Dancing to the top: How collective action revitalized arts education in Boston

In 2009, a group of local foundations, the school district, arts organizations, and the Mayor's Office launched the Boston Public Schools Arts Education Initiative (BPS-AE)—a multiyear, citywide, public–private initiative aimed at increasing BPS students' access to in-school arts education. Managed by a strong local intermediary with deep experience in education, this initiative used several complementary, overlaid strategies: direct service, system building, and community engagement—all of which were supported by a philanthropic collaborative of local and national funders. Today, 17,000 more BPS students receive arts education; nearly 130 additional full-time certified arts teachers have been hired; and district spending on arts has risen to $26 million annually, compared to $15 million in 2009. There is also growing demand from the larger community for more and better arts education. In 2015, BPS-AE produced a case study that provides a more detailed explication of the multitiered strategy it used to achieve these results. The study offers recommendations as to how other cities can involve diverse key constituencies to advance this kind of initiative, create leadership structures that support effective citywide collaboration, engage community stakeholders in participatory planning processes, leverage private philanthropy to boost public funding, and develop a centralized support system for school principals and arts teachers.     

The case of philanthropy: bringing scientists and philanthropic donors together,for good

Summary: Philanthropists and scientists share many common interests, and yet they are not familiar with each other''s ways of thinking. This Editorial highlights how to improve their mutual understanding to advance research and life sciences.

“Wealth is not new. Neither is charity. But the idea of using private wealth imaginatively, constructively, and systematically to attack the fundamental problems of mankind is new.” – John Gardner

Philanthropy, derived from private wealth, stands unique as a vital source of scientific funding. Yet many scientists don''t truly understand the workings of this form of charitable giving. Some are even wary of it, and believe that a divide between the worlds of science and business is a normal state of affairs. My experience has exposed striking similarities between the two specialties: both dedicate their resources to innovation and the sincere desire to do good for their fellow man.I''ve been lucky to work on both sides of the fence. I conducted research for my PhD at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA, and at Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City, NY, where I worked on the Id1 gene and its role in the molecular mechanism of mammalian cell differentiation. I later moved to the Pershing Square Foundation. In 2013, to support young investigators with bold and risky ideas in cancer research in the New York area, the Pershing Square Foundation partnered with the Sohn Conference Foundation to create the Pershing Square Sohn Research Alliance (PSSCRA). Since the organization''s founding, I have served as its Executive Director. As a result of my career experience, I understand firsthand the role of philanthropic support of medical research. I am always excited to work with new, young and innovative talent, and to introduce that talent into the social mainstream.     

NHS waiting list have been a boon for private medicine in the UK.

Health care: public, private or both? In Great Britain, about 13% of the population is covered by private health insurance, and everyone else is served by the public health care system known as the National Health Service, or NHS. Caroline Richmond, who examined the impact of private medical practice in Britain, says people become private patients for one compelling reason: to avoid the NHS''s notoriously long waiting lists for surgery. According to Professor Alan Maynard, a health care researcher, the mainstays of the private sector are the "three h''s" --hips, hernias and hemorrhoids-- along with some elective surgery, particularly in gynecology and opthalmology. Another small sector focuses on fertility regulation and cosmetic surgery. Although the levels are not monitored closely, physician consultants are not permitted to earn more than 10% of their income from private practice.     

Compliance to Brazil's Forest Code will not protect biodiversity and ecosystem services

In striking contrast to heartening events in the adjacent Amazon, Brazil's Cerrado biome has seen continued deforestation over the past decade. Though approved in 2012, no study evaluated the impacts of new Brazilian Forest Code (FC) revision on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here, we report the first assessment of the likely loss and gain in biodiversity and ecosystem services expected if the FC is properly enforced across 200 million hectares of the Cerrado. We also discuss the challenges associated to compliance with the law and present opportunities for conservation. Establishing restoration programmes in private properties with currently less native vegetation than required by the FC could create habitat for 25% more threatened species than now found in these places and could also increase water security and carbon stock in 56.6 MtC. More important, trading environmental reserve quotas coupled with the strategic expansion of protected areas on private and public land could definitely rescue the Cerrado from the brink.     

