Aportes de las teorías sociológicas a la discusión de la ontología. Los casos de Luhmann, Habermas y Latour

En este trabajo se discuten los aportes de la teoría sociológica contemporánea al debate filosófico y científico de la ontología, para ello son cotejados los componentes ontológicos de la Teoría General de Sistemas Sociales de Niklas Luhmann, lla Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa de Jürgen Habermas y la Actor-Network Theory de Bruno Latour.

Possibility and agency in Figured Worlds: Becoming a ‘good doctor’

Context: Figured Worlds is a socio-cultural theory drawing on Vygotskian and Bakhtinian traditions, which has been applied in research into the development of identities of both learners and teachers in the wider education literature. It is now being adopted in medical education.

Objective: The objective of this paper is to show what Figured Worlds can offer in medical education. Having explained some of its central tenets, we apply it to an important tension in our field.

Application: The assumption that there is a uniform ‘good doctor’ identity, which must be inculcated into medical students, underlies much of what medical educators do, and what our regulators enforce. While diversity is encouraged when students are selected for medical school, pressure to professionalise students creates a drive towards a standardised professional identity by graduation. Using excerpts from reflective pieces written by two junior medical students, we review the basic concepts of Figured Worlds and demonstrate how it can shed light on the implications of this tension. Taking a Bakhtinian approach to discourse, we show how Adam and Sarah develop their professional identities as they negotiate the multiple overlapping and competing ways of being a doctor which they encounter in the world of medical practice. Each demonstrates agency by ‘authoring’ a unique identity in the cultural world of medicine, as they appropriate and re-voice the words of others.

Discussion: Finally, we consider some important areas in medical education where Figured Worlds might prove to be a useful lens: the negotiation of discourses of gender, sexuality and social class, career choice as identification within specialty-specific cultural worlds, and the influence of hidden and informal curricula on doctor identity.

Roads to Health in Nigeria – Understanding the Intersection of Culture and Healing

The most important attribute for which we all aspire as human beings is good health because it enables us to undertake different forms of activities of daily living. The emergence of scientific knowledge in Western societies has enabled us to explore and define several parameters of “health” by drawing boundaries around factors that are known to impact the achievement of good health. For example, the World Health Organization defined health by taking physical and psychological factors into consideration.

Viral Bodies: Uncontrollable Blackness in Popular Culture and Everyday Life

Viral Bodies: Uncontrollable Blackness in Popular Culture and Everyday Life maps rapidly circulated performances of Blackness across visual media that collapse Black bodies into ubiquitous “things.” Throughout my dissertation, I use viral performance to describe the uncontrollable discursive circulation of bodies, their behaviors, and the ideas around them. In particular, viral performance is employed to describe the complicated ways that (mis)understandings of Black bodies spread and are often transformed into common-sense beliefs. As viral performances, Black bodies are often made more visible, while simultaneously becoming more opaque. This dissertation examines the recurrence of viral performances of Blackness in viral videos online, film, and photography/images. I argue that viral performances make products that reinscribe stereotypical notions of Blackness while also generating paths of alterity—which contradict the normalized clichés and provide desirable possibilities for Black performance. Viral Bodies forges a new dialogue between visual and aural technologies, performance, and larger historic discourses that script Black bodies as visually (and sonically) deviant subjects. I am interested in how technologies complicate the re-presentation of images, ideas, and ideologies—producing a necessity for new decipherings of performances of Blackness in popular culture and everyday life.

