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Results from these surveys have caught the attention of governments across the industrialized world, particularly the claim that large portions of the working-age populations do not have adequate literacy levels to support everyday life and work.
Depending on the country and which iteration of the surveys is cited, between one-third and more than two-thirds of adult populations in countries surveyed1 are said to lack the minimum skill level Level 3 considered by experts to be suitable for coping with the increasing demands of the emerging knowledge society and the information economy OECD and Statistics Canada There have been many controversies among experts about the methodology, reliability, and meanings of the findings of these surveys Sticht a, b.
Perhaps the point that gained the most attention was the large disparity reported between measured performance on a set of taskbased test items and the views about performance ability expressed in the self-assessment portion of the survey.
Respondents were asked how well their reading, writing, and numeracy skills met the demands of their daily lives and work. Quite consistently, adults believed their own skills to be much higher than their measured performance.
Other contrasting reports have long been reported elsewhere in the academic literature Prinsloo and Breier ; Darville and are familiar to literacy practitioners.
These anomalies in survey results have produced quite different reactions among some government officials. This is very dangerous! But, for our purposes in this essay, this talk of danger and blame offers not an explanation but more puzzling data. In the following pages, we aim to shed light on this puzzle by looking first at what the literature can tell us about changing uses of text at work and then by exploring a concrete example of an electronics manufacturing workplace. High-Performance Work Volumes have been written in the past two decades about workplace restructuring, revealing a sea change in the philosophy of management for workplaces of all kinds, both private- and public-sector.
Achieving this standard depends heavily on prescribed use of text, either paper or electronic, by front-line workers. A second and closely related aspect of high-performance production is continuous improvement CI. Like quality assurance, CI is a highly technical practice involving the systematic use of an ongoing cycle of planning, executing, checking, and refining operations to improve efficiencies and to eliminate waste in all aspects of the production process.
Data come from many sources, including the most routine use of charts, checklists, and logbooks, sometimes computerized, as part of the daily work tasks of employees in all kinds of workplaces.
Until the s, production environments often involved very little paperwork. Production control was exercised through an oral culture of supervision. But today, all that has changed. Shop-floor workers commonly see the paperwork as an add-on and a second priority, while for senior managers and quality assurance experts, the data—in the form of paper or electronic text—are increasingly the form of work that counts. The texts increasingly stand in for the product and mediate business relationships through real-time and just-in-time communications between suppliers and customers.
Thus, the use of text, electronic or paper, in this setting is inseparable from the exercise of managerial power. She shows us how the demands of reading and writing in this setting are embedded in a textual organization of work that is complex and highly contested.
However, as we continued our dialogue about my work in the plant, we discovered that texts were profoundly important, both to understanding the nature of the work and to identifying my frustrations with my job. Here I will try to make those tensions visible.
For seven years, I worked in a large, global, ISOregistered electronics contract manufacturing company. I was one of approximately fifty surface mount technology SMT team leaders in the plant whose job was to lead a small team of workers through the first manufacturing step in the production of electronic circuit boards, such as memory cards and motherboards.
The physical work of making circuit boards was relatively straightforward, since the processes for each machine and each product were documented in manufacturing instructions MIs ; although there were wide variations in the types of products that we built, the process itself was highly prescribed.
All approved procedures for each stage of the production needed to be explicitly documented. The MIs, for example, contained product-specific process steps, including details on which parts should be on the board, how much solder paste should be applied, and how to handle the boards.
At the beginning of each shift, my first responsibility was to check the production board to find out which product we were building. My second task was to print all the relevant MIs to ensure that the team had the most current set of instructions.
An owner of a document was the person, usually a process engineer, who was responsible for the correct maintenance of the document in compliance with ISO. As team leader, it was my responsibility to ensure that the team was using the correct revision number of the document; this requirement meant that most team leaders printed a new set of documents each shift just to be safe.
In theory, we were allowed to do only what was detailed in the MI; in practice, there were often more effective ways to get the work done. Yet, if we were audited by a quality specialist or internal ISO auditor and asked why we were doing something in particular, we would need to be able to show the relevant section of the appropriate document to justify our actions. These documentary requirements were essential in order for the plant to maintain the ISO certification.
Thus, documents governed our work both by defining the acceptable range of our actions and by curbing our discretion. The SMT line process involved the mechanical application of solder paste on a circuit board, the mechanical placement of electronic components on top of the solder paste, and the thermal cycling of the board in a fifty-foot oven to melt and solidify the solder paste.
As the components were tiny some measured 0. A long conveyer belt transported the circuit board from operation to operation. Part of that work was to record machine data from each step of the process in logbooks; as I reflect on my experience, this activity turned out to be central to my experience of frustration in the job. On the assembly line, there were four paper logbooks for solder paste measurements, to document when new parts were added to the placement machines and to record the results of the weekly oven profile test.
These data were used to track manufacturing problems back to the specific employee. Production demands conflicted with these requirements for recording the process, but, as team leader, I was held accountable for both tasks. I was usually able to keep on top of the required paperwork for the team leader; however, checking that the logbooks had been properly filled in by the contract workers at the end of each shift was something that I never had time for.
My attitude toward what counted as real work was shaped by middle-management actions that clearly sent the message that meeting production targets was our main priority. If the team failed to meet the production targets on a shift, I, as team leader, would be questioned by my manager about what had gone wrong.
I would also have to complete a form detailing the problems we had encountered on the shift more paperwork! It was only at the time of the ISO audits that the gaps in logbooks would be noticed. When an audit was approaching, there would be a big panic about whether the documents were thorough enough to pass the audit.
Each department had a quality specialist who had to ensure that the logbooks, employee training records, and all instructional documents were up to date and complete. At audit time, these specialists had a big job on their hands. Not surprisingly, we would often have to fabricate data after the fact in order to appear to be in compliance with audit specifications. Team leaders like me learned to play the game to keep our jobs.
The failure to complete logbooks was often seen by team leaders as evidence of deficiencies in the literacy abilities of individual contract workers. Thus, to keep up with the other demands, contract workers would neglect the logbooks. Eventually, I realized there were several more layers to this story, revealing profound contradictions in the hiring practices in the plant. For example, each SMT line was operated by four workers, three of whom had expertise on only one part of the process; only I, as team leader, was trained on all of the machines.
Yet I was also the only permanent employee on my team. The other team members were employed on six-month contracts renewable three times to a maximum of eighteen months. This practice meant that skilled and experienced workers left the company on a weekly basis, resulting in constant disruption to the team. As a team leader, I wholeheartedly agreed with this goal.
However, I was frustrated by the barriers to achieving it when company hiring policies and practices favored short-term contract workers. The minimum requirement for contract positions was a postsecondary degree from any country, an acceptable score on the Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEFL , and the successful completion of a thirty-to-forty-five-minute scenario-based interview.
These hiring practices ensured that the contract workers on the manufacturing floor were highly educated people with a high degree of fluency in English. Most workers were recent male immigrants to Canada, usually with more than one university degree; these hiring criteria ensured a highly literate workforce, yet the way these highly educated workers were utilized by the company suggested otherwise.
Permanent employees were equipped with individual email accounts so that they could communicate with other workers in other departments or on other shifts. We were also given training on how to create and work with documents so that we would be able to own documents and take the lead in technical problem solving at regular quality meetings.
Permanent employees were expected to be involved in cross-shift and cross-department communication and were given the tools to accomplish this. In sharp contrast, contract workers did not have personal email accounts; they had access only to a general department email account.
As a result, they lost both their individual identities as employees and any sense of privacy in communication. They were not permitted to create new documents, lead process-improvement projects, or meet with employees on other shifts or in other departments. At the Learning Centre, they were restricted to functional training on how to fill in logbooks. In other words, the contract workers were actively excluded from the main electronic textual practices that tied together much work of the plant.
In a very real sense, the value of workers to the company could be gauged by their access to such literacy practices as the ability to communicate through email, access texts, and create new work processes via text. Exclusion from this textual realm also meant exclusion from real power in the workplace.
Finally, I also came to understand the significance of the fact that the majority of these workers were people of color. In my two years as a team leader, I worked with people from all areas of the world. It was an uncomfortable experience for me, as a Canadian-born white woman with a B. Because the majority of permanent employees in manufacturing were also white and the majority of the contract workers were people of color, there was a strange neocolonial feel to the workplace that made me uneasy.
This was not incidental, accidental, or an oversight; it was an organizational course of action central to the labor-market strategy of this large corporation. She was keenly aware that it was a form of racialized discrimination. But what did it have to do with literacy? Together we unraveled these connections.
In this setting, as in many others, the concept of literacy was at the center of a complex textual relation between the changing demands of powerful institutions and the increasingly precarious lives of individuals.
Here was a group of highly literate workers who were accused of having poor literacy on the basis of how they functioned in the plant. How they functioned, however, turned out to have little to do with individual skills or skill deficits. Instead, it was part of an organizational course of action in which some workers and not others were hired into temporary and subordinate positions and then excluded from key literacy practices in the plant.
These arrangements were designed to monitor and control the work process and were justified in terms of the imperative to turn a profit on every shift. This particular story focuses on a relation between permanent, North American—born employees and highly skilled immigrant workers of color.
