bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Separate, Unequal, but More Autonomous: Technology, Equity and World Order in the Millennial Transition
Authors: Morehouse Ward
Published: March 2013

On the threshold of the millennial transition of the next 20–40 years, the human community is confronted with four alliterative crises which will reach a crescendo in the 1980s: energy, environment, employment, and equity. Breakdowns in capital- and energy-intensive systems are increasingly likely in the industrially advanced countries of the North and in the so-called modern sectors of Third World economies. As pressure on non-renewable resources and the environment grows, more and more effort is being made through organized R&D in the North to find technological solutions or fixes to these problems. The revolutionary advances occurring in micro-electronics and biotechnology can have dramatic impact on life-styles in the North and South, and on the global political economy. The key issues of the millennial transition, however, will not be technological but economic and political, revolving around the question of control over these technological innovations. Greater economic, political and technological integration of the world will draw the periphery nations of the Third World more tightly into a web of continuing dependence; and therefore selective disengagement of the South from the North emerges as a ‘lesser evil’ transitional strategy, while the South seeks to strengthen its own local problem-solving skills to grapple with the alliterative crises of the 1980s. In this effort, the South must use more extensively its own existing survival technology - indigenously based knowledge and skills which most people in the Third World live by today - in judicious combination with new advanced technologies from the North, if it can exercise reasonable control over the acquisition and utilization of those technologies.
Alternative Sources of Energy: Indigenous Renewable Resources
Authors: Omo-Fadaka Jimoh
Published: March 2013

This paper sees in indigenous biomass and other natural resources such as sun and wind and water, especially in Third World countries (most of which lie in the torrid or semi-torrid zones and a vast majority of whose populations live in rural areas), a potential alternative to non-renewable sources of energy such as oil and nuclear power. Biomass can be transformed into various forms of energy: solids (firewood and charcoal), liquids (alcohol and oil), gases (methane and hydrogen), and electricity. They are at once renewable and non-polluting, viable and inexpensive, decentralized and labour-intensive. The paper also surveys the efforts being made in Third World countries to make use of these energy-producing resources. But it adds that care will have to be taken, using appropriate social measures, to ensure that, unlike oil and nuclear energy, biomass energy is not only decentralized (which it has to be by its nature) but also equitably shared (which mere decentralization does not guarantee) by all sections of the rural population.
United States Korean Policy and World Order
Authors: Kim Samuel S.
Published: March 2013

The role of the United States in South Korea traditionally viewed as one of peacemaking and stabilizing force in a volatile region of Asia, when scrutinized from a normative perspective (using the world order values of peace, economic well-being and social justice), makes it clear that past and present US support for the Republic of Korea (ROK) has served precisely the opposite purpose. By channeling massive amounts of military and economic aid into South Korea, and by stationing troops there, the US has helped frustrate the goal of unification and preserved the corrupt and repressive regime of President Park Chung Hee. US encouragement of Japanese investment in South Korea has resulted in a classic case of economic dependency: unfavorable balance of trade and growth without development. The paper comes to the conclusion that as long as the US persists in maintaining its presence in Korea and its anachronistic global perceptions, American foreign policy cannot hope to serve human needs or further a just and peaceful world order.
The World Crisis: Theory and Ideology
Authors: Frank Andre Gunder
Published: March 2013

This essay sees all the dimensions of the present world crisis in perspective, and comes to the conclusion that it is not ephemeral but deeply embedded in the world capitalist system in which even the socialist world, not to speak of the Third World, has been incorporated. It shows that none of the fancied fire-fighting devices – such as Keynesianism, neo-classical monetarism and Marxism – is likely to be of any avail in containing the crisis. It is this that has added the crisis of theory and ideology to the political-economic crisis. What is needed is a fundamental transformation in the world system on a well-thought-out and coherent and consistent alternative pattern. Although there are spontaneous sporadic revolts, they lack these characteristcs as well as well-directed sustained action supported by a solid social base. It therefore poses, in the end, a series of questions and leaves it to the future to answer them.
The Moving Cultural Frontier of World Order: From Monotheism to North-South Relations
Authors: Mazrui Ali A.
Published: March 2013

This essay argues that the history of the international system has revolved around a moving frontier of cultural exclusivity. Originating under monotheism, the cultural frontier has been characterized by a persistent “us/them” dichotomy. Civilizations which anthropomorphized God in monarchical terms tended to divide the world between the God-fearing and the sinner. This tendency was reinforced by the culture of politics which differentiated supporters from adversaries. Both were embodied in early international law such that a system of rules for civilized nations did not apply to ‘them’ – the rest of the world, thus opening the door to imperialism and eventual class stratification in the international system.

