A Novel Non-invasive Method to Detect RELM Beta Transcript in Gut Barrier Related Changes During a Gastrointestinal Nematode Infection

Currently, methods for monitoring changes of gut barrier integrity and the associated immune response via non-invasive means are limited. Therefore, we aimed to develop a novel non-invasive technique to investigate immunological host responses representing gut barrier changes in response to infection. We identified the mucous layer on feces from mice to be mainly composed of exfoliated intestinal epithelial cells. Expression of RELM-β, a gene prominently expressed in intestinal nematode infections, was used as an indicator of intestinal cellular barrier changes to infection. RELM-β was detected as early as 6 days post-infection (dpi) in exfoliated epithelial cells. Interestingly, RELM-β expression also mirrored the quality of the immune response, with higher amounts being detectable in a secondary infection and in high dose nematode infection in laboratory mice. This technique was also applicable to captured worm-infected wild house mice. We have therefore developed a novel non-invasive method reflecting gut barrier changes associated with alterations in cellular responses to a gastrointestinal nematode infection

Co-creating “smart” sustainable food futures with urban food growers

The futuristic visions, infrastructures, and developments of smart cities continue to gather pace, with municipal authorities and businesses in the UK investing increasing amounts of resources into their manifestation. At the same time local communities continue to be hard hit by austerity, with more local services being affected by government cuts, with the North-East of England being particularly affected. In this paper we report on a case study that aimed to explore how the top-down, technocentric, and corporate visions of smart cities stand in contrast to the reality of grassroots communities who are dealing with the consequences of austerity. Our case study focuses on a community of urban food growers. We describe our speculative and participatory approach that we devised for co-designing “smart” urban food-growing futures from the bottom-up with local residents in a deprived neighbourhood of Newcastle upon Tyne, and reflect on how they elicited realities and future visions that stand as a counterpoint to the corporate visions of future cities

More-than-human participation: Design for sustainable smart city futures

In this forum we highlight innovative thought, design, and research in the area of interaction design and sustainability, illustrating the diversity of approaches across HCI communities. — Roy Bendor, Edito

The phylogenetics of Anguillicolidae (Nematoda: Anguillicolidea), swimbladder parasites of eels

BACKGROUND: Anguillicolidae Yamaguti, 1935 is a family of parasitic nematode infecting fresh-water eels of the genus Anguilla, comprising five species in the genera Anguillicola and Anguillicoloides. Anguillicoloides crassus is of particular importance, as it has recently spread from its endemic range in the Eastern Pacific to Europe and North America, where it poses a significant threat to new, naïve hosts such as the economic important eel species Anguilla anguilla and Anguilla rostrata. The Anguillicolidae are therefore all potentially invasive taxa, but the relationships of the described species remain unclear. Anguillicolidae is part of Spirurina, a diverse clade made up of only animal parasites, but placement of the family within Spirurina is based on limited data. RESULTS: We generated an extensive DNA sequence dataset from three loci (the 5' one-third of the nuclear small subunit ribosomal RNA, the D2-D3 region of the nuclear large subunit ribosomal RNA and the 5' half of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I gene) for the five species of Anguillicolidae and used this to investigate specific and generic boundaries within the family, and the relationship of Anguillicolidae to other spirurine nematodes. Neither nuclear nor mitochondrial sequences supported monophyly of Anguillicoloides. Genetic diversity within the African species Anguillicoloides papernai was suggestive of cryptic taxa, as was the finding of distinct lineages of Anguillicoloides novaezelandiae in New Zealand and Tasmania. Phylogenetic analysis of the Spirurina grouped the Anguillicolidae together with members of the Gnathostomatidae and Seuratidae. CONCLUSIONS: The Anguillicolidae is part of a complex radiation of parasitic nematodes of vertebrates with wide host diversity (chondrichthyes, teleosts, squamates and mammals), most closely related to other marine vertebrate parasites that also have complex life cycles. Molecular analyses do not support the recent division of Anguillicolidae into two genera. The described species may hide cryptic taxa, identified here by DNA taxonomy, and this DNA barcoding approach may assist in tracking species invasions. The propensity for host switching, and thus the potential for invasive behaviour, is found in A. crassus, A. novaezelandiae and A. papernai, and thus may be common to the group

