The deleterious effects of human erythropoietin gene driven by the rabbit whey acidic protein gene promoter in transgenic rabbits

International audienc

A federation of clutter: the bourgeoning language of vulnerability in Australian policing policies

The policing of vulnerable people has long been a topic of operational uncertainty and political sensitivity. On the one hand, governments have accepted that police officers require special mechanisms to cater for disadvantaged social groups and should interact with members of these groups in such a way that vulnerability attributes are acknowledged (Bartkowiak-Théron and Asquith 2012). On the other hand, agencies disagree on a variety of technical issues relating to the policing of vulnerable people, such as collaborative logistics, leadership, ownership and resource sharing. The policing of vulnerability has been under close scrutiny for over 30 years, with an increasing array of government and non-government services contributing their own areas of expertise to assist in solving these ‘wicked’ issues (Fleming and Wood 2006: 2). Yet, the burgeoning lists of who constitutes a vulnerable person, and the haphazard and localised development of strategies, have left little room for policy and practice transfer across vulnerability attributes, let alone jurisdictions. In this chapter, we reverse the policy transfer lens from the UK and US to consider the valuable policy and practice innovations developed in one Australian jurisdiction that may resolve some of the operational barriers to policing vulnerability in other jurisdictions.The interagency collaboration of government departments such as police, housing, education and health is now de rigueur and epitomised in the language of ‘whole of government’ protocols. However, such collaboration is not without its problems (Bartkowiak-Théron 2011). Some of the much-debated issues include policy and practice silos (Boxelaar et al. 2006), core business (Millie 2014) and specialised training (Bartkowiak-Théron and Lieutier 2014). In addition, a critical issue that continues to shape policing responses to vulnerability is the vernacular used to determine whether someone is vulnerable, and how such a person is identified. Not all agencies talk about the same people in the same way; nor do they necessarily talk about the same people at all. In this chapter, we explore what has become terminological clutter. We analyse not only divergence and disagreement in terms and expressions but also how this semantic clutter can contribute to operational ambiguity and uncertainty in policy development

Habitat fragmentation differentially shapes neutral and immune gene variation in a tropical bird species

International audienceHabitat fragmentation is a major cause of biodiversity loss, responsible for an alteration of intraspecific patterns of neutral genetic diversity and structure. Although neutral genetic variation can be informative for demographic inferences, it may be a poor predictor of adaptive genetic diversity and thus of the consequences of habitat fragmentation on selective evolutionary processes. In this context, we contrasted patterns of genetic diversity and structure of neutral loci (microsatellites) and immune genes (i.e., toll-like receptors) in an understorey bird species, the wedge-billed woodcreeper Glyphorynchus spirurus. The objectives were (1) to investigate forest fragmentation effects on population genetic diversity, (2) to disentangle the relative role of demography (genetic drift and migration) and selection, and (3) to assess whether immunogenetic patterns could be associated with variation of ectoparasite (i.e., ticks) pressures. Our results revealed an erosion of neutral genetic diversity and a substantial genetic differentiation among fragmented populations, resulting from a decrease in landscape connectivity and leading to the divergence of distinct genetic pools at a small spatial scale. Patterns of genetic diversity observed for TLR4 and TLR5 were concordant with neutral genetic patterns, whereas those observed for TLR3 and TLR21 were discordant. This result underlines that the dominant evolutionary force shaping immunogenetic diversity (genetic drift vs. selection) may be different depending on loci considered. Finally, tick prevalence was higher in fragmented environments. We discussed the hypothesis that pathogen selective pressures may contribute to maintain adaptive genetic diversity despite the negative demographic effect of habitat fragmentation on neutral genetic diversity