Genome-wide linkage scan for colorectal cancer susceptibility genes supports linkage to chromosome 3q

Background: Colorectal cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer-related mortality. The disease is clinically and genetically heterogeneous though a strong hereditary component has been identified. However, only a small proportion of the inherited susceptibility can be ascribed to dominant syndromes, such as Hereditary Non-Polyposis Colorectal Cancer (HNPCC) or Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP). In an attempt to identify novel colorectal cancer predisposing genes, we have performed a genome-wide linkage analysis in 30 Swedish non-FAP/non-HNPCC families with a strong family history of colorectal cancer.Methods: Statistical analysis was performed using multipoint parametric and nonparametric linkage.Results: Parametric analysis under the assumption of locus homogeneity excluded any common susceptibility regions harbouring a predisposing gene for colorectal cancer. However, several loci on chromosomes 2q, 3q, 6q, and 7q with suggestive linkage were detected in the parametric analysis under the assumption of locus heterogeneity as well as in the nonparametric analysis. Among these loci, the locus on chromosome 3q21.1- q26.2 was the most consistent finding providing positive results in both parametric and nonparametric analyses Heterogeneity LOD score (HLOD) = 1.90, alpha = 0.45, Non-Parametric LOD score (NPL) = 2.1).Conclusion: The strongest evidence of linkage was seen for the region on chromosome 3. Interestingly, the same region has recently been reported as the most significant finding in a genome-wide analysis performed with SNP arrays; thus our results independently support the finding on chromosome 3q

Climate social science—Any future for ‘blue sky research’ in management studies?

Summary The environmental humanities call for post-disciplinary approaches to meet the vexing problem of climate change. However, scholars have not scrutinised how management and organisation studies (MOS) could contribute to such an endeavour. This research note explores common surfaces of contact between the natural and social sciences, with the goal of unravelling the legitimate positions to speak from about climate change. The findings suggest that scholars in MOS are exposed to ecological reasoning, which undergirds underdog heroism, disciplinary confusion and a debasement of political subjectivity. As a counter strategy, I suggest that we affirm a ‘blue-sky research’ approach that would support alternative research paths and a more traditional will to know—to advance ‘climate social science’

Linkage to chromosome 2q32.2-q33.3 in familial serrated neoplasia (Jass syndrome)

Causative genetic variants have to date been identified for only a small proportion of familial colorectal cancer (CRC). While conditions such as Familial Adenomatous Polyposis and Lynch syndrome have well defined genetic causes, the search for variants underlying the remainder of familial CRC is plagued by genetic heterogeneity. The recent identification of families with a heritable predisposition to malignancies arising through the serrated pathway (familial serrated neoplasia or Jass syndrome) provides an opportunity to study a subset of familial CRC in which heterogeneity may be greatly reduced. A genome-wide linkage screen was performed on a large family displaying a dominantly-inherited predisposition to serrated neoplasia genotyped using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Mapping 10 K SNP Array. Parametric and nonparametric analyses were performed and resulting regions of interest, as well as previously reported CRC susceptibility loci at 3q22, 7q31 and 9q22, were followed up by finemapping in 10 serrated neoplasia families. Genome-wide linkage analysis revealed regions of interest at 2p25.2-p25.1, 2q24.3-q37.1 and 8p21.2-q12.1. Finemapping linkage and haplotype analyses identified 2q32.2-q33.3 as the region most likely to harbour linkage, with heterogeneity logarithm of the odds (HLOD) 2.09 and nonparametric linkage (NPL) score 2.36 (P = 0.004). Five primary candidate genes (CFLAR, CASP10, CASP8, FZD7 and BMPR2) were sequenced and no segregating variants identified. There was no evidence of linkage to previously reported loci on chromosomes 3, 7 and 9

Empowering women’s entrepreneurship to establish bottom-up innovation systems - The case of cycling tourism in Norrtälje Region : EU Interreg Program, Quadruple Helix Reports 2011:5

