From cooperation to criticism of economic globalization: an intersectional concept of gender justice

"In der Realität von Pflegehilfskräften überschneiden sich Geschlecht, Klasse, race/Ethnizität und Staatsbürgerschaft. Sie sind da, wo die Öffentliche Reformverwaltung (NPM) eingeführt wurde, mit Ausgrenzung, Kommodifizierung und der Verweigerung gewerkschaftlicher Rechte konfrontiert. Wie auch bei anderen weiblichen Angestellten in Pflegediensten, denen eine berufliche Anerkennung ihrer Qualifikationen verwehrt wird, findet ihre Ausgrenzung auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und in Kampagnen für Geschlechtergleichheit und GenderMainstreaming (GM) statt. Anstatt die ausgrenzende Gleichheitsdefinition der internationalen Institutionen zu übernehmen, sollte kritisch hinterfragt werden, inwieweit die Globalisierung die Verschlechterung der Arbeitsbedingungenfür weibliche Pflegekräfte legitimiert. FeministInnen sollten da rauf bestehen, Gendergerechtigkeit durch ein anderes Verständnis von Gleichheit und GM zu fördern. Der Beitrag stellt ein intersektionales Modell von Geschlechtergerechtigkeit vor, das die negativen Auswirkungen der Globalisierung untersucht, und formuliert eine politische Ethik für die Behandlung von Frauen in schlecht bezahlter Pflegearbeit. Arbeitsqualität und Durchschnittseinkommen müssen als Grundlage für die Definition von Diskriminierung dienen. Neukonzeptionen von Gleichheit und GM, die auf den vorgeschlagenen Diskriminierungskriterien basieren, würden die Grundlage bereiten für feministischen Aktivismus gegen ausgrenzende NPM-Praktiken." (Autorenreferat)"Gender, class, race/ethnicity and citizenship intersect in the experience of nursing assistants and expose them to exclusion, commodification and denial of their unionization rights in every country that has embraced the new public management (NPM) reform. Resembling other women employed in caring services that are denied the benefit of skills recognition, their exclusion occurs both in the labour market and in campaigns targeting gender equality and gender mainstreaming. Rather than accepting the exclusionary definition of equality promoted by the institutions of economic globalization, the role of economic globalization in legitimizing the deterioration of employment quality for women employed in caring services should be challenged. In particular, feminists should insist on promoting gender justice by revisiting the concepts of equality and gender mainstreaming. This article presents an intersectional model of gender justice that reveals the deleterious effects of economic globalization and formulates a political ethics of care for women in badly-paid caring work. Job quality and average income in occupational fields must serve as the basis for defining discrimination. Revised notions of equality and gender mainstreaming, based on these proposed measures of discrimination, would provide the ground for feminist activism against NPM exclusionary practices." (author's abstract

Review of Translocational Belongings: Intersectional Dilemmas and Social Inequalities by Floya Anthias

Social inequalities create violence and threaten to reduce democratic features of contemporary political lives. People are excluded, exploited, and discriminated against and easily left exposed to both state violence and (politically encouraged) sporadic violence. On what basis? On a long list of oppressive bases: class, gender, race/religion/ ethnicity/nationality/ religion/citizenship status, sexuality, age, ability, language, body shape, culture, sexuality, education, accent and many others

Ion-by-ion Cooling efficiencies

We present ion-by-ion cooling efficiencies for low-density gas. We use Cloudy (ver. 08.00) to estimate the cooling efficiencies for each ion of the first 30 elements (H-Zn) individually. We present results for gas temperatures between 1e4 and 1e8K, assuming low densities and optically thin conditions. When nonequilibrium ionization plays a significant role the ionization states deviate from those that obtain in collisional ionization equilibrium (CIE), and the local cooling efficiency at any given temperature depends on specific non-equilibrium ion fractions. The results presented here allow for an efficient estimate of the total cooling efficiency for any ionic composition. We also list the elemental cooling efficiencies assuming CIE conditions. These can be used to construct CIE cooling efficiencies for non-solar abundance ratios, or to estimate the cooling due to elements not explicitly included in any nonequilibrium computation. All the computational results are listed in convenient online tables.Comment: Submitted to ApJS. Electronic data available at http://wise-obs.tau.ac.il/~orlyg/ion_by_ion

Nutrition and Heart Failure: Impact of Drug Therapies and Management Strategies

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142156/1/ncp0060.pd

A novel familial mutation in the PCSK1 gene that alters the oxyanion hole residue of proprotein convertase 1/3 and impairs its enzymatic activity.

