Everyday speculation in the remaking of peri-urban livelihoods and landscapes

Peri-urbanization is transforming the urban-rural interface of metropolitan areas across the global south. Large-scale planned developments and infrastructure projects result in the widespread displacement of residents and the disappearance of agricultural fields, vegetable plots, and small enterprises. Through multi-year fieldwork in eastern peri-urban Jakarta, we shift the optic from the large players driving these transformations—developers, land brokers, and investors—to examine how residents of peri-urban settlements (kampungs) respond to unexpected developments and manage the uncertainties associated with market-induced displacement. We conceptualize their practices as everyday speculation, extending speculation beyond its financial meaning to include social and cultural aspects. Both displacees in relocation kampungs and holdouts in kampungs subject to displacement make the most of emergent spatiotemporal rent gaps to devise ways to improve their livelihoods and accumulate wealth, but they also attempt to realize their social and cultural aspirations of reproducing kampung ways of life characterized by dense social networks and commoning practices such as mutual aid. Speculation reinforces pre-existing economic inequalities among kampung residents but is not obliterating social and cultural values that contest the norms of neoliberal global urbanism. Scaling up from everyday speculation by individual households, we identify three paths of kampung transformation that are concatenating across a shape-shifting speculative kampung landscape that coexists in a complex and synergistic relationship with the planned developments. Understanding residents’ everyday actions is thus important to grasping the full scope of peri-urbanization.

Select streptococci can degrade Candida mannan to facilitate growth

Background: Multiple studies have found that streptococci have a synergistic relationship with Candida species, but the details of these interactions are still being discovered. Candida species are covered by mannan, a polymer of mannose, which could serve as a carbon source for certain microbes. We hypothesized that streptococci that possess mannan-degrading glycosyl hydrolases would also be able to enzymatically cleave mannose residues, which could serve as a primary carbohydrate source to support growth. Methods & Results: We analyzed 90 streptococci genomes to predict the capability of streptococci to transport and utilize mannose and to degrade diverse mannose-linkages found on mannan. The genome analysis revealed mannose transporters and downstream pathways in most streptococci, but only <50% of streptococci harbored the glycosyl hydrolases required for mannan degradation. To confirm the ability of streptococci to use mannose or mannan, we grew 6 representative streptococci in a chemically defined media lacking glucose supplemented with mannose, yeast extract or purified mannan isolated from Candida and Saccharomyces strains. Although all tested Streptococcus strains could use mannose, S. salivarius and S. agalactiae , which did not possess mannan-degrading glycosyl hydrolases, could not use yeast extract or mannan to enhance their growth. In contrast, we found that S. mitis , S. parasanguinis, S. sanguinis , and S. pyogenes possessed the necessary glycosyl hydrolases to use yeast extract and isolated mannan, which promoted robust growth. Conclusions : Our data indicate that several streptococci are capable of degrading fungal mannans and harvesting mannose for energy. Importance: This work highlights a previously undescribed aspect of streptococcal- Candida interactions. Our work identifies that certain streptococci possess the enzymes required to degrade mannan and through this mechanism, they can release mannose residues from the cell wall of fungal species and use them as a nutrient source. We speculate that streptococci that can degrade fungal mannan may have a competitive advantage for colonization. This finding has broad implications for human health as streptococci and Candida are found at multiple body sites.

Sustainability, Competitive Advantages and Performance in the Hotel Industry: A Synergistic Relationship

The relationship between sustainability, competitive advantages, and performance is a topic with no conclusive results in the tourism industry. To contribute to the debate, the purpose of this study is i) to analyze the influence of sustainability on cost and differentiation competitive advantages and ii) to examine the possible synergistic relationship between sustainability and performance. Perceptual as well as hotel-specific objective performance measurements are used, such as occupancy rate, average daily rate (ADR), and revenues per available room (RevPAR), to examine all the relationships. Structural equation models based on Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) are applied to test all the hypotheses. Data is collected from 3-, 4- and 5-star hotels in Spain. The results show that sustainability positively and significantly influences cost and differentiation advantages, perceptual performance, ADR, and RevPAR. In addition, those hotels with these three performance variables whose values are above the median obtain a significant relationship between sustainability and performance. Consequently, there is evidence of a synergistic sustainability-performance relationship in the hotel industry. Therefore, this study offers academic evidence on the strong relationships that exist between these variables in the hotel industry. This research work analyses all three sustainability pillars (economic, environmental, and social sustainability), and the practices that best explain each of the three sustainability pillars are indicated so that hotel managers can optimize their sustainable management.

