Summary
Motivation
Donors have increasingly disbursed funds using aid chains, whereby work is subcontracted to organizations socially and geographically closer to recipients. Aid chains reduce scope ...for opportunism in contracting. They do, however, enable donors to distance themselves from the messy work of engaging the politics of interventions—“ethics dumping”—with negative impacts on project outcomes.
Purpose
How can aid chains—and project outcomes—be improved? This article investigates what can be learned from global value chains (GVCs). In particular, it examines Multi‐Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs)—currently considered the gold standard for governing GVCs—and evaluates their potential fit for aid chains.
Methods and approach
The article describes aid chains' drivers and challenges, and theoretically links the fragmentation of public‐sector service provision to the fragmentation of global production processes. By reviewing MSP case studies and thematically analysing their scope to transform power asymmetries, it empirically evaluates MSPs' potential by assessing the case of the Australian NGO Cooperation Program.
Findings
While MSPs offer an ambitious framework, their application is weakened by, first, the lack of a consumer role, and second, their central focus on relational practices in transforming power asymmetries. The article's conclusion that MSPs offer limited policy transferability furthers nascent literatures on ethical public‐sector procurement; power asymmetries in MSPs; and how aid chains might be improved.
Policy implications
Aid chains reduce the scope for opportunism in contracting, however their power asymmetries have negative impacts on project outcomes that cannot be ignored. MSPs offer an ambitious but problematic policy option for improving aid chain governance. Their lack of effective measures to address power asymmetries limits their potential, calling into question their status as the gold standard for GVC governance and their policy transferability.
Identifying homology relationships between sequences is fundamental to biological research. Here we provide a novel orthogroup inference algorithm called OrthoFinder that solves a previously ...undetected gene length bias in orthogroup inference, resulting in significant improvements in accuracy. Using real benchmark datasets we demonstrate that OrthoFinder is more accurate than other orthogroup inference methods by between 8 % and 33 %. Furthermore, we demonstrate the utility of OrthoFinder by providing a complete classification of transcription factor gene families in plants revealing 6.9 million previously unobserved relationships.
Microplastics are ubiquitous contaminants in aquatic habitats globally, and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are point sources of microplastics. Within aquatic habitats microplastics are colonized ...by microbial biofilms, which can include pathogenic taxa and taxa associated with plastic breakdown. Microplastics enter WWTPs in sewage and exit in sludge or effluent, but the role that WWTPs play in establishing or modifying microplastic bacterial assemblages is unknown. We analyzed microplastics and associated biofilms in raw sewage, effluent water, and sludge from two WWTPs. Both plants retained >99% of influent microplastics in sludge, and sludge microplastics showed higher bacterial species richness and higher abundance of taxa associated with bioflocculation (e.g. Xanthomonas) than influent microplastics, suggesting that colonization of microplastics within the WWTP may play a role in retention. Microplastics in WWTP effluent included significantly lower abundances of some potentially pathogenic bacterial taxa (e.g. Campylobacteraceae) compared to influent microplastics; however, other potentially pathogenic taxa (e.g. Acinetobacter) remained abundant on effluent microplastics, and several taxa linked to plastic breakdown (e.g. Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, and Sphingomonas) were significantly more abundant on effluent compared to influent microplastics. These results indicate that diverse bacterial assemblages colonize microplastics within sewage and that WWTPs can play a significant role in modifying the microplastic-associated assemblages, which may affect the fate of microplastics within the WWTPs and the environment.
Checkpoint blockade with antibodies specific for cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein (CTLA)-4 or programmed cell death 1 (PDCD1; also known as PD-1) elicits durable tumor regression in ...metastatic cancer, but these dramatic responses are confined to a minority of patients. This suboptimal outcome is probably due in part to the complex network of immunosuppressive pathways present in advanced tumors, which are unlikely to be overcome by intervention at a single signaling checkpoint. Here we describe a combination immunotherapy that recruits a variety of innate and adaptive immune cells to eliminate large tumor burdens in syngeneic tumor models and a genetically engineered mouse model of melanoma; to our knowledge tumors of this size have not previously been curable by treatments relying on endogenous immunity. Maximal antitumor efficacy required four components: a tumor-antigen-targeting antibody, a recombinant interleukin-2 with an extended half-life, anti-PD-1 and a powerful T cell vaccine. Depletion experiments revealed that CD8
T cells, cross-presenting dendritic cells and several other innate immune cell subsets were required for tumor regression. Effective treatment induced infiltration of immune cells and production of inflammatory cytokines in the tumor, enhanced antibody-mediated tumor antigen uptake and promoted antigen spreading. These results demonstrate the capacity of an elicited endogenous immune response to destroy large, established tumors and elucidate essential characteristics of combination immunotherapies that are capable of curing a majority of tumors in experimental settings typically viewed as intractable.
Technological advancements have made AI instructors, or more broadly machine teachers, a lived reality. However, limited information is available about how students will perceive an AI instructor ...that provides educational content. Thus, the present study examines the effects of an AI instructor's voice and expertise on the perceived credibility of an AI instructor through an online experiment with a 2 (voice: machinelike vs. humanlike) x 2 (expertise: novice vs. expert) between-subjects design. Findings indicate that students perceive greater credibility of an AI instructor with a humanlike voice than those with a machinelike voice. The study also finds that social presence mediates the relationship between the voice of an AI instructor and the perceived credibility of the AI instructor. Finally, the perceived credibility of an AI instructor positively influences students' intentions to enroll in future AI instructor-based online courses. These findings highlight the importance of developing AI instructors that are perceived as credible.
•The study examines the effects of an AI instructor's voice and expertise on the perceived credibility of the AI instructor.•An online experiment was conducted with a 2 (voice: machinelike vs. humanlike) x 2 (expertise: novice vs. expert) design.•Students perceive greater credibility of an AI instructor with a humanlike voice than that with a machinelike voice.•Social presence functions as a mediator between the voice and the perceived credibility of an AI instructor.•The perceived credibility of an AI instructor predicts intentions to take AI-based online courses.
Currently there is no general approach for achieving specific optogenetic control of genetically defined cell types in rats, which provide a powerful experimental system for numerous established ...neurophysiological and behavioral paradigms. To overcome this challenge we have generated genetically restricted recombinase-driver rat lines suitable for driving gene expression in specific cell types, expressing Cre recombinase under the control of large genomic regulatory regions (200–300 kb). Multiple tyrosine hydroxylase (
Th)::
Cre and choline acetyltransferase (
Chat)::
Cre lines were produced that exhibited specific opsin expression in targeted cell types. We additionally developed methods for utilizing optogenetic tools in freely moving rats and leveraged these technologies to clarify the causal relationship between dopamine (DA) neuron firing and positive reinforcement, observing that optical stimulation of DA neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of
Th::
Cre rats is sufficient to support vigorous intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS). These studies complement existing targeting approaches by extending the generalizability of optogenetics to traditionally non-genetically-tractable but vital animal models.
► Generation of
Th::Cre rat lines for targeting dopaminergic and noradrenergic cells ► Generation of
Chat::Cre rat lines suitable for targeting cholinergic neurons ► Methods for optogenetic control of physiology and behavior in freely moving rats ► Stimulation of dopamine neurons supports intracranial self-stimulation in rats
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