Nervous conditions: cultural difference, political rifts, and mental health care in Israel

Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Israel between 2013 and 2016, this dissertation examines how clinicians and patients deal with the issues of cultural difference and diversity in Israel’s mental health care settings, which are increasingly called upon to practice “cultural competence.” In 2010s, the Israeli Ministry of Health started to design and execute policy measures intended to target inter-group health disparities and introduce cultural competence in health care institutions. Although modest in scope, these policies are also emblematic of the much larger tectonic shifts that have been reshaping Israeli society over the last three decades, including a neoliberal restructuring of Israeli economy and a decline of the secular Ashkenazi hegemony in political and cultural spheres. In this context, the Ministry of Health measures may be understood as a reaction of a particular segment of the Israeli political elite to the new realities and as an attempt to address mounting public anxieties, while also working within the existing neoliberal and largely non-pluralist political-economic framework. The specific discourses of the cultural competence policies construe culture as a property of individual patients that individual clinicians and institutions should learn to accommodate, without attending to structural or political considerations. And yet, the actual implementation of the governmental agenda in the sphere of cultural competence training is almost never a mere passive reflection of the official discourses: While echoing some of the essentializing and implicitly hierarchical rhetoric of the official policies, the training also smuggles in quietly subversive approaches to cultural difference and recognition. The impact of this training on actual clinical practice is, unsurprisingly, very limited, and clinicians themselves rarely find the discourses of “cultural competence” resonant or relevant. At the same time, they are constantly engaged in complex moral reasoning and ethical decision-making over the nature and limits of empathy and recognition in the face of cultural alterity and political difference. This dissertation contributes to an interdisciplinary literature on the so-called “psy” or psychological disciplines (psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis etc.) by proposing an approach that is informed by the anthropology of ethics and morality

Substrate-Induced Allosteric Change in the Quaternary Structure of the Spermidine N-Acetyltransferase SpeG

AbstractThe spermidine N-acetyltransferase SpeG is a dodecameric enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of an acetyl group from acetyl coenzyme A to polyamines such as spermidine and spermine. SpeG has an allosteric polyamine-binding site and acetylating polyamines regulate their intracellular concentrations. The structures of SpeG from Vibrio cholerae in complexes with polyamines and cofactor have been characterized earlier. Here, we present the dodecameric structure of SpeG from V. cholerae in a ligand-free form in three different conformational states: open, intermediate and closed. All structures were crystallized in C2 space group symmetry and contain six monomers in the asymmetric unit cell. Two hexamers related by crystallographic 2-fold symmetry form the SpeG dodecamer. The open and intermediate states have a unique open dodecameric ring. This SpeG dodecamer is asymmetric except for the one 2-fold axis and is unlike any known dodecameric structure. Using a fluorescence thermal shift assay, size-exclusion chromatography with multi-angle light scattering, small-angle X-ray scattering analysis, negative-stain electron microscopy and structural analysis, we demonstrate that this unique open dodecameric state exists in solution. Our combined results indicate that polyamines trigger conformational changes and induce the symmetric closed dodecameric state of the protein when they bind to their allosteric sites

Structural characterization of a hypothetical protein: a potential agent involved in trimethylamine metabolism in Catenulispora acidiphila

Catenulispora acidiphila is a newly identified lineage of actinomycetes that produces antimicrobial activities and represents a promising source of novel antibiotics and secondary metabolites. Among the discovered protein coding genes, 68 % were assigned a putative function, while the remaining 32 % are genes encoding “hypothetical” proteins. Caci_0382 is one of the “hypothetical” proteins that has very few homologs. Sequence analysis shows that the protein belongs to the NTF2-like protein family. The structure of Caci_0382 demonstrates that it shares the same fold and has a similar active site as limonene-1,2-epoxide hydrolase, which suggests that it may have a related function. Using a fluorescence thermal shift assay, we identified stabilizing compounds that suggest potential natural ligands of Caci_0382. Using this information, we determined the crystal structure in complex with trimethylamine to provide a better understanding of the function of this uncharacterized protein. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10969-014-9176-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

The second International Symposium on Fungal Stress: ISFUS

The topic of ‘fungal stress’ is central to many important disciplines, including medical mycology, chronobiology, plant and insect pathology, industrial microbiology, material sciences, and astrobiology. The International Symposium on Fungal Stress (ISFUS) brought together researchers, who study fungal stress in a variety of fields. The second ISFUS was held in May 8-11 2017 in Goiania, Goiás, Brazil and hosted by the Instituto de Patologia Tropical e Saúde Pública at the Universidade Federal de Goiás. It was supported by grants from CAPES and FAPEG. Twenty-seven speakers from 15 countries presented their research related to fungal stress biology. The Symposium was divided into seven topics: 1. Fungal biology in extreme environments; 2. Stress mechanisms and responses in fungi: molecular biology, biochemistry, biophysics, and cellular biology; 3. Fungal photobiology in the context of stress; 4. Role of stress in fungal pathogenesis; 5. Fungal stress and bioremediation; 6. Fungal stress in agriculture and forestry; and 7. Fungal stress in industrial applications. This article provides an overview of the science presented and discussed at ISFUS-2017.Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) 2010/06374-1, 2013/50518-6, 2014/01229-4Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) PQ2 302312/2011-0, PQ1D 308436/2014-8Coordenação de Aperfeiçoãmento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) PAEP 88881.123209/2016-01Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás Brazil 20171026700011

