There are few areas of society today that remain outside the ambit of policy processes, and likewise policy making has progressively reached into the structure and fabric of everyday life. An ...instrument of modern government, policy and its processes provide an analytical window into systems of governance themselves, opening up ways to study power and the construction of regimes of truth. This volume argues that policies are not simply coercive, constraining or confined to static texts; rather, they are productive, continually contested and able to create new social and semantic spaces and new sets of relations. Anthropologists do not stand outside or above systems of governance but are themselves subject to the rhetoric and rationalities of policy. The analyses of policy worlds presented by the contributors to this volume open up new possibilities for understanding systems of knowledge and power and the positioning of academics within them.
The explosion of generative AI offers promise for neuroimaging biomarker development in psychiatry, but effective adoption of AI methods requires clarity with respect to specific applications and ...challenges. These center on dataset sizes required to robustly train AI models along with feature selection that capture neural signals relevant to symptom and treatment targets. Here we discuss areas where generative AI could improve quantification of robust and reproducible brain-to-symptom associations to inform precision psychiatry applications, especially in the context of drug discovery. Finally, this communication discusses some challenges that need solutions for generative AI models to advance neuroimaging biomarkers in psychiatry.
In this paper, we consider, from critical perspectives, the ways in which research assessment governs the production of academic knowledge and can contribute to epistemic injustices. This issue is ...examined through a fieldwork study in 2018 of the implications of the Danish Bibliometric Indicator for research in a humanities department of a research-intensive Danish university. We draw on Connell's Southern Theory in conjunction with Bourdieu's work on language and power to show how humanities research in the Danish language is pushed onto the periphery of global disciplinary fields. The paper highlights that regimes of governance such as bibliometric research assessment affect not only what is published and where but also what is recognised as scientific or academic language. Such regimes can contribute significantly to the generation and reproduction of epistemic injustices through limitations on how, and by whom, legitimate knowledge is defined, produced and promulgated. We argue that it is time to recognise this as the colonisation of research.
Characterization of the complex branching architecture of cerebral arteries across a representative sample of the human population is important for diagnosing, analyzing, and predicting pathological ...states. Brain arterial vasculature can be visualized by magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). However, most MRA studies are limited to qualitative assessments, partial morphometric analyses, individual (or small numbers of) subjects, proprietary datasets, or combinations of the above limitations. Neuroinformatics tools, developed for neuronal arbor analysis, were used to quantify vascular morphology from 3T time-of-flight MRA high-resolution (620μm isotropic) images collected in 61 healthy volunteers (36/25 F/M, average age=31.2±10.7, range=19–64years). We present in-depth morphometric analyses of the global and local anatomical features of these arbors. The overall structure and size of the vasculature did not significantly differ across genders, ages, or hemispheres. The total length of the three major arterial trees stemming from the circle of Willis (from smallest to largest: the posterior, anterior, and middle cerebral arteries; or PCAs, ACAs, and MCAs, respectively) followed an approximate 1:2:4 proportion. Arterial size co-varied across individuals: subjects with one artery longer than average tended to have all other arteries also longer than average. There was no net right–left difference across the population in any of the individual arteries, but ACAs were more lateralized than MCAs. MCAs, ACAs, and PCAs had similar branch-level properties such as bifurcation angles. Throughout the arterial vasculature, there were considerable differences between branch types: bifurcating branches were significantly shorter and straighter than terminating branches. Furthermore, the length and meandering of bifurcating branches increased with age and with path distance from the circle of Willis. All reconstructions are freely distributed through a public database to enable additional analyses and modeling (cng.gmu.edu/brava).
•We digitally traced the brain vasculature of 61 healthy volunteers from 3T MRA data.•All cerebral arteries were morphologically quantified with global and local analyses.•Size and overall structure varied with artery type but not gender, age or hemisphere.•Bifurcating branches were significantly shorter and straighter than terminating ones.•Reconstructions, metadata, and morphometric measurements are freely available online.
