In this book, James Boon ranges through history and around the globe in a series of provocative reflections on the limitations, attractions, and ambiguities of cultural interpretation. The book ...reflects the unusual keyword of its title, extra-vagance, a term Thoreau used to refer to thought that skirts traditional boundaries. Boon follows Thoreau's lead by broaching subjects as diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan, Perry Mason, opera, and the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Burke, and Mary Douglas. He makes creative and often playful leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and exceedingly specific ones. Boon opens by exploring links between ritual and reading, focusing on commentaries about the seclusion of menstruating women in Native American culture, trance dances in Bali, and circumcision (or lack of it) in contrasting religions. He considers the ironies of "first-person ethnography" by telling stories from his own fieldwork, reflecting on ethnological museums, and making seriocomic connections between Mark Twain and Marcel Mauss. In expansive discussions that touch on Manhattan and Sri Lanka, the Louvre and the "World of Coca-Cola" museum, willfully obscure academic theory and shamelessly commercial show business, Boon underlines the inadequacies of simple ideologies and pat generalizations. The book is a profound and eloquent exploration of cultural comparison by one of America's most original and innovative anthropologists.
Disruption of the intestinal epithelial barrier allows bacterial translocation and predisposes to destructive inflammation. To ensure proper barrier composition, crypt-residing stem cells ...continuously proliferate and replenish all intestinal epithelial cells within days. As a consequence of this high mitotic activity, mucosal surfaces are frequently targeted by anticancer therapies, leading to dose-limiting side effects. The cellular mechanisms that control tissue protection and mucosal healing in response to intestinal damage remain poorly understood. Type 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILC3s) are regulators of homeostasis and tissue responses to infection at mucosal surfaces. We now demonstrate that ILC3s are required for epithelial activation and proliferation in response to small intestinal tissue damage induced by the chemotherapeutic agent methotrexate. Multiple subsets of ILC3s are activated after intestinal tissue damage, and in the absence of ILC3s, epithelial activation is lost, correlating with increased pathology and severe damage to the intestinal crypts. Using ILC3-deficient Lgr5 reporter mice, we show that maintenance of intestinal stem cells after damage is severely impaired in the absence of ILC3s or the ILC3 signature cytokine IL-22. These data unveil a novel function of ILC3s in limiting tissue damage by preserving tissue-specific stem cells.
In this book, James Boon ranges through history and around the
globe in a series of provocative reflections on the limitations,
attractions, and ambiguities of cultural interpretation. The book
...reflects the unusual keyword of its title, extra-vagance,
a term Thoreau used to refer to thought that skirts traditional
boundaries. Boon follows Thoreau's lead by broaching subjects as
diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan, Perry
Mason, opera, and the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Ruth Benedict,
Kenneth Burke, and Mary Douglas. He makes creative and often
playful leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold
single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and exceedingly
specific ones. Boon opens by exploring links between ritual and
reading, focusing on commentaries about the seclusion of
menstruating women in Native American culture, trance dances in
Bali, and circumcision (or lack of it) in contrasting religions. He
considers the ironies of "first-person ethnography" by telling
stories from his own fieldwork, reflecting on ethnological museums,
and making seriocomic connections between Mark Twain and Marcel
Mauss. In expansive discussions that touch on Manhattan and Sri
Lanka, the Louvre and the "World of Coca-Cola" museum, willfully
obscure academic theory and shamelessly commercial show business,
Boon underlines the inadequacies of simple ideologies and pat
generalizations. The book is a profound and eloquent exploration of
cultural comparison by one of America's most original and
innovative anthropologists.
Verifying the quality of a random number generator involves performing computationally intensive statistical tests on large data sets commonly in the range of gigabytes. Limitations on computing ...power can restrict an end-user's ability to perform such verification. There are also random number-based applications where an honest user needs to publicly demonstrate that the random bits they are using pass the statistical tests without the bits being revealed. Here, we report the implementation of an entanglement-based protocol that allows a third party to publicly perform statistical tests without compromising the privacy of the random bits.
To assess the functional relevance and therapeutic potential of the pro-angiogenic long non-coding RNA MANTIS in vascular disease development.
RNA sequencing, CRISPR activation, overexpression, and ...RNAi demonstrated that MANTIS, especially its Alu-element, limits endothelial ICAM-1 expression in different types of endothelial cells. Loss of MANTIS increased endothelial monocyte adhesion in an ICAM-1-dependent manner. MANTIS reduced the binding of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodelling factor BRG1 at the ICAM-1 promoter. The expression of MANTIS was induced by laminar flow and HMG-CoA-reductase inhibitors (statins) through mechanisms involving epigenetic rearrangements and the transcription factors KLF2 and KLF4. Mutation of the KLF binding motifs in the MANTIS promoter blocked the flow-induced MANTIS expression. Importantly, the expression of MANTIS in human carotid artery endarterectomy material was lower compared with healthy vessels and this effect was prevented by statin therapy. Interestingly, the protective effects of statins were mediated in part through MANTIS, which was required to facilitate the atorvastatin-induced changes in endothelial gene expression. Moreover, the beneficial endothelial effects of statins in culture models (spheroid outgrowth, proliferation, telomerase activity, and vascular organ culture) were lost upon knockdown of MANTIS.
MANTIS is tightly regulated by the transcription factors KLF2 and KLF4 and limits the ICAM-1 mediated monocyte adhesion to endothelial cells and thus potentially atherosclerosis development in humans. The beneficial effects of statin treatment and laminar flow are dependent on MANTIS.
Saline coastal wetlands, such as mangrove and coastal salt marsh, provide many ecosystem services. In Australia, large areas have been lost since European colonization, particularly as a result of ...drainage, infilling and flood-mitigation works, often starting in the mid-19th century and aimed primarily towards converting land to agricultural, urban or industrial uses. These threats remain ongoing, and will be exacerbated by rapid population growth and climate change in the 21st century. Establishing the effect of wetland loss on the delivery of ecosystem services is confounded by the absence of a nationally consistent approach to mapping wetlands and defining the boundaries of different types of coastal wetland. In addition, climate change and its projected effect on mangrove and salt marsh distribution and ecosystem services is poorly, if at all, acknowledged in existing legislation and policy. Intensifying climate change means that there is little time to be complacent; indeed, there is an urgent need for proper valuation of ecosystem services and explicit recognition of ecosystem services within policy and legislation. Seven actions are identified that could improve protection of coastal wetlands and the ecosystem services they provide, including benchmarking and improving coastal wetland extent and health, reducing complexity and inconsistency in governance arrangements, and facilitating wetland adaptation and ecosystem service delivery using a range of relevant mechanisms. Actions that build upon the momentum to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon – ‘blue carbon’ – could achieve multiple desirable objectives, including climate-change mitigation and adaptation, floodplain rehabilitation and habitat protection.
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•Human and climate-induced changes will cause coastal wetlands to migrate and change.•Effectiveness of wetland management may be affected by spatio-temporal changes in extent•A review of Australian coastal management policy that could be affected is provided•The capacity of existing policy to effectively improve ecosystem outcomes is explored.•Actions that will improve the fate of coastal wetlands and their ecosystem services are provided.
For decades I devised commentaries on Lévi-Strauss attuned to the diverse arts his anthropology spans (Boon 1972, 1982, 1989, 1995). Prompted by polymath Kenneth Burke's "perspectives through ...incongruity," I also sidled so-called structuralism alongside alternative "isms" (Symbolism, Functionalism, Romanticism, etc.) and "anti-isms" (deconstruction, cultural interpretation, etc.)—(Boon 1973, 1982a, 1989, 1999). Lévi-Strauss once wove sympathetic recall of my angle on his corpus into "conversations" with Eribon (1988a, 1991b:181). The following piece, spiritedly belated, offers seriocomic reciprocation, with "increase." (Call it a return-gift, per Marcel Mauss). The interpretive aim remains: augmenting sensory registers of cross-cultural, trans-temporal meaning-and-not, arguably experienced as "embodied metaphor" (Lévi-Strauss 1981:658).
Findings from the second phase of a study of pre-service teachers' attitudes to environmental education and knowledge of climate change are reported in this paper. A sample of 87 pre-service teachers ...participated in a survey study in the last year of their Bachelor of Education degree to examine developments to their attitudes to environmental education and their knowledge of climate change as a result of training. Results showed their attitudes towards environmental education were consistently favourable, but their climate change science knowledge had not changed as a result of their participation in their degree. Data on preservice teachers' sources of knowledge for climate change, their views on important substantive climate change knowledge for their future students and their perceptions of gaps in their own training in relation to climate change were also investigated in order to triangulate the survey data. Implications for preservice teacher education are discussed. Author abstract
IMPORTANCE: X-linked retinitis pigmentosa (XLRP) is a severe cause of early-onset RP in male individuals, characterized by degeneration of photoreceptors, an extinguished electroretinogram, and ...vision loss. OBJECTIVE: To assess the duration of improvements in retinal sensitivity associated with a single, subretinal injection of cotoretigene toliparvovec (BIIB112/AAV8-RPGR) gene therapy after vitrectomy surgery in the dosed eye over 12 months in part 1 of the Clinical Trial of Retinal Gene Therapy for X-linked Retinitis Pigmentosa Using BIIB112 (XIRIUS) study, compared with untreated fellow eyes and eyes from the untreated subgroup from the Natural History of the Progression of X-Linked Retinitis Pigmentosa (XOLARIS) study. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This was a post hoc analysis of the XIRIUS and XOLARIS studies. Part 1 of the XIRIUS study was a phase 1, dose-escalation study of 18 male participants 18 years or older enrolled between March 8, 2017, and October 16, 2018, with genetically confirmed RPGR-variant XLRP with active disease and best-corrected visual acuity better than or equal to light perception (cohort 1), 34 to 73 letters (20/40 to 20/200 Snellen equivalent; cohorts 2-3), or greater than or equal to 34 letters (better than or equal to 20/200 Snellen equivalent; cohorts 4-6). Participants from the noninterventional, multicenter, global, prospective XOLARIS clinical study who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria of part 1 of XIRIUS were included as a comparator group (n = 103). Safety assessments included all XIRIUS participants; post hoc associations of retinal sensitivity assessments in XIRIUS only included the 12 participants receiving the 4 highest doses of cotoretigene toliparvovec. Data were analyzed on June 30, 2021. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Incidence of dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs), treatment-emergent adverse events, changes from baseline in retinal sensitivity (as assessed by macular integrity assessment microperimetry), retinal sensitivity response (achievement of ≥7-dB improvement from baseline at ≥5 of 16 central loci), and low-luminance visual acuity were assessed over 24 months. RESULTS: A total of 18 participants (mean SD age, 31.9 9.4 years; male, 100%) were enrolled and completed the XIRIUS study. A subgroup of 103 participants (mean SD age, 30.8 11.4 years; male, 100%) from the XOLARIS study was included. Administration of the 4 highest doses of cotoretigene toliparvovec (n = 12) among the 18 XIRIUS participants was associated with early improvements in retinal sensitivity. One of 103 untreated participants (1%) in the XOLARIS subgroup achieved improved retinal sensitivity at month 12. No DLTs were noted at any dose, and serious adverse events of reduced visual acuity (n = 2) and noninfective retinitis (n = 1) occurred. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Results suggest that early and sustained improvements in retinal sensitivity and low-luminance visual acuity in some participants through 12 months support consideration of additional clinical trials. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: XIRIUS: NCT03116113; XOLARIS: NCT04926129
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) can act as regulatory RNAs which, by altering the expression of target genes, impact on the cellular phenotype and cardiovascular disease development. Endothelial ...lncRNAs and their vascular functions are largely undefined. Deep RNA-Seq and FANTOM5 CAGE analysis revealed the lncRNA
LINC00607
to be highly enriched in human endothelial cells.
LINC00607
was induced in response to hypoxia, arteriosclerosis regression in non-human primates, post-atherosclerotic cultured endothelial cells from patients and also in response to propranolol used to induce regression of human arteriovenous malformations. siRNA knockdown or CRISPR/Cas9 knockout of
LINC00607
attenuated VEGF-A-induced angiogenic sprouting.
LINC00607
knockout in endothelial cells also integrated less into newly formed vascular networks in an in vivo assay in SCID mice. Overexpression of
LINC00607
in CRISPR knockout cells restored normal endothelial function. RNA- and ATAC-Seq after
LINC00607
knockout revealed changes in the transcription of endothelial gene sets linked to the endothelial phenotype and in chromatin accessibility around ERG-binding sites. Mechanistically,
LINC00607
interacted with the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling protein BRG1. CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout of
BRG1
in HUVEC followed by CUT&RUN revealed that BRG1 is required to secure a stable chromatin state, mainly on ERG-binding sites. In conclusion,
LINC00607
is an endothelial-enriched lncRNA that maintains ERG target gene transcription by interacting with the chromatin remodeler BRG1 to ultimately mediate angiogenesis.
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