Understanding beliefs and preferences of irrigators towards the use and management of agricultural water in the Colorado River Basin

2013 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The agriculture sector in the American West is faced with multiple challenges including urbanization, drought, an aging producer population, and the prospects of climate change. As a result, the availability, use, and allocation of water throughout the West have become sources of both conflict and collaboration. Growing conflict emphasizes the need to identify and understand the diversity of beliefs of agricultural water users. This in turn, will help stakeholders better manage limited water resources and identify solutions for agricultural producers to deal with uncertainty and the pressures they are experiencing. This study examines the findings from a survey of farmers and ranchers who use Colorado River water for agricultural purposes, including: the pressures they are experiencing on their water supplies, options for addressing pressures, their interest and involvement in water transfer arrangements, and their preferences for meeting future water demands. In addition, their beliefs towards water availability, the role of storage, water policy and law, and working together with other stakeholders to address water challenges will be discussed. In brief, the results of this study indicate that agricultural water users face myriad number of pressures on their water supplies with drought and urban growth topping the list. The data indicates strong opposition towards agricultural water transfers, even those of temporary nature due to the concern of possibly losing their water right. A majority of participants agree that there will not be enough water for agriculture in their area or in the Colorado River Basin and that further water storage is needed to address uncertainty; however, new storage projects should be expanded before initiating new projects. Overall, agricultural water users agree that they need to partner with other non-agricultural water users (preferably at the district or basin level) in order to address the challenges they face or will face in the future. Multiple types of water stakeholders can benefit from the information found in this study by learning the differences, commonalities, viewpoints, and preferences of the agricultural sector and by using it to help gauge support for or against management decisions and policies, help predict and mitigate conflict among competing users, and to help develop approaches for working together collaboratively to address water issues in the Colorado River Basin

Structural insights into regulation of nuclear receptors by ligands

Nuclear receptors are DNA-binding transcription factors, the transcriptional function of many of which depends on the binding of ligands, a feature that distinguishes nuclear receptors from other transcription factors. This review will summarize recent advances in our knowledge of the interaction between selected nuclear receptors and their cognate ligands

Bypass urbanism: Re-ordering center-periphery relations in Kolkata, Lagos and Mexico City

This paper introduces the concept of “bypass urbanism” to account for a process of urbanization that is reordering center-periphery relations of urban regions into new hierarchies. Bypass urbanism became visible through a comparison of large-scale urban transformations at the peripheries of Kolkata, Lagos, and Mexico City by zooming out and considering their impacts on the socio-spatial structure of the extended urban regions. Bypass urbanism is not emerging from the construction of a singular new town or real estate project, but is the result of the simultaneous development of an ensemble of various independent but related projects. Therefore, bypass urbanism usually does not emanate from a coherent planning initiative, even less so from a hidden “master plan” at the hands of any single developer or state agency, but it emerges through a convergence of interests over large areas of land at the geographical periphery of urban regions that have been made available for new urban developments by various measures. We understand bypass urbanism as a multidimensional process that includes material-geographical bypassing, the bypassing of regulatory frameworks, and socio-economic bypassing in everyday life. It results in the creation of exclusive and excluding spaces that enable middle and upper-class lifestyles, at the same time leading to the peripheralization of extant urban areas that are bypassed and neglected. The massive scale of bypass urbanism that we have observed represents a new quality of urban development resulting not in isolated urban enclaves or archipelagos, but in the fundamental restructuring of the extended urban region with far reaching and incalculable repercussions