Although the cultural frontier has been moving due to secular challenges, the major challenges to Judaeo-Christian monotheism – Marxism and Islam – are themselves dualistic: the Marxist dialectic is inherently of this nature as is the tension between good and evil in Islam. The interrelationship between major cultural themes in today's world, coupled with a developmental system of stratification which is based on technical know-how, suggests that important but hidden problems of a cultural nature are contained in the world order agenda.
On Interdependence
Authors: Sid-Ahmed Mohamed
Published: March 2013

This essay explores the crisis of global interdependence that has arisen from competing North-South perceptions of interdependence and from inequitable relations among Third World and industrialized states of the North. Illustrating the general features of the crisis through a case study of the Middle East, the author argues that techniques of economic, political and cultural cooptation have been used by the West to foster a form of interdependence that is of primary benefit to wealthier segments of the global community. To the degree that some Third World states (notably Egypt) now identify with the West, this strategy has been successful. However, the costs to world order are considerable. As they become more integrated into Western-dominated networks of “interdependence,” Third World states face intensifying social contradictions that cannot be resolved through socialist or other noncapitalist strategies. Redress of these problems requires a new legal category of ownership – internationalized property – under which corporate capital, power, and productive capacity would be transferred from the predominant domain of the North to a commonwealth of world states. This basis for world authority would avoid the side– and counter-effects associated with world government and would provide the foundation for a more just world order.
OPEC's Political Options: Case for Collective Self-Reliance within the Third World
Authors: Sobhan Rehman
Published: March 2013

Since the 1973 oil embargo, OPEC's political and economic leverage in global politics has progressively weakened. This decline in OPEC's relative power is due largely to the oil producers' increased dependence on the West for technology, markets, security, and investment opportunities. To counteract this increasing dependency, this paper argues for increased economic collaboration with the Third World, including a complete redirection of OPEC's investments. Collective self-reliance would help diversify and strengthen the oil producers' economies, as well as strengthen and improve the well-being of the Third World as a whole.
Western Civilization: Anatomy and Pathology
Authors: Galtung Johan
Published: March 2013

In this article, the author assumes that Western civilization (found in Western and Eastern Europe, North America, the USSR, and Muslim societies) has been dominant in the world, and he explores the positive and negative effects of this civilizational penetration on Hindu, Sinic and Nipponic traditions. Approaching the investigation from a cosmological perspective, he argues that civilizations are in incessant interaction – lending, borrowing, sending, receiving, imposing and submitting as people, things and ideas move in space and time. The consequences of interaction are twofold: (1) it gives rise to similarities in deep structures and ideologies of otherwise dissimilar civilizations; (2) it could mitigate the dominance of one civilization across time. Applied to Western penetration, this analysis suggests that during a period of expansion, the dominant civilization transmits its central themes to civilizations unable to resist penetration through isolation (the Sinic case) or through economic-military countermeasures (the Nipponic case). (Hindu civilization is a class apart, since its extraordinary richness enables it to both absorb and modify external influences.) As the dominant civilization becomes overextended, it enters a period of contraction marked by some openness to civilizations in the expansion mode. This process is iterative. The author concludes that Western European and North American aspects of Western civilization (the inner West) are in contraction while Islam, East European and Soviet forms are expanding, and the remaining civilizations are occidentalizing. Thus, the inner West, which is basically dominance-oriented and exploitative in the expansion mode, may now be ready to enter a dialogue with less aggressive cosmologies, with potentially important consequences for global civilization.
From outside the Imperium: Gandhi's Cultural Critique of the ‘West’
Authors: Nandy Ashis
Published: March 2013

Gandhi considered the cultural gap between the modern and the non-modern cultures deeper than that between the West and the East. It is the modern culture he rejected, not only as a social ideal, but also as a framework within which one could struggle for an equitable distribution of the products of modernity. Thus, to him, the demonic aspects of the modern Western culture did not centre around only the political economy of modernity, but also around modern West's scientific secularism, technologism, overorganization, ideologies of adulthood and masculinity, giganticism, stress on normality and oversocialization, and cultural evolutionism. Such a critique allowed Gandhi to see the West as a differentiated structure and the Western man as a co-victim of the oppression of the modern nation-state system, centralized economy, mass media and technocracy, and an ethic which was openly ethnocidal. Traditional cultures also were not undifferentiated to him. He was a critical traditionalist, not an uncritical defender of faiths, and he believed in ‘negative’ relativism, not in the anthropologist's version of cultural relativism. No culture could be perfect in his model, not even a traditional one; it could only be useful as a shifting baseline for cultural criticism.
Technology and the Development Debate: Limitations of NIEO Strategy
Authors: Baumgartner Thomas , Burns Tom R.
Published: March 2013

Technology has become the new central factor in the debate about development. The means to achieve development (which, it is assumed, must necessarily be in the image of a few industrialized countries, whether of the West or the East) is conceptualized simply as the transfer of technology, regardless of the certain mismatch between imported, culturally determined, technology and the historically given structural and institutional frameworks of the importing societies. On the international level, transferred technology tends to create dependency; on the national level, it leads to distortions and undesirable developments. This paper explicates the relationship between technology and social systems, and discusses its implications for development strategies.
Elites, Public Opinion, and Empire: On Lions, Foxes and Mass Politics in the Post-Vietnam Era
Authors: Sanders Jerry W.
Published: March 2013

This essay analyzes the replacement of ‘managerialism’ with ‘militarism’ as the dominant ideology within the US foreign policy establishment. At issue for both sides in the post-Vietnam power struggle was how best to combat centrifugal forces at work in the international order that threatened further erosion of the US empire.