Women´s entrepreneurship has been enhanced in several different contexts and by various means. It is a topic that links socio-political objectives with academic research and produces an ensemble of professionals with expertise and authority on specifically the category of women in relation to what can be termed entrepreneurship and practices correlated to it. These professionals often construct differences between men and women, commonly in the wake of a discourse on biological differences and psychological differences (e.g. see Ahl, 2006), or by showing how women are socially subordinated men on a structural level. As part of the EU-funded Quadruple Helix project seeking ‘gender awareness’, this report is thus positioned within this professional ensemble with its predefined categories, at the same time as a normative outcome is ambitiously sought at a political level.   The lead partner of the Quadruple Helix project is the Municipality of Norrtälje (Sweden). Complementary partners are: Stockholm County Administrative Board (Sweden), BalticFem (Sweden), Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Åbo Akademi University (Finland), Eurohouse (Estonia),  Läänemaa Tourism Association (Estonia) and Saaremaa University Centre (Estonia). They are all partaking within their area of expertise, belonging to one of the helices in picture 1. An increased collaboration between these helices is to stimulate cluster formation and women’s entrepreneurship, a process focused in this report by studying the specific case of cycling tourism in the Norrtälje region,  area of Roslagen. The report presents a study of the business of cycling tourism carried out by women as part of the framework of the Quadruple Helix project of the Central Baltic Interreg IV A programme (hereafter “QH-project”). An interview study was performed during spring and summer 2011, followed up by an analysis of how the EU-project unfolded with focus on the conditions for women entrepreneurs in the Norrtälje region. Norrtälje is part of the Baltic Sea region, a region that the QH-project seeks to strengthen by stimulating clusters of the tourism sector and increase networking among women entrepreneurs. The QH-project also aims to provide innovative support by adding new mobile telephone applications for the tourism sector. Both to create a more contemporary service industry in line with new market demands, and to couple a traditionally male branch with the tourism sector.   The aim of this study is to analyse how the QH-project turned out in practice, how it was operationalized and how it unfolded as a process. Focus is on the different actors involved, especially the management team at Norrtälje municipality, the entrepreneurs involved (hereafter ‘e—team’) in the tourism business, and the NGO ‘BalticFem’, supporting the networking activities. This detailed study of how a specific network took shape and formed a prosperous innovation process, can help us to understand how we can develop and complete the Quadruple Helix innovation model. The question is also how we can focus on entrepreneurship, innovation and clusters in a more gender equal way? When we understand how a network and an innovation process aiming to support women’s entrepreneurship unfolds, we may also create more gender equal businesses by how we compile the platform consisting of the four sectors: public sector, private sector, academic sector and civil society or the so-called third sector. Except for the overall objective to stimulate entrepreneurship and increase business life and growth, the report addresses EU’s political interest in ‘gender awareness’. ‘Gender awareness’ is both promoted as a way to change gender structures, for example in developing countries (e.g. see Wright, 1995; Elson, 1995), or by managers in companies (Wahl, Holgersson, Höök, & Linghag, 2001). In this report, gender issues will be pinpointed by first illustrating how women entrepreneurs started to collaborate around a common business idea, a cycling route, and secondly, by presenting how they positioned themselves within the predefined category ‘woman entrepreneur’ (or female entrepreneur), an often problematized group in modern society. How an innovation system has been operationalized by project-based work can thus help us to address what gender orders this type of work has contributed to (cf. Lindgren & Packendorff, 2006). And an analysis of the subject positions constructed by the interviewees and interviewer (Fenwick, 2002), may help us to understand how predefined categories are either resisted or maintained. This type of research design makes it possible to fulfil the stated socio-political objectives of the QH-project, at the same time as the academic contribution may provide with alternative insights and not merely repeat and strengthen descriptions of prevailing realities, as the one that women are structurally subordinated to men.   The description in this report will also be designed as a ‘populated text’, i.e. a text that is about people, what they can be said to do and how language produces them (Billig, 2011). For example, describing mentalities as inner states could be recognized as a ‘depopulation’ of a text, i.e. that the text is not about people pursuing their businesses, but about their claimed inner states of mind (cf. Ibid). The case described in this document is thus aiming to be a text about people, a populated narrative, delivering descriptions of practices undertaken in realization of a specific business idea and the emanation of an innovation system bottom-up.   The interview study was performed as a qualitative inquiry, with semi-structured interviews and open-ended questions. The interviews were between 30-60 minutes each, often including a visit to the premises of the entrepreneurs, their bed and breakfasts, hostels and restaurants. Altogether 14 participants were interviewed and are kept anonymous. The interviews are not transcribed, but important quotes have been collected. Documents linked to the cycling route have also been analysed, complemented with observations during an exhibition.   The report is structured as follows. The first part consists of a case description, a success story of a prosperous woman entrepreneur and practical conclusions important for the QH-project as a functioning innovation system. The second part is a more critical discussion about the re-construction of women’s entrepreneurship, subjectivities produced and the resistance towards the category ‘vulnerable woman’ and ‘responsible woman’. Taken together, the report illustrates how women were empowered to engage in entrepreneurial activities to co-produce an innovation system.QC 20111114EU Interreg progra

