Justice at Sea: Fishers’ politics and marine conservation in coastal Odisha, India

This is a paper about the politics of fishing rights in and around the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in coastal Odisha, in eastern India. Claims to the resources of this sanctuary are politicised through the creation of a particularly damaging narrative by influential Odiya environmental actors about Bengalis, as illegal immigrants who have hurt the ecosystem through their fishing practices. Anchored within a theoretical framework of justice as recognition, the paper considers the making of a regional Odiya environmentalism that is, potentially, deeply exclusionary. It details how an argument about ‘illegal Bengalis’ depriving ‘indigenous Odiyas’ of their legitimate ‘traditional fishing rights’ derives from particular notions of indigeneity and territory. But the paper also shows that such environmentalism is tenuous, and fits uneasily with the everyday social landscape of fishing in coastal Odisha. It concludes that a wider class conflict between small fishers and the state over a sanctuary sets the context in which questions about legitimate resource rights are raised, sometimes with important effects, like when out at sea

Reductions in cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory mortality following the national Irish smoking ban: Interrupted time-series analysis

Copyright @ 2013 Stallings-Smith et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: Previous studies have shown decreases in cardiovascular mortality following the implementation of comprehensive smoking bans. It is not known whether cerebrovascular or respiratory mortality decreases post-ban. On March 29, 2004, the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to implement a national workplace smoking ban. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of this policy on all-cause and cause-specific, non-trauma mortality. Methods: A time-series epidemiologic assessment was conducted, utilizing Poisson regression to examine weekly age and gender-standardized rates for 215,878 non-trauma deaths in the Irish population, ages ≥35 years. The study period was from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2007, with a post-ban follow-up of 3.75 years. All models were adjusted for time trend, season, influenza, and smoking prevalence. Results: Following ban implementation, an immediate 13% decrease in all-cause mortality (RR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.76-0.99), a 26% reduction in ischemic heart disease (IHD) (RR: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.63-0.88), a 32% reduction in stroke (RR: 0.68; 95% CI: 0.54-0.85), and a 38% reduction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (RR: 0.62; 95% CI: 0.46-0.83) mortality was observed. Post-ban reductions in IHD, stroke, and COPD mortalities were seen in ages ≥65 years, but not in ages 35-64 years. COPD mortality reductions were found only in females (RR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.32-0.70). Post-ban annual trend reductions were not detected for any smoking-related causes of death. Unadjusted estimates indicate that 3,726 (95% CI: 2,305-4,629) smoking-related deaths were likely prevented post-ban. Mortality decreases were primarily due to reductions in passive smoking. Conclusions: The national Irish smoking ban was associated with immediate reductions in early mortality. Importantly, post-ban risk differences did not change with a longer follow-up period. This study corroborates previous evidence for cardiovascular causes, and is the first to demonstrate reductions in cerebrovascular and respiratory causes

VAC14 nucleates a protein complex essential for the acute interconversion of PI3P and PI(3,5)P2 in yeast and mouse

The signalling lipid PI(3,5)P2 is generated on endosomes and regulates retrograde traffic to the trans-Golgi network. Physiological signals regulate rapid, transient changes in PI(3,5)P2 levels. Mutations that lower PI(3,5)P2 cause neurodegeneration in human patients and mice. The function of Vac14 in the regulation of PI(3,5)P2 was uncharacterized previously. Here, we predict that yeast and mammalian Vac14 are composed entirely of HEAT repeats and demonstrate that Vac14 exerts an effect as a scaffold for the PI(3,5)P2 regulatory complex by direct contact with the known regulators of PI(3,5)P2: Fig4, Fab1, Vac7 and Atg18. We also report that the mouse mutant ingls (infantile gliosis) results from a missense mutation in Vac14 that prevents the association of Vac14 with Fab1, generating a partial complex. Analysis of ingls and two additional mutants provides insight into the organization of the PI(3,5)P2 regulatory complex and indicates that Vac14 mediates three distinct mechanisms for the rapid interconversion of PI3P and PI(3,5)P2. Moreover, these studies show that the association of Fab1 with the complex is essential for viability in the mouse

Aurora kinases are expressed in medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and their inhibition suppresses in vitro growth and tumorigenicity of the MTC derived cell line TT

International audienceBACKGROUND: The Aurora kinase family members, Aurora-A, -B and -C, are involved in the regulation of mitosis, and alterations in their expression are associated with cell malignant transformation. To date no information on the expression of these proteins in medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) are available. We here investigated the expression of the Aurora kinases in human MTC tissues and their potential use as therapeutic targets. METHODS: The expression of the Aurora kinases in 26 MTC tissues at different TNM stages was analyzed at the mRNA level by quantitative RT-PCR. We then evaluated the effects of the Aurora kinase inhibitor MK-0457 on the MTC derived TT cell line proliferation, apoptosis, soft agar colony formation, cell cycle and ploidy. RESULTS: The results showed the absence of correlation between tumor tissue levels of any Aurora kinase and tumor stage indicating the lack of prognostic value for these proteins. Treatment with MK-0457 inhibited TT cell proliferation in a time- and dose-dependent manner with IC50 = 49.8 ± 6.6 nM, as well as Aurora kinases phosphorylation of substrates relevant to the mitotic progression. Time-lapse experiments demonstrated that MK-0457-treated cells entered mitosis but were unable to complete it. Cytofluorimetric analysis confirmed that MK-0457 induced accumulation of cells with ≥ 4N DNA content without inducing apoptosis. Finally, MK-0457 prevented the capability of the TT cells to form colonies in soft agar. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate that Aurora kinases inhibition hampered growth and tumorigenicity of TT cells, suggesting its potential therapeutic value for MTC treatment

Challenges for Australia's Bio/Nanopharma Policies: trade deals, public goods and reference pricing in sustainable industrial renewal

Industrial renewal in the bio/nanopharma sector is important for the long term strength of the Australian economy and for the health of its citizens. A variety of factors, however, may have caused inadequate attention to focus on systematically promoting domestic generic and small biotechnology manufacturers in Australian health policy

The “Flexi-Chamber”: A Novel Cost-Effective In Situ Respirometry Chamber for Coral Physiological Measurements

Coral reefs are threatened worldwide, with environmental stressors increasingly affecting the ability of reef-building corals to sustain growth from calcification (G), photosynthesis (P) and respiration (R). These processes support the foundation of coral reefs by directly influencing biogeochemical nutrient cycles and complex ecological interactions and therefore represent key knowledge required for effective reef management. However, metabolic rates are not trivial to quantify and typically rely on the use of cumbersome in situ respirometry chambers and/or the need to remove material and examine ex situ, thereby fundamentally limiting the scale, resolution and possibly the accuracy of the rate data. Here we describe a novel low-cost in situ respirometry bag that mitigates many constraints of traditional glass and plexi-glass incubation chambers. We subsequently demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel "Flexi-Chamber" approach via two case studies: 1) the Flexi-Chamber provides values of P, R and G for the reef-building coral Siderastrea cf. stellata collected from reefs close to Salvador, Brazil, which were statistically similar to values collected from a traditional glass respirometry vessel; and 2) wide-scale application of obtaining P, R and G rates for different species across different habitats to obtain inter- and intra-species differences. Our novel cost-effective design allows us to increase sampling scale of metabolic rate measurements in situ without the need for destructive sampling and thus significantly expands on existing research potential, not only for corals as we have demonstrated here, but also other important benthic groups