Latinidad in Austin, TX

Review of 'Mujeres' exhibition (February 2015) in Austin, Texas

Transition from freshwater to seawater reshapes the skin-associated microbiota of Atlantic salmon

Knowledge concerning shifts in microbiota is important in order to elucidate the perturbations in the mucosal barrier during the transitional life stages of the host. In the present study, a 16S rRNA gene sequencing technique was employed to examine the compositional changes and presumptive functions of the skin-associated bacterial communities of Atlantic salmon reared under controlled laboratory conditions and transferred from freshwater to seawater. Proteobacteria was the dominant phylum in salmon from both freshwater (45%) and seawater (above 89%). Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, Cyanobacteria and Verrucomicrobia were the most abundant phyla in salmon from freshwater. The transition to seawater influenced the OTU richness and evenness. The high abundance (~62%) of the genus Oleispira made Proteobacteria the most significantly abundant phylum in salmon from seawater. The predictive functional profile suggested that the communities had the ability to extract energy from amino acids in order to maintain their metabolism and scavenge and biosynthesise compounds to make structural changes and carry out signalling for their survival. These findings need to be further explored in relation to metabolic processes, the fish genotype, and the environment

Roberto Bolaño's fiction: An expanding universe; David Foster Wallace and ‘The long thing’: new essays on the novels; The Maximalist novel: from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's rainbow to Roberto Bolaño's 2666

Review Essay: Chris Andrews, Roberto Bolaño's Fiction: An Expanding Universe Marshall Boswell ed., David Foster Wallace and ‘The Long Thing’: New Essays on the Novels Stefano Ercolino, The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow to Roberto Bolaño's 266

Letting Down the Drawbridge: Restoration of the Right to Protest At Parliament

This article analyses the history of the prohibition of protests around Parliament under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. This prohibited any demonstrations of one or more persons within one square kilometre of the Houses of Parliament unless permission had been obtained in writing from the police in advance. This measure both formed part of a pattern of the then Labour Government to restrict protest and increase police powers, and was symbolically important in restricting protest that was directed at politicians at a time when politicians have been very unpopular. The Government of Tony Blair had been embarrassed by a one-man protest by peace campaigner, Brian Haw. In response to sustained defiance, Mr. Blair’s successor as Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and opposition Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs pledged to remove the restrictions, but this was not acted on by Parliament until September 2011. This article argues that the original restrictions were unnecessary, and that the much narrower successor provisions could be improved by being drafted more specifically

Ultrastructural Changes in Bovine Oocytes Induced During In Vitro Production of Embryos

Despite substantial progress in the development of procedures for in vitro maturation, in vitro fertilisation and in vitro culture, the production of viable embryos in most laboratories is around 20-30%. The objective of this study was to examine ultrastructural changes induced in bovine oocytes during various stages of in vitro embryo production as these changes could contribute towards the low viability of the embryos. The oocytes recovered from slaughterhouse ovanes were transported in modified Dulbecco's phosphate buffered saline for various periods of time at two different temperatures, in vitro matured (WM), in vitro fertilised (WF) and in vitro cultured (WC) to morulae stages. After submitting to various stages mentioned above the oocytes were processed for transmission electron microscopy and examined in Hitachi 7100 or Phillips CM 12 electron microscopes at 75 or 80 kV respectively. Results exhibited that holding of oocytes in commonly used transport medium induced changes in the organelles such as rough endoplasmic reticulum, cortical granules, mitochondria and Golgi complexes both in the cumulus cells and those present in the oocytes. The severity of these changes was higher in oocytes transported at 2-4 C than those transported at 35-370 C the effect of which was reflected by the viability test. None of the cleaved oocytes (0/49) in the former while an average of 18.2% (10/55) of the oocytes in the latter developed to morulae. In the second experiment, the oocytes which were submitted to IVM, exhibited ultrastructural changes such as incomplete cumulus expansion, swelling of mitochondria, reduced incidence of cortical granules and accumulation of lipid droplets which were probably the factors affecting the viability of oocytes. In the third experiment, examination of in vitro produced morulae (35/121, 28.9%) revealed the presence of a large number of lipid droplets, vacuoles and numerous mitochondria undergoing the process of degeneration which ultimately may affect the viability of embryos. It was concluded that the ultrastructural changes induced during various stages of in vitro embryo production contribute towards low viability of the in vitro produced embryos

Photometric Study of W UMa Type Binaries in the Old Open Cluster Berkeley 39

The study of W UMa binary systems give a wealth of information about its nature as well as about its parent body (if any), like clusters. In this paper, we present the I passband photometric solutions of four W UMa binaries in the open cluster Berkeley 39 using the latest version of WD program. The result shows that, two binary systems are W subtype W UMa binary systems and another two systems are H subtype W UMa binary systems. No third body is found in any of the four systems. We found a correlation between the period and mass-ratio as well as temperature and mass-ratio for the respective variables which is similar to the relationship between mass ratio and total mass of the contact binaries as shown by vant Veer (1996) and Li et al. (2008).Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, accepted for the publication in RA