Marketing the Damaged Self: The Construction of Identity in Advertisements Directed Towards People with HIV/AIDS

This paper explores the identities projected in advertisements directed towards HIV positive individuals and people with AIDS. Fifty such advertisements were collected from three popular American magazines for gay men over a period of seven months. Analysis of the ads reveals a paradoxical presentation of people with HIV/AIDS, which offers simultaneous conflicting images of hope and fear, power and weakness, innocence and guilt. An interactive sociolinguistic model through which this contradictory discourse might be understood is presented, drawing on Goffman’s insights on stigma management and the presentation of the self in social interaction. Advertisements directed towards people with HIV/AIDS, it is suggested, present a contradictory discourse in which the advertisers are positioned as ‘the wise’, offering to mediate the conflicting identities of the stigmatized. The identity values enacted in this contradictory discourse are further measured against American conceptions of communication and the self as observed by Carbaugh and others. The possible consequences of these positionings on the roles made available to people with HIV/AIDS in the wider social context are discussed.

Melanin-concentrating hormone projections to areas involved in somatomotor responses

The lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) participates in the integration of sensory information and somatomotor responses associated with hunger and thirst. Although the LHA is neurochemically heterogeneous, a particularly high number of cells express melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH), which has been reported to play a role in energy homeostasis. Treatment with MCH increases food intake, and MCH mRNA is overexpressed in leptin-deficient (ob/ob) mice. Mice lacking both MCH and leptin present reduced body fat, mainly due to increased resting energy expenditure and locomotor activity. Dense MCH innervation of the cerebral motor cortex (MCx) and the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPT), both related to motor function, has been reported. Therefore, we postulated that a specific group of MCH neurons project to these areas. To investigate our hypothesis, we injected retrograde tracers into the MCx and the PPT of rats, combined with immunohistochemistry. We found that 25% of the LHA neurons projecting to the PPT were immunoreactive for MCH, and that 75% of the LHA neurons projecting to the MCx also contained MCH. Few MCH neurons were found to send collaterals to both areas. We also found that 15% of the incerto-hypothalamic neurons projecting to the PPT expressed MCH immunoreactivity. Those neurons preferentially innervated the rostral PPT. In addition, we observed that the MCH neurons express glutamic acid decarboxylase mRNA, a gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) synthesizing enzyme. We postulate that MCH/GABA neurons are involved in the inhibitory modulation of the innervated areas, decreasing motor activity in states of negative energy balance. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.

The sleep-wake cycle in adult rats following pilocarpine-induced temporal lobe epilepsy

The relationship between sleep and epilepsy is both complex and clinically significant. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) influences sleep architecture, while sleep plays an important role in facilitating and/or inhibiting possible epileptic seizures. The pilocarpine experimental model reproduces several features of human temporal lobe epilepsy and is one of the most widely used models in basic research. The aim of the present study was to characterize, behaviorally and electrophysiologically, the phases of sleep-wake cycles (SWC) in male rats with pilocarpine-induced epilepsy. Epileptic rats presented spikes in all phases of the SWC as well as atypical cortical synchronization during attentive wakefulness and paradoxical sleep. The architecture of the sleep-wake phases was altered in epileptic rats, as was the integrity of the SWC. Because our findings reproduce many relevant features observed in patients with epilepsy, this model is suitable to study sleep dysfunction in epilepsy. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcriptome and gene expression profile of ovarian follicle tissue of the triatomine bug Rhodnius prolixus

Insect oocytes grow in close association with the ovarian follicular epithelium (OFE), which escorts the oocyte during oogenesis and is responsible for synthesis and secretion of the eggshell. We describe a transcriptome of OFE of the triatomine bug Rhodnius prolixus, a vector of Chagas disease, to increase our knowledge of the role of FE in egg development. Random clones were sequenced from a cDNA library of different stages of follicle development. The transcriptome showed high commitment to transcription, protein synthesis, and secretion. The most abundant cDNA was a secreted (S) small, proline-rich protein with maximal expression in the vitellogenic follicle, suggesting a role in oocyte maturation. We also found Rp45, a chorion protein already described, and a putative chitin-associated cuticle protein that was an eggshell component candidate. Six transcripts coding for proteins related to the unfolded-protein response (UPR) by were chosen and their expression analyzed. Surprisingly, transcripts related to UPR showed higher expression during early stages of development and downregulation during late stages, when transcripts coding for S proteins participating in chorion formation were highly expressed. Several transcripts with potential roles in oogenesis and embryo development are also discussed. We propose that intense protein synthesis at the FE results in reticulum stress (RS) and that lowering expression of a set of genes related to cell survival should lead to degeneration of follicular cells at oocyte maturation. This paradoxical suppression of UPR suggests that ovarian follicles may represent an interesting model for studying control of RS and cell survival in professional S cell types. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sleep deprivation of rats: The hyperphagic response is real

