The Anxiety of Recognition: The Search for Legibility of Mayan Identities in Yucatán, Mexico and San Francisco, California

This dissertation tracks the mobilization of Yucatec Maya culture and identity across Yucatán, Mexico and San Francisco, California. Moving within a circulating discourse pertaining to a crisis of culture loss, I pause at three distinct sites to explore how culture is deployed for recognition in national and transnational spaces. I focus on Tuch Mukuy, a 17-member community theater troupe in Oxkutzcab, Yucatán; U Najil Xook, a one-member NGO dedicated to Mayan language preservation; and Alianza del Pueblo Maya, an NGO formed by the members of the Yucatec Maya migrant community in San Francisco to represent their interests and provide for their needs. I explore the efforts of Tuch Mukuy, U Najil Xook, and Alianza del Pueblo Maya to position themselves to be seen as Maya or indigenous by state and non-state actors across shifting fields of power and authority in Mexico and the United States. I examine the ways in which the space of the nation forecloses certain mobilizations of culture and cultural identity, while the space of the transnational open up possibilities for alternative visions and mobilizations of culture and identity. Within Yucatán, the space of the national, Tuch Mukuy and U Najil Xook are trapped into particular configurations of culture that will always be past-oriented. In Mexico, claims for rights and recognition are made to the nation-state based upon a history of marginalization and state-sponsored cultural assimilationist programs. Maya culture becomes framed, necessarily, through terms of revitalization and preservation, and packaged in the tangible and intangible forms of that which can be saved--such as, language, dress, and traditional practices, and knowledge entailed therein. This past-orientation renders claims to Mayaness as always under the impossible scrutiny of authenticity. In San Francisco, the space of the transnational, Alianza del Pueblo Maya becomes untethered from the future anterior temporality characteristic of recognition claims within the Mexican nation-state. In a city saturated with civil society organizations dedicated the rights of a range of politicized identities situated in race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, culture, and nation, Alianza must rely on a combination of strategies and alliances to become culturally recognized, but also politically and economically addressed. Coalition, not culture, becomes the space through which claims of recognition are made

'Cover story': a study in land management

This article summarises an environmental research project undertaken by pupils of Mondeor High School, Johannesburg. The project was entered for the Enviro '85 Competition where it won the Civic Awareness Section and was overall winner of the competition

A novel developmental encephalopathy with epilepsy and hyperkinetic movement disorders associated with a deletion of the sodium channel gene cluster on chromosome 2q24.3

We reported a 21 months-old boy with a complex epilepsy phenotype, developmental delay, and hyperkinetic movement disorders, associated with a deletion of the whole sodium channel gene cluster. Whether this unusual phenotype results from leading to haploinsufficiency of either SCN1A or SCN2A, or the combination of both, remains subject of speculation. However, nobody of the numerous reported patients with truncating mutations in SCN1A has ever manifested such a clinical phenotyp

Verification of clinical guidelines encoded into knowledge-based DSSs

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Farnesyltransferase inhibitors and human malignant pleural mesothelioma: a first-step comparative translational study.

It is known that the potential clinical use of farnesyltransferase inhibitors (FTI) could be expanded to include cancers harboring activated receptor tyrosine kinases. Approximately 70% of malignant pleural mesotheliomas (MPM) overexpress epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) and a subset express both EGFR and transforming growth factor A (TGF-A), suggesting an autocrine role for EGFR in MPM. We checked on MPM cells (10 human cell lines, 11 primary cultures obtained by human biopsies, and 7 short-term normal mesothelial cell cultures) concerning the following: (a) the relative overexpression of EGFR (Western blotting, flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry), (b) the relative expression of EGFR ligands (EGF, amphiregulin, TGF-A, ELISA), (c) the relative increase of the activated form of Ras (Ras-bound GTP) after EGF stimulation (Ras activation assay), (d) the efficacy of five different FTIs (HDJ2 prenylation, cell cytotoxicity, and apoptosis using ApopTag and gel ladder). EGFR was overexpressed in MPM cells compared with normal pleural mesothelial cells in equivalent levels as in non\u2013small cell lung cancer cells A549. MPM cells constitutively expressed EGFR ligands; however, Ras activation was attenuated at high EGF concentrations (100 ng/mL). Growth of MPM cells was substantially not affected by treatment with different FTIs (SCH66336, BMS- 214662, R115777, RPR-115135, and Manumycin). Among these, BMS-214662 was the only one moderately active. BMS-214662 triggered apoptosis in a small fraction of cells (not higher than 30%) that was paralleled by a slight decrease in the levels of TGF-A secreted by treated MPM cells. Our data highlighted the concept that the same signaling pathway can be regulated in different ways and these regulations can differ between different cells of different origin

