While practice theories and diverse economy approaches are widely employed by human geographers, the two literatures have developed in parallel, rather than in dialogue. This article argues that this ...has constrained understandings of postcapitalist social change and traces an emerging theoretical conversation between these traditions. It outlines the potential of scholarly engagement with what we term ‘diverse practices’, especially when discussing the scalar possibilities and constraints of community activism. By grounding diverse economic scholarship in practice-theoretical conceptions of power, politics, and scale, the article proposes a materialisation of postcapitalist possibility and explores the barriers and facilitators of transformative geographies.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Microplastics have been observed in indoor and outdoor air. This raises concern for human exposure, especially should they occur in small enough sizes, which if inhaled, reach the central airway and ...distal lung. As yet, methods for their detection have not spectroscopically verified the chemical composition of microplastics in this size-range. One proposed method is an automated spectroscopic technique, Raman spectral imaging; however, this generates large and complex data sets. This study aims to optimize Raman spectral imaging for the identification of microplastics (≥2 μm) in ambient particulate matter, using different chemometric techniques. We show that Raman spectral images analyzed using chemometric statistical approaches are appropriate for the identification of both virgin and environmental microplastics ≥2 μm in size. On the basis of the sensitivity, we recommend using the developed Pearson’s correlation and agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis for the identification of microplastics in spectral data sets. Finally, we show their applicability by identifying airborne microplastics >4.7 μm in an outdoor particulate matter sample obtained at an urban sampling site in London, United Kingdom. This semiquantitative method will enable the procurement of exposure concentrations of airborne microplastics guiding future toxicological assessments.
Full text
Available for:
IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Understanding how the metabolic rates of prokaryotes respond to temperature is fundamental to our understanding of how ecosystem functioning will be altered by climate change, as these ...micro-organisms are major contributors to global carbon efflux. Ecological metabolic theory suggests that species living at higher temperatures evolve higher growth rates than those in cooler niches due to thermodynamic constraints. Here, using a global prokaryotic dataset, we find that maximal growth rate at thermal optimum increases with temperature for mesophiles (temperature optima Formula: see textC), but not thermophiles (Formula: see textC). Furthermore, short-term (within-day) thermal responses of prokaryotic metabolic rates are typically more sensitive to warming than those of eukaryotes. Because climatic warming will mostly impact ecosystems in the mesophilic temperature range, we conclude that as microbial communities adapt to higher temperatures, their metabolic rates and therefore, biomass-specific COFormula: see text production, will inevitably rise. Using a mathematical model, we illustrate the potential global impacts of these findings.
It has long been suspected that the rate of mutation varies across the human genome at a large scale based on the divergence between humans and other species. However, it is now possible to directly ...investigate this question using the large number of de novo mutations (DNMs) that have been discovered in humans through the sequencing of trios. We investigate a number of questions pertaining to the distribution of mutations using more than 130,000 DNMs from three large datasets. We demonstrate that the amount and pattern of variation differs between datasets at the 1MB and 100KB scales probably as a consequence of differences in sequencing technology and processing. In particular, datasets show different patterns of correlation to genomic variables such as replication time. Never-the-less there are many commonalities between datasets, which likely represent true patterns. We show that there is variation in the mutation rate at the 100KB, 1MB and 10MB scale that cannot be explained by variation at smaller scales, however the level of this variation is modest at large scales-at the 1MB scale we infer that ~90% of regions have a mutation rate within 50% of the mean. Different types of mutation show similar levels of variation and appear to vary in concert which suggests the pattern of mutation is relatively constant across the genome. We demonstrate that variation in the mutation rate does not generate large-scale variation in GC-content, and hence that mutation bias does not maintain the isochore structure of the human genome. We find that genomic features explain less than 40% of the explainable variance in the rate of DNM. As expected the rate of divergence between species is correlated to the rate of DNM. However, the correlations are weaker than expected if all the variation in divergence was due to variation in the mutation rate. We provide evidence that this is due the effect of biased gene conversion on the probability that a mutation will become fixed. In contrast to divergence, we find that most of the variation in diversity can be explained by variation in the mutation rate. Finally, we show that the correlation between divergence and DNM density declines as increasingly divergent species are considered.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This article examines current approaches to wellbeing research in the social sciences, reviewing their underlying ontologies to explore which ‘being’ is implied in contemporary research on wellbeing. ...It critically analyses themes from the ‘science of happiness’ for their focus on a decontextualized and individualized subject and highlights the emergence of an alternative, developing geographical research agenda in the study of wellbeing, termed here ‘intra-active wellbeing’. It is argued that this research agenda draws together formerly disparate aspects of geographical thought – classically humanistic wellbeing research and more-than-human inquiry – and creates space for a more pluralistic field of wellbeing scholarship.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Cholinium amino acid ionic liquids (ChAA ILs), which are wholly composed of renewable biomaterials, have recently been demonstrated to have very promising properties for applications in organic ...synthesis and biomass pretreatment. In this work, the toxicity of these ILs toward enzymes and bacteria was assessed, and the effect of the anion on these properties is discussed. The inhibitory potentials of this type of ILs to acetylcholinesterase were weaker approximately an order of magnitude than the traditional IL 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate. Additionally, the ChAA ILs displayed low toxicity toward the bacteria tested. Furthermore, the biodegradability of the ChAA ILs was evaluated via the closed bottle and CO(2) headspace tests using wastewater microorganisms. All the ILs were classified as 'readily biodegradable' based on their high levels of mineralization (62-87%). The presence of extra carboxyl or amide groups on the amino acid side chain rendered the ILs significantly more susceptible to microbial breakdown. In addition, for most of the ChAA ILs, low toxicity correlated with good biodegradability. The low toxicity and high biodegradability of these novel ChAA make them promising candidates for use as environmentally friendly solvents in large-scale applications.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The monthly Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) dataset, available on global 2° × 2° grids, has been revised herein to version 4 (v4) from v3b. Major revisions include updated and ...substantially more complete input data from the International Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) release 2.5; revised empirical orthogonal teleconnections (EOTs) and EOT acceptance criterion; updated sea surface temperature (SST) quality control procedures; revised SST anomaly (SSTA) evaluation methods; updated bias adjustments of ship SSTs using the Hadley Centre Nighttime Marine Air Temperature dataset version 2 (HadNMAT2); and buoy SST bias adjustment not previously made in v3b.
Tests show that the impacts of the revisions to ship SST bias adjustment in ERSST.v4 are dominant among all revisions and updates. The effect is to make SST 0.1°–0.2°C cooler north of 30°S but 0.1°–0.2°C warmer south of 30°S in ERSST.v4 than in ERSST.v3b before 1940. In comparison with the Met Office SST product the Hadley Centre Sea Surface Temperature dataset, version 3 (HadSST3), the ship SST bias adjustment in ERSST.v4 is 0.1°–0.2°C cooler in the tropics but 0.1°–0.2°C warmer in the midlatitude oceans both before 1940 and from 1945 to 1970. Comparisons highlight differences in long-term SST trends and SSTA variations at decadal time scales among ERSST.v4, ERSST.v3b, HadSST3, and Centennial Observation-Based Estimates of SST version 2 (COBE-SST2), which is largely associated with the difference of bias adjustments in these SST products. The tests also show that, when compared with v3b, SSTAs in ERSST.v4 can substantially better represent the El Niño/La Niña behavior when observations are sparse before 1940. Comparisons indicate that SSTs in ERSST.v4 are as close to satellite-based observations as other similar SST analyses.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) are insects containing genes of bacterial origin with putative functions in peptidoglycan (PGN) metabolism. Of these, rlpA1-5, amiD, and ldcA are highly expressed in ...bacteriocytes, specialized aphid cells that harbor the obligate bacterial symbiont Buchnera aphidicola, required for amino acid supplementation of the host's nutrient-poor diet. Despite genome reduction associated with endosymbiosis, pea aphid Buchnera retains genes for the synthesis of PGN while Buchnera of many other aphid species partially or completely lack these genes. To explore the evolution of aphid horizontally-transferred genes (HTGs) and to elucidate how host and symbiont genes contribute to PGN production, we sequenced genomes from four deeply branching lineages, such that paired aphid and Buchnera genomes are now available for 17 species representing eight subfamilies. We identified all host and symbiont genes putatively involved in PGN metabolism. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that each HTG family was present in the aphid shared ancestor, but that each underwent a unique pattern of gene loss or duplication in descendant lineages. While four aphid rlpA gene subfamilies show no relation to symbiont PGN gene repertoire, the loss of aphid amiD and ldcA HTGs coincides with the loss of symbiont PGN metabolism genes. In particular, the coincident loss of host amiD and symbiont murCEF in tribe Aphidini, in contrast to tribe Macrosiphini, suggests either 1) functional linkage between these host and symbiont genes, or 2) Aphidini has lost functional PGN synthesis and other retained PGN pathway genes are non-functional. To test these hypotheses experimentally, we used cell-wall labeling methods involving a d-alanine probe and found that both Macrosiphini and Aphidini retain Buchnera PGN synthesis. Our results imply that compensatory adaptations can preserve PGN synthesis despite the loss of some genes considered essential for this pathway, highlighting the importance of the cell wall in these symbioses.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Long-term survivors with metastatic cancer have not been well studied, but diagnoses of incurable cancer will have substantial effects on patients’ families, on workplaces, and on U.S. health care ...resources in the coming years.
PDF
