A portable and compact device is demonstrated for measuring acetone in breath samples. The device features a 7 cm long high finesse optical cavity as an optical sensor that is coupled to a miniature ...adsorption preconcentrator containing 0.5 g of polymer material. Acetone is trapped out of breath and released into the optical cavity where it is probed by a near-infrared diode laser operating at ∼1670 nm. With an optical cavity mirror reflectivity of 99.994%, a limit of detection of 159 ppbv (1σ) is demonstrated on samples from breath bags. Initial results on direct breath sampling are presented with a precision of 100 ppbv. The method is validated with measurements made using an ion–molecule reaction mass spectrometer. Data are presented on elevated breath acetone from two individuals following an overnight fast and exercise, and from a third individual during several days of routine behavior.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) remains a popular policy with many international funding institutions, in spite of growing evidence of its disappointing outcomes. It is ...underpinned by theoretically justified benefits which serve to reproduce and market it. The paper explores approaches to understand and rectify these failures. The conclusion is that explanatory effort should be expanded from the “facilitating characteristics” of potentially successful CBNRM sites to include two sets of interfaces—those between donors and recipient states, and between the state (especially the local state) and CBNRMs at the local level. Illustrative examples in Botswana and Malawi are given throughout the discussion.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Political Ecology (PE) has been retrospectively created from a history of wide ranging work of different disciplines, cultural settings and epistemological foundations. Its conceptualization was and ...remains expansive, eclectic and inclusive which has brought both innovative thinking and charges of incoherence. A review of these paradoxical views on the quality of knowledge and its effectiveness in promoting justice and other aspects of political progress concludes that PE can fulfil these criteria in spite of challenges involved in understanding an exceptionally wide range of different disciplines in the natural and social sciences, technical detail and cultural settings. Also, the production of PE both shapes and is shaped by the structures of the academy and daily practice of teaching and research in a reflexive way. There are particular rewards and penalties in academic production which make it difficult to undertake long term PE research, to write overall integrative PE work other than edited and multi-author works, and to engage with wider audiences outside the academy. There is also an enduring stand-off between PE and policy matters. The growth of PE courses in anglophone universities is encouraging more comparison, coherence and communication between political ecologists and promises increasing stabilization and legitimacy of the field.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
There is a long history of debate about the changing Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) environment, but with important disjunctures between research, international environmental agendas and institutions, and ...various different domestic policies at the national level. Within academe, a retreat from the Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation (THED) since the late 1980s has not been reflected to any degree in domestic policy agendas of India and China. Here, we make a comparative analysis of the "upstream downstream" debates (which claim that the resource use practices of upstream users have serious detrimental costs to those downstream) in two of the most powerful and populous countries of the HKH region: India and China. We find that the rejection of THED is, on the whole, contradicted but sometimes appropriated by different national players within important political arenas, and in this sense it becomes a discursive pawn in "games of the state." Parts of the retreat from THED are simply ignored, and others are actively resisted. Set against these discursive maneuvers within domestic politics, the academic "state of the game" has undergone profound changes, shifting away from technically derived and science-led imperatives of environmental management toward issues of plural environmental truths, environmental justice, and hybrid knowledge. However, national debates have taken their individual routes, shaped largely by national political events. Thus, the poststructuralist turn in the social sciences in the academy and in some policy arenas, too-the deconstruction of one grand environmental narrative after another (e.g., deforestation, the wood fuel crisis, overstocking), the faltering claims of positivist science to deliver truth, and growing attacks of uncertainty-all this has had a contingent, but usually peripheral, impact upon national academic, political, and policy agendas in China and India. Some conclusions about policy studies are drawn.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
Previous studies have suggested that breath gases may be related to simultaneous blood glucose and blood ketone levels in adults with type 2 and type 1 diabetes. The aims of this study were to ...investigate these relationships in children and young people with type 1 diabetes in order to assess the efficacy of a simple breath test as a non-invasive means of diabetes management. Gases were collected in breath bags and measurements were compared with capillary blood glucose and ketone levels taken at the same time on a single visit to a routine hospital clinic in 113 subjects (59 male, age 7 years 11 months-18 years 3 months) with type 1 diabetes. The patients were well-controlled with relatively low concentrations of the blood ketone measured (β hydroxybutyrate, 0-0.4 mmol l−1). Breath acetone levels were found to increase with blood β hydroxybutyrate levels and a significant relationship was found between the two (Spearman's rank correlation ρ = 0.364, p < 10−4). A weak positive relationship was found between blood glucose and breath acetone (ρ = 0.16, p = 0.1), but led to the conclusion that single breath measurements of acetone do not provide a good measure of blood glucose levels in this cohort. This result suggests a potential to develop breath gas analysis to provide an alternative to blood testing for ketone measurement, for example to assist with the management of type 1 diabetes.
Shc is a ubiquitously expressed Src homology 2 (SH2) domain protein that can transform fibroblasts and differentiate PC12
cells in a Ras-dependent fashion. Shc binds a variety of ...tyrosine-phosphorylated growth factor receptors presumably via its
carboxyl-terminal SH2 domain. We cloned a fragment of Shc when screening a bacterial expression library with tyrosine-phosphorylated
epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor. Surprisingly, this fragment encodes the amino terminus of Shc, a region that has no
significant similarity to an SH2 domain. When expressed as a glutathione S-transferase fusion protein, this amino-terminal
domain binds to autophosphorylated EGF receptor, as well as HER2/neu and TrkA receptors. This fragment acts like an SH2 domain
in that it does not bind non-phosphorylated EGF receptor or EGF receptor with all tyrosine phosphorylation sites mutated or
deleted. Our data define a novel domain in Shc that has the potential to interact with growth factor receptors and other tyrosine-phosphorylated
proteins.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The notion and practice of development have been severely critiqued from both modernist and postmodernist perspectives, yet the global development industry flourishes. The latter have afforded ...important insights, but also suffer from unexamined ideological agendas, a disinclination to undertake detailed research into development processes and policy, a preoccupation with texts and representations by the development industry, and from perpetuating an indulgent and agenda-less academic cul-de-sac. Instead, the postmodern critique of development could lead to a more politically astute and practical reconstruction of certain aspects of 'development', particularly in the neopopulist mode of developmentalism. Three powerful development paradigms are identified, and the ways in which they are constructed, promoted, and adapted are discussed in the light of conflicting modernist and postmodern accounts.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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