INFORMALITY IN FORMAL SPACES THROUGH SELF ORGANIZATION: A STUDY OF THE PEOPLE’S PROCESSES IN PUTTALAM TOWN IN SRI LANKA

Informality is an inevitable ingredient in an urban environment. The ‘formally’ established urban built environments are informally shaped by people for the appropriation of spaces for their activities. Within dominant institutionalized urban planning processes, such informalities are often regarded as ‘nuisances’, ‘out-of-place’, and ‘misfits’ in urban spaces. Yet, informally organized spaces are as important as formal spaces for the vitality, equity, and sustainability of all types of urban environments. People's processes in the creation and operation of informal spaces, resisting, contesting, and negotiating the dominant formal networks, have been the subject of many scholarly works over the last few decades, but a lack of empirical work and informative case studies on the subject has distanced mainstream planners and urban designers from learning and integrating such informal space production into institutionalized urban development processes. In order to mend this gap and reorient the prevalent understanding among planning professionals, a people’s endeavor in Puttalam town in Sri Lanka to form and sustain informal spaces is presented in this paper. The paper elaborates on the ‘self-organizing’ behaviour of the small-scale retail vendors and the day-to-day users of the city to withstand interventions by the authorities on the public market space of the town.

Methylmercury and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Mediterranean Seafood: A Molecular Anthropological Perspective

Eating seafood has numerous health benefits; however, it constitutes one of the main sources of exposure to several harmful environmental pollutants, both of anthropogenic and natural origin. Among these, methylmercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons give rise to concerns related to their possible effects on human biology. In the present review, we summarize the results of epidemiological investigations on the genetic component of individual susceptibility to methylmercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons exposure in humans, and on the effects that these two pollutants have on human epigenetic profiles (DNA methylation). Then, we provide evidence that Mediterranean coastal communities represent an informative case study to investigate the potential impact of methylmercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on the human genome and epigenome, since they are characterized by a traditionally high local seafood consumption, and given the characteristics that render the Mediterranean Sea particularly polluted. Finally, we discuss the challenges of a molecular anthropological approach to this topic.

Transnational Social Resilience in La Costa Region of Chiapas, Mexico

This paper tells the story of how a group of fishermen became resilient in response to a community crisis in their village caused by the depletion of shrimp stocks, and how they are building transnational social resilience through the creation and operation of an Ecotourist resort to improve their lives, and insure their future well-being. Social change is taking place in some communities in the La Costa region of Chiapas, one of the most impoverished states in Mexico, where people opted to emigrate to the US and came back charged with individual and collective social remittances, and new personal narratives which have helped them and their community adapt and change while constructing transnational lives. The development of El Centro Turístico El Madresal in Ponte Duro, Chiapas, provides an informative case study in how to use the tools of social resilience conceptualization within a transnational context.

Most Preschoolers don't know Most

Recently, researchers interested in the nature and origins of semantic representations haveinvestigated an especially informative case study: The acquisition of the word most – aquantifier which by all accounts demands a sophisticated 2nd order logic, and whichtherefore poses an interesting challenge to theories of language acquisition. According tosome reports, children acquire most as early as three years of age, suggesting that it doesnot draw on cardinal representations of quantity (contrary to some formal accounts),since adult-like knowledge of counting emerges later in development. Other studies,however, have provided evidence that children acquire most much later – possibly by theage of 6 or 7 – thereby drawing this logic into question. Here we explore this issue byconducting a series of experiments that probed children’s knowledge of most in differentways. We conclude that children do not acquire an adult-like meaning for most until verylate in development – around the age of 6 – and that certain behaviors which appearconsistent with earlier knowledge are better explained by children’s well-attested bias toselect larger sets (a “more” bias), especially when tested with unfamiliar words.

Uncertainty Relation for Errors Focusing on General POVM Measurements with an Example of Two-State Quantum Systems

A novel uncertainty relation for errors of general quantum measurement is presented. The new relation, which is presented in geometric terms for maps representing measurement, is completely operational and can be related directly to tangible measurement outcomes. The relation violates the naïve bound ℏ/2 for the position-momentum measurement, whilst nevertheless respecting Heisenberg’s philosophy of the uncertainty principle. The standard Kennard–Robertson uncertainty relation for state preparations expressed by standard deviations arises as a corollary to its special non-informative case. For the measurement on two-state quantum systems, the relation is found to offer virtually the tightest bound possible; the equality of the relation holds for the measurement performed over every pure state. The Ozawa relation for errors of quantum measurements will also be examined in this regard. In this paper, the Kolmogorovian measure-theoretic formalism of probability—which allows for the representation of quantum measurements by positive-operator valued measures (POVMs)—is given special attention, in regard to which some of the measure-theory specific facts are remarked along the exposition as appropriate.