Primary Actor Research Articles

Looking back and looking ahead: local empowerment and governance in the Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal

SUMMARYDiversifying governance models for protected areas serves as one strategy to address some of the challenges they are facing. This paper explores the potential of local communities to be the primary actor in the governance of the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) following its planned handover to them in 2012. In doing so, the paper serves as an important baseline from which to monitor a new experiment in protected area governance. During the summer of 2007, the executive members and implementing staff of the Conservation Area Management Committees (CAMCs) were interviewed and local villagers surveyed. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to assess the CAMCs’ capacities to manage ACA without outside support. All CAMCs had more than a decade of managerial experience and considerable local support. Villagers largely considered the CAMCs as legitimate institutions, and their executive members as trustworthy. CAMC members were confident about assuming management responsibility of the area. The devolution of power to an overarching local council to govern ACA will present some challenges, especially with regard to lower-performing CAMCs. However, key factors identified in the literature as critical to good governance portend positive prospects for the transition.

Ageing between Gerontology and Biomedicine

Over the past two decades, public interest in the basic biological processes underlying the phenomenon of ageing has grown considerably. New developments in biotechnology and health maintenance programmes appear to be forging new relationships between biology, medicine and the lives of older people. A number of social scientists describe the process as the ‘biomedicalization of aging’. In this article, we argue that contemporary biogerontology, an important sub-field of gerontology that could be construed as the primary actor in the process of ‘biomedicalization’, should be regarded instead as advancing a critique of biomedicine. We then provide a genealogy of the critique and close the argument by pointing to sources of uncertainty within biogerontology, which should be taken into account in any further studies of the relationship between biology, medicine and the lives of older people.

The Perpetuation of War in U. S. History Textbooks

American history textbooks, for the better part of the twentieth century, have focused on war as the primary actor. This article investigates the pervasiveness of war in textbooks and considers the e ect of such on students and their role as future policymakers. In the past decade, history textbooks have undergone a total transition toward an emphasis on social history. An examination of what this entails, and what impacts this may have on schoolchildren and society as a whole, lends insight into the e ects the study of history can have. Finally, I argue that a historian must not only choose events that illustrate the past, but also determine how those choices may a ect the future.

Pain, Gain, or Shame: The Evolution of Environmental Law and the Role of Multinational Corporations

The evolution of environmental law in the past century has been linked to the growing acceptance of the notion of collective global responsibility, which entails the notion of sustainable development. At the turn of this century, the focus in environmental law has shifted from the creation of a global framework to deal with environmental problems to that of compliance with these frameworks. As a result, the primary actor of environmental policy has shifted from the state to the corporation. How has environmental law developed so as to encourage compliance by this new primary actor? Conversely, how has the corporation been changed by these developments? This article will trace the historical shift in environmental actors from the early beginnings of environmental law to the challenges faced today. As the multinational corporation has become the primary actor, this article also considers ways in which incentives can be created for multinational corporations to behave in environmentally responsible ways.

Underwriters, Auditors, and other Usual Suspects: Elements of Third Party Enforcement in US and European Securities Law

The financial scandals of the last decade have called into question the effectiveness of the system of securities regulation in many countries. Articles that have examined the origins of the regulatory crisis have concluded that the classical tools of corporate governance for the supervision of management have lost their force as a result of new incentive structures in the financial markets. They see as the solution to the regulatory lacunae the utilisation of financial intermediaries as gatekeepers, i. e. as agents that ensure compliance of the primary market actor (the issuer) with applicable rules by reviewing its disclosures and withholding their participation in transactions if violations occur. This essay analyses the most important liability provisions of US and European securities regulation in light of the gatekeeper theory. It identifies deficiencies in the current regulatory regime, suggests that some aspects of US securities regulation may serve as an example for a development of the European system, and highlights the dangers that a lack of legislative attention and a reorientation of the judiciary towards general principles of tort law create. It concludes by advancing a tentative explanation of certain trends of convergence between US and European regulatory mechanisms that can be observed.

Securitizing infectious disease

Over the past decade there has been an increased awareness in the field of international relations of the potential impact of an infectious disease epidemic on national security. While states’ attempts to combat infectious disease have a long history, what is new in this area is the adoption at the international level of securitized responses regarding the containment of infectious disease. This article argues that the securitization of infectious disease by states and the World Health Organization (WHO) has led to two key developments. First, the WHO has had to assert itself as the primary actor that all states, particularly western states, can rely upon to contain the threat of infectious diseases. The WHO's apparent success in this is evidenced by the development of the Global Outbreak Alert Response Network (GOARN), which has led to arguments that the WHO has emerged as the key authority in global health governance. The second outcome that this article seeks to explore is the development of the WHO's authority in the area of infectious disease surveillance. In particular, is GOARN a representation of the WHO's consummate authority in the area of coordinating infectious disease response or is GOARN the product of the WHO's capitulation to western states’ concerns with preventing infectious disease outbreaks from reaching their borders and as a result, are arguments expressing the authority of the WHO in infectious disease response premature?

Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization

Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization. By Michael Goodhart. New York: Routledge, 2005. 256p. 26.95 paper.Globalization, which had its modern origins in the capitalist expansion of the nineteenth century, has reached a level of development that challenges the sovereign independence, power, and authority of the nation-state, the primary actor in international politics for the last three hundred years. In so doing, it undermines popular sovereignty as traditionally understood in contemporary democracies. In his book, Michael Goodhart provides a tightly reasoned analysis of globalization's challenge to sovereignty and democratic theory, and puts forward a provocative redefinition of democracy that, he argues, can withstand globalization, even flourish in a globalized world.

Question 5: on the chemical reality of the RNA world.

The discovery of catalytic RNA has revolutionised modern molecular biology and bears important implications for the origin of Life research. Catalytic RNA, in particular self-replicating RNA, prompted the hypothesis of an early "RNA world" where RNA molecules played all major roles such information storage and catalysis. The actual role of RNA as primary actor in the origin of life has been under debate for a long time, with a particular emphasis on possible pathways to the prebiotic synthesis of mononucleotides; their polymerization and the possibility of spontaneous emergence of catalytic RNAs synthesised under plausible prebiotic conditions. However, little emphasis has been put on the chemical reality of an RNA world; in particular concerning the chemical constrains that such scenario should have met to be feasible. This paper intends to address those concerns with regard to the achievement of high local RNA molecules concentration and the aetiology of unique sequence under plausible prebiotic conditions.

Epistemologies of Peace: Poetics, Globalization, and the Social Justice Movement

Poetics, as an epistemological approach, articulates alternative imaginaries to those proffered by the neoliberal world order. With a long history of drawing upon various sites to further its aims (e.g. the academy, the international studies association, political parties, the state), the neoliberal world order has used its epistemologies to constitute a hegemony emphasizing the state as the primary actor of political life. Feminists and scholars in postcolonial IR, black studies, and ethnic studies have challenged this idea, arguing that there are differential epistemological economies in world politics. Larger questions at stake in these different sites/cites include self and collective knowledge of marginal peoples and the envisioning of alternative, oppositional histories of decolonization, struggle and contestation. Traditional disciplinary boundaries become sites/cites of contestation about the forging and making of alternatives as academics, grassroots organizers, and activists, through poetics, work together to creatively engage questions of economies, power, history, and subject-formations.

Whither the Children? Childhood in Religious Education

Several years ago I turned my attention to the study of childhood in theology. Colleagues with whom I spoke as I took up this research often naturally assumed that I would find the literature of religious education helpful. But for the most part I did not. This article arose out of curiosity about this impasse. Since its inception, Western theology has largely cast the mature adult Caucasian male as primary actor. While questions about the need for greater inclusivity have led to fresh consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, and class, the adult-centered proclivity of theology has become even more entrenched in the last few centuries. Whereas many premodern theologians took seriously the nature of childhood and the education and formation of children as an important subject matter, until recently modern theologians have not—except those in religious

The Adaptor Protein Gab1 Couples the Stimulation of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-2 to the Activation of Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase

Phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) mediates essential functions of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), including the stimulation of endothelial cell proliferation and migration. Nevertheless, the mechanisms coupling the receptor VEGFR-2 to PI3K remain obscure. We observed that the Grb2-bound adapter Gab1 is tyrosine-phosphorylated and relocated to membrane fractions upon VEGF stimulation of endothelial cells. We could detect the PI3K regulatory subunit p85 in immunoprecipitates of endogenous Gab1, and vice versa, and measure a Gab1-associated lipid kinase activity upon VEGF stimulation. Furthermore, transfection of the Gab1-YF3 mutant lacking all p85-binding sites strongly repressed PI3K activation measured in vitro. Moreover, Gab1-YF3 severely decreased the cellular amount of phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate (PtdIns(3,4,5)P3) generated in response to VEGF. Furthermore, adenoviral expression of Gab1-YF3 suppressed both Akt phosphorylation and recovery of wounded human umbilical vein endothelial cell monolayers, a VEGF-dependent process involving cell migration and proliferation under PI3K control. Transfection of other Gab1 mutants, lacking Grb2-binding sites or the pleckstrin homology (PH) domain, also prevented Akt activation, further demonstrating Gab1 involvement in PI3K activation. These mutants were also used to show that interactions with both Grb2 and PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 mediate Gab1 recruitment by VEGFR-2. Importantly, Gab1 mobilization was impaired by (i) PI3K inhibitors, (ii) deletion of Gab1 PH domain, (iii) PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10) overexpression to repress PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 production, and (iv) overexpression of a competitor PH domain for PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 binding, which altogether demonstrated that PI3K is also an upstream regulator of Gab1. Gab1 thus appears as a primary actor in coupling VEGFR-2 to PI3K/Akt, recruited through an amplification loop involving PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 and its PH domain.

