Mutuality talk in a family-owned multinational: anthropological categories & critical analyses of corporate ethicizing

This article draws on work carried out as part of a collaboration between an elite business school and a family-owned multinational corporation, concerned with promoting ‘mutuality in business’ as a new frontier of responsible capitalism. While the business school partners treated mutuality as a new principle central to an emergent ethical capitalism, the corporation claimed mutuality as a long-established value unique to their company. Both interpretations foreground a central problem in recent writing on the anthropology of business/corporations: the tension between the claim that economic life is always embedded within a moral calculus, and the shift towards increasingly ethical behaviour among many corporations. Further, recent work in the anthropology of business rejects normative evaluations of corporate ethicizing. When corporations lay claim to ethical renewal, but maintain a commitment to competition and growth, then anthropologists must balance a sympathetic engagement with corporate ethicizing, and critical engagement with growth-based strategie

Divergent RNA transcription:A role in promoter unwinding?

New approaches using biotinylated-psoralen as a probe for investigating DNA structure have revealed new insights into the relationship between DNA supercoiling, transcription and chromatin compaction. We explore a hypothesis that divergent RNA transcription generates negative supercoiling at promoters facilitating initiation complex formation and subsequent promoter clearance

Preliminary Data on the Bioturbation Activity of Hediste Diversicolor (Polychaeta, Nereididae) from the Loire Estuary, France

The ragworm Hediste diversicolor (O. F. Müller, 1776) plays a key role in the estuarine water-sediment interface. This scientific project comes under the framework of the International network Nereis Park Experiment gathering 27 laboratories from all over the world. The experiments were carried out concurrently in spring 2007 using a common protocol. In the Loire estuary, the samples were collected in the intertidal zone of the Saint-Nazaire Bridge. During the field experiment, we estimated the surface area of the burrow walls (Sb) value varied from Sb = 0.26 m2.m-2 to 2.18 m2.m-2 (mean Sb = 0.75 m2.m-2), and the pumping rate (Pr) value from Pr = 0.9 l.d-1m-2 to 7.7 l.d-1 m-2 (mean value Pr = 2.7 l.d-1m-2). The density and the biomass of H. diversicolor populations largely controlled the amount of reworked sediment. In the laboratory, we estimated the pseudo-diffusive mixing, Db value varied from Db = 1.2 to 1.6 (mean Db = 1.5). The non-local transport (r) from the upper layers to the bottom of the tubes varied from r = 1 to 7.2 (mean r = 4.3). A positive relationship could be established between Db and the temperature while on the contrary a negative relationship could be established between the Db and biomass. It seems that small individuals are more efficient reworkers than big ones

Cursed Resources? Political Conditions and Oil Market Outcomes.

We analyze how a country's political institutions affect oil production within its borders. We find a pronounced negative relationship between political openness and volatility in oil production, with democratic regimes exhibiting less volatility than more autocratic regimes. This relationship holds across a number of robustness checks including using different measures of political conditions, instrumenting for political conditions and using several measures of production volatility. Political openness also affects other oil market outcomes, including total production as a share of reserves. Our findings have implications both for interpreting the role of institutions in explaining differences in macroeconomic development and for understanding world oil markets.

Influence of various redox conditions on the degradation of microalgal triacylglycerols and fatty acids in marine sediments

