Living and Dying in São Paulo

Jeffery Lesser focuses on São Paulo’s Bom Retiro neighborhood to examine the competing visions of wellbeing in Brazil among racialized immigrants and policymakers and health officials

Reflexões sobre (codi)nomes e etnicidade em São Paulo

The notion that 1,2 million Brazilians are"Japanese" has important implications for our understanding of nation, ethnicity and Diaspora. The majority of Nikkei see Brazil as their nation, but many non-Nikkei Brazilian presume that Japan is the Nikkei homeland. This article suggests that Nikkei militants during the period of the dictatorship (1964-1984) resented the diasporic representations constructed by majority society and rejected the idea that they were simply"Japanese." These same people, however, see themselves as different from normative Brazilians, and their stereotypes of "Brazil" and"Brazilians" as others was as prevalent as the stereotypes of non-Nikkei about"Japan" and"Japanese".A noção de que 1,2 milhões de brasileiros são"Japoneses" tem implicações importantes para os conceitos de nação, etnicidade, e diaspóra. A maioria dos nikkeis vêem o Brasil como a sua nação, porém muitos brasileiros não-nikkeis presumen que o Japão é o"lar" dos nikkeis. Este artigo sugere que os militantes nikkeis se ressentiram das representações diaspóricas construídas pela sociedade majoritária e rejeitaram a idéia de que eles eram simplesmente"japoneses". Essas mesmas pessoas, porém, viam a si próprios como diferentes dos brasileiros normativos, e seus estereótipos de"Brasil" e dos"brasileiros" como "outros" era freqüentemente tão prevalecente quanto o estereótipo dos não-nikkeis em relação a "Japão" e"japoneses"

Climate change promotes parasitism in a coral symbiosis.

Coastal oceans are increasingly eutrophic, warm and acidic through the addition of anthropogenic nitrogen and carbon, respectively. Among the most sensitive taxa to these changes are scleractinian corals, which engineer the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Corals' sensitivity is a consequence of their evolutionary investment in symbiosis with the dinoflagellate alga, Symbiodinium. Together, the coral holobiont has dominated oligotrophic tropical marine habitats. However, warming destabilizes this association and reduces coral fitness. It has been theorized that, when reefs become warm and eutrophic, mutualistic Symbiodinium sequester more resources for their own growth, thus parasitizing their hosts of nutrition. Here, we tested the hypothesis that sub-bleaching temperature and excess nitrogen promotes symbiont parasitism by measuring respiration (costs) and the assimilation and translocation of both carbon (energy) and nitrogen (growth; both benefits) within Orbicella faveolata hosting one of two Symbiodinium phylotypes using a dual stable isotope tracer incubation at ambient (26 °C) and sub-bleaching (31 °C) temperatures under elevated nitrate. Warming to 31 °C reduced holobiont net primary productivity (NPP) by 60% due to increased respiration which decreased host %carbon by 15% with no apparent cost to the symbiont. Concurrently, Symbiodinium carbon and nitrogen assimilation increased by 14 and 32%, respectively while increasing their mitotic index by 15%, whereas hosts did not gain a proportional increase in translocated photosynthates. We conclude that the disparity in benefits and costs to both partners is evidence of symbiont parasitism in the coral symbiosis and has major implications for the resilience of coral reefs under threat of global change

Agricultural Biotechnology's Complementary Intellectual Assets

We formulate and test a hypothesis to explain the dramatic restructuring experienced recently by the plant breeding and seed industry. The reorganization can be explained in part by the desire to exploit complementarities between intellectual assets needed to create genetically modified organisms. This hypothesis is tested using data on agricultural biotechnology patents, notices for field tests of genetically modified organisms, and firm characteristics. The presence of complementarities is identified with a positive covariance in the unexplained variation of asset holdings. Results indicate that coordination of complementary assets have increased under the consolidation of the industry

