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Global clinical trials depend on a range of standards in order for research results to be comparable. As standardization is more than a mere technical exercise, tensions can arise when things are not uniform. This paper uses empirical data from interviews with principal investigators as well as Clinical Research Organization and pharmaceutical industry representatives working in India's clinical trial industry to critically examine the ways Indian researchers navigate quests for standardization. It turns the analytical lens to the often obfuscated work of standardization aiming to transcend the biological and cultural specificity of research participants and research sites. Drawing on the concept of local biologies, it illustrates that the universal body presumed by clinical trial methodology is, in fact, a specifically Euro-American one: Indian participants not only need to be made globally comparable but also aligned with the drugs' future consumers. Focusing on the tensions between biomedicine's postulation of bodily universality and trial participants' local biologies, this paper advances recent interventions problematizing the structural violence undergirding global clinical trials. It also contributes to the literature on local biologies in its discussion of how these are negotiated in Indian for-profit clinical trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile telephony influences nearly all aspects of people׳s lives and is expected to grow in importance as a revenue and information source. Mobile phones are reported to have a positive and significant impact on the overall economic performance of individuals and the growth of a country. In India, however, the adoption pace of mobile telephony in rural regions is slower than that in urban areas. We examine the differences in the intention to adopt mobile telephony across different segments of the rural Indian population using the extended technology acceptance model (TAM), partial least squares regression, and multigroup analysis. Results suggest that gender, age, technology subscription, and region play a moderating role on the relationships in the extended TAM for rural India. These findings can help service providers design and develop group-specific offerings that lead to faster adoption of mobile telephony in rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]