Indeed, as the number of highly skilled immigrants grows in many industrialized countries, creating a workforce of newcomers who are technically skilled but socially and culturally vulnerable to exclusion, the type of situation explored in this chapter may well occur more frequently.
But the dynamics described here can apply not only to the situation of immigrant workers. Such individuals may indeed encounter challenges at work and sometimes in other areas of their lives. This could be seen as a threat to the economic status of any nation in the global marketplace. Relatedly, there may be political dangers for public officials if they are seen to be failing in their responsibility for labor force development.
So the Canadian official who spoke with such alarm may have been accurately reflecting and projecting her own fears. But her way—and the dominant way—of framing the issues collapses these economic relations into a property—and a responsibility—of individuals.
Constructing illiteracy as a problem of crisis proportions is key to making it into a site of administrative action Smith a; Darville , Yet, it is revealing to note that the kind of action that is being taken most frequently in response to this issue is not to provide more literacy instruction to increase the functional levels of adults. On the contrary, funds available for adult literacy programming are reported to be shrinking internationally, though there is widespread new investment in literacy for children Jackson a; Khan ; Sivasubramaniam ; World Bank Testing is now commonplace not only for new job applicants but also as part of compulsory certification for people who want to keep jobs they already have.
In theory, a failed test in most of these settings is said to trigger compulsory literacy instruction; in practice, since resources for instruction are scarce, the immediate impact is often exclusion from services and opportunities. Thus, while literacy may not be experienced by individuals as a problem in the routine conduct of their lives, it is being made to matter by powerful interests that have harnessed it to their own purposes.
In the process, corporate interests have overtaken human interests as the centerpiece of the literacy movement. Notes The authors wish to acknowledge funding for this research from the Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence: The Automobile in the 21st Century.
Statement recorded in field notes by Nancy Jackson, who attended the conference. These texts have been important in tracing how my awareness developed over the year that we worked together. The documents were more of a shield than a source of information; I found out about production changes verbally, at shift crossover, from the other team leader.
I needed that piece of paper which was often fifteen pages long to validate my actions should I be audited. My experiences in this workplace have been the impetus for my graduate research. For more detailed analysis of the deprofessionalization of immigrant women engineers in Canada, see Slade a.
This chapter examines the push for accountability in primary education and extends the idea of interinstitutional discourses that carry ruling ideas across institutional realms and national borders.
They show us mothers attempting to fill in with extra tutoring where underfunded schools and overworked teachers may not be able to meet accountability demands—in much the same way that family caregivers may fill in with unpaid child-care work as lowincome mothers are pressed into the labor force Scott and London chapter 8 and Ridzi chapter 11 this volume , or with informal nursing as hospital stays are shortened Rankin and Campbell She is doing an assignment from the Open Court Reading textbook, part of the series adopted by her urban elementary school.
Also on the table is a test-preparation workbook for the secondgrade level of the CAT-6, the standardized test required by California. Each night, while she cooks dinner and after her daughter finishes her regular homework, the mother helps her daughter go through the workbook so that the young girl will be better prepared to do well on the standardized tests she will soon take. In Toronto, another child is doing a reading assignment, which is aligned to provincial curriculum standards for which a new version of a Canadian standardized test, the CAT-3,1 has been developed.
He, too, is using the Open Court Reading text and a test-preparation workbook bought from a local bookshop on the recommendation of the community center tutor. His English is coming along well, and his parents, who speak only Farsi, wish they could better help their son prepare for the upcoming tests. These two stories are drawn from research done in Canada and the United States that explores the educational work of mothers with children in elementary school.
The similarities in these stories are striking, yet they are occurring in different countries with different educational systems, different educational policies, and different school demographics.
Across national boundaries, students undertake educational work in local classrooms that has been developed by international educational publishing corporations and prepare for standardized tests required by educational policies that, across provincial and state boundaries, have strong similarities in terms of content and process.
Over the past ten years, school systems in the United States and Canada have undergone extensive restructuring, particularly in the areas of finance, accountability, standardization and testing. Regardless of, or perhaps in concert with, the standardizing practices of current educational reforms, parents and educators struggle to meet new educational goals that have been established locally in boards of education and school districts and translocally through a global educational discourse.
In our research and writing, we have been exploring how local changes in schooling are being shaped by a global discourse on educational restructuring. In particular, we are interested in the ways that educational policies frame up the issues embedded within them in such a way that the issues can be made administratively actionable.
The educational actions that flow from a policy, then, bring with them an administrative process that manages our interaction with the identified issues. Recursively, the language of the policy can be tracked back to the globalized discourse that shaped the issue in the first place.
What we see in classrooms as a result of these policy mandates is a new standardized curriculum, accompanied by standardized testing and standardized reporting—the new institutional technologies of standardization and accountability. In the different national educational contexts of Canada and the United States, internationally developed reading series, like Open Court Reading mentioned earlier, are shaping local school and family practices in similar ways Jenkins These curricula are linked to the accountability reforms in public education, particularly to standardized testing processes.
The introductory stories tell of one way that a global educational discourse embedded in the institutional technologies of standardization and accountability can appear at the kitchen tables of families with children in public school.
Exploring the Terrain The institutional technologies that we are seeing in our research are not specific to educational contexts. New institutional technologies can be linked to the social and economic transformation taking place across public service institutions. The Canadian and U. Typically, the emphasis in discussions of the changing economy has been on the transformation of the private sector. We can see this trend particularly in the human-service domains of education, health care, and social work.
We suggest that current and ongoing changes to the traditionally defined public sector are important to explore in that they affect all segments of Canadian, U.
Of particular interest to us are the new institutional technologies that are central to the process of transforming human-service organizations within a globalizing economy. As the public sector is changing, these ordinary work routines are becoming ever more digitized and more similar across institutional and national boundaries.
The new institutional technologies include standardized, often computer-mediated, always textually mediated work processes that link professionals and nonprofessionals in social institutions. They provide the administrative ground on which various levels of management in a social institution can assess and coordinate action. Although institutions differ widely in their organization, contemporary social change is interinstitutional.
The new institutional technologies are changing the relationship between professionals and nonprofessionals and directly affecting the lives of those people who fall within their institutional mandate. Institutional technologies are reshaping the work and relationships of people who participate in the public sector—those who provide services and those who receive services. Public-service institutions are actively addressing themselves to businesslike management strategies to help accommodate reductions in social spending.
Indeed, it might be said that the early-twenty-first-century revolution in information and communication makes such a transformation in human services possible. Knowledge, in processable forms, has become a resource of the greatest importance for determining the most efficient course of action in health care, social services, and educational services.
Institutional technologies that harness knowledge for the purposes of planning, resource utilization, program management, and evaluation are transforming the public sector—ranging from the processes of service-delivery systems to the required expertise of practitioners.
They also create distinctive new problems. Working from informational data bases instead of from the more traditional hands-on interaction, decision making, and professional judgment means that the manifold functions of the service sector must be reconceptualized in specific ways. Whether organizational texts are for processing people for eligibility, assessing results of programs, determining the most cost-efficient interventions, or determining whose need is greatest for placement on waiting lists, they are constructed for the purpose of decision making about the efficient deployment of human services.
Thus, knowing, in other than objective ways, has been called into question. Yet, systems that are automated and objective must continue to rely on knowledgeable people and on the experiential input of individuals themselves to keep them operating successfully.
Our research is focused at this juncture—the intersection of the new institutional technologies and the actual activities of people who work in or use human-service organizations in the transforming public sector. The professionals employed in social work, nursing, community health, and education, as well as the support workers e. So, too, their institutional work is oriented to that part of society in which women have primary care-taking responsibility—the disabled, the family, the child.
The new institutional technologies are one instance of the textually mediated conversations that permeate social institutions. As Smith , notes, texts are ubiquitous in our social world. Texts coordinate the apparently individual but socially organized points of connection between people working in different parts of institutional complexes of activity.
In the research on education and on globalization, we are struck by the unexamined, textually mediated communications that coordinate the work and understandings of people in different social sites, nations, and, indeed, globally oriented agencies.
So, too, the phenomenon often called globalization is thoroughly textualized. For example, converging educational policies are informed by theories of the market that are being taught through textbooks in M. In the international education market, universities are changing regulations and policies to admit students from other countries on the basis of educational equivalencies portrayed in school transcripts sent within educational packages. Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements—written agreements—shape the work of government ministries that credential public and private universities.
And so on. Digitally oriented institutional texts are an empirically interesting feature of institutional restructuring. Our interaction with texts is a moment of activity, taking time and energy—in other words, work—and thus can be described and analyzed.
As the human-service professional teacher, social worker, nurse activates the textual relations through her ongoing work practices—doing report cards, estimating risk assessments, doing welfare intake, entering patient classification forms—she enters into the extended textual relations of the institution. Of interest to us are the processes through which institutional technologies, with their embedded globalized policy discourses, orient the everyday activities of those who work within the social institution and those whose lives intersect with it.
As we engage with texts, we coordinate the local and the translocal, managing and smoothing over the disjunctures between our experience and the relations of power and knowledge that shape and are shaped by education policies.
In order to understand the intersections between globalization and the kitchen table work of families, our research must attend to the social relations of ruling as they are coordinated textually. Texts and Accountability Since internationally developed curricula such as Open Court are coordinated with the accountability reforms in public education, particularly standardized testing, what is taught in the classroom must have some connection to the tests.
