2,415 research outputs found
Returning home: heritage work among the Stl'atl'imx of the Lower Lillooet River Valley
This article focusses on heritage practices in the tensioned landscape of the Stl’atl’imx (pronounced Stat-lee-um) people of the Lower Lillooet River Valley, British Columbia, Canada. Displaced from their traditional territories and cultural traditions through the colonial encounter, they are enacting, challenging and remaking their heritage as part of their long term goal to reclaim their land and return ‘home’. I draw on three examples of their heritage work: graveyard cleaning, the shifting ‘official’/‘unofficial’ heritage of a wagon road, and marshalling of the mountain named Nsvq’ts (pronounced In-SHUCK-ch) in order to illustrate how the past is strategically mobilised in order to substantiate positions in the present. While this paper focusses on heritage in an Indigenous and postcolonial context, I contend that the dynamics of heritage practices outlined here are applicable to all heritage practices
The stellar kinematics and populations of boxy bulges: cylindrical rotation and vertical gradients
Boxy and peanut-shaped bulges are seen in about half of edge-on disc
galaxies. Comparisons of the photometry and major-axis gas and stellar
kinematics of these bulges to simulations of bar formation and evolution
indicate that they are bars viewed in projection. If the properties of boxy
bulges can be entirely explained by assuming they are bars, then this may imply
that their hosts are pure disc galaxies with no classical bulge. A handful of
these bulges, including that of the Milky Way, have been observed to rotate
cylindrically, i.e. with a mean stellar velocity independent of height above
the disc. In order to assess whether such behaviour is ubiquitous in boxy
bulges, and whether a pure disc interpretation is consistent with their stellar
populations, we have analysed the stellar kinematics and populations of the
boxy or peanut-shaped bulges in a sample of five edge-on galaxies. We placed
slits along the major axis of each galaxy and at three offset but parallel
positions to build up spatial coverage. The boxy bulge of NGC3390 rotates
perfectly cylindrically within the spatial extent and uncertainties of the
data. This is consistent with the metallicity and alpha-element enhancement of
the bulge, which are the same as in the disk. This galaxy is thus a pure disc
galaxy. The boxy bulge of ESO311-G012 also rotates very close to cylindrically.
The boxy bulge of NGC1381 is neither clearly cylindrically nor
non-cylindrically rotating, but it has a negative vertical metallicity gradient
and is alpha-enhanced with respect to its disc, suggesting a composite bulge
comprised of a classical bulge and bar (and possibly a discy pseudobulge)
[abridged] Even this relatively small sample is sufficient to demonstrate that
boxy bulges display a range of rotational and population properties, indicating
that they do not form a homogeneous class of object.Comment: MNRAS accepted. 10 page
Structural insights into Clostridium perfringens delta toxin pore formation
Clostridium perfringens Delta toxin is one of the three hemolysin-like proteins produced by C. perfringens type C and possibly type B strains. One of the others, NetB, has been shown to be the major cause of Avian Nectrotic Enteritis, which following the reduction in use of antibiotics as growth promoters, has become an emerging disease of industrial poultry. Delta toxin itself is cytotoxic to the wide range of human and animal macrophages and platelets that present GM2 ganglioside on their membranes. It has sequence similarity with Staphylococcus aureus β-pore forming toxins and is expected to heptamerize and form pores in the lipid bilayer of host cell membranes. Nevertheless, its exact mode of action remains undetermined. Here we report the 2.4 Å crystal structure of monomeric Delta toxin. The superposition of this structure with the structure of the phospholipid-bound F component of S. aureus leucocidin (LukF) revealed that the glycerol molecules bound to Delta toxin and the phospholipids in LukF are accommodated in the same hydrophobic clefts, corresponding to where the toxin is expected to latch onto the membrane, though the binding sites show significant differences. From structure-based sequence alignment with the known structure of staphylococcal α-hemolysin, a model of the Delta toxin pore form has been built. Using electron microscopy, we have validated our model and characterized the Delta toxin pore on liposomes. These results highlight both similarities and differences in the mechanism of Delta toxin (and by extension NetB) cytotoxicity from that of the staphylococcal pore-forming toxins
Status of the Fritz Haber Institute THz FEL
The THz FEL at the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) in Berlin is designed to deliver radiation from 4 to 400 microns. A single-plane-focusing undulator combined with a 5.4 m long cavity is used is the mid-IR (< 50 micron), while a two-plane-focusing undulator in combination with a 7.2 m long cavity with a 1-d waveguide for the optical mode is used for the far-IR. A key aspect of the accelerator performance is low longitudinal emittance, < 50 keV-psec, at 200 pC bunch charge and 50 MeV from a gridded thermionic electron source. We utilize twin accelerating structures separated by a chicane to deliver the required performance over the < 20 - 50 MeV energy range. The first structure operates at near fixed field while the second structure controls the output energy, which, under some conditions, requires running in a decelerating mode. "First Light" is targeted for the centennial of the FHI in October 2011 and we will describe progress in the commissioning of this device. Specifically, the measured performance of the accelerated electron beam will be compared to design simulations and the observed matching of the beam to the mid-IR wiggler will be described
