Stress and the ecology of urban experience: Migrant mental lives in central Shanghai

Responding to claims in urban studies and epidemiology that modern urban living negatively affects the mental health of the poor and newcomers to the city, this article offers a different account based on an ethnography of a neighborhood in central Shanghai, where precarious rural migrant lives unfold. Drawing on the concept of “ecologies of experience” to recognize the making of everyday sensibilities and affective tensions in urban dwelling, it focuses on subjectivity formed in habits of negotiating the urban environment, in coping with troubled thoughts and feelings posed by precariousness. The article considers ecologies of experience arising in distinct prosaic locations - a public library, a large bookstore, and a café – found to be important in the everyday spatial practices of migrants, grounding to different degrees of success hopes for their present and future in the city. In such dwelling, the stresses to mental health – consistently described by migrants as “pressure” (yali) – seem to be moderated through varied forms of respite, slowing-down, and “moments of being,” though always in ambivalent ways. In recognizing the everyday materiality of urban living, the article looks beyond the tendency in studies of China's internal migration to read off migrant mental health outcomes from structural disadvantages related to work, welfare and living conditions. Conceptually, it opens new ground in thinking by acknowledging the role of the felt qualities of lived experience in managing mental states, building on work in geography, sociology and anthropology attentive to the affective resonances of place and to practices of urban negotiation.ESR

Interaction-enhanced flow of a polariton superfluid current in a ring

We study the quantum hydrodynamical features of exciton polaritons flowing circularly in a ring-shaped geometry. We consider a resonant-excitation scheme in which the spinor polariton fluid is set into motion in both components by spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion. We show that this scheme allows us to control the winding number of the fluid and to create two circulating states differing by two units of the angular momentum. We then consider the effect of a disorder potential, which is always present in realistic nanostructures. We discuss how a smooth disorder can be efficiently screened by the polariton-polariton interactions, yielding a signature of polariton superfluidity. This effect is reminiscent of supercurrent in a superconducting loo

Parental Expectations and Prosocial Behavior of Adolescents From Low-Income Backgrounds: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between Three Countries¿Argentina, Colombia, and Spain

Parental expectations are influenced by cultural models, which in turn are subject to a great influence from historically fluctuating features of the socioeconomic background. Parental expectations seem to be linked to children¿s social and emotional development in terms of empathy and prosocial behavior. The current study aims to (a) compare low-income adolescents¿ perceptions of parental expectations of prosocial and antisocial behavior across three Latin countries (Argentina, Colombia, and Spain), (b) compare the empathy and prosocial behavior between the three countries, (c) compare the prosocial behavior between the three countries, and (d) study the effect of perceived parental expectations and empathy on the prosocial behavior of adolescents in all three of the countries studied in this research. The sample was made up of 446 Argentinean adolescents, 474 Colombian adolescents, and 632 Spanish adolescents. The Expected Parental Reactions Scale, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire were used to measure the variables included in this study. Results reveal considerable differences between children¿s perceptions of parental expectations in different countries. Results also show the existence of significant differences between male and female adolescents. In all three countries, girls score more highly than boys in prosocial behavior and empathy. Furthermore, we find that low-income Argentinean adolescents score more highly than Spanish and Colombian adolescents in prosocial behavior measures. Finally, expected parental reactions toward prosocial behavior and empathy seem to have an influence on the adolescents¿ development of prosocial behavior in all three countries

XXVII International Congress of Psychology, Estocolmo, 2000 : Simposio "Science from the standpoint of cognitive psychology"

Contiene los resúmenes de: Science rationality and inference : an insight from cognitive psychology / Prof. Dr. Alfredo Oscar López Alonso ; Cognitive maps across cultures and across sciences / Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi ; Subjective and objective causality in science : a topic for attribution theory? / Prof. Dra. María Cristina Richaud de Minzi ; Metacognition and learning processes underlying science / Drnd. Pablo Narvaja & M. A. Carolina Jaroslavsk

Study of the relationship between photosynthesis, respiration, transpiration, and mineral nutrition in wheat

The growth of wheat (triticum aestivum) was studied in an enclosed controlled environment for a period of 70 days. The exchange of gases (photosynthesis, respiration), water (transpiration) and the consumption of mineral elements (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) were continuously measured. The dynamical relations observed in the different physiological functions, under the influence of growth and in response to environment modifications are presented. The influence of carbon dioxide content during growth (normal or double percentage) was made clear

Vertical transmission in Caenorhabditis nematodes of RNA molecules encoding a viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase

International audienceHere, we report on the discovery in Caenorhabditis nematodes of multiple vertically transmitted RNAs coding for putative RNA-dependent RNA polymerases. Their sequences share similarity to distinct RNA viruses, including bunyaviruses, narnaviruses, and sobemoviruses. The sequences are present exclusively as RNA and are not found in DNA form. The RNAs persist in progeny after bleach treatment of adult animals, indicating vertical transmission of the RNAs. We tested one of the infected strains for transmission to an uninfected strain and found that mating of infected animals with uninfected animals resulted in infected progeny. By in situ hybridization, we detected several of these RNAs in the cytoplasm of the male and female germline of the nematode host. The Caenorhabditis hosts were found defective in degrading exogenous double-stranded RNAs, which may explain retention of viral-like RNAs. Strikingly, one strain, QG551, harbored three distinct virus-like RNA elements. Specific patterns of small RNAs complementary to the different viral-like RNAs were observed, suggesting that the different RNAs are differentially recognized by the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery. While vertical transmission of viruses in the family Narnaviridae, which are known as capsidless viruses, has been described in fungi, these observations provide evidence that multicellular animal cells harbor similar viruses

Patient-specific iPSC-derived cellular models of LGMDR1

Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy recessive 1 (LGMDR1) represents one of the most common types of LGMD in the population, where patients develop a progressive muscle degeneration. The disease is caused by mutations in calpain 3 gene, with over 500 mutations reported to date. However, the molecular events that lead to muscle wasting are not clear, nor the reasons for the great clinical variability among patients, and this has so far hindered the development of effective therapies. Here we generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from skin fibroblasts of 2 healthy controls and 4 LGMDR1 patients with different mutations. The generated lines were able to differentiate into myogenic progenitors and myotubes in vitro and in vivo, upon a transient PAX7 overexpressing protocol. Thus, we have generated myogenic cellular models of LGMDR1 that harbor different CAPN3 mutations within a human genetic background, and which do not derive from muscular biopsies. These models will allow us to investigate disease mechanisms and test therapies. Despite the variability found among iPSC lines that was unrelated to CAPN3 mutations, we found that patient-derived myogenic progenitors and myotubes express lower levels of DMD, which codes a key protein in satellite cell regulation and myotube maturation

Advanced cell-based modeling of the royal disease: characterization of the mutated F9 mRNA

Essentials The Royal disease (RD) is a form of hemophilia B predicted to be caused by a splicing mutation. We generated an iPSC-based model of the disease allowing mechanistic studies at the RNA level. F9 mRNA analysis in iPSC-derived hepatocyte-like cells showed the predicted abnormal splicing. Mutated F9 mRNA level was very low but we also found traces of wild type transcripts. SUMMARY: Background The royal disease is a form of hemophilia B (HB) that affected many descendants of Queen Victoria in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was found to be caused by the mutation F9 c.278-3A>G. Objective To generate a physiological cell model of the disease and to study F9 expression at the RNA level. Methods Using fibroblasts from skin biopsies of a previously identified hemophilic patient bearing the F9 c.278-3A>G mutation and his mother, we generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Both the patient's and mother's iPSCs were differentiated into hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs) and their F9 mRNA was analyzed using next-generation sequencing (NGS). Results and Conclusion We demonstrated the previously predicted aberrant splicing of the F9 transcript as a result of an intronic nucleotide substitution leading to a frameshift and the generation of a premature termination codon (PTC). The F9 mRNA level in the patient's HLCs was significantly reduced compared with that of his mother, suggesting that mutated transcripts undergo nonsense-mediated decay (NMD), a cellular mechanism that degrades PTC-containing mRNAs. We also detected small proportions of correctly spliced transcripts in the patient's HLCs, which, combined with genetic variability in splicing and NMD machineries, could partially explain some clinical variability among affected members of the European royal families who had lifespans above the average. This work allowed the demonstration of the pathologic consequences of an intronic mutation in the F9 gene and represents the first bona fide cellular model of HB allowing the study of rare mutations at the RNA level

Self-Organization, Layered Structure, and Aggregation Enhance Persistence of a Synthetic Biofilm Consortium

Microbial consortia constitute a majority of the earth’s biomass, but little is known about how these cooperating communities persist despite competition among community members. Theory suggests that non-random spatial structures contribute to the persistence of mixed communities; when particular structures form, they may provide associated community members with a growth advantage over unassociated members. If true, this has implications for the rise and persistence of multi-cellular organisms. However, this theory is difficult to study because we rarely observe initial instances of non-random physical structure in natural populations. Using two engineered strains of Escherichia coli that constitute a synthetic symbiotic microbial consortium, we fortuitously observed such spatial self-organization. This consortium forms a biofilm and, after several days, adopts a defined layered structure that is associated with two unexpected, measurable growth advantages. First, the consortium cannot successfully colonize a new, downstream environment until it selforganizes in the initial environment; in other words, the structure enhances the ability of the consortium to survive environmental disruptions. Second, when the layered structure forms in downstream environments the consortium accumulates significantly more biomass than it did in the initial environment; in other words, the structure enhances the global productivity of the consortium. We also observed that the layered structure only assembles in downstream environments that are colonized by aggregates from a previous, structured community. These results demonstrate roles for self-organization and aggregation in persistence of multi-cellular communities, and also illustrate a role for the techniques of synthetic biology in elucidating fundamental biological principles