Showing papers by "Georgetown University published in 2023"

Spatial parasitology and the unmapped human helminthiases

Abstract: Helminthiases are a class of neglected tropical diseases that affect at least 1 billion people worldwide, with a disproportionate impact on resource-poor areas with limited disease surveillance. Geospatial methods can offer valuable insights into the burden of these infections, particularly given that many are subject to strong ecological influences on the environmental, vector-borne or zoonotic stages of their life cycle. In this study, we screened 6829 abstracts and analysed 485 studies that use maps to document, infer or predict transmission patterns for over 200 species of parasitic worms. We found that quantitative mapping methods are increasingly used in medical parasitology, drawing on One Health surveillance data from the community scale to model geographic distributions and burdens up to the regional or global scale. However, we found that the vast majority of the human helminthiases may be entirely unmapped, with research effort focused disproportionately on a half-dozen infections that are targeted by mass drug administration programmes. Entire regions were also surprisingly under-represented in the literature, particularly southern Asia and the Neotropics. We conclude by proposing a shortlist of possible priorities for future research, including several neglected helminthiases with a burden that may be underestimated.

When the leak becomes a flood

Abstract: Social and technological changes over the past several decades have led to widespread writing of “spoken” Arabic dialects. In Tunisia, there has been a noticeable growth of vernacular prose literature, part of a larger development of Tunisian Arabic as a written language. Tunisia does not have a history of colloquial literature: previously even the use of “dɛ̄rja” in literary dialogue was rare. From this nearly non-existent base, a small “leak” of vernacular writing appeared in the latter part of the 20th century, followed by a flood–first online and increasingly in print–in the first two decades of the 21st. This has culminated in over a dozen vernacular novels and literary translations.

Expanding Publication Opportunities: Different Types of Political Science Journal Articles

Abstract: In the field of political science, scholars can contribute to the growing literature on gender and politics in multiple ways. While research articles remain important for scholars to communicate their research, they are not the only way. Scholars might consider other means to contribute to the scholarship, such as through research notes, book reviews, and review essays (a particular type of literature review). Specific to Politics & Gender , Critical Perspectives and Notes from the Field are two more avenues for scholars to engage in the gender and politics scholarly conversation. Each of these publication types provides a way for scholars to participate in the conversation about current political phenomena, research innovations, or topics of concern in the field. In what follows, I distinguish between the type of publishing opportunities available in the field of political science and the options specific to Politics & Gender. I also discuss what scholars should think about when considering the type of publication they want to submit.

Best practice for wound repair and regeneration use of cellular, acellular and matrix-like products (CAMPs)

Abstract: There are currently over 80 biomaterials derived from autologous, allogeneic, synthetic and xenogeneic sources, or a combination of any or all these types of materials, available for soft-tissue coverage to effect wound closure. Often generically referred to as cellular and/or tissue-based products (CTPs), they are manufactured under various trade names and marketed for a variety of indications.

Long-Run Economic Legacies of Colonialism

Abstract: Abstract This chapter surveys the literature on whether and which are the long-run economic legacies of European colonization today. From these works stands out the diversity of development experiences across and even within formerly colonized countries depending on the conditions encountered by colonizers, the latter’s identity, or the length of colonization, to name a few. However, most of these studies are based on comparisons among different types of colonization experiences and not vis-à-vis a scenario of no colonization, constituting a potential avenue for future research. Nonetheless, available findings allow researchers to identify and rank the effect of different colonial policies on key drivers of economic disparities today.

Intertextuality 2.0

Abstract: Abstract Intertextuality captures the idea that all texts and conversations—and by extension, other creations such as images—are linked to other texts and conversations (and other creations), and that people, through making and interpreting such links, construct and infer meanings. Metadiscourse, which broadly refers to discourse about discourse, captures the notion that one important function of language is to communicate about itself. While scholars have long recognized the interrelatedness of the two theoretical concepts, existing studies have tended to focus on one or the other, thus leaving underexplored the specific ways in which these phenomena are intertwined at the micro-interactional level, especially online, and for what purposes. This interactional sociolinguistic study contributes to filling this gap by demonstrating how specific intertextual linking strategies, both linguistic (e.g., word repetition, deictic pronouns) and multimodal (e.g., emojis, symbols, and GIFs), are mobilized by posters participating on weight loss discussion boards. These strategies serve as a resource to accomplish the metadiscursive activities, targeted at various levels of discourse, through which participants construct shared understandings, negotiate the group’s interactional norms, and facilitate engagement in the group’s primary shared activity: exchanging information about, and providing support in, weight loss, healthful eating, and related issues. Intertextuality 2.0 provides microanalysis of discourse in a multimodal digital discourse context, or in “discourse 2.0”; in so doing, it advocates a dual understanding of intertextuality in the sense that its companion, metadiscourse, must be elevated in studies of intertextuality if we are to fully understand its role in (contemporary digital) discourse.

