The Ruse of Reading: The Postcolonial Literary Marketplace and the Novels of Gina Apostol

This paper explores the politics of reading in the novelistic production of Gina Apostol in relation to Sarah Brouillette’s analysis of the postcolonial literary marketplace, Timothy Brennan’s critique of cosmopolitanism, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s tracking of the native informant in postcolonial discourse. In Brouillette’s work, postcolonial writers, unlike the Romantic author who disavows commercial popularity, are aware of the commodification of their work and interact with it, either through resistance or complicity. Cosmopolitanism for Brennan denotes an unequal flow of intellectual commodities between center and periphery instantiated in the consciousness of the migrant writer valorized in “international book markets because of their authentic native attachment to a specific Third World locale” (“Cosmopolitans and Celebrities” 3). Lastly, the native informant, in Spivak’s A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, is a postcolonial subject whose self-representation projects the ascendancy of liberal Western discourse while authenticating a homogenized identity for the ‘Other’

Autopoetics, Market Competence, and the Transnational Author

Although materialist analyses have critiqued the institutionalization of postcolonial studies and its emergence in global capitalism, only few have addressed the role of creative writing in standardizing migrant novelistic production to what Mark McGurl has designated as ‘program fiction’ whose trademark is the practice of “involuted self-reference”. In filling this gap, this paper looks into Gina Apostol’s writings and their reception by international audiences as exemplary of the cultural capital of program fiction. While Apostol’s autofictions/ficto-criticism points to the influence of creative writing in her novels — she studied under John Barth in the MFA program in Johns Hopkins University, this context is overlooked when metropolitan readers construe her work as postcolonial literature. I argue that Apostol’s textualist renderings of Philippine history is an act of ventriloquism whose metropolitan success is a symptom of the auratic authority of postcolonial studies in the First world literary marketplace

Decay-Accelerating Factor 1 Deficiency Exacerbates Leptospiral-Induced Murine Chronic Nephritis and Renal Fibrosis

Leptospirosis is a global zoonosis caused by pathogenicLeptospira, which can colonize the proximal renal tubules andpersist for long periods in the kidneys of infected hosts. Here, we characterized the infection of C57BL/6J wild-type andDaf12/2mice, which have an enhanced host response, with a virulentLeptospira interrogansstrain at 14 days post-infection,its persistence in the kidney, and its link to kidney fibrosis at 90 days post-infection. We found thatLeptospira interroganscan induce acute moderate nephritis in wild-type mice and is able to persist in some animals, inducing fibrosis in theabsence of mortality. In contrast, Daf12/2mice showed acute mortality, with a higher bacterial burden. At the chronic stage,Daf12/2mice showed greater inflammation and fibrosis than at 14 days post-infection and higher levels at all times thanthe wild-type counterpart. Compared with uninfected mice, infected wild-type mice showed higher levels of IL-4, IL-10 andIL-13, with similar levels ofa-smooth muscle actin, galectin-3, TGF-b1, IL-17, IFN-c, and lower IL-12 levels at 90 days post-infection. In contrast, fibrosis in Daf12/2mice was accompanied by high expression ofa-smooth muscle actin, galectin-3, IL-10, IL-13, and IFN-c, similar levels of TGF-b1, IL-12, and IL-17 and lower IL-4 levels. This study demonstrates the link betweenLeptospira-induced murine chronic nephritis with renal fibrosis and shows a protective role of Daf1.Fil: Ferrer, Maria Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; ArgentinaFil: Scharrig Fernandez, Maria Emilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; ArgentinaFil: Alberdi, Maria Lucrecia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; ArgentinaFil: Cédola, Maia Tatiana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; ArgentinaFil: Prêtre, Gabriela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; ArgentinaFil: Drut, Ricardo. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Cs.médicas. Cátedra de Patología Ii; ArgentinaFil: Song, Wen-Chao. University of Pennsylvania; Estados UnidosFil: Gomez, Ricardo Martin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular; Argentin

