Hvordan indsamles en etnografisk genstand i dag? Nærværende artikel er en feltberetning om, hvordan idéentil at indsamle en gravpæl på Madagaskar opstod og gennem en lang række forhandlinger lod sig ...realisere.Med afsæt i et gravpælsritual i en sihanakansk dødeby ved landsbyen Anororo, tages læseren med til undfangelsenaf idéen om det tilsyneladende uladsiggørlige projekt. Vi følger forhandlingerne med landsbyboerne, udvælgelsenog fældningen af et gaffelformet træ, fremstillingsprocessen og endelig den lange rejse op gennem højlandet, ud til en havneby og med skib tusindvis af kilometer nordpå til Aarhus.
This book offers a broad institutional analysis of Madagascar's Third Republic. It argues that a new agenda is in order to consider not just how institutions form, but the ways in which networks of ...power-and leaders of those networks-grow and change malleable institutions in young democracies with few avenues of accountability.
Offshore wind energy is rapidly becoming a technology that developing countries could consider because project costs have recently fallen substantially. Further reductions are expected as the ...industry matures. For most African coastal states, specific information about their offshore wind potential is not available. This study aims to address this shortcoming by evaluating the technical offshore wind potential of the entire continent using spatially explicit models and long-term satellite data. Two different scenarios were developed to reflect different levels of technological maturity in the wind industry: The shallow-water, near-coast scenario 1 represented the conservative assumption that technology will not improve beyond what is available already now. The deep-water, full-exclusive economic zone (EEZ) scenario 2 assumes the operational availability of floating platforms that would allow it to access wind resources at much deeper water depths across the entire EEZ. It is emphasized that the model results are subject to a number of uncertainties and therefore should be treated as first order estimates only. Both scenarios indicate very good technical offshore wind energy potential for one third of the African coastal states, with Mozambique, South Africa, Somalia, Madagascar and Morocco exhibiting particularly good resources. More than 90% of the offshore wind resources are concentrated in coastal zones associated to three African Power Pools. These are the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), the Eastern African Power Pool (EAPP), and the Comité Maghrébin de l′Electricité (COMELEC). A joint and integrated development within these power pools could offer a promising approach to utilising offshore wind energy in Africa.
•Analysis of offshore wind energy potential for the entire African continent.•Results presented for all African coastal states.•One third of coastal states have very good offshore wind potential.•More than 90% of offshore resources concentrated in three African Power Pools.•Offshore wind energy could play important role in Africa's energy future.
The adaptive significance of fruit colour has been investigated for over a century. While colour can fulfil various functions, the most commonly tested hypothesis is that it has evolved to increase ...fruit visual conspicuousness and thus promote detection and consumption by seed dispersing animals. However, fruit colour is a complex trait which is subjected to various constraints and selection pressures. As a result, the effect of animal selection on fruit colour are often difficult to identify, and several studies have failed to detect it. Here, we employ an integrative approach to examine what drives variation in fruit colour. We quantified the colour of ripe fruit and mature leaves of 97 tropical plant species from three study sites in Madagascar and Uganda. We used phylogenetically controlled models to estimate the roles of phylogeny, abiotic factors, and dispersal mode on fruit colour variation. Our results show that, independent of phylogeny and leaf coloration, mammal dispersed fruits are greener than bird dispersed fruits, while the latter are redder than the former. In addition, fruit colour does not correlate with leaf colour in the visible spectrum, but fruit reflection in the ultraviolet area of the spectrum is strongly correlated with leaf reflectance, emphasizing the role of abiotic factors in determining fruit colour. These results demonstrate that fruit colour is affected by both animal sensory ecology and abiotic factors and highlight the importance of an integrative approach which controls for the relevant confounding factors.
Abstract
There is a crucial need for non-sputum-based TB tests. Here, we evaluate the performance of RISK6, a human-blood transcriptomic signature, for TB screening, triage and treatment monitoring. ...RISK6 performance was also compared to that of two IGRAs: one based on RD1 antigens (QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus, QFT-P, Qiagen) and one on recombinant
M. tuberculosis
HBHA expressed in
Mycobacterium smegmatis
(IGRA-rmsHBHA). In this multicenter prospective nested case–control study conducted in Bangladesh, Georgia, Lebanon and Madagascar, adult non-immunocompromised patients with bacteriologically confirmed active pulmonary TB (ATB), latent TB infection (LTBI) and healthy donors (HD) were enrolled. ATB patients were followed-up during and after treatment. Blood RISK6 scores were assessed using quantitative real-time PCR and evaluated by area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (ROC AUC). RISK6 performance to discriminate ATB from HD reached an AUC of 0.94 (95% CI 0.89–0.99), with 90.9% sensitivity and 87.8% specificity, thus achieving the minimal WHO target product profile for a non-sputum-based TB screening test. Besides, RISK6 yielded an AUC of 0.93 (95% CI 0.85–1) with 90.9% sensitivity and 88.5% specificity for discriminating ATB from LTBI. Moreover, RISK6 showed higher performance (AUC 0.90, 95% CI 0.85–0.94) than IGRA-rmsHBHA (AUC 0.75, 95% CI 0.69–0.82) to differentiate TB infection stages. Finally, RISK6 signature scores significantly decreased after 2 months of TB treatment and continued to decrease gradually until the end of treatment reaching scores obtained in HD. We confirmed the performance of RISK6 signature as a triage TB test and its utility for treatment monitoring.