The resolution of the debate in favor of “containment militarism,” the paper contends, emerged from a decisive shift in the domestic political climate that, after a brief interregnum, restored US foreign policy to its familiar adversary role vis-a-vis global reform and transformation. In support of this thesis, the essay focuses attention on the “Soviet threat” mobilization campaign of the elite Committee On The Present Danger (CPD).

As the parameters of policy debate moved steadily to the right during Carter's term in office, the Administration's rhetoric and doctrine evolved accordingly from global interdependence to global confrontation. The paper argues that the deepening crisis of capital accumulation acted as an added constraint on Carter, which, in combination with the domestic mood, forced abandonment of managerialism and with it all pretense of elite reform. It concludes by suggesting that the political impetus for meaningful global reform will have to come from a popular democratic movement. Conversely, the domestic concerns of the latter can only be realized in a world beyond empire.
Nuclear Strategy and World Order: The United States Imperative
Authors: Beres Louis Rene
Published: March 2013

This paper argues that current US nuclear strategy goes beyond the legitimate objective of survivable strategic forces to active preparation for nuclear war fighting. The proponents of this counterforce strategy claim it is necessary to make US deterrence more credible. The author rejects this claim and shows how US strategy actually degrades US security. Moreover, the author contends that it actually encourages nuclear war because it is based on a number of implausible and contradictory assumptions. After examining these assumptions in detail, the author proposes an alternative strategy for nuclear war avoidance and for improving the likelihood of nuclear disarmament. This strategy involves a comprehensive test ban treaty, joint renunciation of first use, and the establishment of new and more extensive nuclear weapon free zones.
The Establishment of a World Authority: Working Hypotheses
Authors: Brucan Silviu
Published: March 2013

This paper diagnoses the present-day global disorders and upheavals—social, political and economic—as symptoms of a transition set in motion by the incapacity of existing international arrangements to contain and mediate tensions and conflicts, both actual and potential, in international affairs. They point to the need for the creation of a new international institution that would take into account the widespread aspiration and urge for a restructuring of the international power system. It finds in history, especially since the emergence of modern nation-states (coincidentally with the expansion of the capitalist mode of production and its global thrust for the creation of a market global in its sweep), evidence of attempts at setting up international order-keeping institutions. The last such attempt in the shape of the United Nations, although more universal and democratic than its predecessors, mirrored the power structure that existed at the time of its birth. The world scene has changed enormously since, thanks to the emergence of many more new nation-states following decolonization, all conscious and assertive of their rights and all grappling with the complex problems bequeathed to them by colonialism. The UN has time and again demonstrated its incapacity to cope with the various problems—even in such a crucial sphere as war-prevention and peace-keeping. The article proposes, as a solution, the creation of a world authority that would facilitate the transition to a new world order. It then defines the functions of such a world authority and the powers it will have to be armed with to perform its functions.
On the Ecological Viability of Cultures
Authors: Chinweizu
Published: March 2013

This paper starts from the premise that a species or society must adapt itself to, and live within, its ecosystem, or else perish. In the event of an ecological accident, the species must rapidly adapt itself to survive. In the event of ecological misbehaviour of a society – i.e. destabilizing the ecosystem beyond the ecosystem's recuperative capacity (e.g. by nuclear poisoning), or so changing itself that it becomes incompatible with the ecosystem (e.g. by genetic engineering), the society puts itself on the road to extinction. The paper then outlines the tests for judging the ecological viability of a culture. It goes on to show how, by its homo-centric world-view, by its social philosophy, by its value system, by its culture forms, by its economic system, by its folk wisdom, by the example and precept of the culture's high priests, the Western culture makes a resource demand far beyond the earth's finite yielding capacity, and discharges a waste load far beyond the biosphere's absorptive capacity. This is a warning clear enough to those non-Western societies which, under duress or blandishment or both, set out to imitate the West, ‘catch up’ with the West, ‘beat the West at its own game’ – all in the tantalizing name of ‘modernization’. It is a game not worth playing, because in such a game even victory will be total defeat.
Toward an Alternative Security System: Moving beyond the Balance of Power in the Search for World Security
Authors: Johansen Robert C.
Published: March 2013

Technological changes and their military consequences have outpaced the capacity of the international system to protect people's security and to meet basic needs. The balance of power system cannot prevent war for long, nor can it reduce to an acceptable level the prospect of nuclear catastrophe. Yet policy makers have excluded from their agendas policies that question this anachronistic system or the basic direction of time-honored diplomacy. Fundamental changes are needed but encounter psychological as well as political and economic resistance, including the belief that the present international order is more or less permanent. Building a more durable peace therefore requires identifying policies that will not jeopardize security in the short run but that will lead to a more effective security system in the long run. Examination of seven policy models—based respectively on a nuclear war-fighting capability, mutual assured destruction, minimum deterrence, conventional defensive weapons, a world peacekeeping federation, civilian resistance, and a global security system—demonstrates that U.S. and Soviet policies are leading to greater insecurity, and that more prudent policy options are available. Scientific studies of war as well as diplomatic history suggest that if a policy is to contribute to security in the long run, it must help demilitarize, depolarize, denationalize, and transnationalize the world system. Policies that will contribute to the establishment of a new international security order and that can be undertaken now include: an international satellite monitoring agency; a ban on all nuclear tests; a freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of all nuclear warheads and delivery systems; a no-first-use pledge; the establishment of a non-intervention regime; and demilitarizing initiatives by the small powers, such as a Nordic nuclear weapons free zone.
Power: Myth and Reality
Authors: Skolimowski Henryk
Published: March 2013

This article sees the current identification of power with brute physical force (power of coercion) as an unjustifiable oversimplification of the variety of meanings of power. It analyzes the concept of power within a deeper philosophical framework in order to discover its present distortions. It argues that on a deeper level the source of power is authority, which is born of extraordinary qualities that human beings are capable of possessing. The adulation of power as brute force (in the present Western society) is thus a compensation for not possessing real power - i.e. moral authority as a special human quality. The present physical interpretation of power is but a manifestation of the larger process of turning everything into an object, generally an object of manipulation. One of the preconditions of restoring justice and equity among nations and among individuals, in the author's view, is to strip the notion of power of its corrupting and brutalizing character. The paper finally attempts to answer the larger question of how to empower people as people so that they do not feel helpless objects of manipulation and become agents responsible for their own destiny.
The African Crisis: Alternative Development Strategies for the Continent
Authors: Shaw Timothy M.
Published: March 2013

Africa is currently undergoing a crisis characterized by economic recession, political decline, and social tension which will have grave international as well as national and regional consequences. The World Bank and the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU) have proposed divergent development paths for the continent that must be evaluated in light of this crisis. The World Bank, as outlined in its Agenda for Action, favors externally-oriented development whereas the OAU in its Lagos Plan of Action calls for collective self reliance. This article reviews the debate framed by these two alternative strategies and examines the implications for both Africa and the industralized world. In doing so, it discusses which African and Northern interests are likely to favor increased external interaction and continued dependence (the World Bank Agenda) and which prefer disengagement and increased intra-regional relationships (OAU Lagos Plan).

The author draws distinctions between the development priorities of the minority “semi-peripheral” countries such as Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt and the majority “peripheral” states such as Zambia and Senegal: the former being more externally-oriented than the latter. The countries also differ on the degree of self-reliance they seek. Another important factor is related to the recent emergence of a variety of bourgeois classes-national, bureaucratic, military—who, having more propertied interests than the disadvantaged proletarian classes, may prefer the lassez-faire Agenda over the more structured Plan. This divisive dynamic is in turn exacerbated by rivalries between various Center factions.
Peace in an Age of Transformation
Authors: Kothari Rajni
Published: March 2013

This article seeks to cope with the fundamental problematique of our time which cuts across all the specific crises and challenges-Survival. It posits the thesis that human history is today poised on the threshold of yet another mutation, spanning the entire network of arrangement of human affairs-political, economic, social, cultural, ethnic, religious, ways of thinking and styles of living - right from the global to the grass-roots levels. It sees in the all-too-plain aborted promise of a bygone era for a continuously rising prosperity for all, in the quick succession of crises in both international and national affairs (each more severe and more intractable than the last), in the deep divisions and sharp polarizations (both between and within nations), in the ceaseless preparations for - and frequent eruptions of - war, and in the perpetually haunting fear of total destruction - symptoms of a sickness in the existing arrangements that can no longer be made to respond to analgesics and palliatives. On the other side, it sees in the pervasive discontent and unrest, in the endemic turbulences and turmoil, and in the slow but sustained initiatives for creating a just world - signals of a surge towards a fundamental transformation of the status quo, even though the signals are sporadic and episodic, and the surge inchoate and neither well conceived, well directed nor well coordinated. The greatest irony of the situation, the article notes, is that while the surge for transformation emanates from the peripheries, from societies believed to be traditional and doggedly resistant to change, and from people believed to have been suppressed into quiescence and passivity for good, the opposition to change (by various strategems, not excluding the threat of use, or actual use, of naked force) comes precisely from those who once prided themselves on their role as the powerful dynamo of change unprecedented in history. The article traces the developments leading to the present state of affairs in the historical perspective, and discusses the issue of peace and security in this context of emerging transformation. It sees peace neither as a function of the balance of terror and of mutual assured destruction put forward by nuclear strategists, nor as a consequence of proposals for disarmament put out by peace researchers, but as emerging out of struggles at creating structures that are, and are seen and felt to be, just and equitable, and that ensure the security of peoples and the survival of the human species, and of creation as a whole. It also attempts to provide a new pedagogy and methodology for such an approach to peace and survival.
Reflections on the Institutionalization of Protest: The West German Peace Movements
Authors: Mushaben Joyce Marie
Published: March 2013

