Client or Volunteer? Understanding Neoliberalism and Neocolonialism Within International Volunteer Health Work

As international volunteer health work increases globally, research pertaining to the social organizations that coordinate the volunteer experience in the Global South has severely lagged. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to critically examine the social organizations within Canadian NGOs in the provision of health work in Tanzania. Multiple, concurrent data collection methods, including text analysis, participant observation and in-depth interviews were utilized. Data collection occurred in Tanzania and Canada. Neoliberalism and neocolonialism were pervasive in international volunteer health work. In this study, the social relations—“volunteer as client,” “experience as commodity,” and “free market evaluation”—coordinated the volunteer experience, whereby the volunteers became “the client” over the local community and resulting in an asymmetrical relationship. These findings illuminate the need to generate additional awareness and response related to social inequities embedded in international volunteer health work

Dementia Home Care Resources: How Are We Managing?

With the number of people living with dementia expected to more than double within the next 25 years, the demand for dementia home care services will increase. In this critical ethnographic study, we drew upon interview and participant data with persons with dementia, family caregivers, in-home providers, and case managers in nine dementia care networks to examine the management of dementia home care resources. Three interrelated, dialectical themes were identified: (1) finite formal care-inexhaustible familial care, (2) accessible resources rhetoric-Iinaccessible resources reality, and (3) diminishing care resources-increasing care needs. The development of policies and practices that provide available, accessible, and appropriate resources, ensuring equitable, not necessarily equal, distribution of dementia care resources is required if we are to meet the goal of aging in place now and in the future

Successful new product development by optimizing development process effectiveness in highly regulated sectors: the case of the Spanish medical devices sector

Rapid development and commercialization of new products is of vital importance for small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in regulated sectors. Due to strict regulations, competitive advantage can hardly be achieved through the effectiveness of product concepts only. If an SME in a highly regulated sector wants to excell in new product development (NPD) performance, the company should focus on the flexibility, speed, and productivity of its NPD function: i.e. the development process effectiveness. Our main research goals are first to explore if SMEs should focus on their their development process effectiveness rather than on their product concept effectiveness to achieve high NPD performance; and second, to explore whether a shared pattern in the organization of the NPD function can be recognized to affect NPD performance positively. The medical devices sector in Spain is used as an example of a\ud highly regulated sector. A structured survey among 11 SMEs, of which 2 were studied also as in in-depth case studies, led to the following results. First of all, indeed the companies in the dataset which focused on the effectiveness of their development process, stood out in NPD performance. Further, the higher performing companies did have a number of commonalities in the organisation of their NPD function: 1) The majority of the higher performing firms had an NPD strategy characterized by a predominantly incremental project portfolio.\ud 2) a) Successful firms with an incremental project portfolio combined this with a functional team structure b) Successful firms with a radical project portfolio combined this with a heavyweight or autonomous team structure.\ud 3) A negative reciprocal relationship exists between formalization of the NPD processes and the climate of the NPD function, in that a formalized NPD process and an innovative climate do not seem to reinforce each other. Innovative climate combined with an informal NPD process does however contribute positively to NPD performance. This effect was stronger in combination with a radical project portfolio. The highest NPD performance was measured for companies focusing mainly on incremental innovation. It is argued that in highly regulated sectors, companies with an incremental product portfolio would benefit from employing a functional structure. Those companies who choose for a more radical project portfolio in highly regulated sectors should be aware\ud that they are likely to excell only in the longer term by focusing on strategic flexibility. In their NPD organization, they might be well advised to combine informal innovation processes with an innovative climate

Egg Quality Assurance Programs and Egg-associated Salmonella Enteritidis Infections, United States

A 1% increase in eggs produced under egg quality assurance programs was associated with a 0.14% decrease in Salmonella Enteritidis incidence

Nonperturbative Light-Front QCD

In this work the determination of low-energy bound states in Quantum Chromodynamics is recast so that it is linked to a weak-coupling problem. This allows one to approach the solution with the same techniques which solve Quantum Electrodynamics: namely, a combination of weak-coupling diagrams and many-body quantum mechanics. The key to eliminating necessarily nonperturbative effects is the use of a bare Hamiltonian in which quarks and gluons have nonzero constituent masses rather than the zero masses of the current picture. The use of constituent masses cuts off the growth of the running coupling constant and makes it possible that the running coupling never leaves the perturbative domain. For stabilization purposes an artificial potential is added to the Hamiltonian, but with a coefficient that vanishes at the physical value of the coupling constant. The weak-coupling approach potentially reconciles the simplicity of the Constituent Quark Model with the complexities of Quantum Chromodynamics. The penalty for achieving this perturbative picture is the necessity of formulating the dynamics of QCD in light-front coordinates and of dealing with the complexities of renormalization which such a formulation entails. We describe the renormalization process first using a qualitative phase space cell analysis, and we then set up a precise similarity renormalization scheme with cutoffs on constituent momenta and exhibit calculations to second order. We outline further computations that remain to be carried out. There is an initial nonperturbative but nonrelativistic calculation of the hadronic masses that determines the artificial potential, with binding energies required to be fourth order in the coupling as in QED. Next there is a calculation of the leading radiative corrections to these masses, which requires our renormalization program. Then the real struggle of finding the right extensions to perturbation theory to study the strong-coupling behavior of bound states can begin.Comment: 56 pages (REVTEX), Report OSU-NT-94-28. (figures not included, available via anaonymous ftp from pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu in subdirectory pub/infolight/qcd

