Ethnopoetics and Narrative Analysis

We acknowledge and concur with Catherine Kohler Riessman's insistence on the necessity of sustained and formal analysis of narratives. We thus distance ourselves from qualitative researchers who aim to celebrate personal narratives rather than undertaking that analytic work. In doing so, we also draw on the work of Dell Hymes, whose approach to ethnopoetics informs our own. The discussion is developed and illustrated with materials from Natasha Carver's research with informants of Somali heritage that display the relevance of ethnopoetic transcription and analysis

Effects of methimepip and JNJ-5207852 in Wistar rats exposed to an open-field with and without object and in Balb/c mice exposed to a radial-arm maze

The role of the histamine H3 receptor (H3R) in anxiety is controversial, due to limitations in drug selectivity and limited validity of behavioral tests used in previous studies. In the present report, we describe two experiments. In the first one, Wistar rats were treated with an H3R agonist (methimepip), and exposed to an open-field. In the second one, Balb/c mice were treated with H3R agonist (methimepip) or antagonist (JNJ-5207852), and exposed to an open space 3D maze which is a modified version of the radial-arm maze. C57BL/6J saline treated mice were included for comparisons. When exposed to an empty open field, Wistar rats spent more time in the outer area and made very low number of brief crossings in the central area. However, when an object occupied the central area, rats crossed frequently into and spent a long time in the central area. Administration of a range of different doses of methimepip (selective H3R agonist) reduced the entries into the central area with a novel object, indicating enhanced avoidance response. In the 3D maze, both Balb/c and C57BL/6J saline-treated mice crossed frequently onto the bridges that radiate from the central platform but only C57BL/6J mice crossed onto the arms which extend the bridges. This suggests that Balb/c mice are more anxious than C57BL/6J mice. Neither methimepip nor JNJ-5207852 (selective H3R antagonist/inverse agonist) induced entry into the arms of the maze, indicative of lack of anxiolytic effects

The size, concentration, and growth of biodiversity-conservation nonprofits

Nonprofit organizations play a critical role in efforts to conserve biodiversity. Their success in this regard will be determined in part by how effectively individual nonprofits and the sector as a whole are structured. One of the most fundamental questions about an organization’s structure is how large it should be, with the logical counterpart being how concentrated the whole sector should be. We review empirical patterns in the size, concentration, and growth of over 1700 biodiversity-conservation nonprofits registered for tax purposes in the United States within the context of relevant economic theory. Conservation-nonprofit sizes vary by six to seven orders of magnitude and are positively skewed. Larger nonprofits access more revenue streams and hold more of their assets in land and buildings than smaller or midsized nonprofits do. The size of conservation nonprofits varies with the ecological focus of the organization, but the growth rates of nonprofits do not

Selective control of primer usage in multiplex one-step reverse transcription PCR

Abstract Background Multiplex RT-PCR is a valuable technique used for pathogen identification, disease detection and relative quantification of gene expression. The simplification of this protocol into a one-step procedure saves time and reagents. However, intensive PCR optimization is often required to overcome competing undesired PCR primer extension during the RT step. Results Herein, we report multiplex one-step RT-PCR experiments in which the PCR primers contain thermolabile phosphotriester modification groups. The presence of these groups minimizes PCR primer extension during the RT step and allows for control of PCR primer extension until the more stringent, elevated temperatures of PCR are reached. Results reveal that the use of primers whose extension can be controlled in a temperature-mediated way provides improved one-step RT-PCR specificity in both singleplex and multiplex reaction formats. Conclusions The need for an accurate and sensitive technique to quantify mRNA expression levels makes the described modified primer technology a promising tool for use in multiplex one-step RT-PCR. A more accurate representation of the abundances in initial template sample is feasible with modified primers, as artifacts of biased PCR are reduced because of greater improvements in reaction specificity

Managing the student experience in English higher education: differing responses to market pressures

This paper reports on recent research aimed at assessing how the management of the undergraduate student experience in English higher education is changing in the light of the new tuition fee regime introduced in 2012, as well as other government policies aimed at creating market-type pressures within the higher education sector. A distinction was observed between the research-intensive universities studied – defined here as institutions where research income comprised 20 per cent or more of total turnover, with correspondingly strong positions in published research-based rankings – and universities largely dependent on income from teaching, with weaker market positions. Broadly speaking, the latter group were responding to market pressures by centralizing services, standardizing procedures, and strengthening management controls over teaching processes. The research-intensive universities tended to work within existing institutional cultures to respond to students' needs. Organizational change here usually took the form of creating more coherent functional groupings of student services, rather than comprehensive reorganizations. It appears to us that these different responses to a changed environment point to the creation of two distinct English university types, one strongly managerial with 'student as customer' orientations, and a smaller group with less centralized, more collegial cultures