Unsettling issues: valuing public goods and the production of matters of concern

What are public goods – of any kind – worth? How are they valued, and made valuable? What expertise is involved in their production? Questions over the value of public goods – a sporting championship, the arts, scientific advances or quality of life – figure prominently in our public and political discourse, as politicians and administrators struggle to manage the often competing claims of instrumental, economic reason and intangible, cultural evaluations. We must decide not only what characteristics and ‘goods’ to value, but how to value them, sometimes in the less than fully-realized knowledge that modes of valuation are performative (Austin, 1978) of worth.PostprintPeer reviewe

Dynamics on networks of cluster states for globally coupled phase oscillators

Copyright © by Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. Its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.Systems of globally coupled phase oscillators can have robust attractors that are heteroclinic networks. We investigate such a heteroclinic network between partially synchronized states where the phases cluster into three groups. For the coupling considered there exist 30 different three-cluster states in the case of five oscillators. We study the structure of the heteroclinic network and demonstrate that it is possible to navigate around the network by applying small impulsive inputs to the oscillator phases. This paper shows that such navigation may be done reliably even in the presence of noise and frequency detuning, as long as the input amplitude dominates the noise strength and the detuning magnitude, and the time between the applied pulses is in a suitable range. Furthermore, we show that, by exploiting the heteroclinic dynamics, frequency detuning can be encoded as a spatiotemporal code. By changing a coupling parameter we can stabilize the three-cluster states and replace the heteroclinic network by a network of excitable three-cluster states. The resulting “excitable network” has the same structure as the heteroclinic network and navigation around the excitable network is also possible by applying large impulsive inputs. We also discuss features that have implications for related models of neural activity

Economizing habitus : material calculation and ‘the rules of the game’ in the publishing industry

Pierre Bourdieu’s classical sociology and the actor network based ‘economization’ literature are often considered contradictory, despite some agreement on the constructed nature of economic man. Through an examination of the publishing industry, we argue that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus may offer a useful contribution to the literature on economization. We examine how those new to a field come to understand their position and the role of material devices in structuring this. We argue that Bourdieu’s theory, appropriately stated, sheds light on the tacit assessments made by market agents alongside their involvement in network-based calculative mechanisms, and allows studies of markets to deal with some persistent criticisms of the economization programme.PostprintPeer reviewe

Putting a value on young people's futures: Introducing SROI at Construction Youth Trust

The challenges measuring social value is not a new concept for the construction industry which is good at measuring costs, timings and efficiency of projects but not the benefits of intangibles such as good design even though design can promote everything from reduced crime to higher productivity (Macmillan, 2005). The measurement of social value has become increasingly important through the enactment of the Social Value Act 2012 requiring public authorities to consider economic, social and environmental well-being when awarding public sector contracts. Social Return on Investment (SROI) is an approach that can be used to measure the social, economic and environmental benefits of an activity by dividing the value of outcomes for stakeholders, by the inputs of the activity leading to the SROI ratio. The research reports on a project at Construction Youth Trust to develop a bespoke Social Return on Investment (SROI) model to capture the value of activities helping young people facing barriers access opportunities within the construction industry. The research examines the primary and secondary research that went into the development of the Trusts bespoke SROI model that was developed in partnership with the construction industry and part funded by construction company Willmott Dixon. Initial conclusions are that SROI is still under development and there are a lot of technical challenges to implementing the approach such as a lack of universal bank of financial proxies and the inability to compare SROI reports. Therefore implementing SROI is currently a time consuming and expensive process

Nicotinamide benefits both mothers and pups in two contrasting mouse models of preeclampsia

Preeclampsia (PE), high blood pressure and protein in the urine in the last third of pregnancy, complicates about 1 in 20 human pregnancies, and it is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related maternal deaths. The only definitive treatment, induced delivery, invariably results in premature babies. Blood pressure-lowering drugs help, but results in preventing preterm delivery and correcting the fetal growth restriction (FGR) that also occurs in PE have been disappointing. Here we show that feeding high doses of nicotinamide, a vitamin, improves the maternal condition, prolongs pregnancies, and prevents FGR in mice having PE-like conditions due to two contrasting causes. Because nicotinamide benefits both mothers and pups, it merits evaluation for preventing or treating PE in humans

