Taylorism, targets and the pursuit of quantity and quality by call centre management

The paper locates the rise of the call centre within the context of the development of Taylorist methods and technological change in office work in general. Managerial utilisation of targets to impose and measure employees' quantitative and qualitative performance is analysed in four case-study organisations. The paper concludes that call centre work reflects a pardigmic re-configuration of customer servicing operations, and that the continuing application of Taylorist methods appears likely

Liquid Metal Sources in Ion Microscopy and Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry

This paper reports on state-of-the-art developments in liquid metal sources and some of the finer points of their operating characteristics that are especially relevant to the satisfactory functioning of analytical ion scanning microscopes equipped with secondary ion mass spectrometers. Such effects include unwanted emissions from the source and their exclusion by means of filters and mass separators in the ion-optical column. The design of the ion-optical column is also discussed and some applications of this rapidly advancing form of analytical microscopy are described

Cell therapies in ovarian cancer.

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most important cause of gynecological cancer-related mortality. Despite improvements in medical therapies, particularly with the incorporation of drugs targeting homologous recombination deficiency, EOC survival rates remain low. Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) is a personalized form of immunotherapy in which autologous lymphocytes are expanded, manipulated ex vivo, and re-infused into patients to mediate cancer rejection. This highly promising novel approach with curative potential encompasses multiple strategies, including the adoptive transfer of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, natural killer cells, or engineered immune components such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) constructs and engineered T-cell receptors. Technical advances in genomics and immuno-engineering have made possible neoantigen-based ACT strategies, as well as CAR-T cells with increased cell persistence and intratumoral trafficking, which have the potential to broaden the opportunity for patients with EOC. Furthermore, dendritic cell-based immunotherapies have been tested in patients with EOC with modest but encouraging results, while the combination of DC-based vaccination as a priming modality for other cancer therapies has shown encouraging results. In this manuscript, we provide a clinically oriented historical overview of various forms of cell therapies for the treatment of EOC, with an emphasis on T-cell therapy

Dietary restriction in ILSXISS mice is associated with widespread changes in splicing regulatory factor expression levels.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record Dietary restriction (DR) represents one of the most reproducible interventions to extend lifespan and improve health outcomes in a wide range of species, but substantial variability in DR response has been observed, both between and within species. The mechanisms underlying this variation in effect are still not well characterised. Splicing regulatory factors have been implicated in the pathways linked with DR-induced longevity in C. elegans and are associated with lifespan itself in mice and humans. We used qRT-PCR to measure the expression levels of a panel of 20 age- and lifespan-associated splicing regulatory factors in brain, heart and kidney derived from three recombinant inbred strains of mice with variable lifespan responses to short-term (2 months) or long-term (10 months) 40% DR to determine their relationship to DR-induced longevity. We identified 3 patterns of association; i) splicing factors associated with DR alone, ii) splicing factors associated with strain alone or iii) splicing factors associated with both DR and strain. Tissue specific variation was noted in response to short term or long-term DR, with the majority of effects noted in brain following long term DR in the positive responder strain TejJ89. Association in heart and kidney were less evident, and occurred following short term DR. Splicing factors associated with both DR and strain may be mechanistically involved in strain-specific differences in response to DR. We provide here evidence concordant with a role for some splicing factors in the lifespan modulatory effects of DR across different mouse strains and in different tissues

Constructive pointfree topology eliminates non-constructive representation theorems from Riesz space theory

In Riesz space theory it is good practice to avoid representation theorems which depend on the axiom of choice. Here we present a general methodology to do this using pointfree topology. To illustrate the technique we show that almost f-algebras are commutative. The proof is obtained relatively straightforward from the proof by Buskes and van Rooij by using the pointfree Stone-Yosida representation theorem by Coquand and Spitters

Roles of Putative Type II Secretion and Type IV Pilus Systems in the Virulence of Uropathogenic Escherichia coli

Type II secretion systems (T2SS) and the evolutionarily related type IV pili (T4P) are important virulence determinants in many Gram-negative bacterial pathogens. However, the roles of T2SS and T4P in the virulence of extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli have not been determined.To investigate the functions of putative T2SS and T4P gene clusters present in the model uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) strains UTI89 and CFT073, we deleted the secretin gene present in each cluster. The secretin forms a channel in the outer membrane that is essential for the function of T2S and T4P systems. We compared the secretin deletion mutants with their wild type counterparts using tissue culture assays and the CBA/J mouse model of ascending urinary tract infection. No deficiencies were observed with any of the mutants in adherence, invasion or replication in human bladder or kidney cell lines, but UTI89 DeltahofQ and UTI89 DeltagspD exhibited approximately 2-fold defects in fluxing out of bladder epithelial cells. In the mouse infection model, each of the knockout mutants was able to establish successful infections in the bladder and kidneys by day one post-infection. However, UTI89 DeltahofQ and a CFT073 DeltahofQ DeltayheF double mutant both exhibited defects in colonizing the kidneys by day seven post-infection.Based on our results, we propose that the putative T4P and T2S systems are virulence determinants of UPEC important for persistence in the urinary tract, particularly in renal tissues

Cinematic and aesthetic cartographies of subjective mutation

This article exmaines the use of cinema as a mapping of subjective mutation in the work of Deleuze, Gauttari and Berardi. Drawing on Deleuze's distinciton between the reduction of the art-work to the symptom and the idea of art as symptomatology, the article focuses on Berardi's use of cinematic examples, posing the quesiton in each case of to what extent they function as symptomatologies or mere symptoms of cultural and subjective mutations in examples ranging from Bergman's Persona to Van Sant's Elephant to finish on speculations about Fincher's The Social Network as a cirtical engagement with subjective mutation in the 21st Century

BfpI, BfpJ, and BfpK Minor Pilins Are Important for the Function and Biogenesis of Bundle-Forming Pili Expressed by Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli

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Integrable Generalisations of the 2-dimensional Born Infeld Equation

The Born-Infeld equation in two dimensions is generalised to higher dimensions whilst retaining Lorentz Invariance and complete integrability. This generalisation retains homogeneity in second derivatives of the field.Comment: 11 pages, Latex, DTP/93/3

Estimating bacterial surface contamination by means of ATP determinations: 20 pence short of a pound

This Letter to the Editor was published in the Journal of Hospital Infection [© The Healthcare Infection Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd.] The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2011.12.02