Beyond Self: Strategic Essentialism in Ana Mendieta\u27s La Maja de Yerba

Artist Ana Mendieta frequently conjoined the female body with nature to express her search for personal identity and support for feminist topics. Her last intended and least scholarly examined work, La Maja de Yerba (Grass Goddess), continues specific visual and thematic elements of her previous Silueta Series (Silhouette) yet also presents an aesthetically unique creation. Despite its incompletion as a result of her premature death, the preserved maquette directly stipulates a female form to be planted in grass on the Bard College campus grounds. This alignment of women and nature garners criticism for its reliance on universalism and categorizations of women’s experiences; however, Mendieta’s use of essentialism in public art contributes to circulating feminist discourse to a wider audience. This paper considers the artistic influences, thematic concepts, and employment of strategic essentialism in Mendieta’s La Maja de Yerba

Hyporheic Interactions Increase Zinc Exposure and Effects on Hyalella azteca in Sediments under Flow‐Through Conditions

Groundwater–surface water interactions in the hyporheic transition zone can influence contaminant exposure to benthic macroinvertebrates. In streams, hyporheic flows are subject to varying redox conditions, which influence biogeochemical cycling and metal speciation. Despite these relationships, little is known about how these interactions influence the ecological risk of contaminants. The present study investigated the effects of hyporheic flows and zinc (Zn)‐contaminated sediments on the amphipod Hyalella azteca. Hyporheic flows were manipulated in laboratory streams during 10‐d experiments. Zinc toxicity was evaluated in freshly spiked and aged sediments. Hyporheic flows altered sediment and porewater geochemistry, oxidizing the sediments and causing changes to redox‐sensitive endpoints. Amphipod survival was lowest in the Zn sediment exposures with hyporheic flows. In freshly spiked sediments, porewater Zn drove mortality, whereas in aged sediments simultaneously extracted metals (SEM) in excess of acid volatile sulfides (AVS) normalized by the fraction of organic carbon (fOC) [(SEM‐AVS)/fOC] influenced amphipod responses. The results highlight the important role of hyporheic flows in determining Zn bioavailability to benthic organisms, information that can be important in ecological risk assessments. Environ Toxicol Chem 2019;38:2447–2458. © 2019 SETACPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152028/1/etc4554.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152028/2/etc4554_am.pd

BREATHE: A Pilot Study of a One-Day Retreat to Reduce Burnout Among Mental Health Professionals

OBJECTIVE: Staff burnout is a frequent problem for mental health providers and may be associated with negative outcomes for providers, consumers, and organizations. This study tested an intervention to reduce staff burnout. METHODS: Community mental health providers were invited to participate in a day-long training session to learn methods to reduce burnout. A Web-based survey was given at time of registration, before the intervention, and again six weeks later. RESULTS: Eighty-four providers participated in the training, and follow-up data were available for 74. Six weeks after the day-long training, staff reported significant decreases in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and significant increases in positive views toward consumers. There were no significant changes in providers' sense of personal accomplishment, job satisfaction, or intention to leave their position. Ninety-one percent of the staff reported the training to be helpful. CONCLUSIONS: This brief intervention is feasible, is acceptable to staff, and may improve burnout and staff attitudes

Household networks and emergent territory: a GIS study of Chumash households, villages and rock-art in South-Central California

Elite households of the Californian Chumash have been studied in order to understand the development of Late Holocene hunter-gatherer alliance networks. Equally, models of what has been termed ‘tribelet territories’ have been used to describe land ownership within larger Californian concepts. Surprisingly little research has explicitly addressed issues of how such territories may have developed. In this article, we turn to DeLanda’s philosophy of social complexity to consider how Chumash households may have underpinned the development of tribelet territories and the political implications for their articulation with wider alliances. Importantly, utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we analyse potential mobility patterns in relation to households, villages and rock-art locales in a case from the Emigdiano Chumash. The results suggest that the painting of rock art was imbricated within processes of territorialization, and that the local placement of art reflects which villages were home to particularly high-status households

A global model of the response of tropical and sub-tropical forest biodiversity to anthropogenic pressures

Habitat loss and degradation, driven largely by agricultural expansion and intensification, present the greatest immediate threat to biodiversity. Tropical forests harbour among the highest levels of terrestrial species diversity and are likely to experience rapid land-use change in the coming decades. Synthetic analyses of observed responses of species are useful for quantifying how land use affects biodiversity and for predicting outcomes under land-use scenarios. Previous applications of this approach have typically focused on individual taxonomic groups, analysing the average response of the whole community to changes in land use. Here, we incorporate quantitative remotely sensed data about habitats in, to our knowledge, the first worldwide synthetic analysis of how individual species in four major taxonomic groups—invertebrates, ‘herptiles’ (reptiles and amphibians), mammals and birds—respond to multiple human pressures in tropical and sub-tropical forests. We show significant independent impacts of land use, human vegetation offtake, forest cover and human population density on both occurrence and abundance of species, highlighting the value of analysing multiple explanatory variables simultaneously. Responses differ among the four groups considered, and—within birds and mammals—between habitat specialists and habitat generalists and between narrow-ranged and wide-ranged species

