SIGNS OF WILDNESS: CODES OF THE “PRIMITIVE” IN MASCULINE COMMODITY CULTURE

This project broadly examines articulations of the “primitive” emerging from various sites of popular cultural production, considering their operation within the wider “semioscape”– defined by Thurlow and Aiello (2007) as “the globalizing circulation of symbols, sign-systems, and meaning-making practices.” Taking my lead from Kurusawa (2002, 2004), Torgovnik (1991, 1998), Chow (1995), and Di Leonardo (1998), who have demonstrated the importance of the “primitive” as an interpretive discourse, I add to this body of thought by extending its scope into the realm of popular media and cultural production, examining cases within film, television, advertising, sports, and associated lifestyle commodities. I pose these general questions: How does the “primitive” contribute to the way meaning and usefulness is produced for certain commodities, and how has this changed over the last few decades? Is the “primitive” now an “empty” signifier with respect to the “non-western?” Does the greater proliferation and ease of othering via digital economies render discourses of primitive alterity less problematic? What prospects do these signs of wildness hold for masculine gender formation, shifting environmental awareness, and politics of cross-cultural consumption? Ultimately, the larger aim is to promote dialogue towards a critical re-mapping of the terms of the “primitive” as a resilient semiotic resource for commodity cultures vis-á-vis global information economies. I argue that these signs of wildness serve, as they often have in the past, to activate values about the “human” via transgression, transformation, and transcendence; but that these signs have more recently shifted as expressive resources, now altered by digital technologies, new media ecologies, and creative “knowledge communities” resulting in a pronounced fragmentation, mutability, and wider distribution in response to greater “noise.” Thus, I argue, our informational capitalism is exponentially more prolific at contriving and disseminating various transgressions for us, engendering a schizoid state of consumer appeals via a wider romantic-naturalist discourse of limits and potentials which appeals to the terms of the “primitive.” Finally, the easiness and disposability of such hypothetical transgressions makes conditions for corporate image-makers more desperate and frenetic, propelling an increasingly unstable and unpredictable semiotic state of affairs where signs of wildness take on special currency

Separating intrinsic interactions from extrinsic correlations in a network of sensory neurons

Correlations in sensory neural networks have both extrinsic and intrinsic origins. Extrinsic or stimulus correlations arise from shared inputs to the network, and thus depend strongly on the stimulus ensemble. Intrinsic or noise correlations reflect biophysical mechanisms of interactions between neurons, which are expected to be robust to changes of the stimulus ensemble. Despite the importance of this distinction for understanding how sensory networks encode information collectively, no method exists to reliably separate intrinsic interactions from extrinsic correlations in neural activity data, limiting our ability to build predictive models of the network response. In this paper we introduce a general strategy to infer {population models of interacting neurons that collectively encode stimulus information}. The key to disentangling intrinsic from extrinsic correlations is to infer the {couplings between neurons} separately from the encoding model, and to combine the two using corrections calculated in a mean-field approximation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on retinal recordings. The same coupling network is inferred from responses to radically different stimulus ensembles, showing that these couplings indeed reflect stimulus-independent interactions between neurons. The inferred model predicts accurately the collective response of retinal ganglion cell populations as a function of the stimulus

Atlantic Ocean Heat Transport Enabled by Indo-Pacific Heat Uptake and Mixing

The ocean transports vast amounts of heat around the planet, helping to regulate regional climate. One important component of this heat transport is the movement of warm water from equatorial regions toward the poles, with colder water flowing in return. Here, we introduce a framework relating meridional heat transport to the diabatic processes of surface forcing and turbulent mixing that move heat across temperature classes. Applied to a (1/4)° global ocean model the framework highlights the role of the tropical Indo‐Pacific in the global ocean heat transport. A large fraction of the northward heat transport in the Atlantic is ultimately sourced from heat uptake in the eastern tropical Pacific. Turbulent mixing moves heat from the warm, shallow Indo‐Pacific circulation to the cold deeper‐reaching Atlantic circulation. Our results underscore a renewed focus on the tropical oceans and their role in global circulation pathways

Normative Alethic Pluralism

Some philosophers have argued that truth is a norm of judgement and have provided a variety of formulations of this general thesis. In this paper, I shall side with these philosophers and assume that truth is a norm of judgement. What I am primarily interested in here are two core questions concerning the judgement-truth norm: (i) what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement? And (ii) do these relationships vary or are they constant? I argue for a pluralist picture—what I call Normative Alethic Pluralism (NAP)—according to which (i) there is more than one correct judgement-truth norm and (ii) the normative relationships between truth and judgement vary in relation to the subject matter of the judgement. By means of a comparative analysis of disagreement in three areas of the evaluative domain—refined aesthetics, basic taste and morality—I show that there is an important variability in the normative significance of disagreement—I call this the variability conjecture. By presenting a variation of Lynch’s scope problem for alethic monism, I argue that a monistic approach to the normative function of truth is unable to vindicate the conjecture. I then argue that normative alethic pluralism provides us with a promising model to account for it

