Amid a vast influx of rural migrants into urban areas, China has
allowed cities wide latitude in providing education and other
social services. While millions of people have been welcomed into
the ...megacities as a source of cheap labor, local governments have
used various tools to limit their access to full citizenship.
The Urbanization of People reveals how cities in China
have granted public goods to the privileged while condemning poor
and working-class migrants to insecurity, constant mobility, and
degraded educational opportunities. Using the school as a lens on
urban life, Eli Friedman investigates how the state manages flows
of people into the city. He demonstrates that urban governments are
providing quality public education to those who need it least:
school admissions for nonlocals heavily favor families with high
levels of economic and cultural capital. Those deemed not useful
are left to enroll their children in precarious resource-starved
private schools that sometimes are subjected to forced demolition.
Over time, these populations are shunted away to smaller locales
with inferior public services. Based on extensive ethnographic
research and hundreds of in-depth interviews, this
interdisciplinary book details the policy framework that produces
unequal outcomes as well as providing a fine-grained account of the
life experiences of people drawn into the cities as workers but
excluded as full citizens.
What Do We Know about Opioids and the Kidney? Mallappallil, Mary; Sabu, Jacob; Friedman, Eli A ...
International journal of molecular sciences,
01/2017, Letnik:
18, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Evidence suggests a link between opioid use and kidney disease. This review summarizes the known renal manifestations of opioid use including its role in acute and chronic kidney injury. Both the ...direct and indirect effects of the drug, and the context which leads to the development of renal failure, are explored. While commonly used safely for pain control and anesthesia in those with kidney disease, the concerns with respect to side effects and toxicity of opioids are addressed. This is especially relevant with the worldwide increase in the use of opioids for medical and recreational use.
In recent years, scholars have begun to document the emergence of private migrant schools in urban China. However, neither education nor labor scholars have empirically investigated teachers’ work. ...Because it is precisely those with the fewest economic resources that have been restricted to privatized education in the city, migrant schools are dependent on a highly exploitative form of employment. Based on a study of Guangzhou and Beijing, we see that there is diversity in working conditions. In Beijing, teachers are subject to extralegal precarity in which basic legal enforcement is tenuous to nonexistent. In Guangzhou, there is greater legal compliance, but management has employed market discipline to shift risk onto teachers. In general, teachers’ work in migrant schools is similar to other forms of migrant labor in China, characterized by low pay, long hours, high work intensity, and lack of job security. The article concludes by assessing the divergent politics of migration in each city while considering the implications for socioeconomic inequality.
Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I ...reconfigure Karl Polanyi's theory of the coutermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined "moments": the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus far been confounded by conditions of "appropriated representation," where the only worker organizations allowed to exist are those within the state-run All China Federation of Trade Unions. However, in drawing on two case studies of strikes in capital-intensive industries in Guangdong province, I show that the relationship between insurgency and institutionalization shifted between 2007 and 2010.
Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang Provinces, the author asks how post-socialist unions respond to worker unrest and why the development of sectoral-level bargaining ...has been uneven in different regions of China. While Zhejiang has had relative success in establishing the organizational infrastructure for sectoral bargaining, Guangdong has had little success despite ongoing attempts by unions. The author explains variation in sectoral-level bargaining through an analysis of the different models of economic development, which are characterized as local entrepreneurialism and global integration for Zhejiang and Guangdong, respectively. Despite having different organizational forms, unions in both places suffer from a lack of credibility and capacity to enforce contracts. Given the ACFTU's ongoing focus on sectoral-level bargaining, however, experiments will likely continue in various regions and industries throughout China.
To ascertain whether patients at discharge from a municipal teaching hospital knew their discharge diagnoses, treatment plan (names and purpose of their medications), and common side effects of ...prescribed medications.
