Dalit politics in India: recognition without redistribution

Dalit political parties in north and central India have overwhelmingly pursued an agenda of recognition, calling for equal respect, rather than one of redistribution. While this has improved the social and economic standing of those Dalits better situated in terms of class, it has failed to substantively improve the lives of the majority of Dalits. Ultimately, Dalits’ quest for equal treatment will be limited so long as it lacks a redistributive politics that addresses exploitative economic relations. We use the case of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh to illustrate our arguments

Transformation formula for the Reduced Bergman kernel and its Application

In this article, we prove the transformation formula for the reduced Bergman kernels under proper holomorphic correspondences between bounded domains in the complex plane. As a corollary, we obtain the transformation formula for the reduced Bergman kernels under proper holomorphic maps. We also establish the transformation formula for the weighted reduced Bergman kernels under proper holomorphic maps. Finally, we provide an application of this transformation formula.Comment: 11 page

Notions of Visibility with respect to the Kobayashi distance: Comparison and Applications

In this article, we study several notions of visibility with respect to the Kobayashi distance for relatively compact complex submanifolds in complex Euclidean space. These notions of visibility are generalizations to the context of such submanifolds of notions introduced and studied in recent work by Bharali--Zimmer, Bharali--Maitra and Bracci--Nikolov--Thomas. We also introduce and study the notion of "visibility subspace" of relatively compact, embedded submanifolds. Using this notion, we generalize to such submanifolds a recent result of Bracci--Nikolov--Thomas and use this generalized result to prove a theorem on the continuous extension of Kobayashi isometries. Next we present a sufficient condition, more permissive than those currently known, for a domain to possess the visibility property with respect to Kobayashi almost-geodesics introduced and studied recently by Bharali--Zimmer (we call this BZ-visibility). We concretely illustrate the fact that our condition is more permissive by providing examples. We also prove a Wolff--Denjoy-type theorem that is a generalization of recent results of this kind by Bharali--Zimmer and Bharali--Maitra and that, owing to the examples mentioned, is a proper generalization. Along the way, we note that what is needed for the proof of this sort of theorem to work is a form of visibility that seems to be intermediate between BZ-visibility and visibility with respect to ordinary Kobayashi geodesics.Comment: Comments welcom

The role of the microbiome in the neurobiology of social behaviour

Microbes colonise all multicellular life, and the gut microbiome has been shown to influence a range of host physiological and behavioural phenotypes. One of the most intriguing and least understood of these influences lies in the domain of the microbiome's interactions with host social behaviour, with new evidence revealing that the gut microbiome makes important contributions to animal sociality. However, little is known about the biological processes through which the microbiome might influence host social behaviour. Here, we synthesise evidence of the gut microbiome's interactions with various aspects of host sociality, including sociability, social cognition, social stress, and autism. We discuss evidence of microbial associations with the most likely physiological mediators of animal social interaction. These include the structure and function of regions of the 'social' brain (the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, and the hippocampus) and the regulation of 'social' signalling molecules (glucocorticoids including corticosterone and cortisol, sex hormones including testosterone, oestrogens, and progestogens, neuropeptide hormones such as oxytocin and arginine vasopressin, and monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine). We also discuss microbiome-associated host genetic and epigenetic processes relevant to social behaviour. We then review research on microbial interactions with olfaction in insects and mammals, which contribute to social signalling and communication. Following these discussions, we examine evidence of microbial associations with emotion and social behaviour in humans, focussing on psychobiotic studies, microbe-depression correlations, early human development, autism, and issues of statistical power, replication, and causality. We analyse how the putative physiological mediators of the microbiome-sociality connection may be investigated, and discuss issues relating to the interpretation of results. We also suggest that other candidate molecules should be studied, insofar as they exert effects on social behaviour and are known to interact with the microbiome. Finally, we consider different models of the sequence of microbial effects on host physiological development, and how these may contribute to host social behaviour.Peer reviewe

Tubular ultrafiltration ceramic membrane based on titania nanoparticles immobilized on macroporous clay-alumina support: Elaboration, characterization and application to dye removal

