bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Regulation of antiviral innate immunity by chemical modification of viral RNA
Authors: Li Na , Rana Tariq M. 
Published: February 2022

AbstractMore than 100 chemical modifications of RNA, termed the epitranscriptome, have been described, most of which occur in prokaryotic and eukaryotic ribosomal, transfer, and noncoding RNA and eukaryotic messenger RNA. DNA and RNA viruses can modify their RNA either directly via genome‐encoded enzymes or by hijacking the host enzymatic machinery. Among the many RNA modifications described to date, four play particularly important roles in promoting viral infection by facilitating viral gene expression and replication and by enabling escape from the host innate immune response. Here, we discuss our current understanding of the mechanisms by which the RNA modifications such as N6‐methyladenosine (m6A), N6,2′‐O‐dimethyladenosine (m6Am), 5‐methylcytidine (m5C), N4‐acetylcytidine (ac4C), and 2′‐O‐methylation (Nm) promote viral replication and/or suppress recognition by innate sensors and downstream activation of the host antiviral response.This article is categorized under:
RNA in Disease and Development > RNA in Disease
RNA Structure and Dynamics > Influence of RNA Structure in Biological Systems
RNA Evolution and Genomics > RNA and Ribonucleoprotein Evolution
Bhutan’s ‘Middle Way’: Diversification, Mainstreaming, Commodification and Impacts in the Context of Food Security
Authors: Kobayashi Mai 
Published: February 2022

AbstractThe Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is both wedded to tradition and influenced by the global push to modernize. In this study of the country’s path to food security, Mai Kobayashi describes its evolving national ‘middle way’ towards sustainable agriculture. She traces seed-sector dynamics over the past 70 years, as exogenous influences from India and Japan mingled with endogenous practices. First following a Green Revolution-style high-input agricultural model reflecting India’s, Bhutan joined the Colombo Plan in 1962, paving the way to autonomous economic development. Meanwhile, two Japanese specialists—agriculturalist Keiji Nishioka and seed-processing technologist Katsuhiko Nishikawa—respectively introduced open pollinated varieties and imported hybrids. The latter sited seed access within commodity relations for the first time. But Bhutan’s own National Seed Center has supported a pluralistic approach serving the seed demands of both family and market-oriented farmers, while organic agriculture became a national mandate in 2007. Bhutan, Kobayashi concludes, has shown that its evolving, idiosyncratic ‘middle way’ towards food security is likely to endure.
Agroecology, Sovereignty and the Endogenous Development Perspective in Seed Governance and Management
Authors: Nishikawa Yoshiaki 
Published: February 2022

AbstractFood sovereignty is a useful concept for researchers, officials and activists eager to understand on-the-ground realities in the context of seed governance. For the Indigenous, peasant and small farmers immersed in those realities, however, it can seem abstract, prescriptive and politicised. In this analysis of the broader debate, Yoshiaki Nishikawa suggests that the Japanese sociologist Kazuko Tsurumi’s endogenous development theory offers a perspective applicable to myriad seed-sovereignty approaches. That perspective puts farmers’ work experience and cultural values first, recognises and supports a genuinely inclusive seed commons and infuses an understanding of rural realities and spontaneous practices into the study and practice of agroecology. Tsurumi emphasised that transformation is never complete: traditional customs and approaches coexist with modern introductions. Thus, the heterogeneous nature of those who manage seeds, and of the resources themselves, needs to be grasped by scientists and policymakers in this arena. As Nishikawa concludes, it is local decisions, not external ideologies, that must come first in guiding analyses on building better seed management systems.
Reclaiming Diverse Seed Commons Through Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and Economies of Care
Authors: Pimbert Michel 
Published: February 2022

AbstractSeed commons—the collective management of seeds and associated knowledge—is a major aim of food sovereignty, that crucial alternative to the dead end of industrialized agriculture. To reclaim the commons, explains Michel Pimbert in this wide-ranging policy analysis, we need to enable community control over growing, trading and consuming food. That will demand mutually supportive transformations in agriculture, economies, rights and political systems towards agroecology, an economics of solidarity, collective notions of property and direct democracy. Drawing on sources such as the Nyéléni Declaration on food sovereignty and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, Pimbert outlines a radical approach to seed governance outside the capitalist and patriarchal paradigm. The proposals, while scarcely featuring in global and national fora on seed governance, offer a fresh framework for needed change at a time of social exclusion, poverty and deepening environmental crises.
Indigenous Seed Systems and Biocultural Heritage: The Andean Potato Park’s Approach to Seed Governance
Authors: Swiderska Krystyna , Argumedo Alejandro 
Published: February 2022

