The “Carta della Natura” project: the case study of Molise region

This document shows the conceptual and operational framework adopted to realise the “Carta della Natura” of Molise region at 1:25, 000 scale. In particular, the methodology used to create the Map of habitats is briefly described and the habitats mapped and identified on the scale of analysis are listed.The next phase of the Carta della Natura project is also described: the assessment phase that using a set of indicators and indexes, assigns specific marks to the territorial units included that are representative of their natural value and risk of degradation. The mapping and the evaluation of the Molise regions’ habitats represent a valid landmark for bodies and agencies responsible for the safeguard, control, planning and management of the territory.

Hanoi’s Built Materiality and the Scales of Anthropology

Hanoi’s ‘collective housing quarters’ (KTTs) are a living legacy of its socialist past. Since the 2000s the state has set out radical redevelopment plans to transform KTTs into new buildings, but these have largely failed. What are the possible explanations for this failure? KTTs have gradually transformed in their material forms through self-built modifications initiated by residents. Such material property of KTTs bears on the pathway of redevelopment, but official discourses are silent about this. In this article I show how KTTs as things have the capacity to transform anthropological thinking. The material property of KTTs as a citywide phenomenon affords a particular scale of analysis, with which we can imagine humans as participants in the material world instead of viewing materialities as participants in society.

Quantification of Myocyte Disarray in Human Cardiac Tissue

Proper three-dimensional (3D)-cardiomyocyte orientation is important for an effective tension production in cardiac muscle. Cardiac diseases can cause severe remodeling processes in the heart, such as cellular misalignment, that can affect both the electrical and mechanical functions of the organ. To date, a proven methodology to map and quantify myocytes disarray in massive samples is missing. In this study, we present an experimental pipeline to reconstruct and analyze the 3D cardiomyocyte architecture in massive samples. We employed tissue clearing, staining, and advanced microscopy techniques to detect sarcomeres in relatively large human myocardial strips with micrometric resolution. Z-bands periodicity was exploited in a frequency analysis approach to extract the 3D myofilament orientation, providing an orientation map used to characterize the tissue organization at different spatial scales. As a proof-of-principle, we applied the proposed method to healthy and pathologically remodeled human cardiac tissue strips. Preliminary results suggest the reliability of the method: strips from a healthy donor are characterized by a well-organized tissue, where the local disarray is log-normally distributed and slightly depends on the spatial scale of analysis; on the contrary, pathological strips show pronounced tissue disorganization, characterized by local disarray significantly dependent on the spatial scale of analysis. A virtual sample generator is developed to link this multi-scale disarray analysis with the underlying cellular architecture. This approach allowed us to quantitatively assess tissue organization in terms of 3D myocyte angular dispersion and may pave the way for developing novel predictive models based on structural data at cellular resolution.

Description of the Intramunicipal Habitat with Significant Concentrations of Foreign Population. The Case of the Province of Málaga (Spain)

The presence of foreigners in the province of Málaga is highly noticeable, especially in specific municipalities such as the city of Málaga, coastal areas, or villages in the Axarquia region. But from a geographical point of view, there are comparatively few investigations dedicated to the definition of the space in which foreign immigrants reside. The aim of this research is to provide a description of the habitats where people who were born abroad tend to concentrate in the province of Málaga. The main novelty of the research is the scale of analysis we have used being intramunicipal, based on Nomenclator statistics. This is especially relevant when we are dealing with small municipalities in some of which the proportion of foreigners is quite high, because it is the only one that allows us to characterise the habitat of the foreigners.

Drawing Monsters with Emil Ferris and Lynda Barry: An Exploration of the Drawing Process as Part of Graphic Medicine

This essay explores the role of drawing as a mode of processing intersectional violence, a strategy that I argue links Emil Ferris’s comic, My Favorite Thing is Monsters (2018) to Lynda Barry’s pedagogical graphic narratives What It Is (2008) and Making Comics (2019). I argue that My Favorite Thing is Monsters embodies an enhanced version of graphic medicine that shifts the scale of analysis from the individual to the collective, revealing the health impact of intersectional oppressions. In its titular preoccupation with monsters, especially the Medusa, and its materialization of the protagonist’s sketch book, I further argue that Ferris’s work of fiction recalls Barry’s exercise of drawing monsters. Continuing its exploration of the healing process of drawing, and drawing monsters, the essay concludes with an experiment in ethnographic criticism, reflecting on my own experience of drawing my way through the global pandemic of Covid-19 during the first six months of 2020.