Fungal entomopathogens: new insights on their ecology

An important mechanism for insect pest control should be the use of fungal entomopathogens. Even though these organisms have been studied for more than 100 y, their effective use in the field remains elusive. Recently, however, it has been discovered that many of these entomopathogenic fungi play additional roles in nature. They are endophytes, antagonists of plant pathogens, associates with the rhizosphere, and possibly even plant growth promoting agents. These findings indicate that the ecological role of these fungi in the environment is not fully understood and limits our ability to employ them successfully for pest management. In this paper, we review the recently discovered roles played by many entomopathogenic fungi and propose new research strategies focused on alternate uses for these fungi. It seems likely that these agents can be used in multiple roles in protecting plants from pests and diseases and at the same time promoting plant growth

Application of Pauli-Villars Regularization and Discretized Light-Cone Quantization to a (3+1)-Dimensional Model

We apply Pauli-Villars regularization and discrete light-cone quantization to the nonperturbative solution of a (3+1)-dimensional model field theory. The matrix eigenvalue problem is solved for the lowest-mass state with use of the complex symmetric Lanczos algorithm. This permits the calculation of each Fock-sector wave function, and from these we obtain values for various quantities, such as average multiplicities and average momenta of constituents, structure functions, and a form factor slope.Comment: RevTex, 27 page

Combination Lopinavir and Ritonavir Alter Exogenous and Endogenous Bile Acid Disposition in Sandwich-Cultured Rat Hepatocytes

Inhibition of the bile salt export pump (BSEP) can cause intracellular accumulation of bile acids and is a risk factor for drug-induced liver injury in humans. Antiretroviral protease inhibitors lopinavir (LPV) and ritonavir (RTV) are reported BSEP inhibitors. However, the consequences of LPV and RTV, alone and combined (LPV/r), on hepatocyte viability, bile acid transport, and endogenous bile acid disposition in rat hepatocytes have not been examined. The effect of LPV, RTV, and LPV/r on cellular viability and the disposition of [3H]taurocholic acid (TCA) and [14C]chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA) was determined in sandwich-cultured rat hepatocytes (SCRH) and suspended rat hepatocytes. Lactate dehydrogenase and ATP assays revealed a concentration-dependent effect of LPV and RTV on cellular viability. LPV (5 µM), alone and combined with 5 µM RTV, significantly decreased [3H]TCA accumulation in cells + bile of SCRHs compared with control. LPV/r significantly increased [3H]TCA cellular accumulation (7.7 ± 0.1 pmol/mg of protein) compared with vehicle and 5 µM LPV alone (5.1 ± 0.7 and 5.0 ± 0.5 pmol/mg of protein). The [3H]TCA biliary clearance was reduced significantly by LPV and RTV and further reduced by LPV/r. LPV and RTV did not affect the initial uptake rates of [3H]TCA or [14C]CDCA in suspended rat hepatocytes. LPV (50 µM), RTV (5 µM), and LPV/r (5 and 50 µM/5 µM) significantly decreased the accumulation of total measured endogenous bile acids (TCA, glycocholic acid, taurochenodeoxycholic acid, glycochenodeoxycholic acid, and α/β-tauromuricholic acid) in SCRH. Quantification of endogenous bile acids in SCRH may reveal important adaptive responses associated with exposure to known BSEP inhibitors

Flat Clathrin Lattices: stable features of the plasma membrane

Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is a fundamental property of eukaryotic cells. Classical CME proceeds via the formation of clathrin-coated pits (CCP) at the plasma membrane that invaginate to form clathrin-coated vesicles; a process that is well understood. However, clathrin also assembles into flat clathrin lattices (FCL); these structures remain poorly described and their contribution to cell biology is unclear. We have used quantitative imaging to provide the first comprehensive description of FCL and explore their influence on plasma membrane organization. Ultrastructural analysis by electron and super-resolution microscopy revealed two discrete populations of clathrin structures. CCP were typified by their sphericity, small size and homogeneity. FCL were planar, large and heterogeneous, and present on both the dorsal and ventral surfaces of cells. Live microscopy demonstrated that CCP are short-lived and culminate in a peak of dynamin recruitment, consistent with classical CME. In contrast, FCL were long-lived with sustained association with dynamin. We investigated the biological relevance of FCL using the chemokine receptor CCR5 as a model system. Agonist activation leads to sustained recruitment of CCR5 to FCL. Quantitative molecular imaging indicated that FCL partitioned receptors at the cell surface. Our observations suggest that FCL provide stable platforms for the recruitment of endocytic cargo