Four siblings presented with congenital diarrhea and various endocrinopathies. Exome sequencing and homozygosity mapping identified five regions, comprising 337 protein-coding genes that were shared by three affected siblings. Exome sequencing identified a novel homozygous N309K mutation in the proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 1 (PCSK1) gene, encoding the neuroendocrine convertase 1 precursor (PC1/3) which was recently reported as a cause of Congenital Diarrhea Disorder (CDD). The PCSK1 mutation affected the oxyanion hole transition state-stabilizing amino acid within the active site, which is critical for appropriate proprotein maturation and enzyme activity. Unexpectedly, the N309K mutant protein exhibited normal, though slowed, prodomain removal and was secreted from both HEK293 and Neuro2A cells. However, the secreted enzyme showed no catalytic activity, and was not processed into the 66 kDa form. We conclude that the N309K enzyme is able to cleave its own propeptide but is catalytically inert against in trans substrates, and that this variant accounts for the enteric and systemic endocrinopathies seen in this large consanguineous kindred

GSVD Comparison of Patient-Matched Normal and Tumor aCGH Profiles Reveals Global Copy-Number Alterations Predicting Glioblastoma Multiforme Survival

Despite recent large-scale profiling efforts, the best prognostic predictor of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) remains the patient's age at diagnosis. We describe a global pattern of tumor-exclusive co-occurring copy-number alterations (CNAs) that is correlated, possibly coordinated with GBM patients' survival and response to chemotherapy. The pattern is revealed by GSVD comparison of patient-matched but probe-independent GBM and normal aCGH datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We find that, first, the GSVD, formulated as a framework for comparatively modeling two composite datasets, removes from the pattern copy-number variations (CNVs) that occur in the normal human genome (e.g., female-specific X chromosome amplification) and experimental variations (e.g., in tissue batch, genomic center, hybridization date and scanner), without a-priori knowledge of these variations. Second, the pattern includes most known GBM-associated changes in chromosome numbers and focal CNAs, as well as several previously unreported CNAs in 3% of the patients. These include the biochemically putative drug target, cell cycle-regulated serine/threonine kinase-encoding TLK2, the cyclin E1-encoding CCNE1, and the Rb-binding histone demethylase-encoding KDM5A. Third, the pattern provides a better prognostic predictor than the chromosome numbers or any one focal CNA that it identifies, suggesting that the GBM survival phenotype is an outcome of its global genotype. The pattern is independent of age, and combined with age, makes a better predictor than age alone. GSVD comparison of matched profiles of a larger set of TCGA patients, inclusive of the initial set, confirms the global pattern. GSVD classification of the GBM profiles of an independent set of patients validates the prognostic contribution of the pattern

Genome-Wide Association and Trans-ethnic Meta-Analysis for Advanced Diabetic Kidney Disease: Family Investigation of Nephropathy and Diabetes (FIND)

Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is the most common etiology of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in the industrialized world and accounts for much of the excess mortality in patients with diabetes mellitus. Approximately 45% of U.S. patients with incident end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) have DKD. Independent of glycemic control, DKD aggregates in families and has higher incidence rates in African, Mexican, and American Indian ancestral groups relative to European populations. The Family Investigation of Nephropathy and Diabetes (FIND) performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) contrasting 6,197 unrelated individuals with advanced DKD with healthy and diabetic individuals lacking nephropathy of European American, African American, Mexican American, or American Indian ancestry. A large-scale replication and trans-ethnic meta-analysis included 7,539 additional European American, African American and American Indian DKD cases and non-nephropathy controls. Within ethnic group meta-analysis of discovery GWAS and replication set results identified genome-wide significant evidence for association between DKD and rs12523822 on chromosome 6q25.2 in American Indians (P = 5.74x10-9). The strongest signal of association in the trans-ethnic meta-analysis was with a SNP in strong linkage disequilibrium with rs12523822 (rs955333; P = 1.31x10-8), with directionally consistent results across ethnic groups. These 6q25.2 SNPs are located between the SCAF8 and CNKSR3 genes, a region with DKD relevant changes in gene expression and an eQTL with IPCEF1, a gene co-translated with CNKSR3. Several other SNPs demonstrated suggestive evidence of association with DKD, within and across populations. These data identify a novel DKD susceptibility locus with consistent directions of effect across diverse ancestral groups and provide insight into the genetic architecture of DKD

The power of institutional ethnography: ruling relations in privatized services

Professor Orly Benjamin, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University speaks at the QUEST (Qualitative Expertise at Southampton) seminar on Ethnographic Approaches. www.quest.soton.ac.u

Job insecurity and gender: the moderating role of gender ideology

This study examined the complex relationships between gender, job insecurity and job related stress. Previous findings have suggested that men experience greater job insecurity than women, and are more vulnerable to job-related stress. The current study tested the hypothesis that the gender ideology of employees moderates the effect of gender on job insecurity and stress. Data were obtained by questionnaires from a sample of 203 married employees. The results showed that traditional men experience greater job insecurity than traditional women. However, as hypothesized, egalitarian men and women exhibited similar degrees of job insecurity. Furthermore, job insecurity in traditional men and in egalitarian men and women was related to loss of control stress, financial stress, and stress expressions at home, whereas traditional women were relatively protected from job-related stress. These findings illuminate the important moderating role played by gender ideology in the relationships between gender, job insecurity and stress

Narrating the Power of Non-Standard Employment: The Case of the Israeli Public Sector

Applying a critical discourse analysis approach, this study shows how the argument equating non-standard employment (NSE) with organizational efficiency gains dominance over the contesting argument that views NSE as reducing organizational efficiency. We interviewed 24 senior-level HR managers in the Israeli public sector, where NSE is used extensively, in order to shed light on the discursive order and the power struggle between these contesting arguments. Findings point to two story-lines that helped discredit the argument in which NSE reduces organizational efficiency: (1) a statement of loyalty to organizational efficiency, accompanied by a gesture of concern for employees in non-standard arrangements; and (2) subordinating an implied preference for eliminating NSE to organizational constraints. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.