Negotiating Dissidence

Traces the very beginnings of Arab women making documentaries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from the 1970s and 1980s in Egypt and Lebanon, to the 1990s and 2000s in Morocco and Syria

The potential of text mining in data integration and network biology for plant research : a case study on Arabidopsis

Despite the availability of various data repositories for plant research, a wealth of information currently remains hidden within the biomolecular literature. Text mining provides the necessary means to retrieve these data through automated processing of texts. However, only recently has advanced text mining methodology been implemented with sufficient computational power to process texts at a large scale. In this study, we assess the potential of large-scale text mining for plant biology research in general and for network biology in particular using a state-of-the-art text mining system applied to all PubMed abstracts and PubMed Central full texts. We present extensive evaluation of the textual data for Arabidopsis thaliana, assessing the overall accuracy of this new resource for usage in plant network analyses. Furthermore, we combine text mining information with both protein-protein and regulatory interactions from experimental databases. Clusters of tightly connected genes are delineated from the resulting network, illustrating how such an integrative approach is essential to grasp the current knowledge available for Arabidopsis and to uncover gene information through guilt by association. All large-scale data sets, as well as the manually curated textual data, are made publicly available, hereby stimulating the application of text mining data in future plant biology studies

Seascapes of solidarity: Refugee cinema and the representation of the Mediterranean

Van de Peer, Stefanie - ORCID 0000-0003-3152-2912 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3152-2912Films about refugees have been embraced by accented cinema. Indeed, exilic filmmakers continue to test the boundaries of cinema, and specifically its strong bonds with nation and land. But not all exiles are refugees. This article offers that for Arab refugees the journeys across the Mediterranean Sea define their filmmaking and thus also the refugee film. If we acknowledge the sea as a central theme, motif and stylistic element in (some) refugee cinema, spectators may be able to experience refugee cinema more ethically. Using the concept of Mediterranean Thinking as a central analytical tool, this paper focuses on the visual representations of refugees in films made on and in the Mediterranean Sea, problematising the injustices in the representation of refugees since the so-called “refugee crisis”. With a film-philosophical approach to four films from North Africa and Syria, this paper engages the senses of spectators in a cinema that highlights the instability of knowledge and power through movement and fluidity. An in-depth analysis of the visual qualities of water places fluid space and time at the centre of these refugee films. In Mediterranean refugee filmmaking, water enables an embodied experience that leads to allegiance and sympathy, in order to achieve solidarity. This approach is based on a desire to contribute to a new historiography in the service of a more just world. Transnational journeys shape the representations of refugees travelling, transforming and transcending the Mediterranean. Ultimately, this paper examines how the migrant and the sea itself develop with the “refugee crisis”, visualised in a cinema adrift on the Mediterranean Sea.https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.18.0418pubpu

Acknowledged Legislators: ‘Lived experience’ in Scottish Poetry Films

Stefanie Van de Peer - ORCID: 0000-0003-3152-2912 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3152-2912In his 2014 book Arts of Independence, co-authored with artist Alexander Moffat, Alan Riach asserts that, while Scotland has had more than its fair share of important and experimental filmmakers, from John Grierson and Bill Douglas to Margaret Tait, the country still lacks a coherent film industry (p. 42). David Archibald’s Forsyth Hardy Lecture at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2014 also engaged with the lack of a national film industry in Scotland in the context of the independence referendum, and highlighted the transnational nature of cinema in general and Scottish cinema specifically. He argued for a more concerted effort towards an independent film industry in the country, and we argue here that one of the strategies for starting to foster an independent, national film identity could arguably be through a focus on the lives of poets and writers in film who are themselves devoted to issues of nationhood and national identity. In the case of this article, the poets in question are Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, Liz Lochhead and Robert Alan Jamieson. While these are not the only poets who have been subjects for Scottish films, we wish to focus on these as they are well-known, and have a consistent interest in the medium of film.https://ijosts.ubiquitypress.com/articles/abstract/188/7pubpub

Sympathy for the Other: Female solidarity and postcolonial subjectivity in Francophone cinema

Stefanie Van de Peer - ORCID: 0000-0003-3152-2912 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3152-2912In this article we explore how female sympathy and solidarity can be forged between transnational subjects and spectators. In particular, we place cinematic depictions of minority female suffering in the contexts of current feminist and postcolonial praxes. The aim is to demonstrate the ways in which world cinema can produce a transnational feminist solidarity through forms and narratives that reflect the experiences of women as gendered postcolonial subjects. Amongst the female and feminist theorists drawn upon, central to our understanding of a transnational feminist solidarity is Sandra Lee Bartky's ‘mitgefühl’ (feeling-with). From this understanding we suggest bonds of sympathetic solidarity between audiences and diegetic female subjects that bridge their ontological separation, without conflating the two, in relation to Rachida (Yamina Bachir Chouikh, 2002) and Frontière(s) (Xavier Gens, 2007). In combining film-philosophy, cinematic affect and feminist theory we formulate a radically new way of understanding and envisioning the construction of female suffering onscreen: as a means of producing transnational forms of spectator solidarity.https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2016.000920pubpub

1001 Nights and anime: The adaptation of transnational folklore in Tezuka Osamu’s Senya ichiya monogatari / A Thousand and One Nights (1969)

Stefanie Van de Peer - ORCID: 0000-0003-3152-2912 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3152-2912AM replaced with VoR 2021-06-03.Anthologising folktales from across the Middle East to North Africa, the inherently transnational 1001 Nights has become one of the most adapted works in the history of folklore (Zipes et al 2015). The tales have been adapted globally into works ranging from literature to theatre, from radio to film and animation. Historically, the 1001 Nights have served as inspiration for some of the very first animated experiments, from Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) to the Fleischer Studios’ 1936 Popeye the Saylor meets Sinbad the Sailor. One of the influences of the 1001 Nights can be found in Japanese culture (Nishio and Yamanaka, 2006). First translated into Japanese in 1875, the 1001 Nights quickly went on to take a hold of Japanese literature, and more recently it has become the basis for numerous manga and anime adaptations. This article investigates how one Japanese adaptation, Osamu Tezuka’s Senya Ichiya Monogatari (dir. Eiichi Yamamoto, 1969), expands the transnational potential of the original. In exploring how the 1001 Nights have become and remain integral to a transnational repertoire of animated storytelling, we highlight the elasticity and transnationality of 1001 Nights and the impact of its cultural localisation. We argue that the original’s structural and thematic emphasis on journeys, quests and flows provides the Japanese filmmakers with content that allows them to reach out to international distributors, making this early ‘anime’ film transnational in its own right. Through such means, the reciprocal flows of transnationalism within the 1001 Nights and its adaptations offer a mechanism for rethinking the relationship among Middle Eastern, North African and Japanese storytelling as a sometimes shared folklore.http://doi.org/10.16995/os.41pubpu

Predicting protein-protein interactions in Arabidopsis thaliana through integration of orthology, gene ontology and co-expression

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Large-scale identification of the interrelationships between different components of the cell, such as the interactions between proteins, has recently gained great interest. However, unraveling large-scale protein-protein interaction maps is laborious and expensive. Moreover, assessing the reliability of the interactions can be cumbersome.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we have developed a computational method that exploits the existing knowledge on protein-protein interactions in diverse species through orthologous relations on the one hand, and functional association data on the other hand to predict and filter protein-protein interactions in <it>Arabidopsis thaliana</it>. A highly reliable set of protein-protein interactions is predicted through this integrative approach making use of existing protein-protein interaction data from yeast, human, <it>C. elegans </it>and <it>D. melanogaster</it>. Localization, biological process, and co-expression data are used as powerful indicators for protein-protein interactions. The functional repertoire of the identified interactome reveals interactions between proteins functioning in well-conserved as well as plant-specific biological processes. We observe that although common mechanisms (e.g. actin polymerization) and components (e.g. ARPs, actin-related proteins) exist between different lineages, they are active in specific processes such as growth, cancer metastasis and trichome development in yeast, human and Arabidopsis, respectively.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We conclude that the integration of orthology with functional association data is adequate to predict protein-protein interactions. Through this approach, a high number of novel protein-protein interactions with diverse biological roles is discovered. Overall, we have predicted a reliable set of protein-protein interactions suitable for further computational as well as experimental analyses.</p

Nonrandom divergence of gene expression following gene and genome duplications in the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana

BACKGROUND: Genome analyses have revealed that gene duplication in plants is rampant. Furthermore, many of the duplicated genes seem to have been created through ancient genome-wide duplication events. Recently, we have shown that gene loss is strikingly different for large- and small-scale duplication events and highly biased towards the functional class to which a gene belongs. Here, we study the expression divergence of genes that were created during large- and small-scale gene duplication events by means of microarray data and investigate both the influence of the origin (mode of duplication) and the function of the duplicated genes on expression divergence. RESULTS: Duplicates that have been created by large-scale duplication events and that can still be found in duplicated segments have expression patterns that are more correlated than those that were created by small-scale duplications or those that no longer lie in duplicated segments. Moreover, the former tend to have highly redundant or overlapping expression patterns and are mostly expressed in the same tissues, while the latter show asymmetric divergence. In addition, a strong bias in divergence of gene expression was observed towards gene function and the biological process genes are involved in. CONCLUSION: By using microarray expression data for Arabidopsis thaliana, we show that the mode of duplication, the function of the genes involved, and the time since duplication play important roles in the divergence of gene expression and, therefore, in the functional divergence of genes after duplication

The gain and loss of genes during 600 million years of vertebrate evolution

BACKGROUND: Gene duplication is assumed to have played a crucial role in the evolution of vertebrate organisms. Apart from a continuous mode of duplication, two or three whole genome duplication events have been proposed during the evolution of vertebrates, one or two at the dawn of vertebrate evolution, and an additional one in the fish lineage, not shared with land vertebrates. Here, we have studied gene gain and loss in seven different vertebrate genomes, spanning an evolutionary period of about 600 million years. RESULTS: We show that: first, the majority of duplicated genes in extant vertebrate genomes are ancient and were created at times that coincide with proposed whole genome duplication events; second, there exist significant differences in gene retention for different functional categories of genes between fishes and land vertebrates; third, there seems to be a considerable bias in gene retention of regulatory genes towards the mode of gene duplication (whole genome duplication events compared to smaller-scale events), which is in accordance with the so-called gene balance hypothesis; and fourth, that ancient duplicates that have survived for many hundreds of millions of years can still be lost. CONCLUSION: Based on phylogenetic analyses, we show that both the mode of duplication and the functional class the duplicated genes belong to have been of major importance for the evolution of the vertebrates. In particular, we provide evidence that massive gene duplication (probably as a consequence of entire genome duplications) at the dawn of vertebrate evolution might have been particularly important for the evolution of complex vertebrates