Катагенез газоносних пісковиків Алмазно – Мар’ївського району Донбасу

На примере песчаников одного стратиграфического уровня (l5Sl6 С2 6) показаны минералогические новообразования средней стадии катагенеза, вызв анные активизацией тектонических движений. Взаимодействие этих процессов (катагенез+тектоника) стимулирует реакции обмена в угленосной толще, в результате которых возникают новые минералы и газы (среди них и метан).On the example of sandstones of one stratygraphic level mineralogical new formations of middle stage of katagenesis, conditioned by activation of tectonic motions, are shown. The seinterprocess communication stimulates the reactions of exchange in an coal-bearing layer, which new minerals and gases are as a result of (among them and methane)

Crystal structures of the transpeptidase domain of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis penicillin‐binding protein PonA1 reveal potential mechanisms of antibiotic resistance

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a human respiratory pathogen that causes the deadly disease tuberculosis. The rapid global spread of antibiotic‐resistant M. tuberculosis makes tuberculosis infections difficult to treat. To overcome this problem new effective antimicrobial strategies are urgently needed. One promising target for new therapeutic approaches is PonA1, a class A penicillin‐binding protein, which is required for maintaining physiological cell wall synthesis and cell shape during growth in mycobacteria. Here, crystal structures of the transpeptidase domain, the enzymatic domain responsible for penicillin binding, of PonA1 from M. tuberculosis in the inhibitor‐free form and in complex with penicillin V are reported. We used site‐directed mutagenesis, antibiotic profiling experiments, and fluorescence thermal shift assays to measure PonA1's sensitivity to different classes of β‐lactams. Structural comparison of the PonA1 apo‐form and the antibiotic‐bound form shows that binding of penicillin V induces conformational changes in the position of the loop β4′‐α3 surrounding the penicillin‐binding site. We have also found that binding of different antibiotics including penicillin V positively impacts protein stability, while other tested β‐lactams such as clavulanate or meropenem resulted in destabilization of PonA1. Our antibiotic profiling experiments indicate that the transpeptidase activity of PonA1 in both M. tuberculosis and M. smegmatis mediates tolerance to specific cell wall‐targeting antibiotics, particularly to penicillin V and meropenem. Because M. tuberculosis is an important human pathogen, these structural data provide a template to design novel transpeptidase inhibitors to treat tuberculosis infections. Database Structural data are available in the PDB database under the accession numbers 5CRF and 5CXW

Emerging Priorities for Microbiome Research

Microbiome research has increased dramatically in recent years, driven by advances in technology and significant reductions in the cost of analysis. Such research has unlocked a wealth of data, which has yielded tremendous insight into the nature of the microbial communities, including their interactions and effects, both within a host and in an external environment as part of an ecological community. Understanding the role of microbiota, including their dynamic interactions with their hosts and other microbes, can enable the engineering of new diagnostic techniques and interventional strategies that can be used in a diverse spectrum of fields, spanning from ecology and agriculture to medicine and from forensics to exobiology. From June 19–23 in 2017, the NIH and NSF jointly held an Innovation Lab on Quantitative Approaches to Biomedical Data Science Challenges in our Understanding of the Microbiome. This review is inspired by some of the topics that arose as priority areas from this unique, interactive workshop. The goal of this review is to summarize the Innovation Lab’s findings by introducing the reader to emerging challenges, exciting potential, and current directions in microbiome research. The review is broken into five key topic areas: (1) interactions between microbes and the human body, (2) evolution and ecology of microbes, including the role played by the environment and microbe-microbe interactions, (3) analytical and mathematical methods currently used in microbiome research, (4) leveraging knowledge of microbial composition and interactions to develop engineering solutions, and (5) interventional approaches and engineered microbiota that may be enabled by selectively altering microbial composition. As such, this review seeks to arm the reader with a broad understanding of the priorities and challenges in microbiome research today and provide inspiration for future investigation and multi-disciplinary collaboration

The spread of marine anoxia on the northern Tethys margin during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Records of the paleoenvironmental changes that occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) are preserved in sedimentary rocks along the margins of the former Tethys Ocean and Peri-Tethys. This paper presents new geochemical data that constrain paleoproductivity, sediment delivery, and seawater redox conditions, from three sites that were located in the Peri-Tethys region. Trace and major element, iron speciation, and biomarker data indicate that water column anoxia was established during episodes when inputs of land-derived higher plant organic carbon and highly weathered detrital clays and silts became relatively higher. Anoxic conditions are likely to have been initially caused by two primary processes: (i) oxygen consumption by high rates of marine productivity, initially stimulated by the rapid delivery of terrestrially derived organic matter and nutrients, and (ii) phosphorus regeneration from seafloor sediments. The role of the latter process requires further investigation before its influence on the spread of deoxygenated seawater during the PETM can be properly discerned. Other oxygen-forcing processes, such as temperature/salinity-driven water column stratification and/or methane oxidation, are considered to have been relatively less important in the study region. Organic carbon enrichments occur only during the initial stages of the PETM as defined by the negative carbon isotope excursions at each site. The lack of observed terminal stage organic carbon enrichment does not support a link between PETM climate recovery and the sequestration of excess atmospheric CO2 as organic carbon in this region; such a feedback may, however, have been important in the early stages of the PETM

Diffuse interface methods for multiclass segmentation of high-dimensional data

We present two graph-based algorithms for multiclass segmentation of high-dimensional data, motivated by the binary diffuse interface model. One algorithm generalizes Ginzburg-Landau (GL) functional minimization on graphs to the Gibbs simplex. The other algorithm uses a reduction of GL minimization, based on the Merriman-Bence-Osher scheme for motion by mean curvature. These yield accurate and efficient algorithms for semi-supervised learning. Our algorithms outperform existing methods, including supervised learning approaches, on the benchmark datasets that we used. We refer to Garcia-Cardona (2014) for a more detailed illustration of the methods, as well as different experimental examples. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved