Theorizing construction industry practice within a disaster risk reduction setting: is it a panacea or an illusion?

Construction industry practice is strongly influenced by the culture surrounding its operations and, with the prevailing emphasis on achieving efficiency, there is a strong focus on outcome metrics such as profitability and employee productivity. With the recent increases in natural hazard events worldwide, and the likelihood that this will worsen still further with anticipated climate changes, the industry is increasingly contributing to building resilience within disaster-affected communities. Existing industry expertise, its educational approaches and the related theoretical frameworks, however, all require adjustment if these changing needs are to be fully addressed. Most importantly, an agenda shift is required from the philosophical side and a more pragmatic approach is needed if community resilience goals and objectives are to be met, rather than the narrower focus of the current metrics-driven management system. A synthesis of the current literature is therefore presented, along with relevant case histories illustrating how such an agenda shift within a disaster management context may influence the development of appropriate theory, as well as impacting upon grass-roots educational requirements. The research concludes by discussing how the ‘mainstreaming’ of disaster management within construction industry practice could drive forward developments in theorizing expertise and educational provisions across the constituent discipline

Factors influencing terrestriality in primates of the Americas and Madagascar

Among mammals, the order Primates is exceptional in having a high taxonomic richness in which the taxa are arboreal, semiterrestrial, or terrestrial. Although habitual terrestriality is pervasive among the apes and African and Asian monkeys (catarrhines), it is largely absent among monkeys of the Americas (platyrrhines), as well as galagos, lemurs, and lorises (strepsirrhines), which are mostly arboreal. Numerous ecological drivers and species-specific factors are suggested to set the conditions for an evolutionary shift from arboreality to terrestriality, and current environmental conditions may provide analogous scenarios to those transitional periods. Therefore, we investigated predominantly arboreal, diurnal primate genera from the Americas and Madagascar that lack fully terrestrial taxa, to determine whether ecological drivers (habitat canopy cover, predation risk, maximum temperature, precipitation, primate species richness, human population density, and distance to roads) or species-specific traits (body mass, group size, and degree of frugivory) associate with increased terrestriality. We collated 150,961 observation hours across 2,227 months from 47 species at 20 sites in Madagascar and 48 sites in the Americas. Multiple factors were associated with ground use in these otherwise arboreal species, including increased temperature, a decrease in canopy cover, a dietary shift away from frugivory, and larger group size. These factors mostly explain intraspecific differences in terrestriality. As humanity modifies habitats and causes climate change, our results suggest that species already inhabiting hot, sparsely canopied sites, and exhibiting more generalized diets, are more likely to shift toward greater ground use

Organizational Diversity among Distinct Glycoprotein Endoplasmic Reticulum-associated Degradation Programs

Protein folding and quality control in the early secretory pathway function as posttranslational checkpoints in eukaryote gene expression. Herein, an aberrant form of the hepatic secretory protein α1-antitrypsin was stably expressed in a human embryonic kidney cell line to elucidate the mechanisms by which glycoprotein endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (GERAD) is administered in cells from higher eukaryotes. After biosynthesis, genetic variant PI Z underwent alternative phases of secretion and degradation, the latter of which was mediated by the proteasome. Degradation required release from calnexin- and asparagine-linked oligosaccharide modification by endoplasmic reticulum mannosidase I, the latter of which occurred as PI Z was bound to the molecular chaperone grp78/BiP. That a distinct GERAD program operates in human embryonic kidney cells was supported by the extent of PI Z secretion, apparent lack of polymerization, inability of calnexin to participate in the degradation process, and sequestration of the glycoprotein folding sensor UDP-glucose:glycoprotein glucosyltransferase in the Golgi complex. Because UDP-glucose:glycoprotein glucosyltransferase sustains calnexin binding, its altered distribution is consistent with a GERAD program that hinders the reentry of substrates into the calnexin cycle, allowing grp78/BiP to partner with a lectin, other than calnexin, in the recognition of a two-component GERAD signal to facilitate substrate recruitment. How the processing of a mutant protein, rather than the mutation itself, can contribute to disease pathogenesis, is discussed