Open Court Reading is used widely in low-performing urban schools like the ones the children in our stories attend. Finding the same reading series in classrooms in Toronto as well as Los Angeles suggests an active role for corporate publishers in the planning, production, and distribution of a standardized curriculum.
For example, capitalizing on the compliance provisions in the NCLB law, companies are marketing such services as tutoring supplemental education services and voice-messaging systems that can assist school districts in the United States as they try to raise test scores of low-performing students by notifying parents of absences and meet testtaker percentages by announcing standardized testing dates Borja ; Walsh The standardized-testing requirements of accountability reform provide lucrative opportunities for educational publishers, as well.
The McGraw-Hill Web site states that, as part of its worldwide mission, McGraw-Hill plans to expand its global publishing operations and increase its penetration of the global education market. It is not alone. Major educational publishers are all pushing to claim a share of the global education industry. So we have a pretty big school business. So supplemental is one area for us to grow. Testing is certainly another. You need a lot of information to figure out how to help him, how does he learn best, what are his deficiencies, what are his particular problems, health problems or whatever, and then fashion a program for him.
We can do this because we have enterprise solutions for schools, we have testing and data collection, and we have school materials. The Houghton Mifflin Company, which once held 12 percent of the market, hopes to purchase Harcourt Education from the London-based Reed Elsevier Group, which would vault Houghton Mifflin to the lead in education publishing, with a 33 percent share of the K market.
Such a consolidation would mean that three corporations, producing more than 80 percent of K textbooks, would control the global education industry. Standardized testing and measures for ensuring educational accountability have been the primary vehicles for top-down control of local school activities. The push toward greater accountability is couched in the rhetoric of preparing children to be productive members in a global society. How these changes appear in the everyday lives of parents with children in school needs to be examined more closely.
Parents will require new and different knowledges Filer and Pollard and new forms of cultural and social capital. Parents are confronted with the new technologies of accountability as achievement data are produced by government-mandated accountability systems and school curricula are modified to raise standardized test scores.
Parents will increasingly be asked to manage new forms of participation that accompany and support these changes—to take up the discourse of shared responsibility. For example, the mothers understood the standardizing effects of the Open Court curriculum. Cynthia, a white and working-class mother, said: It actually gets a little crazy with the whole Open Court thing—is that, you know, a kid in California can go to X school, Y school, Z school and transfer three times in a year and be on chapter 5 at his first school.
Georgia, an African American mother, made the same observation. Regardless of what these mothers may individually think about standardized curriculum and standardized testing, they are participating in the home-based educational work, discussed in the next section, that is coordinated with the classroom-mandated and increasingly standardized educational work of schools. A Home-Learning Economy While much of the work parents take up at home involves traditional home-based educational practices such as helping with homework, reading to children, and seeing to proper bedtimes, a new form of involvement is taking shape—helping children prepare for successful performance on standardized tests.
For example, McGraw-Hill publishes its Spectrum series for standardized test preparation for grades 1 through 8 Foreman, Cohen, et al. These books are easily found on Internet searches and in the large bookstore chains. The mothers Lois interviewed in Los Angeles shared how they use these books to help their children prepare for testing. Or what else can I teach them to keep them learning this?
And they had a lot of like—you remember a long time ago we had the SRA [previous pedagogical strategy adopted by the County]? Well, the Open Court has a new concept. It was almost like SRAs. And it taught them to read. Every day of the week they read. And my daughter took one yesterday. Let me show you [pointing to page in test-prep workbook]. She took a similarity test yesterday. These are the kind of tests that I give her, to teach her about similarities.
Georgia also mentioned purchasing materials that help prepare her children for testing, especially her first-grade daughter. With my younger one, we play a lot of games. I buy a lot of material. I buy the booklets at Lakeshore. I have a chalkboard at home, a calendar like they have at school, the whole nine yards. You have to help them.
Because maybe they did get it, but not enough to actually stay in here [pointing to her forehead]. That word also means something else. Do you know what else that word means? Both of these mothers went to a teacher supply store, Lakeshore, to purchase the standardized test-preparation workbooks and other schooling materials they used in their homes. Moreover, by shopping for their home educational supplies at Lakeshore, they were unknowingly aligning their work at home with their children to the global distribution of educational materials.
Lakeshore Learning Materials operates thirty-three stores in twelve states in the United States. The company also has an equivalent operation in Canada: Wintergreen Learning Materials. The Lakeshore and the Wintergreen Web sites are linked, and the Web sites include catalogues for purchasing various classroom supplies and teaching materials. Except for the company name, the covers for the learning materials catalogue are identical.
Standardization has crossed borders, and publishing companies are marketing the same products for schools, teachers, and parents in Los Angeles that they market in Toronto.
Still, we can suggest that the interinstitutional relations we see are linked to the social and economic transformation of public education. For the past two decades, educational institutions have actively supported a growing movement to involve parents more fully in helping their children be successful in school. As parents engage with the work of the classroom in the family home, they help produce the high test scores that meet the government mandates for school accountability.
The accountability technology we describe, reaching deep into the family home, to the kitchen table, is among the new institutional technologies that will continue to change the nature of the family-school relationship.
Schools today rely even more heavily on the work of parents. We began this chapter with an analysis of the institutional technologies that are reshaping the public sector and human services today, and education in particular.
We briefly showed how policy convergence or policy borrowing across national and systemic boundaries has brought accountability programs such as standardized testing to such diverse settings as Los Angeles and Toronto, among others.
Historically, the exchange of family and school information through texts has been facilitated between local educators and parents. The new technologies of accountability, such as standardized testing, alter this process and assume new kinds of involvement from parents.
Along with many other educational researchers, we are interested in the ways that parents and educators are coparticipants in the activities of schooling. At the same time, we are aware of the ongoing large-scale educational changes that sweep through educational systems, altering the everyday work of all the participants—administrators, teachers, and parents—and that these changes are situated in an increasingly globalizing economy. These international, often global, social relations of ruling are essential for understanding the ways that education continues as an engine of inequality Smith , despite the efforts of many well-meaning people in many different educational venues.
Additional parts of this chapter were presented as part of a symposium session at the American Educational Research Association meeting, San Diego, April 12—16, The authors would like to thank Yvette Daniel for her comments on the symposium papers. In Los Angeles, standardized testing occurs at each grade level, including the new grade 12 exit exam, a high-stakes test that determines access to institutions of higher learning.
Microenterprise Development Nancy C. They enter and shape plans not only for public education and welfare but also in the communitybased and activist organizations that seek funding from the state. In this chapter, Nancy Jurik reports on her case study of a microlending program envisioned by local activists as a response to poverty in their region.
The analysis begins with her own participation in the conceptualization and establishment of the program and suggests that the microenterprise model appealed to funders because of its fit with the dominant policy ideas of the moment, including a rhetoric of individual empowerment and the accountability of a business model.
Using a national survey of similar programs, Jurik found that many organizations shifted their goals and activities over time in order to align their programs with the ideas and expectations of funders; her analysis helps to show how this kind of cooptation can happen despite the intentions of program staff. In the microlending case, the staff knew the real-life obstacles their clients faced in getting businesses going—obstacles that extended beyond business into their daily lives and the realities of family commitments and structural discrimination.
But the program model relied on an abstracted view of a microentrepreneur who needed only business training to succeed. And the bottom-line accountability that was so attractive to funders pushed the staff to narrow rather than broaden the assistance provided.
Jurik pressure on existing strategies for providing income support. Such borrowing points, here and for further analysis, toward the web of language and program ideas that links activists and their funders across borders for other cases, see Naples and Desai , drawing activists into the bottom-line strategizing that has come to dominate policymaking.
Microenterprises are defined as very small businesses that are owner operated, involve small amounts of startup capital i. Microenterprise development programs hereafter referred to as MDPs aim to provide training and small loans to clients—especially to poor women and men of color—to help them start and operate their own microenterprises.
The enthusiasm for microenterprise development is exemplified by the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank for pioneering work in lending to the poor Dugger Globally, MDPs like the Grameen have been associated with the empowerment of both clients and their communities Counts For many, empowerment is a critical concept in discourses surrounding the new economy and connotes self-reliance and incorporation into market spheres Jurik, Cavender, and Cowgill The peer lending methods developed by some of the more famous MDPs like the Grameen are often identified as a chief source of such empowerment.
If circle member loans are not paid, no further loans are issued until the bad loan s are paid off. The circle members also provide support for one another in business planning and operation. In addition to its empowerment potential, many peer-lending MDPs boasted a 90 percent or better rate of repayment on their loans to clients Balkin Conditions in the new economy have encouraged the widespread identification of microenterprises as a viable avenue for boosting family income.
These conditions include the increasing insecurity faced by workers because of industrial restructuring; government fiscal crises; global competition for cheap labor; layoffs; and the growth of contingent work. Declining government investments in employment, social service, and safety-net The Promises and Realities of U. MDPs were first popularized in southern hemisphere or so-called developing nations, but they also attracted attention in the United States during the decade preceding welfare reform legislation.
MDPs are consistent with neoliberal trends that the sociologist Jill Quadagno describes as a policy shift from the U. MDPs are also praised as an avenue for assisting women who want to combine paid work and child-care responsibilities.
Thus, MDPs seem like an ideal solution for alleviating the insecurities of the new economy, a solution that is consistent with neoliberal ideologies that call for minimal government and the increased integration of everyone and everything into the marketplace McMichael To date, most literature on MDPs focuses on programs in southernhemisphere nations, and the relatively fewer studies of U.
This chapter is drawn from a larger study of microenterprise development programs located in the United States Jurik My research in this area was inspired by involvement in the planning and establishment of an MDP, which I will refer to as MicroEnterprise, Incorporated ME , that was located in a large western U.
Jurik of U. My data on the ME program were supplemented by interviews with a variety of other U. MDP providers. This study revealed a conflict between MPD program missions to help economically marginalized clients operate profitable microenterprises and demands that staff keep program operating costs to a minimum. Despite their many accomplishments, ME and other U.
MDPs made significant changes over the course of their operations. Although most of these changes were important for organizational survival, they often contradicted the visions of poverty alleviation and collective empowerment held by ME founders and many MDP proponents worldwide. Ultimately, there was a disjuncture between the lives of economically marginalized clients and MDP proponent discourse that promised both services to the poor and program cost effectiveness Bhatt, Painter, and Tang Methods In this research, I relied on an institutional ethnography approach to unravel the connections between the everyday experiences of program participants staff and clients and the ruling regimes of the New Economy.
Institutional ethnography begins with concrete, everyday experiences of local-setting participants and identifies problematic issues or disjunctures that they face. With the help of Julie Cowgill and several other research assistants, I gathered data on the ME program and its funders and partnering social service providers.
In addition to obtaining data on the ME program, we also interviewed practitioners from a purposively selected national sample of fifty other U. This research revealed a series of dilemmas that practitioners and clients confronted in trying to meet the goals of their programs. Outlining the dis- The Promises and Realities of U.
I then explored the roots of this problematic by examining connections among programs and between local programs and larger national-international contexts. I examined the historical context of MDP origins and diffusion in southern-hemisphere and U. MDP practice and various extralocal institutional arrangements in government, business, and other social service agencies Campbell and Gregor ; Smith More than twelve years ago, I was invited to attend a meeting of individuals who wanted to begin a self-employment lending program for poor and low-income women in their community.
The steering committee charged with planning the program included women who were community volunteers, civic leaders, social service workers, and academics. Several of the committee leaders had heard about microenterprise lending at a national conference on hunger where speakers argued that even very small loans to support self-employment projects among the poor could promote self-sufficiency and significantly reduce world hunger.
She was convinced that important components of the Grameen model would work for a program in our region. At the meeting I attended, she argued the need to provide both business training and loans to poor women in the city. She also articulated the early guiding mission of the program—that it would focus on immigrant women who operated small, informal enterprises out of their homes to help support their families.
The steering committee wanted to utilize the peer lending model developed by the Grameen and other famous MDPs, including some programs already operating in the United States. I joined the steering committee and coordinated a needs assessment study for the proposed MDP. Jurik nomic conditions of the region in which the program would be located, interviews with established MDPs around the United States, and interviews with local service providers about the perceived need for an MDP in the area.
The local community in which the ME program was located illustrates many of the conditions of the New Economy.
This western region was troubled by continuing layoffs and persistent unemployment even during a period that was widely proclaimed to be one of national economic recovery and local economic boom.
Large numbers of undocumented immigrants and unemployed workers from other parts of the nation were moving into the area looking for work. The new jobs that were generated fell disproportionately in low-wage service employment sectors and lacked health benefits. The number of families living near or below the poverty line was increasing. Despite myriad successes, ME experienced a number of tensions in fulfilling contradictory program goals. The problems that it experienced were consistent with those reported by other U.
MDP providers Jurik 78— Contradictions of Microenterpise Development The experiences of the ME program and the reported experiences of other U. MDPs suggest that in practice, the logic of microenterprise development requires the balancing of often conflicting organizational goals and extralocal demands.
On the one hand are MDP promises to alleviate poverty by extending self-employment opportunities to poor, welfare, and otherwise marginalized clients, and, in some programs, by empowering clients The Promises and Realities of U.
On the other hand, funders expect MDPs to provide services to large numbers of clients, show business successes, and keep loan loss rates and operating costs to a minimum. These funder expectations exist because small lending programs in the U. The new generation of microenterprise lending programs promises to avoid such costly mistakes and inefficient management Adams and Von Pishke ; Morduch Such expectations of businesslike management and program cost-effectiveness pose dilemmas for MDP practitioners.
Additionally, microloans have quickly attained a reputation as a quick fix for poverty and stagnant local economies Bates and Servon Funders anticipate that the high repayment rate on peer loans so often cited by MDP boosters will provide a sufficient source of revenue to cover program operations Jurik Thus, MDP practitioners constantly find themselves struggling to cover operations costs, and this need, in turn, subjects them to the often changing demands of funding sources.
Although some MDPs carefully scrutinize new funding opportunities to maintain consistency with program-identified objectives, most practitioners report that they find themselves modifying program goals, target populations, training, and loan modalities to conform to funding trends and specific grant requirements. In its planning stages, ME made several changes in the program to increase its appeal to potential funders. However, funders cautioned that mentioning women in the title might discourage men and even smack of reverse discrimination.
Funders also recommended that it would be less expensive to train nonpoverty-level clients to start businesses. Jurik ME shifted its target population to focus on low-income as well as povertylevel clients.
However, this commitment on the part of ME leaders and similar commitments made by other MDP providers were repeatedly challenged by expectations that they produce observable success outcomes and simultaneously maintain an aura of costeffective and businesslike program operations. Initially a prototypic manual 3-way valve system, consisting of a 3-way valve, an air pressure regulator, and a manometer, was used to manually toggle between the ventilator and the constant-pressure breath-hold equipment.
The success of the manual 3-way valve system prompted the design of an electronically actuated valve system. In the electronic system, the manual 3-way valve was replaced with a custom designed 3-way valve operated by an electrical solenoid.
The electrical solenoid is triggered by using a hand-held push button or a foot pedal that is several feet away from the gantry of the scanner. This system has provided improved image quality and is safe for the animals, easy to use, and reliable. Premotor neurons encode torsional eye velocity during smooth-pursuit eye movements.
Responses to horizontal and vertical ocular pursuit and head and body rotation in multiple planes were recorded in eye movement-sensitive neurons in the rostral vestibular nuclei VN of two rhesus monkeys. When tested during pursuit through primary eye position, the majority of the cells preferred either horizontal or vertical target motion.
During pursuit of targets that moved horizontally at different vertical eccentricities or vertically at different horizontal eccentricities, eye angular velocity has been shown to include a torsional component the amplitude of which is proportional to half the gaze angle “half-angle rule” of Listing’s law.
Multiple linear regression analysis revealed a significant contribution of torsional eye movement sensitivity to the responsiveness of the cells.
These findings suggest that many VN neurons encode three-dimensional angular velocity , rather than the two-dimensional derivative of eye position, during smooth-pursuit eye movements.
Although no clear clustering of pursuit preferred-direction vectors along the semicircular canal axes was observed, the sensitivity of VN neurons to torsional eye movements might reflect a preservation of similar premotor coding of visual and vestibular-driven slow eye movements for both lateral-eyed and foveate species.
Purpose: To study the oxygen saturation SO2 and breath-holding time variation applied active breathing control ABC in radiotherapy of tumor. And the patient monitor was used to observe the oxygen saturation SO2 variation. The variation of SO2, and length of breath-holding time and the time for recovering to the initial value of SO2 were recorded and analyzed. And the breath-holding time shortened obviously for patients whose SO2 did not recover to normal.
It is necessary to check the SO2 variation in breath training, and enough time should be given to recover SO2. We describe a clinical case study surrounding the behavioral assessment and operant treatment of, an adult with severe mental retardation who engaged in chronic breath-holding. In this clinical case, previous neurological and medical testing had ruled out biological bases for the individual’s breath-holding.
A functional behavioral assessment…. Agreement and repeatability of vascular reactivity estimates based on a breath-hold task and a resting state scan. By complementing a task-related BOLD acquisition with a vascular reactivity measure obtained through breath-holding or hypercapnia, this unwanted variance can be statistically reduced in the BOLD responses of interest. Recently, it has been suggested that vascular reactivity can also be estimated using a resting state scan. This study aimed to compare three breath-hold based analysis approaches block design, sine—cosine regressor and CO2 regressor and a resting state approach CO2 regressor to measure vascular reactivity.
We tested BOLD variance explained by the model and repeatability of the measures. Fifteen healthy participants underwent a breath-hold task and a resting state scan with end-tidal CO2 being recorded during both.
Maps and regional vascular reactivity estimates showed high repeatability when the breath-hold task was used. Repeatability and variance explained by the CO2 trace regressor were lower for the resting state data based approach, which resulted in highly variable measures of vascular reactivity.
We conclude that breath-hold based vascular reactivity estimations are more repeatable than resting-based estimates, and that there are limitations with replacing breath-hold scans by resting state scans for vascular reactivity assessment. Both CO 2 inhalation followed by hyperventilation and breath-holding have been utilized to measure cerebral vasomotor reactivity VMR but their correlation has been poorly studied and understood. A retrospective study was conducted in subjects The mean BHI was 0.