From July to October 1999, we surveyed 47 consecutive patients at discharge from the medical service of a municipal teaching hospital in New York City (Brooklyn, NY). Patients were asked to state either the trade or the generic name(s) of their medication(s), their purpose, and the major side effect(s), as well as their discharge diagnoses. Patients were excluded if they were not oriented to person, place, and time, were unaware of the circumstances surrounding their admission to the hospital, and/or did not speak or understand English.
Of the 47 patients surveyed, 4 were excluded. Of the remaining 43 patients, 12 (27.9%) were able to list all their medications, 16 (37.2%) were able to recount the purpose of all their medications, 6 (14.0%) were able to state the common side effect(s) of all their medications, and 18 (41.9%) were able to state their diagnosis or diagnoses. The mean number of medications prescribed at discharge was 3.89.
Less than half of our study patients were able to list their diagnoses, the name(s) of their medication(s), their purpose, or the major side effect(s). Lacking awareness of these factors affects a patient's ability to comply fully with discharge treatment plans. Whether lack of communication between physician and patient is actually the cause of patient unawareness of discharge instructions or if this even affects patient outcome requires further study.
ABSTRACT
Aim: This was a pilot clinical trial to assess biochemical and clinical effects of an oral probiotic dietary supplement in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients (stages 3 and 4).
Methods: A ...prospective, randomized, double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled, 6-month trial of probiotic bacteria was conducted in 16 outpatients in Ontario, Canada. Primary endpoints included effect on hematologic, biochemical, and fecal variables, and on general well-being as assessed by quality of life (QOL). These outcomes were evaluated from biochemical parameters, mainly blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine, uric acid, and C-reactive protein (CRP) as a general inflammatory marker. QOL was assessed on a subjective scale of 1 to 10 as the secondary parameter.
Trial registration: This pilot study forms part of registered trial NCT00760162.
Results: A total of 13 patients completed the study. Three patients dropped out: one was the receiver of a transplant. The second dropped out for unknown reasons and the third died of myocardial infarction (unrelated to probiotic bacteria or the protocol). Among the 13 patients who completed the trial, the mean change in BUN concentration during the probiotic treatment period (−2.93 mmol/L) differed significantly (p = 0.002) from the mean change in BUN concentration during the placebo period (4.52 mmol/L). In addition, the mean changes in uric acid concentration were moderate during the KB period (24.70 μmol/L) versus during the placebo period (50.62 μmol/L, p = 0.050), and the changes in serum creatinine concentration were insignificant. Neither gastrointestinal nor infectious complications were noted in any subject with improved QOL.
Conclusion: Orally administered probiotic bacteria selected to metabolize nitrogenous wastes may be tolerated for as long as 6 months. A major limitation of this trial is its small size that may have precluded detection of changes in other biochemical or hematologic parameters that would be evident in larger cohorts. Extension of the evaluation of this probiotic bacterial mixture will include a dose escalation trial in a similar prospective, placebo-controlled, and double-blind study site.
Background. Primary goal of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study of Renadyl in end-stage renal disease patients was to assess the safety and efficacy of Renadyl measured ...through improvement in quality of life or reduction in levels of known uremic toxins. Secondary goal was to investigate the effects on several biomarkers of inflammation and oxidative stress. Methods. Two 2-month treatment periods separated by 2-month washout and crossover, with physical examinations, venous blood testing, and quality of life questionnaires completed at each visit. Data were analyzed with SAS V9.2. Results. 22 subjects (79%) completed the study. Observed trends were as follows (none reaching statistical significance): decline in WBC count (-0.51×109/L, P=0.057) and reductions in levels of C-reactive protein (-8.61 mg/L, P=0.071) and total indoxyl glucuronide (-0.11 mg%, P=0.058). No statistically significant changes were observed in other uremic toxin levels or measures of QOL. Conclusions. Renadyl appeared to be safe to administer to ESRD patients on hemodialysis. Stability in QOL assessment is an encouraging result for a patient cohort in such advanced stage of kidney disease. Efficacy could not be confirmed definitively, primarily due to small sample size and low statistical power—further studies are warranted.
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