bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
P2X receptors in sensory neurons co‐cultured with cancer cells exhibit a decrease in opioid sensitivity
Authors: Chizhmakov I. , Mamenko N. , Volkova T. , Khasabova I. , Simone D. A. , Krishtal O. 
Published: December 2008

AbstractOpioids are known to control the activity of P2X receptors in the sensory neurons of rats. These receptors are important in persistent pain signaling. However, there are extremely severe pain states, such as those associated with metastatic diseases, that are refractory to opioid treatment. We have tested the possibility that cancer cells affect the sensitivity of P2X2/3and P2X2receptors to opiates. The sensitivity of ATP‐activated currents to the selective μ‐opioid receptor agonist endomorphin‐1 was evaluated in rat nodose neurons co‐cultured (on separate coverslips) with fibrosarcoma cells (NCTC 2472) using whole‐cell patch‐clamp recordings. Both in control and in co‐cultured neurons, P2X‐mediated responses exhibited highly variable biphasic desensitization kinetics with fast and slow components. However, ATP‐activated currents in co‐cultured neurons acquired a new feature: the degree of their inhibition by endomorphin‐1 demonstrated strong dependence on their desensitization kinetics. The neurons with ‘slower’ responses were subject to a smaller inhibitory effect of the opioid. The ‘ultra‐slow’ responses completely lost their sensitivity to the opioid. The occurrence of such responses, rarely observed in the control neurons, was considerably increased with the duration of co‐culturing. Application of endomorphin‐1 to nodose neurons, co‐cultured with rapidly proliferating but non‐malignant cells (fibroblasts), resulted in data similar to those for the control. In summary, fibrosarcoma cells release diffusible factors altering the properties of desensitization kinetics of P2X receptors and, in particular, decrease their sensitivity to opioid inhibitory control. These phenomena may increase neuronal excitability initiated by peripheral ATP release and thereby contribute to the decreased sensitivity of cancer pain to opioids.
Battling “Unhealthy Relations”: Soviet Youth Sexuality as a Political Problem
Authors: LIVSCHIZ ANN 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis paper explores the way Soviet party and education officials dealt with female youth sexuality, in an effort to get it under control in order to ensure that Soviet girls grew up to be productive members of Soviet society. Many of the policies enacted by the regime reflected profound social conservatism of the majority of the top political leadership of the country and their great fear of youth, and particularly female, sexuality, as a force that could not be overcome, controlled or fully harnessed for the service of the state.
Developing the Sexual Child
Authors: HAWKES GAIL L. , EGAN R. DANIELLE 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThe idea that a child should not have sexual interests and experiences is fast being supplanted by the knowledge that he does have them; that they are an expression of perfectly normal, healthy energies, and that while it is necessary to gain control over them, they should not be forcibly suppressed” (Renz & Renz 1935: 92).
Foster‐Daughter or Servant, Charity or Abuse: Beslemes in the Late Ottoman Empire*
Authors: MAKSUDYAN NAZAN 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis paper addresses the complex and contradictory framing of youthful female sexuality, personified in the figure of foster‐daughters (beslemes), in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire. Beslemes were both sexually exploited and attempted to be disciplined under the critical gaze of the upper classes and the state, since they disturbed the accepted rules and limits of sexual agency as sexually active unwed adolescent girls. They were marginalized as indecent and fallen girls, since sexual agency and chastity were considered to be incompatible. Though acknowledging the subordination of foster‐daughters, this paper suggests that these young women were not completely subjected, silenced and helpless and that they were able to find ways of taking the initiative in resistive strategies.
REPRODUCTIVE AUTONOMY, THE NON‐IDENTITY PROBLEM, AND THE NON‐PERSON PROBLEM
Authors: DISILVESTRO RUSSELL 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe Non‐Identity Problem is the problem of explaining the apparent wrongness of a decision that does not harm people, especially since some of the people affected by the decision would not exist at all were it not for the decision. One approach to this problem, in the context of reproductive decisions, is to focus on wronging, rather than harming, one's offspring. But a Non‐Person Problem emerges for any view that claims (1) that only persons can be wronged and (2) that the person‐making properties allow for there to be human non‐persons. Consider an individual human organism that is prevented from ever possessing the person‐making properties. On person‐only accounts of the victims of wronging, this organism cannot be wronged by anyone. Hence even individuals whose decisions prevent it from ever possessing the person‐making properties cannot wrong it. But this is counter‐intuitive. We can think of examples where a human organism is wronged by precisely those decisions that prevent it from possessing the person‐making properties. The best solution to this problem, in the case where the person‐making property is rational self‐governance in pursuit of a meaningful life, is to adjust the concept of a person so that it refers, not merely to those with the immediate capacity for rational self‐governance in pursuit of a meaningful life, but also to those with a higher‐order capacity for such self‐governance. Any solution to the Non‐Identity Problem that focuses on wronging rather than harming should incorporate this sort of solution to the Non‐Person Problem.
