Venezuela's National Music Education Program El Sistema: Its Interactions with Society and Its Participants' Engagement in Praxis

Venezuela's government-funded, national music education program, El Sistema, has attracted worldwide attention because of its purported success in ‘saving’ children from lives filled with drugs, violence, and crime. It does this by giving them the opportunity to play in an after-school orchestra, one to four hours a day, five to six days a week. This article describes the program’s organizational philosophy and mission, and accounts for its day-to-day activities in order to explore how these programmatic aspects may positively contribute to participant engagement in Paulo Freire’s notion of praxis, that is, “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire and Ramos, 2004, p. 51). Additionally, other programmatic aspects of El Sistema are highlighted to help link the program with previous research on improving students’ social behavior and cognitive development. Finally, the article discusses some of the program’s strengths and weaknesses and how it plays a role in Venezuelan society, interacting not only with the community of students and parents, but also with national and local governments and the private business sector. In doing so, El Sistema is contextualized within its social environment and conclusions are drawn on the potential for success and replicability in other cities and countries

The Arctic Switch Fabric : a scalable network technology

Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 35).by Michael Sy.S.B.and M.Eng

Some results on PA-provably recursive functions

We provide some results which emerged from joint research carried out at CRM. The theorems are inspired by analogy with situations related to forcin

Rapid and repeated limb loss in a clade of scincid lizards

© 2008 Skinner et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background: The Australian scincid clade Lerista provides perhaps the best available model for studying limb reduction in squamates (lizards and snakes), comprising more than 75 species displaying a remarkable variety of digit configurations, from pentadactyl to entirely limbless conditions. We investigated the pattern and rate of limb reduction and loss in Lerista, employing a comprehensive phylogeny inferred from nucleotide sequences for a nuclear intron and six mitochondrial genes. Results: The inferred phylogeny reveals extraordinary evolutionary mutability of limb morphology in Lerista. Ancestral state reconstructions indicate at least ten independent reductions in the number of digits from a pentadactyl condition, with a further seven reductions proceeding independently from a tetradactyl condition derived from one of these reductions. Four independent losses of all digits are inferred, three from pentadactyl or tetradactyl conditions. These conclusions are not substantially affected by uncertainty in assumed rates of character state transition or the phylogeny. An estimated age of 13.4 million years for Lerista entails that limb reduction has occurred not only repeatedly, but also very rapidly. At the highest rate, complete loss of digits from a pentadactyl condition is estimated to have occurred within 3.6 million years. Conclusion: The exceptionally high frequency and rate of limb reduction inferred for Lerista emphasise the potential for rapid and substantial alteration of body form in squamates. An absence of compelling evidence for reversals of digit loss contrasts with a recent proposal that digits have been regained in some species of the gymnophthalmid clade Bachia, possibly reflecting an influence of differing environmental and genetic contexts on the evolution of limb morphology in these clades. Future study of the genetic, developmental, and ecological bases of limb reduction and loss in Lerista promises the elucidation of not only this phenomenon in squamates, but also the dramatic evolutionary transformations of body form that have produced the extraordinary diversity of multicellular organisms.Adam Skinner, Michael SY Lee and Mark N Hutchinso

Targeting extracellular DNA to deliver IGF-1 to the injured heart.

There is a great need for the development of therapeutic strategies that can target biomolecules to damaged myocardium. Necrosis of myocardium during a myocardial infarction (MI) is characterized by extracellular release of DNA, which can serve as a potential target for ischemic tissue. Hoechst, a histological stain that binds to double-stranded DNA can be conjugated to a variety of molecules. Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a small protein/polypeptide with a short circulating-half life is cardioprotective following MI but its clinical use is limited by poor delivery, as intra-myocardial injections have poor retention and chronic systemic presence has adverse side effects. Here, we present a novel delivery vehicle for IGF-1, via its conjugation to Hoechst for targeting infarcted tissue. Using a mouse model of ischemia-reperfusion, we demonstrate that intravenous delivery of Hoechst-IGF-1 results in activation of Akt, a downstream target of IGF-1 and protects from cardiac fibrosis and dysfunction following MI

フィリピン人作業療法士の麻薬常習とリハビリに対する役割 : Q方法論

首都大学東

Liquid droplet formation by HP1α suggests a role for phase separation in heterochromatin.

Gene silencing by heterochromatin is proposed to occur in part as a result of the ability of heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) proteins to spread across large regions of the genome, compact the underlying chromatin and recruit diverse ligands. Here we identify a new property of the human HP1α protein: the ability to form phase-separated droplets. While unmodified HP1α is soluble, either phosphorylation of its N-terminal extension or DNA binding promotes the formation of phase-separated droplets. Phosphorylation-driven phase separation can be promoted or reversed by specific HP1α ligands. Known components of heterochromatin such as nucleosomes and DNA preferentially partition into the HP1α droplets, but molecules such as the transcription factor TFIIB show no preference. Using a single-molecule DNA curtain assay, we find that both unmodified and phosphorylated HP1α induce rapid compaction of DNA strands into puncta, although with different characteristics. We show by direct protein delivery into mammalian cells that an HP1α mutant incapable of phase separation in vitro forms smaller and fewer nuclear puncta than phosphorylated HP1α. These findings suggest that heterochromatin-mediated gene silencing may occur in part through sequestration of compacted chromatin in phase-separated HP1 droplets, which are dissolved or formed by specific ligands on the basis of nuclear context

Hospital waste in Hanoi

Hanoi's 36 national hospitals and specialized clinics are the largest hospitals and which have the best equipment in the country. Seriously ill patients from all provinces in the North are transferred to those hospitals for treatment. Nearly all beds are occupied. In most of those hospitals, costs are shared by the government and patients. The government supply facilities and the base salaries fore medical staff. Due to insufficient budgets, the physical infrastructure of most of hospitals is poor and backward according to international standards. Under those conditions, the waste collection and processing of clinical and non-clinical hospital also lacks of both physical infrastructure and knowledge fore management hazardous waste. This paper will review and compare the classification, processing, reuse, and recycling of waste in 24 of 36 Hanoi hospitals and specialized clinics, and also about the plan, and the role of private waste collectors and recyclers