scholarly journals A Review of Termite Pheromones: Multifaceted, Context-Dependent, and Rational Chemical Communications

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuki Mitaka ◽  
Toshiharu Akino

Termite colonies, composed of large numbers of siblings, develop an important caste-based division of labor; individuals in these societies interact via intra- or intercaste chemical communications. For more than 50 years, termites have been known to use a variety of pheromones to perform tasks necessary for maintenance of their societies, similar to eusocial hymenopterans. Although trail-following pheromones have been chemically identified in various termites, other types of pheromones have not been elucidated chemically or functionally. In the past decade, however, chemical compositions and biological functions have been successfully identified for several types of termite pheromones; accordingly, the details of the underlying pheromone communications have been gradually revealed. In this review, we summarize both the functions of all termite pheromones identified so far and the chemical interactions among termites and other organisms. Subsequently, we argue how termites developed their sophisticated pheromone communication. We hypothesize that termites have diverted defensive and antimicrobial substances to pheromones associated in caste recognition and caste-specific roles. Furthermore, termites have repeatedly used a pre-existing pheromone or have added supplementary compounds to it in accordance with the social context, leading to multifunctionalization of pre-existing pheromones and emergence of new pheromones. These two mechanisms may enable termites to transmit various context-dependent information with a small number of chemicals, thus resulting in formation of coordinated, complex, and rational chemical communication systems.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Smith

: I describe a new approach to understanding processes of village aggregation and urbanization in the past. The key concept—energized crowding—refers to the social effects of large numbers of social interactions that take place within settlements. Demographic processes of population growth and settlement nucleation (aggregation and urbanization) lead to increased energized crowding, which in turn generates a variety of social outcomes. I discuss those outcomes under three headings: scalar stress, community formation, and economic growth. In this model, aggregation and urbanization are crucial processes that lead—by way of energized crowding—to many documented social outputs in both contemporary and past settlement systems. Because this is a new approach for archaeology, conceptual tools for understanding these processes must be borrowed from other social sciences. In particular, recent research on settlement scaling provides empirical and theoretical support for the notion that aggregation and urbanization were of fundamental importance in generating social change in the past.


Author(s):  
D.I. Potter ◽  
M. Ahmed ◽  
K. Ruffing

Ion implantation, used extensively for the past decade in fabricating semiconductor devices, now provides a unique means for altering the near-surface chemical compositions and microstructures of metals. These alterations often significantly improve physical properties that depend on the surface of the material; for example, catalysis, corrosion, oxidation, hardness, friction and wear. Frequently the mechanisms causing these beneficial alterations and property changes remain obscure and much of the current research in the area of ion implantation metallurgy is aimed at identifying such mechanisms. Investigators thus confront two immediate questions: To what extent is the chemical composition changed by implantation? What is the resulting microstructure? These two questions can be investigated very fruitfully with analytical electron microscopy (AEM), as described below.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estella Tincknell

The extensive commercial success of two well-made popular television drama serials screened in the UK at prime time on Sunday evenings during the winter of 2011–12, Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–) and Call the Midwife (BBC, 2012–), has appeared to consolidate the recent resurgence of the period drama during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as reassembling something like a mass audience for woman-centred realist narratives at a time when the fracturing and disassembling of such audiences seemed axiomatic. While ostensibly different in content, style and focus, the two programmes share a number of distinctive features, including a range of mature female characters who are sufficiently well drawn and socially diverse as to offer a profoundly pleasurable experience for the female viewer seeking representations of aging femininity that go beyond the sexualised body of the ‘successful ager’. Equally importantly, these two programmes present compelling examples of the ‘conjunctural text’, which appears at a moment of intense political polarisation, marking struggles over consent to a contemporary political position by re-presenting the past. Because both programmes foreground older women as crucial figures in their respective communities, but offer very different versions of the social role and ideological positioning that this entails, the underlying politics of such nostalgia becomes apparent. A critical analysis of these two versions of Britain's past thus highlights the ideological investments involved in period drama and the extent to which this ‘cosy’ genre may legitimate or challenge contemporary political claims.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Zachary Nowak ◽  
Bradley M. Jones ◽  
Elisa Ascione

This article begins with a parody, a fictitious set of regulations for the production of “traditional” Italian polenta. Through analysis of primary and secondary historical sources we then discuss the various meanings of which polenta has been the bearer through time and space in order to emphasize the mutability of the modes of preparation, ingredients, and the social value of traditional food products. Finally, we situate polenta within its broader cultural, political, and economic contexts, underlining the uses and abuses of rendering foods as traditional—a process always incomplete, often contested, never organic. In stirring up the past and present of polenta and placing it within both the projects of Italian identity creation and the broader scholarly literature on culinary tradition and taste, we emphasize that for so-called traditional foods to be saved, they must be continually reinvented.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
D. A. Abgadzhava ◽  
A. S. Vlaskina

War is an essential part of the social reality inherent in all stages of human development: from the primitive communal system to the present, where advanced technologies and social progress prevail. However, these characteristics do not make our society more peaceful, on the contrary, according to recent research and reality, now the number of wars and armed conflicts have increased, and most of the conflicts have a pronounced local intra-state character. Thus, wars in the classical sense of them go back to the past, giving way to military and armed conflicts. Now the number of soldiers and the big army doesn’t show the opponents strength. What is more important is the fact that people can use technology, the ideological and informational base to win the war. According to the history, «weak» opponent can be more successful in conflict if he has greater cohesion and ideological unity. Modern wars have already transcended the political boundaries of states, under the pressure of certain trends, they are transformed into transnational wars, that based on privatization, commercialization and obtaining revenue. Thus, the present paper will show a difference in understanding of terms such as «war», «military conflict» and «armed conflict». And also the auteurs will tell about the image of modern war and forecasts for its future transformation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Turkan Ahmet

The past few decades of ongoing war in Iraq has had a dramatic impact on the health of Iraq’s population. Wars are known to have negative effects on the social and physical environments of individuals, as well as limit their access to the available health care services. This paper explores the personal experiences of my family members, who were exposed to war, as well as includes information that has been reviewed form many academic sources. The data aided in providing recommendations and developing strategies, on both local and international levels, to improve the health status of the populations exposed to war.


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