Corporate Citizenship and Managerial Motivation: Implications for Business Legitimacy
Authors: VIDAVER‐COHEN DEBORAH , BRØNN PEGGY SIMCIC 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTIn 2000, Business and Society Review published a Special Issue of the journal to explore scholars’ ideas about how the practice of corporate citizenship would evolve in the 21st century. Contributors to the volume predicted a change in business motives for engaging in social initiatives, suggesting that managers would begin to see corporate citizenship as a strategic necessity to preserve organizational legitimacy in the face of changing social values. This article uses data from a study of corporate citizenship practices in over 500 Norwegian companies to explore the validity of the Special Issue predictions. We begin by reviewing the foundations of organizational legitimacy theory and examine recent research documenting the growing importance of corporate citizenship for assessments of business legitimacy. We describe our study methods, present our results, and discuss the implications of our findings in this context.
Dignity in Western Versus in Chinese Cultures: Theoretical Overview and Practical Illustrations
Authors: KOEHN DARYL , LEUNG ALICIA 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTDignity is an important concept in ethics. Human rights organizations justify rights by appealing to human dignity. Prominent politicians have cited the need to protect human dignity and urged the founding of international institutions. The concept of human dignity is often used to evaluate and critique the ethics of select practices. In addition, the idea of dignity is used as a universal principle to ground universalist business ethics.This paper argues that there are substantial differences between the ways in which the West and China construe human dignity. Having documented these major differences, we consider two cases to show how the differences might “cash out” in actual business practice. Instead of relying upon a nonexistent universal concept of human dignity, we suggest that it is respectful and sound to seek to identify the many goods (teamwork, initiative, autonomy, respect for elders) that differing parties see at play in the case at hand and then to try to come up with ways to realize as many of these goods as possible.
Executives’ Views of Factors Affecting Governance Change in a Not‐for‐Profit Setting
Authors: SCHWARZKOPF DAVID L. , OSTERHELD KAREN K. , LEVY ELLIOTT S. , HALL GREGORY J. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTKnowing the factors that executives deem critical to governance change can improve our understanding of how such changes come about and can help us evaluate those changes. Interviews with business and finance executives at 11 colleges reveal the importance to governance change of chief executive and board member leadership and interactions, as well as executive communication style. Costs are clear constraints to action, particularly since benefits are not quantified and are difficult to describe. Efforts to discuss governance with internal stakeholders require persistence to overcome narrow, individualized concerns. Communication about governance to external stakeholders is rare and represents a missed opportunity for stakeholder feedback and the development of trust. Executives appear willing to adopt governance forms without considering the idiosyncrasies of their institutional field, limiting the working definition of governance and its potential. For corporations and not‐for‐profit enterprises these findings hold implications for the context in which leadership is exercised and the shape of governance structures. They also pose a fundamental ethical dilemma for leaders to address.
Rating the Raters: Conflicts of Interest in the Credit Rating Firms
Authors: STRIER FRANKLIN 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe major credit rating agencies contributed substantially to the sub‐prime mortgage crisis by giving their highest rating (AAA) to most of the collateralized debt obligations (CDO) securities that were backed by these sub‐prime mortgages. Because the rating agencies are compensated by the issuers whose CDO bonds they rate, this relationship creates a prima facie conflict of interest, one that is compounded when the rating agency also consults for the issuers on designing the CDOs. While Congress and the Securities Exchange Commission investigate possible wrongdoing, various reforms have been proposed. This article analyzes these conflicts of interest and the cognate corporate governance issues. It then categorizes and critiques several of the reform proposals—which range in severity from requiring more disclosure to the suspension of the rating agency's license.
Regional volatility in emerging countries The case of Russia1
Authors: Kwon Goohoon , Spilimbergo Antonio 
Published: December 2008