AbstractIn the Indigenous worldview, seeds are both biological entities and embodiments of immateriality: knowledge, culture and the sacred. Indigenous seed systems thus codify the human connection to nature. Yet such ‘informal’ systems, whether developed by Indigenous peoples or small-scale farmers, barely surface in policy debates. Krystyna Swiderska and Alejandro Argumedo seek to redress the balance in this detailed study of the principles, values and practices of Indigenous seed systems and governance. While ranging over a number of case studies from Kyrgyzstan to Kenya, their prime focus is the Andean Potato Park in Cusco, Peru—a world centre of origin and domestication of crops such as the potato, quinoa and amaranth. Swiderska and Argumedo describe the Park’s collective and customary governance structure, and the ways of learning, exchange systems, seed banks and more developed by its Quechua farmers. To safeguard the vital Indigenous contribution to seed security and diversity, they conclude, a biocultural rights-based approach to seed governance is required and needs further support from policy reform, among other measures.
The Diversity of Seed-Saving Governance and Sharing Systems in contemporary Japan
Authors: Kawai Ayako 
Published: February 2022

AbstractCrop diversity in Japan is on the ebb, eroded by factors such as the rise of industrialised agriculture, a shrinking and ageing population of farmers, and a dearth of knowledge transmission between generations. However, thousands of Japanese farmers follow a practice vital to fostering agrobiodiversity: seed saving. Using a qualitative case study approach, Ayako Kawai tracked diverse seed governance and sharing systems across four groups of producers: traditional, organic and ‘lifestyle’ farmers and local community members. She found differences in the ways seeds are valued—cultural, economic, rights-based, familial or personal—that influence approaches to saving and sharing seeds. Organic and traditional farmers and community growers, for instance, tightly regulate seed distribution, while part-time producers are far keener to actively share seeds. That could, notes Kawai, create a dilemma if broader access to genetic resources becomes a general priority. Yet she concludes that a plurality of practices, like crop diversity itself, builds in resilience by spreading risk and offering a range of responses to future uncertainties.
Seed System Dynamics and Crop Diversity of Chinbaung in Myanmar
Authors: Nagashima Mami , Nishikawa Yoshiaki ,   Mya Shew,   Ohm Mar Saw,   Min San Tein, Kawase Makoto , Watanabe Kazuo , Irie Kenji 
Published: February 2022

AbstractIn this field survey of seed system dynamics in Myanmar, the authors note that the country’s dominant system of traditional agriculture faces pressure from the introduction of ‘improved’ varieties and shifts in policy. However, farmers—from small and subsistence growers to large-scale rice producers—continue to raise indigenous species. One is chinbaung, the collective term for several varieties in the genus Hibiscus. The authors traced differences in chinbaung cultivation and use among places, and examined production systems in three villages in central arid zone, each sited in a geographically distinct locale. They found that a local festival popular with seed sellers has become a prime conduit for disseminating diverse genetic resources. Poe Yon, a guild of agricultural brokerage firms with hubs in cities across the country, meanwhile involves firms and farmers in a unique relationship that ensures broader distribution. Ultimately, the autonomy of farmers has enabled agrobiodiversity to thrive in Myanmar—a success, the authors note, that agricultural policymakers should heed.
Evolutionary Populations for Sustainable Food Security and Food Sovereignty
Authors: Ceccarelli Salvatore , Grando Stefania , Salimi Maedeh , Razavi Khadija 
Published: February 2022

AbstractTwo mechanisms in plant breeding are thought to diminish crop diversity: the displacement of landraces by “improved” varieties, and a bias towards varieties developed under a high-input management regime. This multinational study examines how genetic diversity can be restored through evolutionary plant breeding: enabling plants under cultivation to evolve via natural selection pressure and adapt to the environment. The authors first present findings from research in Iran. Here, in participation with institutions, farmers selected barley, rice and wheat varieties from evolutionary populations for cultivation and used them outright as “smart crops” with all-around benefits for the environment, human health and farming income. A similarly successful project in Italy led to six more in countries across Africa, Asia and the Near East. Ultimately, the authors conclude, such “evolutionary-participatory” plant breeding enables farmers to manage genetic diversity autonomously. While the seeds produced have yet to meet the requirements of seed laws, new rules emerging in Europe could enable organic farmers to adopt the approach from 2022.
Adding Value to a Scottish Rye Landrace: Collaborative Research into New Artisanal Products
Authors: Blackley Stan , McVey David , Scholten Maria , Veitch Adam 
Published: February 2022

AbstractHebridean rye (Secale cereale), a high-yield landrace grown by crofters in Scotland’s Highlands and Islands, has traditionally been used as livestock feed. This multi-author study presents and analyses findings into the crop’s potential as the raw material for locally produced flour, bread and beer, offering new opportunities in sustainable seed saving, small-scale agriculture, food production and eco-enterprise. The authors—part of the project’s multidisciplinary team of researchers, artisanal food producers and crofters—explicate aspects of the pioneering project, from conditions on Uist’s coastal machair where the rye originates, to testing seasonal varieties in mainland Lochaber and assessing nutritional qualities and consumer acceptance of novel products. They conclude that Hebridean rye, with its potential for crofters in remote locales and local businesses, could help in preserving agrobiodiversity, traditional knolwedge and practices, crofting culture and economic resilience in the north and north-west of Scotland.
Introduction
Authors: Schultze-Kraft Markus 
Published: February 2022

AbstractEducation on and for peace in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, protracted violent conflict is up against major challenges. Both conventional and critical approaches to peace education are of limited help to address these challenges. Incorporating a focus on historical memory, without losing sight of its own pitfalls, into peace education can support learners and teachers to come to grips with achieving positive, peace-sustaining change at both the micro (individual) and macro (social and institutional) levels and develop concepts and practices of effective and legitimate alternatives to violence and war. Conceived in these terms, historical memory-oriented peace education also stands to enhance the work-in-progress that is the UN-led sustaining peace agenda, closely aligned as it is with the Sustainable Development Goals. Informed by the author’s long-standing work on violent conflict, peace and education in countries of the global South, particularly Colombia, the book presents a comprehensive narrative about the relationship between peace education, historical memory and the sustaining peace agenda, advocating for the adoption of a new perspective on education for sustaining peace through historical memory.
Conventional and Critical Approaches to Peace Education
Authors: Schultze-Kraft Markus 
Published: February 2022

AbstractPeace and education are both “essentially contested concepts.” Welding them together in one single term—peace education—raises tough questions about what it is that is being proposed and done. With their normative, morally appellative and culturally universalist focus on the individual learner, conventional conceptions and practices of peace education do not easily relate to variable, heterogeneous and context-dependent notions and realities of peace and education in violence-inflected societies. They also shy away from taking account of asymmetric and unequal power relationships. Evoking the importance of building “cultures of peace” falls short of addressing these realities. Critical approaches to peace education forefront empowering individuals as well as collectives to become agents of social transformation. Education for peace is understood as social action geared towards finding solutions to manifold manifestations of direct, cultural and structural violence, injustice and inequality. Critical peace education is more attuned to the thorny issues of power and exclusion. However, it faces the challenge of showing how the empowerment and emancipation of the marginalised and oppressed through formal and informal education for peace can lead to broader institutional transformation. The chapter illustrates peace education’s challenges in relation to the case of Colombia.
Double copy for Lagrangians at trilinear order
Authors: Beneke M. , Hager P. , Sanfilippo A.F. 
Published: February 2022

Abstract
We present a novel double-copy prescription for gauge fields at the Lagrangian level and apply it to the original double copy, couplings to matter and the soft theorem. The Yang-Mills Lagrangian in light-cone gauge is mapped directly to the $$ \mathcal{N} $$
N
= 0 supergravity Lagrangian in light-cone gauge to trilinear order, and we show that the obtained result is manifestly equivalent to Einstein gravity at tree level up to this order. The application of the double-copy prescription to couplings to matter is exemplified by scalar and fermionic QCD and finally the soft-collinear effective QCD Lagrangian. The mapping of the latter yields an effective description of an energetic Dirac fermion coupled to the graviton, Kalb-Ramond, and dilaton fields, from which the fermionic gravitational soft and next-to-soft theorems follow.
Swampland constraints on neutrino masses
Authors: Gonzalo E. , Ibáñez L.E. , Valenzuela I. 
Published: February 2022

Abstract
Compactifying the Standard Model (SM) on a circle may lead to AdS 3D vacua, depending on the character (Majorana or Dirac) and the mass of the lightest neutrino. It has been shown that, imposing the Ooguri-Vafa conjecture that no stable non-SUSY AdS vacua are consistent with Quantum Gravity, one can obtain conditions on the mass of the lightest neutrino. This result has the shortcoming that it is in general sensitive to the UV structure of the theory. In the present paper we show that two other independent swampland conditions may yield constraints very similar to those. These other two conditions come from the AdS swampland distance conjecture and the dS conjecture as applied to AdS vacua by Lust, Palti and Vafa. Unlike the non-SUSY AdS constraints, for these conjectures the results require only local IR information of the radion potential. We consider both the case of an explicit cosmological 4D constant and the alternative of a simple quintessence 4D potential. Cosmological data in the next decade may falsify the results, giving us information on the constraints of particle physics from Quantum Gravity.
The formation of SCEs as an effect of occupational exposure to formaldehyde
Authors: Ghelli Federica , Cocchi Enrico , Bellisario Valeria , Buglisi Martina , Squillacioti Giulia , Santovito Alfredo , Bono Roberto 
Published: February 2022