Recommended from our members
Mainstreaming domestic and gender-based violence into sociology and the criminology of violence
Sociological and criminological views of domestic and gender-based violencegenerally either dismiss it as not worthy of consideration, or focus on specificgroups of offenders and victims (male youth gangs, partner violence victims). Inthis paper, we take a holistic approach to violence, extending the definition fromthat commonly in use to encompass domestic violence and sexual violence. Weoperationalize that definition by using data from the latest sweep of the CrimeSurvey for England and Wales. By so doing, we identify that violence is currentlyunder-measured and ubiquitous; that it is gendered, and that other forms of violence (family violence, acquaintance violence against women) are equally ofconcern. We argue that violence studies are an important form of activity forsociologists
Shades of empire: police photography in German South-West Africa
This article looks at a photographic album produced by the German police in colonial Namibia just before World War I. Late 19th- and early 20th-century police photography has often been interpreted as a form of visual production that epitomized power and regimes of surveillance imposed by the state apparatuses on the poor, the criminal and the Other. On the other hand police and prison institutions became favored sites where photography could be put at the service of the emergent sciences of the human body—physiognomy, anthropometry and anthropology. While the conjuncture of institutionalized colonial state power and the production of scientific knowledge remain important for this Namibian case study, the article explores a slightly different set of questions. Echoing recent scholarship on visuality and materiality the photographic album is treated as an archival object and visual narrative that was at the same time constituted by and constitutive of material and discursive practices within early 20th-century police and prison institutions in the German colony. By shifting attention away from image content and visual codification alone toward the question of visual practice the article traces the ways in which the photo album, with its ambivalent, unstable and uncontained narrative, became historically active and meaningful. Therein the photographs were less informed by an abstract theory of anthropological and racial classification but rather entrenched with historically contingent processes of colonial state constitution, socioeconomic and racial stratification, and the institutional integration of photography as a medium and a technology into colonial policing. The photo album provides a textured sense of how fragmented and contested these processes remained throughout the German colonial period, but also how photography could offer a means of transcending the limits and frailties brought by the realities on the ground.International Bibliography of Social Science
Universal Quantification of Structurally Diverse Natural Products Using an Evaporative Light Scattering Detector
Lateralization of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with chronic ambulatory electrocorticography
OBJECTIVE: Patients with suspected mesial temporal lobe (MTL) epilepsy typically undergo inpatient video-electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring with scalp and/or intracranial electrodes for 1 to 2 weeks to localize and lateralize the seizure focus or foci. Chronic ambulatory electrocorticography (ECoG) in patients with MTL epilepsy may provide additional information about seizure lateralization. This analysis describes data obtained from chronic ambulatory ECoG in patients with suspected bilateral MTL epilepsy in order to assess the time required to determine the seizure lateralization and whether this information could influence treatment decisions.
METHODS: Ambulatory ECoG was reviewed in patients with suspected bilateral MTL epilepsy who were among a larger cohort with intractable epilepsy participating in a randomized controlled trial of responsive neurostimulation. Subjects were implanted with bilateral MTL leads and a cranially implanted neurostimulator programmed to detect abnormal interictal and ictal ECoG activity. ECoG data stored by the neurostimulator were reviewed to determine the lateralization of electrographic seizures and the interval of time until independent bilateral MTL electrographic seizures were recorded.
RESULTS: Eighty-two subjects were implanted with bilateral MTL leads and followed for 4.7 years on average (median 4.9 years). Independent bilateral MTL electrographic seizures were recorded in 84%. The average time to record bilateral electrographic seizures in the ambulatory setting was 41.6 days (median 13 days, range 0-376 days). Sixteen percent had only unilateral electrographic seizures after an average of 4.6 years of recording.
SIGNIFICANCE: About one third of the subjects implanted with bilateral MTL electrodes required >1 month of chronic ambulatory ECoG before the first contralateral MTL electrographic seizure was recorded. Some patients with suspected bilateral MTL seizures had only unilateral electrographic seizures. Chronic ambulatory ECoG in patients with suspected bilateral MTL seizures provides data in a naturalistic setting, may complement data from inpatient video-EEG monitoring, and can contribute to treatment decisions
- …