Abstract
Citizen science evolved through multiple disciplinary manifestations into a new field of study and a participatory method of enquiry. While most citizen science projects take place within ...problem-focused natural sciences, social sciences and humanities help understanding the human dimension and open a broad methodological spectrum for enriching scientific research with new approaches and for boosting public participation. In this paper, we use a meta-synthesis approach to explore how citizen science is practised in the so far less addressed social sciences and humanities by focusing on the role of the citizens, the goals and approaches of the projects, the tasks in which citizens are engaged and their gains across projects of diverse disciplinary background. Our findings indicate that social sciences are gaining more acknowledgment within interdisciplinary citizen science projects by addressing ‘wicked’ problems of human behaviour and agency, while humanities are in quest of a better-defined locus in citizen science. We conclude that social sciences and humanities still face considerable barriers to infiltrate citizen science; the payoffs are substantial and already rewarding for several subfields in social sciences and humanities.
Drawing on our long-term research experiences, in this deliberately provocative but also reflexive paper we argue that international food and agriculture studies constitute a research area that would ...particularly benefit from insights obtained from research conducted in the world's peripheries—in this case, specifically from insights on East European food systems. Instead of seeing them as textbook case studies of undeveloped, traditional and hence uninspiring systems, we propose to study them from the East European perspective. This enables us to move away from a unidirectional development path and to acknowledge the diversity, resilience and unintended but real sustainability of the melange of East European formal and informal food systems. Such endeavour reveals food practices that cannot easily be reduced to ‘food chains’, ‘food initiatives’ or diets. It recognises meanings that go beyond the conventional food system terminology and are rooted in surrounding contexts. Evidence from Eastern Europe reveals a rich diversity of food practices challenging normative assumptions and neatly structured explanatory models underlying Western food system scholarship.
•Food practices which are marginal in the West are widespread in Eastern Europe.•These practices located at the intersection of the formal market and non-market economies.•They are based on the entangling of binaries considered to stand in opposition.•This makes Eastern Europe a source of critical and innovative thinking about AFNs.
Self-assembling peptide-based nanotubes are among the most investigated bioactive compounds as a result of their numerous potential applications as novel biomaterials. To support rational bottom-up ...design of such artificial nanosystems, here we investigate structural and energetic properties of various sheet-derived nanotubes. We carried out high level quantum chemical calculations on large models, composed of up to 32 amino acids, and characterized structures from extended β-sheets to the molecular framework of β-barrel proteins. Surprisingly, enzyme-resistant nonnatural β-peptides have an affinity to form nanotubes that is remarkably higher than that of natural α-peptides. We analyzed the stability of both systems depending on (i) parallel or antiparallel orientation, (ii) the number of peptide strands, and (iii) the formed hydrogen bond pattern. Applicability is outlined by investigating guest molecules in the tubes. It is hoped that the structural and energetic data presented here will be effectively used in the design of novel peptide nanosystems.
Despite its importance for understanding human infertility and congenital diseases, early mammalian development has remained inaccessible to in toto imaging. We developed an inverted light-sheet ...microscope that enabled us to image mouse embryos from zygote to blastocyst, computationally track all cells and reconstruct a complete lineage tree of mouse pre-implantation development. We used this unique data set to show that the first cell fate specification occurs at the 16-cell stage.
To capture highly dynamic biological processes at cellular resolution is a recurring challenge in biology. Here we show that combining selective-volume illumination with simultaneous acquisition of ...orthogonal light fields yields three-dimensional images with high, isotropic spatial resolution and a significant reduction of reconstruction artefacts, thereby overcoming current limitations of light-field microscopy implementations. We demonstrate medaka heart and blood flow imaging at single-cell resolution and free of motion artefacts at volume rates of up to 200 Hz.
Currently available tools for multiplex bacterial genome engineering are optimized for a few laboratory model strains, demand extensive prior modification of the host strain, and lead to the ...accumulation of numerous off-target modifications. Building on prior development of multiplex automated genome engineering (MAGE), our work addresses these problems in a single framework. Using a dominant-negative mutant protein of the methyl-directed mismatch repair (MMR) system, we achieved a transient suppression of DNA repair in Escherichia coli, which is necessary for efficient oligonucleotide integration. By integrating all necessary components into a broad-host vector, we developed a new workflow we term pORTMAGE. It allows efficient modification of multiple loci, without any observable off-target mutagenesis and prior modification of the host genome. Because of the conserved nature of the bacterial MMR system, pORTMAGE simultaneously allows genome editing and mutant library generation in other biotechnologically and clinically relevant bacterial species. Finally, we applied pORTMAGE to study a set of antibiotic resistance-conferring mutations in Salmonella enterica and E. coli. Despite over 100 million y of divergence between the two species, mutational effects remained generally conserved. In sum, a single transformation of a pORTMAGE plasmid allows bacterial species of interest to become an efficient host for genome engineering. These advances pave the way toward biotechnological and therapeutic applications. Finally, pORTMAGE allows systematic comparison of mutational effects and epistasis across a wide range of bacterial species.
The number of collaborative initiatives between scientists and volunteers (i.e., citizen science) is increasing across many research fields. The promise of societal transformation together with ...scientific breakthroughs contributes to the current popularity of citizen science (CS) in the policy domain. We examined the transformative capacity of citizen science in particular learning through environmental CS as conservation tool. We reviewed the CS and social-learning literature and examined 14 conservation projects across Europe that involved collaborative CS. We also developed a template that can be used to explore learning arrangements (i.e., learning events and materials) in CS projects and to explain how the desired outcomes can be achieved through CS learning. We found that recent studies aiming to define CS for analytical purposes often fail to improve the conceptual clarity of CS; CS programs may have transformative potential, especially for the development of individual skills, but such transformation is not necessarily occurring at the organizational and institutional levels; empirical evidence on simple learning outcomes, but the assertion of transformative effects of CS learning is often based on assumptions rather than empirical observation; and it is unanimous that learning in CS is considered important, but in practice it often goes unreported or unevaluated. In conclusion, we point to the need for reliable and transparent measurement of transformative effects for democratization of knowledge production. El número de iniciativas colaborativas entre los científicos y los voluntarios (es decir, ciencia ciudadana) está incrementando en muchas áreas de investigación. La promesa de una transformación social junto con avances científicos contribuye a la popularidad actual de la ciencia ciudadana (CC) en el dominio político. Examinamos la capacidad transformativa de la ciencia ciudadana, en particular del aprendizaje por medio de CC ambiental como herramienta de conservación. Revisamos la literatura sobre CC y aprendizaje social y examinamos 14 proyectos de conservación en Europa que involucraban CC colaborativa. También desarrollamos un patrón que puede usarse para explorar los arreglos de aprendizaje (es decir, los materiales y eventos de aprendizaje) en los proyectos de CC y para explicar cómo los desarrollos deseados pueden obtenerse mediante el aprendizaje de CC. Encontramos que los estudios recientes que buscan definir a la CC por propósitos analíticos fallan continuamente en la mejora de la claridad conceptual de la CC; que los programas de CC pueden tener potencial transformativo, especialmente para el desarrollo de las habilidades individuales, pero dicha transformación no está ocurriendo necesariamente en los niveles institucionales y de organización; que existe evidencia empírica de los resultados simples de aprendizaje, pero la aseveración de los efectos transformativos del aprendizaje de CC está basada continuamente en suposiciones en lugar de observaciones empíricas; y que es unánime que el aprendizaje en la CC está considerado como importante, pero en la práctica continuamente sigue sin ser reportado o evaluado. En conclusión, señalamos la necesidad de una medida confiable y transparente de los efectos transformadores para la democratización de la producción del conocimiento.
Antimicrobial peptides are promising alternative antimicrobial agents. However, little is known about whether resistance to small-molecule antibiotics leads to cross-resistance (decreased ...sensitivity) or collateral sensitivity (increased sensitivity) to antimicrobial peptides. We systematically addressed this question by studying the susceptibilities of a comprehensive set of 60 antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli strains towards 24 antimicrobial peptides. Strikingly, antibiotic-resistant bacteria show a high frequency of collateral sensitivity to antimicrobial peptides, whereas cross-resistance is relatively rare. We identify clinically relevant multidrug-resistance mutations that increase bacterial sensitivity to antimicrobial peptides. Collateral sensitivity in multidrug-resistant bacteria arises partly through regulatory changes shaping the lipopolysaccharide composition of the bacterial outer membrane. These advances allow the identification of antimicrobial peptide-antibiotic combinations that enhance antibiotic activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria and slow down de novo evolution of resistance. In particular, when co-administered as an adjuvant, the antimicrobial peptide glycine-leucine-amide caused up to 30-fold decrease in the antibiotic resistance level of resistant bacteria. Our work provides guidelines for the development of efficient peptide-based therapies of antibiotic-resistant infections.
PDF
