The Sakalava Pilgrimage as a Royal Service (Western Madagascar)

Das ethnographische Fallbeispiel untersucht die besonderen Formen von Pilgerschaft und Prozession im Kontext des zentralen Königsschreins der Sakalava im westlichen Madagaskar. ‘Pilgern’ entstand hier im Rahmen einer dezidiert nicht-westlichen Logik und wird von den Akteuren zunächst als eine von vielen Aspekten königlicher Arbeit (fanompoa) verstanden, wodurch die Beziehung zu den königlichen Ahnen erhalten und gefestigt werden kann. Der vorgelegte Text erörtert die spezifische Vorstellungswelt der Sakalava-Pilgerschaft im Kontext einer mehr als 300 Jahre langen Entwicklung. Die ursprünglich dominierende Funktion einer Bekräftigung der königlichen Machtposition wurde in neuerer Zeit in Folge der Entmachtung der Könige durch vielfältige neue religiöse, soziale und identitäre Aspekte ergänzt

Using Citizen Suits To Remedy Environmental Injustice and Achieve Clean Water in California

Nearly fifty years since the passage of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) in 1972, widespread pollution of California’s surface and groundwater continues across the state. “Over half of California’s lakes, bays, wetlands, and estuaries are too polluted to swim, drink, or fish,” according to the State Water Resources Control Board. Poor and working-class communities suffer disproportionately from the negative externalities and environmental impacts of water pollution, including effects on human health and wellness. With a focus on the CWA citizen suit provision, this paper examines how the legal and administrative processes for water pollution control have not effectively addressed the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards borne by California’s poor communities. Part I discusses the background and legal history of water pollution control in California. Part II considers that CWA citizen suits play an essential role in enabling plaintiffs to supplement government enforcement of water pollution and to challenge agency inaction. Lawyers representing environmental justice communities have successfully used the citizen suit provision to enjoin and penalize polluting activity in clients’ neighborhoods. Part III focuses on two major limitations of CWA citizen suits: addressing agricultural pollution and seeking appropriate remedies. Agriculture is the primary source of California’s water pollution but its runoff is regulated by California law and cannot be challenged by federal citizen suit actions. Plaintiffs that do succeed against polluters are limited to injunctive and punitive relief and may be left without a meaningful acknowledgement of the affected community or a reasonable likelihood that the plaintiffs will attain clean water. Part IV recommends that a state-level citizen suit provision should be written into California’s Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act (“Porter-Cologne Act”) to allow plaintiffs to challenge agricultural runoff. This section also recommends that plaintiffs should be allowed to seek comprehensive remedies under federal and state law to ensure that judicial relief properly acknowledges, respects, and remedies environmental injustice suffered by the poor

Blood Vessel Density in Basal Cell Carcinomas and Benign Trichogenic Tumors as a Marker for Differential Diagnosis in Dermatopathology

In order to get insight into the density of blood vessels in the stroma of benign and malignant trichogenic neoplasms, immunohistological quantification of CD 31 positive vessels was performed in 112 tumors, comprised of 50 BCCs of nodular (35) or morphoeic (15) growth patterns, 17 Pinkus' tumors, as well as 17 trichoepitheliomas of which 6 were desmoplastic, 8 trichofolliculomas, and 20 trichoblastomas. Methods. Vessel density was counted within the tumors, in the tumor-surrounding stroma, and, as a control, in the normal skin of the operation specimen. The results were compared using statistical methods. Results. Whereas, irrespective of the patients' age and location of tumors, the vessel density in normal skin showed no significant differences (8.8 ± 2.7), the counts in the peritumoral stroma revealed significant differences between the different tumors investigated. The highest counts were obtained in BCC (24.7 ± 6.7) and the lowest in benign trichogenic neoplasms (around 14) Pinkus' tumors revealed intermediate counts (19.7 ± 6.6). The vessel densities within the tumors were generally low, and no correlation to the dignity was found. Conclusion. Determination of blood vessel density in the peritumoral stroma may be an additional parameter for differential diagnosis of trichogenic tumors of uncertain dignity

Expression signatures of cisplatin- and trametinib-treated early-stage medaka melanomas

Small aquarium fish models provide useful systems not only for a better understanding of the molecular basis of many human diseases, but also for first-line screening to identify new drug candidates. For testing new chemical substances, current strategies mostly rely on easy to perform and efficient embryonic screens. Cancer, however, is a disease that develops mainly during juvenile and adult stage. Long-term treatment and the challenge to monitor changes in tumor phenotype make testing of large chemical libraries in juvenile and adult animals cost prohibitive. We hypothesized that changes in the gene expression profile should occur early during anti-tumor treatment, and the disease-associated transcriptional change should provide a reliable readout that can be utilized to evaluate drug-induced effects. For the current study, we used a previously established medaka melanoma model. As proof of principle, we showed that exposure of melanoma developing fish to the drugs cisplatin or trametinib, known cancer therapies, for a period of seven days is sufficient to detect treatment-induced changes in gene expression. By examining whole body transcriptome responses we provide a novel route toward gene panels that recapitulate anti-tumor outcomes thus allowing a screening of thousands of drugs using a whole-body vertebrate model. Our results suggest that using disease-associated transcriptional change to screen therapeutic molecules in small fish model is viable and may be applied to pre-clinical research and development stages in new drug discovery

The piranha genome provides molecular insight associated to its unique feeding behavior

The piranha enjoys notoriety due to its infamous predatory behavior but much is still not understood about its evolutionary origins and the underlying molecular mechanisms for its unusual feeding biology. We sequenced and assembled the red-bellied piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri) genome to aid future phenotypic and genetic investigations. The assembled draft genome is similar to other related fishes in repeat composition and gene count. Our evaluation of genes under positive selection suggests candidates for adaptations of piranhas’ feeding behavior in neural functions, behavior, and regulation of energy metabolism. In the fasted brain, we find genes differentially expressed that are involved in lipid metabolism and appetite regulation as well as genes that may control the aggression/boldness behavior of hungry piranhas. Our first analysis of the piranha genome offers new insight and resources for the study of piranha biology and for feeding motivation and starvation in other organisms

In vitro evidence for senescent multinucleated melanocytes as a source for tumor-initiating cells

Oncogenic signaling in melanocytes results in oncogene-induced senescence (OIS), a stable cell-cycle arrest frequently characterized by a bi- or multinuclear phenotype that is considered as a barrier to cancer progression. However, the long-sustained conviction that senescence is a truly irreversible process has recently been challenged. Still, it is not known whether cells driven into OIS can progress to cancer and thereby pose a potential threat. Here, we show that prolonged expression of the melanoma oncogene N-RAS61K in pigment cells overcomes OIS by triggering the emergence of tumor-initiating mononucleated stem-like cells from senescent cells. This progeny is dedifferentiated, highly proliferative, anoikis-resistant and induces fast growing, metastatic tumors. Our data describe that differentiated cells, which are driven into senescence by an oncogene, use this senescence state as trigger for tumor transformation, giving rise to highly aggressive tumor-initiating cells. These observations provide the first experimental in vitro evidence for the evasion of OIS on the cellular level and ensuing transformation