The business of social responsibility: Evidence from the garment industry in Northeast Thailand

Many business managers demonstrate a reluctance to engage fully with corporate social responsibility (CSR). They often perceive CSR as a cost and their CSR activities tend to be piecemeal and defensive. Such suboptimal outcomes can stem from a failure to appreciate a firm’s social assets. We suggest that firms have the potential to engage much more fully with CSR, in a manner that is consistent with a profit-maximizing approach to business. But managers need help in both gaining an awareness of the social contributions that they can make and in navigating their way through CSR issues. To this end, we outline a program of four-Ds, namely dialogue, data, design and delivery, to assist managers integrate CSR issues into their overall business strategies. Our case study of the garment industry in Thailand illustrates how CSR issues can be leveraged to increase worker productivity and deliver positive social and community health outcomes, despite operating in an area that is often subject to criticism

Recognising and building on freshman students' prior knowledge of economics

The results of three surveys of freshman economics students (2008-2010) at the Waikato Management School, New Zealand, suggest that incoming students have significant levels of prior economics knowledge. Given this head start in knowledge, we have expanded our freshman lecture material with more advanced content than students would normally encounter in a microeconomics principles class. This paper examines the sources of incoming students’ prior economics knowledge and discusses some of the changes made to the learning material. The changes relate principally to the links we make between students’ basic, prior economics knowledge and the more advanced learning content that demonstrates how formal economics training can add considerable value in thinking more deeply about current affairs, business issues and daily life experiences

Migration, household composition and child welfare in rural Northeast Thailand

In many developing countries, the composition of rural households is influenced by the migration of adult household members to urban locations in search of employment. Children may be left in the care of their mother alone, or in the care of grandparents when both parents have migrated. Using representative data from a household survey conducted in rural Northeast Thailand in 2003, this paper investigates whether household composition has any effect on the welfare of children, as measured by anthropometric measurements including height-for-age, weight-for-age, and weight-for-height. Our findings suggest that household types other than nuclear families result in some significantly worse child nutritional outcomes. The implication is that governments should protect the welfare of the children of migrants, either through targeted programs or through increased opportunities for employment in rural areas

Harnessing the private sector for rural development, poverty alleviation and HIV/AIDS prevention

In resource-constrained developing countries, mobilizing resources from outside sources may assist in overcoming many development challenges. This paper examines the Thai Business Initiative in Rural Development (TBIRD), an NGO-sponsored program that brings together the comparative advantages and self-interest of rural villages, private sector firms and a facilitating NGO, to improve social and community health outcomes in rural areas. We analyze key issues in the program with data from Northeast Thailand. We find that the TBIRD program appears to improve the income earning and other prospects of the TBIRD factory workers. Further, TBIRD factory employment exhibits a pro-poor bias. A key impact is to provide jobs for people who might otherwise be at increased risk of HIV infection through poverty-induced decisions to migrate to urban centres and participate in the commercial sex industry. This program adds another important tool for development planners in the fight against HIV/AIDS

Augmenting Mask-Based Lithography with Direct Laser Writing to Increase Resolution and Speed

We present combined direct-laser-writing and UV Lithography in SU-8F and S1813 as a fast and flexible lithographic technique for the prototyping of functional polymer devices and pattern transfer applications. Direct laser writing (DLW), which is performed by focusing a laser through a microscope objective, is a useful alternative method for patterning photoresists with sub-micron resolution. DLW however, can be time consuming if the pattern density is high since it is a serial technique. Typically, dense patterns are made using conventional mask-based UV lithography, but these masks can be quite expensive if the resolution is high and the mask cannot be modified once created. Here, we combine UV lithography using inexpensive transparency masks, which have modest resolution of about 20 µm linewidths, with DLW to create smaller features. By using the laser to augment an inexpensive mask, high resolution prototypes can be created, tested, and modified quickly to optimize a design. Here we show that this Laser Augmented Microlithographic Patterning (LAMP) method works with both positive- and negative-tone photoresists, S1813 and SU-8, respectively. The laser written features can be registered to within 2.2 µm of the mask created features and we demonstrate the applicability of LAMP by fabricating an interdigitated electrode and a microfluidic device that can capture an array of dozens of silica beads or living cells

Personal financial literacy among high school students in New Zealand, Japan and the United States