Massive demonstrations occurring in the Federal Republic of Germany in opposition to the deployment of Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles are rooted in a thirty-year tradition of peace protest. Protest experiences acquired during the campaign against German rearmament and the early deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in the 1950s fused with those gleaned by student activists in the 1960s and environmentalists in the 1970s. Protest issues have begun to converge over three decades, producing an antinuclear groundswell for which the German “Greens” have become a political clearing house of sorts. For West Germany, the significance of the peace movement lies in the changes in national attitudes toward citizen participation, its commitment to NATO, and the ramifications for inter-German relations. For the global community, the significance rests with changing attitudes toward a collective security system that operates at the expense of national interests and, possibly, national survival.
The Peace Movement and the Third World
Authors: Hutchful Eboe
Published: March 2013

This paper explores the nature of the relationship between the peace movement in the West and the Third World. Western countries lack, individually and collectively, the materials essential for the smooth functioning of their armament industries and require easy access to cheap supplies from well-endowed Third World countries. This appropriation is facilitated by their manipulation of the capitalist world economy which is dominated, after all, by the United States and, where possible, by their control over Third World countries, often with the collusion of their ruling elites.

Liberation from this asymmetric relationship is imperative for the peoples of the Third World who are engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. However, Western countries do not tolerate such developments and, in fact, consider any nation that supports liberation struggles (especially the Soviet Union) as an enemy to be destroyed—if necessary, in a “winnable nuclear war.” Since the Soviet Union, China, and their allies support liberation movements as a matter of course, the Third World, instead of being peripheral, is actually central to the current climate of nuclear confrontation and superpower rivalry.

And actually, the liberation struggles in the Third World are the corollary of the struggles of the peace movement in the West: that is, if the focus of the peace movement in the West were adjusted to stress liberty and justice as vital ingredients of peace. It is important to grasp this nexus, not only to preclude one party working against the other, but also to encourage their joining forces to work toward their goals more effectively. Clearly, this sort of cooperation will require the peace movement to enlarge its program of action. The paper concludes on this note by proposing some amendments to the current agenda of the peace movement.
Struggles for a Just World Peace: A Transition Strategy
Authors: Mendlovitz Saul H.
Published: March 2013

Over the past 20 years, Saul H. Mendlovitz has been actively engaged in research, teaching, dialogue, advocacy, and political action in the struggles for a just world peace. Recently, he has been involved in the work of the Committee for a Just World Peace (CJWP). The CJWP's primary purpose is stimulating various grass-roots, social action, and citizen movements throughout the globe to interact in ways which will contribute to the formation of a global social movement in the struggles for a just world peace.

More recently, with his initiative, the World Order Models Project in collaboration with the Soviet Political Science Association and with the cooperation of four institutes in Chile, India, Japan, and the United States, embarked on a new project called “The Coming Global Civilization: Challenges to Polity.” The project seeks to develop cross-cultural and multidisciplinary perspectives on the coming global civilization, to analyze the consequent challenges to existing forms of polity, and to articulate both a normative vision and practical guidelines for action in a period of rapid transition.

This essay is a result of these various engagements. We publish it here in the hope that it will encourage further dialogue and generate some response.
Legitimate judgment in art, the scientific world reversed? Maintaining critical distance in evaluation
Authors: Chong Phillipa
Published: March 2013

This article considers affinities between artistic and scientific evaluations. Objectivity has been widely studied, as it is thought the foundation for legitimate judgments of truth. Yet we know comparatively little about subjectivity apart from its characterization as the obstacle to objective knowledge. In this article, I examine how subjectivity operates as an epistemic virtue in artistic evaluation, which is an especially interesting field for study given the accepted relativism of taste. Data are taken from interviews with 30 book reviewers drawn from major American newspapers including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and others. The data reveal that critics invest in a set of strategies to effectively ‘objectivize’ the subjectivity intrinsic to artistic evaluation, which I refer to collectively as strategies for maintaining critical distance. I argue that the concrete procedures for producing legitimate judgment in the world of art can be usefully compared to the norms for legitimate judgment in science.
Signal Detection Analysis of Factors Associated With Diabetes Among Semirural Mexican American Adults
Authors: Hanni K. D. , Ahn D. A. , Winkleby M. A.
Published: March 2013

