Continuous Fight Research Articles

A Comparative Review of the Lipoglycopeptides: Oritavancin, Dalbavancin, and Telavancin

Resistance to antibiotics among gram-positive bacteria, especially enterococci and staphylococci, has led to the need to develop new antibiotics. Vancomycin, a glycopeptide antibiotic, has been used for over 3 decades to treat serious methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections. The increased frequency of multidrug-resistant bacteria, especially vancomycin-resistant strains, has focused interest on three new lipoglycopeptides for the treatment of infections caused by gram-positive bacteria: oritavancin, dalbavancin, and telavancin. Although oritavancin and dalbavancin are still in development, telavancin received approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration in September 2009 for treatment of complicated skin and skin structure infections. Structurally different from vancomycin and teicoplanin, all three lipoglycopeptides have greater potency and less potential for development of resistant organisms. Of particular importance is the activity of oritavancin, dalbavancin, and telavancin against vancomycin-resistant organisms. In addition, the pharmacokinetic properties of these new antimicrobials substantially differ from those of vancomycin. Both oritavancin and dalbavancin have long terminal half-lives, which may allow for infrequent dosing. In addition, oritavancin is primarily cleared through hepatic pathways, which makes it potentially useful in patients with renal compromise. In animal models, these new lipoglycopeptides were effective in treating serious gram-positive infections, including complicated skin and skin structure infections, endocarditis, bacteremia, and pneumonia; in clinical studies, however, efficacy was shown only in complicated skin and skin structure infections for all three agents. According to preliminary data, the adverse-effect profile of these lipoglycopeptides is generally similar to that of drugs currently used to treat severe gram-positive infections. However, further evaluation and monitoring is necessary as more patients are exposed to these agents. As antimicrobial resistance continues to increase worldwide, the lipoglycopeptides may provide clinicians with a useful antimicrobial in the continued fight against multidrug-resistant gram-positive bacteria.

Fighting nature: the example of two Hungarian short story writers

Jozsef Lengyel (1896–1975), a Hungarian short story writer, could compare European and other landscapes based on personal experience, since he had to spend 18 years in Siberia in Stalin’s Gulag. He wrote a short story cycle, in which the relation of man and nature, the experience of an extreme climate, and the peculiarities of the Siberian landscape are central themes. What people were doing there, was a struggle, partly for survival, partly for the transformation of nature into something “useful” to man, or at least suitable for human life. This authentic representation of a non-European environment, which is unique in Hungarian literature, will be compared in this paper with the short stories by Istvan Tomorkeny (1866–1917), who in some hundreds of ethnographic short stories described the life of miserable peasants on the Great Hungarian Plain, i.e., activities that Lengyel described as “beautifying the land.” In both oeuvres nature tends to appear as an enemy, which is sometimes indomitable, sometimes to be defeated by all means. The representation of indomitable nature performs the environmental sublime, while fighting nature appears as an attitude, which is highly problematic in retrospect. The ethos of environmental devastation makes such literature uncomfortable reading in an age of possible global environmental catastrophes; but the continuous fight with nature means a continuous coexistence with nature at the same time, i.e., a continuous realization of the dependence of human existence on the environment, a realization that can be useful now, when human beings try to live in the illusion of a possible separation from nature.

Detection of the arylpropionamide‐derived selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) S‐4 (Andarine) in a black‐market product

Non-steroidal and tissue-selective anabolic agents such as selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs) represent a promising class of therapeutics for the treatment of various diseases such as sarcopenia or cancer cachexia. Advanced compounds of SARMs are based on an arylpropionamide-derived structure and leading drug candidates have successfully completed phase-II-clinical trials. Although none of these therapeutics have been approved, their performance-enhancing qualities and the black-market availability of these products makes them a viable target for misuse in the athletic community. In 2008, SARMs were added to the Prohibited List established by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). That SARMs are the subject of misuse even without clinical approval was proved for the first time by the detection of the drug candidate Andarine (also referred to as S-4, S-3-(4-acetylamino-phenoxy)-2-hydroxy-2-methyl-N-(4-nitro-3-trifluoromethyl-phenyl)-propionamide), advertised, sold and supplied via the Internet. The oily liquids, declared as green tea extracts and face moisturizer, were assayed using state-of-the-art analytical procedures and S-4 was found at concentrations of approximately 150 mg/mL. The authenticity of the product was demonstrated in comparison to reference material by liquid chromatography, high resolution/high accuracy (tandem) mass spectrometry using positive and negative electrospray ionization, and comparison to reference material. Moreover, an impurity resulting from poor product purification was detected, accounting for approximately 10% of S-4. This consisted of 2-hydroxy-2-methyl-N-(4-nitro-3-trifluoromethyl-phenyl)-3-(4-nitro-3-trifluoromethyl-phenylamino)-propionamide. The ease of purchasing non-approved drug candidates that could potentially increase athletic performance demonstrates the need to operate proactively in the continued fight against doping. The early inclusion of emerging drugs into routine sports drug testing procedures is a key element of preventive doping research, limiting the options for cheating athletes who aim to undermine the doping control system.

Inclusão digital e conselheiros de saúde: uma política para a redução da desigualdade social no Brasil

Inequalities in health conditions remain even twenty years after the implementation of Unified Health System (SUS). This condition burdens social movements exerting social control on the health care area with a continuous fight. In this struggle, the accumulation of political power is related to an increase in the capacity to acquire knowledge and information. This study aims at fathoming the inequality surrounding the digital inclusion of Health Counselors (HC) of different regions within the country. We have adopted the qualitative survey method, which employs the Focal Groups technique, with HC representing managers, services providers, workers and users, all from national, state and municipal levels. Four aspects were examined, comprising reading and writing habits; Internet utilization; the use of health indicators; and the role of information in the Council-State-Society relation. Results have evidenced the need to broaden the foundations of digital inclusion initiatives in the health care area, and to overcome the cross-sector challenge of linking them to politics and education. By using benchmarks of educational philosophy, we were able to outline a theoretical-analytical matrix as a contribution to understanding the complexity involved in fostering digital inclusion in the health care area.

One Continuous Fight: the Retreat From Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863

One Continuous Fight: the Retreat From Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863

Colecistectomia videolaparoscópica por trocarte único (SITRACC®): uma nova opção

To present a new device for the execution of Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy. In October 2008 was performed the first human Single Trocar Acess - Sitracc Cholecystectomy, in a female patient. The operation consisted in the classical steps of a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, using special flexible instruments and a 5 mm optical device. The operative time was 64 minutes. There were no important complications at the post-operative phase. The cholecistectomy by the Single Trocar Access method is feasible in humans. With the improvement of the instruments and the multichannel trocar, new surgeries could be perform by this method, adding a new weapon in a continuous fight to benefit our patients.

Taxonomy of Fusarium genus: A continuous fight between lumpers and splitters

The genus Fusarium comprises a high number of fungal species that can be plant-pathogenic, causing diseases in several agriculturally important crops including cereals, and also can be harmful for humans and animals since many of them are toxigenic. The identification of mycotoxigenic Fusarium species still remains a most critical issue, given that the number of species recognized in the genus has been constantly changing in the last century in accordance with the different taxonomic systems. Together with the morphological identification, current criteria for Fusarium species identification are also based on biological and phylogenetic species recognition. However these criteria rarely agree to each other. Therefore, it is still a charming scientific challenge to ascertain the taxonomic status of Fusarium species, which in the years have been continuously 'splitted' and 'lumpered' by scientists. The major cases of the taxonomic debates amongst the Fusarium community will be here discussed.