In Pursuit of Legitimacy

In his book In Pursuit of Legitimacy, Hesham Al Awadi sets out to explainEgyptian president Mubarak’s dramatic shift in his treatment of the MuslimBrothers (Al Ikhwan Al Muslimin), from toleration of the outlawed group tosevere repression, over the first two decades of his regime. Standard explanationsfor this shift, as Awadi points out, have a state-centric bias in which the state is the primary actor responding to the threat posed by the MuslimBrothers to the regime, either by providing social services when the state’scapacity to do so was hampered, or by challenging the legitimacy of anauthoritarian regime. The author acknowledges these factors, but then offersa substantially different narrative in which he skillfully traces the politicaldance of power between the outlawed group and the regime. The move torepression, in Awadi’s rendering, can be better explained by the responsiverelationship between the Muslim Brothers and Mubarak than by understandingeither power or legitimacy solely in terms of the state.Awadi argues that the driving force behind Mubarak’s crackdown inthe mid-1990s was a cyclical competition between the president and theMuslim Brothers for political legitimacy, which began with his regime’saccession following Sadat’s assassination in 1980. In his analysis, theauthor states that this conflict’s brutal 1995 climax, during which a numberof Muslim Brothers were convicted at a military trial, was by no meansa foregone conclusion. Rather, it was the result of a highly responsive relationshipbetween the regime and the increasingly powerful oppositionorganization. Moreover, it could have evolved differently had the MuslimBrothers made different choices about how to best pursue their program ...

American Hegemony or Global Governance? Competing Visions of International Security

Since the 1990s, the concepts of global and security governance have emerged as new frameworks for the analysis of international relations. The proponents of these approaches have argued that we are witnessing a transformation in global politics through the simultaneous dynamics of integration and fragmentation. The result of these two dynamics is a shift away from the state as the primary authority and actor in international affairs, thus challenging the state-centric theoretical perspectives that had developed during the Cold War. Although states retain a central role, the literature on global and security governance suggests that a growing number of international organizations and private actors, such as multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations, are taking on functions ranging from the making to the implementation of international policies (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Finkelstein 1995). Moreover, in addition to sectors such as those involving international finance, economics, and the environment (Young 2000; Hall and Biersteker 2002), the proponents of the governance concept find that the fragmentation of policymaking capabilities and authority among state and nonstate actors is also increasingly observed in the international security arena. In 1995, the Commission on Global Governance (1995:99) observed: The breakdown of the bipolar cold war system means that responses to security crises—both with preventive efforts and beyond them—have to come from a wider group of nations and organizations than before. The United Nations, particularly the Security Council, has the principal responsibility. But regional bodies and a wide range of civil society organization are now in a position to play useful roles. Nearly 10 years later, the concepts of global and security governance have increasingly become popular in the study of international security (Axworth 2001; Duffield 2001; Croft, Krahmann, and Howorth 2004). This popularity rests on the argument that subnational and transnational threats—such as …

Structural Insight into Functional Aspects of Ribosomal RNA Targeting

AbstractFor Abstract see ChemInform Abstract in Full Text.

Structural insight into functional aspects of ribosomal RNA targeting.

Ribosomes are giant riboprotein assemblies that play the main role in the translation of the genetic code into proteins. All ribosomes consist of two subunits of unequal size with defined tasks. The small ribosomal subunit is involved in the initiation of the translation process, in choosing the translated frame, in decoding the genetic message, and in controlling the fidelity of codon± anticodon interactions. The large subunit catalyzes the formation of the peptide bond and gates the nascent chains by channeling them through their dynamic exit tunnel. Messenger RNA (mRNA) and tRNA carry the genetic information and the amino acids, respectively. The ribosome possesses a channel along which the mRNA chain progresses and three tRNA binding sites, designated as A (aminoacyl), P (peptidyl), and E (exit). All tRNA molecules are built primarily of double helices, with an anticodon stem loop at one end and a single-stranded CCA moiety on their other end. The amino acids to be incorporated in the nascent proteins and the newly formed polypeptide chains bind to the CCA end. The mRNA and the anticodon loop of the tRNA molecules interact with the small subunit, whereas the acceptor stem and the 3 end of the tRNA molecules bind to the large subunit. Hence, each of the three tRNA molecules is located on both subunits, which act in concert during the elongation cycle in order to translocate the Aand P-tRNA molecules together with the mRNA by precisely one codon. Recently obtained crystal structures of ribosomal particles showed unambiguously that both ribosomal active sites, namely the decoding and peptidyl transferase centers, consist exclusively of ribosomal RNA (rRNA). As the primary actor in the process of protein biosynthesis, the ribosomal RNA is targeted by substrates, by nonribosomal factors participating in the process, and by antibiotics and inhibitors. Many clinically relevant antibiotics hamper ribosomal functions by binding primarily to ribosomal RNA. Self-rRNA targeting plays a major role in the creation of functional ribosomes. This article highlights recent advances in studies aimed at the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that are triggered, accomplished, or assisted by rRNA interactions.