Homo Clima : Climate Man and Productive Power - Government through Climate Change as Bioaesthetic Frame.

Former creative resistance to environmentally hazardous activities has during the last decades, through discussions on climate change, been increasingly reoriented by meteorology, expert knowledge and policy discourse. The ecological system’s perspective on climate change, proclaiming the human not simply as a disturbance in a natural balancing system, but as changing it, has become a causal model for the possibility to change that human. This PhD thesis interrogates how statements in IPCC reports and a Swedish newspaper (DN) constitute truth claims on climate change. What subjectivities does parlance on climate change produce and what type of citizen is called upon to optimize vitality in relation to atmospheric molecules? How is self-management of every-day activities established by help to interactivity and self-techniques framed by technical artefacts? These questions are addressed by a governmentality perspective on how discourse, conceived as partaking in a process of productive power, strives to make climate change an ethico-politic question that fosters ‘Homo Clima’, climate man. What strategies and techniques this form of ‘government’ deploys are described by six interconnecting themes; “Atmospheric biopolitics fosters contingency”, “Mortality/Vitality”, “The moral population in the atmosphere moral economy”, “Homo Clima” and “Bioaesthetics through technical artefacts”, ending in a discussion upon these themes as an act which “Re-thematizes climate change”. The chapters illustrate how statements on the prevention and mitigation of climate risks mold scientific rationalities, mathematically modelled futures and calculations of molecular compounds with how these same futures and molecules correlate to individual culpability, responsibility and morality. From Foucauldian biopolitics to Foucauldian ethics, this can be conceived as an optimization of the vitality of the population by inserting the idea of the population as moral into history and foster moral en masse. Homo Clima is in line with this power/knowledge regime investigated, regarding his ambitions and receptiveness to adapt into a self-governing communicative ethico-politically active neoliberal subject, predicted to inhabit a not yet fully flourished relation between its climate moral self and its actions. By statements in the perimeter of technical artefacts, death, reproduction and consumption, Homo Clima is to become an ideal citizen, investing its own changeability in relation to those beings that are investigated, mapped, localized, archived, systematized and segmented; to simultaneously amend and protect a climate authorized aesthetizised life. This formation, together with the atmosphere as a new terrain for ‘government’ with market solutions for climate risks that links vitalisation with individual morality to moral at an aggregate level, offers an ostensible confrontation of the enterprising subject in the advanced liberal society. Homo Clima is thus conceptualized as a relay of bioaesthetics rather than as a protector of the environment. QC 20110608</p