AbstractFormaldehyde (FA) is a ubiquitous toxic chemical employed worldwide due to its disinfectant and preservative properties. Despite being classified as a human carcinogen, FA is still employed as formalin in pathology wards as standard fixative. We evaluated its relationship with the formation of sister-chromatid exchanges (SCEs) in cultured peripheral blood lymphocytes on 57 pathologists and 48 controls and the risk/protective role played by several genetic polymorphisms. All subjects were assessed for SCEs and genotyped for the most common cancer-associated gene polymorphisms: CYP1A1 exon 7 (A > G), CYP1A1*2A (T > C), CYP2C19*2 (G > A), GSTT1 (presence/absence), GSTM1 (presence/absence), GSTP1 (A > G), XRCC1 (G399A), XRCC1 (C194T), XRCC1 (A280G), XPC exon 15 (A939C), XPC exon 9 (C499T), TNFα − 308 G > A), IL10 − 1082 (G > A), and IL6 − 174 (G > C). Air-FA concentration was assessed through passive personal samplers. Pathologists, exposed to 55.2 μg/m3 of air-FA, showed a significantly higher SCEs frequency than controls, exposed, respectively, to 18.4 μg/m3. Air-FA was directly correlated with SCEs frequency and inversely with the replication index (RI). Regression models showed FA exposure as a significant predictor in developing SCEs, while did not highlight any role of the selected polymorphisms. Our study confirms the role of low air-FA levels as genotoxicity inductor, highlighting the importance to define exposure limits that could be safer for exposed workers.
Role of Vitamin K in Bone and Muscle Metabolism
Authors: Alonso N. , Meinitzer A. , Fritz-Petrin E. , Enko D. , Herrmann M. 
Published: February 2022

AbstractVitamin K, a cofactor for the γ-glutamyl carboxylase enzyme, is required for the post-translational activation of osteocalcin and matrix Gla protein, which play a key role in bone and muscle homeostasis. In vivo and in vitro models for osteoporosis and sarcopenia suggest the vitamin K could exert a positive effect in both conditions. In bone, it increases osteoblastogenesis, whilst decreases osteoclast formation and function. In muscle, it is associated with increased satellite cell proliferation and migration and might play a role in energy metabolism. Observational trials suggest that high levels of vitamin K are associated with increased bone mineral density and reduced fracture risk. However, interventional studies for vitamin K supplementation yielded conflicting results. Clinical trials in sarcopenia suggest that vitamin K supplementation could improve muscle mass and function. One of the main limitations on the vitamin K studies are the technical challenges to measure its levels in serum. Thus, they are obtained from indirect sources like food questionnaires, or levels of undercarboxylated proteins, which can be affected by other environmental or biological processes. Although current research appoints to a beneficial effect of vitamin K in bone and muscle, further studies overcoming the current limitations are required in order to incorporate this supplementation in the clinical management of patients with osteosarcopenia.
Evaluation of Safety‐Related Outcomes of One‐Segment and More‐Than‐One‐Segment High‐Level Hepatectomy in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Based on the Japanese Board Certification System
Authors: Hojo Akihisa , Nakayama Hisashi , Okamura Yukiyasu , Higaki Tokio , Moriguchi Masamichi , Aramaki Osamu , Yamazaki Shitaro , Takayama Tadatoshi 
Published: February 2022

AbstractBackgroundWe evaluated the impact of the Japanese board certification system for expert surgeons (JBCSES) on complications and survival outcomes in hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma.MethodsThe postoperative outcomes of 493 patients who underwent high‐level liver surgery involving one‐segment (OSeg) hepatectomy and more‐than‐one‐segment (MOSeg) resection were compared before and after JBCSES establishment. After the establishment of the JBCSES, the patients’ postoperative outcomes were compared using propensity score matching (PSM) to determine the influence of expert surgeons.ResultsThe establishment of the JBCSES was associated with a decrease in the overall postoperative complication rates after high‐level liver surgery from 50.2 to 38.1% (P = 0.008) and a decrease in Clavien–Dindo class ≥ IIIb complications from 10.2 to 5.0% (P = 0.035). The 90‐day mortality rate decreased from 5.1 to 0.7% (P = 0.003), and the 5‐year survival rate increased from 51.4 to 63.9% (P = 0.009). Using PSM, a comparison of OSeg hepatectomies that involved expert surgeons (n = 48) and those that did not (n = 48) showed significantly lower intraoperative blood loss in surgeries involving an expert surgeon (mean, 340 vs. 473 mL; P = 0.033). There were no significant differences in complication rates or long‐term prognosis between these groups. A comparison of MOSeg hepatectomies that involved expert surgeons (n = 26) and those that did not (n = 26) showed no significant difference in surgical factors, complications, or overall survival between the two groups.ConclusionsAfter establishment of the JBCSES, postoperative complication rates and mortality rates decreased and survival rates increased following liver surgery. Expert surgeon participation significantly decreased intraoperative blood loss during OSeg hepatectomies.