Contestations of identity: colonial policing of female sexuality in the Cross River region of Southern Nigeria

Colonial rule impacted profoundly on the lives of Nigerian women and led to a reconfiguration of gender identities, producing sites of contestation and negotiation as imperial ideas of feminity were contested and reconstructed. Through the prism of prostitution using the Cross River region of the present-day Akwa Ibom and the Cross River States as a case study, this paper navigates the landscape of female sexuality in the twentieth century and the colonial government’s effort to contain a phenomenon that undermined normative conjugal and family relations and also muddled the packaging of a colonial identity. The optimal utilisation of their colonies by the British necessitated the cooperation of the chiefs and seeking to impose a new moral, economic and social order to facilitate their economic and political control. The British rulers/colonists in collaboration with the local chiefs and elders reinterpreted morality and reconstructed the Nigerian woman in accordance with the Victorian values of what constituted a virtuous and good woman. Prostitution with its thwarting of culturally and morally acceptable expressions of sexuality drew state censorship. In some cases, local actors colluded with the colonial government to police female sexuality and more often than not deepen women’s marginalisation. In many other instances, they aided the entry of women into prostitution. Perception and the resulting behaviour of kinsmen and local governing bodies toward the sex trade were tied in part to their benefits from the derivable income which contributed significantly to the survival of rural households. At diverse points and to varying degrees, institutional structures and spaces became sites of contestation as the prostitutes sought to assert their rights over their sexuality.Keywords: Gender identities, prostitution, female sexuality, morality, Nigeri

Pollution resulting from oil exploration and Plastic disposal in Niger-Delta Nigeria: biodynamics and artist’s recycling methods as control measures

Despite the huge efforts of the government and other key players in Nigeria’s oil industry to reduce the volume of gas flaring during oil exploration; very little progress can be seen. Billions of standard cubic feet (SCF) of gas are still flared quarterly, which puts the country air quality at a risk. The country’s level of particulate matter is still at 10% ratio. This level of particulate matter (PM) is proven to pose high adverse environmental and health implication such as climate change, acid rain, agricultural loss, physiological effects, air pollution caused by burning of petro chemical products causing the destruction of zinc roof, depletion of the ozone layer, decay of concrete walls/ foundations and economic loss. It is therefore the aim of this paper to engage the use of Biodynamic technology and art-oriented approach to see how most of these chemical products could be converted to art forms by way of recycling for aesthetic purposes and also as street furniture instead of resulting to burning them. With these suggestions therefore, the solution to air pollution problems being faced in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria will be reduced to its barest minimum. Through Biodynamic, smog from the atmosphere could be absorbed/ purified via a catalytic reaction with sunlight and then turned the smog into harmless salt. Being that this technology has already been validated by European Union Studies to 75% active and also owing to the fact that it’s basic constituents such as Titanium oxide and Marble mineral is in commercial quantity abundant in Nigeria, is not to rule out the fact that with proper environmental management and control, the Niger Delta Region will be relieved of these menace of pollution. Moreover, the works of art produced from these chemical wastes can also be exported as income generation for the country. Therefore, it is imperative for this technology and creative ventures to be embraced and developed, to allow for not only improvement of air quality but to also see to the emergence of a product that can bring a new face in the diversification of Nigeria’s economy through exportation of these products. This will not only grow the country’s Gross Domestic Products, but will also be in line with the developmental vision of the Federal Government of Nigeria.Keywords: Bio, dynamic, Air pollution, Aesthetics, Air quality, Recycling, Niger Delta, Particulate matter, Titanium, Marble, Catalyst, Economy, Artists, Gas flarin

Student Evaluation of Interprofessional Experiences Between Medical and Graduate Biomedical Students

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) has fostered increased collaboration and appreciation for different disciplines among health professionals but has yet to be established in a translational research setting. Interprofessional experiences (IPEx) implemented early in student training could increase translational research productivity.Methods and findings: Ten students involved in an IPE curriculum wrote autoethnographic accounts that were coded and emergent themes were grouped through constant comparative analysis. IPE led to improvements in communication, trust, appreciation, and an increased desire to seek IPE in future careers. Challenges included administrative barriers and interpersonal conflicts.Conclusions: Participants found IPE beneficial to their careers and developed a respect for each other’s discipline. To implement IPE, institutions should consider possible administrative challenges and inclusion of conflict management training

SHREC2020 track:Multi-domain protein shape retrieval challenge

Proteins are natural modular objects usually composed of several domains, each domain bearing a specific function that is mediated through its surface, which is accessible to vicinal molecules. This draws attention to an understudied characteristic of protein structures: surface, that is mostly unexploited by protein structure comparison methods. In the present work, we evaluated the performance of six shape comparison methods, among which three are based on machine learning, to distinguish between 588 multi-domain proteins and to recreate the evolutionary relationships at the proteinand species levels of the SCOPe database. The six groups that participated in the challenge submitted a total of 15 sets of results. We observed that the performance of all the methods significantly decreases at the species level, suggesting that shape-only protein comparison is challenging for closely related proteins. Even if the dataset is limited in size (only 588 proteins are considered whereas more than 160,000 protein structures are experimentally solved), we think that this work provides useful insights into the current shape comparison methods performance, and highlights possible limitations to large-scale applications due to the computational cost

Surface-based protein domains retrieval methods from a SHREC2021 challenge

publication dans une revue suite à la communication hal-03467479 (SHREC 2021: surface-based protein domains retrieval)International audienceProteins are essential to nearly all cellular mechanism and the effectors of the cells activities. As such, they often interact through their surface with other proteins or other cellular ligands such as ions or organic molecules. The evolution generates plenty of different proteins, with unique abilities, but also proteins with related functions hence similar 3D surface properties (shape, physico-chemical properties, …). The protein surfaces are therefore of primary importance for their activity. In the present work, we assess the ability of different methods to detect such similarities based on the geometry of the protein surfaces (described as 3D meshes), using either their shape only, or their shape and the electrostatic potential (a biologically relevant property of proteins surface). Five different groups participated in this contest using the shape-only dataset, and one group extended its pre-existing method to handle the electrostatic potential. Our comparative study reveals both the ability of the methods to detect related proteins and their difficulties to distinguish between highly related proteins. Our study allows also to analyze the putative influence of electrostatic information in addition to the one of protein shapes alone. Finally, the discussion permits to expose the results with respect to ones obtained in the previous contests for the extended method. The source codes of each presented method have been made available online

SHREC’20 Track:Retrieval of digital surfaces with similar geometric reliefs

International audienceThis paper presents the methods that have participated in the SHREC'20 contest on retrieval of surface patches with similar geometric reliefs and 1 the analysis of their performance over the benchmark created for this challenge. The goal of the context is to verify the possibility of retrieving 3D models only based on the reliefs that are present on their surface and to compare methods that are suitable for this task. This problem is related to many real world applications, such as the classification of cultural heritage goods or the analysis of different materials. To address this challenge, it is necessary to characterize the local "geometric pattern" information, possibly forgetting model size and bending. Seven groups participated in this contest and twenty runs were submitted for evaluation. The performances of the methods reveal that good results are achieved with a number of techniques that use different approaches