bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Constructing Civil Society in Myanmar
Authors: Matelski Maaike
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses what constitutes civil society in Myanmar over time, and what activities these actors engaged in. It highlights a Gramscian perspective on civil society as a sphere of contestation, potential exploitation and hegemony and brings in the notion of ‘uncivil society’ to describe some of the Buddhist nationalist groups that emerged during the political transition period, as well as the rise in hate speech via Facebook and other channels. The chapter traces the origins of Myanmar civil society to Buddhist nationalist movements and ethnic self-organizations engaged in resistance activities as well as social welfare. It introduces the democracy movement that emerged in the 1990s and ends with a description of the 2015 electoral victory of the National League for Democracy and the escalating violence against the Rohingya that occurred in its wake.
Competing Frames around the 2010 Elections
Authors: Matelski Maaike
Published: May 2024

This chapter describes competing advocacy frames that emerged around the 2010 elections in Myanmar. Representatives of the democracy movement called for an election boycott, stating unfair conditions for the opposition, whereas other civil society actors viewed the elections as an opportunity to discuss politics and contribute to political change. Both actors engaged in voter education to highlight their positions, and both tried to influence international audiences to either support or reject the 2010 elections. For democracy activists, it was more difficult to lobby, as their message to boycott the elections and their attempts to influence the election outcome were sometimes seen as contradictory. The elections took place under highly restrictive circumstances in 2010 and were won by the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. In the aftermath, some democracy activists shifted focus to new campaign issues, calling for a UN Commission of Inquiry into crimes committed by the Myanmar military.
Foreign Aid and the (De)politicization of Civil Society Assistance
Authors: Matelski Maaike
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses the influence of the largely Western donor support on civil society’s room to manoeuvre before and during Myanmar’s political transition. Under military rule, foreign assistance was constrained, and aid budgets were relatively low. During the political transition, many donors and inter-governmental organizations entered the country looking for opportunities. Although this resulted in increased support for civil society, international non-governmental organizations remained in a more powerful position than local actors. After the rise in hate speech and violence against Muslim communities, aid again became politicized. Foreign agencies in Rakhine State were accused of prioritizing Muslim recipients, and some were forced to leave the country. After violence against the Rohingya escalated, cases against Myanmar were started at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, in which Aung San Suu Kyi defended the role of the military. This sparked surprise and outrage among Western observers who had viewed her as a human rights icon. The selective international attention for Myanmar, which focused respectively on sanctions, opportunities for foreign involvement and the plight of the Rohingya, arguably resulted in feelings of ‘competitive victimhood’ between different ethnic groups that were all affected by the military.
Healthcare
Authors: Levin Jack , Wiest Julie B.
Published: May 2024

This chapter suggests that hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities are potential hotbeds for covert violence, if for no other reason than the fact that many people die there every year. After all, patients typically check into a hospital because of serious illness or injury, and nursing homes are intended for those in need of round-the-clock care. Although most of the sick and injured who seek care (in the United States and other economically advanced nations) are treated and then released on the road to recovery, many others die on the operating table or in their hospital bed. Because death is very much part of life in healthcare facilities, it unfortunately also makes them places where a killer can operate unnoticed for long periods of time without being discovered. However, healthcare workers who covertly target patients are rarely physicians; they are more often members of staff with far less power, including orderlies, nurse’s aides, and home-healthcare workers.
Shining Light on the Shadows
Authors: Levin Jack , Wiest Julie B.
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on strategies for preventing covert violence, something that is perhaps even more difficult than preventing overt forms of criminal behavior. To a large degree, this is because the covert version is often harder to detect and/or is easily misunderstood as something else. Compared to maliciously inflicted injuries and deaths, those that are deemed accidental, due to natural causes, or self-inflicted generally require much less, if any, investigation or follow-up. And once an official classification has been made, there are virtually no mechanisms in place for routine reconsideration. Further, the U.S. legal standard required for a criminal conviction—beyond a reasonable doubt—is a high bar to achieve. If there is not enough evidence present, perhaps it is easier or more practical to classify a possible homicide as something else. Despite these and other difficulties, strategies exist that hold promise for reducing the incidence of covert violence. This chapter describes three of those, along with supporting evidence and examples.
All Life is Yoga: An Introduction
Authors: Aswini Clarence-Smith Suryamayi
Published: May 2024

The chapter outlines the key contribution of the book: an autoethnographic analysis of how communal utopian practice is enabled, challenged and sustained. It presents the overall structure of the book and the distinct theoretical and ethnographic foci of each chapter, distinguishing the research focus of this work from that of intentional community scholarship in general given that the latter tends to be limited to understanding and analysing alternative practices, rather than the processes that give life to these. The chapter introduces the intentional community of Auroville, its founding period and its development, challenges and achievements, and presents the community’s endemic understandings and practices of research. It discusses the author’s positionality as a native scholar, her autoethnographic research methods and how these are uniquely leveraged to offer a rich analysis of the process of engaging in utopian practice in an intentional community context.
Spiritually Prefigurative Politics in Practice: An Embodied Account of an Auroville Community Decision-Making Process
Authors: Aswini Clarence-Smith Suryamayi
Published: May 2024

This chapter is an autoethnographic examination of an Auroville community decision-making process that is prefigurative of a spiritualized political forum. It describes and discusses the inclusion of practices designed to facilitate the embodiment of spiritually conscious states, as well as that of activities that explicitly draw on spiritual guidance to strategically inform participation and decision making. The chapter is revelatory of the shared and contested ways in which Aurovilians relate to the community’s spiritual heritage, and contributes to an understanding of the challenges and potential for spiritually prefigurative politics.
Media: Telling Stories
Authors: Benjamin Garfield
Published: May 2024

In this chapter, the focus is on the role of the media, particularly online platforms, in shaping the discourses that support the quantification of trust and the extraction of legitimacy. The sliding of terms and understanding that blurs what any given technology is and what it can do are discussed, as well as the harms it can generate or the inequalities it can perpetuate. Hype is shown to be a performance of functionality, complexity and legitimacy based on these misrepresentations in the media and in the way platforms present themselves to publics. Power over media is power over discourse is power over trust and legitimacy; this chain of proxies is critiqued with perspectives from disability and trans activism that challenge dominant narratives about what technology is and who it is for.
Case Study: Tech for Good
Authors: Benjamin Garfield
Published: May 2024

This case study confronts the various ‘tech for good’ initiatives that embed solutionist values in humanitarian activities. Drawing on examples of ‘data for good’ in Turkey, ‘AI for good’ at the UN, and various other manifestations of these schemes, the ill-defined nature of ‘good’ and its relation to discursive power are discussed. The metricization of humanitarianism is shown to be dehumanizing in the obscuring of context and lived experience. The application of generic technologies to humanitarian issues is not only extractive in itself, but it also operates as a tool to extract trust in the same technologies and companies for wider applications of technologies against different populations.
Case Study: Trusting Faces
Authors: Benjamin Garfield
Published: May 2024

This case study focuses on facial recognition technologies. The face is a key part of interpersonal interactions and trust, but when it gets quantified as data and assessed by algorithms it entrenches bias and discrimination. The use of facial recognition and emotion recognition technologies to assign social values such as trustworthiness (whether in job interviews or policing) is particularly problematic. The discussion brings in issues of race and gender as part of defining a default quantifiable human as a technologically embedded norm, and outlines technical, psychological and ethical critiques of facial recognition as a legitimizing technology for power and inequality.
Conclusion: False Trade-Offs
Authors: Benjamin Garfield
Published: May 2024

This concluding chapter provides an overview of the different relations between trust and technology, particularly the technologization of trust defined as trustification. This is brought back to the twin mechanisms of quantification and discourse that support power over and through technology. The constant displacement of trust across different parts of complex sociotechnical assemblages is discussed in terms of the way false trade-offs are constructed in technology discourse. Drawing together the intertwining threads of the book, a call to action is put forward based on the politicization of technology and the value of collective mistrust in addressing power inequalities.
Contested Children’s and Young People’s Political Representation in Global Health
Authors: Holzscheiter Anna , Pantzerhielm Laura
Published: May 2024

How are children and young people made sense of and acted upon in the politics of global health? How do children and young people interpret, resist and engage with the discourses, policies and sites populated by established, institutionalized global health actors? This contribution takes stock and critically interrogates the state of research on childhood and youth in the politics of global health. It contrasts the dearth of academic engagement with the place of young people in global (health) governance with the manifold forms of institutionalized participation that has proliferated in international institutions in recent years. We perform a systematic review of global health scholarship across pertinent academic outlets, epistemological and disciplinary divides and find that the political agency and representation of children and youth in global health politics has not been systematically, or comprehensively researched. Thereafter, we map youth representation in global health empirically, pointing to its varied institutionalized forms and the involvement of both public and private, adult and youth-led organizations. Our chapter highlights the contestation surrounding both the notions of ‘child’ and ‘youth’ and the indeterminate boundaries between these two identities. We also show that despite strong normative commitments to making children and youth heard, the emerging institutional ecology surrounding young people’s engagement in global health is marked by a strong presence of youth while children are largely at the margins. At the same time, even youth representation in global health is characterized by homogenous depoliticized discourses that often do not perceive of young people as competent political actors in the present. The concluding section of our chapter proposes new avenues for research into the political representation of children and young people in this global policy field.
In/visible Subjects: Global Migration Management and the Integration of Refugee Children into Schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Authors: Haybano Alebachew K. , Riggan Jennifer
Published: May 2024