Which physicians make home visits and why? A survey

BACKGROUND: Recent changes in the North American health care system and certain demographic factors have led to increases in home care services. Little information is available to identify the strategies that could facilitate this transformation in medical practice and ensure that such changes respond adequately to patients'' needs. As a first step, the authors attempted to identify the major factors influencing physicians'' home care practices in the Quebec City area. METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire was sent by mail to all 696 general practitioners working in the Quebec City area. The questionnaire was intended to gather information on physicians'' personal and professional characteristics, as well as their home care practice (practice volume, characteristics of both clients and home visits, and methods of patient assessment and follow-up). RESULTS: A total of 487 physicians (70.0%) responded to the questionnaire, 283 (58.1%) of whom reported making home visits. Of these, 119 (42.0%) made fewer than 5 home visits per week, and 88 (31.1%) dedicated 3 hours or less each week to this activity. Physicians in private practice made more home visits than their counterparts in family medicine units and CLSCs (centres locaux des services communautaires [community centres for social and health services]) (mean 11.5 v. 5.8 visits per week), although the 2 groups reported spending about the same amount of time on this type of work (mean 5.6 v. 5.0 hours per week). The proportion of visits to patients in residential facilities or other private residences was greater for private practitioners than for physicians from family medicine units and CLSCs (29.7% v. 18.9% of visits), as were the proportions of visits made at the patient''s request (28.0% v. 14.2% of visits) and resulting from an acute condition (21.4% v. 16.0% of visits). The proportion of physicians making home visits at the request of a CLSC was greater for those in family medicine units and CLSCs than for those in private practice (44.0% v. 11.3% of physicians), as was the proportion of physicians making home visits at the request of a colleague (18.0% v. 4.5%) or at the request of hospitals (30.0% v. 6.8%). Physicians in family medicine units and CLSCs did more follow-ups at a frequency of less than once per month than private practitioners (50.9% v. 37.1% of patients), and they treated a greater proportion of patients with cognitive disorders (17.2% v. 12.6% of patients) and palliative care needs (13.7% v. 8.6% of patients). Private practitioners made less use of CLSC resources to assess home patients or follow them. Male private practitioners made more home visits than their female counterparts (mean 12.8 v. 8.3 per week), although they spent an almost equal amount of time on this activity (mean 5.7 v. 5.2 hours per week). INTERPRETATION: These results suggest that practice patterns for home care vary according to the physician''s practice setting and sex. Because of foreseeable increases in the numbers of patients needing home care, further research is required to evaluate how physicians'' practices can be adapted to patients'' needs in this area.     

Private health care dominates meeting as general council calls for national debate on issue.

The CMA''s General Council has decided to withhold its stamp of approval for a "private parallel" health care system by voting against a motion to remove legislative barriers to private insurance. However, General Council did call on the CMA to take the issue directly to Canadians and conduct a national debate. General Council did pass a "Blueprint for Action"--16 resolutions spelling out the CMA''s views on ways to protect Canada''s medicare system.     

Toronto centre hopes to cash in on growing demand for private health services

When the CMA held its 1996 annual meeting, part of the debate on the future of health care involved the "appropriate balance of the roles of the public and private sectors" in delivering health care. The King''s Health Centre in Toronto is now doing its own balancing act: providing publicly funded care to Canadians, and private care to non-Canadians and Canadians who can afford it. This article discusses some of the niche markets King''s is attempting to develop.     