Sigma-electrons responsible for cooperativity and ring equalization in hydrogen-bonded supramolecular polymers

We have quantum chemically analyzed the cooperative effects and structural deformations of hydrogen-bonded urea, deltamide, and squaramide linear chains using dispersion-corrected density functional theory at BLYP-D3(BJ)/TZ2P level of theory. Our purpose is twofold: (i) reveal the bonding mechanism of the studied systems that lead to their self-assembly in linear chains; and (ii) rationalize the C-C bond equalization in the ring moieties of deltamide and squaramide upon polymerization. Our energy decomposition and Kohn-Sham molecular orbital analyses reveal cooperativity in all studied systems, stemming from the charge separation within the sigma-electronic system by charge transfer from the carbonyl oxygen lone pair donor orbital of one monomer towards the sigma* N-H antibonding acceptor orbital of the neighboring monomer. This key orbital interaction causes the C=O bonds to elongate, which, in turn, results in the contraction of the adjacent C-C single bonds that, ultimately, makes the ring moieties of deltamide and squaramide to become more regular. Notably, the pi-electron delocalization plays a much smaller role in the total interaction between the monomers in the chain.Theoretical Chemistr

Spirulina Promotes Stem Cell Genesis and Protects against LPS Induced Declines in Neural Stem Cell Proliferation

Adult stem cells are present in many tissues including, skin, muscle, adipose, bone marrow, and in the brain. Neuroinflammation has been shown to be a potent negative regulator of stem cell and progenitor cell proliferation in the neurogenic regions of the brain. Recently we demonstrated that decreasing a key neuroinflammatory cytokine IL-1β in the hippocampus of aged rats reversed the age-related cognitive decline and increased neurogenesis in the age rats. We also have found that nutraceuticals have the potential to reduce neuroinflammation, and decrease oxidative stress. The objectives of this study were to determine if spirulina could protect the proliferative potential of hippocampal neural progenitor cells from an acute systemic inflammatory insult of lipopolysaccharide (LPS). To this end, young rats were fed for 30 days a control diet or a diet supplemented with 0.1% spirulina. On day 28 the rats were given a single i.p. injection of LPS (1 mg/kg). The following day the rats were injected with BrdU (50 mg/kg b.i.d. i.p.) and were sacrificed 24 hours after the first injection of BrdU. Quantification of the BrdU positive cells in the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus demonstrated a decrease in proliferation of the stem/progenitor cells in the hippocampus as a result of the LPS insult. Furthermore, the diet supplemented with spirulina was able to negate the LPS induced decrease in stem/progenitor cell proliferation. In a second set of studies we examined the effects of spirulina either alone or in combination with a proprietary formulation (NT-020) of blueberry, green tea, vitamin D3 and carnosine on the function of bone marrow and CD34+ cells in vitro. Spirulina had small effects on its own and more than additive effects in combination with NT-020 to promote mitochondrial respiration and/or proliferation of these cells in culture. When examined on neural stem cells in culture spirulina increased proliferation at baseline and protected against the negative influence of TNFα to reduce neural stem cell proliferation. These results support the hypothesis that a diet enriched with spirulina and other nutraceuticals may help protect the stem/progenitor cells from insults