Business rights and ethnic exclusion in sub-Saharan Africa: Addressing group-based inequality through business rights reform

The business rights pillar of the Legal Empowerment of the Poor agenda is not preoccupied with equality of outcome; it concentrates instead on equality of opportunity. This paper addresses the lacuna in the business rights literature by 'bringing outcomes back in'. Certainly, equal outcomes are difficult to achieve and require understanding of a host of group as well as individual characteristics, and the complex obstacles to distributing benefits more broadly and beneficially, especially to members of groups that have faced historical discrimination in business. In order to understand some of the ways in which the interests of the poor can be advanced in business, and how mere business rights might be complemented, this research extends the analysis to include what I call active business rights reforms

Capitalism and African business cultures

Scholars and practitioners once commonly linked 'African culture' to a distinctive 'African capitalism', at odds with genuine capitalism and the demands of modern business. Yet contemporary African business cultures reveal that a capitalist ethos has taken hold within both state and society. The success and visibility of an emergent, and celebrated, class of African big business reveals that business and profit are culturally acceptable. Existing theories of African capitalism are ill-equipped to explain changes in African business cultures, which increasingly are as diverse as any across the globe. Further, at their core is a growing capacity for reproduction, as capitalists

Meristic and Morphometric Differences in Populations of Rivulus marmoratus

Rivulus marmoratus (Pisces: Aplocheilidae) is a small cyprinodontid found in mangroves of the western tropical Atlantic and is the only known self-fertilizing, hermaphroditic vertebrate. Populations normally consist of genetically diverse groups of homozygous clones. Rivulus marmoratus has the widest range of any member of the genus (southern Brazil to central Florida) and is the only marine representative of the genus. There has been considerable speculation about the origin of the species in an otherwise sexually reproducing genus and family. Although well studied in the laboratory, few specimens have been collected from the wild until recently. This study examined meristic and morphometric differences among 12 widespread populations and among individual clonal lineages reared in the laboratory. Thirty-two meristic and morphometric characters in 187 fish (ranging from Brazil to Florida) were examined with univariate and multivariate statistics for determination of overall differences among populations. To control for possible environmental effects, offspring of eight clones from two populations (Belize and Florida) were reared at 25 C and similarly analyzed. All characters with the exception of pectoral fin rays were significantly different among wild populations. In addition, Belizean male fish differed from hermaphrodites in several morphometric characters. Fish reared at constant temperature also displayed significant differences, indicating a probable genetic component to differences in wild fish. The multivariate analyses also confirmed considerable heterogeneity among R. marmoratus. Overall, fish from Brazil, the Florida Everglades, Belize, and Honduras appear to be distinct from the other groups. The characters that contributed most to group delineations were number of precaudal vertebrae, distance from pelvic fin origin to anal fin origin, pectoral fin length, and number of branched caudal rays. Discriminant function analysis was able to classify the fish reared at 25 C to individual clonal heritage, although with a different set of characters than in wild fish

An Acyl-Linked Dimer of Daptomycin Is Strongly Inhibited by the Bacterial Cell Wall

This document is the unedited Author’s version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publi-cation in ACS Infectious Diseases,© American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsinfecdis.7b00019.The lipopeptide antibiotic daptomycin is active against Gram-positive pathogens. It permeabilizes bacterial cell membranes, which involves the formation of membrane-associated oligomers. We here studied a dimer of daptomycin whose two subunits were linked through a bivalent aliphatic acyl chain. Unexpectedly, the dimer had very low activity on vegetative Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis cells. However, activity resembled that of monomeric daptomycin on liposomes and on B. subtilis L-forms. These findings underscore the importance of the bacterial cell wall in daptomycin resistance.NSERC operating grants to M.P. (250265-2013) and S.T. (155283-2012)

The action mechanism of daptomycin

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bmc.2016.05.052 © 2016.Daptomycin is a lipopeptide antibiotic produced by the soil bacterium Streptomyces roseosporus that is clinically used to treat severe infections with Gram-positive bacteria. In this review, we discuss the mode of action of this important antibiotic. Although daptomycin is structurally related to amphomycin and similar lipopeptides that inhibit peptidoglycan biosynthesis, experimental studies have not produced clear evidence that daptomycin shares their action mechanism. Instead, the best characterized effect of daptomycin is the permeabilization and depolarization of the bacterial cell membrane. This activity, which can account for daptomycin's bactericidal effect, correlates with the level of phosphatidylglycerol (PG) in the membrane. Accordingly, reduced synthesis of PG or its increased conversion to lysyl-PG promotes bacterial resistance to daptomycin. While other resistance mechanisms suggest that daptomycin may indeed directly interfere with cell wall synthesis or cell division, such effects still await direct experimental confirmation. Daptomycin's complex structure and biosynthesis have hampered the analysis of its structure activity relationships. Novel methods of total synthesis, including a recent one that is carried out entirely on a solid phase, will enable a more thorough and systematic exploration of the sequence space

The Emerging Scholars Issue: Insights on Teaching and Leading through Reshaping Policy and Practice

The Emerging Scholars program began at the 2019 Texas-NAME conference with five graduate students, four of which were enrolled in a doctoral program. Students participated in preconference workshops on establishing a research agenda, understanding academia and higher education institutions, and creating a network as an education researcher. Since its inception, the program has continued introducing students to collaborations and publication opportunities through Texas-NAME. This special issue provides doctoral students (some of whom have since graduated) with an opportunity to be single-authors in their scholar. Organized in three distinct sections, readers will be exposed to research and policy briefs and critical reflections that center on the experiences of difference to provide educational access, equity, and opportunity to historically minoritized populations

The Emerging Scholars Issue: Continuous Learning Through a Personal and Professional Lens

The Emerging Scholars program offers ongoing mentoring, personalized feedback, and opportunities for individual and collaborative scholarly development. Participants are encouraged to present at the Texas-NAME annual conference and publish their research in the Journal of Multicultural Affairs\u27 special issue for Emerging Scholars. The publication process is supportive, beginning with mentorship and discussions on manuscript organization. Peer review involves the mentor, a contributing author, and previous emerging scholars as reviewers, fostering a collaborative environment that promotes learning and idea development. The issue\u27s topics revolve around challenges faced by students of color, exploring issues such as out-of-school suspensions, the impact of COVID-19 on education, Indigenous knowledge, rural education policy, cultural gaps, class start times, and critical race theory in schools. Authors delved into topics of personal interest and experiences that influenced their research, all with the common goal of improving educational equality. The special issue serves as a platform for scholars to grow and collaborate, fostering efforts towards positive change in the academic landscape for every student\u27s benefit