1,127 research outputs found
Obliged to calculate: My School, markets, and equipping parents for calculativeness
This paper argues neoliberal programs of government in education are equipping parents for calculativeness. Regimes of testing and the publication of these results and other organizational data are contributing to a public economy of numbers that increasingly oblige citizens to calculate. Using the notions of calculative and market devices, this paper examines the Australian Governmentâs My School website, which publishes academic and organizational information about schools, including national test results. While it is often assumed that such performance technologies contribute to neoliberal reform of education through school choice, the paper argues the website is technically limited in its capacity to facilitate the economic calculations and calculated action of parents resulting in school choice. The paper instead opens My School to analysis as a technique of governmental self-formation. Using the theoretical resources of actor-network theory and Foucauldian scholarship, this paper complicates assumptions in the literature about the extent to which My School actually operates as a âmarket mechanismâ. It argues My School attempts to cultivate a calculated form of parental educational agency, irreducible to economic market agency
Activating Farmers : Uses of entrepreneurship discourse in the rhetoric of policy implementers
Peer reviewe
Does population screening for Chlamydia trachomatis raise anxiety among those tested? Findings from a population based chlamydia screening study
BACKGROUND: The advent of urine testing for Chlamydia trachomatis has raised the possibility of large-scale screening for this sexually transmitted infection, which is now the most common in the United Kingdom. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an invitation to be screened for chlamydia and of receiving a negative result on levels of anxiety, depression and self-esteem. METHODS: 19,773 men and women aged 16 to 39 years, selected at random from 27 general practices in two large city areas (Bristol and Birmingham) were invited by post to send home-collected urine samples or vulvo-vaginal swabs for chlamydia testing. Questionnaires enquiring about anxiety, depression and self-esteem were sent to random samples of those offered screening: one month before the dispatch of invitations; when participants returned samples; and after receiving a negative result. RESULTS: Home screening was associated with an overall reduction in anxiety scores. An invitation to participate did not increase anxiety levels. Anxiety scores in men were lower after receiving the invitation than at baseline. Amongst women anxiety was reduced after receipt of negative test results. Neither depression nor self-esteem scores were affected by screening. CONCLUSION: Postal screening for chlamydia does not appear to have a negative impact on overall psychological well-being and can lead to a decrease in anxiety levels among respondents. There is, however, a clear difference between men and women in when this reduction occurs
Loss of Dnmt3b function upregulates the tumor modifier Ment and accelerates mouse lymphomagenesis
DNA methyltransferase 3B (Dnmt3b) belongs to a family of enzymes responsible for methylation of cytosine residues in mammals. DNA methylation contributes to the epigenetic control of gene transcription and is deregulated in virtually all human tumors. To better understand the generation of cancer-specific methylation patterns, we genetically inactivated Dnmt3b in a mouse model of MYC-induced lymphomagenesis. Ablation of Dnmt3b function using a conditional knockout in T cells accelerated lymphomagenesis by increasing cellular proliferation, which suggests that Dnmt3b functions as a tumor suppressor. Global methylation profiling revealed numerous gene promoters as potential targets of Dnmt3b activity, the majority of which were demethylated in Dnmt3bâ/â lymphomas, but not in Dnmt3bâ/â pretumor thymocytes, implicating Dnmt3b in maintenance of cytosine methylation in cancer. Functional analysis identified the gene Gm128 (which we termed herein methylated in normal thymocytes [Ment]) as a target of Dnmt3b activity. We found that Ment was gradually demethylated and overexpressed during tumor progression in Dnmt3bâ/â lymphomas. Similarly, MENT was overexpressed in 67% of human lymphomas, and its transcription inversely correlated with methylation and levels of DNMT3B. Importantly, knockdown of Ment inhibited growth of mouse and human cells, whereas overexpression of Ment provided Dnmt3b+/+ cells with a proliferative advantage. Our findings identify Ment as an enhancer of lymphomagenesis that contributes to the tumor suppressor function of Dnmt3b and suggest it could be a potential target for anticancer therapies
Networking expertise: Discursive coalitions and collaborative networks of experts in a public creationism controversy in the UK
Experts do play a particular role in public socio-scientific debates, even more so if
they form heterogeneous coalition with other actors and experts. A case study about a