Signal detection analysis was used to evaluate a combination of sociodemographic, acculturation, mental health, health care, and chronic disease risk factors potentially associated with diabetes in a sample of 4,505 semirural Mexican American adults. Overall, 8.9% of adults had been diagnosed with diabetes. The analysis resulted in 12 mutually exclusive groups, with diabetes prevalence ranging from 1.8% to 44.1%. Three groups were at the highest risk (34.5%-44.1% diabetic) and accounted for almost half of those with diabetes. Each of these groups was distinguished by their middle to older ages and presence of one or more chronic conditions (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, and/or poor mental health) in addition to diabetes. The differing composition of the groups identified by the signal detection analysis has important implications for the design and implementation of public health interventions and health care treatment programs for Mexican Americans with diabetes.
Community-Based Financial Literacy Education in a Cultural Context
Authors: Tisdell Elizabeth J. , Taylor Edward W. , Forté Karin Sprow
Published: March 2013

This article presents the findings related to teaching beliefs and pedagogical practices of a study that examined how financial literacy educators educate adults from underserved population groups in community-based settings. The study is theoretically framed in the teaching beliefs and culturally responsive education literature. Findings reveal a complex interaction of educators’ teaching beliefs that affect their pedagogical approaches: financial literacy as understanding, the importance of the cultural context, and emotions and money. These beliefs resulted in a pedagogy that highlighted the everyday financial realities of learners’ lives in a cultural context.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome due to exposure to high-concentration mixture of ethenone and crotonaldehyde
Authors: Huang Jun-Feng , Zhu Du-Ming , Ma Jie-Fei , Zhong Ming
Published: March 2013

Introduction:

Acute inhalational exposure leads to rapidly progressive acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This report is the first one to present a patient with ARDS in relation to long-standing exposure to a high-concentration mixture of ethenone and crotonaldehyde.

Case report:

A male worker in a chemical plant was accidentally exposed to the mixture of high-concentrated ethenone and crotonaldehyde for 5 min in an open space and worked continuously in the polluted area for approximately 12 h. On admission, he was conscious with the following vital parameters: blood pressure, 151/91 mmHg; pulse rate, 107 beats/min; respiratory rate, 30 breaths/min; temperature, 37.6°C; oxygen saturation, 92% supported by mask saturation 10 L/min; arterial blood gases showed P/F oxygen ratio of less than 200. Physical examination disclosed decreased bilateral vesicular sounds. A chest computed tomography revealed bilateral nonsegmental ground-glass opacities. The patient was mechanically ventilated and treated with corticosteroid. The patient was discharged without any symptoms.

Conclusion:

Exposure to mixtures of ethenone and crotonaldehyde can cause severe pulmonary injury leading to delayed ARDS.
The hazardous effects of three natural food dyes on developmental stages and longevity of Drosophila melanogaster
Authors: Uysal Handan , Semerdöken Sıdıka , Çolak Deniz Altun , Ayar Arif
Published: March 2013

Nowadays, food dyes obtained from herbal, animal, microbial and mineral sources are widely used as food additives. In this study, the toxic effects of three different natural food dyes (carmine, turmeric and annatto) on 72 ± 4 h larvae of Oregon-R wild type of Drosophila melanogaster were investigated. For this purpose, four different application doses (50, 75, 100, 125 mg mL−1) were chosen by means of preliminary studies. It was determined that larval mortality increased with increasing concentration in the application groups and the toxicity order was carmine > turmeric > annatto. It was observed that the survival rate was highest in the control with 98% and lowest in 125 mg mL−1 carmine with 16%. In addition, the average lifespan of the adult individuals obtained from third instar larvae was also studied. While the average lifespan was 40.88 ± 1.44 days in the control group, these values were 10.81 ± 0.55–23.90 ± 1.27 days in the carmine group, 15.00 ± 0.80–22.42 ± 1.43 days in the turmeric group and 10.33 ± 1.03–35.68 ± 1.54 days in the annatto group, respectively. According to the obtained results, when both the developmental period from larvae into adults and the lifespan of the developing adults were compared with the control group, the food dyes were found to be toxic and the toxicity order of carmine > turmeric > annatto was identified.
Genotoxic, antigenotoxic and antioxidant properties of methanol extracts obtained from Peltigera horizontalis and Peltigera praetextata
Authors: Nardemir Gokce , Yanmis Derya , Alpsoy Lokman , Gulluce Medine , Agar Guleray , Aslan Ali
Published: March 2013

