The Psychogeriatric Assessment Scales: a multidimensional alternative to categorical diagnoses of dementia and depression in the elderly

The Psychogeriatric Assessment Scales (PAS) provide an assessment of the clinical changes seen in dementia and depression. Principal components analysis and latent trait analysis were used to develop a set of scales to summarize these clinical changes. There are three scales derived from an interview with the subject (Cognitive Impairment, Depression, Stroke) and three from an interview with an informant (Cognitive Decline, Behaviour Change, Stroke). Results are reported on the reliability and validity of these scales using data from clinical samples in Sydney and Geneva and a population sample from Canberra. The scales were found to have excellent validity when judged against clinical diagnoses of dementia and depression and could distinguish Alzheimer's from vascular dementia. Cut-off points were developed to indicate correspondence between scale scores and clinical diagnoses. Percentile rank norms were developed from the Canberra population sample. The PAS is easy to administer and score and can be used by lay interviewers after training. It is intended for application both in research and in services for the elderl

Strong expression of TGF-beta in human host tissues around subcutaneous Dirofilaria repens

Dirofilaria repens and other Dirofilaria species are widely distributed parasitic nematodes of carnivores, which occasionally are transmitted to men, causing subcutaneous nodules. In humans, it usually occurs only as single male or female filariae without production of microfilariae. The non-productive living or dead Dirofilaria worms in subcutaneous biopsies from 15 human patients permitted us to study the role of the pleiotropic and immunoregulatory cytokine transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) independent from the influence of microfilariae. Antiserum against latent TGF-beta 1 was used for an immunohistological examination. In the infiltrates around female and male filariae, there occurred strongly TGF-beta-positive macrophages, mast cells, endothelial cells, fibrocytes, and giant cells adjacent to dead worms. In one nodule, secondary lymph follicles were observed with clearly TGF-beta-positive B cells in the mantle zone and weakly positive macrophages and B cells in the germinal centre. A network of CD35-positive follicular dendritic cells was observed in the germinal centre. All Dirofilaria contained Wolbachia endobacteria, which probably had attracted the numerous TGF-beta-negative neutrophils near to the worm. Wolbachia were phagocytosed by neutrophils adjacent to dead filariae. Macrophages and lymphocytes expressed the MHC class II molecule HLA-DR in small accumulations of immune cells in the outer zone of the infiltrate and the mantle zone and germinal centre of secondary lymph follicles. It is concluded that single non-productive Dirofilaria worms elicit a strong expression of TGF-beta. This result is in accordance with observations on Onchocerca volvulus from patients with the hyporeactive (generalised) form

Accountability, Strategy, and International Non-Governmental Organizations

Increased prominence and greater influence expose international non-governmental development and environmental organizations (INGOs) to increased demands for accountability from a wide variety of stakeholdersdonors, beneficiaries, staffs, and partners among others. This paper focuses on developing the concept of INGO accountability, first as an abstract concept and then as a strategic idea with very different implications for different INGO strategies. We examine those implications for INGOs that emphasize service delivery, capacity-building, and policy influence. We propose that INGOs committed to service delivery may owe more accountability to donors and service regulators; capacity-building INGOs may be particularly obligated to clients whose capacities are being enhanced; and policy influence INGOs may be especially accountable to political constituencies and to influence targets. INGOs that are expanding their activities to include new initiatives may need to reorganize their accountability systems to implement their strategies effectively. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 7. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Greening Capitalism? A Marxist Critique of Carbon Markets

Climate change is increasingly being recognized as a serious threat to dominant modes of social organization, inspiring suggestions that capitalism itself needs to be transformed if we are to ‘decarbonize’ the global economy. Since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, carbon markets have emerged as the main politico-economic tools in global efforts to address climate change. Newell and Paterson (2010) have recently claimed that the embrace of carbon markets by financial and political elites constitutes a possible first step towards the transformation of current modes of capitalist organization into a new form of greener, more sustainable ‘climate capitalism.’ In this paper, we argue that the institutionalization of carbon markets does not, in fact, represent a move towards the radical transformation of capitalism, but is better understood as the most recent expression of ongoing trends of ecological commodification and expropriation, driving familiar processes of uneven and crisis-prone development. In this paper, we review four critical Marxist concepts: metabolic rift (Foster, 1999), capitalism as world ecology (Moore, 2011a), uneven development and accumulation through dispossession (Harvey, 2003, 2006), and sub-imperialism (Marini, 1972, 1977), developing a framework for a Marxist analysis of carbon markets. Our analysis shows that carbon markets form part of a longer historical development of global capitalism and its relation to nature. Carbon markets, we argue, serve as creative new modes of accumulation, but are unlikely to transform capitalist dynamics in ways that might foster a more sustainable global economy. Our analysis also elucidates, in particular, the role that carbon markets play in exacerbating uneven development within the Global South, as elites in emerging economies leverage carbon market financing to pursue new strategies of sub-imperial expansion. </jats:p

First spectroscopy of 66^{66}Se and 65^{65}As: Investigating shape coexistence beyond the N = Z line

The experiment was performed at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL), at Michigan State University (USA).We report on the first γ spectroscopy of 66Se and 65As from two-neutron removal at intermediate beam energies. The deduced excitation energies for the first-excited states in 66Se and 65As are compared to mean-field-based predictions within a collective Hamiltonian formalism using the Gogny D1S effective interaction and to state-of-the-art shell-model calculations restricted to the pf5/2 g9/2 valence space. The obtained Coulomb-energy differences for the first excited states in 66Se and 65As are discussed within the shell-model formalism to assess the shape-coexistence picture for both nuclei. Our results support a favored oblate ground-state deformation in 66Se and 65As. A shape transition for the ground state of even-odd As isotopes from oblate in 65As to prolate in 67,69,71As is suggested