Hassel, H., Launius, C., & Rensing, S. (2021). A Guide to Teaching Introductory Women’s and Gender Studies: Socially Engaged Classrooms. Springer International Publishing. 133 pp. $24.99 eBook. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71785-8.

In A Guide to Teaching Introductory Women’s and Gender Studies: Socially Engaged Classrooms (2021), authors Holly Hassel, Christie Launius, and Susan Rensing draw on their years of experience designing and teaching introductory courses to Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) and on the insights of key feminist educators. Their writing style is engaging and approachable, and they succeed at addressing the concerns of both students and teachers by taking into account the growing demographic diversity in WGS classrooms. Educators within the field of WGS–graduate students, new faculty, and experienced professors–will find within this text a rich range of pedagogical materials that can be tailored to a variety of different educational settings

Online structured dance/movement therapy reduces bodily detachment in depersonalization-derealization disorder

Background: Depersonalization-derealization disorder (DDD) is a dissociative disorder encompassing pronounced disconnections from the self and from external reality. As DDD is inherently tied to a detachment from the body, dance/movement therapy could provide an innovative treatment approach. / Materials and methods: We developed two online dance tasks to reduce detachment either by training body awareness (BA task) or enhancing the salience of bodily signals through dance exercise (DE task). Individuals with DDD (n = 31) and healthy controls (n = 29) performed both tasks individually in a cross-over design. We assessed symptom severity (Cambridge Depersonalization Scale), interoceptive awareness (Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness – II), mindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire), and body vigilance (Body Vigilance Scale) before, during and after the tasks. / Results: At baseline, individuals with DDD exhibited elevated depersonalization-derealization symptoms alongside lower levels of interoceptive awareness and mindfulness compared to controls. Both tasks reduced symptoms in the DDD group, though dance exercise was perceived as easier. The DE task increased mindfulness in those with DDD more than the BA task, whereas controls showed the opposite pattern. In the DDD group, within-subject correlations showed that lower levels of symptoms were associated with task-specific elevations in interoceptive awareness and mindfulness. / Conclusion: Individual and structured dance/movement practice, performed at home without an instructor present, offers an effective tool to reduce symptoms in DDD and can be tailored to address specific cognitive components of a mindful engagement with the body

A real-time test of food hazard awareness

Purpose - Food poisoning attributable to the home generates a large disease burden, yet is an unregulated and largely unobserved domain. Investigating food safety awareness and routine practices is fraught with difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to develop and apply a new survey tool to elicit awareness of food hazards. Data generated by the approach are analysed to investigate the impact of oberservable heterogeneity on food safety awareness. Design/methodology/approach - The authors develop a novel Watch-and-Click survey tool to assess the level of awareness of a set of hazardous food safety behaviours in the domestic kitchen. Participants respond to video footage stimulus, in which food hazards occur, via mouse clicks/screen taps. This real-time response data is analysed via estimation of count and logit models to investigate how hazard identification patterns vary over observable characteristics. Findings - User feedback regarding the Watch-and-Click tool approach is extremely positive. Substantive results include significantly higher hazard awareness among the under 60s. People who thought they knew more than the average person did indeed score higher but people with food safety training/experience did not. Vegetarians were less likely to identify four of the five cross-contamination hazards they observed. Originality/value - A new and engaging survey tool to elicit hazard awareness with real-time scores and feedback is developed, with high levels of user engagement and stakeholder interest. The approach may be applied to elicit hazard awareness in a wide range of contexts including education, training and research

The role of guanxi networks in the performance of women-led firms in China

This exploratory paper examines how knowledge acquired via guanxi (networks and connections) have enabled women-led firms in China to overcome a number of significant barriers and challenges in order to start and grow a successful business. We draw upon two case studies, in order to illustrate how they have utilized guanxi as a means of overcoming these barriers. We investigate the way in which guanxi facilitates the business owner in engaging in a process of entrepreneurial learning (Harrison and Leitch 2005; Politis, 2008) – and making connections and contacts – by which she is able to improve the firm’s performance. Further research is necessary to build upon a small number of studies that have already cleared the ground in terms of guanxi. More reliable and country-wide, but disaggregated, statistics on small businesses would be a welcome start, including information on their owner-manager’s or owner-managers’ gender

Single-cell transcriptome profiling reveals β cell maturation in stem cell-derived islets after transplantation

Human pluripotent stem cells differentiated to insulin-secreting β cells (SC-β cells) in islet organoids could provide an unlimited cell source for diabetes cell replacement therapy. However, current SC-β cells generated in vitro are transcriptionally and functionally immature compared to native adult β cells. Here, we use single-cell transcriptomic profiling to catalog changes that occur in transplanted SC-β cells. We find that transplanted SC-β cells exhibit drastic transcriptional changes and mature to more closely resemble adult β cells. Insulin and IAPP protein secretions increase upon transplantation, along with expression of maturation genes lacking with differentiation in vitro, including INS, MAFA, CHGB, and G6PC2. Other differentiated cell types, such as SC-α and SC-enterochromaffin (SC-EC) cells, also exhibit large transcriptional changes. This study provides a comprehensive resource for understanding human islet cell maturation and provides important insights into maturation of SC-β cells and other SC-islet cell types to enable future differentiation strategy improvements