AbstractAn uneven distribution of natural resources and the Soviet legacy of artificial regional specialization expose Russia's regions to large income shocks. Using an unique regional dataset covering Russian regions between 1992 and 2003, we assess how these features influence the magnitude and persistence of regional income shocks. We propose a novel measure of regional exogenous shocks that we use to show that fiscal policy in Russia's regions has largely been pro‐cyclical, exacerbating rather than moderating regional exogenous shocks.
Fostering civil society to build institutions Why and when1
Authors: Grajzl Peter , Murrell Peter 
Published: December 2008

AbstractWe revisit the ubiquitous claim that aiding civil society improves institutional outcomes. In our model, a vibrant civil society initiates public debate in a reform process otherwise dominated by partisan interest groups and politicians. Civil society involvement can alleviate or aggravate adverse selection problems that arise because interest groups are better informed about reform consequences than politicians. Since aid increases the cost to the politician of excluding civil society, it affects institution building. We show analytically, and illustrate empirically, that the welfare implications of fostering civil society critically depend on the specifics of local politics, thereby casting new light on the experience of civil society aid in transition and developing countries.
Impact of Imperfect Information on the Optimal Exercise Strategy for Warrants
Authors: Koziol Christian 
Published: December 2008

Abstract In this paper, we determine the optimal exercise strategy for corporate warrants if investors suffer from imperfect information and we evaluate the impact of this friction on the value of a warrant. For this purpose, we address both exercises at maturity, where imperfect information about the firm value is present, and exercises before maturity which are impacted by imperfect information about the size of the dividend. We model imperfect information so that all warrant holders know that they obtain biased signals of the true state without observing the signals of other warrant holders. The optimal exercise strategy follows from a complex game among warrant holders in which every individual warrant holder must account for the potential signals of the other warrant holders and their resulting exercise decisions. The main findings are that due to imperfect information warrant holders optimally start to exercise their warrants later than without imperfect information. Moreover, a simple block exercise strategy is always an equilibrium strategy for a high degree of imperfect information before maturity, even though a partial exercise can be the unique strategy without imperfect information. Remarkably, imperfect information does not necessarily result in a lower warrant value. As long as a warrant holder has a signal that allows for correct exercise decisions, then imperfect information enhances the warrant value due to suboptimal exercises by other investors.
The evolutionary ecology of detritus feeding in the larvae of freshwater Diptera
Authors: McLachlan Athol J. , Ladle Richard J. 
Published: December 2008

AbstractDetritus (dead organic matter), largely of terrestrial origin, is superabundant in inland waters but because of its indigestible nature, would appear to be a poor food source for animals. Yet this unpromising material is widely used as food and indeed can be viewed as a defining characteristic of the freshwater environment. We here explore the relationships among animals, detritus and its associated micro‐organism decomposers, taking a functional approach. We pose questions about interrelationships and attempt to arrive at new insights by disentangling them from an adaptive point of view. To do this we have been careful in selecting the habitats for detailed consideration. Rain pools on rock surfaces in tropical Africa and pools on peat moorland in the UK were chosen. Both examples have a relatively simple community structure and hence offer the prospect of achieving our aim. As model organisms for study we focus principally on the aquatic stages of selected holometabolous insects; that is, selected genera of the universally common midges, Ceratopogonidae and Chironomidae. We approach these case studies from an evolutionary ecology perspective and see detritus as a simple template upon which a beautiful complex of adaptations can evolve.
Repeated alcohol administration during adolescence causes changes in the mesolimbic dopaminergic and glutamatergic systems and promotes alcohol intake in the adult rat
Authors: Pascual Maria , Boix Jordi , Felipo Vicente , Guerri Consuelo 
Published: December 2008

AbstractAdolescence is a developmental period which the risk of drug and alcohol abuse increases. Since mesolimbic dopaminergic system undergoes developmental changes during adolescence, and this system is involved in rewarding effects of drugs of abuse, we addressed the hypothesis that ethanol exposure during juvenile/adolescent period over‐activates mesolimbic dopaminergic system inducing adaptations which can trigger long‐term enduring behavioural effects of alcohol abuse. We treated juvenile/adolescent or adult rats with ethanol (3 g/kg) for two‐consecutive days at 48‐h intervals over 14‐day period. Here we show that intermittent ethanol treatment during the juvenile/adolescence period alters subsequent ethanol intake.In vivomicrodialysis demonstrates that ethanol elicits a similar prolonged dopamine response in the nucleus accumbens of both adolescent and adult animals pre‐treated with multiple doses of ethanol, although the basal dopamine levels were higher in ethanol‐treated adolescents than in adult‐treated animals. Repeated ethanol administration also down‐regulates the expression of DRD2 and NMDAR2B phosphorylation in prefrontal cortex of adolescent animals, but not of adult rats. Finally, ethanol treatment during adolescence changes the acetylation of histones H3 and H4 in frontal cortex, nucleus accumbens and striatum, suggesting chromatin remodelling changes. In summary, our findings demonstrate the sensitivity of adolescent brain to ethanol effects on dopaminergic and glutamatergic neurotransmission, and suggest that abnormal plasticity in reward‐related processes and epigenetic mechanisms could contribute to the vulnerability of adolescents to alcohol addiction.
Predicting invasiveness in exotic species: do subtropical native and invasive exotic aquatic plants differ in their growth responses to macronutrients?
Authors: Hastwell Graeme T. , Daniel Andrew J. , Vivian‐Smith Gabrielle 
Published: December 2008

AbstractWe investigated whether plasticity in growth responses to nutrients could predict invasive potential in aquatic plants by measuring the effects of nutrients on growth of eight non‐invasive native and six invasive exotic aquatic plant species. Nutrients were applied at two levels, approximating those found in urbanized and relatively undisturbed catchments, respectively. To identify systematic differences between invasive and non‐invasive species, we compared the growth responses (total biomass, root:shoot allocation, and photosynthetic surface area) of native species with those of related invasive species after 13 weeks growth. The results were used to seek evidence of invasive potential among four recently naturalized species. There was evidence that invasive species tend to accumulate more biomass than native species (P = 0.0788). Root:shoot allocation did not differ between native and invasive plant species, nor was allocation affected by nutrient addition. However, the photosynthetic surface area of invasive species tended to increase with nutrients, whereas it did not among native species (P = 0.0658). Of the four recently naturalized species, Hydrocleys nymphoides showed the same nutrient‐related plasticity in photosynthetic area displayed by known invasive species. Cyperus papyrus showed a strong reduction in photosynthetic area with increased nutrients. H. nymphoides and C. papyrus also accumulated more biomass than their native relatives. H. nymphoides possesses both of the traits we found to be associated with invasiveness, and should thus be regarded as likely to be invasive.
Coniferous round wood imports from Russia and Baltic countries to Belgium. A pathway analysis for assessing risks of exotic pest insect introductions
Authors: Piel Frédéric , Gilbert Marius , De Cannière Charles , Grégoire Jean‐Claude 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTUnderstanding entry pathways resulting from global trade is critical to assess the risks of introduction of invasive alien species (IAS). From 1996 onward, the import of timber from Russia and the Baltic States to Belgium dramatically increased, with more than one million cubic metres of coniferous round wood imported until 2004. Such a high volume could have served as entry pathway for exotic bark beetles from the East that have the potential to become forest insect pests upon establishment. We collected and cross‐checked different data sources (FAOSTAT, Eurostat, National Bank of Belgium, Belgian Customs, the Belgian sawmills industry) regarding the import of timber in an attempt to trace back the spatial and temporal patterns of this trade, and to assess the expected validity of a pest risk analysis based on those data. We found that the timber trade between 1996 and 2004 is particularly dynamic in space and time, and may have allowed several opportunities for exotic bark‐beetle introductions. In addition, the patterns of trade change so quickly from year to year that the existing data sources are essentially not adequate for IAS risk assessment in a near real‐time fashion. The data are either comprehensive, but then aggregated at a too coarse level (space, time, or category) to be of real use in risk assessment, or available with adequate levels of details, in which case they are mostly partial or incomplete. Better accessibility to data and data exchanges between organizations in charge of trade data collection and plant protection would help better targeting of phytosanitary controls.
Application of common predictive habitat techniques for post‐border weed risk management
Authors: Crossman Neville D. , Bass David A. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTWeed risk assessment has become an accepted methodology for examining the likelihood and consequence of a plant species becoming invasive outside of its native range. Weed risk assessment draws upon biological and ecological information to estimate the likelihood and magnitude of the threats posed by introducing non‐indigenous plants. In geographical terms, this has traditionally been understood as within a new country following importation of plant material. However, recent risk assessment development has focused more specifically on intracountry risk posed by already‐present invasive plants and is referred to as post‐border weed risk management. This form of assessment calls for fine‐scale predictions of invasive species habitat suitability. This study applies some of the more popular and widely available habitat prediction models that represent a variety of different statistical approaches (linear regression, logistic regression, Bayesian probability, Classification and Regression Trees, Genetic Algorithm for Rule‐set Production) to a single invasive plant, the vertebrate‐dispersed, fleshy fruited European olive (Olea europaea L.) in southern Australia. The relationships between the dependant (O. europaea distribution) and independent (soil and climate) variables are used in the models to produce predictive maps for each model. Accuracy was calculated for each model output as well as a combined surface to examine whether recent calls for ensemble modelling of distributions produces improved predictions. Overall, the combined prediction demonstrated superior accuracy compared to any individual model outputs. The combined outputs can be likened to mapped gradations of predicted habitat suitability. The type of output produced in this study should form a critical component of post‐border weed risk management but more importantly, the methodology will add to this important discipline.