Now-a-days, there is a big need to reduce genotoxic effects of mutagenic and carcinogenic agents in environment, which are increased by the technological development. Lichens produce a wide variety of unique metabolites due to being in various extreme areas and being symbiotic organisms of fungi and algae. Therefore, this study was planned to search new sources having antimutagenic activity by researching two different lichen species and to determine whether their usage is safe. With this respect, the mutagenic and antimutagenic properties of methanol extracts of the lichens were determined by the bacterial reverse mutation and sister chromatid exchange assays. Furthermore, the malondialdehyde level, superoxide dismutase, glutathione and glutathione peroxidase activities against aflatoxin B1 were determined for understanding the ways in which the lichens showed their genotoxic properties.
A novel model approach for esophageal burns in rats
Authors: Kalkan Yildiray , Tumkaya Levent , Akdogan Remzi Adnan , Yucel Ahmet Fikret , Tomak Yakup , Sehitoglu İbrahim , Pergel Ahmet , Kurt Aysel
Published: March 2013

Background:

Corrosive esophageal injury causes serious clinical problems. We aimed to create a new experimental esophageal burn model using a single catheter without a surgical procedure.

Materials and methods:

We conducted the study with two groups of 12 male rats that fasted for 12 h before application. A modified Foley balloon catheter was inserted into the esophageal lumen. The control group was given 0.9% sodium chloride, while the experimental group was given 37.5% sodium hydroxide with the other part of the catheter. After 60s, esophagus was washed with distilled water. The killed rats were examined using histopathological methods after 28 days.

Results:

In comparison with the histopathological changes experienced by the study groups, the control groups were observed to have no pathological changes. Basal cell degeneration, dermal edema, and a slight increase in the keratin layer and collagen density of submucosa due to stenosis were all observed in the group subjected to esophageal corrosion.

Conclusion:

A new burn model can thus, we believe, be created without the involvement of invasive laparoscopic surgery and general anesthesia. The burn in our experiment was formed in both the distal and proximal esophagus, as in other models; it can also be formed optionally in the entire esophagus.
Effects of Urtica dioica on oxidative stress, proliferation and apoptosis after partial hepatectomy in rats
Authors: Oguz Serhat , Kanter Mehmet , Erboga Mustafa , Toydemir Toygar , Sayhan Mustafa Burak , Onur Hatice
Published: March 2013

The present study was performed to investigate the effect of Urtica dioica (UD) on liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy (PH) in rats. A total of 24 male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into three groups: sham-operated, PH and PH + UD; each group contains eight animals. The rats in UD-treated groups were given UD oils (2 ml/kg/day) once a day orally for 7 days starting 3 days prior to hepatectomy operation. At day 7 after resection, liver samples were collected. The levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione (GSH) were estimated in liver homogenates. Moreover, histopathological examination, mitotic index (MI), proliferating cell nuclear antigen labeling, proliferation index (PI), transferase-mediated deoxyuridine triphosphate nick end-labeling assay, apoptotic index (AI) were evaluated at day 7 after hepatectomy. As a result, UD significantly increased MI and PI, significantly decreased AI and also attenuated hepatic vacuolar degeneration and sinusoidal congestion in PH rats. UD treatment significantly decreased the elevated tissue MDA level and increased the reduced SOD activity and GSH level in the tissues. These results suggest that UD pretreatment was beneficial for rat liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy.
L'impératif du service client dans l'industrie
Authors: Tzokas Nikolaos , Donaldson Bill , Sade Abu Bakar
Published: March 2013

En dépit de la pléthore d'études reconnaissant l'importance du rôle joué par le service client dans la compétitivité des entreprises industrielles, le développement théorique de ce domaine d'étude demeure embryonnaire. Cet article (1) élabore un construit pour mesurer l'engagement de la direction de l'entreprise en faveur du service client et (2) étudie les activités de service client dans les entreprises industrielles, ainsi que les mécanismes de contrôle mis en place par ces dernières afin d'évaluer leur performance en termes de service. L'article établit une relation directe entre l'engagement en faveur du service client et la performance générale de l'entreprise, thème qui devrait renouveler l'intérêt de la recherche pour ce domaine primordial.
Les effets automatiques du parrainage télévisuel sur la marque : étude de la mésattribution de la familiarité, du transfert sémantique et de l'influence des émotions déclenchées par le programme
Authors: Courbet Didier
Published: March 2013

Grâce à une expérimentation, cette recherche étudie les effets non conscients du parrainage de deux programmes quasi identiques, mais de valences affectives différentes, sur l'attitude à l'égard d'une nouvelle marque. Les effets, enregistrés par tests indirects, sont indéniables pour le parrainage du programme gai : avec deux apparitions, celui-ci a un impact positif sur la marque. Le programme triste n'a eu aucun effet : l'intensité des émotions déclenchées aurait provoqué des pensées impertinentes empêchant de mémoriser la marque. Les résultats sont en accord avec le nouveau modèle de la mésattribution de la familiarité. Aucune trace d'un transfert sémantique automatique du programme sur l'image de la marque n'est observée.
La comptabilité mentale comme autorégulation : Représentativité pour les catégories dirigées par un but
Authors: Brendl C. Miguel , Markman Arthur B. , Higgins E. Tory
Published: March 2013

