Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology as a Critical Practice: Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence

In the Algerian War of Independence, women famously used both traditional and modern clothing as part of their revolutionary efforts against French colonialism. This paper uncovers some of the principal lessons of this historical episode through a phenomenological exploration of agency, religion, and political transformation. Part I draws primarily on the philosophical insights of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty alongside the memoirs of Zohra Drif, a young woman member of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, in order to explore the worldly and habitual nature of human agency in contrast to the Enlightenment stress on individual rationality and autonomy. Part II turns to John Russon’s phenomenological interpretation of religion in order to argue for the ineluctable significance of religion on human existence, in contrast to the modern tendency to oppose religious tradition and secular modernity. Part III analyzes the dynamics of intercultural communication, and argues for the political power of phenomenology as a critical enterprise that enables more just and emancipatory visions of collective human life and political transformation to come to the fore. Peer review process: Double-anonymous peer revie

Are these students lost to nursing?

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

African American Women’s Perceptions of a Group Based, Diabetic Medical Nutritional Therapy Intervention: A Qualitative Study

Background: African American women exhibit lower rates of attaining recommended diabetes management goals such as optimal blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure numbers compared to other racial and gender groups. As a result, they bear a disproportionate burden of the adverse outcomes associated with poorly managed type 2 diabetes, including increased complications and mortality rates compared to other demographic groups. Despite favorable qualitative findings regarding group-based interventions for African American women with other chronic diseases, a notable gap in the literature exists regarding the women’s perceptions of a group-based medical nutritional therapy tailored to type 2 diabetes. Purpose: This scholarly project explored African American women\u27s perceptions of and experiences with the impact of the Sisters Inspiring Sisters To Engage in Relevant Diabetes Self-Care (SISTER) group-based medical nutrition therapy program on their type 2 diabetes management. Methods: Nineteen SISTER study participants completed individual, semi-structured interviews via Zoom. Nine women were interviewed twelve months after starting the SISTER study, and ten women were interviewed three months after starting the SISTER study. Researchers analyzed the interviews using line-by-line open coding, leading to the identification of themes, categories, and properties. Results: Analysis of in-depth interviews revealed two distinct sets of results for the twelve-month cohort and the three-month cohort. The major findings of the twelve-month cohort can be described as (1) Group, (2) Program, and (3) Change. The major themes revealed in the three-month cohort interviews emerged as (1) Group, (2) Motivation, (3) One Size Fits All, and (4) Program. Conclusion: The participants’ experience with the SISTER study highlights the value and impact of peer support and increased access to health education specifically for African American women with type 2 diabetes. The results of this scholarly project emphasize the participants\u27 expressed need and desire for additional research and targeted interventions specifically tailored to this population

Building a Disciplinary, World-Wide Data Infrastructure

Sharing scientific data, with the objective of making it fully discoverable, accessible, assessable, intelligible, usable, and interoperable, requires work at the disciplinary level to define in particular how the data should be formatted and described. Each discipline has its own organization and history as a starting point, and this paper explores the way a range of disciplines, namely materials science, crystallography, astronomy, earth sciences, humanities and linguistics get organized at the international level to tackle this question. In each case, the disciplinary culture with respect to data sharing, science drivers, organization and lessons learnt are briefly described, as well as the elements of the specific data infrastructure which are or could be shared with others. Commonalities and differences are assessed. Common key elements for success are identified: data sharing should be science driven; defining the disciplinary part of the interdisciplinary standards is mandatory but challenging; sharing of applications should accompany data sharing. Incentives such as journal and funding agency requirements are also similar. For all, it also appears that social aspects are more challenging than technological ones. Governance is more diverse, and linked to the discipline organization. CODATA, the RDA and the WDS can facilitate the establishment of disciplinary interoperability frameworks. Being problem-driven is also a key factor of success for building bridges to enable interdisciplinary research.Comment: Proceedings of the session "Building a disciplinary, world-wide data infrastructure" of SciDataCon 2016, held in Denver, CO, USA, 12-14 September 2016, to be published in ICSU CODATA Data Science Journal in 201

