Listen to Nice

In describing Humphrey Jennings’ wartime documentary propaganda film, 'Listen to Britain' (1942), a film with an overtly poetic sensibility and dominantly musical soundtrack, John Corner asserts that ‘through listening to Britain, we are enabled to properly look at it'. This idea of sound leading our attention to the images has underpinned much of the collaborative work between composer and sound designer, Geoffrey Cox, and documentary filmmaker, Keith Marley. It is in this context that the article will analyse an extract of A Film About Nice (Marley and Cox 2010), a contemporary re-imagining of Jean Vigo’s silent documentary, 'A propos de Nice' (1930). Reference will be made throughout to the historical context, and the filmic and theoretical influences that have informed the way music and creative sound design have been used to place emphasis on hearing a place, as much as seeing it

Formative research on hygiene behaviors and geophagy among infants and young children and implications of exposure to fecal bacteria.

We conducted direct observation of 23 caregiver-infant pairs for 130 hours and recorded wash-related behaviors to identify pathways of fecal-oral transmission of bacteria among infants. In addition to testing fingers, food, and drinking water of infants, three infants actively ingested 11.3 ± 9.2 (mean ± SD) handfuls of soil and two ingested chicken feces 2 ± 1.4 times in 6 hours. Hand washing with soap was not common and drinking water was contaminated with Escherichia coli in half (12 of 22) of the households. A one-year-old infant ingesting 1 gram of chicken feces in a day and 20 grams of soil from a laundry area of the kitchen yard would consume 4,700,000-23,000,000 and 440-4,240 E. coli, respectively, from these sources. Besides standard wash and nutrition interventions, infants in low-income communities should be protected from exploratory ingestion of chicken feces, soil, and geophagia for optimal child health and growth

DNA damage-induced interaction between a lineage addiction oncogenic transcription factor and the MRN complex shapes a tissue-specific DNA Damage Response and cancer predisposition

Since genome instability can drive cancer initiation and progression, cells have evolved highly effective and ubiquitous DNA Damage Response (DDR) programs. However, some cells, in skin for example, are normally exposed to high levels of DNA damaging agents. Whether such high-risk cells possess lineage-specific mechanisms that tailor DNA repair to the tissue remains largely unknown. Here we show, using melanoma as a model, that the microphthalmia-associated transcription factor MITF, a lineage addition oncogene that coordinates many aspects of melanocyte and melanoma biology, plays a non-transcriptional role in shaping the DDR. On exposure to DNA damaging agents, MITF is phosphorylated by ATM/DNA-PKcs, and unexpectedly its interactome is dramatically remodelled; most transcription (co)factors dissociate, and instead MITF interacts with the MRE11-RAD50-NBS1 (MRN) complex. Consequently, cells with high MITF levels accumulate stalled replication forks, and display defects in homologous recombination-mediated repair associated with impaired MRN recruitment to DNA damage. In agreement, high MITF levels are associated with increased SNV burden in melanoma. Significantly, the SUMOylation-defective MITF-E318K melanoma predisposition mutation recapitulates the effects of ATM/DNA-PKcs-phosphorylated MITF. Our data suggest that a non-transcriptional function of a lineage-restricted transcription factor contributes to a tissue-specialised modulation of the DDR that can impact cancer initiation

Structural analysis of massive galaxies using HST deep imaging at z < 0.5

Taking advantage of HST CANDELS data, we analyze the lowest redshift (z<0.5) massive galaxies in order to disentangle their structural constituents and study possible faint non-axis-symmetric features. Due to the excellent HST spatial resolution for intermediate-z objects, they are hard to model by purely automatic parametric fitting algorithms. We performed careful single and double S\'ersic fits to their galaxy surface brightness profiles. We also compare the model color profiles with the observed ones and also derive multi-component global effective radii attempting to obtain a better interpretation of the mass-size relation. Additionally, we test the robustness of our measured structural parameters via simulations. We find that the S\'ersic index does not offer a good proxy for the visual morphological type for our sample of massive galaxies. Our derived multi-component effective radii give a better description of the size of our sample galaxies than those inferred from single S\'ersic models with GALFIT. Our galaxy population lays on the scatter of the local mass-size relation, indicating that these massive galaxies do not experience a significant growth in size since z~0.5. Interestingly the few outliers are late-type galaxies, indicating that spheroids must reach the local mass-size relation earlier. For most of our sample galaxies, both single and multi-component S\'ersic models with GALFIT show substantial systematic deviations from the observed SBPs in the outskirts. These residuals may be partly due to several factors, namely a non-optimal data reduction for low surface brightness features, the existence of prominent stellar haloes for massive galaxies and could also arise from conceptual shortcomings of parametric 2D image decomposition tools. They consequently propagate into galaxy color profiles

Effects of improved complementary feeding and improved water, sanitation and hygiene on early child development among HIV-exposed children: substudy of a cluster randomised trial in rural Zimbabwe.

Introduction: HIV-exposed uninfected children may be at risk of poor neurodevelopment. We aimed to test the impact of improved infant and young child feeding (IYCF) and improved water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) on early child development (ECD) outcomes. Methods: Sanitation Hygiene Infant Nutrition Efficacy was a cluster randomised 2×2 factorial trial in rural Zimbabwe ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01824940). Pregnant women were eligible if they lived in study clusters allocated to standard-of-care (SOC; 52 clusters); IYCF (20 g small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplement/day from 6 to 18 months, complementary feeding counselling; 53 clusters); WASH (pit latrine, 2 hand-washing stations, liquid soap, chlorine, play space, hygiene counselling; 53 clusters) or IYCF +WASH (53 clusters). Participants and fieldworkers were not blinded. ECD was assessed at 24 months using the Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT; assessing motor, cognitive, language and social skills); MacArthur Bates Communication Development Inventory (assessing vocabulary and grammar); A-not-B test (assessing object permanence) and a self-control task. Intention-to-treat analyses were stratified by maternal HIV status. Results: Compared with SOC, children randomised to combined IYCF +WASH had higher total MDAT scores (mean difference +4.6; 95% CI 1.9 to 7.2) and MacArthur Bates vocabulary scores (+8.5 words; 95% CI 3.7 to 13.3), but there was no evidence of effects from IYCF or WASH alone. There was no evidence that that any intervention impacted object permanence or self-control. Conclusions: Combining IYCF and WASH interventions significantly improved motor, language and cognitive development in HIV-exposed children. Trial registration number: NCT01824940

An introduction to the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) and the DOPA Explorer (Beta)

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) is conceived around a set of interacting Critical Biodiversity Informatics Infrastructures (databases, web modelling services, broadcasting services, ...) hosted at different institutions, including the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and BirdLife International. The current services of DOPA provide to a large variety of end-users, ranging from park managers, funding agencies to researchers, with means to assess, monitor and possibly forecast the state and pressure of protected areas at the local, national and global scales. With an introduction to the DOPA, the readers will find here a user manual of the beta version of DOPA Explorer, a first web based assessment tool where information on 9 000 protected areas covering almost 90% of the global protected surface has been processed automatically to generate a set of indicators on ecosystems, climate, phenology, species, ecosystem services and pressures. DOPA Explorer can so help identify the protected areas with most unique ecosystems and species and assess the pressures they are exposed to because of human development. Ecological data derived from and near real-time earth observations are also made available for the African continent. Inversely, DOPA Explorer indirectly highlights the protected areas for which the information is incomplete.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen

An Amyloid Organelle: Solid State NMR Evidence for Cross-Beta Assembly of Gas Vesicles

Functional amyloids have been identified in a wide range of organisms, taking on a variety of biological roles and being controlled by remarkable mechanisms of directed assembly. Here, we report that amyloid fibrils constitute the ribs of the buoyancy organelles of Anabaena flos-aquae. The walls of these gas-filled vesicles are known to comprise a single protein, GvpA, arranged in a low pitch helix. However, the tertiary and quaternary structures have been elusive. Using solid-state NMR correlation spectroscopy we find detailed evidence for an extended cross-β structure. This amyloid assembly helps to account for the strength and amphiphilic properties of the vesicle wall. Buoyancy organelles thus dramatically extend the scope of known functional amyloids.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant EB001035)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant EB003151)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant EB002026