Urban environments and situated institutions : everyday governance in west Bengal

How do processes of power shape the urban environment in small Indian cities? On a day-to-day basis, who actually controls access to and the use of environmental resources? How is this done? Answering these questions contributes to our ability to develop a nuanced understanding the urban condition. In order to investigate these questions an actor-oriented approach is developed, drawing on the anthropological literatures on everyday governance and the everyday state. This conceptual framework informs an urban political ecology approach oriented towards everyday practices and the micro-politics of the (re)production of urban socio-natures. This thesis employs a mixed methods approach to qualitative research. Three cases are presented to explore: para (neighbourhood) clubs as governance actors, the governance of the urban pondscape, and the urban political ecology of solid waste management. These case studies serve to highlight how power shapes the (re)production of urban socio-natures through the everyday environmental governance practices of a complex network of governance actors. This work further demonstrates how multiple intersectionalities, including class, caste and access to political and social authority, shape these practices and their outcomes. Finally, the manner in which balances of power, place making and the formation of subject positions may both result from and shape everyday environmental governance practices and their outcomes is explored. This empirical investigation makes a number of contributions to the literature. It has explores the hereto-understudied topics of environmental governance in small cities in India, the urban political ecologies of non-piped water and of solid waste, and the role of clubs as governance actors. It further contributes to conversations within the literature on how to deepen and broaden Urban Political Ecology by engaging with everyday practices, and cases of ordinary, not-openly contested socio-natures. -- Comment les processus de pouvoir influencent-ils l'environnement urbain dans les petites villes indiennes ? Au quotidien, qui contrôle l'accès et l'utilisation des ressources environnementales ? Comment ce contrôle s'exerce-t-il ? Répondre à ces questions contribue au développement d'une compréhension nuancée de la condition urbaine. Afin d'explorer ces questions une approche actor-oriented de la gouvernance quotidienne est développée, faisant appel aux littératures anthropologiques de la gouvernance quotidienne et de l'everyday state. Ce cadre conceptuel établit ainsi une approche d'Urban Political Ecology orientée vers les pratiques quotidiennes et la micro- politique de la (re) production des socio-natures urbaines. Cette thèse emploie des méthodes qualitatives mixtes. Trois cas sont présentés afin d'étudier : les clubs para (quartier) comme acteurs de la gouvernance; la gouvernance de la pondscape urbaine; et l'urban political ecology de la gestion des déchets solides. Ces études de cas permettent de mettre en lumière la façon dont le pouvoir influence la (re)production des socio-natures urbaines par le biais des pratiques quotidiennes de gouvernance environnementale d'un réseau complexe d'acteurs. Ce travail démontre également comment plusieurs intersectionnalités, y compris la classe, la caste et l'accès au pouvoir politique et social, façonnent ces pratiques de gouvernance et leurs produits. Finalement, cette recherche explore la manière dont les équilibres de pouvoir, la fabrication de lieux et la formation de la position du sujet peuvent à la fois résulter de et contribuer à façonner les pratiques quotidiennes de gouvernance environnementale et leurs produits. Cette investigation empirique fait ainsi plusieurs contributions à la littérature. Elle explore les questions jusque-là sous-étudiées de la gouvernance environnementale dans les petites villes en Inde, de l'urban political ecology de l'eau non courante et des déchets solides, ainsi que du rôle des clubs comme acteurs de la gouvernance. Celle-ci contribue également à des débats sur la façon d'approfondir et d'élargir l'urban political ecology en travaillant sur les pratiques quotidiennes, et sur des cas de socio-natures ordinaires, pas ouvertement contestées

Case report: Transvenous coil embolization of a high-grade Galenic dural arteriovenous fistula

Introduction: Galenic dural arteriovenous fistulas (dAVFs) are a rare form of dAVF and rarely described in the literature. Their distinct location requires different surgical approaches than dAVFs occurring at the nearby sites of the straight sinus and torcular Herophili, and their high risk of hemorrhage makes these dAVFs very challenging to approach surgically. In this report, we present a unique case of Galenic dAVF. Case description: The patient is a 54-year-old female who presented with a 2-year history of progressive headaches, cognitive decline, and papilledema. A cerebral angiogram demonstrated a complex dAVF to the vein of Galen (VoG). She underwent transarterial embolization with Onyx-18 which resulted in minimal reduction in arterial venous shunting. She subsequently underwent a successful transvenous coil embolization resulting in complete occlusion of dAVF. The patient’s postoperative course was complicated by interventricular hemorrhage; however, she had a remarkable clinical recovery with resolution of headaches and improvement in cognitive function. A follow-up angiogram completed 6 months post-embolization demonstrated very mild residual shunting. Conclusion: In the unique case presented here, we demonstrate the efficacy of transvenous embolization via an occluded straight sinus as an alternative therapeutic option to eliminate cortical venous reflux

Pearling: stroke segmentation with crusted pearl strings

We introduce a novel segmentation technique, called Pearling, for the semi-automatic extraction of idealized models of networks of strokes (variable width curves) in images. These networks may for example represent roads in an aerial photograph, vessels in a medical scan, or strokes in a drawing. The operator seeds the process by selecting representative areas of good (stroke interior) and bad colors. Then, the operator may either provide a rough trace through a particular path in the stroke graph or simply pick a starting point (seed) on a stroke and a direction of growth. Pearling computes in realtime the centerlines of the strokes, the bifurcations, and the thickness function along each stroke, hence producing a purified medial axis transform of a desired portion of the stroke graph. No prior segmentation or thresholding is required. Simple gestures may be used to trim or extend the selection or to add branches. The realtime performance and reliability of Pearling results from a novel disk-sampling approach, which traces the strokes by optimizing the positions and radii of a discrete series of disks (pearls) along the stroke. A continuous model is defined through subdivision. By design, the idealized pearl string model is slightly wider than necessary to ensure that it contains the stroke boundary. A narrower core model that fits inside the stroke is computed simultaneously. The difference between the pearl string and its core contains the boundary of the stroke and may be used to capture, compress, visualize, or analyze the raw image data along the stroke boundary

Phase Diagram of Multilayer Magnetic Structures

Multilayer "ferromagnet-layered antiferromagnet" (Fe/Cr) structures frustrated due to the roughness of layer interfaces are studied by numerical modeling methods. The "thickness-roughness" phase diagrams for the case of thin ferromagnetic film on the surface of bulk antiferromagnet and for two ferromagnetic layers separated by an antiferromagnetic interlayer are obtained and the order parameter distributions for all phases are found. The phase transitions nature in such systems is considered. The range of applicability for the "magnetic proximity model" proposed by Slonczewski is evaluated.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

No cross-interactions among different tensor fields with the mixed symmetry (3,1) intermediated by a vector field

Under the hypotheses of analyticity in the coupling constant, locality, Lorentz covariance, and Poincare invariance of the deformations, combined with the preservation of the number of derivatives on each field, the consistent interactions between a collection of free massless tensor gauge fields with the mixed symmetry of a two-column Young diagram of the type (3,1) and one Abelian vector field, respectively a $p$-form gauge field, are addressed. The main result is that a single mixed symmetry tensor field from the collection gets coupled to the vector field/$p$-form. Our final result resembles to the well known fact from General Relativity according to which there is one graviton in a given world.Comment: 19 page

280 one-opposition near-Earth asteroids recovered by the EURONEAR with the <i>Isaac Newton</i> Telescope

