1,193 research outputs found
Private sector development and income dynamics: A panel study of the Tanzanian labour market
In this paper, we use a three-period panel of Tanzanian households to explore the determinants of earnings and earnings growth from 2004 to 2006. In doing so, we draw particular attention to the role of education and to the importance of heterogeneity between more and less formal occupations. Several important conclusions emerge. Education is found to have a significant convex effect upon earnings levels, but to have had no significant effect upon earnings growth (indeed, there is some suggestion that education may have had a negative impact). This suggests that recent Tanzanian growth may have reflected an ‘unskill-biased technological change’, providing relative reward to informal skills rather than to formal education. Further, there are interesting insights into the age-earnings relationship: the relationship is found significantly to be concave in levels, yet age is not found significantly to have affected earnings growth. This suggests that the concave levels relationship is driven by workers’ participation decisions, rather than by a concave earnings trajectory at the level of the individual worker. Finally, we find significant evidence of variation between formal and informal enterprises, and between sizes of enterprises within these different employment sectors.
Reflections on promoting physical activity and the fitness industry: Conference report for Elevate 2017, 10th to 11th May, ExCeL, London.
The 2nd Elevate 2017 conference was held from 10-11 May 2017, at the ExCel London, UK. Elevate is the UK's largest cross-sector event bringing together the physical activity sector, academia, healthcare, policy makers, local authorities and performance experts to focus on an increasingly important and complex societal challenge: tackling physical inactivity. This article is the author's own personal experiences and reflections on the event
Study of the certification of secondary school principals in the United States
Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University This item was digitized by the Internet Archive
Investigating the biological properties of tigecycline
Antibiotic resistance of many bacterial strains to current antibiotic treatment strategies are increasing. Bacterial biofilm related diseases displaying resistance to current antibiotics is an area of intense investigations. Failure to eradicate biofilm forming pathogenic microorganisms, coupled with an exacerbated host immune response results in extensive tissue damage and ultimately chronic inflammation within infected patients. Periodontitis and cystic fibrosis (CF) represent typical forms of chronic inflammatory disease
The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a newly developed glycylcycline, tigecycline, against non-pseudomonal Gram-negative CF pathogens and oral pathogens commonly associated with inflammatory disease of the lung and oral cavity, respectively. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of periodontal and pulmonary pathogens in planktonic growth phase and sessile biofilms were determined by serial doubling dilutions with tigecycline. Furthermore, planktonic MICs and sessile MICs exposed to tigecycline and a competitive efflux pump inhibitor MC-207,110 EPI were assessed by XTT assays. In addition the biomasses of sessile biofilms exposed to tigecycline and EPI were determined by crystal violet assay. This investigation demonstrated a significant improvement in the susceptibility of both planktonic and sessile cells to tigecycline following the addition of an EPI, indicating that the EPI enhanced sensitivity to antibiotic treatment of resistant bacterial strains. Furthermore, bacterial biofilm biomass of the CF pathogen Burkholderia cepacia was reduced significantly by co treatments of tigecycline and EPI.
Finally, the immunomodulatory properties of tigecycline were evaluated using clinically relevant epithelial cell lines, A549 OKF6-TERT2 and a primary neutrophil cell line. Oral and pulmonary cell lines were co-inoculated with subinhibitory concentration of tigecycline and Escherichia coli derived lipopolysaccharide (LPS). The neutrophil cell line was co-inoculated with (phorbol 12-myristate acetate) PMA and tigecycline. Epithelial IL-6 and IL-8 levels were determined by ELISA and RT-qPCR, demonstrating only marginal down-regulation in some cases of these inflammatory mediators. However, tigecycline at subinhibitory concentrations did reduce the levels of IL-8 and MMP-9 synthesised by neutrophils in a dose dependent manner.
In conclusion, tigecycline alone is ineffective at killing and reducing biomass of mature biofilms associated with chronic inflammatory disease of the lungs and oral cavity, however the addition of a competitive efflux pump inhibitor decreased resistance of the bacterial biofilm to tigecycline. This would suggest a possible new chemotherapeutic use to treat patients who suffer from a chronic inflammatory disease. Furthermore, down-regulation of inflammatory mediators by subinhibitory concentration of tigecycline may indicate a potential use in the therapeutic management of both CF and periodontal disease, and other diseases of chronic inflammatory origin
Ecological interactions involving plant selenium hyperaccumulation
2010 Summer.Includes bibliographic references.Covers not scanned.Print version deaccessioned 2022.To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document
Drug-Related Homicide in Dade County (Miami), Florida; 1978-1980.