Continuous-flow left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) have emerged as the standard of care for advanced heart failure patients requiring long-term mechanical circulatory support. Evidence-based ...clinical management of LVAD-supported patients is becoming increasingly important for optimizing outcomes. In this state-of-art review, we propose key elements in managing patients supported with the new continuous-flow LVADs. Although most of the presented information is largely based on investigator experience during the 1,300-patient HeartMate II clinical trial, many of the discussed principles can be applied to other emerging devices as well. Patient selection, pre-operative preparation, and the timing of LVAD implant are some of the most important elements critical to successful circulatory support and are principles universal to all devices. In addition, proper nutrition management and avoidance of infectious complications can significantly affect morbidity and mortality during LVAD support. Optimizing intraoperative and peri-operative care, and the monitoring and treatment of other organ system dysfunction as it relates to LVAD support, are discussed. A multidisciplinary heart failure team must be organized and charged with providing comprehensive care from initial referral until support is terminated. Preparing for hospital discharge requires detailed education for the patient and family or friends, with provisions for emergencies and routine care. Implantation techniques, troubleshooting device problems, and algorithms for outpatient management, including the diagnosis and treatment of related problems associated with the HeartMate II, are discussed as an example of a specific continuous-flow LVAD. Ongoing trials with other continuous-flow devices may produce additional information in the future for improving clinical management of patients with these devices.
The American Academy of Pediatrics published a clinical report on late-preterm (LPT) infants in 2007 that was largely based on a summary of a 2005 workshop convened by the
National Institute of Child ...Health and Human Development, at which a change in terminology from "near term" to "late preterm" was proposed. This paradigm-shifting recommendation had a remarkable impact: federal agencies (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), professional societies (the American Academy of Pediatrics and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists), and organizations (March of Dimes) initiated nationwide monitoring and educational plans that had a significant effect on decreasing the rates of iatrogenic LPT deliveries. However, there is now an evolving concern. After nearly a decade of steady decreases in the LPT birth rate that largely contributed to the decline in total US preterm birth rates, the birth rate in LPT infants has been inching upward since 2015. In addition, evidence revealed by strong population health research demonstrates that being born as an early-term infant poses a significant risk to an infant's survival, growth, and development. In this report, we summarize the initial progress and discuss the potential reasons for the current trends in LPT and early-term birth rates and propose research recommendations.
Learning under neoliberalism Hyatt, Susan B; Shear, Boone; Wright, Susan
2015., 20150301, 2015, 2015-03-30, Letnik:
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As part of the neoliberal trends toward public-private partnerships, universities all over the world have forged more intimate relationships with corporate interests and more closely resemble ...for-profit corporations in both structure and practice. These transformations, accompanied by new forms of governance, produce new subject-positions among faculty and students and enable new approaches to teaching, curricula, research, and everyday practices. The contributors to this volume use ethnographic methods to investigate the multi-faceted impacts of neoliberal restructuring, while reporting on their own pedagogical responses, at universities in the United States, Europe, and New Zealand.
"Golden Rice" is a variety of rice engineered to produce beta-carotene (pro-vitamin A) to help combat vitamin A deficiency, and it has been predicted that its contribution to alleviating vitamin A ...deficiency would be substantially improved through even higher beta-carotene content. We hypothesized that the daffodil gene encoding phytoene synthase (psy), one of the two genes used to develop Golden Rice, was the limiting step in beta-carotene accumulation. Through systematic testing of other plant psys, we identified a psy from maize that substantially increased carotenoid accumulation in a model plant system. We went on to develop "Golden Rice 2" introducing this psy in combination with the Erwinia uredovora carotene desaturase (crtI) used to generate the original Golden Rice. We observed an increase in total carotenoids of up to 23-fold (maximum 37 microg/g) compared to the original Golden Rice and a preferential accumulation of beta-carotene.
This brief article is based on a paper given at a workshop at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London in June 2015. After outlining the salient features of the system for managing ...multilingualism at the Court of Justice of the European Union, the article focuses on some key influences on the English version of the Court's judgments. It reviews the character of the French source text, the role of the Court's lawyer linguists, the sources of the English, and the purpose and nature of the resulting product. By way of conclusion, it provides some insights into the impact of multilingualism on the Court's decision-making process and on the texts the Court produces.