Spatial response of hard- and mixed-bottom benthic epifauna to organic enrichment from salmon aquaculture in northern Norway

Norwegian Atlantic salmon aquaculture is continuing to expand in northern regions dominated by hard- and mixed-bottom substrates. Such habitats contain rich benthic epifaunal communities, including sponges and other sessile invertebrates susceptible to the impacts of particulate material released from finfish farms. Here, conventional soft-sediment sampling techniques are unable to discern the impacts of farm waste, and new monitoring methods and indicator taxa must be identified. This study improves understanding of the impacts of particulate waste released from salmon farms on the density and structure of benthic epifaunal communities on mixed- and hard-bottom substrates. The diversity, density, and composition of epifaunal communities and visually conspicuous benthic infauna were recorded in towed camera transects along the enrichment gradient (~50-800 m) of 3 salmon farms in northern Norway. Elevated fluxes of particulate material in the vicinity of all farms significantly affected epifaunal community composition, as did the coverage of some key substrate types. The defecated mounds of lugworms and the seastar Asterias rubens were notably more abundant near the farms where fluxes were elevated. The sponges Polymastia spp. and Phakellia spp. and the soft coral Duva florida showed significant declines in density with increasing sedimentation and were principal taxa in communities at natural sedimentation levels. Results identify taxa with both positive and negative spatial associations to particulate waste released from finfish farms and the potential for the development of an epifauna indicator-based index for monitoring the environmental impacts of aquaculture in hard- and mixed-bottom dominated substrates.publishedVersio

A Current Analysis of Black Head Football Coaches and Offensive Coordinators at the NCAA DI-FBS Level

At the start of the 2015 college football season, 15 of the 128 NCAA DI-FBS programs took the field with a new head coach. Of note, is that none of the newly hired head coaches were Black, and 11 of the 15 hires climbed the coaching ranks on the offensive side of the ball. Given that 11.7% of the head coaching jobs in the league were available this offseason and none were filled by a Black coaching candidate could signify that the positive trends found after the 2010 season regarding the hiring of Black head football coaches (Bopp & Sagas, 2012) may have plateaued, or even worse, declined. The purpose of this study was to ascertain if significant strides are being made in the promotion of Black coaches to head coach and offensive coordinator positions in college football, and evaluate how successful they have been in those positions. The findings of our study, which were interpreted using racial tasking (Bopp & Sagas, 2014) as our theoretical lens, found that a) Black representation at the head coach and offensive coordinator position has plateaued, b) White head coaches statistically have higher winning percentages than their Black counterparts, c) White head coaches are afforded nearly a year more on average than Black head coaches to lead their programs, and d) that White offensive coordinators tend to manage more prolific passing teams (e.g., attempts, yards, and touchdowns) than their Black counterparts. The performance of Black coaches compared with their White counterparts has not favored Black coaches which may create prejudice in the mind of athletic administrators. Implications and suggestions for change are discussed

Nation state meets popular culture : the construction of Chinese nationalism in anti-Japanese war dramas

textThis thesis explores how Anti-Japanese War Drama in Chinese TV becomes a field of negotiation in which the forces of dominant state ideology, liberal market and alternative discourses meet. Focusing how the notion of Chinese nationalism has been constructed in the negotiation, this work examines TV dramas as a homogenizing national project in which market forces and state intervention are no longer at odd with each other. By critically reading representations and narratives of bandits and women in two dramas To Advance towards the Fire and Auntie Duohe, the study points out how dominant nationalist discourses attempt to incorporate the marginalized or disadvantaged group as a consistent part of the nation. However, the anti-Japanese war dramas still allow a space for the alternative discourse to emerge which disturbs the perceived coherence of the nation.Radio-Television-Fil

Unmasking the ‘New Normal’ and the ‘Vernacular of the Veracious’ during a Pandemic

This paper argues that the deployment of a figurative language like the phrase “new normal” and many other verbal formulations during a pandemic is a form of power and control by political leaders. This deployment is calculated and calculating as it is meant to condition the minds of the masses that depend on the ruling political class for clarity, guidance, and some form of redemption. These “weaponized” words are presented as expressions of the veracious—essentially a vernacular of power—by persons of authority for a semblance of credibility. There are at least two versions of the veracious that are at play in the communities of infected people: (a) the official sense of what is true and (b) the hidden, unacknowledged “state of affairs” that is known only by the ruling power. The unevenness of communication during the pandemic gives the state full control of the calculated and calculating message, leaving the recipients of the official message reduced to helpless consumers. In these Covidized days of our lives, there is nothing normal in the “new normal.” It is an abnormality. Likewise, the “vernacular of the veracious” is plain propaganda for the wrong reason and needs to be turned into a “new paradigm.