Active Nuclear Receptors Exhibit Highly Correlated AF-2 Domain Motions

Nuclear receptor ligand binding domains (LBDs) convert ligand binding events into changes in gene expression by recruiting transcriptional coregulators to a conserved activation function-2 (AF-2) surface. While most nuclear receptor LBDs form homo- or heterodimers, the human nuclear receptor pregnane X receptor (PXR) forms a unique and essential homodimer and is proposed to assemble into a functional heterotetramer with the retinoid X receptor (RXR). How the homodimer interface, which is located 30 Å from the AF-2, would affect function at this critical surface has remained unclear. By using 20- to 30-ns molecular dynamics simulations on PXR in various oligomerization states, we observed a remarkably high degree of correlated motion in the PXR–RXR heterotetramer, most notably in the four helices that create the AF-2 domain. The function of such correlation may be to create “active-capable” receptor complexes that are ready to bind to transcriptional coactivators. Indeed, we found in additional simulations that active-capable receptor complexes involving other orphan or steroid nuclear receptors also exhibit highly correlated AF-2 domain motions. We further propose a mechanism for the transmission of long-range motions through the nuclear receptor LBD to the AF-2 surface. Taken together, our findings indicate that long-range motions within the LBD scaffold are critical to nuclear receptor function by promoting a mobile AF-2 state ready to bind coactivators

Medium Chain Fatty Acids Are Selective Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor (PPAR) γ Activators and Pan-PPAR Partial Agonists

Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) act through peroxisome proliferator activated receptor (PPAR) γ to increase insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes (T2DM), but deleterious effects of these ligands mean that selective modulators with improved clinical profiles are needed. We obtained a crystal structure of PPARγ ligand binding domain (LBD) and found that the ligand binding pocket (LBP) is occupied by bacterial medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs). We verified that MCFAs (C8–C10) bind the PPARγ LBD in vitro and showed that they are low-potency partial agonists that display assay-specific actions relative to TZDs; they act as very weak partial agonists in transfections with PPARγ LBD, stronger partial agonists with full length PPARγ and exhibit full blockade of PPARγ phosphorylation by cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (cdk5), linked to reversal of adipose tissue insulin resistance. MCFAs that bind PPARγ also antagonize TZD-dependent adipogenesis in vitro. X-ray structure B-factor analysis and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations suggest that MCFAs weakly stabilize C-terminal activation helix (H) 12 relative to TZDs and this effect is highly dependent on chain length. By contrast, MCFAs preferentially stabilize the H2-H3/β-sheet region and the helix (H) 11-H12 loop relative to TZDs and we propose that MCFA assay-specific actions are linked to their unique binding mode and suggest that it may be possible to identify selective PPARγ modulators with useful clinical profiles among natural products

Molecular mechanisms of cell death: recommendations of the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death 2018.

Over the past decade, the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death (NCCD) has formulated guidelines for the definition and interpretation of cell death from morphological, biochemical, and functional perspectives. Since the field continues to expand and novel mechanisms that orchestrate multiple cell death pathways are unveiled, we propose an updated classification of cell death subroutines focusing on mechanistic and essential (as opposed to correlative and dispensable) aspects of the process. As we provide molecularly oriented definitions of terms including intrinsic apoptosis, extrinsic apoptosis, mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT)-driven necrosis, necroptosis, ferroptosis, pyroptosis, parthanatos, entotic cell death, NETotic cell death, lysosome-dependent cell death, autophagy-dependent cell death, immunogenic cell death, cellular senescence, and mitotic catastrophe, we discuss the utility of neologisms that refer to highly specialized instances of these processes. The mission of the NCCD is to provide a widely accepted nomenclature on cell death in support of the continued development of the field

Halophilic bacteria isolated from brine cured cattle hides

Halophilic and halotolerant organisms found on brine cured hides were isolated and at least partially characterized. All of the halophilic bacteria isolated from the brine cured cattle hide samples used in these experiments were motile. Gram negative, aerobic and extremely pleomorphic organisms. The colonies formed by these bacteria were either bright pink, red, or purple colonies on media containing 27%, and 30% salt. The halotolerant colonies on 20% salt media were all white. Seventy percent of the isolates showed a positive gelatin test. The effect of the different salt solutions on the pH of brine cured hide sample was examined. When hide samples were placed into a variety of different salt solutions a pH reduction was observed as the organisms grew. The growth rate of halophilic bacteria was examined at room conditions, 37 degrees C and 41 degrees C. Growth was very slow at low temperatures. Halotolerant bacteria and halophilic bacteria grew best at 37 degrees C. The original hide samples used as the source of these halophilic bacteria had a fishy odor and a large area of reddish discoloration on the flesh side typical of ''red heat''