How are children figured in and configured by global politics seeking to constrain migration while providing protection for refugees? To understand their role in global politics, we must understand how refugee children navigate the interaction between global migration management and regional politics, which affects everyday relationships between refugees and host-country nationals. Researching Eritrean and Somali elementary school students in Addis Ababa in 2015–2017, we explore strategies by which refugee children are made, and make themselves, in/visible in response to these interlocking politics. We focus first on how processes of global migration management play out in large refugee hosting states in the Global South, accounting for regional politics and the way they impact refugee–host relations; and second, the agency of refugee children and their families within the local implementation of a global strategy to mitigate northward migration to Europe – integrating refugees into schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Pathologies of Child Governance: Safe Harbor Laws and Children Involved in the Sex Trade in the United States
Authors: Linde Robyn
Published: May 2024

State child protection is embedded within United States law, practice, and policy, regulating nearly every aspect of childhood. These principles create an expectation of children’s experiences and development that ideally produce useful adult citizens vis-à-vis health, intellect, morality, and abilities. Deviations from childhood norms – sexual exploitation, abuse, and some juvenile sexual activity – are addressed through policy, law, education, and adjudication. The disconnect between expectations of childhood and the lived experiences of diverse groups of children mean these contributions sometimes produce pathologies of child governance – unintended consequences and outcomes – that exacerbate abuse, delinquency, criminalization, and exploitation. Examining one such pathology – excluding a subset of children involved in the sex trade from treatment as victims and the subsequent protections afforded other children in the trade – can improve our understanding of how a singular narrative of childhood involving binary conceptions of agency and victimhood produces outcomes antithetical to state protection efforts.
Centring the Demand for Critical Climate Justice Education
Authors: Collins Bennett , Watson Ali
Published: May 2024

Too often, governments and international institutions engage children and young people through rhetoric alone. Facing climate crisis, children and young people globally find themselves at the centre of liberal policy and advocacy spaces, thanks to their own mobilization and their moral position as those most impacted by current and future ecological catastrophes and their socio-political consequences. This chapter identifies how neoliberal institutions have foregrounded children and young people as global political actors in the climate crisis, often co-opting their participation for their own aims. Such institutions highlight the nexus of education and climate action while prioritizing a narrative that discounts the root causes of climate injustice and the possible solutions, often coming from marginalized voices. Using first-hand knowledge of the potential of ‘transformative education’ in (re)making global political worlds, we argue for the importance of creating a critical education approach and praxis that will inform current and future climate action.
Introduction: Examining Inter-Organizational Relations
Authors: Franke Ulrich , Koch Martin
Published: May 2024

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to take stock of inter-organizational relations research and to establish the conceptual foundation for the contributions to the volume. Starting with a depiction of inter-organizational relations as a subfield of international relations, it traces the contours of the field and its intellectual evolution towards conformity and canonization. Since this introduction, as the book, aims to overcome a narrowing of the field, a summary of five prominent approaches on inter-organizational relations and their empirical application follows. The focus is on two rationalist approaches (resource dependence and regime complexity) and three of their challengers (network accounts, sociological neo-institutionalism and classical pragmatism). This prepares for theoretical discussions in the subsequent chapters and underpins the volume’s goal to re-pluralize the debate on inter-organizational relations in international relations. The chapter closes with a presentation of the structure of the book and summaries of each chapter.
Changing Models of Peacekeeping and the Downsizing of Human-Rights Norms
Authors: Geis Anna , Moe Louise Wiuff
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the situation in Mali to challenge the common assumption that inter-organizational collaboration is an inherent benefit in stabilization and crisis-management approaches. It combines data from fieldwork in Mali with international relations insights into regime complexity and the ‘robust turn’ of UN peace operations to explore how emerging forms of stabilization and counterterrorism collaboration between international and African organizations and states interact with regional and global norm dynamics and have in fact weakened their implementation in Mali. More broadly, the findings highlight current complexities of norm dynamics that unfold beyond the prevailing focus on the diffusion of ‘good’ international norms and involve adaptation and transformations of presumed ‘norm diffusers’ themselves.
Public Sphere Dystopia: A Diagnosis
Authors: Trenz Hans-Jörg
Published: May 2024