Chemotactile social recognition in the blue-ringed octopus, Hapalochlaena maculosa

Social recognition is the ability of individuals in a species to differentiate among conspecifics based on their identity or biologically meaningful demographic. Despite evidence that they have sophisticated brains, complex behavioural repertoires, and acute sensory processing, surprisingly little is known about mechanisms aiding social recognition in cephalopods. This class's unique chemotactile sense by the ventral arm surfaces gathers considerable information used in predator-prey interactions. Does it also help mediate social interactions? This study utilised 366 h of focal animal observations to assess the likelihood of Hapalochlaena maculosa, a nocturnal species, to retreat after physically contacting conspecifics based on their sex, familiarity and mating history. Females retreated from both sexes equally, while males were more likely to retreat after contacting female conspecifics. Most conspicuously, males were significantly more likely to retreat after contacting females with which they had already mated. These findings provide the first evidence for chemotactile sex discrimination and mate recognition within cephalopods, and supplement previous observations that male H. maculosa do not appear to detect the sex of conspecifics from a distance. The decision to retreat from or stay with an individual based on their sex or mating history, only after physical contact, emphasises the importance of chemotactile behaviour in octopus sensory ecology and behaviour. Furthermore, male octopuses have limited spermatophore production, and the use of chemotactile social recognition observed here may highlight the importance of reproduction, specifically sperm allocation and avoidance of sexual cannibalism, on the evolution of sensory ecology and cognition within this lineage

Zebrafish Extracellular Matrix as a Therapeutic Agent for Adult Mammalian Central Nervous System Regeneration

Mammalian central nervous system (CNS) has limited capacity for regeneration. Despite numerous efforts in the last few decades, CNS-related injuries remain as detrimental as they were 50 years ago. While some functional recovery can occur, most regenerations are limited by an extracellular matrix (ECM) that actively inhibits axonal repair and promotes glial scarring. In most tissues, the ECM is an architectural foundation that plays an active role in supporting cellular development and regenerative response after injury. In mammalian CNS, however, this is not the case - its composition is not conducive for regeneration, with various molecules restricting plasticity and neuronal growth. In fact, the CNS-ECM alters its composition dramatically following an injury to restrict regeneration and to prioritize containment of injury as well as preservation of intact neural circuitry. Therefore, an ideal solution to limited CNS regeneration would be to modify and supplement the inhibitory extracellular environment so that it becomes more regeneration-permissive. Mammalian nervous tissue cannot provide such ECM, and synthesizing it in a laboratory is beyond current technology. Remarkably however, evolutionarily primitive species possess robust regenerative neural tissue. For example, small tropical freshwater dwelling zebrafish (Danio rerio) can completely regenerate severed spinal cord, re-gaining full motor function in a week. We believe their ECM contributes to its regenerative capability and that it can be harnessed to induce regeneration even in mammalian CNS. The objective of this dissertation was to evaluate the tissue-specific properties of zebrafish CNS-ECM for CNS injuries in terms of (1) influence on neuron viability and network formation, (2) potential for evoking regenerative CNS traits, and (3) capacity to restore axon connections that translate to meaningful behavioral recovery. Scaffolds enriched with ECM derived from zebrafish brains (zf-brECM) were used to grow a population of primary cortical neurons. The scaffolds were compared to others that were enriched with ECM derived from mammalian tissue, such as pig brain (p-brECM), pig urinary bladder (p-UBM), and rat brain (r-brECM). The scaffolds themselves were designed to help control the distribution of neuronal bodies and axonal sprouting. Ultimately, zf-brECM promoted significantly more neuron survival and growth than mammalian ECMs. Additionally, zf-brECM significantly increased the overall formation of new axon networks. More importantly, axon networks formed in the presence of zf-brECM resulted in functional propagation of action potential signals. Building upon this, therapeutic efficacy of zf-brECM was explored in vivo using a rodent model of optic nerve crush (ONC). ONC was chosen as a representative model of CNS injury model for two reasons: 1) ONC surgery is reliably replicable, lending itself to minimal surgical variability and intra-animal data noise; 2) optic nerves are small and their neural circuitries are simple, making the resident retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and their axons easy to analyze. We compared zf-brECM against commercially available mammalian ECMs by looking at the biological response of the optic nerves and observing traits that are considered hallmarks of CNS regeneration: glial scar deposition and expression level of axon inhibitors, namely chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPG). While ECM technology for CNS injuries has been limited and virtually unstudied in the visual system, it is known that mammalian optic nerves cannot regenerate under normal physiological circumstances. Therefore, we also observed long-distance growth of repairing axons traversing the lesion sites and compared the resulting behavioral recovery. The final behavioral assays revealed that only zf-brECM was able to restore pupil response as well as depth perception to damaged rodent eyes. This body of work demonstrates the regenerative potential of zf-brECM, combined with its affordability, easy handling, and fast reproduction, positions zebrafish as an excellent candidate for a novel ECM source in the future. Specifically, it shows that zebrafish ECM holds promising regenerative potential for application in adult mammalian CNS injuries. Future research is necessary to determine the specific factors in zebrafish CNS-ECM responsible for the regenerative events