The development of new membranes with improved separation properties, high mechanical and thermal stability using inexpensive and naturally abundant materials is of utmost importance for sustainable development and environmental applications. Ceramic materials due to their high chemical, mechanical and thermal stability in combination to their facile surface functionalization have inspired material scientists to design innovative low-cost ceramic-based membrane supports. This study focuses on the preparation and characterization of novel asymmetric ultrafiltration ceramic membrane coated with single separation layer made of TiO2 nanoparticles, and its application to removal of alizarin dye from aqueous solutions. The membrane was prepared by a simple and one-step deposition of micrometer-thick titania layer on the internal surface of the tubular-shape porous clay-alumina membrane support from an aqueous colloidal suspension of titanium oxide (TiO2) nanoparticles with size of 10 nm. The colloidal suspension was prepared in the presence of 0.2 wt.% of Dolapix, and 30 g of an aqueous solution of polyvinyl alcohol at 12 wt.% and 66 mL of H2O. Microfiltration tubular supports of 10 mm/7 mm (outer/inner diameter) were prepared through an extrusion method followed by a sintering process using China Clay Rajmahal grade and alumina, as mineral precursors. The composition of 25% of clay and 75% of alumina was selected in this work as it showed a lower sintering temperature (T-f = 1350 degrees C) which could ensure low cost elaboration process, an average water flux of 850 L h(-1) m(-2) bar(-1) as well as enhanced mechanical performance (approximate to 37 MPa) and large porosity (48%) with an average pore diameter of 0.75 mu m. SEM characterization showed that at the sintering temperature of 800 degrees C, the TiO2 nanoparticles coated densely and homogeneously the ceramic support forming a thin layer of about 4.2 mu m in thickness and leading to a clear reduction of the mean pore size (50 nm approximatively) while providing a water permeability of 117 L h(-1) m(-2) bar(-1). The so-designed ultrafiltration (UF) tubular ceramic membrane has proved efficient for alizarin red dye removal with a retention rate of 99% and a permeate flux of 70 L h(-1) m(-2) at pH 9 and a transmembrane pressure of 5 bar. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Pattern selection in three dimensional dendritic growth

We study the selection of the shape and growth velocity of three dimensional dendritic crystals in cubically anisotropic materials. We demonstrate that aside from minor additional complexities due to the lack of axisymmetry, the recently discovered mechanism of "microscopic solvability" can be extended to these systems and used to find a unique needle crystal solution of the equations of thermal diffusion-controlled solidification. We compare the predictions of this approach with measured growth rates in succinonitrile. Finally, we extend our analysis to determine the ratio of the sidebranch wavelength to the tip radius.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27133/1/0000126.pd

Dysbiosis-Associated Enteric Glial Cell Immune-Activation and Redox Imbalance Modulate Tight Junction Protein Expression in Gulf War Illness Pathology

About 14% of veterans who suffer from Gulf war illness (GWI) complain of some form of gastrointestinal disorder but with no significant markers of clinical pathology. Our previous studies have shown that exposure to GW chemicals resulted in altered microbiome which was associated with damage associated molecular pattern (DAMP) release followed by neuro and gastrointestinal inflammation with loss of gut barrier integrity. Enteric glial cells (EGC) are emerging as important regulators of the gastrointestinal tract and have been observed to change to a reactive phenotype in several functional gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS and IBD. This study is aimed at investigating the role of dysbiosis associated EGC immune-activation and redox instability in contributing to observed gastrointestinal barrier integrity loss in GWI via altered tight junction protein expression. Using a mouse model of GWI and studies with cultured EGC and use of antibiotics to ensure gut decontamination we show that exposure to GW chemicals caused dysbiosis associated change in EGCs. EGCs changed to a reactive phenotype characterized by activation of TLR4-S100β/RAGE-iNOS pathway causing release of nitric oxide and activation of NOX2 since gut sterility with antibiotics prevented this change. The resulting peroxynitrite generation led to increased oxidative stress that triggered inflammation as shown by increased NLRP-3 inflammasome activation and increased cell death. Activated EGCs and were associated with decrease in tight junction protein occludin and selective water channel aquaporin-3 with a concomitant increase in Claudin-2. The tight junction protein levels were restored following a parallel treatment of GWI mice with a TLR4 inhibitor SsnB and butyric acid that are known to decrease the immunoactivation of EGCs. Our study demonstrates that immune-redox mechanisms in EGC are important players in the pathology in GWI and may be possible therapeutic targets for improving outcomes in GWI symptom persistence