Study Objectives: Chronic sleep deprivation of rats causes hyperphagia without body weight gain. Sleep deprivation hyperphagia is prompted by changes in pathways governing food intake; hyperphagia may be adaptive to sleep deprivation hypermetabolism. A recent paper suggested that sleep deprivation might inhibit ability of rats to increase food intake and that hyperphagia may be an artifact of uncorrected chow spillage. To resolve this, a palatable liquid diet (Ensure) was used where spillage is insignificant. Design: Sleep deprivation of male Sprague Dawley rats was enforced for 10 days by the flowerpot/platform paradigm. Daily food intake and body weight were measured. On day 10, rats were transcardially perfused for analysis of hypothalamic mRNA expression of the orexigen, neuropeptide Y (NPY). Setting: Morgan State University, sleep deprivation and transcardial perfusion; University of Maryland, NPY in situ hybridization and analysis. Measurements and Results: Using a liquid diet for accurate daily measurements, there was no change in food intake in the first 5 days of sleep deprivation. Importantly, from days 6-10 it increased significantly, peaking at 29% above baseline. Control rats steadily gained weight but sleep-deprived rats did not. Hypothalamic NPY mRNA levels were positively correlated to stimulation of food intake and negatively correlated with changes in body weight. Conclusion: Sleep deprivation hyperphagia may not be apparent over the short term (i.e., <= 5 days), but when extended beyond 6 days, it is readily observed. The timing of changes in body weight and food intake suggests that the negative energy balance induced by sleep deprivation prompts the neural changes that evoke hyperphagia.

Contribuição ao estudo das hepatectomias parciais com oclusão do fluxo sanguíneo aferente

O tratamento cirúrgico dos tumores hepáticos tem sido um grande desafio na história evolutiva da cirurgia. No passado, as altas taxas de morbidade e mortalidade limitavam sua aplicação como opção terapêutica. O refinamento da técnica de ressecção hepática está associado a menores índices de mortalidade e morbidade peri-operatória e, embora, a mortalidade tenha sido reduzida a menos de 10% nos serviços especializados, a morbidade ainda é bastante significativa, sendo que a hemorragia grave e a embolia aérea permanecem como complicações graves das hepatectomias. O controle da perda sanguínea é o objetivo primordial durante este tipo de cirurgia. As técnicas descritas, com a finalidade de conter a hemorragia transoperatória, são aquelas associadas à redução do fluxo sanguíneo ao fígado, seja através da oclusão vascular aferente ou manobra de Pringle por clampeamento do pedículo hepático, seja por exclusão vascular total do órgão. Hepatectomias parciais podem ser realizadas com pequeno sangramento e, mesmo quando associadas a períodos prolongados de isquemia tecidual, não foram identificadas lesões parenquimatosas ou falência hepática persistente. A redução na necessidade de reposição de sangue, no período peri-operatório, está associada a menor morbidade e à diminuição significativa na incidência de sepse abdominal. O objetivo deste estudo foi o de avaliar uma série de hepatectomias parciais com oclusão do fluxo sanguíneo aferente, em pacientes portadores de patologias benignas e neoplasias malignas. Foram analisadas 60 hepatectomias em 59 pacientes com oclusão do fluxo sanguíneo aferente quanto a possíveis fatores de risco para morbidade e mortalidade, bem como a relação entre o tempo de isquemia hepática e a variação das transaminases, tempo de protrombina e bilirrubinas, e destes, com a evolução pós-operatória. A prevalência de complicações pós-operatórias foi de 43,3% e a mortalidade de 6,7%. O fator de risco significativo para mortalidade foi tempo cirúrgico mais prolongado, quando comparado com os pacientes que não foram a óbito. Para a morbidade pós-operatória, foram identificados como fatores de risco a idade acima de 60 anos, cirurgia por neoplasia maligna, parênquima hepático anormal, ou seja, presença de cirrose, esteatose ou colestase, perda sanguínea necessitando reposição de mais de uma unidade de sangue e outros procedimentos cirúrgicos concomitantes. Na análise multivariada por regressão logística, estes fatores de risco foram reduzidos, apenas, para presença de cirrose, esteatose ou colestase. O tempo de isquemia não apresentou relação com a morbi-mortalidade pós-operatória. A variação das transaminases foram mais acentuadas nos casos com maior tempo de isquemia, porém, retornaram aos níveis pré-operatórios em, aproximadamente, uma semana. Não houve variação de tempo de protrombina e bilirrubinas quanto ao tempo de isquemia. A variação de AST e ALT não foram diferentes entre os pacientes com e sem morbidade pós-operatória.

