Remembering 9/11: Religious Maximalism in the United States of America Twenty Years after the Attacks

On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda partisans hijacked four American airliners. Three of the planes struck their targets: the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington, DC. In “Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11” (2nd ed., 2006), Bruce Lincoln made several provocative proposals about the study of religion and the category of fundamentalism, based on his reflection after those attacks. This article extends some of Lincoln’s proposals by refining his category “religious maximalism” in terms of his four domains of religion (transcendent discourse, practices, community, and regulatory institution), rather than considering it as a replacement for the category “fundamentalism” or as a global religious pattern. The article then examines several presidential speeches to chart the progress of Christian maximalism in the United States of America. The last four presidential speeches before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 were delivered by President Donald Trump. These speeches deemphasized religion, ignored history, disregarded basic factual accuracy, and promoted the authoritarian use of power. These signaled a move not toward religious maximalism, but rather toward racist nationalism. The article concludes that American Christian maximalists who helped elect President Trump did not gain control of the national transcendent discourse during his term of office, but they did gain considerable control of judicial and legislative power. It remains to be seen whether they can use their power in the national regulatory institutions to move the United States of America toward Christian maximalism in the long wake of 9/11

Orienting of attention via observed eye-gaze is head-centred

Observing averted eye gaze results in the automatic allocation of attention to the gazed-at location. The role of the orientation of the face that produces the gaze cue was investigated. The eyes in the face could look left or right in a head-centred frame, but the face itself could be oriented 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise such that the eyes were gazing up or down. Significant cueing effects to targets presented to the left or right of the screen were found in these head orientation conditions. This suggests that attention was directed to the side to which the eyes would have been looking towards, had the face been presented upright. This finding provides evidence that head orientation can affect gaze following, even when the head orientation alone is not a social cue. It also shows that the mechanism responsible for the allocation of attention following a gaze cue can be influenced by intrinsic object-based (i.e. head-centred) properties of the task-irrelevant cue

Ataluren stimulates ribosomal selection of near-cognate tRNAs to promote nonsense suppression

A premature termination codon (PTC) in the ORF of an mRNA generally leads to production of a truncated polypeptide, accelerated degradation of the mRNA, and depression of overall mRNA expression. Accordingly, nonsense mutations cause some of the most severe forms of inherited disorders. The small-molecule drug ataluren promotes therapeutic nonsense suppression and has been thought to mediate the insertion of near-cognate tRNAs at PTCs. However, direct evidence for this activity has been lacking. Here, we expressed multiple nonsense mutation reporters in human cells and yeast and identified the amino acids inserted when a PTC occupies the ribosomal A site in control, ataluren-treated, and aminoglycoside-treated cells. We find that ataluren\u27s likely target is the ribosome and that it produces full-length protein by promoting insertion of near-cognate tRNAs at the site of the nonsense codon without apparent effects on transcription, mRNA processing, mRNA stability, or protein stability. The resulting readthrough proteins retain function and contain amino acid replacements similar to those derived from endogenous readthrough, namely Gln, Lys, or Tyr at UAA or UAG PTCs and Trp, Arg, or Cys at UGA PTCs. These insertion biases arise primarily from mRNA:tRNA mispairing at codon positions 1 and 3 and reflect, in part, the preferred use of certain nonstandard base pairs, e.g., U-G. Ataluren\u27s retention of similar specificity of near-cognate tRNA insertion as occurs endogenously has important implications for its general use in therapeutic nonsense suppression

The Cysteine Rich Necrotrophic Effector SnTox1 Produced by Stagonospora nodorum Triggers Susceptibility of Wheat Lines Harboring Snn1

The wheat pathogen Stagonospora nodorum produces multiple necrotrophic effectors (also called host-selective toxins) that promote disease by interacting with corresponding host sensitivity gene products. SnTox1 was the first necrotrophic effector identified in S. nodorum, and was shown to induce necrosis on wheat lines carrying Snn1. Here, we report the molecular cloning and validation of SnTox1 as well as the preliminary characterization of the mechanism underlying the SnTox1-Snn1 interaction which leads to susceptibility. SnTox1 was identified using bioinformatics tools and verified by heterologous expression in Pichia pastoris. SnTox1 encodes a 117 amino acid protein with the first 17 amino acids predicted as a signal peptide, and strikingly, the mature protein contains 16 cysteine residues, a common feature for some avirulence effectors. The transformation of SnTox1 into an avirulent S. nodorum isolate was sufficient to make the strain pathogenic. Additionally, the deletion of SnTox1 in virulent isolates rendered the SnTox1 mutated strains avirulent on the Snn1 differential wheat line. SnTox1 was present in 85% of a global collection of S. nodorum isolates. We identified a total of 11 protein isoforms and found evidence for strong diversifying selection operating on SnTox1. The SnTox1-Snn1 interaction results in an oxidative burst, DNA laddering, and pathogenesis related (PR) gene expression, all hallmarks of a defense response. In the absence of light, the development of SnTox1-induced necrosis and disease symptoms were completely blocked. By comparing the infection processes of a GFP-tagged avirulent isolate and the same isolate transformed with SnTox1, we conclude that SnTox1 may play a critical role during fungal penetration. This research further demonstrates that necrotrophic fungal pathogens utilize small effector proteins to exploit plant resistance pathways for their colonization, which provides important insights into the molecular basis of the wheat-S. nodorum interaction, an emerging model for necrotrophic pathosystems