public science education controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution/creationism in
the UK press is used to investigate in detail how connections and coalitions between
experts and other actors involved in the controversy emerged and played out. The research
focuses on the question of what role collaborative and other networks of experts played in
terms of influence, visibility, credibility, consensus and weight of argument. Issues that
are considered in the research are the status of the members of the coalitions forming
during the debate and how it is displayed in media representations and letters and
petitions, and also how these networks and coalitions of experts perform in relation to
each other
âExcellence R Usâ: university research and the fetishisation of excellence
The rhetoric of âexcellenceâ is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organisations, from art history to zoology. But does âexcellenceâ actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of âexcellenceâ do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate âexcellenceâ as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hypercompetition that arises from the performance of âexcellenceâ is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. In the final analysis, it turns out that that âexcellenceâ is not excellent. Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship
Academic capitalism and entrepreneurial universities as a new paradigm of âDevelopmentâ
The interest of higher education researchers in entrepreneurialism in European universities began in
the late 1990s with the appearance of two path-breaking books: Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie
on Academic Capitalism and Burton Clark on Creating Entrepreneurial Universities. Since
that time âentrepreneurialâ has become a popular term to describe what many people, politicians in
particular, believe is necessary for university survival, and indeed economic survival, as the new
paradigm of development. Drawing mostly from a three-year comparative study undertaken as
part of the European Framework social science research programme, this article explores
whether this new paradigm of âdevelopmentâ is a contingent result of the huge expansion of
higher education in the previous quarter century or whether it is primarily the result of
ideological changes which have led to the current global dominance of neo-liberalism. The view
we have attempted to put forward is the latter. The article deploys ideas and research from
governmentality theory to suggest some limitations of the use of empirical data in current higher
education policy research and some ways of thinking differently about entrepreneurialism and
Clarkâs âpathways of transformationâ to the universities he studied. The article offers a short
example of the useful work that social theory can do in relation to policy agendas like university
entrepreneurialism which often lie unproblematized within higher policy and practice
A search for W bb and W Higgs production in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV
We present a search for W b \bar{b} production in p \bar{p} collisions at
sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV in events containing one electron, an imbalance in transverse
momentum, and two b-tagged jets. Using 174 pb-1 of integrated luminosity
accumulated by the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider, and the
standard-model description of such events, we set a 95% C.L. upper limit on W b
\bar{b}WH--$135
GeV.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, submitted to Physical Review Letter
Measurement of the Ratio of B+ and B0 Meson Lifetimes
The ratio of B+ and B0 meson lifetimes was measured using data collected in
2002-2004 by the D0 experiment in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider.
These mesons were reconstructed in B -> mu+ nu D*- X decays, which are
dominated by B0, and B ->mu+ nu D0bar X decays, which are dominated by B+. The
ratio of lifetimes is measured to be t+/t0 = 1.080 +- 0.016(stat) +-
0.014(syst).Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX, to be submitted to Physical Review Letter
A Search for the Flavor-Changing Neutral Current Decay B0_s -> mu^+mu^- in pp(bar) Collisions at \sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV with the D0 Detector
We present the results of a search for the flavor-changing neutral current
decay B0_s -> mu+ mu- using a data set with integrated luminosity of 240
pb^{-1} of pp(bar) collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV collected with the D0
detector in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron collider. We find the upper limit
on the branching fraction to be Br(B0_s -> mu+ mu-) \leq 5.0 x 10^{-7} at the
95% C.L. assuming no contributions from the decay B0_d -> mu+ mu- in the signal
region. This limit is the most stringent upper bound on the branching fraction
B0_s -> mu+ mu- to date.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, to be submitted to Physical Review
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