Evidence for suppression of immunity as a driver for genomic introgressions and host range expansion in races of Albugo candida, a generalist parasite

How generalist parasites with wide host ranges can evolve is a central question in parasite evolution. Albugo candida is an obligate biotrophic parasite that consists of many physiological races that each specialize on distinct Brassicaceae host species. By analyzing genome sequence assemblies of five isolates, we show they represent three races that are genetically diverged by ∼1%. Despite this divergence, their genomes are mosaic-like, with ∼25% being introgressed from other races. Sequential infection experiments show that infection by adapted races enables subsequent infection of hosts by normally non-infecting races. This facilitates introgression and the exchange of effector repertoires, and may enable the evolution of novel races that can undergo clonal population expansion on new hosts. We discuss recent studies on hybridization in other eukaryotes such as yeast, Heliconius butterflies, Darwin’s finches, sunflowers and cichlid fishes, and the implications of introgression for pathogen evolution in an agro-ecological environment

Critically Assessing the Invalidity of Race Realism and Finding Solutions to Educate Society on Racial Theory

With race being a hard concept to grasp, many competing theories have arisen to explain what race is and how to categorise someone by race. The dominant explanation for race in early history has been characterised by race realism. Colloquially, race realism is the theory that scientific evidence proves race to be objectively definable by trends in geography, appearance, and most prominently, genetics. Previous research from Stanford geneticist Noah Rosenberg (2005) that looked to support this topic has relied on small sample sizes and data that had otherwise been misconducted. When Sarah Tishkoff (2009) of the University of Pennsylvania conducted the same experiments more thoroughly and with larger sample sizes, evidence contradictory to earlier experiments arose and invalidated the findings supposedly supporting race realism. Considering this, we used data from an extensive public survey to assess society’s underlying beliefs and attitudes towards race while looking to confirm that race realism had been invalidated at a social level. In alignment with the newer findings, the data we collected suggests that people of younger generations have been less and less exposed to the ideas of race realism, and all have come to the conclusion on their own that it is arbitrary to objectively define someone by race. The study showed that while these generations still socially group themselves into races as a result of ancestral and geographic history, there is no genetic property that ties them to their personal sense of identity. Thus, the study concludes by providing ways to further educate the population and avoid the pitfalls of race realism, as certain social groups in the media still back the obsolete ideas of race realism to this day

Racialization: A Defense of the Concept

This paper defends the concept of racialization against its critics. As the concept has become increasingly popular, questions about its meaning and value have been raised, and a backlash against its use has occurred. I argue that when “racialization” is properly understood, criticisms of the concept are unsuccessful. I defend a definition of racialization and identify its companion concept, “racialized group.” Racialization is often used as a synonym for “racial formation.” I argue that this is a mistake. Racial formation theory is committed to racial ontology, but racialization is best understood as the process through which racialized – rather than racial – groups are formed. “Racialization” plays a unique role in the conceptual landscape, and it is a key concept for race eliminativists and anti-realists about race

What happens when a woman wins an election? Evidence from close races in Brazil

This paper analyzes the effect of the gender of local policymakers on policy outcomes. Analyzing a rich dataset from Brazilian municipalities and using a regression discontinuity design, we find that municipalities ruled by female mayors have better health outcomes, receive more federal discretionary transfers, and have lower corruption. Additionally, male mayors hire more temporary public employees than their female counterparts when they are allowed to run for re-election, and when municipal elections are approaching. These findings suggest that male mayors may promote more political patronage than female mayors and that men and women may respond differently to local election incentives

Racing against time? Aspects of the temporal organization of the runner's world

Drawing on documentary sources and participant observation, I seek to specify salient temporal characteristics of the social world of running. Extant analyses seem preoccupied with criticizing running temporality for reproducing, in a sporting context, those Taylorized, alienating beliefs and oppressive practices typical of capitalist sites of production. A different point of departure, runners' own understandings, shows that temporal considerations are a key constituent of the runner's self that is not experienced as alienated. Three aspects of running temporality are highlighted: the large-scale temporal organization of the running world, with a focus on the cyclical racing pattern and the planned and scheduled character of training; temporal features of running careers; and the way in which "times" figure in the activity of running and its description. I conclude that these temporal organizations are important symbolic resources that help to build and reaffirm the runner's self. Rather than time alienating and exploiting runners, runners exploit it as a constructive resource that they can deploy in diverse ways

Information, Candidate Selection, and the Quality of Representation: Evidence from Nepal

How do we improve the quality of representation in new democracies? This paper studies candidate selection by party leaders and asks whether poor information about public preferences can lead elite choices to diverge from mass opinion. Working with a political party in Nepal, we show that while elites value voter preferences, these preferences only explain one third of elite candidate selection. Next, we embed an experiment in actual candidate selection deliberations for this party and find that party leaders not only select different candidates when polling data are presented to them, but that their updated decisions also improve the party’s vote share. By opening the black-box of candidate selection, this paper demonstrates that closing the information gap between elites and voters has the power to improve the quality of representation

Is “Race” Modern? Disambiguating the Question

Race theorists have been unable to reach a consensus regarding the basic historical question, “is ‘race’ modern?” I argue that this is partly because the question itself is ambiguous. There is not really one question that race scholars are answering, but at least six. First, is the concept of race modern? Second, is there a modern concept of race that is distinct from earlier race concepts? Third, are “races” themselves modern? Fourth, are racialized groups modern? Fifth, are the means and methods associated with racialization modern? And sixth, are the meanings attached to racialized traits modern? Because these questions have different answers, the debate about the historical origins of “race” cannot be resolved unless they are distinguished. I will explain the ways in which “race” is and is not modern by answering these questions, thereby offering a resolution to a seemingly intractable problem

Fast and Precise Symbolic Analysis of Concurrency Bugs in Device Drivers

© 2015 IEEE.Concurrency errors, such as data races, make device drivers notoriously hard to develop and debug without automated tool support. We present Whoop, a new automated approach that statically analyzes drivers for data races. Whoop is empowered by symbolic pairwise lockset analysis, a novel analysis that can soundly detect all potential races in a driver. Our analysis avoids reasoning about thread interleavings and thus scales well. Exploiting the race-freedom guarantees provided by Whoop, we achieve a sound partial-order reduction that significantly accelerates Corral, an industrial-strength bug-finder for concurrent programs. Using the combination of Whoop and Corral, we analyzed 16 drivers from the Linux 4.0 kernel, achieving 1.5 - 20× speedups over standalone Corral