306 research outputs found

    Implications of sustainable agricultural intensification for family farming in Africa: anthropological perspectives

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    In this paper, we will explore the ways in which sustainable intensification interventions often overlook fundamental social dynamics in rural landscapes. We provide evidence of the underlying social, political and environmental contexts that affect farmers’ land-use decisions. While there are numerous initiatives to promote a Green Revolution for Africa, many tend to be dominated by technical fixes that fail to understand rural farmers’ condi - tions or aspirations and focus narrowly on increasing productivity. These technical solu - tions rarely address the broader social, economic and political challenges to agricultural production and farmers’ livelihoods. Finally, top-down technical approaches frequently fail to build on the local knowledge, innovative capacity and expertise of farmers and members of rural communities throughout Africa. Examples from fieldwork in Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania are used to illustrate our arguments

    Liquid drop stability for protein crystal growth in microgravity

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    It is possible to grow protein crystals for biomedical research in microgravity by deploying a protein-rich solution from a syringe, forming a drop in which crystallization can occur with the proper degree of supersaturation. Drop stability is critical to the success of this research, due to the large drop sizes which can be achieved in space. In order to determine the type of syringe tips most suitable to support these large drops, tests were performed during brief periods of weightlessness onboard the NASA KC-135 low-gravity simulation aircraft. The drops were analyzed using three simple models in which the samples were approximated by modified pendulum and spring systems. It was concluded that the higher frequency systems were the most stable, indicating that of the syringes utilized, a disk-shaped configuration provided the most stable environment of low-gravity protein crystal growth

    The Dory Fleet of Pacific City: An Annotated Bibliography

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    This annotated bibliography has been created as part of the Launching through the Surf: The Dory Fleet of Pacific City project. Kathleen Spring, Brenda DeVore Marshall, Andrea Snyder, Mary Beth Jones, Alicia Schnell, and Gabrielle Leif have contributed to the document. Many of the articles and other documents were found in personal scrapbooks and files. In many cases, the bibliographic information is incomplete. Research is ongoing, and the bibliography will be updated as additional information becomes available

    Civil Procedure

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    The Biopsychosocial Model: Application to Occupational Therapy Practice

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    Despite the call for the profession to embrace a more integrated and holistic approach to practice, therapists may be faced with practical challenges, including issues relating to client caseloads, productivity demands, scheduling, entrenched practices, limitations on service imposed by payer sources, and staffing and budgetary restraints, to name but a few. Due to these limitations, current occupational therapy practice may be predisposed to adopt a more reductive approach to the evaluation and treatment of symptoms, underlying biological pathologies, and resulting impairments and disabilities. Therefore, psychological and social factors may be neglected, resulting in an unbalanced, fragmented, and incomplete approach to patient care. This paper examines a more holistic and integrated biopsychosocial approach in current occupational therapy practice. Furthermore, an exploration of the Biopsychosocial Model, its relevance to the profession of occupational therapy, and the proposed methods of application toward a more holistic, evidence-based, and client-centered approach to clinical practice is addressed

    Mapping Musical Mobilities:Challenging Musical Nationalism Through Mobility and Migration

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    Often, music – particularly classical music – has been viewed in some quarters as a product of particular national cultures, with little regard paid to the ways in which mobile phenomena can contribute to its production, whether in the form of mobile people, objects, or concepts. This paper turns to notions of mobility as a means of exploring how musical cultures can be animated. It explores, too, the possibilities of particular forms of ‘mapping’ as a way to retain, but also rethink, the spatial specificity so emphatically signalled in some musical tradition-claiming, while simultaneously avoiding the excessive valorisation of mobility that can characterise many musical careers as endlessly nomadic or socially detached. We begin by discussing the question of music and nationalism in more detail, particularly as it has been conceived of within musicology, ethnomusicology, and nationalism studies. In so doing, we aim to establish a sense of the national framing and fixing through which (classical) music has hitherto been understood in some contexts. This leads naturally onto an attendant discussion of the mobility of music, in which we will outline some of the nascent material on this topic

    The Detail Behind Web-Scale: Selecting and Configuring Web-Scale Discovery Tools to Meet Music Information Retrieval Needs.

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    Web-scale discovery tools are rapidly gaining popularity as a purported "one-stop search" for discovering library information. Music, particularly printed music and recordings, presents unique information retrieval needs. This article identifies, explores, and makes recommendations regarding key music-related aspects to consider when selecting and implementing a discovery tool, considering scope, metadata, and interface

    Enhanced Potency of Bivalent Small Molecule gp41 Inhibitors

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    Low molecular weight peptidomimetic inhibitors with hydrophobic pocket binding properties and moderate fusion inhibitory activity against HIV-1 gp41-mediated cell fusion were elaborated by increasing the available surface area for interacting with the heptad repeat-1 (HR1) coiled coil on gp41. Two types of modifications were tested: 1) increasing the overall hydrophobicity of the molecules with an extension that could interact in the HR1 groove, and 2) forming symmetrical dimers with two peptidomimetic motifs that could potentially interact simultaneously in two hydrophobic pockets on the HR1 trimer. The latter approach was more successful, yielding 40–60 times improved potency against HIV fusion over the monomers. Biophysical characterization, including equilibrium binding studies by fluorescence and kinetic analysis by Surface Plasmon Resonance, revealed that inhibitor potency was better correlated to off-rates than to binding affinity. Binding and kinetic data could be fit to a model of bidentate interaction of dimers with the HR1 trimer as an explanation for the slow off-rate, albeit with minimal cooperativity due to the highly flexible ligand structures. The strong cooperativity observed in fusion inhibitory activity of the dimers implied accentuated potency due to the transient nature of the targeted intermediate. Optimization of monomer, dimer or higher order structures has the potential to lead to highly potent non-peptide fusion inhibitors by targeting multiple hydrophobic pockets
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