Serum gamma glutamyl transpeptidase in breast cancer

Gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (gamma-GT) levels were estimated in the sera of patients with breast cancer and compared with those of benign breast diseases and healthy controls. Serum gamma-GT levels were found to be significantly increased in patients with breast cancer compared to the controls as well as benign breast diseases. The rise however, was nearly same in all the patients irrespective of histopathology of cancer but was directly related to tumour mass. After mastectomy the levels remained higher upto 3 months. In patients with cancer the rise in serum gamma-GT was significantly higher as compared to those with benign breast diseases. Although gamma-GT is an index of liver diseases, its high level in breast carcinoma suggests the release of the membrane bound constituents from different tissues even in carcinoma.     

Envisioning Our Practice: Examining and Interpreting Pedagogical Visions of Four Early Career Teacher Educators

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore how pedagogical visions inform our work as former classroom teachers and current teacher educators in rural and urban regions of the United States. Specifically, we explore the instructional decisions we make as we work to meet these visions in higher education. Teacher educators are charged with the task of fostering visionary teachers in today’s highly challenging educational landscape. We pose the question: How can teacher educators foster visionary beginning teachers without an examination of their visions for their practice? Using a self-study design, we examine the intersections of our pedagogical visions for teaching and the instructional actions we take to work toward our visions in higher education. Findings highlight specific instructional practices and strategies used to enact visions while providing a critical discussion of the lens of visioning within self-study research.     

Decentralization of First Nations Education in Canada: Perspectives on Ideals and Realities of Indian Control of Indian Education

Fuelled by the concept of self-determination, efforts to improve schooling under the banner of decentralization are taking hold in First Nations communities throughout Canada. Proponents of decentralization hold the perception that decentralized systems are more likely to improve education than centralized systems. But is there a chance that local control can improve First Nations education? From the point of view of the realization of the decentralization values, the outcome is uncertain at best and gloomy at worst. To the extent that First Nations are alert to the emerging educational needs and problems and strong enough to mobilize First Nations resources on their behalf, we may entertain a cautious optimism on the resolution of some of the manifold contradictions of decentralization. I contend that unless there is a genuine devolution that entails the empowerment of First Nations communities to provide an education that is specifically suited to each community, schools for Aboriginal children will remain mediocre in quality. If decentralization is to sustain its momentum and advance productively in coming years, at least it should meet three conditions. First, certain constraints or contradictions internal to decentralization will have to be resolved. Second, Aboriginal scholars and First Nations school authorities need to employ appropriate change strategies by providing a framework for local control, and finally, First Nations communities and federal authorities need to find the key symbolic and structural characteristics of decentralizing First Nations schools.     

THINKING ABOUT CITIZEN JOURNALISM

This study seeks to understand how community newspaper editors negotiate the professional complexities posed by citizen journalism—a phenomenon that, even in the abstract, would appear to undermine their gatekeeping control over content. Through interviews with 29 newspaper editors in Texas, we find that some editors either favor or disfavor the use of citizen journalism primarily on philosophical grounds, while others favor or disfavor its use mainly on practical grounds. This paper presents a mapping of these philosophical-versus-practical concerns as a model for visualizing the conflicting impulses at the heart of a larger professional debate over the place and purpose of user-generated content in the news production process. Moreover, these findings are viewed in light of gatekeeping, which, we argue, offers a welcome point of entry for the study of participatory media work as it evolves at news organizations large and small alike. In contributing to a growing body of literature on user-generated content in news contexts, this study points to the need for better understanding the causes and consequences of journalism's hyperlocal turn, as digitization enables newswork to serve increasingly niche geographic and virtual communities.     

De Coubertin's Olympism and the Laugh of Michel Foucault: Crisis Discourse and the Olympic Games

De Coubertin developed the sport philosophy of Olympism and the Olympic Games as a response to social and political crisis to promote peace, fair play, and the development of Christian masculinity. The purpose of this paper is to examine how crisis discourse functions as an important shaper of contemporary understandings of Olympism and how conflicting discourses have mobilized crisis discourse to produce competing ‘truths’ in which to rationalize and understand the Olympic Games. In drawing from Foucault's work and de Certeau's text, Heterologies: Discourse on the other, I argue that ‘crisis’ as the rationalization for Olympism and the Olympic Games has proven an unsuccessful venture for de Coubertin; as the Olympic Games have produced conservative outcomes based on a neoliberal agenda focused on elitism, professionalism, nationalism, and commercialism. This historical case raises important questions about the role of Olympism and its power to act as a catalyst for change.     

Early Neglect Is Associated With Alterations in White Matter Integrity and Cognitive Functioning

Cognitive deficits have been reported in children who experienced early neglect, especially children raised in institutionalized settings. Previous research suggests that early neglect may differentially affect the directional organization of white matter in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This may be one mechanism to explain cognitive deficits associated with neglect. To test this idea, properties of white matter and neurocognitive performance were assessed in children who suffered early neglect and those raised in typical environments (n = 63, M_age = 11.75 years). As predicted, prefrontal white matter microstructure was affected, consistent with more diffuse organization, in children that suffered early neglect and this was related to neurocognitive deficits. Such findings underscore how early adversity may affect the PFC and explain cognitive deficits associated with neglect.     

Developmental Trajectories of Acculturation in Hispanic Adolescents: Associations With Family Functioning and Adolescent Risk Behavior

This study examined longitudinal acculturation patterns, and their associations with family functioning and adolescent risk behaviors, in Hispanic immigrant families. A sample of 266 Hispanic adolescents (M_age = 13.4) and their primary parents completed measures of acculturation, family functioning, and adolescent conduct problems, substance use, and sexual behavior at five timepoints. Mixture models yielded three trajectory classes apiece for adolescent and parent acculturation. Assimilated adolescents reported the poorest family functioning, but adolescent assimilation negatively predicted adolescent cigarette smoking, sexual activity, and unprotected sex indirectly through family functioning. Follow‐up analyses indicated that discrepancies between adolescent and parent family functioning reports predicted these adolescent outcomes. Results are discussed regarding acculturation trajectories, adolescent risk behavior, and the mediating role of family functioning.     

Travelling theory: Western knowledge and its Indian object

From the1830s the colonial government in India became the agency for the promotion of ‘Western education’, that is, education that sought to disseminate modern, Western, rational knowledge through modern institutions and pedagogic processes. This paper examines a historical episode in which certain key categories of modern Western thought were pressed into service to explain a consequence of the dissemination of Western knowledge in colonial India. The episode in question was that of the alleged ‘moral crisis’ of the educated Indian, who, many argued, had been plunged into confusion and moral disarray following his exposure to Western knowledge in the schools and universities established by his British ruler. In the discourse of moral crisis, the knowledge being disseminated through Western education was simultaneously put to use in explaining an unanticipated effect of this education. How adequate was Western knowledge to explaining its own effects? More generally – for this paper is drawn from a larger study of how modern Western knowledge ‘travelled’ when transplanted to colonial India – what is the status of the knowledge we produce when we ‘apply’ the categories of modern Western thought in order to understand or explain India?