Plasmodium falciparum ligand binding to erythrocytes induce alterations in deformability essential for invasion

The most lethal form of malaria in humans is caused by Plasmodium falciparum. These parasites invade erythrocytes, a complex process involving multiple ligand-receptor interactions. The parasite makes initial contact with the erythrocyte followed by dramatic deformations linked to the function of the Erythrocyte binding antigen family and P. falciparum reticulocyte binding-like families. We show EBA-175 mediates substantial changes in the deformability of erythrocytes by binding to glycophorin A and activating a phosphorylation cascade that includes erythrocyte cytoskeletal proteins resulting in changes in the viscoelastic properties of the host cell. TRPM7 kinase inhibitors FTY720 and waixenicin A block the changes in the deformability of erythrocytes and inhibit merozoite invasion by directly inhibiting the phosphorylation cascade. Therefore, binding of P. falciparum parasites to the erythrocyte directly activate a signaling pathway through a phosphorylation cascade and this alters the viscoelastic properties of the host membrane conditioning it for successful invasion

Belonging to a different landscape: repurposing nationalist affects

This is an article about the embodied, sensual experience of rural landscape as a site where racialized feelings of national belonging get produced. Largely impervious to criticism and reformation by 'thin' legal-political versions of multicultural or cosmopolitan citizenship, it is my suggestion that this racialized belonging is best confronted through the recognition and appreciation of precisely what makes it so compelling. Through an engagement with the theorization of affect in the work of Divya Praful Tolia-Kelly, I consider the resources immanent to the perception of landscapes of national belonging that might be repurposed to unravel that belonging from within. I suggest that forms of environmental consciousness can unpick the mutually reinforcing relationships between nature and nation, opening up opportunities for thinking identity and belonging in different ways, and allowing rural landscapes to become more hospitable places

Performing the Anglo-Scottish Border: Cultural Landscapes, Heritage and Borderland Identities

Recent times have seen much reflection on the nature of the Anglo-Scottish border region; its past, present and potential future. Political concerns have rightly absorbed much of the attention, but at the same time important light has been shed on the legacy of cultural engagements and forms of interaction that might be said to perform and produce this border over time and render it particularly distinctive. A soft, internal border, the territory considered in this article is one with an ancient feudal past and a heavily conserved, preserved and, in parts, still militarized present. It is predominantly rural and characterized by large swathes of forestry, agriculture, and moorland, all of which raise issues of aesthetic and environmental, as well as social and economic sustainability. The concern in the case studies presented in this article is how, through the relational and processual perspectives of border studies and cultural landscapes, we might comprehend the over layered and sedimented histories, the nature of identities, heritage and experience of place here. I consider too the ways in which recent forms of creative practice are contributing to a wider investigation of this region and re-conceptualizing the cultural significance of the border

Rats, assorted shit and ‘racist groundwater’: towards extra-sectional understandings of childhoods and social-material processes

Reflecting on a study of children’s outdoor play in a ‘white, working class estate’ in east London, this paper argues that social-material processes that are characteristically massy, indivisible, unseen, fluid and noxious have, problematically, remained hidden-in-plain-sight within multidisciplinary research with children and young people. For example, juxtaposing qualitative and autoethnographic data, we highlight children’s vivid, troubling narratives of swarming rats, smearing excrement, and percolating subsurface flows of water, toxins and racialised affects. In so doing, we develop a wider argument that key theorisations of matter, nature and nonhuman co-presences have often struggled to articulate the indivisibility of social-material processes from contemporary social-political-economic geographies. Over the course of the paper, as children’s raced, classed, exclusionary, disenfranchised narratives accumulate, we recognise the urgency of reconciling microgeographical accounts of play and materiality with readings of geographies of social-economic inequalities, exclusions, ethnicities, religions, memorialisations and mortalities. To this end, we initiate an argument for a move from intersectional to extra-sectional analyses that might retain intersectionality’s critical and political purchase, whilst simultaneously folding social-material complexities and vitalities into its theorisation

Co-production: towards a utopian approach

This article outlines how co-production might be understood as a utopian method, which both attends to and works against dominant inequalities. It suggests that it might be positioned ‘within, against, and beyond’ current configurations of power in academia and society more broadly. It develops this argument by drawing on recent research funded through the UK’s Connected Communities programme, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; and by attending to arguments from the field of Utopian Studies. It explores particular issues of power and control within the field of co-production, acknowledging that neoliberalism both constrains and co-opts such practice; and explores methodological and infrastructural issues such that its utopian potential might be realised

Rancière and the re-distribution of the sensible: The artist Rosanna Raymond, dissensus and postcolonial sensibilities within the spaces of the museum

Through aesthetics we can articulate affective politics and demonstrate new ways of ‘doing’ progressive politics (Rancière, 2004).The paper explores the politics and practice of dissensus, within the museum with artist Rosanna Raymond. The paper argues that the museum space when critiqued through a postcolonial perspective and artistic practice, can be a vehicle for political change. Using Ranciere's account of 'politics' the paper outlines how a 'redistribution of the sensible' might be possible, that is inclusive of Maori space-time, self-determined cultural values and geoaesthetics