Sediment cakes, supplemented with microalgal cells (Nannochloropsis salina), were incubated for 35 days under permanently oxic, oscillating (5d:5d changeover oxic/anoxic) and strictly anoxic conditions of oxygenation in diffusively ‘‘open’’ sedimentary systems. Total lipids (TLip) and triacylglycerols (TG) concentrations were monitored by thin layer chromatography-flame ionisation detection, whereas the concentrations of the main extractable (free+ester-bound) individual fatty acids (C16:0, C16:1, C18:1) were followed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Under the three conditions of oxygenation, TOC, TLip and TG showed a sharp decrease in concentration during the early days of incubation and seemed to stabilise thereafter, defining an apparent non degradable fraction (GNR). The GNR content was systematically higher in the anoxic incubation than under the oxic and oscillating conditions. The ratio of the main hydrolysis products of TG versus TG [(Free fatty acids+Monoacylglycerols+1,2-Diacylglycerols)/TG], used as an indicator of the hydrolysis of TG, showed that the presence of oxygen in the sediments (oxic and oscillating conditions) stimulates the hydrolysis of TG and the subsequent degradation of their metabolites. Unlike TOC, TLip and TG, individual fatty acids (FA) showed a continuous concentration decrease until the end of the experiment, which was fitted with a simple first order model [G(t)=G0e_kt] to yield apparent degradation rate constants. The values observed under oscillating conditions (kFA=0.019 +/- 0.001 d_1) were intermediate to those observed during oxic (kFA=0.029 +/- 0.003 d_1) and anoxic (kFA=0.011 +/- 0.001 d_1) incubations, and no significant difference between individual FA could be observed. The production of saturated and monounsaturated C16 (and to a lesser extent C18) alkanols under oscillating and anoxic redox conditions suggested that (a part of) the dominant FA were reduced to the corresponding alcohols under anoxic conditions, following their release from acylglycerols

Towards large-cohort comparative studies to define the factors influencing the gut microbial community structure of ASD patients.

Differences in the gut microbiota have been reported between individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and neurotypical controls, although direct evidence that changes in the microbiome contribute to causing ASD has been scarce to date. Here we summarize some considerations of experimental design that can help untangle causality in this complex system. In particular, large cross-sectional studies that can factor out important variables such as diet, prospective longitudinal studies that remove some of the influence of interpersonal variation in the microbiome (which is generally high, especially in children), and studies transferring microbial communities into germ-free mice may be especially useful. Controlling for the effects of technical variables, which have complicated efforts to combine existing studies, is critical when biological effect sizes are small. Large citizen-science studies with thousands of participants such as the American Gut Project have been effective at uncovering subtle microbiome effects in self-collected samples and with self-reported diet and behavior data, and may provide a useful complement to other types of traditionally funded and conducted studies in the case of ASD, especially in the hypothesis generation phase

Prophylactic anti-coagulation in cancer palliative care: a prospective randomised study

Goals: The objective of this study was to determine utility of prophylactic anti-coagulation in cancer patients hospitalised for palliative care in a specialised centre. Materials and methods: Prospective 1:1 open randomised study was designed. Twenty patients aged 55 to 88years with advanced cancer and an estimated life expectancy of less than 6months were assigned to either receive treatment with 2,850/3,800U (70kg) of daily subcutaneous nadroparin or no treatment. Suspicion of venous thrombo-embolism (deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism) was confirmed by echo-Doppler examination of the lower limbs and/or by spiral computed tomography scan of the lungs. Bleeding episodes were recorded. Platelet count was measured on days 7 and 14. Survival time from study entry was determined. Main results: One venous thrombo-embolism and one major bleeding occurred in the group receiving nadroparin, whereas two minor bleedings occurred in the control group. At 3months, nine of ten participants had died in the control group vs five of ten in the group receiving nadroparin (P = 0.141). Five participants could be discharged home (P = 0.141). Conclusions: Decision to administer prophylactic nadroparin in hospitalised cancer patients under palliative care remains a challenge. Better mobility score at admission and the likelihood to be discharged home may be useful for practical purposes. The observation of a potential influence of prophylactic nadroparin on survival deserves further studie

The histone H3K4 demethylase JARID1A directly interacts with haematopoietic transcription factor GATA1 in erythroid cells through its second PHD domain

Chromatin remodelling and transcription factors play important roles in lineage commitment and development through control of gene expression. Activation of selected lineage-specific genes and repression of alternative lineage-affiliated genes results in tightly regulated cell differentiation transcriptional programmes. However, the complex functional and physical interplay between transcription factors and chromatin modifying enzymes remains elusive. Recent evidence has implicated histone demethylases in normal haematopoietic differentiation as well as in malignant haematopoiesis. Here we report an interaction between H3K4 demethylase JARID1A and the haematopoietic-specific master transcription proteins SCL and GATA1 in red blood cells. Specifically, we observe a direct physical contact between GATA1 and the second PHD domain of JARID1A. This interaction has potential implications for normal and malignant haematopoiesis