH to activate the transferrin promoter, which can be inhibited with a rWIN antisense oligonucleotide or constitutive expression of the rWIN DNA-binding domain. The current study demonstrates that rWIN acts as an early event gene for FSH actions on Sertoli cells and that rWIN appears to have a role in the regulation of Sertoli cell differentiated functions. (Endocrinology 141: 2758 –2766, 2000