bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Alternatives to Crisis: Social Movements in Global Fisheries G Overnance
Authors: Sundar Aparna
Published: February 2020

Narratives of crisis in the fisheries tell us about declining catches, vanishing species, and displaced fishers. We hear little about the agency of fishing communities themselves, and their long history of militant mobilization at a variety of scales in defense of their resources, livelihoods, and communities. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It traces the changing role of social movements representing fishing communities in global fisheries governance, from their emergence in the period of state-led developmentalism to their contradictory positioning within the new global governance of voluntary codes and market-based mechanisms. In contrast to technoscientific, economistic and managerial solutions for sustainability, these movements place the human-ecological relationship at the centre, asserting the importance of livelihood, place-based community, and fishers’ knowledges in ensuring the sustainability of the fisheries. Despite the complexities and contradictions involved in making such claims, the movements have been successful in inserting them into global frameworks and discussions around fisheries governance. It is important that scholarship committed to the production of alternatives to the intensification of capitalism's socio-ecological crises documents, critically examines, and valorizes the work of such movements.
Kashubians versus Global Energy Companies: A Global-Local Encounter at the Heart of Poland's Shale Gas Revolution
Authors: Materka Edyta
Published: February 2020

In 2011, Poland jumped into the ‘shale gas revolution’ with global energy companies and American geopolitical interests at its side. Poland's northern province of Pomerania, split into hundreds of shale gas exploration concessions, became known as the ‘United States of American Oil Companies’. This paper explores the global-local encounter between global energy companies and the Kashubians, an ethnic-group minority in Pomerania. It takes a multi-scalar approach to introduce the (inter) national discourses legitimating and challenging shale gas exploration as green energy policy. Then, it surveys Kashubians’ local discourses against shale gas exploration in their agrarian movement to protect ancient, ethnic lands, rural environments, agricultural livelihoods and private economic interests. A disconnect is demonstrated between the discourses on the global and local spheres of the debate. I conclude that global-local encounters are violent desecrations of the local when government institutions are too politically involved in the economic benefits of the global encroachment. Due to the failure of local representative democracy, the ‘local’ is forced to seek political networks across the spatial grid that may or may not help gain leverage in their local struggles. Lastly, postsocialist ethnographers are encouraged to link minority voices in Central and Eastern European States to the global debates.
Caging/Self-Caging: Materiality and Memes as Tools for Geopolitical Analysis
Authors: Eva Fabrizio
Published: February 2020

Human beings, both individually and collectively, are simultaneously victims and perpetrators of the ongoing process of caging (more related to iconographies and power) and self-caging (which is more subjective and individual, related to both iconographies and movement). The independent and difficult-to-control action of memes has the function of circulation, and favours the composition, decomposition and re-composition of human groups in societies, perhaps constituting the primary fuel for the ‘imagination’ mechanisms that (trans)form cultural islands and cultural drift. This ongoing dynamic shows itself and crystallizes in physical space, which is what geographers must carefully observe. This is particularly true for political geographers, who also analyse the same dynamics from the perspective of those socio-economic pyramids that are states or whatever other power structure that has been formally declared and/ or socially recognized – and perhaps with some subjective aspiration to contribute to the processes of resolution/management of human conflict.
What the US Should Learn from China for a More Balanced and Peaceful World
Authors: Parenti Fabio Massimo
Published: February 2020

The growing importance of China in the global economy affects the reconfiguration of the international geography of power. In this scenario, the geopolitical order will be significantly redefined by the evolution of relations between China and the U.S. Based on the outcome of previous studies, and on the extensive efforts made by some social scientists, this paper provides a systematic analysis of the complexity and strategic implications of China–US relations.

To make sense of these multivalent relations, after an initial introduction the paper is organized in three sections. The first section explores the structurally asymmetrical nature of relations between China and the US, focusing on economic policy decisions made by national elites. The second section focuses on the deepening U.S. debt, also underscoring the latest transformation trends experienced by an international monetary system that is still dollar–centred, and which several parties deem to be unsustainable. Lastly, the third section tries to provide evidence that growing instability in the global geopolitical order is intimately related to the economic and financial unbalances between China and the U.S. Hence, promoting more effective cooperation between China and the United States seems to be a priority. As substantiated in this paper, cooperation should, however, make the most of the Chinese developmental path, compared to that adopted by the United States – in terms of economic governance and geopolitical developmental path.
Seizing Center Stage: Ecosystem Services, Live, at the Convention on Biological Diversity!
Authors: Suarez Daniel , Corson Catherine
Published: February 2020