Pathogens, Social Networks, and the Paradox of Transmission Scaling

Understanding the scaling of transmission is critical to predicting how infectious diseases will affect populations of different sizes and densities. The two classic “mean-field” epidemic models—either assuming density-dependent or frequency-dependent transmission—make predictions that are discordant with patterns seen in either within-population dynamics or across-population comparisons. In this paper, we propose that the source of this inconsistency lies in the greatly simplifying “mean-field” assumption of transmission within a fully-mixed population. Mixing in real populations is more accurately represented by a network of contacts, with interactions and infectious contacts confined to the local social neighborhood. We use network models to show that density-dependent transmission on heterogeneous networks often leads to apparent frequency dependency in the scaling of transmission across populations of different sizes. Network-methodology allows us to reconcile seemingly conflicting patterns of within- and across-population epidemiology

DnaA and the timing of chromosome replication in Escherichia coli as a function of growth rate.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: In Escherichia coli, overlapping rounds of DNA replication allow the bacteria to double in faster times than the time required to copy the genome. The precise timing of initiation of DNA replication is determined by a regulatory circuit that depends on the binding of a critical number of ATP-bound DnaA proteins at the origin of replication, resulting in the melting of the DNA and the assembly of the replication complex. The synthesis of DnaA in the cell is controlled by a growth-rate dependent, negatively autoregulated gene found near the origin of replication. Both the regulatory and initiation activity of DnaA depend on its nucleotide bound state and its availability. RESULTS: In order to investigate the contributions of the different regulatory processes to the timing of initiation of DNA replication at varying growth rates, we formulate a minimal quantitative model of the initiator circuit that includes the key ingredients known to regulate the activity of the DnaA protein. This model describes the average-cell oscillations in DnaA-ATP/DNA during the cell cycle, for varying growth rates. We evaluate the conditions under which this ratio attains the same threshold value at the time of initiation, independently of the growth rate. CONCLUSIONS: We find that a quantitative description of replication initiation by DnaA must rely on the dependency of the basic parameters on growth rate, in order to account for the timing of initiation of DNA replication at different cell doubling times. We isolate two main possible scenarios for this, depending on the roles of DnaA autoregulation and DnaA ATP-hydrolysis regulatory process. One possibility is that the basal rate of regulatory inactivation by ATP hydrolysis must vary with growth rate. Alternatively, some parameters defining promoter activity need to be a function of the growth rate. In either case, the basal rate of gene expression needs to increase with the growth rate, in accordance with the known characteristics of the dnaA promoter. Furthermore, both inactivation and autorepression reduce the amplitude of the cell-cycle oscillations of DnaA-ATP/DNA.Peer Reviewe

Measuring populations to improve vaccination coverage

In low-income settings, vaccination campaigns supplement routine immunization but often fail to achieve coverage goals due to uncertainty about target population size and distribution. Accurate, updated estimates of target populations are rare but critical; short-term fluctuations can greatly impact population size and susceptibility. We use satellite imagery to quantify population fluctuations and the coverage achieved by a measles outbreak response vaccination campaign in urban Niger and compare campaign estimates to measurements from a post-campaign survey. Vaccine coverage was overestimated because the campaign underestimated resident numbers and seasonal migration further increased the target population. We combine satellite-derived measurements of fluctuations in population distribution with high-resolution measles case reports to develop a dynamic model that illustrates the potential improvement in vaccination campaign coverage if planners account for predictable population fluctuations. Satellite imagery can improve retrospective estimates of vaccination campaign impact and future campaign planning by synchronizing interventions with predictable population fluxes

Spatial distribution of vastus lateralis blood flow and oxyhemoglobin saturation measured at the end of isometric quadriceps contraction by multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy.

Muscle blood flow (MBF) and muscle oxygen saturation (SmO(2)) were measured at eight locations (four proximal, four distal) over a 4 x 8 cm(2) area of the vastus lateralis at rest and immediately after isometric, maximal quadriceps contraction using multichannel, frequency-domain, near-infrared spectroscopy. A venous occlusion was applied 20 s before the end of the exercise, so that the venous-occlusion-induced increase in total hemoglobin was recorded without any delay after the end of the exercise. Therefore, we were able to investigate the relationship between the exercise-induced changes in vastus lateralis MBF and SmO(2). After exercise, MBF increased significantly at each measured location. Comparing the MBF values measured at the end of exercise in the proximal and distal regions, we observed that only one proximal region had a significantly higher MBF than the corresponding distal one. The maximum desaturation measured during exercise was positively correlated with the postexercise to pre-exercise MBF ratio in both the proximal (P=0.016) and distal (P=0.0065) regions. These data confirm that frequency-domain tissue oximeters are noninvasive, powerful tools to investigate the spatial and temporal features of muscle blood flow and oxygenation, with potential applications in areas of pathophysiology