bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Political Economy of Local Labor Control in the Philippines*
Authors: Kelly Philip F. 
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Labor market processes in sites of peripheral capitalism are all too frequently represented as the straightforward exploitation of abundant, cheap, and place‐bound labor by space‐controlling international capital. Extensive literatures exist that deal with national regimes of labor regulation and the subjugated subjectivities of workers in locations of rapid industrialization in the developing world. The complex regulating institutions operating at a local scale in such sites have not, however, received the same sensitive attention as labor markets in the industrialized world, on which research has advanced considerably in recent years.In this paper I seek to address that discrepancy by focusing on the institutions and actors involved in creating a local labor control regime in a site of rapid industrialization in the Philippines. These include the national state, corporate investors, individual workers, industrial estate management companies, recruitment agencies, village and community leaders, municipal officials, provincial governments, and labor organizations. In exploring the relationship between these various players I develop two arguments. First, the relationship embodied in the labor process of newly industrializing spaces cannot be conceived simply as an antagonism between “global” capital and “local” labor. Instead, the wide range of local players described here act to mediate that relationship and to embed specific global capitals in a local political economy of power relations. Second, these localized relationships often exist outside of formal regulatory institutions, and indeed may directly contravene them. In this way the mechanisms employed in the local labor control regime are frequently more informal, more fluid, and more geographically variable than an analysis of formal regulatory institutions would reveal.
The Places of Primitive Accumulation in Rural China
Authors: Webber Michael 
Published: August 2010

abstract“Rural” is a category of enduring significance in China. The trajectories of social change in China's rural areas reflect local dynamics and new forms of economy that encroach from local or distant cities and international sources. One indicator of change is the separation of people from their means of production: the development of the preconditions for capitalist production. Using information from villages scattered across China, this article identifies the sources of this separation and poses a theoretical question: can these changes be comprehended in a nondeterministic manner? The article demonstrates that the principal means of separating rural people from their means of production have been market based and largely local (reflecting forces within China), supplemented, however, by forcible dispossession. It also shows that the processes that drive primitive accumulation do not simply reflect an economic logic; they include environmental modernization, ethnic politics, nation building, and personal motives. The extraeconomic bases of economic change imply that primitive accumulation is not a process on a path to a known end point or to a predictable geography.
The Rise of a Global Infrastructure Market through Relational Investing
Authors: Torrance Morag 
Published: August 2010

abstractInfrastructure assets around the world are shifting from public to private ownership. This article investigates how institutional investors are investing beyond their traditional financial and geographic borders and are increasingly serving as owners of infrastructure assets. It shows how infrastructure assets have specific geographies of information embedded in their investment returns and discusses the growing interest of institutional investors in investing in the infrastructure landscape. While infrastructure investments are considered globally, opportunities depend on the availability of specialist information in the region of investment. The article demonstrates that the low‐risk, geographically varied returns match the diversification objectives of pension fund portfolios. Relational investing is important in implementing strategies for investing in the infrastructure, since the bidding on and ensuing ownership and management of infrastructure assets around the world require a combination of financial, legal, and technical expertise. The article addresses three distinct economic geography literatures: the geography of finance, pension fund research, and emerging debates on “relational geometries.”
Governing Finance: Global Imperatives and the Challenge of Reconciling Community Representation with Expertise
Authors: Clark Gordon L. 
Published: August 2010

AbstractAlthough the regulation of financial institutions and global markets has been subject to extensive research and policy practice, regulation often comes second to governance: regulation cleans up failures of governance in the management and performance of private financial institutions and markets. There are two theories of the nature and practice of governance; one emphasizes its functional performance, whereas the other emphasizes its political foundations. In this article, I suggest that best practice seeks to reconcile functionalism with community representation and that representation is a virtue in its own right and need not be seen as antithetical to functional efficiency. To sustain these arguments, I note the distinctive characteristics of financial decision making under risk and uncertainty, using simple examples to underscore the benefits of good governance. I then present criteria for well‐governed financial institutions, specifically public and private pension funds, with implications for best practice as illustrated by four case studies of funds from Canada, Europe, and the United States. The final section considers the lessons of these case studies for the design of sovereign wealth funds and raises questions as to whether there are limits to reconciliation, given the acceleration of global financial integration.
After Deindustrialization: Uneven Growth and Economic Inequality in “Postindustrial” Chicago
Authors: Doussard Marc , Peck Jamie , Theodore Nik 
Published: August 2010

abstractThis article presents a critical commentary on the development, through restructuring, of the Chicago economy in the period since the onset of deindustrialization in the early 1980s. Adapting an innovative methodology for the measurement of labor‐market inequalities over time at the metropolitan scale, the article provides an empirical analysis of the city's new mode of growth. A notable feature is an entrenched and deepening pattern of wage inequality in Chicago, which is distinctive from that evident at the national level. Closer attention should be paid to what have proved to be extended processes of economic transformation at the urban scale, the social and geographic contours of which have yet to be adequately mapped.
Changing Places Through Women's Entrepreneurship
Authors: Hanson Susan 
Published: August 2010

abstractIn this article, I focus on entrepreneurship as a gendered geographic process to examine how changes in people and place are linked. Although entrepreneurship is a process that is marked by deep stereotypical gender divisions, it is also one through which people can change the meaning of gender and the way in which gender is lived. In addition, entrepreneurship links people and place in a number of ways, most notably through networks of social relations in place. I discuss four geographic studies of women's entrepreneurship, each undertaken in a different country—Botswana, India, Peru, and the United States. These studies demonstrate that whereas entrepreneurship per se or access to microcredit alone is seldom sufficient to change the position of women or gender relations in a place, women are using entrepreneurship to change their lives and those of others and, in the process, are changing the places where they live. Key to this transformative process are programs of governmental and nongovernmental organizations and women's grassroots actions that are aimed at building women's skills, confidence, and business networks.
Working on the Water: On Legal Space and Seafarer Protection in the Cruise Industry
Authors: Terry William C. 
Published: August 2010

abstractWith a focus on Filipino seafarers, the largest cohort of workers on cruise ships, this article argues that recent legal decisions in U.S. courts on the employment and protection of international cruise ship workers have repositioned the historical relationships between seafarers and their employers and have created a new extraterritorial legal space in which seafarers’ rights are diminished. In this context, Filipino seafarers find themselves embedded in a dynamic transnational system that facilitates their entry into the cruise industry yet structures a diminution of their protection under the law. This process represents a rollback of historical protections that have favored seafarers in U.S. courts. This case calls into question how laws and legal framings serve to buttress labor relationships between people and places, thereby shaping economic geographies. Thus, this article illustrates the power of a legal geographic framework to examine economic relationships and therefore to shed light on how economic globalization is facilitated and shaped at multiple scales. It offers a geographic perspective on how the legal and the economic are implicated in one another and suggests that further attention to legal geographic aspects of economic and labor geographies would be useful for analyzing the maintenance of inequalities in the global system.
Creative Class and Regional Growth: Empirical Evidence from Seven European Countries
Authors: Boschma Ron A. , Fritsch Michael 
Published: August 2010

abstractThis article analyzes the regional distribution and economic effect of the “creative class” on the basis of a unique data set that covers more than 500 regions in 7 European countries. The creative class is unevenly geographically distributed across Europe; the analyses show that a regional climate of tolerance and openness has a strong and positive effect on a region's share of these people. Regional job opportunities also have a large effect on the size of a region's population of the creative class. The findings reveal some evidence of a positive relationship among creative class occupation, employment growth, and entrepreneurship at the regional level in a number of European countries. On the basis of the analysis, however, it is not clear whether human capital, measured by creative occupation, outperforms indicators that are based on formal education, or if formal education has the stronger effect.
Knowledge Bases, Talents, and Contexts: On the Usefulness of the Creative Class Approach in Sweden
Authors: Asheim Bjørn , Hansen Høgni Kalsø 
Published: August 2010

abstractThe geography of the creative class and its impact on regional development has been debated for some years. While the ideas of Richard Florida have permeated local and regional planning strategies in most parts of the Western world, critiques have been numerous. Florida's 3T's (technology, talent, and tolerance) have been adopted without considering whether the theory fits into the settings of a specific urban and regional context. This article aims to contextualize and unpack the creative class approach by applying the knowledge‐base approach and break down the rigid assumption that all people in the creative class share common locational preferences. We argue that the creative class draws on three different knowledge bases: synthetic, analytical, and symbolic, which have different implications for people's residential locational preferences with respect to a people climate and a business climate. Furthermore, the dominating knowledge base in a region has an influence on the importance of a people climate and a business climate for attracting and retaining talent. In this article, we present an empirical analysis in support of these arguments using original Swedish data.
Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—Rethinking Regional Path Dependence: Beyond Lock‐in to Evolution
Authors: Martin Ron 
Published: August 2010

abstractThis article argues that in its “canonical” form, the path dependence model, with its core concept of lock‐in, affords a restrictive and narrowly applicable account of regional and local industrial evolution, an account moreover that is tied to problematic underpinnings based on equilibrist thinking. As such, the canonical path dependence model actually stresses continuity rather than change. The article explores recent developments in political science, in which there have been active attempts to rethink the application of path dependence to the evolution of institutions so as to emphasize change rather than continuity. These developments are used to argue for a rethinking of path dependence ideas in economic geography.
Under the Lens: The Geography of Optical Science as an Emerging Industry
Authors: Feldman Maryann P. , Lendel Iryna 
Published: August 2010

abstractOptical science is the study of light and the ways in which light interacts with matter. Although its origins coincide with the earliest scientific inquiry, modern optics is an enabling technology that is applied to a variety of intermediate markets—telecommunication equipment, medical devices, scientific instruments, semiconductors, imaging and reproduction, defense and security, and retail logistics. One difficulty in studying emerging technology is the limitation of current industrial categories and patent classes. This article examines the geography of optical science inventions using a new methodology that can be applied to study other emerging industries. We rely on companies that self‐identify as working on optics on the basis of their voluntary membership in the Optics Society of America. We investigate the inventive activity of these companies from 2004 to 2007 and identify a set of International Patent Classes that defines the emergent technology space in optical science. Using this definition, we then analyze all the organizations that are inventing in optical science. We find that inventive activity is geographically concentrated: patenting takes place in 240 urban areas, although 84 percent of the patents were invented in 30 metropolitan areas and almost 50 percent were attributed to 11 metropolitan areas. The article considers the organizations that are shaping the emerging technology and the consequences for geographic clusters. Our results reveal that the geographic distribution of inventive activity does not reflect the location of self‐designated regional optics clusters in the United States but suggests a more nuanced understanding of the emergence of industries. We conclude by considering lessons about the development of clusters in emerging industries.
Potential biases in estimating the rate parameter of sigmoid growth functions
Authors: Austin Suzanne H. , Robinson Tara Rodden , Robinson W. Douglas , Ricklefs Robert E. 
Published: August 2010

Summary1. We compare biases in estimates of the rate constant of the logistic and Gompertz functions applied to avian growth using three methods of parameter estimation. The methods differ in how the asymptote is determined, and consist of either floating asymptotes estimated from the full data (floatingA) or data truncated at 70% of the adult mass (70%A), or fixing the asymptote at the adult mass (fixedA).2. First, using data for two passerine species exhibiting different growth patterns, we truncated mass measurements at different ages to explore how each method of growth rate estimation responded to simulated differences in nestling period. We bootstrapped growth rates and error measures from these data to produce unbiased error terms, which we used to compare the different models.3. We tested the effects of age truncation on both real and simulated data, and found that the fixedAmethod produced less bias and better fits than using estimates of floating asymptotes from the full growth curve (floatingA) or truncated at 70% of the adult mass (70%A). Logistic and Gompertz models with a floating asymptote generally provided poorer fits than those with a fixed asymptote, although fits were improved by including a variable accounting for the ratio of asymptotic to adult mass.4. To evaluate the performance of the methods across an array of species, we applied the three methods to growth data for 45 species of New World songbirds spanning diverse rates of growth, developmental periods and geographic origins. To determine whether choice of method influenced interpretation of regional and life‐history differences in avian growth, we used model selection to estimate the influence of three independent variables (adult mass, nestling period and tropical vs. temperate region) with known effects on nestling growth rate calculated by each method. The coefficients of determination in these analyses suggest that the most appropriate method to estimate growth rates, regardless of the growth function (i.e. logistic, Gompertz), is the fixedAmethod, taking care to use accurate and appropriate estimates of adult mass.
Multiplex Amplified Nominal Tandem-Repeat Analysis (MANTRA), a Rapid Method for Genotyping
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
by Use of Multiplex PCR and a Microfluidic Laboratory Chip
Authors: Merritt Adam J. , Keehner Terillee , O'Reilly Lyn C. , McInnes Russell L. , Inglis Timothy J. J. 
Published: August 2010

ABSTRACT

A variable-number tandem-repeat genotyping method for
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
was converted to run in a multiplex PCR format on a 12-well microfluidic laboratory chip. Epidemiologically and genotypically distinct isolate clusters of
M. tuberculosis
were identified. This rapid genotyping method has potential application in smaller clinical laboratories and public health field investigations.
The Pan Genera Detection Immunoassay: a Novel Point-of-Issue Method for Detection of Bacterial Contamination in Platelet Concentrates
Authors: Vollmer Tanja , Hinse Dennis , Kleesiek Knut , Dreier Jens 
Published: August 2010

