NATIONAL FOOD AND NUTRITION POLICIES IN THE UNITED STATES

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Resolving the Uncertainty of Preterm Symptoms: Women’s Experiences With the Onset of Preterm Labor

Objective: To describe expectant women\u27s experiences with the onset of preterm labor. Design: Qualitative, using grounded theory methods. Setting: Southwestern tertiary women\u27s hospital. Participants: Thirty pregnant women who were less than 35 weeks gestation, had experienced preterm labor within the past 7 days, and had no previous experience with preterm labor. Data Source: Taped and transcribed interviews. Results: Themes that emerged from the interview data included the following: recognition and naming of sensations, a consistent pattern of attribution of symptoms, the threat or risk inferred by the attributed cause of the symptom pattern, the associated certainty or uncertainty about these attributions, the process of interpreting and verifying symptom meaning, and the decision to self-manage the symptoms or engage health care assistance. The core process of women experiencing the onset of preterm labor symptoms was identified as resolving the uncertainty of preterm labor symptoms: recognizing and responding to the possibilities. Conclusions: Preterm labor often is not within expectant women\u27s consciousness. They may attribute the symptoms to nonthreatening causes, which results in delays in seeking care for preterm labor. Education about symptom patterns at the onset of preterm labor will increase the probability that women and their health care providers will recognize and interpret the early, subtle symptoms that herald the onset of preterm labor. Uncertainty in illness theory and attribution theory offer frameworks for understanding women\u27s experiences with the onset of preterm labor

Coeducation at university was – and is – no triumph of feminism

In the late 1960s, many elite universities suddenly welcomed women to their undergraduate student bodies. However, as Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains, this was not the consequence of a high-minded commitment to opening opportunities to women but rather one of institutional self-interest. Little wonder, then, that coeducation has failed to lead to a levelling of the playing field for men and women, during their time in higher education or beyond

Relearning liberation: critical methodologies for the general crisis

How can critical theory help us to articulate the nature of social suffering in twenty-first century capitalism, and to expand our horizons of possibility for liberation and alternative futures at a moment of apparent impasse? In this essay, we explore how critical theorists across three generations in the European Frankfurt School tradition articulated the ‘struggles and wishes’ of their age and place, and reflect on the contextual limits and enduring relevance of their negative, utopian, democratic and ethical methods. We then turn to developments of this work in the Latin American tradition, particularly as elaborated by feminists, which articulate critical theorizing as a transformative praxis within the material construction of dignified communitarian life. In the final part of the paper, we consider what we might learn about how to theorize our own dominations and liberations through this critical methodology

Mechanism and Site Requirements for NO Oxidation Catalysis and NOx Adsorption on Dispersed Metal and Oxide Substrates

NO oxidation catalysts and NO2 adsorbents based on BaO are used to remove NOx from combustion effluents that lack CO or CxHy reductants. NOx trapping materials, however, inefficiently use costly active components because of persistent ambiguities about fundamental processes responsible for NOx storage. We address such matters by combining NO oxidation and NOx adsorption rate data with infrared spectra of adsorbed species to identify elementary steps and active site requirements for NO oxidation and NOx adsorption

Measuring Nurses’ Impact on Health Care Quality: Progress, Challenges, and Future Directions

Background: Quality measurement is central in efforts to improve health care delivery and financing. The Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative supported interdisciplinary research teams to address gaps in measuring the contributions of nursing to quality care. Objective: To summarize the research of 4 interdisciplinary teams funded by The Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative and reflect on challenges and future directions to improving quality measurement. Methods: Each team summarized their work including the targeted gap in measurement, the methods used, key results, and next steps. The authors discussed key challenges and recommended future directions. Results: These exemplar projects addressed cross-cutting issues related to quality; developed measures of patient experience; tested new ways to model the important relationships between structure, process, and outcome; measured care across the continuum; focused on positive aspects of care; examined the relationship of nursing care with outcomes; and measured both nursing and interdisciplinary care. Discussion: Challenges include: measuring care delivery from multiple perspectives; determining the dose of care delivered; and measuring the entire care process. Meaningful measures that are simple, feasible, affordable, and integrated into the care delivery system and electronic health record are needed. Advances in health information systems create opportunities to advance quality measurement in innovative ways. Conclusions: These findings and products add to the robust set of measures needed to measure nurses’ contributions to the care of hospitalized patients. The implementation of these projects has been rich with lessons about the ongoing challenges related to quality measurement

CD14 Counterregulates Lipopolysacharide- Induced Tumor Necrosis Factor-α Production in a Macrophage Subset

In response to GM-CSF or M-CSF, macrophages (MΦ) can acquire pro- or anti-inflammatory properties, respectively. Given the importance of CD14 and Toll-like receptor (TLR) 4 in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced signaling, we studied the effect of anti-CD14 antibody mediated CD14 blockade on LPS-induced cytokine production, signal transduction and on the expression levels of CD14 and TLR4 in GM-MΦ and M-MΦ. We found M-MΦ to express higher levels of both surface antigens and to produce more interferon (IFN)-β and interleukin-10, but less tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α than GM-MΦ. Blockage of CD14 at high LPS concentrations increased the production of proinflammatory cytokines and decreased that of IFN-β in M-MΦ but not in GM-MΦ. We show that phosphorylation states of signaling molecules of the MyD88 (myeloid differentiation primary response 88), TRIF (TIR-domain-containing adapter-inducing IFN-β) and MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase) pathways are not altered in any way that would account for the cytokine overshoot reaction. However, CD14 blockage in M-MΦ decreased TLR4 and CD14 expression levels, regardless of the presence of LPS, indicating that the loss of the surface molecules prevented LPS from initiating TRIF signaling. As TNF-α synthesis was even upregulated under these experimental conditions, we suggest that TRIF is normally involved in restricting LPSinduced TNF-α overproduction. Thus, surface CD14 plays a decisive role in the biological response by determining LPSinduced signaling