Economic growth with foreign saving?

Highly indebted countries, particularly the Latin American ones, presented dismal economic outcomes in the 1990s, which are the consequence of the ‘growth cum foreign savings strategy’, or the Second Washington Consensus. Coupled with liberalization of international financial flows, such strategy, which did not make part of the first consensus, led the countries, in the wave of a new world wide capital flow cycle, to high current account deficits and increase in foreign debt, ignoring the solvency constraint and the debt threshold. In practical terms it involved overvalued currencies (low exchange rates) and high interest rates; in policy terms, the attempt to control de budget deficit while the current account deficit was ignored. The paradoxical consequence was the adoption by highly indebted countries of ‘exchange rate populism’, a less obvious but more dangerous form of economic populism.

Sentidos do trabalho informacional corporativo: uma investigação sobre o impacto do conhecimento no trabalho contemporâneo

This study proposes and uses a multipolar qualitative methodology for the investigation of the meanings of corporate work under the impact of the technical-scientific knowledge. Based on the constructionist epistemology and on a heideggerian approach, this methodology made possible the description of such phenomenon under the Management perspective, but also under the Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy views. Study starts with empirical data, collected by interviews and in publications, and analyzes them based on conceptual contributions from the four referred poles. As a result, this investigation proposes reflexivity, impermanence and entanglement as meanings of the corporate work that culminate in the paradoxical work. It also demonstrates that the impact of knowledge occurs in a reflexive spiral of complexification, continuously affecting individuals and work processes; describes the impermanent character of the work ruled by time, by neophilia and by uncertainties that make precarious the very subjective experience of worker; and proposes that this work becomes entangled due to the way it is managed, and is an entangling work, for embarrassing the individual in its techniques, logics and dissonances. The paradoxical essence that emerges from this appreciation of corporate work is described on the following scopes: its reflexivity does not prevent its rationality to be fragile; its dynamism coexists with the difficulty to achieve substantive organizational changes; its entanglement compromises the possibilities of an apparently reachable well-being; its focus on present ends up to be emptied; and its purpose of individual sustenance becomes unsustainable due to hyperconsumption. But the conclusions of the study do no describe a definitive phenomenon. At the ending, it points out possibilities of living with the paradoxical work as well as possibilities of its transformation.

The good, the bad and the ugly: estudo sobre pequenas e médias empresas familiares brasileiras a partir da teoria da ação de Pierre Bourdieu

According to Bourdieu (1994), there are social camps where the economic logic works upside down. Therefore, the expression ¿family business¿ is paradoxical because inside it resides two distinct and, sometimes, antagonistic logics: the business logic, whose goal is the profit, and the family logic, which aims at the common welfare. That is why one must consider the symbolical exchanges influences on the social relations more than in any other kind of company. Based on these concepts, this research presents an overview of the small and medium brazilian family business universe.

O conceito de interação segundo a teoria sistêmica na psicologia

Neste trabalho aborda-se o conceito de interação como fator de relevante importância para o desenvolvimento da psicologia. Para tanto, analisou-se a evolução da ciência ocidental desde suas raízes na Grécia Antiga até aos dias atuais, ressaltando as revoluções científicas que trouxeram alguma modificação ao pensamento científico. Esse enfoque permitiu verificar-se que duas características marcantes predominaram na ciência: o dualismo e o mecanicismo que a Revolução Científica do século XVII acentuou graças à filosofia de Descartes e à física de Newton. Segundo o paradigma cartesiano-newtoniano, interação, em psicologia nada mais é que a atuação de alguma coisa sobre outra e vice-versa; em outros termos, o ser humano é o resultante de forças, quer sejam internas, quer sejam externas, que atuam sobre ele e as quais ele reage. Logo, interação revela uma conotação mecanicista linear de causa e efeito. A visão fisicalista e reducionista impediu, de certa forma, o desenvolvimento da psicologia que sofre, como toda a ciência em geral, uma transformação e consequente reformulação e criação de conceitos. Assim concluiu-se que, neste novo quadro, a psicologia considerando o homem como um sistema, isto é, um conjunto cujas partes, todas relevantes, integram numa luta permanente de ser e não ser, de ordem e desordem em constante reorganização, salienta-se o conceito de interação como um fator de conhecimento maior, mais completo do homem, um ser tão paradoxal e contraditório segundo metodologias inadequadas para sua investigação.