ABSTRACT

Bacterial contamination of platelet concentrates (PCs) still represents an ongoing risk in transfusion-transmitted sepsis. Recently the Pan Genera Detection (PGD) system was developed and FDA licensed for screening of bacterial contamination of PCs directly prior to transfusion. The test principle is based on the immunological detection of lipopolysaccharide (for Gram-negative bacteria) or lipoteichoic acid (for Gram-positive bacteria). In the present study we analyzed the applicability of this method with regard to detection limit, practicability, implementation, and performance. PCs were spiked with
Staphylococcus aureus
,
Bacillus subtilis
, and five different
Klebsiella pneumoniae
strains, as well as eight different
Escherichia coli
strains. The presence of bacteria was assessed by the PGD immunoassay, and bacteria were enumerated by plating cultures. Application of the PGD immunoassay showed that it is a rapid test with a short hands-on time for sample processing and no demand for special technical equipment and instrument operation. The lower detection limits of the assay for Gram-positive bacteria showed a good agreement with the manufacturer's specifications (8.2 × 10
3
to 5.5 × 10
4
CFU/ml). For some strains of
K. pneumoniae
and
E. coli
, the PGD test showed analytical sensitivities (>10
6
CFU/ml) that were divergent from the designated values (
K. pneumoniae
, 2.0 × 10
4
CFU/ml;
E. coli
, 2.8 × 10
4
CFU/ml). Result interpretation is sometimes difficult due to very faint bands. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the PGD immunoassay is an easy-to-perform bedside test for the detection of bacterial contamination in PCs. However, to date there are some shortcomings in the interpretation of results and in the detection limits for some strains of Gram-negative bacteria.
Quantitation of Major Human Cutaneous Bacterial and Fungal Populations
Authors: Gao Zhan , Perez-Perez Guillermo I. , Chen Yu , Blaser Martin J. 
Published: August 2010

ABSTRACT

Because the human skin microbiota may play roles in the causation or modification of skin diseases, we sought to provide initial quantitative analysis from different cutaneous locations. We developed quantitative PCRs to enumerate the total bacterial and fungal populations, as well as the most common bacterial and fungal genera present in six locales, in eight healthy subjects. We used a set of primers and TaqMan MGB probes based on the bacterial 16S rRNA and fungal internally transcribed spacer region, as well as bacterial genus-specific probes for
Propionibacterium
,
Corynebacterium
,
Streptococcus
, and
Staphylococcus
and a fungal genus-specific probe for
Malassezia
. The extent of human DNA contamination of the specimen was determined by quantitating the human housekeeping
GAPDH
gene. The highest level of 16S rRNA copies of bacteria was present in the axilla (4.44 ± 0.18 log
10
copies/μl [mean ± standard error of the mean]), with normalization based on
GAPDH
levels, but the other five locations were similar to one another (range, 2.48 to 2.89 log
10
copies/μl). There was strong symmetry between the left and right sides. The four bacterial genera accounted for 31% to 59% of total bacteria, with the highest percent composition in the axilla and the lowest in the forearm.
Streptococcus
was the most common genus present on the forehead and behind the ear.
Corynebacterium
spp. were predominant in the axilla. Fungal levels were 1 to 2 log
10
lower than for bacteria, with
Malassezi
a
spp. accounting for the majority of fungal gene copies. These results provide the first quantitation of the site and host specificities of major bacterial and fungal populations in human skin and present simple methods for their assessment in studies of disease.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Beijing Lineage Favors the Spread of Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis in the Republic of Georgia
Authors: Niemann Stefan , Diel Roland , Khechinashvili George , Gegia Medea , Mdivani Nino , Tang Yi-Wei 
Published: August 2010

ABSTRACT

High rates and transmission of multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) have been associated with the
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
complex (MTBC) Beijing lineage, pointing to the importance of pathogen genetic factors for the modulation of infection outcome and epidemiology. We present here an in-depth analysis of the population structure of MTBC strains from the Republic of Georgia, a high-incidence setting at the Black Sea Coast. Phylogenetic lineages were identified based on 24-locus MIRU-VNTR (for mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit-variable number tandem repeat) and spoligotyping analysis. Clusters of strains with identical genotyping profiles were determined as an indicator for the rate of recent transmission. Among the 183
M. tuberculosis
isolates investigated, the most prominent lineage found was Beijing (26%), followed by the LAM (18%), Ural (12%), and Haarlem (5%) strains. A closely related previously undefined phylogenetic group (62 strains) showed a genotyping pattern similar to laboratory strain H37RV and was denominated as “Georgia-H37RV-like.” Although isoniazid resistance was found among strains of different lineages, MDR TB was nearly completely restricted to Beijing strains (
P
< 0.0001). Approximately 50% of the isolates were grouped in clusters, indicating a high rate of recent transmission. Our data indicate that, in addition to the confirmation of the importance of Beijing genotype strains for the TB epidemiology in former Soviet Union countries, a high-population diversity with strains of the LAM, Ural, Haarlem, and a previously undefined lineage represents nearly two-thirds of the strains found in Georgia. Higher rates among previously treated and MDR TB patients point to a higher potential of lineage Beijing to escape therapy and develop MDR TB.