"Enter the dragoness": Firm growth, finance, guanxi, and gender in China

Purpose: The purpose of this exploratory paper is to theorise and examine gender differences in the impact of financial capital on Chinese firms' growth, and investigate the role of guanxi (connections and networks) in the process of obtaining finance. Design/methodology/approach: A structured questionnaire is used to collect comprehensive financial data from 18 women to 69 men, which is analysed empirically. Findings: Women appear to be no more disadvantaged from obtaining finance than men in China and in some respects appear to be in a better position. Both women- and men-led firms are significantly stronger in relation to having access to enough finance to grow than at the start-up phase. A majority of participants in this study used guanxi to access finance. Furthermore, the paper finds that guanxi is used equally by men and women, and that guanxi-sourced finance comprised a significant proportion of the overall capital obtained. Research limitations/implications: One major limitation of the study is that, of the 87 questionnaires returned, 21 per cent are women and 79 per cent are men and, although the findings are not representative or generalisable, the results do suggest a number of possible avenues for future research. Originality/value: The paper has illuminated the under-explored area of the financing of growth in women-led firms in China. This research agenda is particularly important because small- and medium-sized enterprise finance in China is a key need-to-know area, there is a paucity of specific research on financing women entrepreneurs in China and of the phenomenal rise of women's entrepreneurship in China. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Differential function and maturation of human stem cell-derived islets after transplantation

Insulin-producing stem cell-derived islets (SC-islets) provide a virtually unlimited cell source for diabetes cell replacement therapy. While SC-islets are less functional when first differentiated in vitro compared to isolated cadaveric islets, transplantation into mice has been shown to increase their maturation. To understand the effects of transplantation on maturation and function of SC-islets, we examined the effects of cell dose, transplantation strategy, and diabetic state in immunocompromised mice. Transplantation of 2 and 5, but not 0.75 million SC-islet cells underneath the kidney capsule successfully reversed diabetes in mice with pre-existing diabetes. SQ and intramuscular injections failed to reverse diabetes at all doses and had undetectable expression of maturation markers, such as MAFA and FAM159B. Furthermore, SC-islets had similar function and maturation marker expression regardless of diabetic state. Our results illustrate that transplantation parameters are linked to SC-islet function and maturation, providing ideal mouse models for preclinical diabetes SC therapy research

Does higher cost mean better quality? evidence from highly-regarded adolescent drug treatment programs

We conducted a survey to examine whether reimbursement levels are associated with the quality of adolescent substance use treatment programs in the United States. Between March and September 2005, telephone and written surveys were administered to program, clinical, and finance directors of previously surveyed highly regarded programs. Differences in quality scores were compared for programs with above versus below median reimbursement levels and examined in multivariate regression models constructed separately for programs offering residential and outpatient treatment. In residential treatment multivariate regression models, higher quality scores were associated with higher reimbursement, but this relationship was not observed for outpatient treatment. Even the highest level of outpatient reimbursement received may be too low to support quality improvement initiatives. Our results suggest that higher reimbursement may be a necessary component of quality improvement for residential adolescent drug treatment programs, and emphasize the need for further research to determine what levels of reimbursement and insurance coverage policies will encourage the expansion of high quality outpatient programs

Vesicle shape, molecular tilt, and the suppression of necks

Can the presence of molecular-tilt order significantly affect the shapes of lipid bilayer membranes, particularly membrane shapes with narrow necks? Motivated by the propensity for tilt order and the common occurrence of narrow necks in the intermediate stages of biological processes such as endocytosis and vesicle trafficking, we examine how tilt order inhibits the formation of necks in the equilibrium shapes of vesicles. For vesicles with a spherical topology, point defects in the molecular order with a total strength of $+2$ are required. We study axisymmetric shapes and suppose that there is a unit-strength defect at each pole of the vesicle. The model is further simplified by the assumption of tilt isotropy: invariance of the energy with respect to rotations of the molecules about the local membrane normal. This isotropy condition leads to a minimal coupling of tilt order and curvature, giving a high energetic cost to regions with Gaussian curvature and tilt order. Minimizing the elastic free energy with constraints of fixed area and fixed enclosed volume determines the allowed shapes. Using numerical calculations, we find several branches of solutions and identify them with the branches previously known for fluid membranes. We find that tilt order changes the relative energy of the branches, suppressing thin necks by making them costly, leading to elongated prolate vesicles as a generic family of tilt-ordered membrane shapes.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phy. Rew.