LAÇOS FINAIS: NOVAS ABORDAGENS SOBRE ETNICIDADE E DIÁSPORA NA AMÉRICA LATINA DO SÉCULO XX: OS JUDEUS COMO LENTES

Scholarly interest in Jews as a subject of Latin American Studies has grown markedly in recent decades, especially when compared to research on other Latin Americans who trace their ancestry to the Middle East, Asia or Eastern Europe. It is within this context that we propose the use of the term “Jewish-Latin American”, rather than “Latin American Jewry”, in order to shift the dominant paradigm about ethnicity in Latin America by returning the ‘nation’ to a prominent position. Our essay advances a series of propositions that might be useful to all students of ethnicity in the region, particularly to scholars working on minorities whose ancestors were characterized religiously as non-Catholic.O interesse acadêmico sobre os judeus como um assunto dos estudos latino-americanos tem crescido acentuadamente nas últimas décadas, especialmente quando comparado à pesquisa sobre outros latinoamericanos com ascendência no Oriente Médio, Ásia ou Europa Oriental. É neste contexto que propomos a utilização do termo “judeu latino-americano”, em vez de “judaísmo latino-americano”, a fim de mudar o paradigma dominante sobre a etnicidade na América Latina através do retorno da “nação” para uma posição de destaque. Este artigo avança em uma série de proposições que devem ser úteis a todos os alunos de etnicidade na região, especialmente para os acadêmicos que trabalham com as minorias cujos ancestrais foram religiosamente caracterizados como não-católicos.&nbsp

A Retrospective Genomic Landscape of 661 Young Adult Glioblastomas Diagnosed Using 2016 WHO Guidelines for Central Nervous System Tumors

The authors present a cohort of 661 young adult glioblastomas diagnosed using 2016 WHO World Health Organization Classification of Tumors of the Central Nervous System, utilizing comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) to explore their genomic landscape and assess their relationship to currently defined disease entities. This analysis explored variants with evidence of pathogenic function, common copy number variants (CNVs), and several novel fusion events not described in literature. Tumor mutational burden (TMB) mutational signatures, anatomic location, and tumor recurrence are further explored. Using data collected from CGP, unsupervised machine-learning techniques were leveraged to identify 10 genomic classes in previously assigned young adult glioblastomas. The authors relate these molecular classes to current World Health Organization guidelines and reference current literature to give therapeutic and prognostic descriptions where possible

Comprehensive Genomic Profiling of 282 Pediatric Low- and High-Grade Gliomas Reveals Genomic Drivers, Tumor Mutational Burden, and Hypermutation Signatures.

BACKGROUND: Pediatric brain tumors are the leading cause of death for children with cancer in the U.S. Incorporating next-generation sequencing data for both pediatric low-grade (pLGGs) and high-grade gliomas (pHGGs) can inform diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic decision-making. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed comprehensive genomic profiling on 282 pediatric gliomas (157 pHGGs, 125 pLGGs), sequencing 315 cancer-related genes and calculating the tumor mutational burden (TMB; mutations per megabase [Mb]). RESULTS: In pLGGs, we detected genomic alterations (GA) in 95.2% (119/125) of tumors. BRAF was most frequently altered (48%; 60/125), and FGFR1 missense (17.6%; 22/125), NF1 loss of function (8.8%; 11/125), and TP53 (5.6%; 7/125) mutations were also detected. Rearrangements were identified in 35% of pLGGs, including KIAA1549-BRAF, QKI-RAF1, FGFR3-TACC3, CEP85L-ROS1, and GOPC-ROS1 fusions. Among pHGGs, GA were identified in 96.8% (152/157). The genes most frequently mutated were TP53 (49%; 77/157), H3F3A (37.6%; 59/157), ATRX (24.2%; 38/157), NF1 (22.2%; 35/157), and PDGFRA (21.7%; 34/157). Interestingly, most H3F3A mutations (81.4%; 35/43) were the variant K28M. Midline tumor analysis revealed H3F3A mutations (40%; 40/100) consisted solely of the K28M variant. Pediatric high-grade gliomas harbored oncogenic EML4-ALK, DGKB-ETV1, ATG7-RAF1, and EWSR1-PATZ1 fusions. Six percent (9/157) of pHGGs were hypermutated (TMB >20 mutations per Mb; range 43-581 mutations per Mb), harboring mutations deleterious for DNA repair in MSH6, MSH2, MLH1, PMS2, POLE, and POLD1 genes (78% of cases). CONCLUSION: Comprehensive genomic profiling of pediatric gliomas provides objective data that promote diagnostic accuracy and enhance clinical decision-making. Additionally, TMB could be a biomarker to identify pediatric glioblastoma (GBM) patients who may benefit from immunotherapy. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: By providing objective data to support diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic decision-making, comprehensive genomic profiling is necessary for advancing care for pediatric neuro-oncology patients. This article presents the largest cohort of pediatric low- and high-grade gliomas profiled by next-generation sequencing. Reportable alterations were detected in 95% of patients, including diagnostically relevant lesions as well as novel oncogenic fusions and mutations. Additionally, tumor mutational burden (TMB) is reported, which identifies a subpopulation of hypermutated glioblastomas that harbor deleterious mutations in DNA repair genes. This provides support for TMB as a potential biomarker to identify patients who may preferentially benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors