RNAi-mediated suppression of isoprene emission in poplar transiently impacts phenolic metabolism under high temperature and high light intensities: a transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis

In plants, isoprene plays a dual role: (a) as thermo-protective agent proposed to prevent degradation of enzymes/membrane structures involved in photosynthesis, and (b) as reactive molecule reducing abiotic oxidative stress. The present work addresses the question whether suppression of isoprene emission interferes with genome wide transcription rates and metabolite fluxes in grey poplar (Populusxcanescens) throughout the growing season. Gene expression and metabolite profiles of isoprene emitting wild type plants and RNAi-mediated non-isoprene emitting poplars were compared by using poplar Affymetrix microarrays and non-targeted FT-ICR-MS (Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry). We observed a transcriptional down-regulation of genes encoding enzymes of phenylpropanoid regulatory and biosynthetic pathways, as well as distinct metabolic down-regulation of condensed tannins and anthocyanins, in non-isoprene emitting genotypes during July, when high temperature and light intensities possibly caused transient drought stress, as indicated by stomatal closure. Under these conditions leaves of non-isoprene emitting plants accumulated hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), a signaling molecule in stress response and negative regulator of anthocyanin biosynthesis. The absence of isoprene emission under high temperature and light stress resulted transiently in a new chemo(pheno)type with suppressed production of phenolic compounds. This may compromise inducible defenses and may render non-isoprene emitting poplars more susceptible to environmental stress

Climate control of terrestrial carbon exchange across biomes and continents

Peer reviewe

Localizing EU Gender Policy: The Diffusion of Gender Mainstreaming across Feminist Movements in Eastern Germany, CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 08.1, June, 2008

Gender mainstreaming emerged in the mid-1990s as an innovative and controversial policy tool for reducing gender inequalities. The European Union seeks to propagate the practice of gender mainstreaming both within EU institutions and among member states. Feminist scholars and policy elites discuss and debate gender main-streaming widely, but have yet to consider how local feminist activists, who could play a central role in diffusing gender mainstreaming, understand, interpret and respond to this agenda. This paper examines whether and why local feminist movements in two cities in eastern Germany adopt gender mainstreaming. Consideration of the characteristics of the contexts in which local feminist movements are embedded clarifies the conditions under which social movements rally round new policy paradigms

An invitation to bring animals into feminist and queer sociology

Abstract: This paper presents an invitation to feminist and queer sociology to engage more frequently, enthusiastically, and deeply with animals. Feminist and queer sociology that attend to animals and animality stand to develop better knowledge for animals and animal studies and for women, queers, and feminist and queer sociology. Sociologists working from feminist and queer perspectives are also particularly well‐positioned within the discipline of sociology to contribute to and take advantage of the insights of the field of feminist animal studies. After a brief review of what feminist animal studies is, I proceed through three steps to elaborate the imperative for feminist and queer sociology to consider animals. First, I show how feminist animal studies as a theoretical perspective engages with issues that are core to feminist and queer sociology. Second, I center intersectional feminism and lay out how incorporating species can and does enhance our understanding of intersectional processes. Third, I present an ethical call, grounded in the traditions of feminist ethics and ecofeminism, to attend to species in feminist and queer sociology

Challenging and Reinforcing the Ability/Disability System through Advocacy for Disabled Dogs

This paper illuminates how volunteers and animal rescuers who assist dogs from a high-intake public shelter in the Los Angeles metropolitan area simultaneously resist the devaluation of the lives of disabled dogs while sensationalizing and fetishizing disability through their discursive and representational practices. Drawing on observations from three years of ethnographic fieldwork in an animal shelter and with animal rescues, as well as from public media volunteers and rescuers post online, I adopt an intersectional analysis that attends to inequalities of species, ability/disability, and gender in the context of contemporary American capitalism. I show how members of the animal rescue community—who are all women, almost all white, and none of whom identified themselves as disabled—reject the shelter's practice of fast-tracking some types of disabled dogs for shelter killing and assert instead the right of disabled dogs to live. At the same time, rescuers talk about and represent disabled dogs as infantile, remarkable, and in need of saviors to help them. Ultimately, rescuers' representations of disabled dogs work to expand capitalist beliefs of companion animals as lively capital by showing that disabled dogs have value as companions, in large part through an assertion of dogs as family members

Coming to Terms with the Legacies of the Pound Model in Animal Sheltering in the United States

This paper examines the legacies of the emergence of the animal control and sheltering industry in the United States and their impact on contemporary public animal shelters. While decades of gradual reform have helped substantially reduce the number of animals entering shelters and being killed there, contemporary animal sheltering largely continues to follow the path set when animal sheltering developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Three key interrelated legacies of the pound model of early animal control and sheltering enduringly shape sheltering today: (1) the institutional culture of animal shelters grounded in the logics of caging and killing; (2) the lack of visibility and transparency, especially within government shelters; and (3) the economic logics of the pound model, including the disparities in sheltering resources across communities. Examining the origins of animal control and sheltering and identifying the specific legacies of this pound model within contemporary government-funded shelters improves understanding of why such shelters in the US have developed with a particular set of practices and ideologies, and thus provides an important footing for envisioning and enacting radical changes in animal sheltering