A Sea Cow Goes to Court. Extinction and Animal Agency in a Struggle Against Militarism

In Japan’s southernmost prefecture, Okinawa, the Japanese government is constructing a new military base for the United States Marine Corps despite ongoing local opposition and protest. Sea grass beds, which are potential feeding grounds of the critically endangered Okinawa dugong, are situated within the construction area. Because of its critical status close to regional extinction, the dugong was declared a Natural Monument of Japan in 1972, arguably putting it under protection of the United States National Historic Preservation Act in context of the base construction. Based on this assumption, and the dugong’s cultural significance for the people of Okinawa, the issue was brought to an American court, a rare case where an animal plays a central role in a lawsuit dealing with cultural property. Based on Eduardo Kohn’s anthropology beyond the human and his thoughts on life as a semiotic process the article explores the entanglements between dugongs and people. I argue that in this process dugongs play an active role. Through their interpretation of the generated indexical signs at the construction site and their resulting behaviour, these animals give humans the opportunity to convert their presence and absence into the sphere of symbolic human interaction

Experimental Investigation of the Impact of PCM Containment on Indoor Temperature Variations

In view of growing concerns on climate change and temperature extremes, there is a need to explore novel methods that provide thermal comfort in architecture. Latent heat thermal energy storage with phase change materials (PCM) has been widely researched in last decades in the field of energy technology and proved beneficial for reduction and shifting of the thermal loads and improving the overall thermal storage capacity of building components. Although a variety of PCM containments have been investigated for indoor cooling applications, the examples of exposed, design-oriented macro-encapsulations are rare. This paper presents a study of visible, suspended ceiling encapsulations for passive cooling, made of glass and novel bio-based PCM. The aim is to provide an overview of correlations between basic containment geometries and their thermal behavior that serves as a base for the further design of custom-made PCM macro-encapsulations. An experimental set-up of test boxes is developed for thermal cycling and a comparative analysis of the thermal performance of varied PCM encapsulation geometries. The study concludes that the containments with the large exchange surface and the small thickness offer an optimal material distribution for the temperature reduction in the box. Based on experimental results, suggestions are made on further formal strategies for the design of cooling elements for local thermal regulation

Intergenerational transmission of economic success in Austria with a focus on migration and gender

In this paper, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of economic success in Austria using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions 2011 dataset (EU-SILC 2011). Starting point of the investigation is a two-step estimation procedure, where we detect a significant positve intergenerational association between the economic situation of the parental household and educational attainments as well as gross hourly wages of their male and female descendants independently. Furthermore, we shed some light on the intergenerational social mobility black box by explaining the direct effect of the income situation of the parental generation on attainable wages of the child generation within the transmission system. It turns out that this effect is significantly underestimated when applying ordinary least squares regressions only, where the perceived socioeconomic status is taken exogenous. Finally, we apply instrumental variable quantile regressions to demonstrate that the direct intergenerational economic association between parents and their descendants is strongest for top earners. Alongside this proceeding, we introduce an alternative way to think about the impact of a bundle of additional intergenerational transmission channels like cognitive ability, noncognitive personal traits, and aspects of physical appearance on an empirical level. Overall, the findings of the paper, where special attention is paid to migrants, offer a better understanding on the intergenerational transmission of economic success mechanism and to what extent this process influences income persistence between generations

Multi-exon deletions of the FBN1 gene in Marfan syndrome

BACKGROUND: Mutations in the fibrillin -1 gene (FBN1) cause Marfan syndrome (MFS), an autosomal dominant multi-system connective tissue disorder. The 200 different mutations reported in the 235 kb, 65 exon-containing gene include only one family with a genomic multi-exon deletion. METHODS: We used long-range RT-PCR for mutation detection and long-range genomic PCR and DNA sequencing for identification of deletion breakpoints, allele-specific transcript analyses to determine stability of the mutant RNA, and pulse-chase studies to quantitate fibrillin synthesis and extracellular matrix deposition in cultured fibroblasts. Southern blots of genomic DNA were probed with three overlapping fragments covering the FBN1 coding exons RESULTS: Two novel multi-exon FBN1 deletions were discovered. Identical nucleotide pentamers were found at or near the intronic breakpoints. In a Case with classic MFS, an in-frame deletion of exons 42 and 43 removed the C-terminal 24 amino acids of the 5(th) LTBP (8-cysteine) domain and the adjacent 25(th) calcium-binding EGF-like (6-cysteine) domain. The mutant mRNA was stable, but fibrillin synthesis and matrix deposition were significantly reduced. A Case with severe childhood-onset MFS has a de novo deletion of exons 44–46 that removed three EGF-like domains. Fibrillin protein synthesis was normal, but matrix deposition was strikingly reduced. No genomic rearrangements were detected by Southern analysis of 18 unrelated MFS samples negative for FBN1 mutation screening. CONCLUSIONS: Two novel deletion cases expand knowledge of mutational mechanisms and genotype/phenotype correlations of fibrillinopathies. Deletions or mutations affecting an LTBP domain may result in unstable mutant protein cleavage products that interfere with microfibril assembly

Performance and operational effectiveness of evacuated flat plate solar collectors compared with conventional thermal, PVT and PV panels

The concept of an evacuated flat plate (EFP) collector was proposed over 40 years ago but, despite its professed advantages, very few manufacturers have developed commercial versions. This situation suggests both technical difficulties in manufacturing a competitively-priced sealed for life panel and a lack of awareness of the bene fits of such panels. This paper demonstrates an evacuated flat plate simulation that closely models experimental efficiency measurements. Having established the validity of the model, it compares published data for a commercial EFP collector with predictions for an optimal design to investigate whether any further efficiency improvement might be possible. The optimised design is then evaluated against alternative solar energy devices by modelling a number of possible applications. These comparisons should inform choices about solar options for delivering heat: EFP collectors are well-suited to some of these applications. Evacuated flat plate collectors are a possible alternative to concentrating collectors for Organic Rankine Cycle power generation. The annual output for all the modelled collectors was found to be a quadratic function of delivery temperature: this enabled a novel optimisation of ORC source temperature. Predictions for concentrating and non-concentrating ORC plant are compared with a PV/thermal alternative. The ORC output is significantly less than a PV panel would achieve; applications needing both heat and power are better served by PVT panels. This is an original and novel result

Human Splicing Finder: an online bioinformatics tool to predict splicing signals

Thousands of mutations are identified yearly. Although many directly affect protein expression, an increasing proportion of mutations is now believed to influence mRNA splicing. They mostly affect existing splice sites, but synonymous, non-synonymous or nonsense mutations can also create or disrupt splice sites or auxiliary cis-splicing sequences. To facilitate the analysis of the different mutations, we designed Human Splicing Finder (HSF), a tool to predict the effects of mutations on splicing signals or to identify splicing motifs in any human sequence. It contains all available matrices for auxiliary sequence prediction as well as new ones for binding sites of the 9G8 and Tra2-β Serine-Arginine proteins and the hnRNP A1 ribonucleoprotein. We also developed new Position Weight Matrices to assess the strength of 5′ and 3′ splice sites and branch points. We evaluated HSF efficiency using a set of 83 intronic and 35 exonic mutations known to result in splicing defects. We showed that the mutation effect was correctly predicted in almost all cases. HSF could thus represent a valuable resource for research, diagnostic and therapeutic (e.g. therapeutic exon skipping) purposes as well as for global studies, such as the GEN2PHEN European Project or the Human Variome Project