Stakeholders’ Perceptions of the Linkage Between Reproductive Rights and Environmental Sustainability

The fulfilment of reproductive health and rights may have a synergistic relationship to environmental sustainability because it leads to lower fertility levels. With this in mind, and with the objective of increasing the legitimacy, funding and acceptance of reproductive health and rights, I conducted a mixed-methods qualitative study consisting of an online survey followed by in-depth interviews. I reached out to two groups of participants: stakeholders of the reproductive health and rights movement, and stakeholders of the environmental sustainability movement. I explored how stakeholders perceived the linkages between family planning, population growth and environmental sustainability. Results indicate that these stakeholders overwhelmingly support the integration of the reproductive health and rights ideological framework in a wider sustainability frame reflecting environmental considerations. I identified three barriers to both addressing and implementing the linkage: responsibility allocation injustice, colonialism and discrimination, and marginalisation. Environmental sustainability and reproductive health and rights stakeholders appear in favour of applying what could be considered ‘environmental mainstreaming’ to the reproductive health and rights field. Environmental sustainability stakeholders were more likely than reproductive health and rights stakeholders, who were more divided on this issue, to endorse the linkage and related concepts.

The Power of Limit

This project analyses the field of current geographic political partitions offering an interdisciplinary evaluation able to describe the space in the borders as ‘narrative beginning’, as ‘contact infrastructure’ that crosses territories where inhabitants are neither citizens nor refugees but only ‘border people’. At the end, cognitive horizons able to breach the Wall, going beyond the political-territorial divisions which have always existed in a world which is a sort of more or less fortified bulwark able to suggest ‘border worlds’ that are ‘city’, ‘border land’. We observe a porous border with a rhizomatic trend that reformulates a synergistic relationship between the individual and the territory in an antinomic game of actions and reactions. Appears an idea of multiplicity in which the ‘rhizome-like’ structure becomes decentralized configurations where each part can be connected to another without go through specific points, as the infrastructure network or even the virtual system of global contacts. So, the space in the borders results in a new map of the delocalized space that increasingly requires of a design thinking that, on the basis of critiques of data, variables and statistics, sometimes becomes ‘hard’ and sometimes ‘elastic’, sometimes ‘insurmountable’ and sometimes ‘flexible’ and that finds an answer in the connivance between opposites and in the territorial synergy.

Evaluation of Emergency Rescue Efficiency in Coal Mines Based on Co-entropy

By decomposing the coal mine emergency rescue organization and coal mine emergency rescue work, the synergy entropy function is constructed by combining the synergy class with the entropy theory, and the synergy efficiency assessment model of coal mine emergency rescue is established. Analyze the synergistic relationship between departments in the rescue organization and between departments and functional units, construct the synergistic influence matrix, and obtain the synergistic status of the coal mine emergency rescue system by calculating the synergistic entropy, synergistic efficiency and synergistic degree. The quantitative analysis of the emergency rescue system in coal mines is achieved by analyzing the situation of the rescue work in coal mines and evaluating the rescue organizations at each tier based on the established evaluation model.

Interventional Radiology Image-Guided Locoregional Therapies (LRTs) and Immunotherapy for the Treatment of HCC

Image-guided locoregional therapies (LRTs) are a crucial asset in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which has proven to be characterized by an impaired antitumor immune status. LRTs not only directly destroy tumor cells but also have an immunomodulating role, altering the tumor microenvironment with potential systemic effects. Nevertheless, the immune activation against HCC induced by LRTs is not strong enough on its own to generate a systemic significant antitumor response, and it is incapable of preventing tumor recurrence. Currently, there is great interest in the possibility of combining LRTs with immunotherapy for HCC, as this combination may result in a mutually beneficial and synergistic relationship. On the one hand, immunotherapy could amplify and prolong the antitumoral immune response of LRTs, reducing recurrence cases and improving outcome. On the other hand, LTRs counteract the typical immunosuppressive HCC microenvironment and status and could therefore enhance the efficacy of immunotherapy. Here, after reviewing the current therapeutic options for HCC, we focus on LRTs, describing for each of them the technique and data on its effect on the immune system. Then, we describe the current status of immunotherapy and finally report the recently published and ongoing clinical studies testing this combination.

The Use of Information and Communication Technologies to Increase the Motivation of Students When Studying English as a Foreign Language

The research is devoted to the study of the possibilities of using information and communication technologies to increase the motivation of students in the process of learning English. Based on the results of a survey attended by 400 second-year students of the XXXX University being involved in the experimental course, the evolution of motivational behavior in the learning process has been demonstrated. The scientific value of the study relates to the concept outline of the synergistic relationship between the motivational behavior of students and the content of the online learning course. The practical value of the study relates to the demonstration of the educational experience of constructing the concept of an effective training course with a focus on maintaining the appropriate level of motivation.

The social life of mangroves: Neoliberal development and mangrove conservation in the changing landscape of Kutch

This article explores the convergence of neoliberal development and mangrove conservation in marginal environments, which are becoming the new resource frontiers. We focus on Kutch, a border district in western India and highlight how the contested trajectories of accelerated and aggressive industrialisation and its convergence with state and corporate-led conservation programmes are shaping the social life of mangroves on the Kutchi coast. We focus on the discourses, practices and politics of value-making and un-making that constitute the multiple modalities of repair as mangroves are depleted and securitised simultaneously. Although these trends are augmenting capitalist accumulation on the coast, they are also giving rise to new kinds of alliances that seek to challenge the logic and practice of repair by highlighting the synergistic relationship of coastal communities with their mangrove habitats.