Cohort study of the impact of direct acting antiviral therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C and decompensated cirrhosis

Background and Aims: All oral direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) effectively treat chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, but the benefits in advanced liver disease are unclear. We compared outcomes in treated and untreated patients with decompensated cirrhosis. Methods: Patients with HCV and decompensated cirrhosis or at risk of irreversible disease were treated in an Expanded Access Programme (EAP) in 2014. Treatment, by clinician choice, was with sofosbuvir, ledipasvir or daclatasvir, with or without ribavirin. For functional outcome comparison, untreated patients with HCV and decompensated cirrhosis who were registered on a database 6 months before treatment was available were retrospectively studied. Primary endpoint was sustained virological response 12 weeks post antiviral treatment (treated cohort) and the secondary endpoint (both cohorts) was adverse outcomes (worsening in MELD score or serious adverse event) within 6 months. Results: 467 patients received treatment (409 decompensated cirrhosis). Viral clearance was achieved in 381 patients (81.6%) – 209 from 231 (90.5%) with genotype 1 and 132 from 192 (68.8%) with genotype 3. MELD scores improved in treated patients (mean change -0.85) but worsened in untreated patients (mean + 0.75) (p65 or with low (<135 mmol/L) baseline serum sodium concentrations were least likely to benefit from therapy. Conclusions: All oral DAAs effectively cured HCV in patients with advanced liver disease. Viral clearance was associated with improvement in liver function within 6 months compared to untreated patients. The longer term impact of HCV treatment in patients with decompensated cirrhosis remains to be determined

Exceptional Diversity, Maintenance of Polymorphism, and Recent Directional Selection on the APL1 Malaria Resistance Genes of Anopheles gambiae

The three-gene APL1 locus encodes essential components of the mosquito immune defense against malaria parasites. APL1 was originally identified because it lies within a mapped QTL conferring the vector mosquito Anopheles gambiae natural resistance to the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and APL1 genes have subsequently been shown to be involved in defense against several species of Plasmodium. Here, we examine molecular population genetic variation at the APL1 gene cluster in spatially and temporally diverse West African collections of A. gambiae. The locus is extremely polymorphic, showing evidence of adaptive evolutionary maintenance of genetic variation. We hypothesize that this variability aids in defense against genetically diverse pathogens, including Plasmodium. Variation at APL1 is highly structured across geographic and temporal subpopulations. In particular, diversity is exceptionally high during the rainy season, when malaria transmission rates are at their peak. Much less allelic diversity is observed during the dry season when mosquito population sizes and malaria transmission rates are low. APL1 diversity is weakly stratified by the polymorphic 2La chromosomal inversion but is very strongly subdivided between the M and S “molecular forms.” We find evidence that a recent selective sweep has occurred at the APL1 locus in M form mosquitoes only. The independently reported observation of a similar M-form restricted sweep at the Tep1 locus, whose product physically interacts with APL1C, suggests that epistatic selection may act on these two loci causing them to sweep coordinately

Antimicrobial resistance in dairy slurry tanks: A critical point for measurement and control

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The genomes of two key bumblebee species with primitive eusocial organization

Background: The shift from solitary to social behavior is one of the major evolutionary transitions. Primitively eusocial bumblebees are uniquely placed to illuminate the evolution of highly eusocial insect societies. Bumblebees are also invaluable natural and agricultural pollinators, and there is widespread concern over recent population declines in some species. High-quality genomic data will inform key aspects of bumblebee biology, including susceptibility to implicated population viability threats. Results: We report the high quality draft genome sequences of Bombus terrestris and Bombus impatiens, two ecologically dominant bumblebees and widely utilized study species. Comparing these new genomes to those of the highly eusocial honeybee Apis mellifera and other Hymenoptera, we identify deeply conserved similarities, as well as novelties key to the biology of these organisms. Some honeybee genome features thought to underpin advanced eusociality are also present in bumblebees, indicating an earlier evolution in the bee lineage. Xenobiotic detoxification and immune genes are similarly depauperate in bumblebees and honeybees, and multiple categories of genes linked to social organization, including development and behavior, show high conservation. Key differences identified include a bias in bumblebee chemoreception towards gustation from olfaction, and striking differences in microRNAs, potentially responsible for gene regulation underlying social and other traits. Conclusions: These two bumblebee genomes provide a foundation for post-genomic research on these key pollinators and insect societies. Overall, gene repertoires suggest that the route to advanced eusociality in bees was mediated by many small changes in many genes and processes, and not by notable expansion or depauperation