Community-Based initiatives in post catastrophe scenarios: potentials and limitations to academic involvement and “Learning by Doing”

Currently the disaster risk management framework is overcoming the purely technical and financial dimension in order to include the social, cultural and environmental spheres. This shifting towards a more holistic perspective calls to develop strategies of emergency and reconstruction management that consider the social acceptance of the interventions respecting the identity of the affected community and their material and immaterial heritage. Ten years of experience in “design-build” initiatives dealing with emergency and reconstruction after catastrophes, is investigated in this article as a good practice of inclusion of population needs in post-disaster process. These range from good-will volunteer reaction turned spontaneously into disciplinary work due to lacking institutional capabilities, to scaling-up of teaching formats to non-profit, community related intervention. The experience underlines the pedagogic and research potentials, as well as the logistic hurdles, the limitations of prototype escalation and the barriers posed by lack in public policies or adequate institutional frameworks. The practices are discussed to support a prospective development of the proposed approach to outline a possible integration of the design-build methodology and the service learning as a bottom up practices in the current framework of emergency and reconstruction

A trajetória econômica da Suécia : um caso de desenvolvimentismo?

A Suécia apresentou, historicamente, trajetória de desenvolvimento bastante peculiar: embora não tenha chegado a ser uma das grandes potências da Europa, logrou forte industrialização e construção de um estado de bem-estar social avançado. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal investigar se a Suécia, na sua trajetória de superação de atraso econômico, pode ser considerada um caso de desenvolvimentismo. Embora este seja usualmente conhecido como um fenômeno latino-americano e, mais recentemente, asiático, a hipótese é que a industrialização retardatária sueca e a reversão de seus indicadores sociais foram impulsionadas por políticas intervencionistas, aos moldes do que hoje se entende por desenvolvimentismo. Utilizando metodologia de construção do núcleo comum de conceitos a partir dos atributos principais que os constituem, concluímos que o processo de industrialização sueco, ocorrido entre 1870 e 1919 – período identificado através da análise histórica e da literatura – adere aos principais atributos do desenvolvimentismo, sem ferir a robustez deste. Ademais, constatamos que a Suécia teve uma experiência singular no sentido de conseguir unir políticas voltadas à superação do atraso econômico da nação em conjunto a medidas redistributivas típicas da Social-Democracia.Sweden has historically presented a quite peculiar development trajectory: although it did not become one of the great powers of Europe, it achieved strong industrialization and the establishment of an advanced welfare state. The main objective of this study is to investigate whether Sweden, in its path of overcoming economic backwardness, can be considered a case of developmentalism. Although this is typically known as a Latin American and more recently, Asian phenomenon, the hypothesis is that Sweden's delayed industrialization and the reversal of its social indicators were driven by interventionist policies, following the principles of what is now understood as developmentalism. Using a methodology that constructs the common core of concepts based on their main attributes, we conclude that Sweden's process of industrialization between 1870 and 1919 – a period which was identified through historical and literary analysis – adheres to the main attributes of developmentalism without compromising its robustness. Furthermore, it is observed that Sweden had a unique experience in successfully combining policies aimed at overcoming the nation's economic backwardness with redistributive measures typical of Social Democracy

7th International Workshop on the Molecular Biology and Genetics of the Lepidoptera: August 20–26, 2006 Orthodox Academy of Crete, Kolympari, Crete, Greece

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A high-throughput chemically induced inflammation assay in zebrafish