Why are some companies more successful than others? An exploration into organizational culture and dynamic capabilities

Why are some companies more successful than others? This thesis approaches the question by enlisting theoretical frameworks that explain the performance with internal factors, deriving from the resource-based view, namely the dynamic capabilities approach. To deepen the understanding of the drivers and barriers towards developing these higher order routines aiming at improving the operational level routines, this thesis explores the organisational culture and identity research for the microfoundational antecedents that might shed light on the formation of the dynamic capabilities. The dynamic capabilities framework in this thesis strives to take the theoretical concept closer to practical applicability. This is achieved through creation of a dynamic capabilities matrix, consisting of four dimensions often encountered in dynamic capabilities literature. The quadrants are formed along internal-external and resources-abilities axes, and consist of Sensing, Learning, Reconfiguration and Partnering facets. A key element of this thesis is the reality continuum, which illustrates the different levels of reality inherent in any entity of human individuals. The theoretical framework constructed in the thesis suggests a link between the collective but constructivist understanding of the organisation and both the operational and higher level routines, evident in the more positivist realm. The findings from three different case organisations suggest that the constructivist assumptions inherent to an organisation function as a generative base for both drivers and barriers towards developing dynamic capabilities. From each organisation one core assumption is scrutinized to identify its connections to the four dimensions of the dynamic capabilities. These connections take the form of drivers or barriers – or have the possibility to develop into one or the other. The main contribution of this thesis is to show that one key for an organisation to perform well in a turbulent setting, is to understand the different levels of realities inherent in any group of people. Recognising the intangible levels gives an advantage in the tangible ones.

Job-related strain and sexual health difficulties among heterosexual men from three european countries: The role of culture and emotional support

Introduction. Epidemiological evidence for the association between job-related stress and sexual difficulties in men is largely lacking. Little is known about the factors that may mediate or moderate this relationship. Aim. This study analyzes the association between job-related difficulties and men’s sexual difficulties. Main Outcome Measures. Job-related difficulties were measured by 10 yes/no questions that addressed a range of adverse workplace situations. The experience of sexual difficulties in the past 12 months was assessed by using seven dichotomous indicators developed in the National Study of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) 2000. Method. Analyses were carried out using data from a 2011 online study of Portuguese, Croatian, and Norwegian men (N = 2,112). Multivariate logistic regression and mediation analysis were used to test the hypothesized association. Results. Men with job-related concerns reported lower sexual satisfaction than men without such concerns did (F = 7.53, P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis confirmed the association between job-related and sexual health concerns. The odds of experiencing one or more sexual health difficulties in the past 12 months were about 1.8 times higher among men who reported the highest levels of workplace difficulties than among men who experienced no such difficulties. The odds of reporting sexual health difficulties were significantly reduced by a higher income (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 0.87, P < 0.01), emotional intimacy with one’s partner (AOR = 0.93, P < 0.001), having children (AOR = 0.62–0.66, P < 0.01), and country-specific effects (AOR = 1.98–2.22, P < 0.001). In all three countries, the relationship between job-related and sexual health difficulties was mediated by anxiety and depression. Conclusions. The findings suggest that negative mood is the mechanism behind the association between workplace strain and sexual difficulties. Emotional support, such as couple intimacy and fatherhood, can reduce—independently from sociocultural and socioeconomic factors—the risk of sexual health concerns.

EFFECT OF BAP, NAA AND GA3, EITHER ALONE OR IN COMBINATION, ON MERISTEM CULTURE AND PLANTLET ESTABLISHMENT IN SWEET POTATO (CV BRONDAL)