DNA Profiling from Heroin Street Dose Packages

A large amount of heroin street doses are seized and examined for drug content by the Israel police. These are generally wrapped in heat-sealed plastic. Occasionally it is possible to visualize latent fingerprints on the plastic wrap itself, but the small size of the plastic item and the sealing process makes the success rate very low. In this study, the possibility of extracting and profiling DNA from the burnt edge of the plastic wrap was investigated. The idea was based on the assumption that epithelial cells might be trapped during the sealing process. The results show that there are sufficient quantities of DNA deposited at the "amorphic" burnt edges of sealed street doses for DNA profiling to be carried out. A controlled experiment using a known donor was performed. This subject carried out sealing of "street drug" packages and consequent DNA extractions were performed to show that known DNA profiles could be recovered from such packages, as a result of handling by the "packer." "Square-like" burnt edges did not yield DNA profiles, probably because of differences in the sealing process. It was also shown that DNA could be recovered from the plastic wrap itself and not only from the amorphic burnt edges. As heroin dealers and drug users are often involved in other crimes and run-ins with the law, the effective extraction and addition of their DNA profiles from such items of evidence to the newly established DNA database in Israel provides new avenues in the continued fight against crime and drug traffickers.

Saving Southern History in Caroline Gordon's Penhally

In the half-century following the Civil War, affluent white southern women realized that they had a view of gender conventions which no longer merged seamlessly with that of white southern men. As Anne Goodwyn Jones notes, this meant that, [c]aught between white supremacy and inferiority, for the first time their to [their] race might well conflict with [their] loyalties to [their] sex (24). Postbellum upper-middle and upper-class white southern women gradually became aware, on an unprecedented scale, not only of their as female in terms closer to those employed by bourgeois New Women of the North, but also that they confronted a cultural image of themselves that served someone else's needs (Jones 25) rather than their own. And the spirit of innovation and challenge to old mores particular to the early twentieth century helped clear the path for many women to explore that feminine image in more critical terms than they had ever been able to do before. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw argues that a significant element of the historical consciousness which helps characterize the writers of the Southern Renaissance is the to understand and to terms with the dominating image of the (74). For upper-middle and upper-class white southern women writers in particular, the image of the southern lady was an entity which had to be examined in order for each of them to be able to situate herself as a person in history, ... who has been shaped by images and myths she only partly apprehends and controls, and, at last, who in her turn will be ... a shaper of myths to come (Prenshaw 83). Like their male contemporaries, many white southern women writers sought both a personal and a cultural identity in the stuff of southern history, and although some of them fundamentally were in sympathy with Agrarian assumptions, many times they perceived the Civil War, the loss of the Old Order, and the fallout of southern defeat somewhat differently in both cultural and personal terms. The material history they examined, the imaginative perspective from which they viewed it, and the literary and cultural conclusions they drew often differed radically from what has to be perceived as the quintessential Southern Renaissance confrontation between old and new. At the core of this difference in approach lay a fundamental breach between how white men and women perceived the downfall of that culture in the first place: male writers and critics often have tended to see the advent of the southern tragedy in a single, abrupt moment of apocalypse that changed their region forever and produced an inertia that made them backward-looking and loyally adherent to the old ways. In contrast, women writers more often have perceived southern history as an unfocused, unproductive clinging to a social order continually crumbling away, which prevented anyone from prospering--intellectually, spiritually, and often materially. For many white southern women writers, the conflict between old and new has been double-edged. The Civil War set in motion a drawn out, often uncomfortable process of remaking personal as well as regional identity, which demanded setting aside the old assumptions and treading on unfamiliar territory; but in addition-what might be the real crux of the tragedy for white women--this meant a continual fight against masculine cultural nostalgia if women and, ultimately, the South were to forge a viable new sense of self. While affluent white women, too, regretted the loss of their familiar ways of life, finally they could afford to be more forward-looking and optimistic about putting aside the vestiges of the old order than could the men, who felt themselves to have had much more at stake in the plantation system and hence much more to lose with its final demise. Caroline Gordon embraced the opportunity offered by modernism to grapple with remaking white southern feminine identity in the context of values and beliefs inherited from the Old South, along the way confronting the blockade to that effort thrown up by intense masculine nostalgia for the Old Order. …