National Cultures, Information Search Behaviors and the Attribution Process of Cross-National Managers: A Conceptual Framework

Cross-cultural management researchers have observed that when presented with similar ethical dilemmas and problems, managers raised in different cultural environments exhibit divergence in their perceptions, interpretations, and eventual solutions. Why does this happen? Our framework attempts to integrate theoretical concepts from the international management and organizational behavior literature to explain variances in managerial information search patterns and attribution processing arising due to national cultural differences. Based on the work of Trompenaars, Hampden-Turner, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, we propose that managers belong to one of two types of national cultures. The first emphasizes Universalism, Specificity, and Dominance over nature (USD) while the second assigns importance to Particularism, Diffuseness, and Subjugation (PDS). When faced with a situation/dilemma, which may have an ethical component, USD and PDS managers differ when it comes to: ○ The weighting, importance and amount of emphasis placed on the three types of information (Consistency, Consensus, and Distinctiveness) used to make attributions. ○ A tendency to focus heavily on those information types, or alternately, to search for external environmental factors. ○ Thus, the above process guides the manager's attribution process to assign causality of an event to either the primary actor(s) involved OR to factors in the external environment. Managers in different cultures may examine a situation, and through the attribution process, arrive at completely different conclusions regarding whether an action is unethical, or whether ethics even have a role. Our framework will enable managers to understand the impact of cultural differences in dealing with ethical situations involving multiple cultures.

The Politics of 'Eurocratic' Structure and the New European Agencies

The establishment of agencies at the European level is one of the most notable recent developments in EU regulatory policy. This article examines how politics has shaped the design of EU regulatory agencies. Building on the American politics literature on delegation, the article explains how principal-agent concerns and political compromise have influenced agency design in the EU context; shows how conflicts between the EU's primary legislative actors - the Council and the Parliament - and its primary executive actor - the Commission - have influenced the design of new bureaucratic agencies; and discusses how the growing power of the European Parliament as a political principal has changed the politics of agency design.

Creating an Ethical Foundation for Home Telemedicine

The entry of telemedicine into the home makes it imperative that home health care professionals prepare to meet the challenge of new ethical issues. Telehome health care accelerates the need for nurse training on a code of ethics, because this new method of health care delivery transforms the patient from the usual object to be acted on into the primary actor in his or her own self-care.

Learning by Teaching: An Exhibition instead of an Exam

Margaret Metzger has taught Dante's Inferno to her senior European literature classes for the past ten years. Until this year, she had always been the primary actor in teaching the book's thirty-four cantos, starting each day with a short reading quiz, then moving on to lead a discussion about some of the daily canto's major themes and patterns. Students did a project at the end of the unit, usually some creative presentation on Dante. Metzger realized that a discrepancy existed between what she was teaching and what she was testing. The test focused on nitpicky details, whereas her teaching focused on thinking and reading skills, on encouraging her students to be independent learners. Two other theoretical positions she had held for a long time propelled her to change her ideas about assessment: first, that students want to do rigorous, honest academic work; second, that they must own their own work and their own learning. Metzger believes,

Actors and Observers Revisited: Correspondence Bias, Counterfactual Surprise, and Discounting in Successive Judgments of Constrained Behavior

In two experiments we examined first, whether observers given information about a film actor's personality would infer correspondent dispositions from a role he played in a film, and second, the impact these judgments have on subsequent dispositional judgments made from constrained behavior of different targets. In both experiments, observers received a fictitious description of the primary actor as either interpersonally warm and sensitive or interpersonally cold and callous. Observers then watched one of two clips—depicting the primary actor playing a role that was either congruent or incongruent with the description they had received—taken from his films. Finally, observers rated the primary actor's true personality. Results showed that observers who watched a congruent film clip provided significantly more extreme correspondent dispositional ratings than did subjects who saw an incongruent clip. Following the ratings of the primary actor, all observers watched other targets engaged in constrained behavior. Observers who had received congruent information about the primary actor, especially when that information was uniformly positive, provided significantly more extreme correspondent dispositional ratings of these subsequent targets than did observers who had previously received incongruent information. Further, these observers indicated that they would be more surprised to see the actors engaged in opposite behavior and cited dispositional factors to explain the targets' constrained behavior, whereas observers of the incongruent sequence indicated that they would be less surprised and cited situational factors to explain the actors' actions. We discuss the implications of these findings and counterfactual thinking for the study of dispositional inference and correspondence bias.