This chapter delivers an empirical account of ongoing public sphere transformations. I will recapitulate the stock of knowledge about media and public sphere disruptions and their devastating effects on democracy. Within critical media studies, analytical knowledge about media malfunctioning and failures is, however, concurrently taken up by various social carriers and translated into forms of public critique and political mobilization. I distinguish between the critique of instrumental and functional performance and the normative critique of media. Both have developed in parallel, establishing rituals of media critique that are internal to the discipline of media studies (in the tradition of what is called critical media studies), transdisciplinary (in the tradition of cultural studies, as well as approaches of political economy), or external, as a universal template for the critique of media content and performance that is applied by public intellectuals and political actors as well as by audience members.
Optical modeling of systematic uncertainties in detector polarization angles for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope
Authors: Murphy Colin C. , Choi Steve K. , Datta Rahul , Devlin Mark J. , Hasselfield Matthew , Koopman Brian J. , McMahon Jeff , Naess Sigurd , Niemack Michael D. , Page Lyman A. , Staggs Suzanne T. , Thornton Robert , Wollack Edward J.
Published: May 2024

We present an estimate of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT)
detector polarization angle systematic uncertainty from optics
perturbation analysis using polarization-sensitive ray tracing in CODE
V optical design software. Uncertainties in polarization angle
calibration in CMB measurements can limit constraints on cosmic
birefringence and other cosmological parameters sensitive to
polarization leakage. Our framework estimates the angle calibration
systematic uncertainties from possible displacements in lens positions
and orientations, and anti-reflection coating (ARC) thicknesses and
refractive indices. With millimeter displacements in lens positions
and percent-level perturbations in ARC thicknesses and indices from
design, we find the total systematic uncertainty for three ACT
detector arrays operating between 90 and 220 GHz to be at the
10th of degree scale. Reduced lens position and orientation
uncertainties from physical measurements could lead to a reduction in
the systematic uncertainty estimated with the framework presented
here. This optical modeling may inform polarization angle systematic
uncertainties for current and future microwave polarimeters, such as
the CCAT Observatory, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4.
Analytical design of three-spectral-resolution scanning imaging spectrometer based on concave grating with multiple groove densities
Authors: Gao Yanhong , Ji Yiqun , Zhao Shijia , Sun Shujun
Published: May 2024

Imaging spectrometers are generally designed with constant spectral resolution and do
not have flexibility to achieve imaging different targets at
respective spectral resolution. In addition, unnecessary increase in
the data cube and transmission pressure result in an efficiency
decrease in information gathering and processing. In this paper, a
scanning imaging spectrometer with three spectral resolution (SISTR)
is proposed. The concave grating with different groove densities is
designed at the aperture stop. SISTR achieves the simultaneous
acquisition of three sets of spectral images with the same spectral
range but different spectral resolution. This paper studies the key
issues of such broadband imaging spectrometers with different spectral
resolution. Also evaluated are how groove densities of the concave
grating affect the spectral overlap and the ways the diameters and
decenters of three areas on the concave grating affect the uniformity
of the energy distribution among three sets of spectral images.
Accordingly, SISTR with three spectral resolution and high variation
ratio is optimized. SISTR achieves a high numerical aperture of 0.33
and three spectral resolution of 0.31 nm, 0.64 nm,
1.40 nm in a wide spectral range of 400 to 800 nm. This
paper provides a theoretical reference for further developments of
imaging spectrometers with multiple resolution.
Membrane-mediated modulation of mitochondrial physiology by terahertz waves
Authors: Lei Mengyao , Zhang Tingrong , Lu Xiaoyun , Zhao Xiaofei , Wang Hongguang , Long Jiangang , Lu Zhuoyang
Published: May 2024

Extensive studies have demonstrated the diverse impacts of electromagnetic waves at gigahertz and terahertz (THz) frequencies on cytoplasmic membrane properties. However, there is little evidence of these impacts on intracellular membranes, particularly mitochondrial membranes crucial for mitochondrial physiology. In this study, human neuroblast-like cells were exposed to continuous 0.1 THz radiation at an average power density of 33 mW/cm2. The analysis revealed that THz exposure significantly altered the mitochondrial ultrastructure. THz waves enhanced the enzymatic activity of the mitochondrial respiratory chain but disrupted supercomplex assembly, compromising mitochondrial respiration. Molecular dynamics simulations revealed altered rates of change in the quantity of hydrogen bonds and infiltration of water molecules in lipid bilayers containing cardiolipin, indicating the specific behavior of cardiolipin, a signature phospholipid in mitochondria, under THz exposure. These findings suggest that THz radiation can significantly alter mitochondrial membrane properties, impacting mitochondrial physiology through a mechanism related to mitochondrial membrane, and provide deeper insight into the bioeffects of THz radiation.
21.8 W acetylene-filled hollow-core anti-resonant fiberamplified spontaneous emission source at 3.1 µm
Authors: Song Weihua , Zhang Xin , Zhang Qian , Hou Yubin , Wang Pu
Published: May 2024

