Pacified Inclusion: Security Policy, Social Networks, and Rio De Janeiro’s Favelas

This dissertation addresses the connections between everyday violence and digital technology. I describe three years of ethnographic research concerning a community policing program called &ldquo;pacifica&ccedil;&atilde;o&rdquo;(pacification) in a Brazilian favela (shanty town). Alongside supporting a permanent police force that destabilized a powerful drug faction, pacification policy endorsed a wide range of social projects and dramatically reshaped the relationship between the Brazilian State and its marginalized citizens. Among the social projects associated with pacification were a number of &ldquo;inclus&atilde;o digital&rdquo; (digital inclusion) programs that combined technical literacy with critical political literacy in the hope of disrupting exclusionary conditions. During my observations of these programs, I found what I call a hidden politics of digital reproduction. Rather than disrupting the pacified favela&rsquo;s social conditions, as proponents of digital inclusion suggested, technology disguised and reproduced longstanding forms of oppression. I recount several examples of digital inclusion&rsquo;s hidden politics including technology corporations that used a discourse of disruption to promote middleclass consumerism in the favela and police who appropriated the rhetoric of social media activist to distract from human rights abuses. In considering these hidden politics of digital reproduction, my theoretical discussion informs anthropological scholarship concerning violence, a modern information society, and democracy in marginalized urban communities.</p

PACAP-38 Signaling in \u3ci\u3eTetrahymena thermophila\u3c/i\u3e Involves NO and cGMP

Chemorepellents are signaling molecules, which have been shown to be important for mammalian neuronal development, and are presumed to have a role in protozoan defense. Tetrahymena thermophila represent a good model system in which to study repellents because of their ease of use in biochemical, behavioral, electrophysiological, and genetic analyses. In this study, we have used Tetrahymena as a model in which to study the chemorepellent, PACAP. Using behavioral and biochemical (EIA) assays, we have found that the NO/cGMP pathway plays an important role in PACAP signaling. An increase in intracellular calcium is also critical for PACAP avoidance, which appears to be mediated through a pertussis toxin-sensitive G-protein

Facilitation Differentially Affects Competitive Responses of Aspen and Subalpine Fir Through Stages of Stand Development

Spatial interactions between trees influence forest community succession. The objective of this study was to investigate how shifts in forest composition and proximity between tree species affect stand development over time in mixed forest systems. At six locations across the Fishlake National Forest, Utah, USA, in stands where facilitation has been documented previously, tree-ring samples were collected from aspen and subalpine fir trees. Basal area increment was calculated to characterize the effects of the proximity of overstory trees on multidecadal growth responses of aspen and subalpine fir in aspen-dominant and mixed aspen–conifer stands. Subalpine fir seedlings were established next to aspen (within 10 cm) when aspen was between 15 and 120 years old with a mean age of 60 years. Aspen and subalpine fir growth rates were reduced with increasing conifer abundance. Aspen trees growing next to a proximate subalpine fir tree had slower growth rates over time than aspen trees growing independently. Growth rates of subalpine fir in aspen-dominated stands were similar when growing independently or near aspen trees. However, subalpine fir in conifer-dominated stands maintained higher growth rates when growing next to an aspen tree than when growing independently. The data suggest that as stand competition increases with conifer abundance, the proximity of overstory trees increases competitive exclusion of aspen while having a beneficial growth effect on subalpine fir. These results underscore the importance of maintaining natural fire regimes in forest systems that keep competitive interactions in balance

Evolutionary Analysis of Cystatins of Early-Emerging Metazoans Reveals a Novel Subtype in Parasitic Cnidarians

© 2021 by the authors.The evolutionary aspects of cystatins are greatly underexplored in early-emerging metazoans. Thus, we surveyed the gene organization, protein architecture, and phylogeny of cystatin homologues mined from 110 genomes and the transcriptomes of 58 basal metazoan species, encompassing free-living and parasite taxa of Porifera, Placozoa, Cnidaria (including Myxozoa), and Ctenophora. We found that the cystatin gene repertoire significantly differs among phyla, with stefins present in most of the investigated lineages but with type 2 cystatins missing in several basal metazoan groups. Similar to liver and intestinal flukes, myxozoan parasites possess atypical stefins with chimeric structure that combine motifs of classical stefins and type 2 cystatins. Other early metazoan taxa regardless of lifestyle have only the classical representation of cystatins and lack multi-domain ones. Our comprehensive phylogenetic analyses revealed that stefins and type 2 cystatins clustered into taxonomically defined clades with multiple independent paralogous groups, which probably arose due to gene duplications. The stefin clade split between the subclades of classical stefins and the atypical stefins of myxozoans and flukes. Atypical stefins represent key evolutionary innovations of the two parasite groups for which their origin might have been linked with ancestral gene chimerization, obligate parasitism, life cycle complexity, genome reduction, and host immunity.This research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, grant number LTAUSA17201; by the European Commission under the H2020 Programme—ParaFishControl, grant number 634429; by the Czech Science Foundation, grant number 19-28399X (to A. S. Holzer, G. Alama-Bermejo, and J. Kyslík) and 21-16565S and by the Czech Academy of Sciences and Hungarian Academy of Sciences, grant number MTA 19-07. This publication reflects the views of the authors only; the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein

Evolutionary Analysis of Cystatins of Early-Emerging Metazoans Reveals a Novel Subtype in Parasitic Cnidarians

Acknowledgments: We thank to Baveesh Pudhuvai (BC CAS, Budweis, Czech Republic) for help in the PCR verification of Buddenbrockia stefin. We also thank Ivan Fiala (BC CAS, Budweis, Czech Republic) for providing suggestions to improve the manuscript and for sharing M. lieberkuehni and N. pickii transcriptomic data. We are grateful to Hanna Hartikainen (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) for sharing T. bryosalmonae genome data. Funding: This research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, grant number LTAUSA17201; by the European Commission under the H2020 Programme— ParaFishControl, grant number 634429; by the Czech Science Foundation, grant number 19-28399X (to A. S. Holzer, G. Alama-Bermejo, and J. Kyslík) and 21-16565S and by the Czech Academy of Sciences and Hungarian Academy of Sciences, grant number MTA 19-07. This publication reflects the views of the authors only; the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Genome Sequence of the Model Mushroom Schizophyllum Commune

Much remains to be learned about the biology of mushroom-forming fungi, which are an important source of food, secondary metabolites and industrial enzymes. The wood-degrading fungus Schizophyllum commune is both a genetically tractable model for studying mushroom development and a likely source of enzymes capable of efficient degradation of lignocellulosic biomass. Comparative analyses of its 38.5-megabase genome, which encodes 13,210 predicted genes, reveal the species\u27s unique wood-degrading machinery. One-third of the 471 genes predicted to encode transcription factors are differentially expressed during sexual development of S. commune. Whereas inactivation of one of these, fst4, prevented mushroom formation, inactivation of another, fst3, resulted in more, albeit smaller, mushrooms than in the wild-type fungus. Antisense transcripts may also have a role in the formation of fruiting bodies. Better insight into the mechanisms underlying mushroom formation should affect commercial production of mushrooms and their industrial use for producing enzymes and pharmaceuticals

Amplified melt and flow of the Greenland ice sheet driven by late-summer cyclonic rainfall

Intense rainfall events significantly affect Alpine and Alaskan glaciers through enhanced melting, ice-flow acceleration and subglacial sediment erosion, yet their impact on the Greenland ice sheet has not been assessed. Here we present measurements of ice velocity, subglacial water pressure and meteorological variables from the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet during a week of warm, wet cyclonic weather in late August and early September 2011. We find that extreme surface runoff from melt and rainfall led to a widespread acceleration in ice flow that extended 140 km into the ice-sheet interior. We suggest that the late-season timing was critical in promoting rapid runoff across an extensive bare ice surface that overwhelmed a subglacial hydrological system in transition to a less-efficient winter mode. Reanalysis data reveal that similar cyclonic weather conditions prevailed across southern and western Greenland during this time, and we observe a corresponding ice-flow response at all land- and marine-terminating glaciers in these regions for which data are available. Given that the advection of warm, moist air masses and rainfall over Greenland is expected to become more frequent in the coming decades, our findings portend a previously unforeseen vulnerability of the Greenland ice sheet to climate change

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

UConn Baseball Reliever Lane Optimization Tool

The building of a tool to be utilized by UConn’s Division I baseball team that will generate a game plan for when different relievers should be used against different parts of the opponent’s lineup to achieve the lowest total expected value of runs allowed for the remainder of the game based on game situations and matchup probabilities. The tool will also examine and determine situations that may be vital enough to the outcome of the game to bring in a better reliever normally saved for later in the game

UConn Baseball Reliever Lane Optimization Tool

The building of a tool to be utilized by UConn’s Division I baseball team that will generate a game plan for when different relievers should be used against different parts of the opponent’s lineup to achieve the lowest total expected value of runs allowed for the remainder of the game based on game situations and matchup probabilities. The tool will also examine and determine situations that may be vital enough to the outcome of the game to bring in a better reliever normally saved for later in the game