The Struggle to Transform the Military

REVOLUTION, INTERRUPTED DONALD RUMSFELD'S tenure as secretary of defense will continue to be marked by his attempt to transform the military into a lighter, nimbler force better able to take advantage of new technology and respond to new threats. Despite (or perhaps because of) the rancor he has generated within the Pentagon, Rumsfeld has managed to shake up a hidebound institution that, if left to its own devices, would probably prefer to endlessly refight the 1991 Gulf War. The continued fighting in Iraq, however, shows the limits of what he has accomplished. The U.S. military is superb at defeating conventional forces-as its three-week blitzkrieg from Kuwait to Baghdad in the spring of 2003 demonstrated-but not nearly as good at fighting the kind of guerrilla foes it has confronted since. To be sure, many of the current problems in Iraq result from Rumsfeld's failure to send enough troops there and from the precipitous disbandment of the Iraqi military. But they also reveal more ftindamental short comings in U.S. capabilities for dealing with unconventional threats. Many policymakers and military officers will no doubt react to the problems in Iraq by trying to eschew this type of conflict in the ftiture. Just as there was an aversion to fighting guerrilla wars after Vietnam (manifested in the Powell Doctrine), there will be a similar backlash

Ética e Consciência

This reflection on ethics has starting point problem: the authenticity. What does one understand by authenticity in human life? Will not authenticity be a beautiful dream, a wandering of philosophers? Our everyday experience fully shows the use of the mask. So, we can ask ourselves: 1) Why should it be otherwise? 2) Could it be otherwise? 3) Which means should one use so that it is otherwise? There seem to exist in nature and history three forces in continuous fight: 1st) the ones that cause the misfortune that now we experience. 2nd) the ones that impel us to refuse the misfortune, that is, the ones that motivate us in search of happiness. The 3rd is, perhaps, our voluntary and conscious contribution to awakening. So our problem is not - what must I do?, but - how must I be? The difference has to do with the basic difference between morality and ethics and has roots in our history. My proposal suggests that it is not enough that we dream or desire to act well to actually act well. It is necessary that we have knowledge (of ourselves and the others) and that we have power, mainly on ourselves. However, our experience shows how fragile is the knowledge that we possess of ourselves (and so refusing the well-known socratic invitation “know thyself") and how fragile is that power, because we are constantly carried along by what we do not want to do (and so we ignore Lao Dzi’s lesson “the one that wins the others is strong; but the one that wins himself is really powerful"). But there is more: though we do what we want, who is it in ourselves that wants what we want? Thus, a practical inquiry on ourselves seems primordial in order to verify which forces act in us and, eventually, to start trying to understand them and to guide them in a more beneficial direction for all the community of living beings of the planet that we inhabit together. Being so, ethics is not only a set of theoretical principles, but over all a set of exercises, guided by a knowledge, that could be able to lead us to a different way of being.

The Vietnam Era Antiwar Movement

America's military escalation in Vietnam during 1965 generated a rapid and organized public opposition. As the war dragged on, this dissent grew dramatically, becoming one of the largest social movements in the nation's history. Ultimately as part of a larger period of unrest, antiwar forces contributed to a general questioning of America's direction and values (1). The Vietnam Era antiwar movement emerged from existing peace and social justice organiza tions involved in civil rights or antinuclear activi ties. Mass demonstrations typically organized by broad coalitions of national and local groups attracted the greatest publicity, but most antiwar efforts took place at the local level. Political liberals represented the movement's largest con stituency, initially through groups like the Ameri can Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), and Women Strike for Peace (WSP). Their mo tives for opposing the war varied, but liberals were generally proud of America's record in advancing human rights and retained cold war suspicions of the Soviet Union. They believed, however, that Vietnam diverted resources from more important foreign interests and objected to supporting Saigon's authoritarian regimes. They used education, electoral politics, and peace ful protest in calling for a negotiated settlement in Vietnam rather than continued fighting (2). Pacifists, divided into moderate and radical camps, frequently questioned America's cold war policy. Their international perspective as signed equal blame to the U.S. and the Soviet Union for global instability. Pacifists often over lapped with liberals in their views and member ships, but organizations like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Committee for Nonvio