Context. One-opposition near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are growing in number, and they must be recovered to prevent loss and mismatch risk, and to improve their orbits, as they are likely to be too faint for detection in shallow surveys at future apparitions. Aims. We aimed to recover more than half of the one-opposition NEAs recommended for observations by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) using the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) in soft-override mode and some fractions of available D-nights. During about 130 h in total between 2013 and 2016, we targeted 368 NEAs, among which 56 potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), observing 437 INT Wide Field Camera (WFC) fields and recovering 280 NEAs (76% of all targets). Methods. Engaging a core team of about ten students and amateurs, we used the THELI, Astrometrica, and the Find_Orb software to identify all moving objects using the blink and track-and-stack method for the faintest targets and plotting the positional uncertainty ellipse from NEODyS. Results. Most targets and recovered objects had apparent magnitudes centered around V ~ 22.8 mag, with some becoming as faint as V ~ 24 mag. One hundred and three objects (representing 28% of all targets) were recovered by EURONEAR alone by Aug. 2017. Orbital arcs were prolonged typically from a few weeks to a few years; our oldest recoveries reach 16 years. The O−C residuals for our 1854 NEA astrometric positions show that most measurements cluster closely around the origin. In addition to the recovered NEAs, 22 000 positions of about 3500 known minor planets and another 10 000 observations of about 1500 unknown objects (mostly main-belt objects) were promptly reported to the MPC by our team. Four new NEAs were discovered serendipitously in the analyzed fields and were promptly secured with the INT and other telescopes, while two more NEAs were lost due to extremely fast motion and lack of rapid follow-up time. They increase the counting to nine NEAs discovered by the EURONEAR in 2014 and 2015. Conclusions. Targeted projects to recover one-opposition NEAs are efficient in override access, especially using at least two-meter class and preferably larger field telescopes located in good sites, which appear even more efficient than the existing surveys

Homological Mirror Symmetry for Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in projective space

We prove Homological Mirror Symmetry for a smooth d-dimensional Calabi-Yau hypersurface in projective space, for any d > 2 (for example, d = 3 is the quintic three-fold). The main techniques involved in the proof are: the construction of an immersed Lagrangian sphere in the `d-dimensional pair of pants'; the introduction of the `relative Fukaya category', and an understanding of its grading structure; a description of the behaviour of this category with respect to branched covers (via an `orbifold' Fukaya category); a Morse-Bott model for the relative Fukaya category that allows one to make explicit computations; and the introduction of certain graded categories of matrix factorizations mirror to the relative Fukaya category.Comment: 133 pages, 17 figures. Changes to the argument ruling out sphere bubbling in the relative Fukaya category, and dealing with the behaviour of the symplectic form under branched covers. Other minor changes suggested by the referee. List of notation include

3D Mapping of the SPRY2 Domain of Ryanodine Receptor 1 by Single-Particle Cryo-EM

The type 1 skeletal muscle ryanodine receptor (RyR1) is principally responsible for Ca2+ release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum and for the subsequent muscle contraction. The RyR1 contains three SPRY domains. SPRY domains are generally known to mediate protein-protein interactions, however the location of the three SPRY domains in the 3D structure of the RyR1 is not known. Combining immunolabeling and single-particle cryo-electron microscopy we have mapped the SPRY2 domain (S1085-V1208) in the 3D structure of RyR1 using three different antibodies against the SPRY2 domain. Two obstacles for the image processing procedure; limited amount of data and signal dilution introduced by the multiple orientations of the antibody bound in the tetrameric RyR1, were overcome by modifying the 3D reconstruction scheme. This approach enabled us to ascertain that the three antibodies bind to the same region, to obtain a 3D reconstruction of RyR1 with the antibody bound, and to map SPRY2 to the periphery of the cytoplasmic domain of RyR1. We report here the first 3D localization of a SPRY2 domain in any known RyR isoform

Description of the Vitis vinifera L. phenotypic variability in eno-carpological traits by a Euro-Asiatic collaborative network among ampelographic collections

The grapevine intra-specific variability captured an increasing interest during the last decades, as demonstrated by the number of recently funded European projects focused on the grapevine biodiversity preservation. However, nowadays, crop plants are mainly characterized by genotyping methods. The present work summarizes the phenotype data collected among 20 ampelographic collections spread in 15 countries, covering mostly of the viticultural areas in the Euro-Asiatic range: from Portugal to Armenia and from Cyprus to Luxembourg. Together with agro-climatic characterization of the experimental site, in two years, about 2400 accessions were described, following a common experimental protocol mainly focused on the carpological and oenological traits, obtaining a general overview of the distribution of the considered phenotypic traits in the cultivated Vitis vinifera species. The most replicated cultivars were selected and, for the subset of these reference cultivars, their behavior in the different environmental conditions over sites and years was described by ANOVA methods