In cities across the world, animals reflect, reproduce and transform urban inequalities – yet their role in mediating social hierarchies remains undertheorized. Urban scholars have begun to highlight ...the importance of infrastructures and technologies in configuring access to essential goods and services. While this research provides key insights into how non-human entities mediate unequal relations, it has largely overlooked how certain animals – „political animals“ – also co-produce inequalities. This article focuses on two critical urban domains, security and public health, that are often characterized by stark inequalities, and takes the role of key animals within these domains – dogs and rats, respectively – as a new analytical entry-point. Security dogs are socialized to identify threatening individuals on the basis of classed and raced markers. Rats thrive in upscale neighborhoods with historical architecture and abundant green space – yet the public health risks and the stigma associated with these rodents may disproportionately affect low-income residents. Drawing on research on security dogs in Kingston, Jamaica and rats in Amsterdam, this talk discusses the role of animals in the formation of sociospatial boundaries, and the distribution of resources and risks across urban spaces and populations. Focusing on the interactions these two types of „political animals“ have with both humans and infrastructure, it sets out a research agenda for studying how animals’ everyday encounters with their cultural and material environments combine to result in (in-)equitable social outcomes.
Superb reliability and biocompatibility equip aggregation‐induced emission (AIE) dots with tremendous potential for fluorescence bioimaging. However, there is still a chronic lack of design ...instructions of excretable and bright AIE emitters. Here, a kind of PEGylated AIE (OTPA‐BBT) dots with strong absorption and extremely high second near‐infrared region (NIR‐II) PLQY of 13.6% is designed, and a long‐aliphatic‐chain design blueprint contributing to their excretion from an animal's body is proposed. Assisted by the OTPA‐BBT dots with bright fluorescence beyond 1100 nm and even 1500 nm (NIR‐IIb), large‐depth cerebral vasculature (beyond 600 µm) as well as real‐time blood flow are monitored through a thinned skull, and noninvasive NIR‐IIb imaging with rich high‐spatial‐frequency information gives a precise presentation of gastrointestinal tract in marmosets. Importantly, after intravenous or oral administration, the definite excretion of OTPA‐BBT dots from the body is demonstrated, which provides influential evidence of biosafety.
The long aliphatic chains of aggregation‐induced emission (AIE)‐gens are conducive to the excretion of AIE dots from an animal's body. The deep micro cerebrovasculature in marmosets is visualized through the thinned skull. Non‐invasive and high‐spatial‐frequency near‐infrared‐IIb imaging is utilized in non‐human primates. It is believed this work provides crucial ideas to advance the development of biosafe AIE dots and future nanomedicine.
Of Being and Belonging Sanghamitra De
Sanglap : journal of literary and cultural inquiry,
07/2023, Letnik:
9, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Easterine Kire, a Naga writer from Northeast India, foregrounds a reconstituted community space where both the individual and the collective meet at a vantage point and non-human forms an integral ...part of human existence. Such strategic ways of representing the art of inhabiting in terms of valorising ‘cosubjectivity’ and blurring of the visible and invisible worlds continue to be a part of conceptualising and reclaiming ethnic boundaries as she integrates human and non-human in the space of the home. The representation of territoriality and community in her works challenges the conventional idea of the self and anthropomorphism as contextualised in her novel When the River Sleeps. What sets Kire apart is her deep engagement with the world of spirits and non-humans and her constant effort to widen and broaden the conceptualisation of ‘community’ to highlight the practices of collective identity in an inclusive space where mutual solidarity is constantly mediated, and ruptures and discontinuities are celebrated. The paper aims to address the complex nuances of Kire’s poetics of representation and contest the definitive conclusions about boundary formation and boundary spanning, thereby representing a fluid space of social and cultural encounter. As I proceed to argue, Kire’s representation of the idea and space of community is purely deconstructive in nature as she upholds an alternate spatial-cultural ethics, liminal to the core in When the River Sleeps.
Chronic heavy alcohol consumption is a risk factor for low trauma bone fracture. Using a non-human primate model of voluntary alcohol consumption, we investigated the effects of 6 months of ethanol ...intake on cortical bone in cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis). Young adult (6.4 ± 0.1 years old, mean ± SE) male cynomolgus macaques (n = 17) were subjected to a 4-month graded ethanol induction period, followed by voluntary self-administration of water or ethanol (4 % w/v) for 22 h/d, 7 d/wk. for 6 months. Control animals (n = 6) consumed an isocaloric maltose-dextrin solution. Tibial response was evaluated using densitometry, microcomputed tomography, histomorphometry, biomechanical testing, and Raman spectroscopy. Global bone response was evaluated using biochemical markers of bone turnover. Monkeys in the ethanol group consumed an average of 2.3 ± 0.2 g/kg/d ethanol resulting in a blood ethanol concentration of 90 ± 12 mg/dl in longitudinal samples taken 7 h after the daily session began. Ethanol consumption had no effect on tibia length, mass, density, mechanical properties, or mineralization (p > 0.642). However, compared to controls, ethanol intake resulted in a dose-dependent reduction in intracortical bone porosity (Spearman rank correlation = −0.770; p < 0.0001) and compared to baseline, a strong tendency (p = 0.058) for lower plasma CTX, a biochemical marker of global bone resorption. These findings are important because suppressed cortical bone remodeling can result in a decrease in bone quality. In conclusion, intracortical bone porosity was reduced to subnormal values 6 months following initiation of voluntary ethanol consumption but other measures of tibia architecture, mineralization, or mechanics were not altered.
•Chronic heavy alcohol consumption is a risk factor for low trauma bone fractures.•We assessed effects of 6 mo of voluntary ethanol intake on cortical bone in monkeys.•Ethanol had no effect on tibia density, mechanical properties, or mineralization.•Ethanol resulted in a dose-dependent reduction in intracortical porosity.•Long-term suppressed intracortical remodeling may result in decreased bone quality.
Non-human primates (NHP) are thought to be a good preclinical animal model for tuberculosis because they develop disease characteristics that are similar to humans. The objective of the current study ...was to determine if NHPs can also be used to reliably predict the exposure of tedizolid, sutezolid, and its biologically active metabolite sutezolid-M1 in humans. The prodrug tedizolid phosphate and sutezolid were administered orally to NHPs either once or twice daily for up to eight days. The active moieties, tedizolid, and sutezolid showed linear pharmacokinetics and respective concentration-time profiles could be described by one-compartment body models with first-order elimination. One additional metabolite compartment with first-order elimination was found appropriate to capture the pharmacokinetics of sutezolid-M1. Once allometrically scaled to humans with a fixed exponent of 0.75 for apparent clearance and 1 for apparent volume of distribution, the AUCs of tedizolid and sutezolid were predicted reasonably well, whereas Cmax was under-predicted for sutezolid. Both NHP and humanized concentration-time profiles will now be used in vitro hollow-fiber pharmacodynamic experiments to determine if differences in drug exposures result in differences in Mycobacterium tuberculosis kill and emergence of resistance.
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