Algorithmic food justice

Under what technoscientific conditions might the scarcity of food be understood as contingent on heterogeneous actors? And the possibilities of food abundance be approached as a reparative project of valuing their manifold relations? Blockchain promises to be an infrastructure that presents both productive imaginaries and also challenges to such restorative and sustainable work (Seidler et al 2017; Rozas et al, 2018). In a series of workshops, we critically experimented with these possibilities and challenges. Working with diverse participants including community growers, organisers, artists, and technologists we used a variety of playful methods to act out fictional scenarios set in 2025, when all of London had been transformed into a city farm. For organisations and participants, reparation meant working in the aftermath of social and environmental collapse to bring into being more-than-human-value systems that radically decentred human knowledge and experience

Algorithmic Food Justice: Co-Designing More-than-Human Blockchain Futures for the Food Commons

The relationships that constitute the global industrial food system tend towards two dominant values that are creating unsustainable social and environmental inequalities. The first is a human-centered perspective on food that privileges humans over all other species. The second is a view of food as a commodity to be traded for maximum economic value, rewarding a small number of shareholders. We present work that explores the unique algorithmic affordances of blockchain to create new types of value exchange and governance in the food system. We describe a project that used roleplay with urban agricultural communities to co-design blockchain-based food futures and explore the conditions for creating a thriving multispecies food commons. We discuss how the project helped rethink algorithmic food justice by reconfiguring more-than-human values and reconfiguring food as more-than-human commons. We also discuss some of the challenges and tensions arising from these explorations

Making Data Work Count

In this paper, we examine the work of data annotation. Specifically, we focus on the role of counting or quantification in organising annotation work. Based on an ethnographic study of data annotation in two outsourcing centres in India, we observe that counting practices and its associated logics are an integral part of day-to-day annotation activities. In particular, we call attention to the presumption of total countability observed in annotation - the notion that everything, from tasks, datasets and deliverables, to workers, work time, quality and performance, can be managed by applying the logics of counting. To examine this, we draw on sociological and socio-technical scholarship on quantification and develop the lens of a 'regime of counting' that makes explicit the specific counts, practices, actors and structures that underpin the pervasive counting in annotation. We find that within the AI supply chain and data work, counting regimes aid the assertion of authority by the AI clients (also called requesters) over annotation processes, constituting them as reductive, standardised, and homogenous. We illustrate how this has implications for i) how annotation work and workers get valued, ii) the role human discretion plays in annotation, and iii) broader efforts to introduce accountable and more just practices in AI. Through these implications, we illustrate the limits of operating within the logic of total countability. Instead, we argue for a view of counting as partial - located in distinct geographies, shaped by specific interests and accountable in only limited ways. This, we propose, sets the stage for a fundamentally different orientation to counting and what counts in data annotation

More-than-Human Data Interactions in the Smart City - reflections

How might we design and plan urban spaces to be more hospitable for foxes? How might a worm or a nettle plant experience the neighbourhood we live in? What kinds of urban data might parakeets find useful? And how might we design new technologies for more equitable living spaces for all of London’s inhabitants - human and non-human, big and small? This booklet brings together reflections from a research project called “More-than- Human Data Interactions in the Smart City.” Through a series of probes and proposals, and two workshops in east London with participants that included community organisers, growers, policy-makers, activists, academics, educators and artists, we explored questions about who we share our city with, and how we can better live together with our non-human neighbours with the help of digital infrastructure and data

Bottom-up visions for future of food growing in cities

We report on community food growing as an instance of practice-based sustainability research focused on the design of interactive systems for food growing in future cities. We present a case study with a series of workshops using speculative and participatory design approaches focused on creatively exploring futures of urban food growing with a local neighbourhood community. Working with local grassroots communities is often perceived as more egalitarian for promoting viable long-term and embedded change in cities, yet little work has studied this approach for urban food growing. To explore how we might better articulate and conceptualize collaborative food growing futures, we discuss the creation of bottom-up visions as contestations to hegemonic narratives of power and control in cities. These are affected by, limitations of present resources and infrastructures, inability to work at scale due to lack of buy-in of stakeholders, and erroneous promises of future technologies. Through these reflections on grassroots futures as complex assemblages of social and material realities, we provoke researchers and practitioners to look at envisioning future possibilities with participants, as a web of practices and stakeholders. We further suggest that researchers and practitioners explore these interconnections through assemblages of socio-material realities and visions of high- and low-tech futures. This work is important because it provides a new approach to looking at the design of future technologies for cities and addressing systemic issues of hegemonic food systems through bottom-up actionable futures