Abstract
The midcycle surge of LH sets in motion interconnected networks of signaling cascades to bring about rupture of the follicle and release of the oocyte during ovulation. Many mediators of ...these LH-induced signaling cascades are associated with inflammation, leading to the postulate that ovulation is similar to an inflammatory response. First responders to the LH surge are granulosa and theca cells, which produce steroids, prostaglandins, chemokines, and cytokines, which are also mediators of inflammatory processes. These mediators, in turn, activate both nonimmune ovarian cells as well as resident immune cells within the ovary; additional immune cells are also attracted to the ovary. Collectively, these cells regulate proteolytic pathways to reorganize the follicular stroma, disrupt the granulosa cell basal lamina, and facilitate invasion of vascular endothelial cells. LH-induced mediators initiate cumulus expansion and cumulus oocyte complex detachment, whereas the follicular apex undergoes extensive extracellular matrix remodeling and a loss of the surface epithelium. The remainder of the follicle undergoes rapid angiogenesis and functional differentiation of granulosa and theca cells. Ultimately, these functional and structural changes culminate in follicular rupture and oocyte release. Throughout the ovulatory process, the importance of inflammatory responses is highlighted by the commonalities and similarities between many of these events associated with ovulation and inflammation. However, ovulation includes processes that are distinct from inflammation, such as regulation of steroid action, oocyte maturation, and the eventual release of the oocyte. This review focuses on the commonalities between inflammatory responses and the process of ovulation.
South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilization takes a closer look at the history of South ...Korea to show that Korea’s advance to democracy was not linear. Instead, while Korea’s national economy grew dramatically under the regimes of Park Chung Hee (1961–79) and Chun Doo Hwan (1980–88), the political system first became increasingly authoritarian. Because modernization was founded on industrial complexes and tertiary education, these structures initially helped bolster the authoritarian regimes. In the long run, however, these structures later facilitated the anti-regime protests by various social movement groups—most importantly, workers and students—that ultimately brought democracy to the country. By using original subnational protest event datasets, government publications, oral interviews, and publications from labor and student movement organizations, Joan E. Cho takes a long view of democratization that incorporates the decades before and after South Korea’s democratic transition. She demonstrates that Korea’s democratization resulted from a combination of factors from below and from above, and that authoritarian development itself was a hidden root cause of democratic development in South Korea. Seeds of Mobilization shows how socioeconomic development did not create a steady pressure toward democracy but acted as a “double-edged sword” that initially stabilized autocratic regimes before destabilizing them over time.
Presenting a framework that incorporates macro-level forces into micro-level strategic calculations, this book explains key political choices by leaders and challengers in Pakistan through the ...political survival mechanism. It offers an explanation for continuing polity weakness in the country, and describes how political survival shapes the choices made by the leaders and challengers.
Using a unique analysis that synthesizes theories of weak states, quasi-states and political survival, the book extends beyond rationalist accounts and the application of choice-theoretical approaches to developing countries. It challenges the focus on ideology and suggests that diverse, religiously and ethnically-defined affinity groups have interests that are represented in particular ways in weak state circumstances. Extensive interviews with decision-makers and polity-participants, combined with narrative accounts, allow the author to examine decision-making by leaders in a state bureaucratic machinery context as well as the complex mechanisms by which dissident affinity groups may support ‘quasi-state’ options. This study can be used for comparisons in Islamic contexts, and presents an interesting contribution to studies on South Asia as well as Political Development.
1. Political Survival in a Weak State 2. Weak State, Strong Society, Negotiable Polity 3. Leadership and Extraction 4. Challengers in a Weak Polity 5. Quasi-States, Extraction, and Governance 6. Conclusion
Anas Malik is a political scientist at Xavier University, USA. His research interests include the political economy of development and political Islam, with a focus on South Asia and the Middle East.
To come to Burma, one of the few places where despotism still dominates, is to take both a physical and an emotional journey and, like most Burmese, to become caught up in the daily management of ...fear. Based on Monique Skidmore's experiences living in the capital city of Rangoon,Karaoke Fascismis the first ethnography of fear in Burma and provides a sobering look at the psychological strategies employed by the Burmese people in order to survive under a military dictatorship that seeks to invade and dominate every aspect of life. Skidmore looks at the psychology and politics of fear under the SLORC and SPDC regimes. Encompassing the period of antijunta student street protests, her work describes a project of authoritarian modernity, where Burmese people are conscripted as army porters and must attend mass rallies, chant slogans, construct roads, and engage in other forms of forced labor. In a harrowing portrayal of life deep within an authoritarian state, recovering heroin addicts, psychiatric patients, girl prostitutes, and poor and vulnerable women in forcibly relocated townships speak about fear, hope, and their ongoing resistance to four decades of oppression. "Karaoke fascism" is a term the author uses to describe the layers of conformity that Burmese people present to each other and, more important, to the military regime. This complex veneer rests on resistance, collaboration, and complicity, and describes not only the Burmese form of oppression but also the Burmese response to a life of domination. Providing an inside look at the madness and the militarization of the city, Skidmore argues that the weight of fear, the anxiety of constant vulnerability, and the numbing demands of the State upon individuals force Burmese people to cast themselves as automata; they deliberately present lifeless hollow bodies for the State's use, while their minds reach out into the cosmos for an array of alternate realities. Skidmore raises ethical and methodological questions about conducting research on fear when doing so evokes the very emotion in question, in both researcher and informant.
In order to understand the Pakistani state and government's treatment of non-dominant ethnic groups after the failure of the military operation in East Pakistan and the independence of Bangladesh, ...this book looks at the ethnic movements that were subject to a military operation after 1971: the Baloch in the 1970s, the Sindhis in the 1980s and Mohajirs in the 1990s.
The book critically evaluates the literature on ethnicity and nationalism by taking nationalist ideology and the political divisions which it generates within ethnic groups as essential in estimating ethnic movements. It goes on to challenge the modernist argument that nationalism is only relevant to modern-industrialised socio-economic settings. The available evidence from Pakistan makes clear that ethnic movements emanate from three distinct socio-economic realms: tribal (Baloch), rural (Sindh) and urban (Mohajir), and the book looks at the implications that this has, as well as how further arguments could be advanced about the relevance of ethnic movements and politics in the Third World.
It provides academics and researchers with background knowledge of how the Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir ethnic conflict in Pakistan took shape in a historical context as well as probable future scenarios of the relationship between the Pakistani state and government, and ethnic groups and movements.
"This book is an ethnographic account of political relations in an autonomous highland region in Myanmar, governed by the country's largest insurgent group, the United Wa State Army"--.
Moving Memory is an
ethnography of remembrance in the field of tension between
post-dictatorship Chile and occupied Palestine that offers new
insights into memory politics as a globally resurgent and
...increasingly transnational phenomenon. It tells a largely
untold story of a Palestinian diaspora: how a predominantly
Christian, conservative, and wealthy elite has come to form the
backbone of a diasporic community to which the Palestinian struggle
remains a central mobilizing force. Schwabe explores how
Palestinian diaspora politics play into larger attempts to obscure
the recent Chilean past and its consequences, all the while working
to counter Zionist efforts to negate and erase Palestinian
existence. Despite considerable efforts to contain them, memories
move. They travel across porous and ever-changing geographical and
socio-political boundaries, reconfiguring realities in the process.
In exploring the paradoxes of remembering and forgetting between
Palestine and Chile as intertwining nodes in the complex field of
global memory politics, the book demarcates the limits and
possibilities of forging solidarity at the fault lines of
memory.
This book provides an unparalleled insider's look at the factors leading up to the 1997-98 crisis in South Korea and how the crisis unfolded over the next two years. Written by former finance ...minister Kyu-Sung Lee, this book traces the evolving situation across the key sectors and the series of policy and institutional measures the government deployed throughout the crisis. This book is a must-read for policymakers, scholars, students, and any reader interested in understanding the facts and circumstances surrounding the 1997-98 crisis, the policies undertaken at the time, and what the experience implies for preventing future crises.
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