Lorsque l'on prend des décisions, on groupe ensemble les gains et les pertes. La façon de choisir la formation de ces groupes, dite “ comptabilité mentale ”, influence lesdites décisions. La comptabilité mentale est un phénomène puissant et intuitivement convaincant. Cependant, jusqu'à présent, les principes psychologiques qui sous-tendent la comptabilité mentale ont retenu peu l'attention. Dans cet article, nous étudions les processus psychologiques qui constituent les “ comptes mentaux ” et qui imputent aux dits comptes les gains et les pertes enregistrés. Nous formulons les hypothèses suivantes : (a) les buts actuellement actifs créent les comptes mentaux et (b) l'attribution des coefficients des gains et des pertes dans ces comptes est proportionnelle à leur représentativité par rapport au but initial du compte mental en question. Nous passons en revue les preuves en faveur de la conception de cette comptabilité mentale dans l'esprit de la représentativité par rapport au but, et décrivons les nouvelles recherches développées pour tester ces propositions. Nous discutons également d'autres phénomènes de prise de décision, comme les coûts perdus (“ sunk costs ”) et l'escalade de l'engagement (“ entrapment ”), où la comptabilité mentale intervient. Nous pensons que la “ comptabilité mentale ” représente une stratégie d'autorégulation bénéfique, bien qu'elle puisse parfois conduire à des décisions irrationnelles.
Les caractéristiques des champions : Déterminants et incidence sur le succès des innovations
Authors: Roure Lionel
Published: March 2013

Ce travail introduit deux nouvelles variables susceptibles d'expliquer l'efficacité des champions d'un projet d'innovation technologique : l'ancienneté et le niveau hiérarchique. Cette recherche s'appuie sur un échantillon de 121 innovations technologiques commercialisées. Les résultats montrent que le niveau hiérarchique des champions est positivement associé aux projets d'innovation coûteux et que l'ancienneté des champions est positivement associée aux projets les plus innovants. De même, les résultats semblent indiquer que l'ancienneté des champions constitue un facteur clé de succès des innovations alors que le niveau hiérarchique apparaît sans effet.
Satisfaction des clients et part de marché de l'entreprise : Un réexamen au regard de récentes avancées théoriques
Authors: Ngobo Paul Valentin
Published: March 2013

Selon la littérature marketing, la satisfaction des clients permet à une entreprise d'augmenter ses ventes ou sa part de marché. Les clients satisfaits achèteront de nouveau la marque, la recommanderont à d'autres consommateurs et payeront un “supplément de prix” pour conserver les avantages de cette marque. Cette relation a non seulement été peu étudiée empiriquement mais, en plus, la plupart des auteurs supposent qu'elle est linéaire. Or de récentes études soulignent que la relation entre la satisfaction, la fidélité (réachat), et le bouche à oreille serait non linéaire. La présente recherche réexamine donc la relation entre la satisfaction et la part de marché au regard de ces récentes études. Les résultats montrent que la relation entre la position concurrentielle d'une entreprise en matière de satisfaction et sa part de marché est non linéaire de forme cubique positive (rendements croissants). En d'autres termes, il existe un niveau de performance à atteindre (en matière de satisfaction) par rapport aux concurrents pour que la satisfaction rapporte des résultats appréciables en termes de part de marché. Cependant, cette relation varie selon les secteurs : la satisfaction a des effets plus marqués sur la part de marché des entreprises qui vendent des biens/services non durables que sur celle des entreprises de biens/services durables.
Une échelle de mesure de l'appartenance aux cercles sociaux : Analyse factorielle confirmatoire multiniveaux
Authors: Sempé Laurent
Published: March 2013

Le problème de la mesure des effets de niveaux n'est pas aujourd'hui pris en compte en marketing. L'application à la position du consommateur dans ses cercles sociaux (cohésion et centralité) permet de valider l'apport de la méthodologie ASC multiniveaux de Muthén dans le cas de données hiérarchiques.
Passage à l'Euro et psychologie des prix. Fondements théoriques et résultats empiriques
Authors: Diller Hermann , Ivens Björn Sven
Published: March 2013

Cet article traite des effets anticipés lors du passage à l'Euro, concernant l'intérêt pour les prix, leur perception ainsi que leur évaluation. Il présente les résultats d'une expérience en laboratoire où trois groupes de consommateurs ont été confrontés à une situation d'achat identique. Seule la présentation des prix (en D-Mark/en Euro/avec double affichage D-Mark et Euro) a été modifiée. Les résultats révèlent une attention accrue pour les prix, d'importantes variations de parts de marché pour certaines marques ainsi que d'intéressants déplacements et déformations de seuils de prix.