We report a 20-W-level acetylene-filled nested hollow-core anti-resonant fiber (nested HC-ARF) amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source at 3.1 µm. A 1535 nm hundred-watt wavelength tunable single-frequency fiber laser with a high signal-to-noise ratio and narrow linewidth is built for pumping acetylene molecules. Simultaneously, a homemade 120 µm core diameter eight-tube nested HC-ARF is used as a gas chamber to obtain high pump laser coupling efficiency. The mid-infrared (mid-IR) ASE source output power of 21.8 W is achieved at 3.1 µm through the low-pressure acetylene gas-filled nested HC-ARF, and the slope efficiency is 25.1%. In addition, the ASE source features an excellent beam quality of Mx2 = 1.16 and My2 = 1.13. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, it is a record output power for such mid-infrared ASE sources while maintaining excellent beam quality. This work provides a new way to achieve high-power mid-infrared emission.
On-chip silicon photonic micro-ring processor lights up optical image encryption
Authors: Zhao Zeyu , Ouyang Hao , You Jie , Tao Zilong , Cheng Xiang’ai , Tang Yuhua , Jiang Tian
Published: May 2024

Optical image encryption has long been an important concept in the fields of photonic network processing and communication. Here, we propose a convolution-like operation-based optical image encryption algorithm exploiting a silicon photonic multiplexing architecture to achieve content security. Particularly, the encryption process is completed in a 3 × 3 cross-shaped photonic micro-ring resonator (MRR) array on chip. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, this algorithm encodes information in an integrated intensity modulation, effectively reducing the encoding difficulty. Moreover, the high reliability and scalability of optical encryption are ensured using both linear and nonlinear operations on photonic chips according to characteristics of MRRs. As the encryption and decryption experiments show, the image restoration accuracy of our optical encryption algorithm exceeds 99% under real system noise at the pixel level, indicating its noise-robust property. Meanwhile, the peak signal-to-noise ratios of the restored and encrypted images are >60 and <15 dB, respectively, revealing both the high accuracy of the restored image and the small correlation between the encrypted and original images. This work adds to the rapidly expanding field of optical image encryption on photonic chips.
Single-drive electro-optic frequency comb source on a photonic-wire-bonded thin-film lithium niobate platform
Authors: Cheng Rebecca , Ren Xinyi , Reimer Christian , Yeh Matthew , Rosborough Victoria , Musolf Juergen , Johansson Leif , Zhang Mian , Yu Mengjie , Lončar Marko
Published: May 2024

Stable pulse and flat-top frequency comb generation are an indispensable component of many photonic applications, from ranging to communications. Lithium niobate on insulator is an excellent electro-optic (EO) platform, exhibiting high modulation efficiency and low optical loss, making it a fitting candidate for pulse generation through electro-optic modulation of continuous-wave (CW) light, a commonly utilized method for generating ultrashort pulses. Here, we demonstrate an on-chip electro-optic comb generation module on thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) consisting of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) amplitude modulator (AM) and a cascaded phase modulator (PM) system driven by a single-electrode drive. We show that when operated in the correct regime, the lithium niobate chips can generate frequency combs with excellent spectral power flatness. In addition, we optically package one of the pulse generator chips via photonic wire bonding. The pulses generated by the photonic-wire-bonded device are compressed to 840 fs pulse duration using an optical fiber and show extremely stable operation.
Tunable broadband polarization retarders
Authors: Hristova Hristina S. , Ivanov Svetoslav S. , Vitanov Nikolay V. , Rangelov Andon A.
Published: May 2024

We theoretically propose a type of tunable polarization retarder, which is composed of sequences of half-wave and quarter-wave polarization retarders, allowing operation at broad spectral bandwidth. The constituent retarders are composed of stacked standard half-wave retarders and quarter-wave retarders rotated at designated angles relative to their fast polarization axes. The proposed composite retarder (CR) can be tuned to an arbitrary value of the retardance by varying the middle retarder alone while maintaining its broadband spectral bandwidth intact.
Intensity-based iterative reconstruction with cross-channel regularization for grating interferometry breast CT
Authors: Pato Montemayor Natalia , van Gogh Stefano , Rawlik Michał , Varga Zsuzsanna , Stampanoni Marco
Published: May 2024

This work demonstrates the successful reconstruction of phase contrast images under challenging acquisition conditions in grating interferometry breast CT (GI-BCT) with an algorithm that adds a novel regularization functional to the existing iterative-based intensity reconstruction (IBIR) algorithm. The addition of a cross-channel regularizer allows to leverage the absorption channel’s convergence to promote that of the phase channel, which otherwise struggles to converge. We demonstrate convergence of phase contrast images on both simulations and real data. This work sets a step towards a clinically compatible reconstruction procedure using cross-channel regularization for the generation of standalone phase-contrast images of breasts.
Wide-field, high-resolution reconstruction in computational multi-aperture miniscope using a Fourier neural network
Authors: Yang Qianwan , Guo Ruipeng , Hu Guorong , Xue Yujia , Li Yunzhe , Tian Lei
Published: May 2024

Traditional fluorescence microscopy is constrained by inherent
trade-offs among resolution, field of view, and system complexity. To
navigate these challenges, we introduce a simple and low-cost
computational multi-aperture miniature microscope, utilizing a
microlens array for single-shot wide-field, high-resolution imaging.
Addressing the challenges posed by extensive view multiplexing and
non-local, shift-variant aberrations in this device, we present
SV-FourierNet, a multi-channel Fourier neural network. SV-FourierNet
facilitates high-resolution image reconstruction across the entire
imaging field through its learned global receptive field. We establish
a close relationship between the physical spatially varying
point-spread functions and the network’s learned effective receptive
field. This ensures that SV-FourierNet has effectively encapsulated
the spatially varying aberrations in our system and learned a
physically meaningful function for image reconstruction. Training of
SV-FourierNet is conducted entirely on a physics-based simulator. We
showcase wide-field, high-resolution video reconstructions on colonies
of freely moving C. elegans and imaging
of a mouse brain section. Our computational multi-aperture miniature
microscope, augmented with SV-FourierNet, represents a major
advancement in computational microscopy and may find broad
applications in biomedical research and other fields requiring compact
microscopy solutions.
Subharmonic resonance and over twenty-fold phase amplification in a self-mixing thin-slice solid-state laser operating in self-induced skew cosh Gaussian transverse modes
Authors: Otsuka Kenju , Sudo Seiichi
Published: May 2024

Over twenty-fold phase amplification was achieved in 300-m-thick LiNdP4O12 and Nd:GdVO4 lasers in the self-mixing interference scheme. The key event is the self-induced skew cosh Gaussian mode oscillation in the thin-slice solid-state lasers with wide aperture laser-diode pumping, which results in a pronounced self-mixing modulation effect through increased fluorescence-to-photon lifetime ratios and light amplitude feedback ratio to the laser. The nonlinear dynamics responsible for the high degree of phase amplification was also explored.
Immunohistochemical Expression and Clinical Significance of WWP1 Protein in Nasopharyngeal Cancer
Authors: Chen Huarong , Li Changya , He Shengmei , Ling Junjun , Zhao Houyu , Zhuo Xianlu
Published: May 2024

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a common malignant tumor of the head and neck. Its pathogenesis is complicated and needs further investigation. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression and clinical significance of WWP1 in NPC. Bioinformatics approaches were used to evaluate the expression and functions of WWP1 in NPC. WWP1 protein expression was then detected by immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray in an NPC cohort and its association with clinical features and prognosis was determined. In addition, WWP1 expression was knocked down in NPC cells using RNA interference, and their colony formation and invasion abilities were assessed. A total of 25 genes closely related to WWP1, which may be enriched in different pathways, were filtered out. WWP1 expression was significantly higher in NPC cells than in normal controls. High WWP1 expression was correlated with lymph node metastasis, tumor recurrence, clinical stage and poor prognosis. Knockdown of WWP1 resulted in attenuated proliferation and invasion of NPC cells. The results suggest that WWP1 may serve as a novel biomarker and prognostic factor for NPC and a potential therapeutic target worthy of further investigation:
High-molecular-weight Hyaluronan Administration Inhibits Bone Resorption and Promotes Bone Formation in Young-age Osteoporosis Rats
Authors: Kikuchi Toshiyuki , Udagawa Kazuhiko , Sasazaki Yoshihiro
Published: May 2024

Osteoporosis poses a significant global health concern, affecting both the elderly and young individuals, including athletes. Despite the development of numerous antiosteoporotic drugs, addressing the unique needs of young osteoporosis patients remains challenging. This study focuses on young rats subjected to ovariectomy (OVX) to explore the impact of high-molecular-weight hyaluronan (HA) on preventing OVX-induced osteoporosis. Twenty-four rats underwent OVX, while 12 underwent sham procedures (sham control group). Among the OVX rats, half received subcutaneous injections of HA (MW: 2700 kDa) at 10 mg/kg/week into their backs (OVX-HA group), whereas the other half received saline injections (0.5 ml/week) at the same site (OVX-saline group). OVX-HA group exhibited significantly higher percentages of osteoclast surface (Oc. S/BS), osteoblast surface per bone surface (Ob. S/BS), and bone volume/tissue volume (BV/TV) compared with OVX-saline group at the same age. The proportions of Ob. S/BS and BV/TV in the OVX-HA group closely resembled those of the sham control group, whereas the proportion of Oc. S/BS in the OVX-HA group was notably higher than that in the sham control group. In summary, the administration of HA significantly mitigated bone resorption and enhanced bone formation, suggesting a crucial role for HA in the treatment of young adult osteoporosis.
The human auditory system uses amplitude modulation to distinguish music from speech
Authors: Chang Andrew , Teng Xiangbin , Assaneo M. Florencia , Poeppel David
Published: May 2024