Anonymity versus Privacy in the Dictator Game: Revealing Donor Decisions to Recipients Does Not Substantially Impact Donor Behavior

Anonymity is often offered in economic experiments in order to eliminate observer effects and induce behavior that would be exhibited under private circumstances. However, anonymity differs from privacy in that interactants are only unaware of each others'' identities, while having full knowledge of each others'' actions. Such situations are rare outside the laboratory and anonymity might not meet the requirements of some participants to psychologically engage as if their actions were private. In order to explore the impact of a lack of privacy on prosocial behaviors, I expand on a study reported in Dana et al. (2006) in which recipients were left unaware of the Dictator Game and given donations as “bonuses” to their show-up fees for other tasks. In the current study, I explore whether differences between a private Dictator Game (sensu Dana et al. (2006)) and a standard anonymous one are due to a desire by dictators to avoid shame or to pursue prestige. Participants of a Dictator Game were randomly assigned to one of four categories—one in which the recipient knew of (1) any donation by an anonymous donor (including zero donations), (2) nothing at all, (3) only zero donations, and (4) and only non-zero donations. The results suggest that a lack of privacy increases the shame that selfish-acting participants experience, but that removing such a cost has only minimal effects on actual behavior.     

Human molecular chronotyping in sight?

Recent research on mouse models has taken us closer to deciphering the molecular clock mechanism that defines an individual's 'body time'. How feasible will it be to create a molecular timetable that allows determination of individual body time from tissue harvested at a single time point?     

Comparative analysis of antigenic strength and in vivo serum antibodies concentration of tetanus toxoid vaccine adsorbed in Pakistan

Clostridium tetani produce tetanospasmin, a potent exotoxin; that causes tetanus or lockjaw disease. Scientists developed an anti-tetanus toxoid to protect the body from the spasm's neurotoxic effect. In Pakistan recently, 478 cases of neonatal tetanus were reported. The study was carried out at The National Control Laboratory for Biologicals Islamabad, aiming to decipher the effectiveness of the most frequently used tetanus toxoid vaccine adsorbed in Pakistan in comparison to standard reference vaccine having earlier known consistent values. The vaccines included domestic public sector, domestic private sector, imported private sector I, and imported private sector II. The triplicate experiments on purebred Swiss albino mice were performed by immunizing with Tetanus toxoid and then tested parallel with standard reference vaccine. Various analytical tests were performed on the test organism that included flocculation test/identity test, antibody quantification using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), potency test, abnormal toxicity test, osmolality, pH test, liquid sub-visible particle test, and sterility test. Results of all the vaccines were compared in comparison with the standard reference vaccine. Absorbances of test vaccines were recorded at the lowest dilution by ELISA. The domestic private sector, imported private sector I, imported private sector II and standard reference vaccine were flocculated at mean dilution (Mean: 0.24, 95% CI: 0.1903–0.2897), and the domestic public sector was flocculated at mean dilution (Mean: 0.23, 95% CI: 0.2052–0.2548). All the products were found within the normal ranges where it was concluded that the maximum average titer of 2.81 was observed at dilution 10^?1.6, indicating that these vaccines were adequate/suitable for the prevention of tetanus.     

Predicting Pasture and Forest Landowner Intention to Create Early Successional Habitat

As human land uses expand across the landscape, the management practices of private landowners are an essential part of effective conservation. Early successional habitats (ESH) and the species that depend on them are a priority in the eastern United States, and efforts to create ESH on private lands has primarily focused on forest landowners and timber harvests. Private pasture lands in a forested landscape present an additional opportunity to create and maintain ESH, yet our understanding of landowner values and attitudes about management strategies in pastures is lacking. To address this, we surveyed private landowners in 5 Virginia counties who own ≥10.1 ha at >610 m elevation (n = 503). Our primary objective was to understand how a variety of factors such as landowner values, past experience with habitat management, and perceived barriers to carrying out habitat management are associated with private landowner intention to carry out 7 ESH management strategies (i.e., reduced mowing, reduced grazing, timber harvests within forest, timber harvests at a field-forest border, prescribed fire, use of machinery, and use of herbicides to control invasive species) for the benefit of wildlife in the next 5 years. We used boosted regression trees to determine which factors best predicted the intention to carry out each management strategy. We were able to predict accuracy >75% of the time for landowner intention to engage in open pasture and timber management strategies. Landowner values were not consistent across the different management strategies; landowners likely to reduce mowing or grazing valued ecological aspects of their land (e.g., pollinator habitat, water quality), whereas landowners likely to harvest timber valued hunting and revenue. Past experience with wildlife management was the strongest predictor of likelihood to reduce mowing and grazing. Our results suggest that expanding outreach efforts to include pasture management options would engage a broader set of landowners in creating ESH, especially if such efforts highlighted the benefits to pollinator species, water quality, and enhanced opportunities for hunting and other types of recreation. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.     

The resurgence in resource nationalism and private protected areas: Through the lens of Save Valley Conservancy's indigenisation

It has been observed that the resurgence in resource nationalism in the past decade worldwide has profound implications for all economic sectors including protected areas. However, a review of the international protected area literature reveals a paucity of studies that make use of the construct of resource nationalism as an analytical framework. This paper addresses this gap by bringing to the fore how Zimbabwe's ZANU PF (the political party that brought the country's independence in 1980) has deployed and extended this construct from the 2000 land reform programme to one of the world's largest private wildlife sanctuaries, namely the Save Valley Conservancy (SVC). In doing so, the paper relies extensively on the narratives, debates and legitimations of the ruling elite and other stakeholders around the recent ‘indigenisation’ of the SVC. It was found that a range of actors attempted to use resource nationalism as a ‘resource’ to further their own private economic and political interests whilst others resorted to the conservation discourse. One of the main conclusions of this paper is that managers of protected areas need to be sensitive to the resurgence in resource nationalism. In this connection, it is argued that the ability to negotiate the resurgence in resource nationalism will determine the fate of some private protected areas. The study suggests possible solutions around the indigenisation of SVC and points to future research priorities.     

Should conservation of biodiversity involve private land? A Q methodological study in Poland to assess stakeholders’ attitude

Biodiversity conservation is gradually shifting its dependency on public protected areas to take a more holistic ecosystem and landscape approach that includes private lands in addition to public lands. However, effective practice of biodiversity conservation on private land also depends on landowners’ attitude and their willingness to participate and cooperate. This study focuses on Poland where conservation on private land is a relatively new concept but it is slowly gaining recognition, especially after its accession into the European Union. It investigates and classifies the diverse attitudes among stakeholder groups in Poland toward biodiversity conservation on private land that are part of protected areas. Four primary stakeholder groups were considered: conservation and park authorities, local administrative officials, local conservation based NGOs and private landowners. The study was conducted across three sites that represented three different forms of protected areas in Poland: a national park, a landscape park and a Natura 2000 site. Q methodology, a research method from psychology and other social sciences, was used to classify human subjectivity in stakeholders’ attitude in a more systematic manner. The analysis yielded three predominant factors which highlighted the diversity in attitudes among the stakeholder groups based on their knowledge, concerns and experience in the subject. Additionally, it underlined the common recognition among all stakeholder groups for better policy support, stronger collaboration among stakeholder and more financial or compensatory support for landowners to make private land conservation more feasible. Understanding the differences in attitudes will help bridge the gap between conservation priority and conservation opportunity—a current challenge in the field of biodiversity conservation.     

His own private hospital

Dr. Brian Day had a simple solution when it became increasingly difficult to book operating room time in Vancouver. He built his own hospital. The Cambie Surgical Centre, which treats patients from BC and around the world, has 2 main operating rooms, 10 recovery beds and 5 private rooms for extended stays. "What I''ve done," says Day, "is say that if there are no operating rooms at UBC, I''ll build my own."     

