On-demand electrostatic droplet charging and sorting

This study reports a droplet-based microfluidic device for on-demand electrostatic droplet charging and sorting. This device combines two independent modules: one is a hydrodynamic flow focusing structure to generate water-in-oil droplets, and the other is the two paired-electrodes for charging and sorting of the droplets. Depending on the polarity on charging electrodes, water-in-oil droplets can be electrostatically charged positively or negatively, followed by automatic real-time electric sorting. This approach will be useful when preformed droplets, with a positive, a negative, or with no charge, need to be manipulated for further on-chip droplet manipulation.     

Serum gamma glutamyl transferase (γ-GT) activity in alcoholics with liver abscess and chronic alcoholics

Gamma Glutamyl Transferase (γ-GT) is a microsomal enzyme. Its activity in serum is assayed in alcoholics with liver abscess and alcoholics without liver abscess after screening by ultrasonography. The enzyme activity in serum is increased by 334% in the patients with liver abscess compared to normal control subjects (p<0.0001), and 172% when compared to patients with chronic alcoholism without liver abscess (p<0.0001). The enzyme activity was increased by 59.3% in the serum of patients without liver abscess compared to the normal control subjects (p<0.001). Measurement of γ-GT in serum appears to be a sensitive index in the diagnosis of alcoholics with liver abscess.     

Childcare Food Handling Employees’ Perceived Barriers and Motivators to Follow Food Safety Practices

Each year millions of children are enrolled in center-based childcare. Childcare employees are tasked with handling over half the children’s weekly meals. Proper food handling practices are crucial in mitigating this high-risk population’s risk of foodborne illness. The purpose of this study was to identify childcare food handling employees’ (n?=?278) perceived barriers and motivators to follow recommended food safety practices. Six important barriers and 14 key motivators to following recommended food safety practices were identified. Important barriers pertained to time restraints, workloads, and lack of understanding of the importance of following proper food safety practices. Key motivators were focused on children’s safety, available supplies, communication, and food safety training/information. Employee and facility characteristics were shown to influence perceived importance of barriers and motivators to following food safety practices. Childcare directors should review scheduling and job duties of employees as the majority of identified barriers focused on “work pace” and “time restraints.” Directors should also attempt to increase food safety communication through practical situational training, written food safety policies, and use of food safety signage to increase understanding of the importance of proper food safety practices. Ensuring proper supplies are available is necessary.     

Lipid peroxidation in erythrocytes of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Lipid peroxidation by measurement of Thiobarbituric Acid Reactive Substances (TBARS) and antioxidant status by determining the activities of the enzymes, Catalase (Cat), Glutathione Peroxidase (GPx) and Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) and the level of Reduced Glutathione (GSH) in the erythrocytes of patients with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus were investigated. It was observed that the level of TBARS in the erythrocytes was increased by 50% showing a significant generation of free radicals in the erythrocytes of these patients. The activities of both Cat and SOD were enhanced while that of GPx was not altered. The level of GSH was also not changed.     

Mediating modernity: Theorizing reception in a non‐western society

This article theorizes non‐Western media reception, based on a reception study of a Hindu epic, “The Ramayan,”; screened on the state‐owned Indian television system, Doordarshan, in 78 episodes beginning in January 1987. Based on interviews with viewers from a variety of social backgrounds and on analysis of press response to the epic, it argues that the epic represented, for many viewers, a narrative of community opposed to bourgeois modernity, and superior to it. For Doordarshan, as a broadcaster in a non‐western/incompletely modern society, the epic represented a way of mediating between a secular bourgeois public, and a “communitarian public sphere”; which, it is argued, characterizes Indian popular culture.     

Hidden careerists in Canadian universities

Our Canadian national survey 1991–92 reveals significantly different profiles of two types of part-time academics: those who have full-time non-academic jobs (Classics 34.5%) and those who only have part-time jobs (Contemporaries 65.5). The two groups have distinct reasons for teaching part-time, structure of work needs, and priorities of motivations that characterize Contemporaries as the real part-time faculty. They differ from Classics in their professional profile and work needs. Contemporaries have chosen the academic profession as their career. Routinization and degradation of part-timers' work, and feminization (53% are women Contemporaries) of real part-timers, camouflage their careerist aspirations.     

The political economy of part-time academic work in Canada

The financial crisis in the Canadian higher education system has led to marked growth in the use of part-time faculty, whose interests and powers are strongly differentiated from those of the full-time faculty. The reasons for the differential power and divergent interest between the two are to be understood in the context of corporatist responses to the state in crisis. Under continuing financial strigency, the university administration negotiates concessions with the collegium of full-time faculty to satisfy their corporate interests and maintain the stability of the system. Part-timers, excluded from the collegium, remain peripheral to these corporatist arrangements, their marginalization being strongly related to ideological structures that originate from and entrench the dominant power and status of the full-time faculty.     

Hidden academics: the part-time faculty in Canada

More than one-third of all Canadian faculty are part-timers who contribute significantly to academic work while consuming only marginally universities' economic resources. Mythical images of their temporariness in the workforce obfuscate the differences of career aspiration and motivation within the group. Two factors render them invisible or hidden academics: one rooted in the economics of the university system and the second in the ideological structures of academic practices and traditions. In the political economy of universities the relentless drive to manage enrolment, finances, and teaching costs has resulted in a bureaucratic rationalization of the academic workload and a bifurcated academic labour force hierarchically split into full- and part-time faculties with radically different work processes and treatment within universities. Part-timers are now a permanent and low-cost academic workforce, producing a surplus value transferable within the university to compensate for what would otherwise be fiscal shortfall. Degradation of certain workprocesses by rationalizing and de-professionalizing certain academic functions legitimized the academic workforce split in relative pay and job characteristics, which reinforces the evident feminization of the part-time faculty.     

Use of food attitudes and behaviors in determination of the personality characteristic of openness: A pilot study

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the potential use of individual food attitudes and behaviors in determining the personality characteristic of openness. For this purpose, the Food Attitude Behavior Openness Scale (FABOS) was developed and administered to a sample of hospitality management students. Individuals scored similarly on the FABOS instrument, the Attitudinal Behavioral Openness Scale (ABOS) and the Tolerance–Intolerance of Ambiguity (TIA) scale. Results from this study suggested that food attitudes and behaviors could act as an indicator of the personality characteristic of openness. This is the first study of its kind that has attempted to connect food attitudes and behaviors with openness.     

Canadian universities: The impact of free trade and globalization

Canadian universities are governed by provincial statutes and are funded by federal and provincial governments, as well as by student fees. They have had exclusive jurisdiction over admission standards, curricula and the granting of degrees. Even though they are autonomous, they are influenced to act in the interest of Canadian society through the use of buffer bodies (between governments and universities) and Boards of Governors.The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement has changed these basic assumptions. Since education (including higher education) is part of social programs, and social programs are not exempt from the provisions of NAFTA, higher education will have to adjust to serving not only Canadian society but permit extra-national institutions to deliver their services without requiring the presence of Canadian nationals.These changes are occurring at a time when technology is making possible electronic means of delivery of higher education material. This article is a first exploration of the intersection of knowledge, capital and technology in the context of free trade. It is set in a Canadian context but its reflections have relevance to other countries.