Over the past decade, the concept of ecosystem services has become a central guiding framework for environmental conservation. Techniques of valuation, payments to protect ecosystem services, and efforts to put a price on nature increasingly characterize environmental policy. We analyze the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP-10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a critical moment in the production of ecosystem services as a discourse. Through analysis of specific examples of the rollout, performance, and strategic deployment of ecosystem services, particularly as embodied in The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project (TEEB) at CBD/COP-10, we illustrate how arguments justifying ecosystem services became persuasive and compelling in the social space of the meeting. We examine the prevalence of a narrative that relies on three successive claims: (1) conservation has failed to conserve biodiversity, which has catalyzed a pending ecological crisis; (2) this crisis is caused by incorrectly priced nature and insufficient financing for conservation; and (3) the economics of ecosystem services provides the means to attract new financial flows, to neutralize political opposition, and to save biodiversity. The CBD/COP-10, we argue, provided a stage for the performance of this narrative, the alignment of actors from the private, public and non-profit sectors around ecosystem services, and the institutionalization of its tenets in policy documents and project financing— all of which worked to constitute the hegemony of ecosystem services. We conclude by asserting that, as conservationists embrace ecosystem services, at the expense of alternative models, they reproduce it as a discourse, thus constituting and reinforcing its hegemony, and the conditions that originally limited their choices.
To What Extent has Australia's Development Trajectory Been Neoliberalist?
Authors: O'Neill Phillip M. , Weller Sally
Published: February 2020

Our account of Australia's economic trajectory over the last four decades highlights the play of tensions, contradictions and imperfect resolutions. We see Australia's political economy as shaped by tensions between the opposed needs and demands of inward- and outward-looking sectors, regions and interests, and irresolvably-different understandings of Australia's past and visions of Australia's future. We show how Australia's spatially fragmented economy – with its entrenched power coalitions, rigid state structure and established institutions and practices – produces systematic resistances to marketisation. Numerous market-oriented reforms have languished, or been modified or reversed, after proving incompatible with extant social, economic or political realities. Those neoliberalist reforms which have been successfully and permanently installed have often generated perverse and unintended outcomes. Put together, we see that attempts to fit Australia's political economy into a framework dominated by neoliberalism insuf-ficiently acknowledges the intricacies of Australia's contemporary (re)organisation.
Introduction: Peasants, Pastoralists and Proletarians: Joining the Debates on Trajectories of Agrarian Change, Livelihoods and Land USE
Authors: McCusker Brent , O'Keefe Paul , O'Keefe Phil , O'Brien Geoff
Published: February 2020

Recent changes in the agrarian studies and geography literatures present differing views on the pace and trajectory of change in rural developing areas. In this special section of Human Geography, we contrast the theoretical and practice implications of these differing approaches, namely depeasantization, accumulation by dispossession and deproletarianization. Depeasantization refers to change in livelihood activities out of agriculture, long theorized as necessary for an area's transition into capitalism. Accumulation by dispossession is a process of on-going capital accumulation where a give resource is privatized, seized, or in some other manner alienated from common ownership in order to provide a basis for continued capital accumulation. Deproletarianization occurs when workers are no longer able to freely commodify and recommodify their only commodity, their own labour. In this section, we explore these three theses with case studies that draw upon empirical data. The papers in this collection all speak to one aspect or another of these debates. We do not intend to try to determine a “best approach”, rather we explore strengths and weaknesses of each argument.

The production of nature, change in the mode of production and the political economy of nature are discussed in the first article by Brent McCusker. Phil O'Keefe and Geoff O'Brien examine the evolution of worked landscape under pre-capitalist modes of production in riverine ecologies. Through further case studies, Paul O'Keefe explores links between livelihoods and climate change in Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, while Franklin Graham explores the persistence of pastoralism in the Sahel. Finally, Naomi Shanguhyia and Brent McCusker examine the process of governance in dry land Kenya through the study of chronic food shortages.
Why Some Fields Might be Rectangular: An Exploration of Agricultural Landscapes between Pre-Capitalist and Capitalist Modes of Production
Authors: O'Keefe Phil , O'Brien Geoff
Published: February 2020

This article is a preliminary investigation of possible spatial form which starts by rejecting the idea that spatial theory can be built from assumptions of isomorphism. It examines spatial form in high potential ridge valley areas which are densely populated, and identifies the transition in land configuration for pre-capitalist to capitalist modes of production. In building the argument simple geometric patterns that differentiate from the model are postulated. The basic drivers of the differing spatial systems are essentially the superstructural legal conditions which are postulated as a moving from communal, customary law to individual statutory property rights.
Chuchuyamba/ Soda Rock: Toward an Applied Critical Geographic Perspective on Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPS)
Authors: Middleton Beth Rose
Published: February 2020

