Who Cycles Into Our Valley

The twelve stories in this collection chart a course between the United States and India. Some are set wholly in one country, while others form a bridge between the two. Uniting them is a shared attention to memory, isolation, and loss. In their own idiosyncratic ways, each of the characters in these small fictions is struggling for human connection in a hostile and lonely world

Federalism, Politics and Corruption in Nigeria: Implications for Higher Education

This study examines some of the current developments in the university system in the educational sector in Nigeria's federalism. Methodologically, the study uses secondary data based on content analysis. The paper notes that Nigerian universities have greatly expanded in terms of number but have stagnated over the years in terms of quality, skills and entrepreneurial usefulness on the part of the products. Hence, the products of these institutions are mostly found to be unemployable and less competitive in relation to their counterparts from other climes. This is a paradox of growth without development in the higher education sector in the country. It is against this backdrop this study is undertaken to critically examine the main challenges facing the higher education advancement in Nigeria. It is observed that the nature of Nigerian politics, the wrongful application of the federal principles and the pervasive corruption in the country have negatively impacted on the higher educational advancement in Nigeria. The study recommends among other strategies surgical and clinical operation for the advancement of the country's higher educational system, which requires fighting the pervasive corruption in the Federation headlong, granting true autonomy to the universities and depoliticizing the educational system. Corrupt and immoral university staff and their accomplices in crime should be prosecuted and jailed to serve as a deterrent to others. Finally, the environment in which the students undertake their studies is greatly a source of concern and thus requires overhauling. For the nation's higher education to progressively advanced, it must be qualitative and internationally competitive. Keywords: Federalism, Politics, Corruption, Nigerian Higher Educatio

Analysis of impact of Fadama III Additional Financing (AF1) on beneficiaries income and poverty alleviation in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria

The study assessed the impact of Fadama III AF‘s interventions on income and poverty alleviation of beneficiaries in Abuja Federal Capital Territory. A sample of one hundred and fifty respondents among the beneficiaries was drawn using multistage sampling technique. Descriptive and simple percentage was used to analyze the data. The sampled respondents were majorly males that represent 72% in their middle age-group, about 78% of them had western education. Farming was the major occupation among respondents (70%). Fadama III AF1 supported farmers with improved seed varieties, fertilizers, agrochemical, water pump, sprayer, advisory services and capacity building training. Although, the output translated to increased income and poverty alleviation among the beneficiaries, there is room for improvement, because the Fadama users are yet to operate at their full capacity. Based on these findings, the following recommendations were made: there is need to invest more on some infrastructural facilities as well as human resources development; for food supplies to remain stable and secured increase in income, there must be considerable improvement in agricultural technologies in order to increase crop yields, and organized market for the farmers to have stable price index for their produce. Keywords: Impact, Fadama III AF1, Poverty alleviation, financial intermediation

Characterizing the Role of the T Cell Receptor Repertoire in T Cell Development and Function

Expansion and memory of immune cells in response to stimulation of diversified antigen receptors is the hallmark of adaptive immunity. Here, we use antigen receptor sequencing and in vivo analysis of monoclonal cell populations to elucidate the development and function of two T cell populations: Foxp3+RORγt+ CD4+ T cells and γδ T cells. Foxp3+RORγt+ T cells have recently been characterized as an immunoregulatory population highly enriched in the colon lamina propria. However, their developmental origin and relation to RORγt- Treg and RORγt+ TH17 cells remains unclear. Here, we show that despite sharing a subset of TCR specificities with TH17 cells, Foxp3+RORγt+ T cells first acquire a Foxp3+RORγt- phenotype before co-expressing RORγt, suggesting that Foxp3+RORγt+ cell development can occur via an RORγt- Treg intermediate. While γδ T cells are considerably well studied relative to Foxp3+RORγt+ T cells, the importance antigen receptor diversification to γδ T cell function is still poorly understood. In order to comprehensively assess the paired-chain γδ T cell repertoire during inflammation, we developed a fixed-TCRδ system. We show that experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) results in dramatic clonal expansion of γδ T cells and that a single expanded TCR clone is sufficient to exacerbate immune pathology. Together, this suggests that γδ T cells can exhibit the clonal expansion characteristic of an adaptive immune response and that this response is physiologically significant to the outcome of EAE

VACTERL/VATER Association

VACTERL/VATER association is typically defined by the presence of at least three of the following congenital malformations: vertebral defects, anal atresia, cardiac defects, tracheo-esophageal fistula, renal anomalies, and limb abnormalities. In addition to these core component features, patients may also have other congenital anomalies. Although diagnostic criteria vary, the incidence is estimated at approximately 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 40,000 live-born infants. The condition is ascertained clinically by the presence of the above-mentioned malformations; importantly, there should be no clinical or laboratory-based evidence for the presence of one of the many similar conditions, as the differential diagnosis is relatively large. This differential diagnosis includes (but is not limited to) Baller-Gerold syndrome, CHARGE syndrome, Currarino syndrome, deletion 22q11.2 syndrome, Fanconi anemia, Feingold syndrome, Fryns syndrome, MURCS association, oculo-auriculo-vertebral syndrome, Opitz G/BBB syndrome, Pallister-Hall syndrome, Townes-Brocks syndrome, and VACTERL with hydrocephalus. Though there are hints regarding causation, the aetiology has been identified only in a small fraction of patients to date, likely due to factors such as a high degree of clinical and causal heterogeneity, the largely sporadic nature of the disorder, and the presence of many similar conditions. New genetic research methods offer promise that the causes of VACTERL association will be better defined in the relatively near future. Antenatal diagnosis can be challenging, as certain component features can be difficult to ascertain prior to birth. The management of patients with VACTERL/VATER association typically centers around surgical correction of the specific congenital anomalies (typically anal atresia, certain types of cardiac malformations, and/or tracheo-esophageal fistula) in the immediate postnatal period, followed by long-term medical management of sequelae of the congenital malformations. If optimal surgical correction is achievable, the prognosis can be relatively positive, though some patients will continue to be affected by their congenital malformations throughout life. Importantly, patients with VACTERL association do not tend to have neurocognitive impairment

Rhetoric of urban form and its influence on state legislation in Massachusetts

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2008.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-69).Urban form is the product of the actions of a multitude of actors, from governments to individuals, from corporations to activist organizations. It is the result of rules, ideas, assumptions,and arguments, all of which accumulate and evolve over many years. Among these many paths of influence, urban form is the outcome of state policy, including the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In turn, state policy is a product of multiple objectives and is shaped, often indirectly,by shared ideas about urban form. In order to understand the ways in which policy and form are intertwined, this thesis explores the influence of ideas about urban form on three recent state laws in Massachusetts: the Community Preservation Act from 2000, 40R/40S (Smart Growth Zoning and Housing Production) from 2004 and 2005, and landlocked tidelands legislation from 2007. Each law has plausibly significant impacts on urban form, but urban form is not the driving factor in any of these cases. In each case study, rhetoric of urban form emerged indirectly in the discussions about the legislation. The prevalence of this rhetoric indicates that it was essential that the legislation be consistent with shared conceptions of the urban forms native to Massachusetts. These ideas of vernacular form are dominated by the idea of New England village, but also include a secondary urban vernacular that is applied to select urban locations. Each piece of legislation had to be consistent enough with an idea of vernacular urban form so that it could be presented and advocated in terms of the vernacular.(cont) Chapter three explores the variety of paths along which ideas of the vernacular form operate in each case study.This analysis of the ways that ideas about urban form shape state legislation suggests lessons that could improve the physical setting of the Commonwealth. Ultimately, the lessons have the potential to positively influence the lives of the Commonwealth's inhabitants, workers, and visitors.by Benjamin P. Solomon-Schwartz.M.C.P

Property and politics in globalising Bangalore

Bhuvaneswari Raman and Solomon Benjamin, in their paper titled “Illegible Claims, Legal Titles, and the Worlding of Bangalore”, analyse how programmes for digitising land titles are mobilised to reshape power relations within the state and outside, in a struggle to shape property claims in Bangalore

A requirement for STAG2 in replication fork progression creates a targetable synthetic lethality in cohesin-mutant cancers.

Cohesin is a multiprotein ring that is responsible for cohesion of sister chromatids and formation of DNA loops to regulate gene expression. Genomic analyses have identified that the cohesin subunit STAG2 is frequently inactivated by mutations in cancer. However, the reason STAG2 mutations are selected during tumorigenesis and strategies for therapeutically targeting mutant cancer cells are largely unknown. Here we show that STAG2 is essential for DNA replication fork progression, whereby STAG2 inactivation in non-transformed cells leads to replication fork stalling and collapse with disruption of interaction between the cohesin ring and the replication machinery as well as failure to establish SMC3 acetylation. As a consequence, STAG2 mutation confers synthetic lethality with DNA double-strand break repair genes and increased sensitivity to select cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents and PARP or ATR inhibitors. These studies identify a critical role for STAG2 in replication fork procession and elucidate a potential therapeutic strategy for cohesin-mutant cancers

Soliton cellular automata for the affine general linear Lie superalgebra

The box-ball system (BBS) is a cellular automaton that is an ultradiscrete analogue of the Korteweg--de Vries equation, a non-linear PDE used to model water waves. In 2001, Hikami and Inoue generalised the BBS to the general linear Lie superalgebra $\mathfrak{gl}(m|n)$. We further generalise the Hikami--Inoue BBS to column tableaux using the Kirillov--Reshetikhin crystals for $\hat{\mathfrak{gl}}{(m|n)}$ devised by Kwon and Okado (arXiv:1804.05456), where we find similar solitonic behaviour under certain conditions.Comment: 53 pages, 0 figure