Luxo e consumo consciente: eles são realmente paradoxais? Um estudo sobre o comportamento de consumo de consumidoras de luxo brasileiras e portuguesas

Consumir luxo é geralmente uma atividade individualista, baseada em propósitos hedonistas e de diferenciação. O consumo consciente, por outro lado, é estimulado por preocupações sociais e ambientais a respeito tanto do bem estar da sociedade atual como também das gerações futuras. Considerando apenas essas duas declarações, seria possível concluir que luxo e consumo conscientes são, então, paradoxais. No entanto, as motivações dos consumidores de luxo mostram um retrato diferente dessa realidade na qual é possível integrar luxo e consumo consciente. Esta pesquisa exploratória descreve o comportamento de consumo de consumidoras de luxo brasileiras e portuguesas e suas atitudes em relação ao consumo consciente. Foram realizadas 11 entrevistas com jovens brasileiras e 8 com jovens portuguesas para entender a sua preocupação social e ambiental ao consumir produtos de luxo e as semelhanças e diferenças entre consumidoras de ambos os países. Essa análise intercultural mostrou que as consumidoras brasileiras se preocupam mais com o status ao consumir produtos de luxo, enquanto as portuguesas tendem a ser mais discretas. Além disso, embora ambas comprem produtos de luxo em quantidades pequenas e os usem por vários anos, o que pode ser considerada como uma ação consciente, quando se trata de traduzir crenças sociais e ambientais nas escolhas de consumo, as portuguesas aparentam fazê-lo mais frequentemente, principalmente boicotando produtos por razões éticas. Este estudo fornece um importante avanço empírico em relação a trabalhos anteriores sobre consumo consciente e comportamento de consumo de luxo, conectando ambos os conceitos a fim de entender o consumo em um período de crescente conscientização a respeito da sustentabilidade.

Dreaming up the right career: an exploratory study of the career aspirations of low-income adolescents living in urban São Paulo

No Brasil, os jovens de baixa renda estão propensos ao desemprego, o que é particularmente problemático em uma economia emergente onde a desigualdade de renda é relativamente alta, e onde o desenvolvimento socioeconômico futuro pode depender do crescimento e da estabilidade de uma classe média já vulnerável. Além disso, o desemprego entre os jovens, especialmente em cidades urbanas, está associado a elevada incidência de violência, comportamento ilegal, aumento da desigualdade e instabilidade sociopolítica. Este estudo complementa tentativas existentes de promover as perspectivas de emprego da juventude brasileira, investigando as aspirações profissionais de 25 adolescentes que vivem em comunidades de baixa renda na zona urbana de São Paulo. A pesquisa foi realizada através de grupos de foco durante o período de quatro encontros nas comunidades paulistanas de Vila Albertina, Heliópolis, Vila Prudente e Vila Nova Esperança. Os resultados da pesquisa repetem, em grande parte, o conhecimento existente que diz respeito a adolescentes; eles confirmam o papel importante que o mérito individual, o microambiente e os modelos exemplares (isto é, familiares, colegas e educadores locais) têm de moldar e possibilitar (ou impedir) os planos de carreira de jovens adultos, e destacam a flexibilidade e a diversidade de interesses profissionais nesta faixa etária. Ademais, os resultados revelam atitudes paradoxais face às comunidades de baixa renda em São Paulo. Todos os participantes pareciam empoderados por elementos dentro de seu microambiente, exibiam sentimentos de orgulho e que faziam parte de sua comunidade; porém, muitos pareciam perturbados pela maneira como pessoas de fora estereotipam ou estigmatizam os moradores da "favela". Ao todo, o estudo destaca tendências que sustentam razões para maiores investimentos no desenvolvimento profissional dos jovens de baixa renda. Na qualidade de um ecossistema com potencial para desenvolvimento socioeconômico, as comunidades de baixa renda podem constituir uma fonte rica não apenas de recursos humanos, mas também de oportunidades comerciais e empregos.

