The Potent Respiratory System of Osedax mucofloris (Siboglinidae, Annelida) - A Prerequisite for the Origin of Bone-Eating Osedax?

Members of the conspicuous bone-eating genus, Osedax, are widely distributed on whale falls in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. These gutless annelids contain endosymbiotic heterotrophic bacteria in a branching root system embedded in the bones of vertebrates, whereas a trunk and anterior palps extend into the surrounding water. The unique life style within a bone environment is challenged by the high bacterial activity on, and within, the bone matrix possibly causing O2 depletion, and build-up of potentially toxic sulphide. We measured the O2 distribution around embedded Osedax and showed that the bone microenvironment is anoxic. Morphological studies showed that ventilation mechanisms in Osedax are restricted to the anterior palps, which are optimized for high O2 uptake by possessing a large surface area, large surface to volume ratio, and short diffusion distances. The blood vascular system comprises large vessels in the trunk, which facilitate an ample supply of oxygenated blood from the anterior crown to a highly vascularised root structure. Respirometry studies of O. mucofloris showed a high O2 consumption that exceeded the average O2 consumption of a broad line of resting annelids without endosymbionts. We regard this combination of features of the respiratory system of O. mucofloris as an adaptation to their unique nutrition strategy with roots embedded in anoxic bones and elevated O2 demand due to aerobic heterotrophic endosymbionts

In Search of a Trade Mark: Search Practices and Bureaucratic Poetics

Trade marks have been understood as quintessential ‘bureaucratic properties’. This article suggests that the making of trade marks has been historically influenced by bureaucratic practices of search and classification, which in turn were affected by the possibilities and limits of spatial organisation and technological means of access and storage. It shows how the organisation of access and retrieval did not only condition the possibility of conceiving new trade marks, but also served to delineate their intangible proprietary boundaries. Thereby they framed the very meaning of a trade mark. By advancing a historical analysis that is sensitive to shifts, both in actual materiality and in the administrative routines of trade mark law, the article highlights the legal form of trade mark as inherently social and materially shaped. We propose a historical understanding of trade mark law that regards legal practice and bureaucratic routines as being co-constitutive of the very legal object itself

The Conundrum of Order: The Concept of Governance from an Interdisciplinary Perspective

The term governance has made an impressive career in a number of disciplines concerned with regulation, order and law. This chapter draws on insights from legal studies, sociology, political science, anthropology, history and geography to paint a multifaceted picture of existing, competing and complementing approaches to the concept of governance. For reasons of space, the chapter can but point to the different variations on a theme, as governance occupies an ambivalent place in past and present discourses on political (or, legal or economic) order and society. It is argued that beyond pointing to crucial phases of methodological and theoretical transformation within different disciplines such as the often perceived transition ‘from government to governance’, governance is itself a deeply interdisciplinary concept

The Laws of Image-nation: Brazilian racial tropes and the shadows of the slave quarters

CAPES Foundation, Proc. N. 09912-1; Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck Law School and the Law and Image Reading Group funded and organized the ‘Law and Image Symposium’