Towards Critical Human Resource Management Education (CHRME): a sociological imagination approach

This article explores the professional standing of the discipline of human resource management (HRM) in business schools in the post-financial crisis period. Using the prism of the sociological imagination, it explains the learning to be gained from teaching HRM that is sensitive to context, power and inequality. The context of crisis provides ideal circumstances for critical reflexivity and for integrating wider societal issues into the HRM curriculum. It argues for Critical Human Resource Management Education or CHRME, which, if adopted, would be an antidote to prescriptive practitioner-oriented approaches. It proceeds to set out five principles for CHRME: using the ‘sociological imagination’ prism; emphasizing the social nature of the employment relationship; investigating paradox within HRM; designing learning outcomes that encourage students to appraise HRM outcomes critically; and reflexive critique. Crucially, CHRME offers a teaching strategy that does not neglect or marginalize the reality of structural power, inequality and employee work experiences

Representational predicaments at three Hong Kong sites

Representational predicaments arise when a job incumbent believes that attributions and images assumed by dominant authorities unfavourably ignore, or disproportionately and unfavourably emphasize, aspects of the incumbent\u27s own work and social identity. This is likely to happen when the incumbent does not have a close relationship with a dominant authority, and when power asymmetries give the former relatively little control over which aspects of their work and social identity are made visible or invisible to the latter. We draw on critical incident interviews from three organizations to illustrate a typology of six types of representational predicament: invasive spotlighting, idiosyncratic spotlighting, embedded background work, paradoxical social visibility, standardization of work processes, and standardization of work outputs. We analyse responses to representational predicaments according to whether they entailed exit, voice, loyalty, or neglect. Incumbents tended to respond with loyalty if they felt able and willing to accommodate their work behaviour and/or social identity to the dominant representations, and if there were sufficient compensatory factors, such as intrinsic rewards from the work or solidarity with colleagues. Exit or neglect appeared to reflect the belief that it was impossible to accommodate. Power asymmetries appeared to deter voice. Individual employees with a close and cordial working relationship with a member of a dominant authority group, or who were relationally networked to one, appeared not to experience representational predicaments

Identification and Differential Expression of MicroRNAs during Metamorphosis of the Japanese Flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus)

BACKGROUND: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of endogenous small non-coding RNAs of 20-25 nucleotides that play a key role in diverse biological processes. Japanese flounder undergo dramatic metamorphosis in their early development. The metamorphosis is characterized by morphological transformation from a bilaterally symmetrical to an asymmetrical body shape concomitant with extensive morphological and physiological remodeling of organs. So far, only a few miRNAs have been identified in fish and there are very few reports about the Japanese flounder miRNA. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Solexa sequencing technology was used to perform high throughput sequencing of the small RNA library from the metamorphic period of Japanese flounder. Subsequently, aligning these sequencing data with metazoan known miRNAs, we characterized 140 conserved miRNAs and 57 miRNA: miRNA* pairs from the small RNA library. Among these 57 miRNA: miRNA* pairs, twenty flounder miRNA precursors were amplified from genomic DNA. We also demonstrated evolutionary conservation of Japanese flounder miRNAs and miRNA* in the animal evolution process. Using miRNA microarrays, we identified 66 differentially expressed miRNAs at two metamorphic stages (17 and 29 days post hatching) of Japanese flounder. The results show that miRNAs might play a key role in regulating gene expression during Japanese flounder metamorphosis. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We identified a large number of miRNAs during flounder metamorphosis, some of which are differentially expressed at two different metamorphic stages. The study provides an opportunity for further understanding of miRNA function in the regulation of flounder metamorphosis and gives us clues for further studies of the mechanisms of metamorphosis in Japanese flounder