Juventude e consumo emocional nas redes sociais da internet. Análise das marcas: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, BlackBerry, Nokia, Riachuelo e C&A

In The paradoxical happiness , Gilles Lipovetsky elects five major paradigmatic models that command the pleasure and happiness in our societies. Starting with the paradigmatic models of penia (where it is emphasized the existential dissatisfaction supplied by the consumption and where advertising has a special place, bombarding consumers and creating consumer needs, in addition to selling a lifestyle rather than the products themselves), and narcissus (model constructed on the basis of self-exaltation and abdication of the social and political) intends to examine the relationship between the consumption exercised by young people and the advertising displayed on social networking sites, focusing on the social media Facebook, observing the virtual fan pages of the following brands: Coca-Cola; Pepsi; BlackBerry, Nokia, Riachuelo and C&A and their relationships with their consumers

Vivências de docentes de enfermagem no ensino do cuidar

Care, in a global perspective, appears in the main quarrels as the necessary phenomenon that will have to permeate the thoughts, the perception and values for the change that will lead to the overcoming of a paradigmatic crisis. The professional care was attributed, in elapsing of history, to the Nursing. Its historical evolution and articulation with the social processes, political and scientific in prominence place, in what it says respect to human well-being, not objectifying to cure, but to comfort, to complement the weak capacities and to the establishment the present capacities, alleviating pain, in other words, caring. The Teaching of care in Nursing, suffered great influences of the biomedical model, being like this, the education in Nursing has been criticized for if being valid pedagogical models incapable to promote the growth of the subjects, keeping it passive before your life processes, showing fragilities, attitudes and questionable behaviors, dissonances, appearing the imminence of an act of to care and to educate that needs to be considered as dialectical and intersubjective act. The objective of this research is to understand the lived experience of the nursing teachers in the Teaching of Care, in order to reflect about the insert of Nursing in the current world context, watching the dialetics of the Teaching of care and the paradigm changes in the section health. It is a phenomenological research that used the analysis of the located phenomenon, to obtain the units of meaning of the speech Nursing teachers about your experience lived in the Teaching of care. This study allowed the Nursing teachers could share your existences, senses and information on the interior of your pedagogic action exalting the interpretation, which appears intentionally in the conscience, emphasizing the pure experience of the be-professor, including emotions and affectivities in the teaching of care. In the construction of the results, three moments were devoted for discussion: Multidimensional Care; Care as Professional Practice; and the Teaching of care. The speeches had revealed rich, complex and for paradoxical times. The understanding of a sensitive teaching, that sometimes, arrives if to worry in rescuing the tenderness and the humanity, it is running into the other permeated speeches of fragilities, inconstancies, technifying, that showed lacks of pedagogic preparation. The Teaching of care needs to adopt a conception of education/learning and to use methodologies that can lead to an action liberating, capable to breach with traditional mooring cables and preconceptions or little healthful habits of life, favoring the use of methods that promote educating for the way of the sensitive, detaching aspects that they contribute for this end, as the intuition, the emotion, the creation, the perception and the sensibility. In this direction, it is considered important to deepen subjects that make possible the creation of care strategies and educational with the human being vision in your totality, therefore if it perceives that the necessary therapeutical boarding to be ampler, passing for the social individual, family and its relations

Amphotericin B mediates killing in Cryptococcus neoformans through the induction of a strong oxidative burst

We studied the effects of Amphotericin B (AmB) on Cryptococcus neoformans using different viability methods (CFUs enumeration, XTT assay and propidium iodide permeability). After 1 h of incubation, there were no viable colonies when the cells were exposed to AmB concentrations >= 1 mg/L. In the same conditions, the cells did not become permeable to propidium iodide, a phenomenon that was not observed until 3 h of incubation. When viability was measured in parallel using XTT assay, a result consistent with the CFUs was obtained, although we also observed a paradoxical effect in which at high AmB concentrations, a higher XTT reduction was measured than at intermediate AmB concentrations. This paradoxical effect was not observed after 3 h of incubation with AmB, and lack of XTT reduction was observed at AmB concentrations higher than 1 mg/L. When stained with dihydrofluorescein, AmB induced a strong intracellular oxidative burst. Consistent with oxidative damage, AmB induced protein carbonylation. Our results indicate that in C. neoformans, Amphotericin B causes intracellular damage mediated through the production of free radicals before damage on the cell membrane, measured by propidium iodide uptake. (C) 2011 Institut Pasteur. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.