'The ghetto will always be my living room': Hustling and belonging in the Nairobi slums

Hustling on the margins This is the story about the journey of a young woman who grew up in one of the oldest and largest informal settlements of Nairobi. Eliza’s story is inextricably tied to the broader narratives of hustling that feature centrally in everyday ‘creolised argot’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2005, p. 28) amongst Nairobi youth making a living outside the formal economy. ‘Hustling’ in the Kenyan context has shaped youth identities and their norms of adaptation to everyday adversity and uncertain futures. Eliza was one of the key protagonists of my PhD research, in many ways epitomizing and defying the logics of the ‘hustle economy’ (Thieme, 2013). Her journey included the impasses she faced as she aspired to do well – to get out just enough to be better off – but to stay anchored within the collective subculture of urban youth living in informal settlements or ‘slums’

‘Youth are redrawing the map’: temporalities and terrains of the hustle economy in Mathare, Nairobi

This article examines the temporalities and terrains of the home-grown hustle economy of Mathare, one of the oldest and largest informal settlements in Nairobi. It builds on my previous work mobilizing the notion of ‘hustle’ to ground the narratives of struggle, opportunity and place-making expressed by youth whose livelihood strategies have centred around neighbourhood-based informal waste labour in order to assert claims to their local environment. Drawing on three ethnographic portraits and over a decade of longitudinal ethnographic research, the article shows how hustling connects to and evolves with particular generational and gendered identities, revealing the shifting demands on ‘older’ versus ‘younger’ youth. As everyday lives are mired in constant uncertainty, youth occupy a ‘precarious present’, caught in a state of suspension but also well versed in adapting to adversity and shaping local politics of provisioning in the absence of formal structures of support. The article sheds light on local logics of wealth redistribution among youth who belong to the same neighbourhood but whose claims to particular resources shift over time. The article demonstrates how hustling in Mathare sits at the nexus of agentive economic, environmental, political and social struggles, as youth on the urban periphery manage waste in their neighbourhoods to negotiate their place but also their time in the city

Harnessing the ‘hustle’: struggle, solidarities and narratives of work in Nairobi and beyond

In a workshop entitled ‘Harnessing the Hustle’, held at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in April 2017, a group of academic researchers and community activists came together to discuss a concept that resonated across ethnographic findings and everyday life alike: hustling. For many of us working in Nairobi for years, we considered the real ‘experts in the room’ to be our Kenyan interlocutors, many of whom have become research collaborators and friends. Most of them lived and worked in different corners of the city, but they had the following in common: they were born and raised in Nairobi, and they self-identified as ‘hustlers’ and with the practice of ‘hustling’ in their everyday life. Alongside our friends and collaborators, we reflected on each paper’s empirical context in which hustling featured as a narrative and set of urban practices and positionings. Throughout the afternoon it became clear that the theoretical registers of hustling merited attention. Hustling was not only a street vernacular; it had also become a way for youth to conceptualize their own struggles, politics and agency. Ironically, the BIEA, which hosted our discussion, is located in the leafy ex-colonial neighbourhood of Kileleshwa. Seemingly removed from Nairobi’s familiar sounds and sensory bombardment, we discussed the need to decolonize ethnographic research and theory, guided by our Kenyan colleagues, artists, collaborators and critics in the workshop

Planning working futures : precarious work through carceral space.

Geographies of precarious work are advanced through an eight month qualitative study of prisoners nearing release from HMP Brixton in London, providing a spatial rendering of working uncertainty. This builds on geographical scholarship highlighting the porosity of prison walls such that carceral space is understood as non-totalising yet extensive. Release on Temporary License (ROTL) is examined as a mechanism of such porosity, allowing offenders to undertake work outside prison. Within the context of the rehabilitation agenda in England and Wales that emphasises the generative function of prison time, we frame the ROTL as a flow mechanism that anticipates both the end of the custodial sentence and precarious work. Experiences of such precariousness emerge through prisoners’ processes of planning for future work through states of suspension, compulsion and experimentation. The focus on planning work contributes to understandings firstly of the porosity of carceral space and secondly of labour precarity. Firstly, it highlights the frictions in the flow mechanism of the ROTL, such that the porosity of carceral space cannot be understood as seamless mobility. Secondly, these frictions indicate how the structural condition of labour precarity can be lived through forms of mundane stability that might be generative as well as exhausting