Preservation of indigenous Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) is limited by narrow legal and procedural interpretation. First, indigenous communities (federally recognized or non-recognized) must often rely on the federal trust responsibility for site protection. Following the trust responsibility, federal agencies that hold indigenous TCPs must argue on behalf of indigenous interests for their protection. Such a structure is problematic, because federal agencies have multiple mandates to serve a broad public, despite the seniority of the tribal trust responsibility, and may not possess a full understanding of the importance of TCPs to indigenous communities. Second, courts are often loath to accept that different meanings of “preservation” exist within indigenous communities. For some indigenous people, sacred and/or storied geographies should be completely undeveloped and open only to traditional uses. For others, active engagement with these geographies by Native community members— even extractive use that may change their character— reinforces their importance and integration within the Native community. This paper approaches these issues from a particular contested TCP in the northeastern Sierra, examining case narratives, legal precedent, and interviews with stakeholders to assess how the site was ultimately left vulnerable to extractive mining despite its documented cultural importance, and how this may inform critical geographic perspectives on defining, stewarding, and protecting TCPs.
Book Review: Geopiracy: Oaxaca, Militant Empiricism, and Geographical Thought
Authors: Finn John C. , Barnes Trevor J. , Sheppard Eric , Mollett Sharlene , Bryan Joe , Gilbert Emily , Wood Denis , Mitchell Don
Published: February 2020

This book review symposium interrogates Joel Wainwright's recent text Geopiracy: Oaxaca, Militant Empiricism, and Geographical Thought (Palgrave Macillan 2013). Overtly, this text is a scathing critique of the Bowman Expeditions, launched in 2006 with several million dollars of funding from the Foreign Military Study Office (FMSO) of the US Army. Two years later, and well into the first expedition in Oaxaca, Mexico, several groups from Oaxaca responded, accusing the Bowman Expedition of “Geopiracy” and of tricking the indigenous communities involved. In mounting a robust critique of the Bowman Expeditions, in this text Wainwright simultaneously takes on several other pressing issues in the discipline of geography, among them the militarization of geography, power, ethics, transparency and consent in fieldwork, the supposed objectivity and value-less-ness of mapping, and the tepid response to the Bowman controversy mustered by the AAG. In this review symposium a diverse group of geographers respond both to the controversy as a whole, and to Wainwright's reading and critique of it. Finally, Wain-wright concludes this symposium with his response to these reviews.
Growing Ourselves to Death? Economic and Ecological Crises, the Growth of Waste, and the Role of the Media and Cultural Industries
Authors: Morgan Trish
Published: February 2020

Since the financial crash of 2008, large sectors of capitalist economies have been enveloped by a crisis that is typically represented by media discourses in purely economic and financial terms. However, the crisis is also ecological. Yet, while media discourses frequently embrace and propose small-scale environmental remedies, it is rarely pointed out that such calls stand at odds with the consumer capitalist system under which the media industries operate. Adopting a ‘business as usual’ approach to consumption, the media industries encourage the public to shop their way out of recession, despite crippling austerity measures that have been imposed on them. This is in the face of an unprecedented ecological crisis which is now largely accepted as due to anthropogenic factors. In light of this ecological crisis, continued growth-based economic paradigms are increasingly deemed unsustainable. Yet frequently, media discourse uncritically takes growth and waste as two aspects of an unchanging and necessary paradigm. Against this backdrop of economic and ecological crises this paper draws on a set of critical cross-disciplinary literature from Harvey's political economy, to Foster and Moore's political ecology to Baran and Sweezy on waste, through to Adorno, Bourdieu and Garnham, to identify and engage with the strategic role of the media. It outlines crisis theories of economy and ecology, moving on to discuss crucial, if neglected aspects of the role of the media and cultural industries with respect to these crises. This paper advances the view that the role of the media in construction of norms with respect to consumption practices and waste is of significance and arguably needs to be incorporated into crisis theory of both economy and ecology.
Live Music, Intercity Competition, and Reputational Rents: Austin, Texas the ‘Live Music Capital of the World’
Authors: Tretter Eliot
Published: February 2020

In this paper I draw on a body of scholarship that focuses on how a central feature of capitalist urbanization is the willingness of firms to participate in a form of rent-seeking that exploits geographical differences. I then extend this analysis to the cultural economy. I use as my case study Austin, Texas, which since 1991 has branded itself the “Live Music Capital of the World.” The existing literature on Austin's urban entrepreneurial strategy, reflecting the dominant trends in urban and economic geography, focuses on how this branding campaign cultivated and exploited the geographical particularities of the city's cultural infrastructure. However, I contend that the changes brought about within the music industry influenced the success of this effort. In particular, I argue that the effectiveness of this branding effort is related to the changing value of live music within the music industry and especially the elevated position of music promoters (those firms that rely on live music as an essential part of their business). As this paper shows, the value of the city's branding efforts is related to the industrial success of two of the music industry's mid-sized promotional firms, SXSW Inc. and C3 Presents. These two Austin-based firms trade on its live-music brand but also, perhaps unwittingly, receive an extra-economic benefit that amplifies this reputation. In particular, I will focus on how a special music event, SXSW, and a music festival, Austin City Limits, help reinforce the image that has been enhanced by the city's branding efforts.
Organizing Social and Spatial Boundaries: Squatting's Material Practices and Social Relationships
Authors: Polanska Dominika V.
Published: February 2020

The prerequisites for squatting are somewhat different from other social movements. Most squatters tend to live (literally reside) in their movement and risk being overwhelmed and burnt-out by the intensity and emotional involvement of this kind of activism. The fact that squatters’ struggles revolve around a physical place, which in itself is a form of protest, and that the most involved activists are expected to locate their everyday lives to this place, puts a lot of pressure on the squatters and the way they handle their social relationships or more material practices and needs.

The aim of this article is to examine how social and spatial boundaries are regulated and organized by squatters and to discuss how the spaces within squats are regulated and how the boundaries are negotiated by the squatting activists in light of these spaces being the ‘embodiment’ of the squatting movement requiring some special organizational measures to create order and avoid conflicts that could lead to the movement's decline. The squatting movement in Warsaw will serve as an example, and its recent development and internal diversification will be used to illustrate the importance of organization of social and spatial boundaries. I will also discuss the reverse effects of the refinement of the boundaries resulting in the creation of hierarchies and processes of exclusion, seclusion, inflexibility and impenetrability faced by squatters in the studied case.

The material for this study is based on 20 semi-structured interviews with squatters’ activists conducted in 2013. The theoretical framework of the study is combining a social movement approach with organizational theory. I argue that squatting, as any social movement, should be analysed as intersecting social orders of networks, institutions and organizations, as it needs to create organizational measures, use dominant institutional order(s) and/or create new shared norms and beliefs, alongside founding its activity on networks of trust, horizontality and reciprocity, in order to function smoothly and not exhaust its current resources (social, symbolic, material).
‘Race’ and the Changing Representations of Neanderthals
Authors: McCluskey Alan
Published: February 2020

This essay first identifies a significant shift in the way Neanderthals have been represented and talked about in both the realms of mainstream science and the mainstream Western media. Within the space of a little over a decade, our early human relatives have been transformed from primitive and inept “savages” to far more sophisticated prototypes of ourselves. The author then proposes that an important but overlooked reason for this rapid change lies in a ground-breaking discovery that only came to light in recent years: the fact that Neanderthal DNA is to be found in today's non sub-Saharan Africans. Such a discovery, the essay holds, suddenly made scientists, journalists and television producers much more receptive to the idea (which had already been floating around, largely neglected, for years) that they had got the Neanderthals entirely wrong. As is argued below, racism and racial ideology have had a distorting influence on Western scientific discourse and practice for the better part of a hundred years. The recent rehabilitation of the Neanderthals may not be the most obvious instance of racial theory guiding scientific discussion and consensus, but, as is this essay contends, there is a strong correlation that cannot and should not be ignored.
Guests, Asylum-Seekers, Refugees or Transit Migrants? Syrians in Turkey in ‘Purgatory’
Authors: Erciyes Jade Cemre
Published: February 2020

The total number of registered Syrians in Turkey reached 2.5 million by the end of 2015. After five years during which Turkey claims to have been maintaining an ‘open-door’ policy for those seeking protection, the Syrians in Turkey are still given only ‘temporary protection’ status, which limits their access to the labor force, education, healthcare, and other support systems. With a majority of those who are registered being under 18 years old, not knowing Turkish and having minimal access to a basic education, the problems of integration into and acceptance by the host-country society will only grow in time. The Syrians, when they can find employment on the black market, are paid less than half the minimum wage, work without security or job safety, or even any guarantee of payment. As the Syrian border area is being militarized and repressed parallel to developments in Turkish politics, and the situation in Syria is not improving but dislocating more people each day, more and more Syrians are joining the transit migrants in making life-threatening journeys to reach Europe, paying whatever savings they have left to human smugglers. Whether or not they will one day return to their left-behind ‘paradise’ or reach their ‘imagined paradise’ – Europe – they seem to be stuck in ‘purgatory’ in Turkey without any prospect of making the place a ‘home’.
Slovenia: Post-Socialist and Neoliberal Landscapes in Response to the European Refugee Crisis
Authors: Applegate Toby Martin
Published: February 2020

As a nation-state, Slovenia represents an increasingly rare case wherein 80 percent of the country identifies as ethnically homogeneous. Even in the face of this fact, Slovenia's ethno-national identity has been called into question since its independence. The European refugee crisis has brought this questioning into sharp focus as the admittance, care and transfer of refugees has caused burdens not only economically and logistically, but also in terms of what it means to be Slovenian and European at the same time. In a place with little history of provision of care for large-scale refugee populations, the cultural and political frameworks of Slovene society do not possess the crisis response capacity that its Northern European neighbors might. In fact, Slovenia's record on human rights is not as stellar as is often presented to the world at large. This paper argues that Slovenia's place in Mitteleuropa serves as a hindrance to it as a place of social care and reaffirms certain historical conditions that render it a transitory space between The Other and the ‘real’ Europe. It relies upon field observations of how Slovenia organized its response to the crisis in the autumn of 2015 and criticizes those responses as reaffirming both the post-socialist transition and the neoliberal intent of its national infrastructure and political economy.
“Social Movement Theory” as a Baseline Legitimizing Narrative: Corporate Exploitation, Anti-Hegemonic Opposition and the Contested Academy
Authors: Jackson Nicholas A.
Published: February 2020

Scholars and administrators created “Social Movement Theory” (SMT) and associated institutions in order to establish a field of “contested politics” buttressed by “scholarly synthesis.” In this article, I place SMT as an object of study itself within the contested space of the corporate academy. SMT is a baseline legitimizing narrative that the domesticated academy produces and that corporate entities then use as preemptive inoculation against anti-hegemonic opposition by geographically separating governmentalities of often brutal and arbitrary material exploitation from depoliticized, dehistoricized and scientistic spectacles of consumerist legitimization. I summarize key ways that administrators govern the corporate academy and remove historical and social specificity, followed by analysis of exemplary cases demonstrating how SMT is placed within “peer-reviewed” scholarship. In contrast to SMT's over-riding goal of “synthesis,” I argue that effective social movement scholarship is contingent, situated and explicitly engaged with power (willing to “reveal a stand”), including difficult questions about who exercises power, how, and especially under what guises of corporate authority. Done well, such intellectual-activism must be conducted independent of current corporate academic strictures, and indeed will likely involve direct anti-hegemonic challenges to the corporate academy. Intellectual-activists that choose to do so can face significant negative impacts ranging from “double-shift” marginalization through loss of academic privileges, total career destruction, banishment from the academic canon and even physical endangerment. Therefore, effective transformation of social movement scholarship requires transformation of the contested academy, both projects very difficult for embedded academics absent external pressure from intellectual-activists.
Conferencing Cuba's Geographies of Speleology: The Politics of Inclusion and Hospitality among Cave Explorers and Scientists
Authors: Pérez María Alejandra
Published: February 2020

From the 13th to the 17th of April of 2015, Cuban cave explorers and scientists, or speleologists, gathered to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba (SEC) in the city of Camaguëy. This organization, dedicated to the exploration, study, and conservation of the country's many caves, was founded in 1940, and was the first of its kind in the Americas. While scholars have examined the achievements of Cuba's biotechnology sector, Cuban science beyond academic institutes and laboratories has been overlooked. In this paper I present ethnographic and interview data obtained during the Camaguëy conference as an entry point into Cuba's “geographies of speleology” (Cant 2006). Such geographies emphasize the complex relations between geographic knowledge, individual and institutional identities, and the state. Moreover, these geographies, much like the sense of identification with and belonging to the Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba, are at times conflicting and contested. I develop this argument by drawing on insights in cultural geography that emphasize the importance of presence of absence. Here I invoke absence in two senses, both in terms of those absent in the Camagüey conference and those deceased but whose memory live on embodied in the collective history and knowledge of the SEC. This research illustrates the importance of stepping out of the (biotechnological) laboratory, and even the formal spaces of institutionalized scientific practice, to assess the history and potential futures of a geographically-based amateur field science in Cuba. Moreover, this work contributes to the growing focus on Latin American geographies of science and, in particular, the importance of Science and Technology Studies in/ of Cuba that examine the fuzzy boundaries of science as practice in a complex spatial network. Finally, the ongoing dynamics of foreign scholars conducting research in Cuba are considered, dynamics that are intimately tied to the very geographies this project purports to analyze.
The Strategic Resources-Criminalization Nexus: Ecuador's Intag Zone
Authors: Shade Lindsay , Ramírez Darwin Javier
Published: February 2020

This article draws from the experience of co-author Javier Ramírezwho was detained as a political prisoner for opposition to a large-scale mining project that would displace his community in northern Ecuador. Examining the trajectory of the 20-year mining conflict from the neoliberal era to the present, we argue that there has been a marked shift in the Ecuadorian state's approach to facilitating extractive development, which more directly puts the state's resources in the service of extractive capital through policing and securitization of rural zones and the penalization or criminalization of territorial defense. We outline how “criminalization of protest” actually reflects spatial strategies of securitization and policing to enforce mining rights. The incarceration of Ramírez and deployment of police to secure subsurface rights were strategically timed in a manner to facilitate key administrative and technical requirements for mining permits, making possible the apparently banal but crucial work of consultation and environmental impact studies. We consider the uneven unfolding and spatial differentiation of “resource security” by examining how the state structures and deploys the security apparatus for nature-based commodity investments. We also examine the decreasing public value of mining through the progressive reduction and elimination of taxes, despite continued public investment and military and police support to mining companies. Finally, we contrast state and mining company representatives’ efforts to responsibilize the public for demand for commodities with territorial defense strategies which aim to revalue land outside of economistic frameworks.
Making Community-Based Adaptation a Reality: Different Conceptualisations, Different Politics
Authors: Galvin Mary
Published: February 2020