Chapter 12. Phonological and phonetic development in study abroad research

Abstract: There is an old anecdote about Daniel Jones (the real Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady/Pygmalion) according to which all he needed was “his ears” for phonetics fieldwork. Currently, many linguists do not receive enough phonetic training and consequently may not have Jones’ acoustically tuned ears. However, technology has afforded researchers new instruments that make phonetic analysis a widely accessible field of inquiry. Recent years have also seen increased attention to issues in second language methodology. In this chapter I discuss some methodological issues that may affect validity and contribute to the possibility of variable findings in research on phonological and phonetic development in study abroad. The chapter follows the standard structure and reviews first what has been done in the literature; then identifies possible issues with current practice; and finally makes proposals for improvements and future developments.

Degrees of Freedom Analysis: A mixed method for theory building, decision making, and prediction

Abstract: Degrees of Freedom Analysis (DoFA) is a method originally published in 1975 that combines qualitative analysis to summarize narrative data with quantitation to summarize alignment or support of the qualitative results for theory building. This paper discusses recent adaptations of the method to facilitate decision making and prediction when theory building is not the investigator's focus. Eleven applications of the method across a variety of disciplines and materials are discussed. These examples highlight the flexibility and utility of DoFA in rigorous and reproducible analyses that involve qualitative materials that would otherwise be challenging to analyze and summarize.

Relationship Between Self-Directed Learning, Grit, and Compassionate Teaching in Doctoral Nursing Education

Abstract: The capacity to be self-directed, take responsibility for one's learning, and possess grit, perseverance, and passion for long-term goals is fundamental to doctoral education. Compassionate teaching (CT) strategies may help foster these traits.This study explored CT strategies, self-directedness, and grit in doctoral nursing education.A mixed-methods design examined doctor of nursing (DNP) graduates' (N = 227) perceptions of self-directedness, grit, and CT using an online survey and interviews.A weak direct correlation existed between CT strategies and grit. A weak-to-moderate direct significant correlation existed between CT strategies and self-directedness. Participants were moderately self-directed with postmasters-DNP graduates being more self-directed than postbaccalaureate-DNP graduates. Qualitative results validated that CT strategies include committing time to relationship building, providing timely critical feedback while being kind, and treating students fairly.Faculty who embrace rigor and compassion are appreciated by students and are perceived to foster self-directedness and grit.

Intersectionality and migrant smuggling research

Abstract: Focusing on the struggle to decriminalize homosexuality in India, this chapter showcases the indispensability of an intersectional and transnational methods perspective. Delving into the law’s colonial histories as well as fieldwork among state institutions and agencies, it shows how to assure attention to the intersections and transnational connections that shaped the law’s governance. This involves investigating the transnational context of the antisodomy law’s origins, colonial and postcolonial archives, and the moments during fieldwork that reveal the intersections of gender, class, race, and religion underlying the law’s implementation. Showing how an intersectional and transnational methods position shapes what counts as data, it also explores the intersectional and transnational aspects of research, itself. The chapter highlights that matters of gender, sexuality, class, and nation are ever-present in fieldwork, not just in the substance of what is being researched, but also in the process of research and data gathering.

Disability History: Introduction

Abstract: This introduction offers a succinct overview of the five chapters contained in the History of Disability section of this Handbook and highlights their contributions to the field of disability history. It also briefly addresses the Euro-American centrism of the field and the issue of the dearth of historical scholarship on disability from and about the “Global South,” especially in the premodern period.

The Aesthetic Value of the World

Abstract: Journal Article The Aesthetic Value of the World Get access The Aesthetic Value of the World Tom Cochrane Oxford University Press. 2021. pp. 240. £55.00 (hbk). Shannon Brick Shannon Brick Georgetown University, USA sb2124@georgetown.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2644-9634 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, ayac042, https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayac042 Published: 09 April 2023

Teaching Civics in the Digital Age: The Use of Traditional and Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract: The civic education of high need students often is shortchanged, contributing to a “civic empowerment gap.” This study examines differences in the pedagogies for digital citizenship employed by teachers of high need students and non-high need students. Are there differences in the pedagogies, activities, and digital media use skills teachers of high need and non-high need students employ in the classroom? Data on 700 middle and high school teachers nationwide are employed. The study finds that teachers of high need students are less likely to incorporate digital technology into the civics classroom. The disparities in the use of technology in the classroom are apparent for accessing information as well as civics-related activities. The inequities in civic education that contribute to the civic empowerment gap are growing in the digital age. Students in high need schools are not receiving civics instruction that keeps pace with the augmented requirements of engaged citizenship.