Dissolved organic matter characteristics of deciduous and coniferous forests with variable management: different at the source, aligned in the soil

This dataset contains the data to the article: "Dissolved organic matter characteristics of deciduous and coniferous forests with variable management: different at the source, aligned in the soil" published in BiogeosciencesDFG/108154260/Elementkreisläufe in Grünland- und Waldökosystemen der Biodiversitätsexploratorien in Abhängigkeit von Landnutzungsintensität und damit verknüpfter Biodiversität/BECycle

Combined multi-modal assessment of glaucomatous damage with electroretinography and optical coherence tomography/angiography

Purpose: To compare the diagnostic performance and to evaluate the interrelationship of electroretinographical and structural and vascular measures in glaucoma. Methods: For 14 eyes of 14 healthy controls and 15 eyes of 12 patients with glaucoma ranging from preperimetric to advanced stages optical coherence tomog-raphy (OCT), OCT-angiography (OCT-A), and electrophysiological measures (multifocal photopic negative response ratio [mfPhNR] and steady-state pattern electroretinogra-phy [ssPERG]) were applied to assess changes in retinal structure, microvasculature, and function, respectively. The diagnostic performance was assessed via area-under-curve (AUC) measures obtained from receiver operating characteristics analyses. The interre-lation of the different measures was assessed with correlation analyses. Results: The mfPhNR, ssPERG amplitude, parafoveal (pfVD) and peripapillary vessel density (pVD), macular ganglion cell inner plexiform layer thickness (mGCIPL) and peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer thickness (pRNFL) were significantly reduced in glaucoma. The AUC for mfPhNR was highest among diagnostic modalities (AUC: 0.88, 95% confidence interval: 0.75–1.0, P < 0.001), albeit not statistically different from that for macular (mGCIPL: 0.76, 0.58–0.94, P < 0.05; pfVD: 0.81, 0.65–0.97, P < 0.01) or peripapillary imaging (pRNFL: 0.85, 0.70–1.0, P < 0.01; pVD: 0.82, 0.68–0.97, P < 0.01). Combined functional/vascular measures yielded the highest AUC (mfPhNR-pfVD: 0.94, 0.85–1.0, P < 0.001). The functional/structural measure correlation (mfPhNR-mGCIPL correlation coefficient [rs ]: 0.58, P = 0.001; mfPhNR-pRNFL rs: 0.66, P < 0.001) was stronger than the functional-vascular correlation (mfPhNR-pfVD rs: 0.29, P = 0.13; mfPhNR-pVD rs: 0.54, P = 0.003). Conclusions: The combination of ERG measures and OCT-A improved diagnostic performance and enhanced understanding of pathophysiology in glaucoma. Translational Relevance: Multimodal assessment of glaucoma damage improves diagnostics and monitoring of disease progression

Genomewide and Enzymatic Analysis Reveals Efficient d-Galacturonic Acid Metabolism in the Basidiomycete Yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides.

Biorefining of renewable feedstocks is one of the most promising routes to replace fossil-based products. Since many common fermentation hosts, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, are naturally unable to convert many component plant cell wall polysaccharides, the identification of organisms with broad catabolism capabilities represents an opportunity to expand the range of substrates used in fermentation biorefinery approaches. The red basidiomycete yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides is a promising and robust host for lipid- and terpene-derived chemicals. Previous studies demonstrated assimilation of a range of substrates, from C5/C6 sugars to aromatic molecules similar to lignin monomers. In the current study, we analyzed the potential of R. toruloides to assimilate d-galacturonic acid, a major sugar in many pectin-rich agricultural waste streams, including sugar beet pulp and citrus peels. d-Galacturonic acid is not a preferred substrate for many fungi, but its metabolism was found to be on par with those of d-glucose and d-xylose in R. toruloides A genomewide analysis by combined transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) and RB-TDNA-seq revealed those genes with high relevance for fitness on d-galacturonic acid. While R. toruloides was found to utilize the nonphosphorylative catabolic pathway known from ascomycetes, the maximal velocities of several enzymes exceeded those previously reported. In addition, an efficient downstream glycerol catabolism and a novel transcription factor were found to be important for d-galacturonic acid utilization. These results set the basis for use of R. toruloides as a potential host for pectin-rich waste conversions and demonstrate its suitability as a model for metabolic studies with basidiomycetes.IMPORTANCE The switch from the traditional fossil-based industry to a green and sustainable bioeconomy demands the complete utilization of renewable feedstocks. Many currently used bioconversion hosts are unable to utilize major components of plant biomass, warranting the identification of microorganisms with broader catabolic capacity and characterization of their unique biochemical pathways. d-Galacturonic acid is a plant component of bioconversion interest and is the major backbone sugar of pectin, a plant cell wall polysaccharide abundant in soft and young plant tissues. The red basidiomycete and oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides has been previously shown to utilize a range of sugars and aromatic molecules. Using state-of-the-art functional genomic methods and physiological and biochemical assays, we elucidated the molecular basis underlying the efficient metabolism of d-galacturonic acid. This study identified an efficient pathway for uronic acid conversion to guide future engineering efforts and represents the first detailed metabolic analysis of pectin metabolism in a basidiomycete fungus

Tree species driving functional properties of mobile organic matter in throughfall and forest floor solutions of beech, spruce and pine forests

The chemical nature of mobile organic matter is a prerequisite for advancing our understanding of the C and nutrient cycling and other forest ecosystem processes. Tree species differ in leaf composition (e.g. nutrient, polyphenol content) and leaf litter quality, which in turn affects a variety of ecosystem processes. However, the composition of OM derived from living plant material via throughfall (TF) and its compositional fate traversing the forest floor (FF) is insufficiently understood. Are there tree-species specific differences in functional properties (e.g. aromaticity) of OM in TF and FF solutions collected from pine, spruce and different beech stands? And if yes- how do functional properties change with tree species and ecosystem compartment (throughfall vs. forest floor)? We addressed these questions by applying solid-state C-13 NMR spectroscopy to TF and FF solutions from European beech forests of the three DFG “Biodiversity Exploratories”, from Norway spruce sites of the Hainich-Dün-Exploratory and Scots pine stands in East-Thuringia. C-13 NMR spectroscopy revealed a homogeneous composition of TF-DOM under beech between the three Exploratories and exhibited remarkable tree-species related differences in DOM composition: Compared to spruce and pine, TF-DOM under beech showed higher intensities of aromatic and phenolic C (beech &gt; pine &gt; spruce) and lower ones of alkyl-C (pine ≈ spruce &gt; beech). Consequently, beech TF exhibited higher aromaticity values and lower alkyl/O-alkyl ratios (i.e. extent of decomposition) in comparison to coniferous TF-DOM. FF-DOM under beech was very similar between the three “Biodiversity Exploratories” and surprisingly analog to FF-DOM under spruce, while under pine higher intensities of aromatic and phenolic C and alkyl-C (pine &gt; beech ≈ spruce) and lower O-alkyl-C signals were observed. Thus, pine FF-DOM exhibited the highest values for both aromaticity (28%) and decomposition (0.87). In essence, tree-species effects became most notable for the composition and functionality of DOM in TF exhibiting consistently the highest aromatic and phenolic C signals for the beech sites. In view of the allelopathic effectiveness of phenolic compounds, the results might point to an increased allelopathic potential of beech TF, which successfully impairs competing plants and organisms and hence alter ecosystem processes and functioning. In the end, the ecological functions of DOM in ecosystems are still imperfectly understood

BinCam:designing for engagement with Facebook for behavior change

Abstract. In this paper we continue work to investigate how we can engage young adults in behaviors of recycling and the prevention of food waste through social media and persuasive and ubiquitous computing systems. Our previous work with BinCam, a two-part design combining a system for the collection of waste-related behaviors with a Facebook application, suggested that although this ubiquitous system could raise awareness of recycling behavior, engagement with social media remained low. In this paper we reconsider our design in terms of engagement, examining both the theoretical and practical ways in which engagement can be designed for. This paper presents findings from a new user study exploring the redesign of the social media interface following this analysis. By incorporating elements of gamification, social support and improved data visualization, we contribute insights on the relative potential of these techniques to engage individuals across the lifespan of a system’s deployment