Community-based adaptation (CBA) is criticised for ignoring power realities and damaging the very communities it aims to assist. This paper shows how CBA is not a homogenous, technical practice but is itself a political endeavour. It suggests that there are five types of CBA, based on actors’ conceptualisation of communities, approach to development, and interest in either transition or transformation. It then focuses on how the “change agent” type of CBA can overcome this critique. It draws on findings from a three year, multi-disciplinary, participatory research project on water and CBA in four local communities in South Africa.
Making the invisible hyper-visible: Knowledge production and the gendered power nexus in critical urban studies
Authors: Walker Margath A. , Boamah Emmanuel Frimpong
Published: February 2020

This paper employs the concept of “invisible colleges” to explore the processes through which spaces of critical urban theory are imbricated within a gendered power nexus. It assesses the degree of dominance in hegemonic knowledge production by clusters of scholars, their co-authors, and academic mentors and mentees. Using the example of critical urban theory, we use network graphs to map these concentrated hidden geographies understood collectively as “invisible colleges”. The resultant visualizations reflect the dominance of key scholars and their similarities (e.g. doctoral education, academic mentors, current institutional affiliations, etc.). These heretofore unmapped networks of connectivity provide insight into the masculinized spaces of critical urban theory bringing to the fore important topics for consideration. These include the politics of citation and “double dipping”, or frequent publication in the same journal outlets. In bringing attention to invisible colleges, a concept that has largely escaped attention in urban studies and geography, we highlight the usefulness of visibility as a technology of equity. En route, the paper describes and visualizes some of the impacts of the proliferation of uneven knowledge production through the coalescing of factors such as path dependency, cumulative advantage, expected inequality and the Matthew and Matilda Effects.
Conscious sedation service for geriatric and special-care dentistry: A health policy brief
Authors: Lim Guang Xu David , Boyle Carole Ann
Published: February 2020

Background:

Geriatric and special care dentistry (GSD) involves oral health care for seniors and individuals with disabilities. Due to ethical issues, finances, waiting times, treatment versatility and so on, conscious sedation (CS) may have a place to optimise the delivery of care.

Objectives:

This article identifies considerations for implementing CS in GSD services in Singapore.

Methods:

Taking the form of a health policy brief, this review (a) defines the situation for patients with special-care needs and justified the need for dental CS, (b) makes reference to practices from countries with established dental CS services, (c) states and evaluates available CS techniques for the GSD centre in Singapore and (d) discusses action plans and considerations for implementation.

Results:

Demographic analysis revealed that 23.8% of the GSD patients could have benefitted from CS, or 44.7% of all patients who required behavioural management. The key advantages of CS included enhanced safety, more teeth saved and a reduction in general anaesthesia wait, amongst others. Conventional dental CS techniques included midazolam via various routes, nitrous oxide and ketamine. To establish a CS service, key points of consideration need to be conceptualised first, such as adequate training, perception of patients and providers, operational costs, facilities and developing guidance specific for oral health professionals.

Conclusion:

A local CS service will be beneficial for GSD patients in view of the challenges faced. A group of experts and stakeholders is needed to provide practical consensus.
A systematic review of the effect of prior hypoglycaemia on cognitive function in type 1 diabetes
Authors: Rama Chandran Suresh , Jacob Peter , Choudhary Pratik
Published: February 2020

Background:

The effect of prior hypoglycaemia on cognitive function in type 1 diabetes is an important unresolved clinical question. In this systematic review, we aimed to summarize the studies exploring the impact of prior hypoglycaemia on any aspect of cognitive function in type 1 diabetes.

Methods:

We used a multidatabase search platform Healthcare Database Advanced Search to search Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, EMCARE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, BNI, HMIC, and AMED from inception until 1 May 2019. We included studies on type 1 diabetes of any age. The outcome measure was any aspect of cognitive function.

Results:

The 62 studies identified were grouped as severe hypoglycaemia (SH) in childhood (⩽18 years) and adult-onset (>18 years) diabetes, nonsevere hypoglycaemia (NSH) and nocturnal hypoglycaemia (NH). SH in early childhood-onset diabetes, especially seizures and coma, was associated with poorer memory (verbal and visuospatial), as well as verbal intelligence. Among adult-onset diabetes, SH was associated with poorer cognitive performance in the older age (>55 years) group only. Early versus late exposure to SH had a significant association with cognitive dysfunction (CD). NSH and NH did not have any significant association with CD, while impaired awareness of hypoglycaemia was associated with poorer memory and cognitive-processing speeds.

Conclusion:

The effect of SH on cognitive function is age dependent. Exposure to SH in early childhood (<10 years) and older age groups (>55 years) was associated with a moderate effect on the decrease in cognitive function in type 1 diabetes [PROSPERO ID: CRD42019141321].
Adamts13-Cultured Red Blood Cells to Treat Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura
Authors: Wang Kai , Batbayar Khulan , Roberts Karl , Olivier Emmanuel , Bouhassira Eric E.
Published: February 2020

Red Blood Cells (RBCs) have long been considered a potentially useful means of delivering drugs to the circulation because delivery through therapeutic RBCs as compared to direct injection in the plasma can lengthen the half-life of the therapeutic agent in the circulation, spatially restrict the drugs to the lumen of the cardio-vascular system, and shield the drug from the immune system. Despite some progress, loading the cells with therapeutically useful cargo remains technically challenging. We have recently developed PSC-RED, a chemically-defined scalable method to differentiate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into unlimited numbers of enucleated cultured RBCs. This provides an ideal method to produce therapeutic RBCs since iPSCs can be genetically manipulated with powerful CRISPR-based technologies. ADAMTS13, whose deficiency is responsible for congenital and acquire Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (TTP) is a good target as a therapeutic that could be delivered through drug-carrying RBCs because large amounts of plasma concentrate, or more recently recombinant proteins, are necessary to treat TTP. We report here we have produced engineered erythroid cells that contains globin-LCR driven ADAMTS13 fusion transgenes inserted at safe harbor AAVS1, and that these cells express a membrane bound version of an inhibitor-resistant version of ADAMTS13. We show using flow cytometry that the fusion protein is express at high levels, and using a FRET assay that detect cleavage of the von Willebrand cognate site, that the membrane bound ADAMTS13 is enzymatically active. Comparison of enzymatic activity with plasma concentrate suggests that about 50 billion engineered ADAMTS13-cRBCs would be sufficient to deliver an amount of ADAMTS13 equivalent to 2 liters of plasma concentrate. This suggests that a transfusion of about 10 mL of ADAMTS13-RBCs could be therapeutic for congenital and acquired TTP. The number of cRBCs necessary to treat even a few patients is very large. This has been considered a major obstacle to the development of treatment based on in vitro produced RBCs because of the volume of culture that is necessary to produce the cells. We also report that we have developed a culture method based on holo-fiber bioreactors that allows the production of cRBCs at a density of 5.108 cell/mL which is sufficient to produce enough cells to performed small clinical trials.

Disclosures

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
Construction and integration of genetic linkage maps from three multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross populations in rice
Authors: Qu Pingping , Shi Jinhui , Chen Tianxiao , Chen Kai , Shen Congcong , Wang Jiankang , Zhao Xiangqian , Ye Guoyou , Xu Jianlong , Zhang Luyan
Published: February 2020

Background

The construction of genetic maps based on molecular markers is a crucial step in rice genetic and genomic studies. Pure lines derived from multiple parents provide more abundant genetic variation than those from bi-parent populations. Two four-parent pure-line populations (4PL1 and 4PL2) and one eight-parent pure-line population (8PL) were developed from eight homozygousindicavarieties of rice by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). To the best of our knowledge, there have been no reports on linkage map construction and their integration in multi-parent populations of rice.

Results

We constructed linkage maps for the three multi-parent populations and conducted quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping for heading date (HD) and plant height (PH) based on the three maps by inclusive composite interval mapping (ICIM). An integrated map was built from the three individual maps and used for QTL projection and meta-analysis. QTL mapping of the three populations was also conducted based on the integrated map, and the mapping results were compared with those from meta-analysis. The three linkage maps developed for 8PL, 4PL1 and 4PL2 had 5905, 4354 and 5464 bins and were 1290.16, 1720.01 and 1560.30 cM in length, respectively. The integrated map was 3022.08 cM in length and contained 10,033 bins. Based on the three linkage maps, 3, 7 and 9 QTLs were detected for HD while 6, 9 and 10 QTLs were detected for PH in 8PL, 4PL1 and 4PL2, respectively. In contrast, 19 and 25 QTLs were identified for HD and PH by meta-analysis using the integrated map, respectively. Based on the integrated map, 5, 9, and 10 QTLs were detected for HD while 3, 10, and 12 QTLs were detected for PH in 8PL, 4PL1 and 4PL2, respectively. Eleven of these 49 QTLs coincided with those from the meta-analysis.

Conclusions

In this study, we reported the first rice linkage map constructed from one eight-parent recombinant inbred line (RIL) population and the first integrated map from three multi-parent populations, which provide essential information for QTL linkage mapping, meta-analysis, and map-based cloning in rice genetics and breeding.
A community-wide acute diarrheal disease outbreak associated with drinking contaminated water from shallow bore-wells in a tribal village, India, 2017
Authors: Maramraj Kiran Kumar , Subbalakshmi G. , Ali Mohammed Shahed , Dikid Tanzin , Yadav Rajesh , Sodha Samir V. , Jain Sudhir Kumar , Singh Sujeet Kumar
Published: February 2020

Background

In 2016, India reported 709 acute diarrheal disease (ADD) outbreaks (> 25% of all outbreaks). Tribal populations are at higher risk with 27% not having accessibility to safe drinking water and 75% households not having toilets. On June 26, 2017 Pedda-Gujjul-Thanda, a tribal village reported an acute diarrheal disease (ADD) outbreak. We investigated to describe the epidemiology, identify risk factors, and provide evidence-based recommendations.

Methods

We defined a case as ≥3 loose stools within 24 h in Pedda-Gujjul-Thanda residents from June 24–30, 2017. We identified cases by reviewing hospital records and house-to-house survey. We conducted a retrospective cohort study and collected stool samples for culture. We assessed drinking water supply and sanitation practices and tested water samples for faecal-contamination.

Results

We identified 191 cases (65% females) with median age 36 years (range 4–80 years) and no deaths. The attack-rate (AR) was 37% (191/512). Downhill colonies (located on slope of hilly terrains of the village) reported higher ARs (56%[136/243], p < 0.001) than others (20%[55/269]). Symptoms included diarrhea (100%), fever (17%), vomiting (16%) and abdominal pain (13%). Drinking water from five shallow bore-wells located in downhill colonies was significantly associated with illness (RR = 4.6, 95%CI = 3.4–6.1 and population attributable fraction 61%). In multi-variate analysis, drinking water from the shallow bore-wells located in downhill colonies (aOR = 7.9, [95% CI =4.7–13.2]), illiteracy (aOR =6, [95% CI = 3.6–10.1]), good hand-washing practice (aOR = 0.4, [95%CI = 0.2–0.7]) and household water treatment (aOR = 0.3, [95%CI = 0.2–0.5]) were significantly associated with illness. Two stool cultures were negative for Vibrio cholerae. Heavy rainfall was reported from June 22–24. Five of six water samples collected from shallow bore-wells located in downhill colonies were positive for faecal contamination.

Conclusion

An ADD outbreak with high attack rate in a remote tribal village was associated with drinking water from shallow downhill bore-wells, likely contaminated via runoff from open defecation areas after heavy rains. Based on our recommendations, immediate public health actions including repair of leakages at contaminated water sources and alternative supply of purified canned drinking water to families, and as long-term public health measures construction of house-hold latrines and piped-water supply initiated.
Associations between maternal BMI, breastfeeding practices and infant anthropometric status in Colombia; secondary analysis of ENSIN 2010
Authors: Aldana-Parra Fanny , Vega Gilma Olaya , Fewtrell Mary
Published: February 2020

Background

Maternal malnutrition and infant feeding mode impact short and long term infant and child morbidity and mortality. The period of lactation may provide an opportunity to modulate the risk of disease later in life. Our aim was to estimate the effect of maternal body mass index (BMI) and infant feeding mode, particularly breastfeeding practices, on the anthropometric status of children under 2 years in Colombia.

Methods

A secondary analysis was performed using the data from ENSIN 2010. Term infants under 2y, singleton, with a mother older than 18y, were included in the analysis. Outcomes were wasting (WLZ < -2SD), overweight (WLZ > +2SD) and stunting (LAZ < -2SD). Predictors were infant feeding (exclusive and predominant BF constructed from 24-h recall, age at introduction of liquids, semisolids and solids) and maternal BMI. Socioeconomic variables, maternal education and age, conditions during pregnancy and birth weight were analyzed as covariates.

Results

Mothers of overweight infants had higher BMI (Mean dif = 1.47 kg/m2; 95% CI = 2.1, 0.8) than those with normal weight infants. Stunting and wasting were not predicted by maternal anthropometry or infant feeding mode. Fewer maternal years of education were associated with wasting (OR = 0.90; 95% CI = 0.86, 0.97; p = 0.003) and stunting (OR = 0.92; 95% CI = 0.89, 0.94; p < 0.0001), while more maternal years of education were associated with overweight (OR = 1.06; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.01; p = 0.001); higher birth weight was associated with overweight (OR = 1.001; 95% CI = 1.00, 1.001; p < 0.0001) and lower birth was associated with stunting (OR = 0.99; 95% CI = 0.89; p < 0.0001) in the final regression model.

Conclusions

Maternal BMI is a modifiable target for public health policy to promote healthy infant growth. Infant nutritional status is affected by direct and indirect factors that need to be addressed in further studies.