Move dish and sample into the cell culture This study aimed to compare three breath-hold based analysis approaches block design, sine-cosine regressor and CO2 regressor and a resting state approach CO2 regressor to measure vascular reactivity. Published by Elsevier Inc. Boson sampling is a problem strongly believed to be intractable for classical computers, but can be naturally solved on a specialized photonic quantum simulator.
The protocol requires only one single-photon source, two detectors, and a loop-based interferometer for an arbitrary number of photons. The single-photon pulse train is time-bin encoded and deterministically injected into an electrically programmable multimode network.
The observed three- and four-photon boson sampling rates are Volumetric velocity measurements in restricted geometries using spiral sampling : a phantom study. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of maximum velocity measurements using volumetric phase-contrast imaging with spiral readouts in a stenotic flow phantom.
In a phantom model, maximum velocity , flow, pressure gradient, and streamline visualizations were evaluated using volumetric phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging MRI with velocity encoding in one extending on current clinical practice and three directions for characterization of the flow field using spiral readouts.
Results of maximum velocity and pressure drop were compared to computational fluid dynamics CFD simulations, as well as corresponding low-echo-time TE Cartesian data. Flow was compared to 2D through-plane phase contrast PC upstream from the restriction.
Results obtained with 3D through-plane PC as well as 4D PC at shortest TE using a spiral readout showed excellent agreements with the maximum velocity values obtained with CFD velocity location, as well as the accurate velocity quantification can be obtained in stenotic regions using short-TE spiral volumetric PC imaging.
Marijuana smoking: effects of varying puff volume and breathhold duration. Two studies were conducted to quantify biological and behavioral effects resulting from exposure to controlled doses of marijuana smoke. Each study also varied levels of delta 9-tetrahydro-cannabinol marijuana cigarette content 1. Subjects smoked 10 puffs in each of six sessions; a seventh, nonsmoking session all measures recorded at the same times as in active smoking sessions served as a control.
Variations in puff volume produced significant dose-related changes in postsmoking plasma delta 9-tetrahydro-cannabinol levels, carbon monoxide boost and subjective effects e.
In contrast, breathholding for 10 or 20 sec versus 0 sec increased plasma delta 9-tetrahydro-cannabinol levels but not CO boost or subjective effects. Task performance measures were not reliably influenced by marijuana smoke exposure within the dosing ranges examined.
These findings confirm the utility of the controlled smoking technology, support the notion that cumulative puff volume systematically influences biological exposure and subjective effects, but cast doubt on the common belief that prolonged breathholding of marijuana smoke enhances classical subjective effects associated with its reinforcing value in humans. Zhang, Ziheng; Dione, Donald P. A novel MR imaging technique, spatial modulation of magnetization with polarity alternating velocity encoding SPAMM-PAV , is presented to simultaneously examine the left ventricular early diastolic temporal relationships between myocardial deformation and intra-cavity hemodynamics with a high temporal resolution of 14 ms.
This approach is initially evaluated in a dynamic flow and tissue mimicking phantom. A comparison of regional longitudinal strains and intra-cavity pressure differences integration of computed in-plane pressure gradients within a selected region in relation to mitral valve inflow velocities is performed in eight normal volunteers.
Our results demonstrate that apical regions have higher strain rates 0. This pattern is reversed during the deceleration period, when the strain-rates in the basal regions are the highest 0. A positive base-to-apex gradient in peak pressure difference is observed during acceleration, followed by a negative base-to apex gradient during deceleration. These studies shed insight into the regional volumetric and pressure difference changes in the left ventricle during early diastolic filling.
Breast tumor hemodynamic response during a breath-hold as a biomarker to predict chemotherapeutic efficacy: preclinical study. Therefore, it requires a perturbation of physiological signals, such as blood flow and oxygenation.
In that sense, a few groups reported that monitoring a relative hemodynamic change during a breast tissue compression or a breath-hold to a patient can provide good contrast between tumor and nontumor.
However, no longitudinal study reports the utilization of a breath-hold to predict tumor response during chemotherapy. A continuous wave near-infrared spectroscopy was employed to monitor hemodynamics in rat breast tumor during a hyperoxic to normoxic inhalational gas intervention to mimic a breath-hold during tumor growth and chemotherapy.
The reduced oxyhemoglobin concentration during inhalational gas intervention correlated well with tumor growth, and it responded one day earlier than the change of tumor volume after chemotherapy.
In conclusion, monitoring tumor hemodynamics during a breath-hold may serve as a biomarker to predict chemotherapeutic efficacy of tumor. Left ventricle changes early after breath-holding in deep water in elite apnea divers. To study by ultrasounds cardiac morphology and function early after breath-hold diving in deep water in elite athletes. Each subject performed a series of three consecutive breath-hold dives and 40 m depth.
End-diastolic left ventricular LV diameter EDD and end-diastolic LV volume EDV increased significantly p breath-hold diving due to favorable changes in loading conditions relative to pre-diving, namely the recruitment of left ventricular preload reserve and the reduction in afterload. Dark chocolate reduces endothelial dysfunction after successive breath-hold dives in cool water. The aim of this study is to observe the effects of dark chocolate on endothelial function after a series of successive apnea dives in non-thermoneutral water.
Twenty breath-hold divers were divided into two groups: a control group 8 males and 2 females and a chocolate group 9 males and 1 female. The chocolate group performed the dives 1 h after ingestion of 30 g of dark chocolate. A significant decrease in FMD was observed in the control group after the dives No differences in digital photoplethysmography and peroxynitrites were observed between before and after the dives.
Antioxidants contained in dark chocolate scavenge free radicals produced during breath-hold diving. Ingestion of 30 g of dark chocolate 1 h before the dive can thus prevent endothelial dysfunction which can be observed after a series of breath-hold dives. Validation of high temporal resolution spiral phase velocity mapping of temporal patterns of left and right coronary artery blood flow against Doppler guidewire.
Temporal patterns of coronary blood flow velocity can provide important information on disease state and are currently assessed invasively using a Doppler guidewire. A non-invasive alternative would be beneficial as it would allow study of a wider patient population and serial scanning. A retrospectively-gated breath-hold spiral phase velocity mapping sequence TR 19 ms was developed at 3 Tesla. Velocity maps were acquired in 8 proximal right and 15 proximal left coronary arteries of 18 subjects who had previously had a Doppler guidewire study at the time of coronary angiography.
Cardiovascular magnetic resonance CMR velocity -time curves were processed semi-automatically and compared with corresponding invasive Doppler data.
High temporal resolution breath-hold spiral phase velocity mapping underestimates absolute values of coronary flow velocity but allows accurate assessment of the temporal patterns of blood flow. MR imaging of the human heart without explicit cardiac synchronization promises to extend the applicability of cardiac MR to a larger patient population and potentially expand its diagnostic capabilities. However, conventional non-gated imaging techniques typically suffer from low image quality or inadequate spatio-temporal resolution and fidelity.
Patient-Adaptive Reconstruction and Acquisition in Dynamic Imaging with Sensitivity Encoding PARADISE is a highly-accelerated non-gated dynamic imaging method that enables artifact-free imaging with high spatio-temporal resolutions by utilizing novel computational techniques to optimize the imaging process. In addition to using parallel imaging, the method gains acceleration from a physiologically-driven spatio-temporal support model; hence, it is doubly accelerated.
The support model is patient-adaptive, i. The proposed method is also doubly adaptive as it adapts both the acquisition and reconstruction schemes.
Based on the theory of time-sequential sampling , the proposed framework explicitly accounts for speed limitations of gradient encoding and provides performance guarantees on achievable image quality. Determination of ethane, pentane and isoprene in exhaled air–effects of breath-holding , flow rate and purified air. Exhaled ethane, pentane and isoprene have been proposed as biomarkers of oxidative stress. The objectives were to explore whether ethane, pentane and isoprene are produced within the airways and to explore the effect of different sampling parameters on analyte concentrations.
The flow dependency of the analyte concentrations, the concentrations in dead-space and alveolar air after breath-holding and the influence of inhaling purified air on analyte concentrations were investigated.
The analytical method involved thermal desorption from sorbent tubes and gas chromatography. The studied group comprised 13 subjects with clinically stable asthma and 14 healthy controls. After breath-holding , no significant changes in ethane levels were observed.
Pentane and isoprene levels increased significantly after 20 s of breath-holding. Inhalation of purified air before exhalation resulted in a substantial decrease in ethane levels, a moderate decrease in pentane levels and an increase in isoprene levels.
The major fractions of exhaled ethane, pentane and isoprene seem to be of systemic origin. There was, however, a tendency for ethane to be flow rate dependent in asthmatic subjects, although to a very limited extent, suggesting that small amounts of ethane may be formed in the airways.
Double-blind, placebo-controlled trial on the effect of piracetam on breath-holding spells. Breath-holding spells BHS are apparently frightening events occurring in otherwise healthy children. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of piracetam in the treatment of breath-holding spells. Forty patients with BHS who were classified into two groups were involved in a double-blinded placebo-controlled prospective study.
