Isolation and Molecular Detection of Mycoplasma gallisepticum in Commercial Layer Chickens in Sylhet, Bangladesh

Mycoplasma gallisepticum induced poultry diseases are associated with a huge economic crisis and have a considerable impact on the poultry industry worldwide. The aim of the current study was to isolate and perform molecular detection of MG circulating pathogenic strain in the commercial layer farms in the Sylhet district of Bangladesh. The entire study was conducted from January 2018 to January 2019 at three Upazilas of Sylhet district in Bangladesh. A total of 50 dead layer chickens (indicating signs of respiratory distress before death) were collected randomly from 15 different layer farms. The tissue samples, such as air sacs, trachea, and lungs, were taken from suspected dead chickens. Both cultural and PCR-based techniques were applied to identify Mycoplasma from tissue samples. The conventional PCR technique was implemented to amplify 185 bp DNA fragments for the MG. Out of 50 samples, 36% (18/50) and 70% (35/50) of MG were identified by cultural method and PCR, respectively. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that PCR is an easier, more sensitive, and less time-consuming method for the early diagnosis of MG in chickens, compared to cultural isolation and hence can lower the economic burden to poultry farmers caused by this disease.

Early knapping techniques do not necessitate cultural transmission

Early stone tools are claimed to be the earliest evidence for the cultural transmission of toolmaking techniques, and with it, cumulative culture. This claim has ostensibly been supported by experimental studies wherein modern humans learned stone tool production (knapping) in conditions that provided opportunities for cultural transmission. However, alternative hypotheses propose that individual learning was sufficient for the expression of early knapping techniques. In order to evaluate this possibility, the capacities of individuals to independently re-innovate early knapping techniques need to be determined. For this, individuals must be tested in cultural isolation, i.e., in a test condition in which knapping techniques cannot be culturally transmitted via demonstrations or reverse engineering. Here, we report on the results of this test condition with human participants (N = 28). Naïve individuals spontaneously re-innovated various early knapping techniques, resulting in products resembling the earliest core and flake technologies. These results contradict previous hypotheses and conclusions of earlier experiments that explicitly implicated cultural transmission in Oldowan stone tool production. They suggest instead that knapping techniques among pre-modern hominins could have been individually derived rather than necessitating cultural transmission.

Ukrainian sculpture of the 20th century: main ideological and plastic transformations

In this article we attempt at demonstrating the inseparability of Ukrainian sculpture from global culture creating process despite cultural and political isolation as a component republic of the Soviet Union for over 70 years of the 20th century. There is a considerable difference in the character of creativity of Ukrainian sculptors, who lived and worked within the borders of the Soviet Union, and those, who migrated to Western Europe or America and had an opportunity to freely experiment with shape and ideas. In this article, particular attention is dedicated to those personalities that have made the most significant ideological and plastic transformations in the 20th-century sculpture with respect to the previous epochs, i.e., to the sculpture of avant-garde and modernism. The last decade of the 20th century was marked by the end of the Soviet-era cultural isolation from the democratic world, when a powerful stream of information penetrated the artistic arena of already independent and open Ukraine, and simultaneously the examples of various conceptual trends and styles appeared – from pop art and installation to performance art, which influenced the development of sculpture.

Genetic variants in the SHISA6 gene are associated with delayed cognitive impairment in two family datasets

Background: Studies of cognitive impairment (CI) in Amish communities have identified sibships containing multiple CI and cognitively unimpaired (CU; unaffected after age 75) individuals. We hypothesize that these CU individuals may carry protective alleles delaying age at onset (AAO) of CI, preserving cognition in older age despite increased genetic risk. As well, the genetic and cultural isolation in the Amish since the early 1800s may have reduced the complexity of the genetic architecture of CI, increasing the power to detect protective alleles in this population. With this in mind we conducted a genome-wide study (GWAS) to identify loci associated with AAO of CI in a sample of Amish adults over age 75. Methods: 1,522 individuals aged 43-99 (mean age 73.1, 42% men) screened at least once for CI using the Modified Mini-Mental State exam (3MS) were genotyped using Illumina chipsets. Genotypes were imputed for 7,815,951 single nucleotide variants (SNV) with minor allele frequency (MAF) > 1%. The outcome studied was age, defined as 1) age at the first 3MS result indicating impairment (AAO; 3MS <87; 362 CI individuals) or 2) age at last normal exam (3MS >=87, 1,160 CU individuals). Cox mixed-effects models examined association between age and each SNV, adjusting for sex and familial relationships. To replicate genome-wide significant findings, SNVs in a 1 Megabase region centered on the peak SNV were examined for association with age using these same methods in the NIA-LOAD family study dataset (1,785 AD cases, 1,565 unaffected controls, mean age 73.5. Results: Three SNV were significantly associated (p<5 x 10-8) with AAO in the Amish, on chromosomes 6 (rs14538074; HR=3.35), 9 (rs534551495; HR=2.82), and 17 (rs146729640; Hazard Ratio (HR)=6.38). Each region found the common allele associated with later AAO. Replication analysis detected association at rs146729640, with nominal statistical significance (HR=1.49, p=0.02). Conclusions: The replicated genome-wide significant association with AAO on chromosome 17 suggest this may be novel locus associated with delayed onset of AD. The associated SNP is located in the SHISA6 gene, which is involved in post-synaptic transmission in the hippocampus and is a biologically plausible candidate gene for AD.

The Invisible Boundaries in the City

1. Perhaps physical frontiers are less important since somehow the world has become a global entity, in which information passes through the physical walls. Many of them have been destroyed (Berlin) and some others such as that of Cyprus resist, but they are certainly less effective than in the past. The major concern of the future is the identification of invisible borders within the cities. It is difficult to identify exclusion, and marginalization is hiding within the cities, even in the weal- thiest ones.The spaces of the cities have invisible borders, but they are not easy to cross. 2. An MIT study (Xu Y, Belyi A, Santi P, Ratti C. 2019) highlights these problems after processing data on human movements, social networks connections and the socio-economic status of people, the document proposes two indices to measure segregation in Singapore. The index segregation of communication measures the relationship between people within each so- cial network, considering the frequency of communication and the socio-economic attributes of each person. The physical segregation index indicates the social exposure which people have towards each other belonging to similar and different socio-economic groups as they move more and more around the city. 3. The MIT study shows how it is possible, through the management of big data, to be able to bring out invisible marginalization situations which can not be seen in other ways. 4. The “documedial process” (Ferraris, Paini, 2018) in which the digital breakthrough has transformed the city, allows not only to bring out areas of border and exclusion but lays the foundations for an analysis of reality capable of highlighting cultural isolation.

A Critical Review of Gullah Geechee Midlife Women and Heirs' Property Challenges Along the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor

This critical review explored the current scholarship of the experiences and challenges faced by Gullah Geechee midlife women heirs' property owners along the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Past researchers have noted these women often experience invisibility due to the concurrent burdens of management of jointly owned property along the corridor in addition to legacy experiences of cultural isolation, land dispossession, voice dispossession, and ancestry enslavement. Past researchers have called for ongoing collaborative research by both non-indigenous and indigenous researchers as a gap continues for gendered perspectives for current corridor heirs' property challenges and land dispossession with respect to power, trauma, economic impact, Gullah Geechee ways of knowing, land-based cultural values, heritage tourism, governmental dispossession, and the legacy of enslavement for critical inquiry from the transformative paradigm.

Donatas Sauka’s Project of Comparative Literature: “Programme Maximum“

The article discusses Donatas Sauka’s study An Epilogue of Faust’s Age (1998) in order to assess the reference to “comparative literature science” expressed in the introduction to the study. The psychological and subjective motivation of comparative research arising from the context of the genesis of the work is interpreted: an aim to overcome the cultural isolation of Soviet-era humanitarian and to go beyond the methodologically narrow and largely directive Soviet-era comparative studies.It is argued that An Epilogue of Faust’s Age is a synthetic study in the field of comparative studies and world literature research, the conceptual unity of which is ensured by the attention to the category of the author in modern European literature and the state of modern consciousness revealed therein. Thus, D. Sauka in his study turns from literary comparative studies to the field of cultural studies and the history of ideas by forming a certain classical person of universal culture in the Lithuanian cultural and academic environment.

Identity, Land and Revolt in Egyptian Earth: An Ecofeminist Reading

This article rethinks the representation of Egyptian rural culture and peasant participation in the nationalist struggle against British colonialism in Abdel Rahman al-Sharqaawi’s well-known novel Egyptian Earth, Al-Ard (1954). It specifically examines the concepts of identity, land, and revolt in Egyptian Earth from an ecofeminist perspective, relating peasants’ resistance against corrupt feudal-imperialist injustices in early twentieth-century Egypt to the dominant patriarchal cultural attitudes towards women’s and nature’s positions in the pre- and post-1952 revolutionary Egypt. It argues that although al-Sharqaawi’s Egyptian Earth gives marginalized Egyptian peasants the opportunity to participate in an important transitional period in the history of modern Egypt, it discusses the invisible psycho-cultural, environmental and social reasons and circumstances that hinder democratic transition in post-1952 revolution, with a particular focus on Egyptian countryside. Within this context, Egyptian villagers in Egyptian Earth are not just colonized people fighting colonial violence and discriminations through reconnecting to their land. They also stand for a patriarchal place and land suffering complicated, deep-seated problems of cultural isolation, sexism, and tribalism. In this way, Egyptian Earth develops ecofeminist ethics that condemn the colonial rule and the nationalist discourse, as both maintain hierarchical relationships between the urban and the rural, the male and the female, culture and nature, and authority and common people.