Artículo de publicación ISIBackground: Studies on innate immunity have benefited from the introduction of zebrafish as a model system. Transgenic fish expressing fluorescent proteins in leukocyte populations allow direct, quantitative visualization of an inflammatory response in vivo. It has been proposed that this animal model can be used for high-throughput screens aimed at the identification of novel immunomodulatory lead compounds. However, current assays require invasive manipulation of fish individually, thus preventing high-content screening. Results: Here we show that specific, noninvasive damage to lateral line neuromast cells can induce a robust acute inflammatory response. Exposure of fish larvae to sublethal concentrations of copper sulfate selectively damages the sensory hair cell population inducing infiltration of leukocytes to neuromasts within 20 minutes. Inflammation can be assayed in real time using transgenic fish expressing fluorescent proteins in leukocytes or by histochemical assays in fixed larvae. We demonstrate the usefulness of this method for chemical and genetic screens to detect the effect of immunomodulatory compounds and mutations affecting the leukocyte response. Moreover, we transformed the assay into a high-throughput screening method by using a customized automated imaging and processing system that quantifies the magnitude of the inflammatory reaction. Conclusions: This approach allows rapid screening of thousands of compounds or mutagenized zebrafish for effects on inflammation and enables the identification of novel players in the regulation of innate immunity and potential lead compounds toward new immunomodulatory therapies. We have called this method the chemically induced inflammation assay, or ChIn assay.This work was supported by grants to MA from Fondecyt (1070867), FONDAP (15090007), ICM (P06-039F), CORFO-Innova (09MCSS-6705), DFG-Conicyt 075-2009; to CD from UNAB (DI- 01-09/1) and Fondecyt (24090004); to UL from Dopaminet (EU FP7 223744); and to CG by a Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant (EU FP7; PIRG07-GA-2010-267552)

Zebrafish models of the immune response: taking it on the ChIn

The zebrafish is proving to be an extremely versatile new experimental model for unraveling the mysteries of innate immunity and has considerable promise as a system for the identification of novel modulators of this crucial biological process. A rate-limiting factor, however, is the mechanical stimulus required to induce the inflammatory response. A new chemically induced inflammation assay ('ChIn' assay) published in BMC Biology obviates this requirement and seems set to accelerate progress in the field

SPODOBASE : an EST database for the lepidopteran crop pest Spodoptera

BACKGROUND: The Lepidoptera Spodoptera frugiperda is a pest which causes widespread economic damage on a variety of crop plants. It is also well known through its famous Sf9 cell line which is used for numerous heterologous protein productions. Species of the Spodoptera genus are used as model for pesticide resistance and to study virus host interactions. A genomic approach is now a critical step for further new developments in biology and pathology of these insects, and the results of ESTs sequencing efforts need to be structured into databases providing an integrated set of tools and informations. DESCRIPTION: The ESTs from five independent cDNA libraries, prepared from three different S. frugiperda tissues (hemocytes, midgut and fat body) and from the Sf9 cell line, are deposited in the database. These tissues were chosen because of their importance in biological processes such as immune response, development and plant/insect interaction. So far, the SPODOBASE contains 29,325 ESTs, which are cleaned and clustered into non-redundant sets (2294 clusters and 6103 singletons). The SPODOBASE is constructed in such a way that other ESTs from S. frugiperda or other species may be added. User can retrieve information using text searches, pre-formatted queries, query assistant or blast searches. Annotation is provided against NCBI, UNIPROT or Bombyx mori ESTs databases, and with GO-Slim vocabulary. CONCLUSION: The SPODOBASE database provides integrated access to expressed sequence tags (EST) from the lepidopteran insect Spodoptera frugiperda. It is a publicly available structured database with insect pest sequences which will allow identification of a number of genes and comprehensive cloning of gene families of interest for scientific community. SPODOBASE is available from URL

Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) host-plant variants: two host strains or two distinct species?

International audienceThe moth Spodoptera frugiperda is a well-known pest of crops throughout the Americas, which consists of two strains adapted to different host-plants: the first feeds preferentially on corn, cotton and sorghum whereas the second is more associated with rice and several pasture grasses. Though morphologically indistinguishable, they exhibit differences in their mating behavior, pheromone compositions, and show development variability according to the host-plant. Though the latter suggest that both strains are different species, this issue is still highly controversial because hybrids naturally occur in the wild, not to mention the discrepancies among published results concerning mating success between the two strains. In order to clarify the status of the two host-plant strains of S. frugiperda, we analyze features that possibly reflect the level of post-zygotic isolation: (1) first generation (F1) hybrid lethality and sterility; (2) patterns of meiotic segregation of hybrids in reciprocal second generation (F2), as compared to the meiosis of the two parental strains. We found a significant reduction of mating success in F1 in one direction of the cross and a high level of microsatellite markers showing transmission ratio distortion in the F2 progeny. Our results support the existence of post-zygotic reproductive isolation between the two laboratory strains and are in accordance with the marked level of genetic differentiation that was recovered between individuals of the two strains collected from the field. Altogether these results provide additional evidence in favor of a sibling species status for the two strains