Emergent Rarity Properties in Carabid Communities From Chinese Steppes With Different Climatic Conditions

Species abundance distributions (SADs) are increasingly used to investigate how species community structure changes in response to environmental variations. SAD models depict the relative abundance of species recorded in a community and express fundamental aspects of the community structure, namely patterns of commonness and rarity. However, the influence of differences in environmental conditions on SAD characteristics is still poorly understood. In this study we used SAD models of carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in three grassland ecosystems (desert, typical, and meadow steppes) in China. These ecosystems are characterized by different aridity conditions, thus offering an opportunity to investigate how SADs are influenced by differences in environmental conditions (mainly aridity and vegetation cover, and hence productivity). We used various SAD models, including the meta-community zero sum multinomial (mZSM), the lognormal (PLN) and Fisher’s logseries (LS), and uni- and multimodal gambin models. Analyses were done at the level of steppe type (coarse scale) and for different sectors within the same steppe (fine scale). We found that the mZSM model provided, in general, the best fit at both analysis scales. Model parameters were influenced by the scale of analysis. Moreover, the LS was the best fit in desert steppe SAD. If abundances are rarefied to the smallest sample, results are similar to those without rarefaction, but differences in models estimates become more evident. Gambin unimodal provided the best fit with the lowest α-value observed in desert steppe and higher values in typical and meadow steppes, with results which were strongly affected by the scale of analysis and the use of rarefaction. Our results indicate that all investigated communities are adequately modeled by two similar distributions, the mZSM and the LS, at both scales of analyses. This indicates (1) that all communities are characterized by a relatively small number of species, most of which are rare, and (2) that the meta-communities at the large scale maintain the basic SAD shape of the local communities. The gambin multimodal models produced exaggerated α-values, which indicates that they overfit simple communities. Overall, Fisher’s α, mZSM θ, and gambin α-values were substantially lower in the desert steppe and higher in the typical and meadow steppes, which implies a decreasing influence of environmental harshness (aridity) from the desert steppe to the typical and meadow steppes.

HiDeF: identifying persistent structures in multiscale ‘omics data

In any ‘omics study, the scale of analysis can dramatically affect the outcome. For instance, when clustering single-cell transcriptomes, is the analysis tuned to discover broad or specific cell types? Likewise, protein communities revealed from protein networks can vary widely in sizes depending on the method. Here, we use the concept of persistent homology, drawn from mathematical topology, to identify robust structures in data at all scales simultaneously. Application to mouse single-cell transcriptomes significantly expands the catalog of identified cell types, while analysis of SARS-COV-2 protein interactions suggests hijacking of WNT. The method, HiDeF, is available via Python and Cytoscape.

Identifying persistent structures in multiscale ‘omics data

In any ‘omics study, the scale of analysis can dramatically affect the outcome. For instance, when clustering single-cell transcriptomes, is the analysis tuned to discover broad or specific cell types? Likewise, protein communities revealed from protein networks can vary widely in sizes depending on the method. Here we use the concept of “persistent homology”, drawn from mathematical topology, to identify robust structures in data at all scales simultaneously. Application to mouse single-cell transcriptomes significantly expands the catalog of identified cell types, while analysis of SARS-COV-2 protein interactions suggests hijacking of WNT. The method, HiDeF, is available via Python and Cytoscape.

Reading for the Planet

The introduction situates world literature and the Anthropocene as instances of broader dynamics of world-imagining and a recent shift toward the global as a scale of analysis. It offers an expanded narrative of globalization, by looking back to moments of capitalist expansion that precede neoliberalism and by recognizing the environment (particularly in colonial peripheries) as globalization’s material condition of possibility as well as its product. Describing the book’s interdisciplinary approach to cultural imagining and environmental crisis, the introduction shows how understandings of nature are mediated by literary tropes and narrative forms and genres in way that precede and exceed representation in any particular text; cultural logics shape what counts as nature or crisis. Therefore, a facility with the literary is broadly relevant to environmental thought and action, and the purview of ecocriticism ranges far beyond texts explicitly “about” the environment. The introduction argues for legibility (not visibility) as the goal of analysis: under what conditions can environmental injustice be read, understood, and apprehended? A reading of Robert Kaplan’s “The Coming Anarchy” and Henrietta Rose-Innes’s “Poison” demonstrates the limitations of eco-apocalypse as a mode of imagining futurity, which tends to ignore histories of imperialism and inequality that shape the present.