We shall Fight on the Seas and the Oceans…We shall

We shall Fight on the Seas and the Oceans…We shall

What Past Is Present

The article deals with new modes of representation of Croatian contemporary history. It argues that the Croatian grand narrative of the twentieth century is presented as the continuous fight of Croats for their nation-state. All historical events in the narrative are appraised as beneficial or harmful only in how they contributed to the creation of the state. The pattern of representation in heavily ethnocentric. The constructed self-image of the Croatian nation portrays Croats as humiliated and repressed by various others in the twentieth century. Croats are represented as the victims of other national groups and of history. The notion of historical responsibility is nonexistent for the analysed period.

Animal cooperation among unrelated individuals.

The evolution of cooperation has long been a topic near and dear to the hearts of behavioral and evolutionary ecologists. Cooperative behaviors run the gamut from fairly simple to very complicated and there are a myriad of ways to study cooperation. Here I shall focus on three paths that have been delineated in the study of intraspecific cooperation among unrelated individuals: reciprocity, byproduct mutualism, and group selection. In each case, I attempt to delineate the theory underlying each of these paths and then provide examples from the empirical literature. In addition, I shall briefly touch upon some recent work that has attempted to examine (or re-examine) the role of cognition and phylogeny in the study of cooperative behavior. While empirical and theoretical work has made significant strides in the name of better understanding the evolution and maintenance of cooperative behavior in animals, much work remains for the future. "From the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as the gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight; whereby the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumb down, as no quarter is given em leader the weakest and the stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and the shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in any other way, survived. Life was a continuous free fight, and em leader a war of each against all was the normal state of existence." (Huxley 1888)

‘It’s a continuous fight isn’t it?’: Parents’ views of the educational provision for children with speech and language difficulties

This study used a qualitative research methodology to explore parents’ views of a number of issues relating to the educational provision for their children with speech, language, and communication difficulties (SLCD). In total, 51 parents took part in seven focus groups around England. Parents were asked to discuss their views on the education being provided for their children; the knowledge of teachers and speech and language therapists about the educational needs of children with speech, language, and communication difficulties; and training for teachers and speech and language therapists (SLTs). The findings that emerged indicated that the parents who participated in this study felt strongly that the education provided for their children depended not so much on ‘need’ as on luck and how hard they could fight for their children. Speech therapy provision was often scarce and teachers did not always understand the needs of children with SLCD. Children experienced a range of difficulties in school because of their special needs. The results are discussed in relation to other studies that have been carried out on parents’ views and the future training needs of teachers and SLTs.

RECLUTAS FORZADOS Y DESERTORES DE LA PATRIA: EL BAJO PUEBLO CHILENO EN LA GUERRA DE LA INDEPENDENCIA, 1810-1814

This article presents a detailed account of the conflictive relationship that evolved between the chilean lower classes and the elite during the first phase of the war of Independence (1810-1814). Based upon a wide range of documents, the author demonstrates that the deep schims which divided the social body during the nineteenth century had its roots in tho se early days of the Republic. It focuses its atention on the military aspects, examining both the forced recruitmen of peasants and inquilinos from the haciendas and its subsequent dessertion from the warring armies. Neither patriots nor monarchists, the lower classes showed their determination to remain outside the civil war. Thus, they became an imp ortant third party in the eonflict, under the guise of montoneros and bandits, that continued fighting against the national authorities well after the Independence wars had ended.

