scholarly journals Fixing the ecosystem: Conservation, crisis and capital in Rwanda's Gishwati Forest

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Clay
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ecosystem Approach ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Landscape Modification ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hybrid Spaces ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
And Function

Conservation-development projects are increasingly enacted across large expanses of land where human livelihoods hang in the balance. Recent initiatives–often called ‘landscape approaches’ or ‘ecosystem-based’ conservation–aim to achieve economic development and conservation goals through managing hybrid spaces. I argue that the landscape/ecosystem approach is a socioecological fix: an effort to resolve social-environmental crises through sinking capital (financial, natural, and social) into an imagined ecosystem. Rwanda’s Gishwati Forest has been the locus of diverse crises and fixes over the past 40 years, including an industrial forestry and dairy project, a refugee settlement, a privately managed chimpanzee sanctuary, a carbon sequestration platform, and, most recently, an “integrated silvo-pastoral conservation landscape.” This paper considers how these governance schemes have intersected with broader processes of agrarian change to generate crises that subsequent conservation/development projects then attempt to resolve. I demonstrate how visions for ecosystems privilege certain forms of governance around which imagined socioecological histories are mobilized to frame problems and legitimize certain solutions, technologies, and actors. The Gishwati ecosystem and its fixes are repeatedly defined through an imaginary of crisis and degradation that engenders large-scale landscape modification while foreclosing reflection about root causes of crises or how these might be addressed. Thus, even while conservation/development paradigms have shifted over the past 40 years (from separating people and nature to integrating them in conservation landscapes), this crisis-fix metabolism has consistently generated livelihood insecurity for the tens of thousands of people living in and around Gishwati. Imagining and enacting more just and inclusive social-environmental landscapes will require making space for diverse voices to define ecosystem form and function as well as addressing deeply rooted power imbalances that are at the heart of recurrent crises.

A widespread pathway for substitution of adenine by diaminopurine in phage genomes

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 372 (6541) ◽  
pp. 512-516
Author(s):  
Yan Zhou ◽  
Xuexia Xu ◽  
Yifeng Wei ◽  
Yu Cheng ◽  
Yu Guo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Restriction Enzymes ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Host Restriction ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Multienzyme System ◽  
Dna Modifications ◽  
Dna Production ◽  
And Function

DNA modifications vary in form and function but generally do not alter Watson-Crick base pairing. Diaminopurine (Z) is an exception because it completely replaces adenine and forms three hydrogen bonds with thymine in cyanophage S-2L genomic DNA. However, the biosynthesis, prevalence, and importance of Z genomes remain unexplored. Here, we report a multienzyme system that supports Z-genome synthesis. We identified dozens of globally widespread phages harboring such enzymes, and we further verified the Z genome in one of these phages, Acinetobacter phage SH-Ab 15497, by using liquid chromatography with ultraviolet and mass spectrometry. The Z genome endows phages with evolutionary advantages for evading the attack of host restriction enzymes, and the characterization of its biosynthetic pathway enables Z-DNA production on a large scale for a diverse range of applications.

scholarly journals Tackling resistance: emerging antimalarials and new parasite targets in the era of elimination

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily S. Mathews ◽  
Audrey R. Odom John
Keyword(s):  
Drug Resistance ◽  
Malaria Elimination ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Therapeutic Targets ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Multi Drug Resistance ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Combination Therapies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Antimalarial Compounds

Malaria remains a significant contributor to global human mortality, and roughly half the world’s population is at risk for infection with Plasmodium spp. parasites. Aggressive control measures have reduced the global prevalence of malaria significantly over the past decade. However, resistance to available antimalarials continues to spread, including resistance to the widely used artemisinin-based combination therapies. Novel antimalarial compounds and therapeutic targets are greatly needed. This review will briefly discuss several promising current antimalarial development projects, including artefenomel, ferroquine, cipargamin, SJ733, KAF156, MMV048, and tafenoquine. In addition, we describe recent large-scale genetic and resistance screens that have been instrumental in target discovery. Finally, we highlight new antimalarial targets, which include essential transporters and proteases. These emerging antimalarial compounds and therapeutic targets have the potential to overcome multi-drug resistance in ongoing efforts toward malaria elimination.