Piracetam was given to group A while group B received placebo. Patients were followed monthly for a total period of 4 months. There was a significant decline of number of attacks after piracetam treatment compared to placebo p value breath-holding spells in children. Evaluation of correlation between physical properties and ultrasonic pulse velocity of fired clay samples.
The aim of this study is to establish a correlation between physical properties and ultrasonic pulse velocity of clay samples fired at elevated temperatures. Brick-making clay and pottery clay were studied for this purpose. A commercial ultrasonic testing instrument Proceq Pundit Lab was used to evaluate the ultrasonic pulse velocity measurements for each fired clay sample as a function of temperature. It was observed that there became a relationship between physical properties and ultrasonic pulse velocities of the samples.
The results showed that in consequence of increasing densification of the samples , the differences between the ultrasonic pulse velocities were higher with increasing temperature. These findings may facilitate the use of ultrasonic pulse velocity for the estimation of physical properties of fired clay samples.
In a series of breath-hold acquisitions, three-dimensional data were acquired initially for prospective image registration of subsequent BOLD measurements. Prospective image registration and BOLD imaging of each kidney was achieved within a total measurement time of about 17 s, enabling its execution within a single breath-hold.
Magn Reson Med , Sensory neurons integrate information about the world, adapting their sampling to its changes. However, little is understood mechanistically how this primary encoding process, which ultimately limits perception, depends upon stimulus statistics.
Here, we analyze this open question systematically by using intracellular recordings from fly Drosophila melanogaster and Coenosia attenuata photoreceptors and corresponding stochastic simulations from biophysically realistic photoreceptor models. Simulations reveal how a photoreceptor’s information capture depends critically upon the stochastic refractoriness of its 30, sampling units microvilli.
In daylight, refractoriness sacrifices sensitivity to enhance intensity changes in neural image representations, with more and faster microvilli improving encoding. But for GWN and other stimuli, which lack longer dark contrasts of real-world intensity changes that reduce microvilli refractoriness, these performance gains are submaximal and energetically costly.
Decompression sickness in breath-hold divers: a review. Although it has been generally assumed that the risk of decompression sickness is virtually zero during a single breath-hold dive in humans, repeated dives may result in a cumulative increase in the tissue and blood nitrogen tension.
Many species of marine mammals perform extensive foraging bouts with deep and long dives interspersed by a short surface interval, and some human divers regularly perform repeated dives to m or a single dive to more than m, all of which may result in nitrogen concentrations that elicit symptoms of decompression sickness.
Neurological problems have been reported in humans after single or repeated dives and recent necropsy reports in stranded marine mammals were suggestive of decompression sickness-like symptoms. Modelling attempts have suggested that marine mammals may live permanently with elevated nitrogen concentrations and may be at risk when altering their dive behaviour.
In humans, non-pathogenic bubbles have been recorded and symptoms of decompression sickness have been reported after repeated dives to modest depths. The mechanisms implicated in these accidents indicate that repeated breath-hold dives with short surface intervals are factors that predispose to decompression sickness. Optimising diffusion-weighted MR imaging for demonstrating pancreatic cancer: a comparison of respiratory-triggered, free-breathing and breath-hold techniques.
Two radiologists, independently and blindly, assigned total image quality scores [sum of rating diffusion images lesion detection, anatomy, presence of artefacts and ADC maps lesion characterisation, overall image quality ] per technique and ranked them.
Total image quality scores for respiratory-triggered, free-breathing and breath-hold techniques were The respiratory-triggered technique had a significantly higher ranking. Lesion SI on all b-values and signal-to-noise ratio on b and b were significantly higher for the respiratory-triggered technique. For respiratory-triggered, free-breathing and breath-hold techniques the mean ADCs were 1.
Anonymized images were randomized for blinded review by two independent readers for image quality, artifact severity in 8 defined vessel segments and aortic dimensions in 6 standard sites.
Comparison and reproducibility of ADC measurements in breathhold , respiratory triggered, and free-breathing diffusion-weighted MR imaging of the liver. To compare and determine the reproducibility of apparent diffusion coefficient ADC measurements of the normal liver parenchyma in breathhold , respiratory triggered, and free-breathing diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging DWI. Eleven healthy volunteers underwent three series of DWI.
ADCs of the liver parenchyma were compared by using nonparametric tests. Reproducibility was assessed by the Bland-Altman method. ADC measurements of the normal liver parenchyma in respiratory triggered DWI are significantly higher and less reproducible than in breathhold and free-breathing DWI. Copyright c Wiley-Liss, Inc. Qualitative assessment of contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography using breath-hold and non-breath-hold techniques in the portal venous system.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the image quality in delineation of the portal venous systems with two different methods, breath-hold and non-breath-hold by using the 3D FLASH sequence. We used a 1. Our study showed contrast-enhanced 3D FLASH MR angiography, together with the breath-hold technique, may provide reliable and accurate information on the portal venous system. Time-instant sampling based encoding of time-varying acoustic spectrum.
The inner ear has been shown to characterize an acoustic stimuli by transducing fluid motion in the inner ear to mechanical bending of stereocilia on the inner hair cells IHCs.
Subsequently, the afferent auditory nerve fiber ANF bundle samples the encoded waveform in the IHCs by synapsing with them. In this work we focus on sampling of information by afferent ANFs from the IHCs, and show computationally that sampling at specific time instants is sufficient for decoding of time-varying acoustic spectrum embedded in the acoustic stimuli.
The approach is based on sampling the signal at its zero-crossings and higher-order derivative zero-crossings. We show results of the approach on time-varying acoustic spectrum estimation from cricket call signal recording.
The framework gives a time-domain and non-spatial processing perspective to auditory signal processing. The approach works on the full band signal, and is devoid of modeling any bandpass filtering mimicking the BM action.
Instead, we motivate the approach from the perspective of event-triggered sampling by afferent ANFs on the stimuli encoded in the IHCs. Though the approach gives acoustic spectrum estimation but it is shallow on its complete understanding for plausible bio-mechanical replication with current mammalian auditory mechanics insights.
Reflex anoxic seizures ‘white breath-holding ‘ : nonepileptic vagal attacks. From clinical history 58 children were diagnosed as having reflex anoxic seizures secondary to provoked cardioinhibition also known as white breath-holding attacks. Before referral, these seizures were commonly misdiagnosed as epileptic either because the provocation was ignored, not recognised, or was a febrile illness, or because there was no crying, no obvious breath-holding , little cyanosis, and often no pallor to suggest syncope and cerebral ischaemia.
The duration of cardiac asystole after ocular compression was measured in these children and in 60 additional children with other paroxysmal disorders. Review of the literature supports the concept that these seizures result from vagal-mediated reflex cardiac arrest which can if necessary be prevented by atropine. The simple name ‘vagal attack’ is proposed. Images Figs. This work was aimed at estimating the concentrations of proteins encoded by human chromosome 18 Chr 18 in plasma samples of 54 healthy male volunteers aged These young persons have been certified by the medical evaluation board as healthy subjects ready for space flight training.
Over stable isotope-labeled peptide standards SIS were synthesized to perform the measurements of proteins encoded by Chr These proteins were quantified in whole and depleted plasma samples. A minor part of the proteins mostly representing intracellular proteins was characterized by extremely high inter individual variations.
The results provide a background for studies of a potential biomarker in plasma among proteins encoded by Chr Breath-holding spells may be associated with maturational delay in myelination of brain stem. To evaluate possible contribution of maturational delay of brain stem in the etiology of breath-holding spells in children using brain stem auditory evoked potentials.
The study group included children who experienced breath-holding spells. The control group consisted of healthy age- and sex-matched children. Age, gender, type and frequency of spell, hemoglobin, and ferritin levels in study group and brain stem auditory evoked potentials results in both groups were recorded. Study group was statistically compared with control group for brain stem auditory evoked potentials.
The mean age of study and control groups was The III-V and I-V interpeak latencies were significantly prolonged in the study group compared with the control group 2.
At the same time, III-V and I-V interpeak latencies of patients without anemia in the study group compared with those of control group were significantly prolonged 2. Our results consider that maturational delay in myelination of brain stem may have a role in the etiology of breath-holding spells in children. Hall effect encoding of brushless dc motors.
Encoding mechanism integral to the motor and using the permanent magnets embedded in the rotor eliminates the need for external devices to encode information relating the position and velocity of the rotating member.
Preliminary observations on the effect of hypoxic and hyperbaric stress on pulmonary gas exchange in breath-hold divers. Pulmonary diffusing capacity to carbon monoxide DLCO and nitric oxide DLNO , haemoglobin Hb and haematocrit Hct were measured in six elite divers before and at 2, 10 and 25 minutes after a maximal breath-hold dive to a depth of 10 metres’ sea water.
Compared to pre-dive, DLCO showed a slight increase at 2 minutes in five subjects and a tendency to decrease at 25 minutes P breath-hold dive. Recent advances in echocardiography allow real-time 3-D dynamic image acquisition of the heart. However, one of the major limitations of 3-D echocardiography is the limited field of view, which results in an acquisition insufficient to cover the whole geometry of the heart. This study proposes the novel approach of fusing multiple 3-D echocardiography images using an optical tracking system that incorporates breath-hold position tracking to infer that the heart remains at the same position during different acquisitions.