Proposal of a population wide genome-based testing for Covid-19

Our lives (and deaths) have by now been dominated for two years by COVID-19, a pandemic that has caused hundreds of millions of disease cases, millions of deaths, trillions in economic costs, and major restrictions on our freedom. Here we suggest a novel tool for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. The key element is a method for a population-scale PCR-based testing, applied on a systematic and repeated basis. For this we have developed a low cost, highly sensitive virus-genome-based test. Using Germany as an example, we demonstrate by using a mathematical model, how useful this strategy could have been in controlling the pandemic. We show using real-world examples how this might be implemented on a mass scale and discuss the feasibility of this approach

“Without the Muslims, We’d be out of a Job” Deconstructing Narratives and Hierarchies of Race, Whiteness, Nation and Class in England’s Sheep Slaughterhouses

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which Whiteness, race, nationhood and class are discursively constructed through narratives which call on purity and morality in Britain. It explores how white British belonging, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and classism are manifest, their intersections, consequences, and shared imperial genealogies. It is based on multi-sited, comparative, fieldwork at three independent sheep slaughterhouses in England, including two sites which practice halal slaughter. The ethnography focusses on an amorphous group of white, British, “working-class” itinerant skilled slaughtermen who labour between them, the white British owners, and their relations with the local white British, British South Asian, Pakistani, and Polish workers at each site. These white British slaughtermen’s livelihoods are sustained by mobility, skill, migrations to, and Muslims in, Britain. They challenge media, political and academic discourses which have claimed that white working-class men have been “left behind” through a confluence of deindustrialisation, deskilling, multiculturalism, and immigration. Through a close ethnography which traces their stories, dialogue, and narrative, and then deconstructs them through critical race theory, narrative analysis, postcolonial studies, and feminist approaches to abjection and belonging, I analyse how these workers resist their own classed stigma by asserting their Whiteness, nationhood, and morality into “hierarchies of belonging.” These hierarchies are manifest by discursively constructing racialised, national, and moral differences and boundaries in relation to their co-workers, their skill, workers’ bodies, the meat they produce, the sheep they slaughter, and the religious and state which laws which govern their labour. Yet, in these fleshy, fluid slaughterhouses, claims of British purity and morality are fragile, imaginative and do not represent stable material, historic or ethical realities. As such, I trouble simplistic analyses which have legitimised white, classed racism as a reaction to socio-economic factors or cultural difference. Rather, I address the status and function of narratives at both national and personal scales and argue that their imaginative qualities are a central modality through which exclusionary forms of Whiteness and Britishness are reproduced as morally superior. More broadly, I connect these moralising narratives to imperial and colonial logics to draw out the long-standing fundamental instabilities of a pure, moral Whiteness or Britishness and the hierarchies which are reproduced through class and race.ESR

The invention of (YouTube) ritual and Pierre Huyghe's holiday

Pierre Huyghe’s work Streamside Day moves the boundaries between representing and producing rituals. In 2003, the artist scripted a holiday for a freshly built suburb in New York State, which he simultaneously turned into a documentary film and quasi-liturgical participatory installation. Artists are increasingly reclaiming the notion of ritual. Simultaneously and beyond the art world, innumerable new rituals are formalizing and circulating through videos online. The forms of ritual and of moving image are merging. To make sense of this phenomenon through the lens of Huyghe’s limit case requires examining ritual production through representation, from Gentile da Fabriano’s Miracolo dei pellegrini to YouTube’s prom videos and gender-reveal ceremonies