Better than DEET Repellent Compounds Derived from Coconut Oil

Hematophagous arthropods are capable of transmitting human and animal pathogens worldwide. Vector-borne diseases account for 17% of all infectious diseases resulting in 700,000 human deaths annually. Repellents are a primary tool for reducing the impact of biting arthropods on humans and animals. N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide (DEET), the most effective and long-lasting repellent currently available commercially, has long been considered the gold standard in insect repellents, but with reported human health issues, particularly for infants and pregnant women. In the present study, we report fatty acids derived from coconut oil which are novel, inexpensive and highly efficacious repellant compounds. These coconut fatty acids are active against a broad array of blood-sucking arthropods including biting flies, ticks, bed bugs and mosquitoes. The medium-chain length fatty acids from C8:0 to C12:0 were found to exhibit the predominant repellent activity. In laboratory bioassays, these fatty acids repelled biting flies and bed bugs for two weeks after application, and ticks for one week. Repellency was stronger and with longer residual activity than that of DEET. In addition, repellency was also found against mosquitoes. An aqueous starch-based formulation containing natural coconut fatty acids was also prepared and shown to protect pastured cattle from biting flies up to 96-hours in the hot summer, which, to our knowledge, is the longest protection provided by a natural repellent product studied to date

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Studying the Complex Magnetic Field of L43

We present observations of polarized dust emission at 850 μm from the L43 molecular cloud, which sits in the Ophiuchus cloud complex. The data were taken using SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as a part of the BISTRO large program. L43 is a dense (NH 10 22 2 ~ –1023 cm−2) complex molecular cloud with a submillimeter-bright starless core and two protostellar sources. There appears to be an evolutionary gradient along the isolated filament that L43 is embedded within, with the most evolved source closest to the Sco OB2 association. One of the protostars drives a CO outflow that has created a cavity to the southeast. We see a magnetic field that appears to be aligned with the cavity walls of the outflow, suggesting interaction with the outflow. We also find a magnetic field strength of up to ∼160 ± 30 μG in the main starless core and up to ∼90 ± 40 μG in the more diffuse, extended region. These field strengths give magnetically super- and subcritical values, respectively, and both are found to be roughly trans-Alfvénic. We also present a new method of data reduction for these denser but fainter objects like starless cores

Relative Alignment between the Magnetic Field and Molecular Gas Structure in the Vela C Giant Molecular Cloud Using Low- and High-density Tracers

We compare the magnetic field orientation for the young giant molecular cloud Vela C inferred from 500 μm polarization maps made with the BLASTPol balloon-borne polarimeter to the orientation of structures in the integrated line emission maps from Mopra observations. Averaging over the entire cloud we find that elongated structures in integrated line-intensity or zeroth-moment maps, for low-density tracers such as 12CO and 13CO J → 1 – 0, are statistically more likely to align parallel to the magnetic field, while intermediate- or high-density tracers show (on average) a tendency for alignment perpendicular to the magnetic field. This observation agrees with previous studies of the change in relative orientation with column density in Vela C, and supports a model where the magnetic field is strong enough to have influenced the formation of dense gas structures within Vela C. The transition from parallel to no preferred/perpendicular orientation appears to occur between the densities traced by 13CO and by C18O J → 1 – 0. Using RADEX radiative transfer models to estimate the characteristic number density traced by each molecular line, we find that the transition occurs at a molecular hydrogen number density of approximately 103 cm−3. We also see that the Centre Ridge (the highest column density and most active star-forming region within Vela C) appears to have a transition at a lower number density, suggesting that this may depend on the evolutionary state of the cloud

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Studying the Complex Magnetic Field of L43

We present observations of polarized dust emission at 850 μm from the L43 molecular cloud, which sits in the Ophiuchus cloud complex. The data were taken using SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as a part of the BISTRO large program. L43 is a dense ( NH2∼1022 –1023 cm−2) complex molecular cloud with a submillimeter-bright starless core and two protostellar sources. There appears to be an evolutionary gradient along the isolated filament that L43 is embedded within, with the most evolved source closest to the Sco OB2 association. One of the protostars drives a CO outflow that has created a cavity to the southeast. We see a magnetic field that appears to be aligned with the cavity walls of the outflow, suggesting interaction with the outflow. We also find a magnetic field strength of up to ∼160 ± 30 μG in the main starless core and up to ∼90 ± 40 μG in the more diffuse, extended region. These field strengths give magnetically super- and subcritical values, respectively, and both are found to be roughly trans-Alfvénic. We also present a new method of data reduction for these denser but fainter objects like starless cores

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: A Spiral Magnetic Field in a Hub-filament Structure, Monoceros R2

We present and analyze observations of polarized dust emission at 850 μm toward the central 1 × 1 pc hub-filament structure of Monoceros R2 (Mon R2). The data are obtained with SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) as part of the B-fields in Star-forming Region Observations survey. The orientations of the magnetic field follow the spiral structure of Mon R2, which are well described by an axisymmetric magnetic field model. We estimate the turbulent component of the magnetic field using the angle difference between our observations and the best-fit model of the underlying large-scale mean magnetic field. This estimate is used to calculate the magnetic field strength using the Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi method, for which we also obtain the distribution of volume density and velocity dispersion using a column density map derived from Herschel data and the C18O (J = 3 − 2) data taken with HARP on the JCMT, respectively. We make maps of magnetic field strengths and mass-to-flux ratios, finding that magnetic field strengths vary from 0.02 to 3.64 mG with a mean value of 1.0 ± 0.06 mG, and the mean critical mass-to-flux ratio is 0.47 ± 0.02. Additionally, the mean Alfvén Mach number is 0.35 ± 0.01. This suggests that, in Mon R2, the magnetic fields provide resistance against large-scale gravitational collapse, and the magnetic pressure exceeds the turbulent pressure. We also investigate the properties of each filament in Mon R2. Most of the filaments are aligned along the magnetic field direction and are magnetically subcritical

Local knowledge, ancient wisdom : challenges in contemporary spirituality

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