Subcontractor Networks and Affiliated Private Costs: Evidence forom Oklahoma Bridge Contracts

Abstract: Abstract This paper offers a theoretical framework associating subcontractor networks in procurement auctions to affiliated costs among bidders. Building on the methodology by Li and Zhang (2010), we construct a model that allows for cost affiliation depending on firm-pair observables. The extension is used to test for entry affiliation caused by overlapping subcontractor networks in a sample of Oklahoma bridge building contracts from 2004 to 2016. The empirical analysis finds statistically significant evidence of affiliation, driven by subcontracting networks, affecting firms’ decisions to bid on projects. JEL Codes: D44, D85, L14, H57

La solidarité et ses limites: La CFDT et les travailleurs dans “les années 68”

Abstract: Despite important recent work, US historians still have much more to learn about the interaction between unions and immigrants in the years since the 1960s. One indication of this lacuna is that it is difficult to cite a US study that combines both a national narrative and a fine-grained local analysis of the subject as well as Cole Stangler's revealing new volume does for the case of France in the 1960s and 1970s.Stangler's story is enlightening on multiple levels. He focuses not on the largest French union federation, the Confédération générale du travail (CGT), but on its smaller rival, the Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), which, he convincingly demonstrates, took a much more aggressive approach to defending immigrant workers during the crucial years between 1965 and 1979.The CFDT was founded in 1964 when the bulk of unionists in the Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens (CFTC) broke from the Christian orientation of that federation to establish the CFDT on a secular footing (déconfessionnalisation). The timing of this founding was propitious. The Algerian War had recently ended; immigrants were moving to France from Eastern and Southern Europe and North Africa, increasing the proportion of immigrants in the French population from 4.7 percent in 1962 to 6.5 percent in 1975; and the nation was on the brink of the upheaval of 1968, which would famously bring workers and students together into the streets of Paris.Holding a “conférence nationale des travailleurs immigrés” in 1966, the CDFT set out to study the problems of immigrant workers and define a plan for organizing them. It then made a historic accord with the rival CGT that allowed each federation to influence the other on the immigration issue over the ensuing decade. The upheaval of 1968, which saw immigrants take to the streets alongside the French-born, crystallized sentiment among the CDFT's leaders to make immigrant organizing a priority.In the early 1970s, the CDFT strengthened its position on immigrants around the notion that “in the realm of capitalism, we are all immigrants” (au royaume du capitalisme, nous sommes tous des immigrés; 67), setting up “groupes de nationalité” to bring workers together in caucuses of their country of origin and joining with the CGT in a campaign against racism that in 1972 helped achieve passage of the Plevin Law, which criminalized racially discriminatory hate speech. That same year, the government agreed to an expansion in labor rights, allowing all foreign workers to be elected as shop stewards. By 1973, the CDFT was supporting the demands of Tunisian immigrant strike leaders threatened with expulsion for being undocumented (“sans papiers”) and was making immigrant rights central to its program (76).During these years, Stangler shows, the CDFT led the CGT in embracing the cause of immigrant workers. Unfortunately, however, the work of both federations was thrown on the defensive by the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to the presidency in 1974, and his suspension of immigration and family unification policies. As the CDFT struggled with the new administration, it also faced internal problems. Although the federation embraced the cause of immigrants, it made little progress elevating immigrants into positions of union leadership. Of 1,298 delegates at its 1973 congress, only 18 were immigrants.The economic crisis that began in the mid-1970s further set back the CDFT's efforts, initiating a process of refocusing (recentrage) that saw it shift its emphasis away from immigrants’ labor rights toward a defense of their cultural integrity (droit à la difference) (124, 122). Increasing defensiveness effectively ended the period of the CDFT's most active engagement on the immigration issue by 1979.In his volume's second half, Stangler shifts from a national overview to a close examination of how key CDFT unions in the construction trades, chemical manufacturing, and public employment responded to immigrants and investigates immigrants’ participation in some of the prominent strikes of 1968 and the early 1970s, supplementing CDFT archival records with interviews with those who engaged in the struggles he documents. His examination of key CDFT unions reveals how uneven interest in the immigration issue was within the federation. The construction union, the Fédération du Bâtiment, operating in an industry where immigrants were providing a growing share of the workforce (12 percent overall in the sector, but nearly 40 percent in the region around Paris by 1973), embraced the immigrant workers’ cause most fully, while the chemical workers’ union, the Fédération de la Chimie (later the Fédération unifée de la Chimie), operating in an industry with fewer immigrants, never explicitly engaged the immigration issue. If immigrants received a varied reception among CDFT unions, Stangler shows that they played an increasingly important role in strikes during a militant moment in French labor history, including nontraditional strikes (des greves non traditionnelles) at Girosteel and Margoline, in which immigrants made demands for equitable treatment central to those fights (166).He concludes with a detailed case study of labor struggle at Renault's factory in Flins-sur-Seine, where immigrants led important strikes in 1973 and 1978. This rich case study tells the story of young militants such as Moussa Diallo of Senegal, Jamaa Ourami of Morocco, and Daniel Richter, the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, who became the CDFT's leader in the plant and took a strong stand against the racism endemic among the plant's French-born workers. Symbolic of how seriously Richter took the concerns of his immigrant comrades was his defense of Islamic workers’ demands for the establishment of prayer rooms at the plant, a demand that soon spread to other auto factories. The CDFT's defense of that demand was “We Are All Shiites” (Nous sommes tous chiites; 215).Stangler ends his narrative in 1979. In the decades that followed, shifting economics, politics, and culture would make it harder to rally workers around proclamations like “Nous sommes tous chiites.” Over time, the immigration issue receded from the prominent position it occupied on French labor's agenda in the 1970s. Today French labor, like its US counterpart, still suffers from the limited progress it made in building a more inclusive movement during the crucial years before neoliberalism tightened its grip.We can learn a great deal from the French experience described by Cole Stangler—especially from his smart, creative, multilevel method of analyzing that experience.

