The ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics in Europe

This article presents the findings of a collaborative research project involving seven field teams across Europe investigating a range of new political phenomena termed 'subterranean politics'. The article argues that the social mobilizations and collective activities in 2011 and 2012 were probably less joined up, more heterogeneous, and, perhaps, even, smaller, than similar phenomena during the last decade, but what was striking was their 'resonance' among mainstream public opinion-the 'bubbling up' of subterranean politics. The main findings included: • Subterranean political actors perceive the crisis as a political crisis rather than a reaction to austerity. Subterranean politics is just as much a characteristic of Germany, where there are no austerity policies, as other countries. • Subterranean political actors are concerned about democracy but not as it is currently practised. They experiment with new democratic practises, in the squares, on the Internet, and elsewhere. • This new political generation not only uses social networking to organize but the Internet has profoundly affected the culture of political activism. • In contrast to mainstream public debates, Europe is 'invisible' even though many subterranean political actors feel themselves to be European. The research concludes that the term 'subterranean politics' is a useful concept that needs further investigation and that Europe needs to be problematized to seek a way out of the crisis

Antibodies protect against intracellular bacteria by Fc receptor-mediated lysosomal targeting

The protective effect of antibodies (Abs) is generally attributed to neutralization or complement activation. Using Legionella pneumophila and Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette–Guérin as a model, we discovered an additional mechanism of Ab-mediated protection effective against intracellular pathogens that normally evade lysosomal fusion. We show that Fc receptor (FcR) engagement by Abs, which can be temporally and spatially separated from bacterial infection, renders the host cell nonpermissive for bacterial replication and targets the pathogens to lysosomes. This process is strictly dependent on kinases involved in FcR signaling but not on host cell protein synthesis or protease activation. Based on these findings, we propose a mechanism whereby Abs and FcR engagement subverts the strategies by which intracellular bacterial pathogens evade lysosomal degradation

Community-developed checklists for publishing images and image analyses

Images document scientific discoveries and are prevalent in modern biomedical research. Microscopy imaging in particular is currently undergoing rapid technological advancements. However, for scientists wishing to publish obtained images and image-analysis results, there are currently no unified guidelines for best practices. Consequently, microscopy images and image data in publications may be unclear or difficult to interpret. Here, we present community-developed checklists for preparing light microscopy images and describing image analyses for publications. These checklists offer authors, readers and publishers key recommendations for image formatting and annotation, color selection, data availability and reporting image-analysis workflows. The goal of our guidelines is to increase the clarity and reproducibility of image figures and thereby to heighten the quality and explanatory power of microscopy data.Toxicolog

Thomson scattering from near-solid density plasmas using soft X-ray free electron lasers

We discuss a collective Thomson scattering experiment at the VUV free electron laser facility at DESY (FLASH) to diagnose warm dense matter at near-solid density. The plasma region of interest marks the transition from an ideal plasma to a correlated and degenerate many-particle system and is of current interest, e.g., in ICF experiments or laboratory astrophysics. Plasma diagnosis of such plasmas is a longstanding issue which is addressed here using a pump-probe scattering experiment to reveal the collective electron plasma mode (plasmon) using the high-brilliance radiation to probe the plasma. Distinctive scattering features allow one to infer basic plasma properties. For plasmas in thermal equilibrium the electron density and temperature are determined from scattering off the plasmon mode. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved