Making Cities through Migration Industries:Introduction to the Special Issue

This publication is with permission of the rights owner (Sage) freely accessible.Migration industry has recently emerged as a lens through which to theorise the intertwinement of non-state actors who aim to provide diverse migration-pertaining services. However, while much of their work is done in and through cities, consequently (re)forming variegated urban landscapes, scholarly literature has thus far neglected the nexus between cities and the migration industry. In this special issue, we begin filling this gap by exploring the significance of migration industries – as a resurgent concept and an area of research from migration studies – for understanding the urban. We start by reviewing the urbanisation of migration studies, highlighting its key limits. We then move on to introduce the migration industries debate, pointing out its existing implicit urban dimensions. We proceed by elaborating our main argument about why and how migration industries provide an especially productive lens for urbanists to consider. Specifically, we stress the three key analytical vantage points that the attention to migration industries enables us to see as central to contemporary city-making. These are its political-economic embeddedness, the urban-constitutive nature of trans-local connectivities, and how business-driven city-making dovetails with more serendipitous, bottom-up shaping of the arrival city. Each of these points also describes how individual papers speak to them. We conclude by briefly outlining a research agenda for migration industries that is thoughtfully embroiled in the (post-)pandemic urban.Peer Reviewe

The isolated muscle fibre as a model of disuse atrophy: characterization using PhAct, a method to quantify f-actin

Research into muscle atrophy and hypertrophy is hampered by limitations of the available experimental models. Interpretation of in vivo experiments is confounded by the complexity of the environment while in vitro models are subject to the marked disparities between cultured myotubes and the mature myofibres of living tissues. Here we develop a method (PhAct) based on ex vivo maintenance of the isolated myofibre as a model of disuse atrophy, using standard microscopy equipment and widely available analysis software, to measure f-actin content per myofibre and per nucleus over two weeks of ex vivo maintenance. We characterize the 35% per week atrophy of the isolated myofibre in terms of early changes in gene expression and investigate the effects on loss of muscle mass of modulatory agents, including Myostatin and Follistatin. By tracing the incorporation of a nucleotide analogue we show that the observed atrophy is not associated with loss or replacement of myonuclei. Such a completely controlled investigation can be conducted with the myofibres of a single muscle. With this novel method we can identify those features and mechanisms of atrophy and hypertrophy that are intrinsic to the muscle fibre from those that include activities of other tissues and systemic agents

The Effects of Growth Mindset Intervention on Vocabulary Skills in First to Third Grade Children

Growth mindset interventions aim to help children realize that through effort and perseverance their performance in the classroom can be improved (Dweck, 2007). This is in contrast to a fixed mindset, which is the belief that intelligence and talent are something we are born with and are not malleable. In the current study, children between first and third grade from low-income schools were placed in a growth mindset intervention to investigate the effect of mindset on learning new vocabulary words. Findings revealed a significant increase in the number of vocabulary words children knew and the use of more growth mindset words (e.g., practice, brain) in their responses on the post-tests. Keywords: growth mindset, vocabulary, intervention, perseveranc

Lower bounds for text indexing with mismatches and differences

International audienceIn this paper we study lower bounds for the fundamental problem of text indexing with mis-matches and differences. In this problem we are given a long string of length n, the "text", and the task is to preprocess it into a data structure such that given a query string Q, one can quickly identify substrings that are within Hamming or edit distance at most k from Q. This problem is at the core of various problems arising in biology and text processing. While exact text indexing allows linear-size data structures with linear query time, text indexing with k mismatches (or k differences) seems to be much harder: All known data structures have exponential dependency on k either in the space, or in the time bound. We provide conditional and pointer-machine lower bounds that make a step toward explaining this phenomenon. We start by demonstrating lower bounds for $k = Θ(log n)$. We show that assuming the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis, any data structure for text indexing that can be constructed in polynomial time cannot have strongly sublinear query time. This bound also extends to the setting where we only ask for $(1 + ε$)-approximate solutions for text indexing. However, in many applications the value of k is rather small, and one might hope that for small k we can develop more efficient solutions. We show that this would require a radically new approach as using the current methods one cannot avoid exponential dependency on k either in the space, or in the time bound for all even $(8 /√ 3) √ log n ≤ k = o(log n)$. Our lower bounds also apply to the dictionary look-up problem, where instead of a text one is given a set of strings

Functions of the nuclear envelope and lamina in development and disease

Abstract Recent findings that some 24 inherited diseases and anomalies are caused by defects in proteins of the NE (nuclear envelope) and lamina have resulted in a fundamental reassessment of the functions of the NE and underlying lamina. Instead of just regarding the NE and lamina as a molecular filtering device, regulating the transfer of macromolecules between the cytoplasm and nucleus, we now envisage the NE/lamina functioning as a key cellular 'hub' in integrating critical functions that include chromatin organization, transcriptional regulation, mechanical integrity of the cell and signalling pathways, as well as acting as a key component in the organization and function of the cytoskeleton

Maternal Effects of Aseptic and Septic Injury on Embryonic Larval Gene Expression in the Tobacco Hornworm, Manduca Sexta

Cross-generational effects of physical and pathogenic stress have been demonstrated in several insect groups, including our model insect Manduca sexta. Prior studies in our laboratory have shown that maternal exposure to the soil-dwelling gram-negative bacteria, Serratia marcescens, just prior to adult eclosion alters egg morphology and larval immunity. Our goal is to identify mechanisms underlaying pathogen-associated parental effects on offspring. The current study advances this goal through measurement of embryonic size, embryonic histone modification, and both embryonic and larval gene expression. Two days prior to eclosion, parents were injected with saline, heat killed S. marcescens, or live S. marcescens. Embryos were collected at 24 (+/- 2) h or permitted to hatch for clearance assays (first instar) or measurement of fat body gene expression (fourth instar). We find that maternal, but not paternal, pathogen exposure significantly increases egg volume variability, and that maternal pathogen exposure may delay hatching. Furthermore, maternal injection with bacteria conferred on their offspring an enhanced ability to clear infection when compared to their saline injected peers. Histone analysis revealed that maternal treatment does not globally alter embryonic histones, however, several immune-related genes demonstrated altered expression in both embryos and fourth instar larvae

Powered bone marrow biopsy procedures produce larger core specimens, with less pain, in less time than with standard manual devices

Bone marrow sampling remains essential in the evaluation of hematopoietic and many non-hematopoietic disorders. One common limitation to these procedures is the discomfort experienced by patients. To address whether a Powered biopsy system could reduce discomfort while providing equivalent or better results, we performed a randomized trial in adult volunteers. Twenty-six subjects underwent bilateral biopsies with each device. Core samples were obtained in 66.7% of Manual insertions; 100% of Powered insertions (P=0.002). Initial mean biopsy core lengths were 11.1±4.5 mm for the Manual device; 17.0±6.8 mm for the Powered device (P<0.005). Pathology assessment for the Manual device showed a mean length of 6.1±5.6 mm, width of 1.0±0.7 mm, and volume of 11.0±10.8 mm3. Powered device measurements were mean length of 15.3±6.1 mm, width of 2.0±0.3 mm, and volume of 49.1±21.5 mm3 (P<0.001). The mean time to core ejection was 86 seconds for Manual device; 47 seconds for the Powered device (P<0.001). The mean second look overall pain score was 33.3 for the Manual device; 20.9 for the Powered (P=0.039). We conclude that the Powered biopsy device produces superior sized specimens, with less overall pain, in less time

Subset currents on free groups

We introduce and study the space of \emph{subset currents} on the free group $F_N$. A subset current on $F_N$ is a positive $F_N$-invariant locally finite Borel measure on the space $\mathfrak C_N$ of all closed subsets of $\partial F_N$ consisting of at least two points. While ordinary geodesic currents generalize conjugacy classes of nontrivial group elements, a subset current is a measure-theoretic generalization of the conjugacy class of a nontrivial finitely generated subgroup in $F_N$, and, more generally, in a word-hyperbolic group. The concept of a subset current is related to the notion of an "invariant random subgroup" with respect to some conjugacy-invariant probability measure on the space of closed subgroups of a topological group. If we fix a free basis $A$ of $F_N$, a subset current may also be viewed as an $F_N$-invariant measure on a "branching" analog of the geodesic flow space for $F_N$, whose elements are infinite subtrees (rather than just geodesic lines) of the Cayley graph of $F_N$ with respect to $A$.Comment: updated version; to appear in Geometriae Dedicat