Music and speech are complex and distinct auditory signals that are both foundational to the human experience. The mechanisms underpinning each domain are widely investigated. However, what perceptual mechanism transforms a sound into music or speech and how basic acoustic information is required to distinguish between them remain open questions. Here, we hypothesized that a sound’s amplitude modulation (AM), an essential temporal acoustic feature driving the auditory system across processing levels, is critical for distinguishing music and speech. Specifically, in contrast to paradigms using naturalistic acoustic signals (that can be challenging to interpret), we used a noise-probing approach to untangle the auditory mechanism: If AM rate and regularity are critical for perceptually distinguishing music and speech, judging artificially noise-synthesized ambiguous audio signals should align with their AM parameters. Across 4 experiments (N = 335), signals with a higher peak AM frequency tend to be judged as speech, lower as music. Interestingly, this principle is consistently used by all listeners for speech judgments, but only by musically sophisticated listeners for music. In addition, signals with more regular AM are judged as music over speech, and this feature is more critical for music judgment, regardless of musical sophistication. The data suggest that the auditory system can rely on a low-level acoustic property as basic as AM to distinguish music from speech, a simple principle that provokes both neurophysiological and evolutionary experiments and speculations.
Adaptive modeling and inference of higher-order coordination in neuronal assemblies: A dynamic greedy estimation approach
Authors: Mukherjee Shoutik , Babadi Behtash
Published: May 2024

Central in the study of population codes, coordinated ensemble spiking activity is widely observable in neural recordings with hypothesized roles in robust stimulus representation, interareal communication, and learning and memory formation. Model-free measures of synchrony characterize coherent pairwise activity but not higher-order interactions, a limitation transcended by statistical models of ensemble spiking activity. However, existing model-based analyses often impose assumptions about the relevance of higher-order interactions and require repeated trials to characterize dynamics in the correlational structure of ensemble activity. To address these shortcomings, we propose an adaptive greedy filtering algorithm based on a discretized mark point-process model of ensemble spiking and a corresponding statistical inference framework to identify significant higher-order coordination. In the course of developing a precise statistical test, we show that confidence intervals can be constructed for greedily estimated parameters. We demonstrate the utility of our proposed methods on simulated neuronal assemblies. Applied to multi-electrode recordings from human and rat cortical assemblies, our proposed methods provide new insights into the dynamics underlying localized population activity during transitions between brain states.
An extension of the Walsh-Hadamard transform to calculate and model epistasis in genetic landscapes of arbitrary shape and complexity
Authors: Faure Andre J. , Lehner Ben , Miró Pina Verónica , Serrano Colome Claudia , Weghorn Donate
Published: May 2024

Accurate models describing the relationship between genotype and phenotype are necessary in order to understand and predict how mutations to biological sequences affect the fitness and evolution of living organisms. The apparent abundance of epistasis (genetic interactions), both between and within genes, complicates this task and how to build mechanistic models that incorporate epistatic coefficients (genetic interaction terms) is an open question. The Walsh-Hadamard transform represents a rigorous computational framework for calculating and modeling epistatic interactions at the level of individual genotypic values (known as genetical, biological or physiological epistasis), and can therefore be used to address fundamental questions related to sequence-to-function encodings. However, one of its main limitations is that it can only accommodate two alleles (amino acid or nucleotide states) per sequence position. In this paper we provide an extension of the Walsh-Hadamard transform that allows the calculation and modeling of background-averaged epistasis (also known as ensemble epistasis) in genetic landscapes with an arbitrary number of states per position (20 for amino acids, 4 for nucleotides, etc.). We also provide a recursive formula for the inverse matrix and then derive formulae to directly extract any element of either matrix without having to rely on the computationally intensive task of constructing or inverting large matrices. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our theory by using it to model epistasis within both simulated and empirical multiallelic fitness landscapes, revealing that both pairwise and higher-order genetic interactions are enriched between physically interacting positions.
Systematic evaluation of lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase binding sites in apolipoproteins via peptide based nanodiscs: regulatory role of charged residues at positions 4 and 7
Authors: Niemelä Akseli , Koivuniemi Artturi
Published: May 2024

Lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT) exhibits α-activity on high-density and β-activity on low-density lipoproteins. However, the molecular determinants governing LCAT activation by different apolipoproteins remain elusive. Uncovering these determinants would offer the opportunity to design and explore advanced therapies against dyslipidemias. Here, we have conducted coarse-grained and all-atom molecular dynamics simulations of LCAT with nanodiscs made with α-helical amphiphilic peptides either derived from apolipoproteins A1 and E (apoA1 and apoE) or apoA1 mimetic peptide 22A that was optimized to activate LCAT. This study aims to explore what drives the binding of peptides to our previously identified interaction site in LCAT. We hypothesized that this approach could be used to screen for binding sites of LCAT in different apolipoproteins and would provide insights to differently localized LCAT activities. Our screening approach was able to discriminate apoA1 helixes 4, 6, and 7 as key contributors to the interaction with LCAT supporting the previous research data. The simulations provided detailed molecular determinants driving the interaction with LCAT: the formation of hydrogen bonds or salt bridges between peptides E4 or D4 and LCAT S236 or K238 residues. Additionally, salt bridging between R7 and D73 was observed, depending on the availability of R7. Expanding our investigation to diverse plasma proteins, we detected novel LCAT binding helixes in apoL1, apoB100, and serum amyloid A. Our findings suggest that the same binding determinants, involving E4 or D4 -S236 and R7-D73 interactions, influence LCAT β-activity on low-density lipoproteins, where apoE and or apoB100 are hypothesized to interact with LCAT.
Clock-dependent chromatin accessibility rhythms regulate circadian transcription
Authors: Yuan Ye , Chen Qianqian , Brovkina Margarita , Clowney E Josephine , Yadlapalli Swathi
Published: May 2024

Chromatin organization plays a crucial role in gene regulation by controlling the accessibility of DNA to transcription machinery. While significant progress has been made in understanding the regulatory role of clock proteins in circadian rhythms, how chromatin organization affects circadian rhythms remains poorly understood. Here, we employed ATAC-seq (Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin with Sequencing) on FAC-sorted Drosophila clock neurons to assess genome-wide chromatin accessibility at dawn and dusk over the circadian cycle. We observed significant oscillations in chromatin accessibility at promoter and enhancer regions of hundreds of genes, with enhanced accessibility either at dusk or dawn, which correlated with their peak transcriptional activity. Notably, genes with enhanced accessibility at dusk were enriched with E-box motifs, while those more accessible at dawn were enriched with VRI/PDP1-box motifs, indicating that they are regulated by the core circadian feedback loops, PER/CLK and VRI/PDP1, respectively. Further, we observed a complete loss of chromatin accessibility rhythms in per01 null mutants, with chromatin consistently accessible at both dawn and dusk, underscoring the critical role of Period protein in driving chromatin compaction during the repression phase at dawn. Together, this study demonstrates the significant role of chromatin organization in circadian regulation, revealing how the interplay between clock proteins and chromatin structure orchestrates the precise timing of biological processes throughout the day. This work further implies that variations in chromatin accessibility might play a central role in the generation of diverse circadian gene expression patterns in clock neurons.
Her2 amplification, Rel-A, and Bach1 can influence APOBEC3A expression in breast cancer cells
Authors: Dennis Madeline , Hurley Alyssa , Bray Nicholas , Cordero Cameron , Ilagan Jose , Mertz Tony M. , Roberts Steven A.
Published: May 2024

APOBEC-induced mutations occur in 50% of sequenced human tumors, with APOBEC3A (A3A) being a major contributor to mutagenesis in breast cancer cells. The mechanisms that cause A3A activation and mutagenesis in breast cancers are still unknown. Here, we describe factors that influence basal A3A mRNA transcript levels in breast cancer cells. We found that basal A3A mRNA correlates with A3A protein levels and predicts the amount of APOBEC signature mutations in a panel of breast cancer cell lines, indicating that increased basal transcription may be one mechanism leading to breast cancer mutagenesis. We also show that alteration of ERBB2 expression can drive A3A mRNA levels, suggesting the enrichment of the APOBEC mutation signature in Her2-enriched breast cancer could in part result from elevated A3A transcription. Hierarchical clustering of transcripts in primary breast cancers determined that A3A mRNA was co-expressed with other genes functioning in viral restriction and interferon responses. However, reduction of STAT signaling via inhibitors or shRNA in breast cancer cell lines had only minor impact on A3A abundance. Analysis of single cell RNA-seq from primary tumors indicated that A3A mRNA was highest in infiltrating immune cells within the tumor, indicating that correlations of A3A with STAT signaling in primary tumors may be result from higher immune infiltrates and are not reflective of STAT signaling controlling A3A expression in breast cancer cells. Analysis of ATAC-seq data in multiple breast cancer cell lines identified two transcription factor sites in the APOBEC3A promoter region that could promote A3A transcription. We determined that Rel-A, and Bach1, which have binding sites in these peaks, elevated basal A3A expression. Our findings highlight a complex and variable set of transcriptional activators for A3A in breast cancer cells.