Accumulation of Self-Reactive Naive and Memory B Cell Reveals Sequential Defects in B Cell Tolerance Checkpoints in Sjogren's Syndrome

This work was funded by grants number 18237 and 20089 from Arthritis Research UK (http://www.arthritisresearchuk.org) to MB and the William Harvey Research Foundation. EC was recipient of short-term travel fellowships from EMBO (ASTF 318-2010) and EFIS-IL

The historical origins of corruption in the developing world: a comparative analysis of East Asia

A new approach has emerged in the literature on corruption in the developing world that breaks with the assumption that corruption is driven by individualistic self-interest and, instead, conceptualizes corruption as an informal system of norms and practices. While this emerging neo-institutionalist approach has done much to further our understanding of corruption in the developing world, one key question has received relatively little attention: how do we explain differences in the institutionalization of corruption between developing countries? The paper here addresses this question through a systematic comparison of seven developing and newly industrialized countries in East Asia. The argument that emerges through this analysis is that historical sequencing mattered: countries in which the "political marketplace" had gone through a process of concentration before universal suffrage was introduced are now marked by less harmful types of corruption than countries where mass voting rights where rolled out in a context of fragmented political marketplaces. The paper concludes by demonstrating that this argument can be generalized to the developing world as a whole

Introduction

Arts in academia is a topic that has not yet found much acceptance, especially not in a discipline like linguistics. It is either considered as not scholarly enough, as not sufficiently objective, or as providing too many open questions and spaces. If artistic takes on an academic issue are considered, it happens usually in a special framework, such as a “science slam” or something termed “alternative” approach. Bringing art and academia together, without creating a limited space first, however, is a very fruitful and rewarding undertaking

Jamaica residency - reflections

The text derives from the discussion of four key words – dream, love, water, respect – during a residency on colonial ideologies and scholarship, which took place in Negril, Jamaica in 2017. The residency was located, theoretically as well as in actuality, in the Edgelands of knowledge-making in northern, Eurocentric academia, in order to allow for sifting through what tends to be cast aside in the disciplinary environments which we inhabit normally. It addressed the coloniality of knowledge production as something that is based not only on canonic forms and structures, but also on its construction as a territorial artifact. Coming together, as a group of scholars from different places, in the Jamaican setting of mass tourism and postcolonial power inequalities, was intended to help in turning the gaze to the binarities at the foundation of ideologies associated with knowledge and language: Following the strictures of this architecture, academic thinking and theory-making happens in university offices, seminar rooms and conference halls, while beaches and tropical greenery are places of leisure or of fieldwork in the sense of data mining. Such spatial divisions are connected with other binarities that characterize epistemological colonial continuities, such as oppositions between theory and practice, culture and nature, reason and emotion, male and female; dualisms such as beach vs. office allow for powerful othering in that observers must withdraw from the contexts of observation and reflect upon them from an institutionalized distance in the isolation of their academic home bases

A Novel Single-Site Mutation in the Catalytic Domain of Protoporphyrinogen Oxidase IX (PPO) Confers Resistance to PPO-Inhibiting Herbicides

Protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO)-inhibiting herbicides are used to control weeds in a variety of crops. These herbicides inhibit heme and photosynthesis in plants. PPO-inhibiting herbicides are used to control Amaranthus palmeri (Palmer amaranth) especially those with resistance to glyphosate and acetolactate synthase (ALS) inhibiting herbicides. While investigating the basis of high fomesafen-resistance in A. palmeri, we identified a new amino acid substitution of glycine to alanine in the catalytic domain of PPO2 at position 399 (G399A) (numbered according to the protein sequence of A. palmeri). G399 is highly conserved in the PPO protein family across eukaryotic species. Through combined molecular, computational, and biochemical approaches, we established that PPO2 with G399A mutation has reduced affinity for several PPO-inhibiting herbicides, possibly due to steric hindrance induced by the mutation. This is the first report of a PPO2 amino acid substitution at G399 position in a field-selected weed population of A. palmeri. The mutant A. palmeri PPO2 showed high-level in vitro resistance to different PPO inhibitors relative to the wild type. The G399A mutation is very likely to confer resistance to other weed species under selection imposed by the extensive agricultural use of PPO-inhibiting herbicides

Self-authorship and creative industries workers’ career decision-making

Career decision-making is arguably at its most complex within professions where work is precarious and career calling is strong. This article reports from a study that examined the career decision-making of creative industries workers, for whom career decisions can impact psychological well-being and identity just as much as they impact individuals’ work and career. The respondents were 693 creative industries workers who used a largely open-ended survey to create in-depth reflections on formative moments and career decision-making. Analysis involved the theoretical model of self-authorship, which provides a way of understanding how people employ their sense of self to make meaning of their experiences. The self-authorship process emerged as a complex, non-linear and consistent feature of career decision-making. Theoretical contributions include a non-linear view of self-authorship that exposes the authorship of visible and covert multiple selves prompted by both proactive and reactive identity work