Strategic communication in women\u27s rights organizations: Tools, challenges and best practices

Despite rapid globalization and tremendous expansion of the number of women\u27s rights organizations, international attention to the issues of women and girls remains rather low. While some women\u27s rights networks and organizations leap to prominence, others do not receive recognition and public support. I wanted to know why. I interviewed 13 directors and communication managers of women\u27s rights non-governmental organizations to see how they manage communication. I used a convenience sample that included a wide range of geographical locations and sizes of NGOs. The interviews were held via Skype. I conducted a theme analysis of transcribed interviews. The participants indicated various communication goals, which included increased visibility, higher credibility and the engagement of multiple stakeholders. The leaders felt that although having a communication specialist in an NGO is important, executives must also be engaged in delivering effective communication strategies. Relationships with employees, donors and governments were said to be particularly important. The best practices in communication included truth and honesty, and new ways of community involvement through technology. Among the most cost-efficient types of technology, participants named mobile phones, social media, and blogs. The main communication challenges for women\u27s rights NGOs they identified were those associated with media relations and misuse of communication tools, as well as lack of resources and funding for communication goals. Generally, while some participants were dissatisfied with current communication strategies, most of them expressed hopeful and optimistic feelings about communication strategies in their NGOs. Through this thesis, I argue that the relative success of non-governmental organizations for women\u27s rights is not random. I emphasize the impact of strategic communication, particularly via the Internet, on women\u27s rights organizations. Strategic communication is an important public relations and/or marketing tool that allows the organization to enhance its overall strategic positioning and achieve visibility, accountability and sustainable development. As a feminist activist working for women\u27s NGO and scholar, I believe the results of this study will contribute to the understanding of both women\u27s rights NGOs and the larger social movements in which they exist, in the context of new communication practices, digital activism and information technologies

Angiogenic properties of aged adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells after hypoxic conditioning

Background: Mesenchymal stem cells derived from adipose tissue (ADSC) are multipotent stem cells, originated from the vascular-stromal compartment of fat tissue. ADSC are used as an alternative cell source for many different cell therapies, however in ischemic cardiovascular diseases the therapeutic benefit was modest. One of the reasons could be the use of autologous aged ADSC, which recently were found to have impaired functions. We therefore analysed the effects of age on age markers and angiogenic properties of ADSC. Hypoxic conditioning was investigated as a form of angiogenic stimulation. Methods: ADSC were harvested from young (1-3 month), adult (12 month) and aged (18-24 month) mice and cultured under normoxic (20%) and hypoxic (1%) conditions for 48 h. Differences in proliferation, apoptosis and telomere length were assessed in addition to angiogenic properties of ADSC. Results: Proliferation potential and telomere length were decreased in aged ADSC compared to young ADSC. Frequency of apoptotic cells was higher in aged ADSC. Gene expression of pro-angiogenic factors including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), placental growth factor (PlGF) and hepatic growth factor (HGF) were down-regulated with age, which could be restored by hypoxia. Transforming growth factor (TGF-b) increased in the old ADSC but was reduced by hypoxia. Expression of anti-angiogenic factors including thrombospondin-1 (TBS1) and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) did increase in old ADSC, but could be reduced by hypoxic stimulation. Endostatin (ENDS) was the highest in aged ADSC and was also down-regulated by hypoxia. We noted higher gene expression of proteases system factors like urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR), matrix metalloproteinases (MMP2 and MMP9) and PAI-1 in aged ADSC compared to young ADSC, but they decreased in old ADSC. Tube formation on matrigel was higher in the presence of conditioned medium from young ADSC in comparison to aged ADSC. Conclusions: ADSC isolated from older animals show changes, including impaired proliferation and angiogenic stimulation. Angiogenic gene expression can be partially be improved by hypoxic preconditioning, however the effect is age-dependent. This supports the hypothesis that autologous ADSC from aged subjects might have an impaired therapeutic potential

Angiogenic properties of aged adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells after hypoxic conditioning

Background: Mesenchymal stem cells derived from adipose tissue (ADSC) are multipotent stem cells, originated from the vascular-stromal compartment of fat tissue. ADSC are used as an alternative cell source for many different cell therapies, however in ischemic cardiovascular diseases the therapeutic benefit was modest. One of the reasons could be the use of autologous aged ADSC, which recently were found to have impaired functions. We therefore analysed the effects of age on age markers and angiogenic properties of ADSC. Hypoxic conditioning was investigated as a form of angiogenic stimulation.Methods: ADSC were harvested from young (1-3 month), adult (12 month) and aged (18-24 month) mice and cultured under normoxic (20%) and hypoxic (1%) conditions for 48 h. Differences in proliferation, apoptosis and telomere length were assessed in addition to angiogenic properties of ADSC.Results: Proliferation potential and telomere length were decreased in aged ADSC compared to young ADSC. Frequency of apoptotic cells was higher in aged ADSC. Gene expression of pro-angiogenic factors including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), placental growth factor (PlGF) and hepatic growth factor (HGF) were down-regulated with age, which could be restored by hypoxia. Transforming growth factor (TGF-β) increased in the old ADSC but was reduced by hypoxia.Expression of anti-angiogenic factors including thrombospondin-1 (TBS1) and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) did increase in old ADSC, but could be reduced by hypoxic stimulation. Endostatin (ENDS) was the highest in aged ADSC and was also down-regulated by hypoxia. We noted higher gene expression of proteases system factors like urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR), matrix metalloproteinases (MMP2 and MMP9) and PAI-1 in aged ADSC compared to young ADSC, but they decreased in old ADSC. Tube formation on matrigel was higher in the presence of conditioned medium from young ADSC in comparison to aged ADSC.Conclusions: ADSC isolated from older animals show changes, including impaired proliferation and angiogenic stimulation. Angiogenic gene expression can be partially be improved by hypoxic preconditioning, however the effect is age-dependent. This supports the hypothesis that autologous ADSC from aged subjects might have an impaired therapeutic potential. © 2011 Efimenko et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Integrated Training Based on Information and Communication Technologies in the Practice of Teaching Russian language, Literature and Cultural Studies to Foreign Bilingual Students of Non-philological Specialties

The article presents an innovative method of teaching foreign bilingual students of nonphilological specialties (engineering, physics and mathematics, and natural science profiles of the RUDN University). The authors develop a teaching manual “Russian Literature on the Screen” which follows the principle of integrated learning (involving focusing students’ attention on interdisciplinary connections and replenishing their knowledge of Russian literature, culture, and history in the process of teaching Russian as a foreign language) and allows using information and communication technologies in the educational process

The fungal literature-based occurrence database in southern West Siberia (Russia)

The abstract presents the initiative to develop the Fungal Literature-based Occurrence Database for Southern West Siberia (FuSWS), which mobilizes occurrences of fungi from published literature (literature-based occurrences, Darwin Core MaterialCitation). The FuSWS database includes 28 fields describing species name, publication source, herbarium number (if exists), date of sampling or observation, locality information, vegetation, substrate, and others. The initiative on digitization of literature-based occurrence data started in the northern part of Western Siberia two years ago (Filippova et al. 2021a). The present project extends the initiative to the south and includes eight administrative regions (Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Kurgan, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Altay, and Gorny Altay). The area occupies the central to southern part of the West Siberian Plain. It extends for about 1.5 thousand km from the west to the east from the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to Yenisey River, and from north to south—about 1.3 thousand km. The total area equals about 1.2 million km2.Currently, the project is actively growing in spatial, collaboration and data accumulation terms. The working group of about 30 mycologists from 16 organizations dedicated to the digitization initiative was created as part of the Siberian Mycological Society (informal organization since 2019). They have created the most complete bibliographic list of mycology-related papers for the Southern West Siberia, including over 800 publications for the last two centuries (the earliest dated 1800). At abstract submission, the database had been populated with a total of about 10K records from about 100 sources. The dataset is uploaded to GBIF, where it is available for online search of species occurrences and/or download (Filippova et al. 2021b) Fig. 1. The project's page with the introduction, templates, bibliography list, video-presentations and written instructions is available at the website of the Siberian Mycological Society (https://sibmyco.org/literaturedatabase).The following protocol describes the digitization workflow in detail:The bibliography of related publications is compiled using Zotero bibliographic manager. Only published works (peer-reviewed papers, conference proceedings, PhD theses, monographs or book chapters) are selected. If possible, the sources are digitized and added to the library as PDF files. The template of the FuSWS database is made with Google Sheets, which allows simultaneous use by several specialists, in a common data format provided. The simple Microsoft Excel template is also available for the offline databasing. The Darwin Core standard is applied to the database field structure to accommodate the relevant information extracted from the publications.From the available bibliography of publications related to the region, only works with species occurrences are selected for the databasing purpose. The main source of occurrences is annotated species lists with exact localities of the records. However, different sorts of other species citations are also extracted, provided that they had the connection to any geography. All occurrences are georeferenced, either from the coordinates provided in the paper, or from the verbatim description of the field work locality. The georeferencing of the verbatim descriptions is made using Yandex or Google map services. Depending on the quality of georeference provided in publications, the uncertainty is estimated as follows: 1) the coordinate of a fruiting structure or a plot provided in the publication gives the uncertainty about 3-30 meters; 2) the coordinate of the field work locality provided in publication gives the uncertainty about 500 m to 5 km; 3) the report of the species presence in a particular region gives the centroid of the area with the uncertainty radius to include its borders.The locality names reported in Russian are translated to English and written in the «locality» field. Russian descriptions are reserved in the field «verbatimLocality» for accuracy.When possible, the «eventDate» is extracted from the annotation data. Whenever this information is absent, the date of the publication is used instead with the remarks in the «verbatimEventDate» field.The ecological features, habitat and substrate preferences are written in the «habitat» field and reserved in Russian.The original scientific names reported in publications are filled in the «originalNameUsage» field. Correction of spelling errors is made using the GBIF Species Matching tool. This tool is also used to create the additional fields of taxonomic hierarchy from species to kingdom, to fill in the «taxonRank» field and to synonymize according to the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy.To track the digitization process, a worksheet is maintained. Each bibliographic record has a series of fields to describe the digitization process and its results: the total number of extracted occurrence records, general description of the occurrence quality, presence of the observation date, details of georeferencing and the name of a person responsible for the digitization

