Engaging aesthetically with tapa barkcloth in the museum

Tapa barkcloth was a fabric replete with materialities of cultural and aesthetic values in 18th- and 19th-century Oceania. In the modern ethnographic museum, remote in time (and frequently space) from its origin, what remains to be appreciated cross-culturally? I think through a tripartite model here, in which certain aesthetic responses are taken as universal, others as shaped by cross-cultural materialities, and yet others as dependent upon the spatiotemporal contexts of creation and appreciation

Oligonucleotide sequences forming short self-complimentary hairpins can expedite the down-regulation of Coprinopsis cinerea genes

Gene silencing in fungi is often induced by dsRNA hairpin forming constructs the preparation of which can require multiple cloning steps. To simplify gene silencing in the filamentous fungi we have evaluated a high throughput cloning method for target sequences using the homobasidiomycete Coprinopsis cinerea, the GFP reporter and a commercially available vector system. The pSUPER RNAi System™, which was developed for mammalian experiments, exploits the human H1 Polymerase III (Pol III) RNA gene promoter and expedites cloning/expression of specific user-defined oligonucleotide sequences to form short self-complimentary hairpins. Transformation of C. cinerea with pSUPER constructs harboring specific oligonucleotides (19 nt stem length) enabled recovery of transformants with reduced transcripts of the GFP transgene, that were less fluorescent in protein assays and microscopic phenotypes. This technological advance should expedite functional genomic studies in C. cinerea and has wider potential for utility in other homobasidiomycete and filamentous fungi

The effect of mesh size and bed roughness on the simulation of sediment transport off the east coast of Norfolk

Water Qualit

The importance of DNA methylation in prostate cancer development.

After briefly reviewing the nature of DNA methylation, its general role in cancer and the tools available to interrogate it, we consider the literature surrounding DNA methylation as relating to prostate cancer. Specific consideration is given to recurrent alterations. A list of frequently reported genes is synthesized from 17 studies that have reported on methylation changes in malignant prostate tissue, and we chart the timing of those changes in the diseases history through amalgamation of several previously published data sets. We also review associations with genetic alterations and hormone signalling, before the practicalities of investigating prostate cancer methylation using cell lines are assessed. We conclude by outlining the interplay between DNA methylation and prostate cancer metabolism and their regulation by androgen receptor, with a specific discussion of the mitochondria and their associations with DNA methylation.CEM is funded by an ERC grant. IGM is supported in Oslo by funding from the Norwegian Research Council, Helse Sor-Ost and the University of Oslo through the Centre for Molecular Medicine (Norway), which is a part of the Nordic EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) partnership. IGM holds a visiting scientist position with Cancer Research UK through the Cambridge Research Institute and a Senior Honorary Visiting Research Fellowship with Cambridge University through the Department of Oncology. IGM is supported in Belfast by the Belfast-Manchester Movember Centre of Excellence (CE013_2-004), funded in partnership with Prostate Cancer UK. AGL is supported by a Cancer Research UK programme grant (C14303/A20406) to Simon Tavaré and by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 project SOUND (Grant Agreement no. 633974). CEM and AGL acknowledge the support of the University of Cambridge, Cancer Research UK and Hutchison Whampoa Limited.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2016.04.00

Epidemiology and fitness effects of wood mouse herpesvirus in a natural host population

Rodent gammaherpesviruses have become important models for understanding human herpesvirus diseases. In particular, interactions between murid herpesvirus 4 and Mus musculus (a non-natural host species) have been extensively studied under controlled laboratory conditions. However, several fundamental aspects of murine gammaherpesvirus biology are not well understood, including how these viruses are transmitted from host to host, and their impacts on host fitness under natural conditions. Here, we investigate the epidemiology of a gammaherpesvirus in free-living wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) and bank voles (Myodes glareolus) in a 2-year longitudinal study. Wood mouse herpesvirus (WMHV) was the only herpesvirus detected and occurred frequently in wood mice and also less commonly in bank voles. Strikingly, WMHV infection probability was highest in reproductively active, heavy male mice. Infection risk also showed a repeatable seasonal pattern, peaking in spring and declining through the summer. We show that this seasonal decline can be at least partly attributed to reduced recapture of WMHV-infected adults. These results suggest that male reproductive behaviours could provide an important natural route of transmission for these viruses. They also suggest that gammaherpesvirus infection may have significant detrimental effects in wild hosts, questioning the view that these viruses have limited impacts in natural, co-evolved host species

Environmental Impacts of the Border Wall

On January 25, 2017, during his first week in office, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order calling for the “immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border” of the United States . Such a wall would span more than one thousand miles, across many different habitats and many different communities . Before a wall will be built, numerous questions must be answered: Which environmental laws apply? How might all this work? On February 16, ELI convened experts to discuss how environmental law and policy may interact with the Executive Order, and to spark discussion about important environmental resources and communities along the border . Below, we present a transcript of the event, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations

Anthropogenic noise playback impairs embryonic development and increases mortality in a marine invertebrate

Human activities can create noise pollution and there is increasing international concern about how this may impact wildlife. There is evidence that anthropogenic noise may have detrimental effects on behaviour and physiology in many species but there are few examples of experiments showing how fitness may be directly affected. Here we use a split-brood, counterbalanced, field experiment to investigate the effect of repeated boat-noise playback during early life on the development and survival of a marine invertebrate, the sea hare Stylocheilus striatus at Moorea Island (French Polynesia). We found that exposure to boat-noise playback, compared to ambient-noise playback, reduced successful development of embryos by 21% and additionally increased mortality of recently hatched larvae by 22%. Our work, on an understudied but ecologically and socio-economically important taxon, demonstrates that anthropogenic noise can affect individual fitness. Fitness costs early in life have a fundamental influence on population dynamics and resilience, with potential implications for community structure and function

Overcoming health-systems constraints to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Effective interventions exist for many priority health problems in low income countries; prices are falling, and funds are increasing. However, progress towards agreed health goals remains slow. There is increasing consensus that stronger health systems are key to achieving improved health outcomes. There is much less agreement on quite how to strengthen them. Part of the challenge is to get existing and emerging knowledge about more (and less) effective strategies into practice. The evidence base also remains remarkably weak, partly because health-systems research has an image problem. The forthcoming Ministerial Summit on Health Research seeks to help define a learning agenda for health systems, so that by 2015, substantial progress will have been made to reducing the system constraints to achieving the MDGs

The financial cost of doctors emigrating from sub-Saharan Africa: human capital analysis

Objective To estimate the lost investment of domestically educated doctors migrating from sub-Saharan African countries to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States