Héctor Alimonda, the American task of political ecology

This text is an introduction of Alternautas' mini-dossier in tribute to the work of Hector Alimonda (1947-2017). Here, Facundo Martín, Gabriela Merlinsky and Catalina Toro Pérez present Alimonda's unique contribution to the field of political ecology in Latin America. It is followed by the newly translated "In the key of south: Latin American political ecology and critical thinking", the introduction of Alimonda´s latest book, Ecología Política Latinoamericana - Volumen 1 (2017), co-edited by Facundo Martín and Catalina Toro Pérez. In the next weeks, we will also publish a translation of"The coloniality of nature", an article that appeared originally in La naturaleza colonizada (2011).Fil: Martin, Facundo Damian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Ciencias Humanas, Sociales y Ambientales; ArgentinaFil: Toro Perez, Catalina. Universidad Nacional de Colombia; ColombiaFil: Merlinsky, Maria Gabriela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Propuesta temática histórico-socioeconómica para la reconstrucción del malecón de puerto bolívar

La Parroquia de Puerto de Bolívar ofrece alternativas de tipo turístico, económico y comercial y su malecón es un atractivo punto de partida para el desarrollo de programas de turismo, ya sean estos de carácter cultural, ecológico, natural, etc. Sin embargo, en proporción a la potencialidad de estas zonas, existe un limitado desarrollo y escasa atención pública para lograr el aprovechamiento y fortalecimiento de los atractivos existentes en el área. El objetivo general de este trabajo es incentivar el desarrollo turístico en la Parroquia Puerto de Bolívar a través de una propuesta temática histórico-socioeconómica para la reconstrucción de su malecón. En la elaboración de nuestra tesis, fue necesario implementar un proceso investigativo conjunto; que nos permita determinar los principales hechos históricos de esta población, las necesidades y percepción tanto de la comunidad local como de los visitantes y la identificación de los otros usos que se le ha estado dando al malecón; para de esta manera plantear una propuesta sólidamente sustentada que conjugue de forma continua el pasado de esta población con su realidad actual

Understanding the Logics of Pheromone Processing in the Honeybee Brain: From Labeled-Lines to Across-Fiber Patterns

Honeybees employ a very rich repertoire of pheromones to ensure intraspecific communication in a wide range of behavioral contexts. This communication can be complex, since the same compounds can have a variety of physiological and behavioral effects depending on the receiver. Honeybees constitute an ideal model to study the neurobiological basis of pheromonal processing, as they are already one of the most influential animal models for the study of general odor processing and learning at behavioral, cellular and molecular levels. Accordingly, the anatomy of the bee brain is well characterized and electro- and opto-physiological recording techniques at different stages of the olfactory circuit are possible in the laboratory. Here we review pheromone communication in honeybees and analyze the different stages of olfactory processing in the honeybee brain, focusing on available data on pheromone detection, processing and representation at these different stages. In particular, we argue that the traditional distinction between labeled-line and across-fiber pattern processing, attributed to pheromone and general odors respectively, may not be so clear in the case of honeybees, especially for social-pheromones. We propose new research avenues for stimulating future work in this area

Hierarchical deep learning for predicting GO annotations by integrating protein knowledge

Motivation: Experimental testing and manual curation are the most precise ways for assigning Gene Ontology (GO) terms describing protein functions. However, they are expensive, time-consuming and cannot cope with the exponential growth of data generated by high-throughput sequencing methods. Hence, researchers need reliable computational systems to help fill the gap with automatic function prediction. The results of the last Critical Assessment of Function Annotation challenge revealed that GO-terms prediction remains a very challenging task. Recent developments on deep learning are significantly breaking out the frontiers leading to new knowledge in protein research thanks to the integration of data from multiple sources. However, deep models hitherto developed for functional prediction are mainly focused on sequence data and have not achieved breakthrough performances yet. Results: We propose DeeProtGO, a novel deep-learning model for predicting GO annotations by integrating protein knowledge. DeeProtGO was trained for solving 18 different prediction problems, defined by the three GO sub-ontologies, the type of proteins, and the taxonomic kingdom. Our experiments reported higher prediction quality when more protein knowledge is integrated. We also benchmarked DeeProtGO against state-of-the-art methods on public datasets, and showed it can effectively improve the prediction of GO annotations.Fil: Merino, Gabriela Alejandra. European Molecular Biology Laboratory. European Bioinformatics Institute.; Reino Unido. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; ArgentinaFil: Saidi, Rabie. European Molecular Biology Laboratory. European Bioinformatics Institute.; Reino UnidoFil: Milone, Diego Humberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; ArgentinaFil: Stegmayer, Georgina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; ArgentinaFil: Martin, Maria J.. European Molecular Biology Laboratory. European Bioinformatics Institute.; Reino Unid