The fungal literature-based occurrence database for southern West Siberia (Russia)

The paper presents the initiative on literature-based occurrence data mobilisation of fungi and fungi-related organisms (literature-based occurrences, Darwin Core MaterialCitation) to develop the Fungal literature-based occurrence database for the southern West Siberia (FuSWS). The initiative on mobilisation of literature-based occurrence data started in the northern part of West Siberia in 2016. The present project extends the initiative to the southern regions and includes ten administrative territories (Tyumen Region, Sverdlovsk Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Omsk Region, Kurgan Region, Tomsk Region, Novosibirsk Region, Kemerovo Region, Altai Territory and Republic of Altai). The area occupies the central to southern part of the West Siberian Plain and extends for about 1.5 K km from the west to the east from the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to Yenisey River and from north to south—about 1.3 K km. The total area equals about 1.4 million km . The initiative is actively growing in spatial, collaboration and data accumulation terms. The working group of about 30 mycologists from eight organisations dedicated to the data mobilisation was created as part of the Siberian Mycological Society (informal organisation since 2019). They have compiled the almost complete bibliographic list of mycology-related papers for the southern West Siberia, including over 900 publications for the last two centuries (the earliest dated 1800). All literature sources were digitised and an online library was created to integrate bibliography metadata and digitised papers using Zotero bibliography manager. The analysis of published sources showed that about two-thirds of works contain occurrences of fungi for the scope of mobilisation. At the time of the paper submission, the database had been populated with a total of about 8 K records from 93 sources. The dataset is uploaded to GBIF, where it is available for online search of species occurrences and/or download. The project's page with the introduction, templates, bibliography list, video-presentations and written instructions is available (in Russian) at the web site of the Siberian Mycological Society. The initiative will be continued in the following years to extract the records from all published sources. New information The paper presents the first project with the aim of literature-based occurrence data mobilisation of fungi and fungi-related organisms in the southern West Siberia. The full bibliography and a digital library of all regional mycological publications created for the first time includes about 900 published works. By the time of paper submission, nearly 8 K occurrence records were extracted from about 90 literature sources and integrated into the FuSWS database published in GBIF

Crowdsourcing Fungal Biodiversity : Revision of Inaturalist Observations in Northwestern Siberia

The paper presents the first analysis of crowdsourcing data of all observations of fungi (including lichens) and myxomycetes in Northwestern Siberia uploaded to iNaturalist.org to date (24.02.2022). The Introduction presents an analysis of fungal diversity crowdsourcing globally, in Russia, and in the region of interest. Materials and methods describe the protocol of uploading data to iNaturalist.org, the structure of the crowdsourcing community. initiative to revise the accumulated data. procedures of data analysis, and compilation of a dataset of revised crowdsourced data. The Results present the analysis of accumulated data by several parameters: temporal, geographical and taxonomical scope, observation and identification efforts, identifiability of various taxa, species novelty and Red Data Book categories and the protection status of registered observations. The Discussion provides data on usability of crowdsourcing data for biodiversity research and conservation of fungi, including pros and contras. The Electronic Supplements to the paper include an annotated checklist of observations of protected species with information on Red Data Book categories and the protection status, and an annotated checklist of regional records of new taxa. The paper is supplemented with a dataset of about 15 000 revised and annotated records available through Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The tradition of crowdsourcing is rooted in mycological societies around the world, including Russia. In Northwestern Siberia, a regional mycological club was established in 2018, encouraging its members to contribute observations of fungi on iNaturalist.org. A total of about 15 000 observations of fungi and myxomycetes were uploaded so far, by about 200 observers, from three administrative regions (Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Tyumen Region). The geographical coverage of crowdsourcing observations remains low. However. the observation activity has increased in the last four years. The goal of this study consisted of a collaborative effort of professional mycologists invited to help with the identification of these observations and analysis of the accumulated data. As a result, all observations were reviewed by at least one expert. About half of all the observations have been identified reliably to the species level and received Research Grade status. Of those, 90 species (195 records) represented records of taxa new to their respective regions: 876 records of 53 species of protected species provide important data for conservation programmes. The other half of the observations consists of records still under-identified for various reasons: poor quality photographs, complex taxa (impossible to identify without microscopic or molecular study). or lack of experts in a particular taxonomic group. The Discussion section summarises the pros and cons of the use of crowdsourcing for the study and conservation of regional fungal diversity, and summarises the dispute on this subject among mycologists. Further research initiatives involving crowdsourcing data must focus on an increase in the quality of observations and strive to introduce the habit of collecting voucher specimens among the community of amateurs. The timely feedback from experts is also important to provide quality and the increase of personal involvement.Peer reviewe