Personal financial literacy is becoming increasingly important in the modern world, especially for young people. In this paper we compare financial literacy of high school students in Hamilton, New Zealand, with samples from Japan and the United States. We compare not only overall financial literacy, but also literacy across five dimensions (or ‘themes’) of financial literacy, and across three cognitive levels. We find that financial literacy is poor overall in all three countries, but is substantially worse in New Zealand and the United States than in Japan. The performance is similar across themes and cognitive levels for U.S. and New Zealand students, but Japanese students perform better mostly in terms of their greater knowledge of terminology and definitions, rather than better comprehension and ability to apply their knowledge. This suggests that all three countries should work harder to develop the financial literacy of their high school students

The value of statistical life and cost–benefit evaluations of landmine clearance in Cambodia

Development agencies spend approximately US$400 million per year on landmine clearance. Yet many cost–benefit evaluations suggest that landmine clearance is socially wasteful because costs appear to far outweigh social benefits. This paper presents new estimates of the benefits of clearing landmines based on a contingent valuation survey in two provinces in rural Cambodia where we asked respondents questions that elicit their trade-offs between money and the risk of death from landmine accidents. The estimated Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) is US$ 0.4 million. In contrast, most previous studies of landmine clearance use foregone income or average GDP per capita, which has a lifetime value of only US$ 2,000 in Cambodia. Humanitarian landmine clearance emerges as a more attractive rural development policy when appropriate estimates of the VSL are used

The value of statistical life and cost-benefit evaluations of landmine clearance in Cambodia

Development agencies spend approximately US$400 million per year on landmine clearance. Yet many cost-benefit evaluations suggest that landmine clearance is socially wasteful because costs appear to far outweigh social benefits. This paper presents new estimates of the benefits of clearing landmines based on a contingent valuation survey in two provinces in rural Cambodia where we asked respondents questions that elicit their tradeoffs between money and the risk of death from landmine accidents. The estimated Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) is US$0.4 million. In contrast, most previous studies of landmine clearance use foregone income or average GDP per capita, which has a lifetime value of only US$2,000 in Cambodia. Humanitarian landmine clearance emerges as a more attractive rural development policy when appropriate estimates of the VSL are used

Molecular Diagnostics in Advanced NSCLC: Trying to Maximize a Non-Ideal Situation

10.1097/JTO.0b013e31811f479dJournal of Thoracic Oncology28782

Emerging Insights of Tumor Heterogeneity and Drug Resistance Mechanisms in Lung Cancer Targeted Therapy

Abstract The biggest hurdle to targeted cancer therapy is the inevitable emergence of drug resistance. Tumor cells employ different mechanisms to resist the targeting agent. Most commonly in EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer, secondary resistance mutations on the target kinase domain emerge to diminish the binding affinity of first- and second-generation inhibitors. Other alternative resistance mechanisms include activating complementary bypass pathways and phenotypic transformation. Sequential monotherapies promise to temporarily address the problem of acquired drug resistance, but evidently are limited by the tumor cells’ ability to adapt and evolve new resistance mechanisms to persist in the drug environment. Recent studies have nominated a model of drug resistance and tumor progression under targeted therapy as a result of a small subpopulation of cells being able to endure the drug (minimal residual disease cells) and eventually develop further mutations that allow them to regrow and become the dominant population in the therapy-resistant tumor. This subpopulation of cells appears to have developed through a subclonal event, resulting in driver mutations different from the driver mutation that is tumor-initiating in the most common ancestor. As such, an understanding of intratumoral heterogeneity—the driving force behind minimal residual disease—is vital for the identification of resistance drivers that results from branching evolution. Currently available methods allow for a more comprehensive and holistic analysis of tumor heterogeneity in that issues associated with spatial and temporal heterogeneity can now be properly addressed. This review provides some background regarding intratumoral heterogeneity and how it leads to incomplete molecular response to targeted therapies, and proposes the use of single-cell methods, sequential liquid biopsy, and multiregion sequencing to discover the link between intratumoral heterogeneity and early adaptive drug resistance. In summary, minimal residual disease as a result of intratumoral heterogeneity is the earliest form of acquired drug resistance. Emerging technologies such as liquid biopsy and single-cell methods allow for studying targetable drivers of minimal residual disease and contribute to preemptive combinatorial targeting of both drivers of the tumor and its minimal residual disease cells