Farnesoid X receptor agonism prevents neutrophil extracellular traps via reduced sphingosine-1-phosphate in chronic kidney disease

Abstract: Abstract Background Activation of the farnesoid X receptor (FXR) reduces renal inflammation, but the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) are webs of DNA formed when neutrophils undergo specialized programmed cell death (NETosis). Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a signaling lipid that stimulates NETosis via its receptor on neutrophils. Here, we identify FXR as a negative regulator of kidney NETosis via repressing S1P signaling in male but not female mice. Methods We determined the effects of the FXR agonist obeticholic acid (OCA) in mouse models of adenosine phosphoribosyltransferase deficiency and Alport syndrome. We assessed renal NETosis by immunofluorescence in these models and in biopsies from patients with Alport syndrome (6 male, 9 female). We also inhibited de novo sphingosine production in Alport mice to show a causal relationship between S1P signaling and renal NETosis. Results Renal FXR activity is greatly reduced in both models, and OCA prevents kidney fibrosis, inflammation, and lipotoxicity. OCA reduces renal neutrophilic inflammation and NETosis in male adenine and Alport mice, but not in female adenine mice. Extensive NETosis was also identified in human Alport kidney biopsies. Kidney sphingosine kinase 1 (Sphk1) expression is increased in mice with kidney disease and reduced by OCA in male but not female mice. Also, Sphk1 expression correlates with NETosis in male but not female mice. Short-term inhibition of sphingosine synthesis reduces neutrophilic inflammation and NETosis. Conclusion FXR agonism represses kidney Sphk1 expression in male but not female mice. This inhibits renal S1P signaling, thereby reducing neutrophilic inflammation and NETosis in a sex-dependent manner.

Mysticism, Visual Art, and Repairing the World in a Strife-ridden Secular Age

Abstract: This chapter will discuss how certain Jewish, Christian, and Muslim visual artists have been provoked by mystical thought. Beginning with the question of what mysticism is, the chapter turns to the work of a handful of modern and contemporary painters and sculptors, addressing their conscious and unconscious engagement of mystical principles within their work. Practitioners such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Samuel Bak, Bruria Finkel, Jane Logemann, Amy Beth Swartz, Victoria Martin, Makoto Fujimura, Anselm Kiefer, Parivz Tanavoli, and Ahmed Sarel offer very visually different approaches—covert or overt—to the concerns of mysticism; each not only connects to the realm of the Divine in different ways, but forges connections to different aspects of the human realm. In the end, the narrative asks how these artists’ work resonates specifically from notions articulated in the words of mystics like St Francis of Assisi, Jalaluddin Rumi, and Abraham Abulafia, as instruments for improving the world.