What is river health? Applying public health lessons to protect river health.

Revealing, and indeed exacerbating, the globe's present water crisis is the failing ecological health of rivers. Those who would protect and restore river health can learn important lessons from humanity's continual fight against disease. We discuss four of these lessons, including their applicability to river issues: (1) recognize and respond to changing challenges, (2) avoid unintended consequences, (3) employ both cure and prevention, and (4) take a systematic approach. The overarching message from human health science is that we need to view human actions and their consequences for river health in an integrated way. In an effort to construct such a view of river degradation, we suggest that human actions jeopardize river health in five major ways : (1) altering physical habitat, (2) modifying seasonal flow of water, (3) changing the food base of the system, (4) changing interactions within the river biota, and (5) polluting with chemical contaminants. Another key lesson of human health science is the need for a commonly understood and robust measure of river condition, or health. Biological monitoring and assessment using the index of biological integrity for Japanese streams (IBI-J) provides a rigorous measure of river condition as well as guidance on the causes of river degradation. Examples of the index's use in Japan illustrate the importance of various stressors responsible for degradation, such as amount and types of effluent, proximity of dams and other structural alterations, and riparian condition. They also show the dangers of management driven solely by narrow water quality measures such as biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). We conclude that biological measures are important because they provide a strong scientific framework to inform the largely cultural process of deciding how humans treat rivers.

Revisiting media and human rights

The post-Cold War period has seen a much greater emphasis than previously on democratisation, human and media rights, the right to communicate, and the communication of rights. A host of new charters have emerged, the People's Communication Charter being possibly the most debated. These Charters appeared in the mid-1990s at a time when the global Left was reorganising following the end of the Cold War (and apartheid), prior to reappearing with a bang during the Seattle and Davos meetings of the World Trade Organisation, and other institutions of big capital like the IMF and World Bank. This issue of Critical Arts represents its coming of age issue. To mark 21 years of publishing we reprint here Nadine Gordimer's article, New Forms of Strategy--No Change of Heart, published in our second issue, in 1980. Written during apartheid, Gordimer's impassioned and insightful article reminds us how far we have come. In the 21 years since this article was first written, much has changed in Southern Africa, and globally. However, the liberation that was so nobly fought for has brought with it different demands: the challenge of living in a global world where the market `decides', the challenge of being a developing nation with the inevitable and often shielding discourses of `developmental media', the challenge of being a fledgling democracy with its emphasis on `nation-building' and the conformity of political discourse that often results, and the challenge of helping to revitalise Africa as a whole (as articulated in Thabo Mbeki's vision of the African renaissance). Apartheid was a regime which penetrated all aspects of life, public, private and psychological. In her response aptly entitled Twenty-One Years Later, Gordimer discusses these struggles, urging us to be courageous and open in our continual fight for freedom, for freedom is not something to be fought and won, the fight must be continual; for the moment we forget what we have won ... we have lost. In this regard the thrust of Chris Merrett's article identifies the demise of activist organisations and the onset of paranoia as features of the post-apartheid period. A demise in critical documentation has been one result. Issues of a critical citizenry are the basis of democracy, and John Williams's opening paper sets the conceptual scene. His argument is that South Africa's new discourse of declarative citizenship sidelines popular participation and that institutional defiance militates against citizenship. …

Rethinking the civil war in Sudan

A troubled country, the largest in a troubled continent, the Sudan surely tells one of the most tragic stories of war. The war is presented in the West as a religiously inspired persecution of Christian tribesmen in the south by the Islamic Fundamentalist government. The real story, however, is one of continued opposition and periodic fighting since shortly before independence in 1956 (and in other forms before then), and one in which a great variety of actors have a role. The purpose of this article is to argue that the war in Sudan has much less to do with religious intolerance and involves many other factors: regional and global politics and basic issues of food and water.