TMV induces RNA decay pathways to modulate gene silencing and disease symptoms

RNA decay pathways comprise a combination of RNA degradation mechanisms that are implicated in gene expression, development and defense responses in eukaryotes. These mechanisms are known as the RNA Quality Control or RQC pathways. In plants, another important RNA degradation mechanism is the posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) mediated by small RNAs (siRNAs). Notably, the RQC pathway antagonizes PTGS by preventing the entry of dysfunctional mRNAs into the silencing pathway to avoid global degradation of mRNA by siRNAs. Viral transcripts must evade RNA degrading mechanisms, thus viruses encode PTGS suppressor proteins to counteract viral RNA silencing. Here, we demonstrate that tobacco plants infected with TMV and transgenic lines expressing TMV MP and CP (coat protein) proteins (which are not linked to the suppression of silencing) display increased transcriptional levels of RNA decay genes. These plants also showed accumulation of cytoplasmic RNA granules with altered structure, increased rates of RNA decay for transgenes and defective transgene PTGS amplification. Furthermore, knockdown of RRP41 or RRP43 RNA exosome components led to lower levels of TMV accumulation with milder symptoms after infection, several developmental defects and miRNA deregulation. Thus, we propose that TMV proteins induce RNA decay pathways (in particular exosome components) to impair antiviral PTGS and this defensive mechanism would constitute an additional counter-defense strategy that lead to disease symptoms.Inst. de BiotecnologíaFil: Conti, Gabriela. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Zavallo, Diego. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Venturuzzi, Andrea Laura. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Rodriguez, Maria Cecilia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Crespi, Martin. Institute of Plant Sciences Paris-Saclay; FranciaFil: Asurmendi, Sebastian. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Caracterización de cepas de campo de Herpesvirus suino 1 aisladas en Argentina

Caracterización de cepas de campo de Herpesvirus suino 1 aisladas en Argentina. Se caracterizaron cepas argentinas de herpesvirus suino tipo 1 (HVS-1) mediante corte con las enzimas de restricción BamHI, BstEII y XhoI. La presencia del tipo genómico II había sido reportada en la Argentina una sola vez y, hasta el momento, no se han informado nuevos casos. Este estudio reveló una homogeneidad de los sitios BamHI, acorde con el número y el tamaño de los fragmentos. La presencia del fragmento BamHI #7 en los aislamientos argentinos analizados sugiere que éstos pertenecen al tipo salvaje (wild-type). Además, se caracterizó el principal dominio inmunogénico de la glicoproteína E de todas las cepas argentinas y se lo comparó con los de las cepas de referencia y con las secuencias disponibles en la base de datos GenBank. Los porcentajes de similitud obtenidos oscilaron entre 99 y 100%.The genomic characterization of Suid herpesvirus 1 (SHV-1) isolates from Argentina was accomplished by restriction pattern analysis using the BamHI, BstEII and XhoI enzymes. Type II genome has been described only once in Argentina. This study revealed considerable homogeneity of BamHI endonuclease sites in all the strains analyzed, according to the number and size of the fragments. No deletion of BamHI fragment #7 among the Argentinean isolates suggests that these strains are wild-type. In addition, the main antigenic domain of glycoprotein E of all the Argentinean strains, as well as the reference strains and sequences available in the GenBank, were characterized. The similarity percent oscillated between 99 and 100%.Fil: Serena, Maria Soledad. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Departamento de Microbiología. Cátedra de Virología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Metz, German Ernesto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Departamento de Microbiología. Cátedra de Virología; ArgentinaFil: Martin Ocampos, Giselle Paula. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Departamento de Microbiología. Cátedra de Virología; ArgentinaFil: Gambaro, Sabrina Eliana. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Departamento de Microbiología. Cátedra de Virología; ArgentinaFil: Mortola, Eduardo. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Cátedra de Inmunología; ArgentinaFil: Echeverria, Maria Gabriela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias. Departamento de Microbiología. Cátedra de Virología; Argentin