Funding in the firing line

With large charities such as the Wellcome Trust or the Gates Foundation committed to funding research, is there a risk that politicians could cut public funding for science?Towards the end of 2010, with the British economy reeling from the combined effects of the global recession, the burst bubble of property speculation and a banking crisis, the country came close to cutting its national science and research budget by up to 25%. UK Business Secretary Vince Cable argued, “there is no justification for taxpayers'' money being used to support research which is neither commercially useful nor theoretically outstanding” (BBC, 2010). The outcry from UK scientists was both passionate and reasoned until, in the end, the British budget slashers blinked and the UK government backed down. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced in October that the government would freeze science and research funding at £4.6 billion per annum for four years, although even this represents about a 10% cut in real terms, because of inflation.“there is no justification for taxpayers'' money being used to support research which is neither commercially useful nor theoretically outstanding”There has been a collective sigh of relief. Sir John Savill, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (UK), said: “The worst projections for cuts to the science budget have not been realised. It''s clear that the government has listened to and acted on the evidence showing investment in science is vital to securing a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future.”Yet Britain is unusual compared with its counterparts elsewhere in the European Union (EU) and the USA, because private charities, such as the Wellcome Trust (London, UK) and Cancer Research UK (London, UK), already have budgets that rival those of their government counterparts. It was this fact, coupled with UK Prime Minister David Cameron''s idea of the ‘big society''—a vision of smaller government, increased government–private partnerships and a bigger role for non-profit organizations, such as single-disease-focused charities—that led the British government to contemplate reducing its contribution to research, relying on the private sector to pick up the slack.Jonathan Grant, president of RAND Europe (London, UK)—a not-for-profit research institute that advises on policy and decision-making—commented: “There was a strong backlash and [the UK Government] pulled back from that position [to cut funding]. But that''s the first time I''ve really ever seen it floated as a political idea; that government doesn''t need to fund cancer research because we''ve got all these not-for-profits funding it.”“…that''s the first time I''ve really ever seen it floated as a political idea; that government doesn''t need to fund cancer research because we''ve got all these not-for-profits funding it”But the UK was not alone in mooting the idea that research budgets might have to suffer under the financial crisis. Some had worried that declining government funding of research would spread across the developed world, although the worst of these fears have not been realized.Peter Gruss, President of the Max Planck Society (Munich, Germany), explained that his organization receives 85% of its more-than €1.5 billion budget from the public purses of the German federal government, German state ministries and the EU, and that not all governments have backed away from their commitment to research. In fact, during the crisis, the German and US governments boosted their funding of research with the goal of helping the economic recovery. In 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel''s government, through negotiation with the German state science ministries, approved a windfall of €18 billion in new science funding, to be spread over the next decade. Similarly, US President Barack Obama''s administration boosted spending on research with a temporary stimulus package for science, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.Even so, Harry Greenberg, Senior Associate Dean for Research at Stanford University (California, USA) pointed out that until the US government injected stimulus funding, the budget at the National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, Maryland, USA) had essentially “been flat as a pancake for five or six years, and that means that it''s actually gone down and it''s having an effect on people being able to sustain their research mission.”Similarly, Gruss said that the research community should remain vigilant. “I think one could phrase it as there is a danger. If you look at Great Britain, there is the Wellcome Trust, a very strong funding organization for life sciences and medical-oriented, health-oriented research. I think it''s in the back of the minds of the politicians that there is a gigantic foundation that supports that [kind of research]. I don''t think one can deny that. There is an atmosphere that people like the Gates family [Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] invests in health-related issues, particularly in the poorer countries [and that] maybe that is something that suffices.”The money available for research from private foundations and charities is growing in both size and scope. According to Iain Mattaj, Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL; Heidelberg, Germany), this growth might not be a bad thing. As he pointed out, private funding often complements government funding, with charities such as the Wellcome Trust going out of their way to leverage government spending without reducing government contributions. “My feeling is that the reason that the UK government is freezing research funding has all to do with economics and nothing to do with the fact that there are potentially private funders,” he said. “Several very large charities in particular are putting a lot of money into health research. The Gates Foundation is the biggest that has just come on the scene, but the Howard Hughes Medical Institute [HHMI; Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA] and the Wellcome Trust are very big, essentially private charities which have their own agendas.”…charities such as the Wellcome Trust [go] out of their way to leverage government spending without reducing government contributions​contributionsOpen in a separate window© CorbisBut, as he explained, these charities actually contribute to the overall health research budget, rather than substituting funds from one area to another. In fact, they often team up to tackle difficult research questions in partnership with each other and with government. Two-thirds of the €140 million annual budget of EMBL comes from the European states that agree to fund it, with additional contributions from private sources such as the Wellcome Trust and public sources such as the NIH.Yet over the years, as priorities have changed, the focus of those partnerships and the willingness to spend money on certain research themes or approaches has shifted, both within governments and in the private sector. Belief in the success of US President Richard Nixon''s famous ‘war on cancer'', for example, has waned over the years, although the fight and the funding continues. “I don''t want to use the word political, because of course the decisions are sometimes political, but actually it was a social priority to fight cancer. It was a social priority to fight AIDS,” Mattaj commented. “For the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation, which are fighting tropical diseases, they see that as a social necessity, rather than a personal interest if you like.”Nevertheless, Mattaj is not surprised that there is an inclination to reduce research spending in the UK and many smaller countries battered by the economic downturn. “Most countries have to reduce public spending, and research is public spending. It may be less badly hit than other aspects of public spending. [As such] it''s much better off than many other aspects of public spending.”A shift away from government funding to private funding, especially from disease-focused charities, worries some that less funding will be available for basic, curiosity-driven research—a move from pure research to ‘cure'' research. Moreover, charities are often just as vulnerable to economic downturns, so relying on them is not a guarantee of funding in harsh economic times. Indeed, greater reliance on private funding would be a return to the era of ‘gentlemen scientists'' and their benefactors (Sidebar A).

