MOORE, AMELIA. 2019. Destination Anthropocene: Science and Tourism in the Bahamas. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 216 pp.; ISBN: 978-0-52029-893-4

This book denaturalizes the understanding of Anthropocene, examines how it is constituted by global scientists, and critiques the racial and classed implications of the over-simplifications that emerge from their theories about anthropogenesis

Sikkim the Place and Sikkim the Documentary: Reading Political History through the Life and After-Life of a Visual Representation

In the year 1971, the renowned India film-maker Satyajit Ray made a documentary on Sikkim, commissioned by the royal family, to showcase the small Himalayan Kingdom which was then a protectorate of India. The content of the film however failed to impress its royal patrons and hence it was not publicly released. A few years later the kingdom was merged into India as the twenty-second state of the union and the film was banned by the Indian government for its sensitive topic. After more than thirty years of unavailability and hence a resultant unique legendary status, the film finally became available for unrestricted public viewing from 2011. This paper traces the eventful trajectory of this film, treating its journey as metaphoric of the political history of Sikkim as it negotiated its status within the larger nation-state during various configurations of political power-structures. Reading back from the controversies engendered in each phase, the article sheds light on the underlying ideological contestations over the material and symbolic dimensions of Sikkim’s political identity which came to bear on the course of events. The unbounded, unpredictable life and after-life of the film attests to the unbounded, unpredictable ways in which hegemonic assertions operate – such that the meaning and significance of the film and by extension the meaning and significance of the historic moment in which it was made and the present vantage-point remain ever-dynamic, open to emergent re-articulations and re-significations

Molecular analysis of photic inhibition of blood-feeding in Anopheles gambiae

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Anopheles gambiae </it>mosquitoes exhibit an endophilic, nocturnal blood feeding behavior. Despite the importance of light as a regulator of malaria transmission, our knowledge on the molecular interactions between environmental cues, the circadian oscillators and the host seeking and feeding systems of the <it>Anopheles </it>mosquitoes is limited.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the present study, we show that the blood feeding behavior of mosquitoes is under circadian control and can be modulated by light pulses, both in a clock dependent and in an independent manner. Short light pulses (~2–5 min) in the dark phase can inhibit the blood-feeding propensity of mosquitoes momentarily in a clock independent manner, while longer durations of light stimulation (~1–2 h) can induce a phase advance in blood-feeding propensity in a clock dependent manner. The temporary feeding inhibition after short light pulses may reflect a masking effect of light, an unknown mechanism which is known to superimpose on the true circadian regulation. Nonetheless, the shorter light pulses resulted in the differential regulation of a variety of genes including those implicated in the circadian control, suggesting that light induced masking effects also involve clock components. Light pulses (both short and long) also regulated genes implicated in feeding as well as different physiological processes like metabolism, transport, immunity and protease digestions. RNAi-mediated gene silencing assays of the light pulse regulated circadian factors <it>timeless</it>, <it>cryptochrome </it>and three <it>takeout </it>homologues significantly up-regulated the mosquito's blood-feeding propensity. In contrast, gene silencing of light pulse regulated olfactory factors down-regulated the mosquito's propensity to feed on blood.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study show that the mosquito's feeding behavior is under circadian control. Long and short light pulses can induce inhibition of blood-feeding through circadian and unknown mechanisms, respectively, that involve the chemosensory system.</p

Delinking of S phase and cytokinesis in the protozoan parasite

The alternation of DNA replication in S phase and chromosome segregation in M phase is a hallmark in the cell cycle of most well-studied eukaryotes and ensures that the progeny do not have more than the normal complement of genes and chromosomes. An exception to this rule has been described in cancer cells that occasionally become polyploid as a result of failure to restrain S phase despite the failure to undergo complete mitosis. Here, we describe the cell division cycle of the human pathogen, Entamoeba histolytica, which routinely accumulates polyploid cells. We have studied DNA synthesis in freshly subcultured cells and show that, unlike most eukaryotes, Entamoeba cells reduplicate their genome several times before cell division occurs. Furthermore, polyploidy may occur without nuclear division so that single nuclei may contain 1-10 times or more genome contents. Multinucleated cells may also accumulate several genome contents in each nuclei of one cell. Thus, checkpoints that normally prevent DNA reduplication until after cytokinesis in most eukaryotes are not observed in E. histolytica

Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction for Data Visualization: An Unsupervised Fuzzy Rule-based Approach

Here, we propose an unsupervised fuzzy rule-based dimensionality reduction method primarily for data visualization. It considers the following important issues relevant to dimensionality reduction-based data visualization: (i) preservation of neighborhood relationships, (ii) handling data on a non-linear manifold, (iii) the capability of predicting projections for new test data points, (iv) interpretability of the system, and (v) the ability to reject test points if required. For this, we use a first-order Takagi-Sugeno type model. We generate rule antecedents using clusters in the input data. In this context, we also propose a new variant of the Geodesic c-means clustering algorithm. We estimate the rule parameters by minimizing an error function that preserves the inter-point geodesic distances (distances over the manifold) as Euclidean distances on the projected space. We apply the proposed method on three synthetic and three real-world data sets and visually compare the results with four other standard data visualization methods. The obtained results show that the proposed method behaves desirably and performs better than or comparable to the methods compared with. The proposed method is found to be robust to the initial conditions. The predictability of the proposed method for test points is validated by experiments. We also assess the ability of our method to reject output points when it should. Then, we extend this concept to provide a general framework for learning an unsupervised fuzzy model for data projection with different objective functions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to manifold learning using unsupervised fuzzy modeling

Understanding the classes better with class-specific and rule-specific feature selection, and redundancy control in a fuzzy rule based framework

Recently, several studies have claimed that using class-specific feature subsets provides certain advantages over using a single feature subset for representing the data for a classification problem. Unlike traditional feature selection methods, the class-specific feature selection methods select an optimal feature subset for each class. Typically class-specific feature selection (CSFS) methods use one-versus-all split of the data set that leads to issues such as class imbalance, decision aggregation, and high computational overhead. We propose a class-specific feature selection method embedded in a fuzzy rule-based classifier, which is free from the drawbacks associated with most existing class-specific methods. Additionally, our method can be adapted to control the level of redundancy in the class-specific feature subsets by adding a suitable regularizer to the learning objective. Our method results in class-specific rules involving class-specific subsets. We also propose an extension where different rules of a particular class are defined by different feature subsets to model different substructures within the class. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been validated through experiments on three synthetic data sets

Feature selection simultaneously preserving both class and cluster structures

When a data set has significant differences in its class and cluster structure, selecting features aiming only at the discrimination of classes would lead to poor clustering performance, and similarly, feature selection aiming only at preserving cluster structures would lead to poor classification performance. To the best of our knowledge, a feature selection method that simultaneously considers class discrimination and cluster structure preservation is not available in the literature. In this paper, we have tried to bridge this gap by proposing a neural network-based feature selection method that focuses both on class discrimination and structure preservation in an integrated manner. In addition to assessing typical classification problems, we have investigated its effectiveness on band selection in hyperspectral images. Based on the results of the experiments, we may claim that the proposed feature/band selection can select a subset of features that is good for both classification and clustering

Eukaryotic checkpoints are absent in the cell division cycle of Entamoeba histolytica

Fidelity in transmission of genetic characters is ensured by the faithful duplication of the genome, followed by equal segregation of the genetic material in the progeny. Thus, alternation of DNA duplication (S-phase) and chromosome segregation during the M-phase are hallmarks of most well studied eukaryotes. Several rounds of genome reduplication before chromosome segregation upsets this cycle and leads to polyploidy. Polyploidy is often witnessed in cells prior to differentiation, in embryonic cells or in diseases such as cancer. Studies on the protozoan parasite, Entamoeba histolytica suggest that in its proliferative phase, this organism may accumulate polyploid cells. It has also been shown that although this organism contains sequence homologs of genes which are known to control the cell cycle of most eukaryotes, these genes may be structurally altered and their equivalent function yet to be demonstrated in amoeba. The available information suggests that surveillance mechanisms or 'checkpoints' which are known to regulate the eukaryotic cell cycle may be absent or altered in E. histolytica