The oomycete Aphanomyces astaci is an emerging infectious pathogen affecting freshwater crayfish worldwide and is responsible for one of the most severe wildlife pandemics ever reported. The pathogen ...has caused mass mortalities of freshwater crayfish species in Europe and Asia, and threatens other susceptible species in Madagascar, Oceania and South America. The pathogen naturally coexists with some North American crayfish species that are its chronic carriers. Presumptions that A. astaci originated in North America are based on disease outbreaks that followed translocations of North American crayfish and on the identification of the pathogen mainly in Europe. We studied A. astaci in the southeastern US, a center of freshwater crayfish diversity. In order to decipher the origin of the pathogen, we investigated (1) the distribution and haplotype diversity of A. astaci, and (2) whether there are crayfish species-specificities and/or geographical restrictions for A. astaci haplotypes. A total of 132 individuals, corresponding to 19 crayfish species and one shrimp species from 23 locations, tested positive for A. astaci. Mitochondrial rnnS and rnnL sequences indicated that A. astaci from the southeastern US exhibited the highest genetic diversity so far described for the pathogen (eight haplotypes, six of which we newly describe). Our findings that A. astaci is widely distributed and genetically diverse in the region supports the hypothesis that the pathogen originated in the southeastern US. In contrast to previous assumptions, however, the pathogen exhibited no clear species-specificity or geographical patterns.
Fossil records of vertebrate integuments are relatively common in both rocks, as compressions, and amber, as inclusions. The integument remains, mainly the Mesozoic ones, are of great interest due to ...the panoply of palaeobiological information they can provide. We describe two Spanish Cretaceous amber pieces that are of taphonomic importance, one bearing avian dinosaur feather remains and the other, mammalian hair. The preserved feather remains originated from an avian dinosaur resting in contact with a stalactite-shaped resin emission for the time it took for the fresh resin to harden. The second piece shows three hair strands recorded on a surface of desiccation, with the characteristic scale pattern exceptionally well preserved and the strands aligned together, which can be considered the record of a tuft. These assemblages were recorded through a rare biostratinomic process we call "pull off vestiture" that is different from the typical resin entrapment and embedding of organisms and biological remains, and unique to resins. The peculiarity of this process is supported by actualistic observations using sticky traps in Madagascar. Lastly, we reinterpret some exceptional records from the literature in the light of that process, thus bringing new insight to the taphonomic and palaeoecological understanding of the circumstances of their origins.
Noasaurines form an enigmatic group of small-bodied predatory theropod dinosaurs known from the Late Cretaceous of Gondwana. They are relatively rare, with notable records in Argentina and ...Madagascar, and possible remains reported for Brazil, India, and continental Africa. In south-central Brazil, the deposits of the Bauru Basin have yielded a rich tetrapod fauna, which is concentrated in the Bauru Group. The mainly aeolian deposits of the Caiuá Group, on the contrary, bear a scarce fossil record composed only of lizards, turtles, and pterosaurs. Here, we describe the first dinosaur of the Caiuá Group, which also represents the best-preserved theropod of the entire Bauru Basin known to date. The recovered skeletal parts (vertebrae, girdles, limbs, and scarce cranial elements) show that the new taxon was just over 1 m long, with a unique anatomy among theropods. The shafts of its metatarsals II and IV are very lateromedially compressed, as are the blade-like ungual phalanges of the respective digits. This implies that the new taxon could have been functionally monodactyl, with a main central weight-bearing digit, flanked by neighbouring elements positioned very close to digit III or even held free of the ground. Such anatomical adaptation is formerly unrecorded among archosaurs, but has been previously inferred from footprints of the same stratigraphic unit that yielded the new dinosaur. A phylogenetic analysis nests the new taxon within the Noasaurinae clade, which is unresolved because of the multiple alternative positions that Noasaurus leali can acquire in the optimal trees. The exclusion of the latter form results in positioning the new dinosaur as the sister-taxon of the Argentinean Velocisaurus unicus.
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