The proposed method yielded a field of view improvement of To improve the quality of the fused image, a wavelet-based fusion algorithm was developed that computes pixelwise likelihood values for overlapping voxels from multiple image views.
The proposed wavelet-based fusion approach yielded significant improvement in contrast The new data confirm the cylindrical rotation observed at -6 Degree-Sign and -8 Degree-Sign and are an excellent fit to themore » Shen et al. N-body bar model.
Our survey finds no strong evidence of previously unknown kinematic streams. We also publish our complete catalog of radial velocities , photometry, TiO band strengths, and spectra, which is available at the Infrared Science Archive as well as at UCLA. The effect of deep inspiration breath-hold on tumour oxygenation. To investigate the influence of deep inspiration breath-hold on the oxygen tension of in-vivo tumours measured using an Eppendorf pO2 histograph.
Change in oxygen tension was assessed using the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. Thirty patients were entered in to this protocol. The median maximum tumour dimension was 4 cm. The median of the median pO2 of these tumours was 18 mmHg. Oxygen tension measurements along pairs of tracks per tumour median of 2 were obtained. In six tumours, the values during NB were significantly higher than during DIBH, whereas, for six other tumours, the relationship was the opposite; for the remaining 18 patients, no significant difference was observed.
These data show heterogeneity of tumour oxygenation seen with in-situ tumours both at baseline and as a result of DIBH.
Sherrah, Andrew G. Background Chronic descending thoracic aortic dissection CDTAD following surgical repair of ascending aortic dissection requires long-term imaging surveillance. We investigated four-dimensional 4D -flow magnetic resonance imaging MRI with a novel multi- velocity encoding multi-VENC technique as an emerging clinical method enabling the dynamic quantification of blood volume and velocity throughout the cardiac cycle.
Measuring vascular reactivity with resting-state blood oxygenation level-dependent BOLD signal fluctuations: A potential alternative to the breath-holding challenge?
Measurement of the ability of blood vessels to dilate and constrict, known as vascular reactivity, is often performed with breath-holding tasks that transiently raise arterial blood carbon dioxide P a CO 2 levels. However, following the proper commands for a breath-holding experiment may be difficult or impossible for many patients.
In this study, we evaluated two approaches for obtaining vascular reactivity information using blood oxygenation level-dependent signal fluctuations obtained from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data: physiological fluctuation regression and coefficient of variation of the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging signal.
This technique may eliminate the need for subject cooperation, thus allowing the evaluation of vascular reactivity in a wider range of clinical and research conditions in which it may otherwise be impractical. An improved target velocity sampling algorithm for free gas elastic scattering. We present an improved algorithm for sampling the target velocity when simulating elastic scattering in a Monte Carlo neutron transport code that correctly accounts for the energy dependence of the scattering cross section.
The algorithm samples the relative velocity directly, thereby avoiding a potentially inefficient rejection step based on the ratio of cross sections. Here, we have shown that this algorithm requires only one rejection step, whereas other methods of similar accuracy require two rejection steps.
The method was verified against stochastic and deterministic reference results for upscattering percentages in U. Whole-heart magnetic resonance coronary angiography with multiple breath-holds and automatic breathing-level tracking.
Whole-heart WH magnetic resonance coronary angiography MRCA studies are usually performed during free breathing while monitoring the position of the diaphragm with real-time motion correction.
However, this results in a long scan time and the patient’s breathing pattern may change, causing the study to be aborted. However, one problem in the mBH method is that patients cannot hold their breath at the same position every time, leading to image degradation. We have developed a new WH MRCA imaging method that employs both the mBH method and automatic breathing-level tracking to permit automatic tracking of the changes in breathing or breath-hold levels. Evaluation of its effects on WH MRCA image quality showed that this method can provide high-quality images within a shorter scan time.
Reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold irradiation with forward intensity-modulated radiotherapy for left-sided breast cancer significantly reduces cardiac radiation exposure compared to inverse intensity-modulated radiotherapy.
To investigate the objective utility of our clinical routine of reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold irradiation for left-sided breast cancer patients on reducing cardiac exposure. Free-breathing and reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold scans were evaluated for our 10 consecutive left-sided breast cancer patients treated with reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold. Both inverse and forward intensity-modulated radiotherapy plans were generated for each computed tomography dataset.
Reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold plans with forward intensity-modulated radiotherapy significantly spared the heart and left anterior descending artery compared to generated free-breathing plans based on mean doses – free-breathing vs reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold , left ventricle Reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold and free-breathing plans with inverse intensity-modulated radiotherapy provided similar organ at risk sparing by reducing the mean doses to the left ventricle, left anterior descending artery, heart, VV20 of the heart and right ventricle.
However, forward intensity-modulated radiotherapy showed significant reduction in doses to the left ventricle, left anterior descending artery, heart, right ventricle, and contralateral breast mean dose, The mean doses for free-breathing vs reproducible deep-inspiration breath-hold of the proximal left anterior descending artery were 1.
A method is presented that combines steady-state free precession SSFP cine imaging with myocardial tagging. Imaging is continued immediately after tagging preparation, using linearly increasing startup angles LISA with a rampup over 10 pulses.
Interleaved segmented k-space ordering is used to prevent artifacts from the increasing signal during the LISA rampup. The measurements were performed in phantoms and in six subjects applying breathhold cine imaging with tagging temporal resolution 51 ms.
The results show that ghost artifacts are negligible for the LISA method. Copyright Wiley-Liss, Inc. The effect of CO2 on ventilation and breath-holding during exercise and while breathing through an added resistance. Ventilation was measured while subjects were made to rebreathe from a bag containing CO 2 and O 2 in order to expose them to a steadily rising CO 2 tension P CO2.
The object of the experiments was to determine the effect of a variety of stimuli upon the increase in ventilation and fall in breath-holding time which occurs in response to the rising P CO2. Steady-state exercise at kg. These results have been interpreted with the aid of a model of the control of breath-holding and it is suggested that there is no change in CO 2 sensitivity on exercise, either during rebreathing or breath-holding. An increase in the resistance to breathing caused a marked reduction in S V and B V , but no change in the breath-holding-CO 2 response curve.
These findings suggest that the flattening of the ventilation-CO 2 response curve is mechanical in origin and acute airway obstruction produces no change in CO 2 sensitivity. On the basis of these results, we suggest that more information about CO 2 sensitivity can be obtained by a combination of ventilation and breath-holding-CO 2 response curves.
Evolution of microstructure and elastic wave velocities in dehydrated gypsum samples. We report on changes in P and S-wave velocities and rock microstructure induced by devolatilization reactions using gypsum as a reference analog material.
Cylindrical samples of natural alabaster were dehydrated in air, at ambient pressure, and temperatures between and K. Concurrently, P and S-wave velocities linearly decreased with porosity from 5. It is concluded that a linearized empirical Raymer-type model extended by a critical porosity term and based on the respective time dependent mineral and pore volumes reasonably replicates the P and S-wave data in relation to reaction progress and porosity.
This study determined 1 how many vessels i. Functional slitlamp biomicroscope was used to image hundreds of venules per subject. The bulbar conjunctiva in five healthy human subjects was imaged on six different locations in the temporal bulbar conjunctiva.
The histograms of the diameter and velocity were plotted to examine whether the distribution was normal. Standard errors were calculated from the standard deviation and vessel sample size. The ratio of the standard error of the mean over the population mean was used to determine the sample size cutoff. The velocity was plotted as a function of the vessel diameter to display the distribution of the diameter and velocity. The distributions of the diameter and velocity were not only unimodal, but also somewhat positively skewed and not normal.
Temporal distribution of favourite books, movies, and records: differential encoding and re- sampling. The reminiscence bump is the effect that people recall more personal events from early adulthood than from childhood or adulthood. The bump has been examined extensively. However, the question of whether the bump is caused by differential encoding or re- sampling is still unanswered.
To examine this issue, participants were asked to name their three favourite books, movies, and records. Furthermore,they were asked when they first encountered them.
We compared the temporal distributions and found that they all showed recency effects and reminiscence bumps. The distribution of favourite books had the largest recency effect and the distribution of favourite records had the largest reminiscence bump.
We can explain these results by the difference in rehearsal. Books are read two or three times, movies are watched more frequently, whereas records are listened to numerous times. The results suggest that differential encoding initially causes the reminiscence bump and that re- sampling increases the bump further. Chronic daily headache with analgesics overuse in professional women breath-hold divers.
The object of this study is to investigate the prevalence and characteristics of headache in Korean professional women breath-hold divers, including their overuse of analgesics. Headache is a common problem encountered in clinical practice, and undersea divers exhibit unique causes of headache in addition to other common primary headaches.
Many scuba divers are known to use various types of drugs to overcome dive-related symptoms or to enhance their underwater performance. The target population of this study was women divers in the northern district of Jeju Island who were registered in the divers’ union.
Data were collected using telephone interviews with a structured questionnaire. Headache was diagnosed and classified according to criteria of the International Headache Society. Nine hundred and eleven The prevalence rates of headache were One hundred and four divers Overuse of combination analgesics was reported by Women divers with CDH were significantly older and they complained more of tinnitus and dizziness, and had a greater history of hypertension than divers without headache.