In Zimbabwe, the average sweet potato yield (6 t/ha) is relatively low when compared to Asian counterparts (17 t/ha). These low crop yields have been blamed on weevil infestations and viral infections which account for 60-90% of sweet potato yield losses in Africa. Meristem tip culture, a Centre for Potato Improvement (CIP) initiated tissue culture technique, has been widely used to eradicate viruses from clonally propagated crops and has been noted to be one of the instrumental techniques that helped China to increase sweet potato yields. In an effort to adopt the meristem tip culture technique for the production of virus-free planting material of a local sweet potato (cv Brondal), a study was conducted to evaluate the effect of Benzylamino purine (BAP), 1-Naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) and Gibberellic acid (GA3) (either alone or in combination) on cultured Brondal meristems. The different hormonal treatments were assessed on the following parameters: plantlet regenerative capacity, multiple plantlet production, shoot height, average leaf number per shoot and average node number per shoot, ten weeks after meristem culture. All treatments containing a combination of BAP (1 mg-L) and GA3 (at either 5 mg-L, 10 mg-L, or 20 mg-L) had a significantly (p<0.01) higher plantlet regenerative capacity of 33-66% when compared to other treatment combinations. Only treatments, 10 mg-L GA3 + 1 mg-L BAP and 20 mg-L GA3 + 1 mg-L BAP were capable of inducing multiple plantlet formation, producing an average of three plantlets/meristem and two plantlets/meristem respectively. Overall, treatment 10 mg-L GA3 + 1 mg-L BAP gave rise to significantly (p<0.01) taller shoots (20 mm) compared to the rest of the treatments used. For average leaf number per shoot, all GA3 treatments (5 mg-L, 10 mg-L, or 20 mg-L) supplemented with 1 mg-L BAP gave significantly (p<0.01) higher numbers of leaves (six leaves/shoot) than the rest of the treatments. Treatments 10 mg-L GA3 + 1 mg-L BAP and 20 mg-L GA3 + 1 mg-L BAP gave rise to the highest number of nodes per shoot, producing an average of three nodes per shoot. In sharp contrast to treatments containing a combination of BAP and GA3, all treatments containing a combination of BAP and NAA performed poorly in all parameters tested for plant regeneration of Brondal sweet potato variety. In conclusion, the best hormonal treatment for culturing Brondal meristems proved to be 10 mg-L GA3 + 1 mg-L BAP.

Bioethics, culture and infanticide in brazilian indigenous communities : the Zuruahá case

O artigo analisa a prática do infanticídio em comunidades indígenas brasileiras. Tomando como referência um caso específico envolvendo duas crianças do povo Zuruahá, focaliza o tema sob uma abordagem mais abrangente e discute como o infanticídio é interpretado em outros povos indígenas. Foram considerados, na discussão, os debates ocorridos durante a Audiência Pública realizada no Congresso Nacional Brasileiro, em dezembro de 2005, que analisou o tema, além de revisão bibliográfica. Diante dos posicionamentos assumidos naquela audiência, procurou-se identificar os problemas éticos e os dilemas morais, contextualizando-os e analisando-os à luz do respeito ao pluralismo cultural. A fim de contribuir com o debate, os autores analisam as possibilidades de intervenção nas práticas tradicionais de infanticídio, recusando qualquer opção que não esteja ancorada numa atitude de profundo respeito pela cultura de outros povos ou que não apresente condição de dialogar com indivíduos ou grupos com diferentes moralidades. ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT

The botanic garden; : consisting of highly finished figures of hardy ornamental flowering plants, cultivated in Great Britain; with their names, orders, history, qualities, culture, and physiological observations. /

"With this were issued in portions: 'The auctarium of the Botanic garden', the 'Floral register', 'A dictionary of English-Latin terms' ... and 'The fruitist',"--British mus. (Nat. hist.) Catalogue.

Beta depicta, or, Remarks on mangel wurzel, with an exposition on its utility reduced from practical experiments, and with full directions for its culture, and the management in feeding and fattening of cattle,

Mode of access: Internet.

Mixing theory for culture and harvest in bioreactors of human mesenchymal stem cells on microcarriers

The use of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) in regenerative medicine is a potential major advance for the treatment of many medical conditions, especially with the use of allogeneic therapies where the cells from a single donor can be used to treat ailments in many patients. Such cells must be grown attached to surfaces and for large scale production, it is shown that stirred bioreactors containing ~200 μm particles (microcarriers) can provide such a surface. It is also shown that the just suspended condition, agitator speed NJS, provides a satisfactory condition for cell growth by minimizing the specific energy dissipation rate, εT, in the bioreactor whilst still meeting the oxygen demand of the cells. For the cells to be used for therapeutic purposes, they must be detached from the microcarriers before being cryopreserved. A strategy based on a short period (~7 min) of very high εT, based on theories of secondary nucleation, is effective at removing >99% cells. Once removed, the cells are smaller than the Kolmogorov scale of turbulence and hence not damaged. This approach is shown to be successful for culture and detachment in 4 types of stirred bioreactors from 15 mL to 5 L.