Football as a vehicle for development: lessons from male Ghanaian youth

This chapter uses recent interest in the challenges male African youth face as they try to become professional footballers as a way to contribute to geographical research on the agency and resourcefulness of young people in the Global South. It does so by using football as a lens, and Ghana as a case study, to explore how processes at a variety of geographical scales are understood and put to use by male Ghanaian youth as part of entrepreneurial strategies to improve their life chances through football. The overarching argument is that contrary to the socialist early independence era, the Ghanaian football industry is now a hub of financial speculation centred on the export of young players to foreign leagues. Male Ghanaian youth are shown to influence the current state of play in two key ways. Some view owning an amateur football club and trading youth players on the international transfer market as an entrepreneurial venture. Meanwhile others are joining clubs to become Foucauldian ‘entrepreneurs of self’ in the form of a professional footballer. The strategies for life making these two sets of atypical entrepreneurs employ are shown to emerge from their engagement with wider social understandings of development as achievable through the deployment of individual autonomy

Targeting endoplasmic reticulum signaling pathways in cancer.

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) orchestrates the production of membrane-bound and secreted proteins. However, its capacity to process the synthesis and folding of protein is limited. Protein overload and the accumulation of misfolded proteins in the ER trigger an adaptive response known as the ER-stress response that is mediated by specific ER-anchored signaling pathways. This response regulates cell functions aimed at restoring cellular homeostasis or at promoting apoptosis of irreparably damaged cells. Activation or deregulation of ER-signaling pathways has been associated with various diseases including cancer. Here we discuss how tumors engage ER-signaling pathways to promote tumorigenesis and how manipulation of this process by anticancer drugs may contribute to cancer treatment