Sidebar A | Gentlemen scientists

Greater reliance on private funding would return science to a bygone age of gentlemen scientists relying on the largesse of their wealthy sponsors. In 1831, for example, naturalist Charles Darwin''s (1809–1882) passage on the HMS Beagle was paid for by his father, albeit reluctantly. According to Laura Snyder, an expert on Victorian science and culture at St John''s University (New York, USA), by the time Darwin returned to England in 1836, the funding game had changed and government and private scientific societies had begun to have a bigger role. When Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1791–1871), an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, experimental photographer and inventor, journeyed to Cape Colony in 1833, the British government offered to give him a free ride aboard an Admiralty ship. “Herschel turned them down because he wanted to be free to do whatever he wanted once he got to South Africa, and he didn''t want to feel beholden to government to do what they wanted him to do,” Snyder explained, drawing from her new book The Philosophical Breakfast Club, which covers the creation of the modern concept of science.Charles Babbage (1791–1871), the mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer, was a member of the same circle as Herschel and William Whewell (1794–1866), a polymath, geologist, astronomer and theologian, who coined the word ''scientist''. Although he was wealthy, having inherited £100,000 in 1827—valued at about £13.3 million in 2008—Babbage felt that government should help pay for his research that served the public interest.“Babbage was asking the government constantly for money to build his difference engine,” Snyder said. Babbage griped about feeling like a tradesman begging to be paid. “It annoyed him. He felt that the government should just have said, ''We will support the engine, whatever it is that you need, just tell us and we''ll write you a check''. But that''s not what the government was about to do.”Instead, the British government expected Babbage to report on his progress before it loosened its purse strings. Snyder explained, “What the government was doing was a little bit more like grants today, in the sense that you have to justify getting more money and you have to account for spending the money. Babbage just wanted an open pocketbook at his disposal.”In the end the government donated £17,000, and Babbage never completed the machine.Janet Rowley, a geneticist at the University of Chicago, is worried that the change in funding will make it more difficult to obtain money for the kind of research that led to her discovery in the 1970s of the first chromosomal translocations that cause cancer. She calls such work ‘fishing expeditions''. She said that the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (White Plains, New York, USA), for example—a non-profit funder of research—has modified its emphasis: “They have now said that they are going to put most of their resources into translational work and trying to take ideas that are close to clinical application, but need what are called incubator funds to ramp up from a laboratory to small-scale industrial production to increase the amount of compound or whatever is required to do studies on more patients.”This echoes Vince Cable''s view that taxpayers should not have to spend money on research that is not of direct economic, technological or health benefit to them. But if neither charities nor governments are willing to fund basic research, then who will pay the bill?…if neither charities nor governments are willing to fund basic research, then who will pay the bill?Iain Mattaj believes that the line between pure research and cure research is actually too blurred to make these kinds of funding distinctions. “In my view, it''s very much a continuum. I think many people who do basic research are actually very interested in the applications of their research. That''s just not their expertise,” he said. “I think many people who are at the basic end of research are more than happy to see things that they find out contributing towards things that are useful for society.”Jack Dixon, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at HHMI, also thinks that the line is blurry: “This divide between basic research and translational research is somewhat arbitrary, somewhat