Beyond the human body: Claire Denis's ecologies

This article explores the work of Claire Denis beyond the focus on the human body through which it is commonly read. Addressing Beau Travail (1999) and The Intruder (2004), I examine an ecological impulse that manifests itself through a nonanthropocentric detailing of the coexistence of body and landscape, and a nonhierarchical attentiveness to the distributed agencies of humans, animals and things. I draw here in particular on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the crystal-image and on Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking of ecotechnics, as elaborated in his essay on The Intruder (a film inspired by Nancy’s autobiographical essay, L’Intrus). In Beau Travail, Deleuzian crystals of time draw attention to the nonhuman histories of the landscape. In The Intruder, this crystalline structure persists, reactivating traces of nonhuman pasts, while a focus on canine gestures and responses signals nonhuman perceptual worlds in the present. Deleuze’s “Desert Islands”, another text that shapes The Intruder, offers a further way of reading the film’s attentiveness to the nonhuman—an attentiveness that extends, as Nancy suggests, to a consideration of environmental crisis

Epidermal Function in the Nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans

Epithelial sheets create the forces which shape embryos during the development of all metazoans. The external epithelia, or hypodermis, of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans plays an essential role in shape change during embryogenesis and also maintains body shape during postembryonic development. Embryonic shape change, known as elongation, is mediated by actin microfilaments in the hypodermis which align circumferentially and contract, causing the embryo to change from a ball of cells, to a long, thin worm shape. A prerequisite to elongation is the migration of the hypodermis around the embryo from the dorsal surface to completely cover the embryo in a layer of hypodermal cells, a process known as enclosure. At the end of embryogenesis, the hypodermis secretes a multi-layered, collagenous exoskeleton, known as the cuticle, which maintains the elongated worm shape postembryonically. In this thesis, I have characterised three elongation-defective mutants which arrest during embryogenesis, and have also looked at the pattern of a cuticular collagen, DPY-7, throughout development using a novel monoclonal antibody, DPY7-5a. One of the embryonic lethal mutations, w4, lies on Chromosome I, between positions 6.2 and 9.9 on the genetic map. The majority of w4 homozygotes are defective in enclosure. The other two embryonic lethal mutations, ijDf1 and ijDf2 are the result of large deficiencies which have been physically mapped. ijDf2 extends from around position -0.9 to 0.7 on chromosome V and is approximately 2.2Mb in size. ijDf1 homozygotes appear to have a pre-enclosure defect in cell adhesion. ijDf1 extends from around position 18 to 23.5 on the X chromosome and is approximately 1.6Mb in size. ijDf1 homozygotes arrest as 1.5-fold stage embryos and this early elongation defect was rescued by injection of the genomic overlap of cosmids K09A9 and K09E9, plus the whole of cosmid C02C6. However, inhibition of the function of predicted genes contained in these cosmids did not produce the mutant phenotype seen in the deficiency. The characterisation of the DPY7-5a antibody suggests localisation of DPY-7 in the cortical layer of the cuticle. The study of the antibody pattern in a dpy-7 mutant demonstrates a clear reduction in secreted DPY-7. These results suggest that there are many molecular components in the complex process of embryonic elongation and the DPY7-5a antibody provides a novel mechanism to study postembryonic shape change and mechanisms of cuticle organisation within the hypodermis

Impact of smoking behavior on clozapine blood levels – a systematic review and meta‐analysis

Objective Tobacco smoking significantly impacts clozapine blood levels and has substantial implications on individual efficacy and safety outcomes. By investigating differences in clozapine blood levels in smoking and non‐smoking patients on clozapine, we aim to provide guidance for clinicians how to adjust clozapine levels for patients on clozapine who change their smoking habits. Methods We conducted a meta‐analysis on clozapine blood levels, norclozapine levels, norclozapine/clozapine ratios and concentration to dose (C/D) ratios in smokers and non‐smokers on clozapine. Data were meta‐analysed using a random‐effects model with sensitivity analyses on dose, ethnic origin and study quality. Results Data from 23 studies were included in this meta‐analysis with 21 investigating differences between clozapine blood levels of smokers and non‐smokers. In total, data from 7125 samples were included for the primary outcome (clozapine blood levels in ng/ml) in this meta‐analysis. A meta‐analysis of all between‐subject studies (N=16) found that clozapine blood levels were significantly lower in smokers compared to non‐smokers (Standard Mean Difference (SMD) ‐0.39, 95% confidence interval (CI) ‐0.55 to ‐0.22,