Reification in the Modern World

This project focuses on how the working class experience is affected by a capitalist society, mainly in how their subjectivity is reduced. I also am investigating whether or not the Lukácsian term “reification” is contemporarily applicable. By doing so, I focus on Lukács’ theory of reification and how that is different from Marx’s “commodity fetishism.” This discussion is mainly informed by thoughts from secondary source essays in Tom Rockmore’s Lukács Today. We see that reification is referring to an experiential aspect of being in capitalism. Next, we talk about Heidegger’s discussion of anxiety as a lived experience and how Lukács critiques Heidegger. Anxiety is important for the discussion of reification because Heidegger is responding to positivism, like Lukács. After this, I illustrate how Marcuse rectifies Existential Phenomenology into a Marxist framework. From Marcuse, we also see a better example of reified time for the worker. Lastly, I evaluate the claim from my introduction about the modern relevance of “reification.

Development Strategies for Privately Owned Fashion Boutiques

Abstract Many privately owned brick-and-mortar fashion boutiques in the United States fail to succeed beyond the first 5 years of business. The knowledge of the factors responsible for the decline in the survival rate of traditional or brick-and-mortar fashion boutiques may be essential to these entrepreneurs’ survival. Grounded in the general systems theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies used by successful brick-and-mortar fashion boutique owners to negate the threat of online retailers. Data were collected through interviews with 5 brick-and-mortar fashion boutique owners, who operated businesses in the southeast region of the United States for more than 5 years, denoting success in fashion retailing. Secondary sources of data included secondoary data from the U. S. Small Business Administration, U. S. Census Bureau, and fashion industry reports. A thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: the importance of marketing, fashion trends, and customer preference.. The outcomes of positive social change will expectedly result from the contribution to strategic knowledge generated from the study, in the formulation of innovative retail business strategies. The potential knowledge utilization of the study results may serve to increase the success rates of online fashion startups and positively influence improvement in the economic status and welfare of fashion business professionals in the community

Speed and learning in the opportunity development process

publishedVersio

The Retroviral Restriction Ability of SAMHD1, but Not Its Deoxynucleotide Triphosphohydrolase Activity, Is Regulated by Phosphorylation

SummarySAMHD1 is a cellular enzyme that depletes intracellular deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) and inhibits the ability of retroviruses, notably HIV-1, to infect myeloid cells. Although SAMHD1 is expressed in both cycling and noncycling cells, the antiviral activity of SAMHD1 is limited to noncycling cells. We determined that SAMHD1 is phosphorylated on residue T592 in cycling cells but that this phosphorylation is lost when cells are in a noncycling state. Reverse genetic experiments revealed that SAMHD1 phosphorylated on residue T592 is unable to block retroviral infection, but this modification does not affect the ability of SAMHD1 to decrease cellular dNTP levels. SAMHD1 contains a target motif for cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (cdk1) (592TPQK595), and cdk1 activity is required for SAMHD1 phosphorylation. Collectively, these findings indicate that phosphorylation modulates the ability of SAMHD1 to block retroviral infection without affecting its ability to decrease cellular dNTP levels

Computational Modeling for the Activation Cycle of G-proteins by G-protein-coupled Receptors

In this paper, we survey five different computational modeling methods. For comparison, we use the activation cycle of G-proteins that regulate cellular signaling events downstream of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) as a driving example. Starting from an existing Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) model, we implement the G-protein cycle in the stochastic Pi-calculus using SPiM, as Petri-nets using Cell Illustrator, in the Kappa Language using Cellucidate, and in Bio-PEPA using the Bio-PEPA eclipse plug in. We also provide a high-level notation to abstract away from communication primitives that may be unfamiliar to the average biologist, and we show how to translate high-level programs into stochastic Pi-calculus processes and chemical reactions.Comment: In Proceedings MeCBIC 2010, arXiv:1011.005

Water Governance in Decentralising Indonesia

Under new democratic regimes in the country of the South, governance innovation is often found at the regional level. This article, using the concept of institutional capacity, shows that powerful efforts affecting regional water resource coordination emerge locally. The paper analyzes fresh water cooperation in the urban region of Cirebon, Indonesia. It is shown that city and their surrounding regions in decentralizing Indonesia show signs of increasing institutional capacity between local actors. An informal approach and discretionary local decision-making, influenced by logic of appropriateness and tolerance are influential. At the same time, these capacities are compromised by significant inequality and a unilateral control of water resources, and they are being challenged by a strong authoritarian political culture inherited from a history of centralized government. The paper points to the need to establish greater opportunities for water governance at the regional level to transcend inter-local rivalry, and thus improve decentralized institutional capacity further

Mineralisation of soft and hard tissues and the stability of biofluids

Evidence is provided from studies on natural and artificial biofluids that the sequestration of amorphous calcium phosphate by peptides or proteins to form nanocluster complexes is of general importance in the control of physiological calcification. A naturally occurring mixture of osteopontin peptides was shown, by light and neutron scattering, to form calcium phosphate nanoclusters with a core–shell structure. In blood serum and stimulated saliva, an invariant calcium phosphate ion activity product was found which corresponds closely in form and magnitude to the ion activity product observed in solutions of these osteopontin nanoclusters. This suggests that types of nanocluster complexes are present in these biofluids as well as in milk. Precipitation of amorphous calcium phosphate from artificial blood serum, urine and saliva was determined as a function of pH and the concentration of osteopontin or casein phosphopeptides. The position of the boundary between stability and precipitation was found to agree quantitatively with the theory of nanocluster formation. Artificial biofluids were prepared that closely matched their natural counterparts in calcium and phosphate concentrations, pH, saturation, ionic strength and osmolality. Such fluids, stabilised by a low concentration of sequestering phosphopeptides, were found to be highly stable and may have a number of beneficial applications in medicine

Nominalphrasen in literarischen Texten : Strukturtypen und Funktionen beim Figurenentwurf in Werken des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts

Nominalphrasen und ihre Teile tragen wesentlich dazu bei, Wissen über literarische Figuren einzuführen und eingeführtes figurenbezogenes Wissen an relevanten Stellen zu aktualisieren. Das vorliegende Buch bewegt sich an der Schnittstelle von Grammatik und Textlinguistik: Anhand von ausgewählten Werken des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts wird systematisch und detailliert dargestellt, welche Strukturtypen von Nominalphrasen eingesetzt werden, um bei der Figureneinführung bzw. beim Weiterreden über literarische Figuren bestimmte Dimensionen der Figurencharakterisierung anzusprechen. In einer Fallstudie wird darüber hinaus nach der Dynamik des Wissensaufbaus im Textstrom gefragt