scholarly journals The cardiac nanoenvironment: form and function at the nanoscale

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jashan P. Singh ◽  
Jennifer L. Young
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
New Materials ◽  
Length Scales ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Molecular Features ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Physiological Homeostasis ◽  
Organ Level ◽  
And Function

AbstractMechanical forces in the cardiovascular system occur over a wide range of length scales. At the whole organ level, large scale forces drive the beating heart as a synergistic unit. On the microscale, individual cells and their surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) exhibit dynamic reciprocity, with mechanical feedback moving bidirectionally. Finally, in the nanometer regime, molecular features of cells and the ECM show remarkable sensitivity to mechanical cues. While small, these nanoscale properties are in many cases directly responsible for the mechanosensitive signaling processes that elicit cellular outcomes. Given the inherent challenges in observing, quantifying, and reconstituting this nanoscale environment, it is not surprising that this landscape has been understudied compared to larger length scales. Here, we aim to shine light upon the cardiac nanoenvironment, which plays a crucial role in maintaining physiological homeostasis while also underlying pathological processes. Thus, we will highlight strategies aimed at (1) elucidating the nanoscale components of the cardiac matrix, and (2) designing new materials and biosystems capable of mimicking these features in vitro.

scholarly journals Weighing trees with lasers: advances, challenges and opportunities

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 20170048 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. I. Disney ◽  
M. Boni Vicari ◽  
A. Burt ◽  
K. Calders ◽  
S. L. Lewis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Laser Scanning ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Point Clouds ◽  
3D Models ◽  
Tree Form ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
And Function ◽  
Non Destructive

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is providing exciting new ways to quantify tree and forest structure, particularly above-ground biomass (AGB). We show how TLS can address some of the key uncertainties and limitations of current approaches to estimating AGB based on empirical allometric scaling equations (ASEs) that underpin all large-scale estimates of AGB. TLS provides extremely detailed non-destructive measurements of tree form independent of tree size and shape. We show examples of three-dimensional (3D) TLS measurements from various tropical and temperate forests and describe how the resulting TLS point clouds can be used to produce quantitative 3D models of branch and trunk size, shape and distribution. These models can drastically improve estimates of AGB, provide new, improved large-scale ASEs, and deliver insights into a range of fundamental tree properties related to structure. Large quantities of detailed measurements of individual 3D tree structure also have the potential to open new and exciting avenues of research in areas where difficulties of measurement have until now prevented statistical approaches to detecting and understanding underlying patterns of scaling, form and function. We discuss these opportunities and some of the challenges that remain to be overcome to enable wider adoption of TLS methods.

Introduction—Minoan Built Environment: Past Studies, Recent Perspectives, and Future Challenges

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Letesson ◽  
Carl Knappett
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Architectural Patterns ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Residential Quarters ◽  
And Function ◽  
Intensive Work

Architecture and urbanism have been of constant interest to Minoan archaeologists since the beginning of the twentieth century. While there is some scholarly bias to this, with the field deeply affected by Sir Arthur Evans’s focus on the monumental architecture of Knossos, Minoan Crete continues to yield abundant evidence for a substantial built environment. Focusing on urban and architectural remains creates a strong bias in favour of one block of time, the Neopalatial period, which produced the largest amount of wellpreserved settlements and buildings. Yet, in general, the evidence we now have on the Minoan built environment is an undeniable resource, one that continues to grow thanks to ongoing studies of pre-existing remains as well as new excavation and survey projects. As is clear in Evans’s magnum opus, The Palace of Minos at Knossos, the large-scale excavations typical of the dawn of the last century were heavily directed towards the urban cores of the largest Minoan sites (e.g. Boyd Hawes et al. 1908; Hutchinson 1950). The bulk of what we know about the Minoan built environment comes from the first half of the twentieth century, initially through the intensive work of the foreign schools at Malia, Phaistos, Palaikastro, Gournia, Mochlos, and Pseira, later joined by countless excavations by Greek archaeologists. Yet, synthetic treatments really only began with the work of James Walter Graham, in the form of numerous papers published in the American Journal of Archaeology (see Letesson 2009 for a detailed review), and especially his Palaces of Crete (Graham 1962). Nonetheless, his comparative analyses, which also dealt with non-palatial buildings, were largely focused on polite architecture. With a particular interest in form and function, he built on Evans’s insights to be the first to identify, across a large sample of buildings, recurring architectural patterns in the Minoan built environment (e.g. Piano Nobile, residential quarters, banquet halls). His studies also included an innovative quantitative component, emphasizing the existence of a unit of length that builders would have used to lay out the palaces and some of the so-called ‘villas’.

Molecular Paleontology and Biochemical Evolution

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan M. Gaines ◽  
Geoffrey Eglinton ◽  
Jürgen Rullkötter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cambrian Explosion ◽  
Microbial World ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unicellular Algae ◽  
Almost All ◽  
And Function ◽  
Multicellular Organisms ◽  
Molecular Paleontology

Carl Woese’s drive for a unified system of biological classification didn’t just open the microbial world to exploration: it reshuffled the entire taxonomic system and revolutionized the way that biologists study evolution, reigniting interest in preanimal evolution. Studies of evolution from the mid-nineteenth through most of the twentieth century relied on the comparison of forms in living and fossil organisms and were limited to the complex multicellular organisms that developed over the past 550 million years. In other words, much was known about the evolution of animals and land plants that left distinctive hard fossils, and very little was known about the unicellular algae and microorganisms that occupied the seas for most of the earth’s history. Woese’s Tree of Life, derived from nucleic acid sequences in ribosomal RNA, has revealed ancestral relationships that form and function don’t even hint at, allowing biologists to look beyond the rise of multicellular life and link it with less differentiated, more primal forms—which was precisely Woese’s intention. But evolution is a history, not just a family tree of relationships. If the information stored in the genes of extant organisms is to provide true insight into that history, it needs to be anchored in time, linked to extinct organisms and to past environments. Ultimately, we must look to the record in the rocks and sediments, just as paleontologists and biologists have been doing for the past two centuries. In Darwin’s time, that record comprised rocks from the past 550 million years, a span of time that geologists now call the Phanerozoic eon, based on Greek words meaning visible or evident life. The eon began with the rocks of the Cambrian period, in which nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century paleontologists discovered a fabulous assortment of fossils—traces of trilobites, anemones, shrimp, and other multicellular animals that were completely missing from any of the earlier strata. Thousands of new animals and plants, including representatives of almost all contemporary groups, as well as hundreds of now-extinct ones, appeared so suddenly between 542 and 530 million years ago that paleontologists refer to the phenomenon as the Cambrian “explosion.”

Indigenous approaches to the past: ‘Creative histories’ at the Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiera Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Responses ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

This article discusses a recent art project created by the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathon Jones, which was commissioned to commemorate the opening of the revitalized Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney in early 2020. Jones’ work involves a dramatic installation of red and white crushed stones laid throughout the grounds of the barracks, merging the image of the emu footprint with that of the English broad convict arrow to ‘consider Australia’s layered history and contemporary cultural relations’. This work was accompanied by a ‘specially-curated programme’ of performances, workshops, storytelling and Artist Talks. Together, these elements were designed to unpack how certain ‘stories determine the ways we came together as a nation’. As one of the speakers of the Artist Talk’s programme, I had a unique opportunity to experiment with what colleagues and I have been calling ‘Creative histories’ in reference to the way some artists and historians are choosing to communicate their research about the past in ways that experiment with form and function and push disciplinary or generic boundaries. This article reflects upon how these two distinct creative history projects – one visual art, the other performative – renegotiate the complex and contested pasts of the Hyde Park Barracks. I suggest that both examples speak to the role of memory and creativity in shaping cultural responses to Australia’s colonial past, while Jones' programme illustrates how Indigenous artists and academics are making a profound intervention into contemporary understandings of how history is ‘done’ in Australia.

scholarly journals Taiwan’s Mythological Theme Parks: Mnemonic Guardians and Uncanny Imaginaries

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian G. Brereton
Keyword(s):  
Filial Piety ◽  
Theme Park ◽  
Theme Parks ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
And Function

Cornell University This paper analyzes the mnemonic roles of mythological theme parks in contemporary Taiwan. I investigate two popular theme parks, Madou’s “Prefecture that Represents Heaven” (代天府) and its single Taiwanese precedent, the “Palace of Southern Heaven” (南天宮) in Zhanghua. I term these sites “mythological theme parks” because they differ significantly in form and function from other popular religious temples throughout Taiwan and China. Though both theme park and temple are loci of social production and reproduction, the nature of interaction at mythological theme parks resembles in many ways that which occurs at the imaginary realms manufactured by secular theme parks. These mythological theme parks feature moral imaginaries displayed in sculptural and animatronic depictions of the afterlife and acts of filial piety. My study addresses both textual sources and ethnographic data, collected while conducting fieldwork during the summers of 2004 and 2005, to evaluate how these mythological theme parks culturally convey the past into the present.

The nice-of-you construction and its fragments

Linguistics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-318
Author(s):  
Adele E. Goldberg ◽  
Thomas Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Unique Function ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
And Function

Abstract This article argues that a usage-based construction (a conventional pairing of form and function) is required to account for a certain pattern of English exemplified by e.g., it’s nice of you to read this. Contemporary corpus and survey data reveal that the construction is strongly associated with certain adjectives (e.g., nice, good) over others, while diachronic data demonstrate that the construction’s overall frequency has systematically waxed and waned over the past century. The construction’s unique function – namely to concisely convey a judgment regarding how an action reflects on the agent of the action – enables us to predict many observations about its distribution without stipulation. These include restrictions on the interpretation of adjectives that occur in the construction, its infinitive complement, the modal verbs that may appear in it and its ability to be embedded. We further observe that certain conventional fragments of the construction evoke the semantics of the entire construction. Finally, we situate the construction within a network of related constructions, as part of a speaker’s “construct-i-con”.

scholarly journals Global Root Traits (GRooT) Database

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaly Guerrero-Ramirez ◽  
Liesje Mommer ◽  
Grégoire T. Freschet ◽  
Colleen M. Iversen ◽  
M. Luke McCormack ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Root Traits ◽  
Root Trait ◽  
Taxonomic Resolution ◽  
Plant Responses ◽  
Mean Values ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Plant Form ◽  
And Function

AbstractMotivationTrait data are fundamental to quantitatively describe plant form and function. Although root traits capture key dimensions related to plant responses to changing environmental conditions and effects on ecosystem processes, they have rarely been included in large-scale comparative studies and global models. For instance, root traits remain absent from nearly all studies that define the global spectrum of plant form and function. Thus, to overcome conceptual and methodological roadblocks preventing a widespread integration of root trait data into large-scale analyses we created the Global Root Trait (GRooT) Database. GRooT provides ready-to-use data by combining the expertise of root ecologists with data mobilization and curation. Specifically, we (i) determined a set of core root traits relevant to the description of plant form and function based on an assessment by experts, (ii) maximized species coverage through data standardization within and among traits, and (iii) implemented data quality checks.Main types of variables containedGRooT contains 114,222 trait records on 38 continuous root traits.Spatial location and grainGlobal coverage with data from arid, continental, polar, temperate, and tropical biomes. Data on root traits derived from experimental studies and field studies.Time period and grainData recorded between 1911 and 2019Major taxa and level of measurementGRooT includes root trait data for which taxonomic information is available. Trait records vary in their taxonomic resolution, with sub-species or varieties being the highest and genera the lowest taxonomic resolution available. It contains information for 184 sub-species or varieties, 6,214 species, 1,967 genera and 254 families. Due to variation in data sources, trait records in the database include both individual observations and mean values.Software formatGRooT includes two csv file. A GitHub repository contains the csv files and a script in R to query the database.

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