artificial in nature. I think every scientist I know who makes important, basic discoveries likes to [...] see their efforts translate into things that help humankind. Our focus at the Hughes has always been on basic things, but we love to see them translated into interesting products.” Even so, HHMI spends less than US $1 billion annually on research, which is overshadowed by the $30 billion spent by the NIH and the relatively huge budgets of the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK. “We''re a small player in terms of the total research funding in the US, so I just don''t see the NIH pulling back on supporting research,” Dixon said.By way of example, Brian Druker, Professor of Medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University (Portland, Oregon, USA) and a HHMI scientist, picked up on Rowley''s work with cancer-causing chromosomal translocations and developed the blockbuster anti-cancer drug, imatinib, marketed by Novartis. “Brian Druker is one of our poster boys in terms of the work he''s done and how that is translated into helping people live longer lives that have this disease,” Dixon commented.There is a similar view at Stanford. The distinction between basic and applied is “in the eye of the beholder,” Greenberg said. “Basic discovery is the grist for the mill that leads to translational research and new breakthroughs. It''s always been a little difficult to convey, but at least here at Stanford, that''s number one. Number two, many of our very basic researchers enjoy thinking about the translational or clinical implications of their basic findings and some of them want to be part of doing it. They want some benefit for mankind other than pure knowledge.”“Basic discovery is the grist for the mill that leads to translational research and new breakthroughs”If it had not backed down from the massive cuts to the research budget that were proposed, the intention of the UK Government to cut funding for basic, rather than applied, research might have proven difficult to implement. Identifying which research will be of no value to society is like trying to decide which child will grow up to be Prime Minister. Nevertheless, most would agree that governments have a duty to get value-for-money for the taxpayer, but defining the value of research in purely economic or translational terms is both short-sighted and near impossible. Even so, science is feeling the economic downturn and budgets are tighter than they have been for a long time. As Greenberg concluded, “It''s human nature when everybody is feeling the pinch that you think [yours] is bigger than the next guy''s, but I would be hard pressed to say who is getting pinched, at least in the biomedical agenda, more than who else.”     

An Evaluation of Systematic Tuberculosis Screening at Private Facilities in Karachi,Pakistan

Background

In Pakistan, like many Asian countries, a large proportion of healthcare is provided through the private sector. We evaluated a systematic screening strategy to identify people with tuberculosis in private facilities in Karachi and assessed the approaches'' ability to diagnose patients earlier in their disease progression.

Methods and Findings

Lay workers at 89 private clinics and a large hospital outpatient department screened all attendees for tuberculosis using a mobile phone-based questionnaire during one year. The number needed to screen to detect a case of tuberculosis was calculated. To evaluate early diagnosis, we tested for differences in cough duration and smear grading by screening facility. 529,447 people were screened, 1,010 smear-positive tuberculosis cases were detected and 942 (93.3%) started treatment, representing 58.7% of all smear-positive cases notified in the intervention area. The number needed to screen to detect a smear-positive case was 124 (prevalence 806/100,000) at the hospital and 763 (prevalence 131/100,000) at the clinics; however, ten times the number of individuals were screened in clinics. People with smear-positive TB detected at the hospital were less likely to report cough lasting 2–3 weeks (RR 0.66 95%CI [0.49–0.90]) and more likely to report cough duration >3 weeks (RR 1.10 95%CI [1.03–1.18]). Smear-positive cases at the clinics were less likely to have a +3 grade (RR 0.76 95%CI [0.63–0.92]) and more likely to have +1 smear grade (RR 1.24 95%CI [1.02–1.51]).