This study examines the characteristics of all homicide victims in Miami, Florida between 1978 and 1980 (N = 1186). Data was collected from the Medical Examiner\u27s office and local law enforcement agencies. The study relates the distribution of various aspects of homicidal situations to one another and to behavioral, cultural, and structural groupings of victims. Special attention is given to levels of drug market involvement. Inferences are made at an aggregate level relevant to categories of victims. Social groupings of victims were better predictors of homicidal circumstances than socioeconomic status levels. SES was found to be most relevant to the ecological accessibility of crime scenes. Separation of drug-users from traffickers resulted in a drug-involvement variable with greater predictive utility than social grouping. Low SES persons killed in quarrels and the assassinations of drug traffickers were empirically linked to homicides in open areas. The deaths of traffickers appear to serve social control functions in this illicit market. The frequency of quarrels among low SES persons appears to reflect immediate activity to perceived deviance in stateless social settings. While traffickers\u27 deaths tended to be highly visible to the public, those of low SES persons did not. The deaths of drug users were found to be less visible to the public than those of either traffickers or the non-drug involved. Both drug-involved groups tended to die in secluded locations, however. Analyses indicated that studies of urban homicide might benefit from a conceptualization of subculture that addressed cultural, structural, and behavioral influences. Such a multi-dimensional approach allows the various aspects of the homicidal act to be explored separately. This sort of approach is felt to be crucial in explaining the functions of violence within particular groups
The self-reference effect on memory in early childhood
The self-reference effect in memory is the advantage for information encoded about self, relative to other people. The early development of this effect was explored here using a concrete encoding paradigm. Trials comprised presentation of a self- or other-image paired with a concrete object. In Study 1, 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 53) were asked in each trial whether the child pictured would like the object. Recognition memory showed an advantage for self-paired objects. Study 2 (N = 55) replicated this finding in source memory. In Study 3 (N = 56), participants simply indicated object location. Again, recognition and source memory showed an advantage for self-paired items. These findings are discussed with reference to mechanisms that ensure information of potential self-relevance is reliably encoded
Church tradition and psychological type preferences among Anglicans in England
A sample of 290 individuals attending Evangelical Anglican churches and Anglo-Catholic churches in central England completed the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, a measure of psychological type preferences. Overall, there were clear preferences for sensing over intuition, for feeling over thinking, and for judging over perceiving, which is consistent with the findings of two earlier studies profiling the psychological type of Anglican churchgoers. However, there was also a significantly higher proportion of intuitives among Anglo-Catholics than among Evangelical Anglicans, which is consistent with the greater emphasis in Anglo-Catholic churches on mystery, awe, and the centrality of sacraments in worship which may resonate with the intuitive predisposition. The implications of these findings are discussed for the benefits of breadth and diversity within Anglicanism
Latitudinal clines in gene expression and cis-regulatory element variation in Drosophila melanogaster
Abstract
Background
Organisms can rapidly adapt to their environment when colonizing a new habitat, and this could occur by changing protein sequences or by altering patterns of gene expression. The importance of gene expression in driving local adaptation is increasingly being appreciated, and cis-regulatory elements (CREs), which control and modify the expression of the nearby genes, are predicted to play an important role. Here we investigate genetic variation in gene expression in immune-challenged Drosophila melanogaster from temperate and tropical or sub-tropical populations in Australia and United States.
Results
We find parallel latitudinal changes in gene expression, with genes involved in immunity, insecticide resistance, reproduction, and the response to the environment being especially likely to differ between latitudes. By measuring allele-specific gene expression (ASE), we show that cis-regulatory variation also shows parallel latitudinal differences between the two continents and contributes to the latitudinal differences in gene expression.
Conclusions
Both Australia and United States were relatively recently colonized by D. melanogaster, and it was recently shown that introductions of both African and European flies occurred, with African genotypes contributing disproportionately to tropical populations. Therefore, both the demographic history of the populations and local adaptation may be causing the patterns that we see
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