The Tower of Babel: Human Rights and the Paradox of Language

Key human rights instruments and leading scholars argue that minority language rights should be treated as human rights, both because language is constitutive of an individual’s cultural identity and because linguistic pluralism increases diversity. These treaties and academics assign the value of linguistic pluralism in diversity. But, as this article demonstrates, major human rights courts and quasi-judicial institutions are not, in fact, prepared to force states to swallow the dramatic costs entailed by a true diversity-protecting regime. Outside narrow exceptions or a path dependent national-political compromise, these enforcement bodies continuously allow the state actively to incentivize assimilation into the dominant culture and language of the majority. The minority can still maintain its distinct language, but only at its own cost. The slippage between the promise of rights and their actual interpretation carries some important political and economic benefits, but the resulting legal outcome does not provide the robust protection of diversity to which lip service is paid. Importantly, the assimilationist nature of the jurisprudence is not indifferent to human rights. However, instead of advancing maximal linguistic diversity as a preeminent norm, the regime that is applied by judicial bodies supports a different set of human rights: those protecting linguistic minorities from discrimination, and promoting equal access of the group to market and political institutions. The result is a tension between two human rights values: pluralism and equality

Penerapan Model Pembelajaran Inkuiri untuk Meningkatkan Pemahaman Membaca Teks Non-Fiksi

Tujuan penelitian ini mendeskripsikan penerapan model pembelajaran Inkuirii untuk meningkatkan pemahaman membaca teks nonfiksi pada siswa kelas VI SDN 173675 Lumban Nabolon Kabupaten Toba Tahun Pelajaran 2020/2021. Subjek penelitian ini adalah seluruh siswa kelas VI SDN SDN 173675 Lumban Nabolon Kabupaten Toba yang berjumlah 32 siswa. Objek penelitian ini adalah proses pembelajaran membaca teks nonfiksi pada siswa kelas VI SDN 173675 Lumban Nabolon Kabupaten Toba semester ganjil 2020/2021.  Metode penelitian yang digunakan Penelitian Tindakan Kelas (PTK), model Kemmis dan Taggart. Teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan lembar observasi, dokumentasi dan tes. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa hasil pemahaman membaca teks nonfiksi, 21 peserta didik tuntas (65,63%) siklus I, 28 Peserta didik tuntas (87,50%) siklus II, dan hasil pemahaman membaca teks nonfiksi yang dibuat, 20 peserta didik tuntas (62,50%) siklus I, 29 Peserta didik tuntas (90,63%) siklus II. Hasil penelitian membuktikan bahwa penerapan model inkuiri dapat meningkatkan pemahaman membaca teks nonfiksi pada siswa kelas VI SDN 173675 Lumban Nabolon Kabupaten Toba Tahun Pelajaran 2020/2021

Development of an in vitro model and fluorescent protein expression system for the study of highly abortigenic Campylobacter jejuni

Campylobacter spp. are a leading cause of sheep abortions worldwide; Campylobacter fetus ssp. fetus has historically been the major culprit. Increasingly, however, C. jejuni has been isolated from cases of sheep abortion, and it has now replaced C. fetus ssp. fetus as the predominant cause of Campylobacter-related ovine abortion in the United States. Emergence of a single tetracycline resistant clone (clone SA) has been implicated as the primary reason for this shift. Virulence factors for clone SA have still not been completely elucidated, and it is not known how this bacterium reaches the uterine and placental tissue from the gut. Although an effective animal model has been described, development of an in vitro cell culture model would provide a cost-effective and reliable alternative. In this study, we assessed the ability of IA3902, a clinical isolate of clone SA, to invade and survive within two different cell lines, AH-1 ovine placental trophoblasts and RAW264.7 murine macrophages. Our results indicate that IA3902 is actually less invasive and has lower survival within AH-1 trophoblast cells than the nonabortigenic isolate NCTC11168; in contrast, IA3902 displayed increased invasion and survival in RAW macrophages as compared to NCTC11168. Next, we tested the hypothesis that C. jejuni\u27s invasive abilities in AH-1 cells would be enhanced in the presence of progesterone, which is present in high levels in the serum of ewes at the time that C. jejuni abortion typically occurs. Contrary to our hypothesis, progesterone treatment of AH-1 cells actually decreased invasion of C. jejuni into trophoblasts. Finally, we developed a system of mCherry fluorescent protein expression in both IA3902 and NCTC11168 to facilitate noninvasive detection of bacteria in an in vitro system. mCherry was successfully expressed in Campylobacter as observed via fluorescent microscopy and measured using a fluorospectrometer; however, low background fluorescence values and an apparent fitness cost in mCherry-expressing Campylobacter may limit its utility for certain studies. These findings indicate that C. jejuni clone SA\u27s ability to survive within immune cells may provide the driving force for its high abortigenicity, rather than an increased tropism for placental tissues. They also provide a basis for future use of in vitro systems for the study of clone SA, and identify RAW264.7 murine macrophages as a suitable cell culture model for further pathogenesis studies

Effects of Cacna1c Haploinsufficiency and Environmental Impact on Spatial Learning, Cognitive Flexibility and Social Behavior in Rats

Mental disorders affect a great number of people worldwide and are highly debilitating. While genetic and environmental influences are thought to contribute to their etiology, the exact mechanisms are still poorly understood. The psychiatric risk gene CACNA1C codes for the α1c subunit of voltage-gated calcium channels and has been associated with major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders in genome-wide association studies and was further implicated by clinical studies and those using genetically altered mice. In an effort to elucidate how CACNA1C interacts with environmental influences to confer disorder risk, this dissertation used a newly developed constitutive Cacna1c heterozygous rat model to examine male and female animals in paradigms aimed at cognitive abilities and social behavior, both of which frequently found dysfunctional in neuropsychiatric disorders. In Study I and II, sex-specific effects of Cacna1c haploinsufficiency were discovered on rough-and-tumble play, emission of ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) and behavioral reactions in the USV playback paradigm, indicative of altered salience coding for social stimuli and reduced incentive value of pro-social interactions. For Study III, male and female rats were subjected to spatial learning and relearning on the radial arm maze, as well as to novel object recognition. The same paradigms were applied in Study IV, in which animals were previously exposed to four weeks of either post-weaning social isolation, standard housing or social and physical enrichment during the critical juvenile developmental period. Compared to the prominent social deficits in Study I and II, intact spatial and reversal learning abilities were seen in Cacna1c heterozygous animals with initial perseverative tendencies in males. Enrichment had an overall positive effect on learning and cognitive flexibility, whereas social isolation caused a profound impairment in object recognition, regardless of genotype. Furthermore, deficits observed in heterozygous animals under standard housing conditions were rescued by enriched rearing conditions, in the sense of a gene x environment interaction. Together, this dissertation adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that a variation in Cacna1c genotype is causally involved in social and cognitive dysfunction as core phenotypes of various neuropsychiatric disorders, yet that individuals harboring genetic risk may benefit from early intervention and positive environmental influence