Conclusions

Tuberculosis screening at private facilities is acceptable and can yield large numbers of previously undiagnosed cases. Screening at general practitioner clinics may find cases earlier than at hospitals although more people must be screened to identify a case of tuberculosis. Limitations include lack of culture testing, therefore underestimating true TB prevalence. Using more sensitive and specific screening and diagnostic tests such as chest x-ray and Xpert MTB/RIF may improve results.     

Quality of Social and Physical Environments in Preschools and Children's Development of Academic,Language, and Literacy Skills

This study examined associations between quality of social and physical environments in preschools and children's development of academic, language, and literacy skills, and the extent to which preschool quality moderated the associations between child risk and development. Participants were a diverse sample of 540 four-year-old children in Georgia who attended Head Start, the Georgia Pre-Kindergarten Program, or private preschools. Controlling for children's gender, family income, race/ethnicity, preschool program type, and pretest performance, high-quality social environments were positively associated with children's academic and literacy skills at the end of preschool. Quality of the physical environment was not associated with children's outcomes at the end of preschool; however, higher quality physical environments moderated the negative associations between income and academic development and between non-White race/ethnicity and literacy development.     

Nobody likes to sleep alone: aspiring to kinship futures in post-Soviet Cuba

In post-Soviet Cuba, instead of the political future envisioned by Revolutionary authorities, poor residents of Havana aspire to create kinship futures where there is no need to ‘sleep alone’. Here, the idea of ‘sleeping together’ represents a trustworthy social bond that shelters a person from loneliness over time. For these habaneros, sexual love between men and women cannot be trusted, since it is often plagued by suspicions of material interest. By contrast, they view parent-child connections as a way to secure a cared-for future for themselves. Nevertheless, as Cuban socialism undergoes transformations, gendered inequalities create obstacles for many people's aspirations for parenthood. This article explores the contrast between sexual and filial love in Cubans’ efforts to create kinship futures for themselves, thereby adding to our understandings of poor people's life projects.     

Social Influences in Sequential Decision Making

People often make decisions in a social environment. The present work examines social influence on people’s decisions in a sequential decision-making situation. In the first experimental study, we implemented an information cascade paradigm, illustrating that people infer information from decisions of others and use this information to make their own decisions. We followed a cognitive modeling approach to elicit the weight people give to social as compared to private individual information. The proposed social influence model shows that participants overweight their own private information relative to social information, contrary to the normative Bayesian account. In our second study, we embedded the abstract decision problem of Study 1 in a medical decision-making problem. We examined whether in a medical situation people also take others’ authority into account in addition to the information that their decisions convey. The social influence model illustrates that people weight social information differentially according to the authority of other decision makers. The influence of authority was strongest when an authority''s decision contrasted with private information. Both studies illustrate how the social environment provides sources of information that people integrate differently for their decisions.     

Delays in the primary vaccination of children.

The results of a population-based survey of 170 children''s vaccination records were used to calculate the cumulative distributions of the ages (in months) at which each dose of vaccine had been received. Considerable delays in the administration of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and of the fourth dose of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine were observed, particularly in children vaccinated by private physicians rather than at public health clinics. The delay before MMR vaccination causes concern because of the frequency of measles in children aged 1 to 2 years, particularly those attending day-care centres, and the fragility of the herd immunity against this disease. Physicians should follow up patients who have missed appointments for MMR vaccination if a voluntary measles control program is to succeed.