The prevalence of CDH is high in Korean professional women breath-hold divers, with many of them being combination-analgesics overusers. Decompression sickness in breath-hold diving, and its probable connection to the growth and dissolution of small arterial gas emboli. We solved the Laplace equation for the radius of an arterial gas embolism AGE , during and after breath-hold diving. We used a simple three-region diffusion model for the AGE, and applied our results to two types of breath-hold dives: single, very deep competitive-level dives and repetitive shallower breath-hold dives similar to those carried out by indigenous commercial pearl divers in the South Pacific.
Because of the effect of surface tension, AGEs tend to dissolve in arterial blood when arteries remote from supersaturated tissue. However if, before fully dissolving, they reach the capillary beds that perfuse the brain and the inner ear, they may become inflated with inert gas that is transferred into them from these contiguous temporarily supersaturated tissues.
By using simple kinetic models of cerebral and inner ear tissue, the nitrogen tissue partial pressures during and after the dive s were determined. These were used to theoretically calculate AGE growth and dissolution curves for AGEs lodged in capillaries of the brain and inner ear. From these curves it was found that both cerebral and inner ear decompression sickness are expected to occur occasionally in single competitive-level dives.
Our predictions both for single competitive-level and repetitive commercial breath-hold diving were consistent with what is known about the incidence of cerebral and inner ear decompression sickness in these forms of diving. Inter- and intraobserver agreement of ADC measurements of lung cancer in free breathing, breath-hold and respiratory triggered diffusion-weighted MRI. To prospectively evaluate the inter- and intraobserver agreement of apparent diffusion coefficient ADC measurements in free breathing, breath-hold , and respiratory triggered diffusion-weighted imaging DWI of lung cancer.
Lesion ADCs were measured twice by both of the two independent observers and compared. Great inter- and intraobserver agreement was shown. According to statistical analyses of the multiplicity functions, we conclude in two volume-limited Main galaxy samples : small stellar velocity dispersion galaxies preferentially form isolated galaxies, close pairs and small group, while large stellar velocity dispersion galaxies preferentially inhabit the dense groups and clusters.
A comprehensive study of sampling -based optimum signal detection in concentration- encoded molecular communication. In this paper, a comprehensive analysis of the sampling -based optimum signal detection in ideal i.
Information is encoded by modulating the amplitude of the transmission rate of information molecules at the TN.
The critical issues involved in the sampling -based receiver thus developed are addressed in detail, and its performance in terms of the number of samples per symbol, communication range, and transmission data rate is evaluated. In addition, the performance of the optimum receiver depends on the receiver’s ability to compute the ISI accurately, thus providing a trade-off between receiver complexity and achievable bit error rate BER. Exact and approximate detection performances have been derived.
Dive-related injuries are relatively common, but almost exclusively occur in recreational or scuba diving. We report 2 children with acute central nervous system complications after breath-hold diving. After ascent, he suddenly felt extreme thoracic pain that resolved spontaneously. Neurologic examination revealed right leg weakness and sensory deficits with a sensory level at T5. A few weeks later, a year-old girl was admitted with acute dizziness, personality changes, confusion, and headache.
After stepping out, she felt sudden severe thoracic pain and lost consciousness. Shortly later she reported headache and vertigo, and numbness of the complete left side of her body. Neurologic examination revealed reduced sensibility to all modalities, a positive Romberg test, and vertigo.
Cerebral MRI revealed no pathologic findings. Both children experienced a strikingly similar clinical course. The chronology of events strongly suggests that both patients were suffering from arterial gas embolism. This condition has been reported for the first time to occur in children after breath-hold diving beneath the water surface without glossopharyngeal insufflation.
Scalable boson sampling with time-bin encoding using a loop-based architecture. We present an architecture for arbitrarily scalable boson sampling using two nested fiber loops. The architecture has fixed experimental complexity, irrespective of the size of the desired interferometer, whose scale is limited only by fiber and switch loss rates.
The architecture employs time-bin encoding , whereby the incident photons form a pulse train, which enters the loops. Dynamically controlled loop coupling ratios allow the construction of the arbitrary linear optics interferometers required for boson sampling. The architecture employs only a single point of interference and may thus be easier to stabilize than other approaches. The scheme has polynomial complexity and could be realized using demonstrated present-day technologies.
MR angiography of the renal artery: comparison of breath-hold two-dimensional phase-contrast cine technique with the phased-array coil and breath-hold two-dimensional time-of-flight technique with the body coil. A PC technique with k-space segmentation was utilized with the phased-array coil.
With cardiac triggering, distal renal arteries were well demonstrated in PC MR angiography. On PC images, up- or downward movements of the mid to distal renal arteries with aortic pulsatility were recognized.
The mid to distal portions of the renal arteries translationally move with aortic pulsatility. To consistently visualize and evaluate them on MR angiography, cardiac triggering might be required to reduce the effects of pulsatile motions of the renal artery in the use of a phased-array coil. Potential, velocity , and density fields from sparse and noisy redshift-distance samples – Method. A method for recovering the three-dimensional potential, velocity , and density fields from large-scale redshift-distance samples is described.
Galaxies are taken as tracers of the velocity field, not of the mass. The density field and the initial conditions are calculated using an iterative procedure that applies the no-vorticity assumption at an initial time and uses the Zel’dovich approximation to relate initial and final positions of particles on a grid. The method is tested using a cosmological N-body simulation ‘observed’ at the positions of real galaxies in a redshift-distance sample , taking into account their distance measurement errors.
Malmquist bias and other systematic and statistical errors are extensively explored using both analytical techniques and Monte Carlo simulations. These calibrations were established for axial single-slice breath-hold imaging at the location of the portal vein. Scanning in multi-slice mode makes the exam more efficient, since whole-liver coverage can be achieved with two breath-holds and the optimal slice can be selected afterward.
Navigator echoes remove the need for breath-holds and allow use in sedated patients. Bland-Altman analysis showed that all imaging method comparisons were strongly associated with each other and had high correlation coefficients 0. Linear regression yielded slopes that were close to 1. We conclude that these three R2. Corrected tetralogy of Fallot: comparison of tissue doppler imaging and velocity-encoded MR for assessment of performance and temporal activation of right ventricle.
To compare velocity-encoded VE magnetic resonance MR imaging with tissue Doppler imaging to assess right ventricular RV peak systolic velocities and timing of velocities in patients with corrected tetralogy of Fallot and healthy subjects. Local institutional review board approval was obtained; patients or their parents gave informed consent. Thirty-three patients 20 male, 13 female; median age, 12 years; interquartile range [IQR], years; age range, years and 19 control subjects 12 male, seven female; median age, 14 years; IQR, years; age range, years underwent VE MR imaging and tissue Doppler imaging.
Data were analyzed by using linear regression, paired and unpaired tests, and Bland-Altman plots. Good correlation and agreement between the two techniques were observed. Both techniques can be used interchangeably to clinically assess velocities and timing of velocities of.
Cardiac changes induced by immersion and breath-hold diving in humans. To evaluate the separate cardiovascular response to body immersion and increased environmental pressure during diving, 12 healthy male subjects mean age Heart rate, left ventricular volumes, stroke volume, and cardiac output were obtained by underwater echocardiography.
Dueck, Jenny, E-mail: jenny. Purpose: The safe clinical implementation of pencil beam scanning PBS proton therapy for lung tumors is complicated by the delivery uncertainties caused by breathing motion. The purpose of this feasibility study was to investigate whether a voluntary breath-hold technique could limit the delivery uncertainties resulting from interfractional motion. Methods and Materials: Data from 15 patients with peripheral lung tumors previously treated with stereotactic radiation therapy were included in this study.
The patients had 1 computed tomographic CT scan in voluntary breath-hold acquired before treatment and 3 scans during the treatment course. PBS proton treatment plans with 2 fields 2F andmore » 3 fields 3F , respectively, were calculated based on the planning CT scan and subsequently recalculated on the 3 repeated CT scans. Conclusions: The breath-hold approach is a realistic clinical option for treating lung tumors with PBS proton therapy.
On the basis of these results, the baseline shift of the tumor should be monitored eg, through image guided therapy , and appropriate measures should be taken accordingly. The intrafractional motion needs to be investigated to confirm that the breath-hold approach is robust.
The first major huddle to the study was to determine the effect of the overnight shipping of the viability of. Breath-hold times in air compared to breath-hold times during cold water immersions. The exercise was designed to provide firsth and experience of the effects of cold water exposure on BH time. The first BH was completed while standing on the pool deck. There were 40 of the volunteers who also breathed from an emergency breathing system EBS while in the cold water.
Results demonstrated that BH capabilities in cold water were significantly lower than those in ambient air. A significant correlation was also found between BH in air and the difference in cold water vs. The BH times for this group were similar to those reported in previous cold water immersion studies.
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Comparison of 4D flow and 2D velocity-encoded phase contrast MRI sequences for the evaluation of aortic hemodynamics. When she got a job, it was at night. An owner of a document was the person, usually a process engineer, who was responsible for the correct maintenance of the document in compliance with ISO. The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of voluntary breath-holding on brain activity and physiological functions. Morphological traits of Nunduva komarkovae.❿
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