Uncanny Objects and the Fear of the Familiar:Hiding from Akan Witches in New York City

This article examines the cosmology and secret practices of West African traditional priests in New York City in preventing the spread of witchcraft, an evil invisible spirit transmitted between female members of the Akan matrilineage. Explored is an uncanny dynamic as everyday habitus becomes increasingly strange in the world of a young Ghanaian woman in the Bronx, who has become petrified of insinuations of witchcraft from close family members. In trying to hide the young woman from infection by her fellow witches, Akan priests attempt to ‘capture’ her habits and everyday routines, calling upon the iconic magic of New York City in order to ‘misplace’ familiarity within the anonymity of Manhattan. In this process, the transmission of the witch’s spirit to the intended victim is disturbed as the victim’s life and things are moved. Nowhere to be found, the witch shifts her attention to other victims

Applications of yeast flocculation in biotechnological processes

A review on the main aspects associated with yeast flocculation and its application in biotechnological processes is presented. This subject is addressed following three main aspects – the basics of yeast flocculation, the development of “new” flocculating yeast strains and bioreactor development. In what concerns the basics of yeast flocculation, the state of the art on the most relevant aspects of mechanism, physiology and genetics of yeast flocculation is reported. The construction of flocculating yeast strains includes not only the recombinant constitutive flocculent brewer’s yeast, but also recombinant flocculent yeast for lactose metabolisation and ethanol production. Furthermore, recent work on the heterologous β-galactosidase production using a recombinant flocculent Saccharomyces cerevisiae is considered. As bioreactors using flocculating yeast cells have particular properties, mainly associated with a high solid phase hold-up, a section dedicated to its operation is presented. Aspects such as bioreactor productivity and culture stability as well as bioreactor hydrodynamics and mass transfer properties of flocculating cell cultures are considered. Finally, the paper concludes describing some of the applications of high cell density flocculation bioreactors and discussing potential new uses of these systems.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) – PRAXIS XXI - BD11306/97

A conserved motif flags acyl carrier proteins for β-branching in polyketide synthesis

Type I PKSs often utilise programmed β-branching, via enzymes of an “HMG-CoA synthase (HCS) cassette”, to incorporate various side chains at the second carbon from the terminal carboxylic acid of growing polyketide backbones. We identified a strong sequence motif in Acyl Carrier Proteins (ACPs) where β-branching is known. Substituting ACPs confirmed a correlation of ACP type with β-branching specificity. While these ACPs often occur in tandem, NMR analysis of tandem β-branching ACPs indicated no ACP-ACP synergistic effects and revealed that the conserved sequence motif forms an internal core rather than an exposed patch. Modelling and mutagenesis identified ACP Helix III as a probable anchor point of the ACP-HCS complex whose position is determined by the core. Mutating the core affects ACP functionality while ACP-HCS interface substitutions modulate system specificity. Our method for predicting β-carbon branching expands the potential for engineering novel polyketides and lays a basis for determining specificity rules

Non-affirmative Theory of Education as a Foundation for Curriculum Studies, Didaktik and Educational Leadership

This chapter presents non-affirmative theory of education as the foundation for a new research program in education, allowing us to bridge educational leadership, curriculum studies and Didaktik. We demonstrate the strengths of this framework by analyzing literature from educational leadership and curriculum theory/didaktik. In contrast to both socialization-oriented explanations locating curriculum and leadership within existing society, and transformation-oriented models viewing education as revolutionary or super-ordinate to society, non-affirmative theory explains the relation between education and politics, economy and culture, respectively, as non-hierarchical. Here critical deliberation and discursive practices mediate between politics, culture, economy and education, driven by individual agency in historically developed cultural and societal institutions. While transformative and socialization models typically result in instrumental notions of leadership and teaching, non-affirmative education theory, previously developed within German and Nordic education, instead views leadership and teaching as relational and hermeneutic, drawing on ontological core concepts of modern education: recognition; summoning to self-activity and Bildsamkeit. Understanding educational leadership, school development and teaching then requires a comparative multi-level approach informed by discursive institutionalism and organization theory, in addition to theorizing leadership and teaching as cultural-historical and critical-hermeneutic activity. Globalisation and contemporary challenges to deliberative democracy also call for rethinking modern nation-state based theorizing of education in a cosmopolitan light. Non-affirmative education theory allows us to understand and promote recognition based democratic citizenship (political, economical and cultural) that respects cultural, ethical and epistemological variations in a globopolitan era. We hope an American-European-Asian comparative dialogue is enhanced by theorizing education with a non-affirmative approach

Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene cluster

A wide variety of enzymatic pathways that produce specialized metabolites in bacteria, fungi and plants are known to be encoded in biosynthetic gene clusters. Information about these clusters, pathways and metabolites is currently dispersed throughout the literature, making it difficult to exploit. To facilitate consistent and systematic deposition and retrieval of data on biosynthetic gene clusters, we propose the Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene cluster (MIBiG) data standard.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog