JURNAL AGROTEKNOLOGI
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Allies among enemies: political authority and party (dis)loyalty in Bangladesh
No full textThe authority of political leaders in Bangladesh rests on diverse qualities, not least of which are the
muscle and finance they can mobilize, and the relationships they can craft with senior party members.
These are utilized to confront rivals both within and outside one’s own party, competition which can be
just as fiercely fought. In some instances, the intensity of intra-party competition can be so severe, that
a further quality emerges: the capacity to find allies among enemies. Building local inter-party alliances
can bolster the authority of politicians, yet severely detriment party coherence. This argument is
developed through an analysis of mayoral and parliamentary elections over the past decade in a small
Bangladeshi city, where a ruling party MP and opposition Mayor appear to have developed such a
relationship. This has thwarted the electoral ambitions of their fellow party members, posing a serious
challenge to party discipline. While political competition is often seen as being inter or intra party, here
it is around inter-party alliances. This portrayal suggests we need to give greater emphasis to the
decentralized and local character that political authority can take in Bangladesh
Multidimensional poverty, gender, and forced displacement: a multi-country, intrahousehold analysis in Sub-Saharan Africa
No full textThis paper examines multidimensional poverty among forcibly displaced populations, using a gendered lens. Although past studies have explored poverty in forcibly displaced contexts, and others have looked at the relation- ship between multidimensional poverty and gender, none has brought together these three issues—multidimensional poverty, forcibly displaced persons, and gender. A tailored measure of multidimensional poverty is developed and applied for refugees and internally displaced populations in five Sub-Saharan African settings substantially affected by forced displacement—Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The gendered analysis builds on prior analysis of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by examining individual-level deprivations of women and men in forcibly displaced households and host communities, as well as synthesizing intrahousehold dynamics of multidimensional poverty in forcibly displaced communities. The results provide insights into the educational constraints of boys and girls living in forcibly displaced households, the labor market inequalities experienced by men and women in these communities, and their differential access to legal documentation and employment as part and parcel of the forced displacement experience
Ranking and synchronization from pairwise measurements via SVD
No full textGiven a measurement graph and an unknown signal , we investigate algorithms for recovering from pairwise
measurements of the form ; . This problem arises in a
variety of applications, such as ranking teams in sports data and time
synchronization of distributed networks. Framed in the context of ranking, the
task is to recover the ranking of teams (induced by ) given a small
subset of noisy pairwise rank offsets. We propose a simple SVD-based
algorithmic pipeline for both the problem of time synchronization and ranking.
We provide a detailed theoretical analysis in terms of robustness against both
sampling sparsity and noise perturbations with outliers, using results from
matrix perturbation and random matrix theory. Our theoretical findings are
complemented by a detailed set of numerical experiments on both synthetic and
real data, showcasing the competitiveness of our proposed algorithms with other
state-of-the-art methods
Limits to electrical mobility in lead-halide perovskite semiconductors
No full textSemiconducting polycrystalline thin films are cheap to produce and can be deposited on flexible substrates, yet high-performance electronic devices usually utilize single-crystal semiconductors, owing to their superior charge-carrier mobilities and longer diffusion lengths. Here we show that the electrical performance of polycrystalline films of metal-halide perovskites (MHPs) approaches that of single crystals at room temperature. Combining temperature-dependent terahertz conductivity measurements and ab initio calculations we uncover a complete picture of the origins of charge-carrier scattering in single crystals and polycrystalline films of CH3NH3PbI3. We show that Fröhlich scattering of charge carriers with multiple phonon modes is the dominant mechanism limiting mobility, with grain-boundary scattering further reducing mobility in polycrystalline films. We reconcile the large discrepancy in charge-carrier diffusion lengths between single crystals and films by considering photon reabsorption. Thus, polycrystalline films of MHPs offer great promise for devices beyond solar cells, including light-emitting diodes and modulators
Incidence and management of metabolic acidosis with sodium bicarbonate in the ICU: An international observational study
No full textBackground
Metabolic acidosis is a major complication of critical illness. However, its current epidemiology and its treatment with sodium bicarbonate given to correct metabolic acidosis in the ICU are poorly understood.
Method
This was an international retrospective observational study in 18 ICUs in Australia, Japan, and Taiwan. Adult patients were consecutively screened, and those with early metabolic acidosis (pH
Results
We screened 9437 patients. Of these, 1292 had early metabolic acidosis (14.0%). Early sodium bicarbonate was given to 18.0% (233/1292) of these patients. Dosing, physiological, and clinical outcome data were assessed in 360 patients. The median dose of sodium bicarbonate in the first 24 h was 110 mmol, which was not correlated with bodyweight or the severity of metabolic acidosis. Patients who received early sodium bicarbonate had higher APACHE III scores, lower pH, lower base excess, lower PaCO2, and a higher lactate and received higher doses of vasopressors. After adjusting for confounders, the early administration of sodium bicarbonate was associated with an adjusted odds ratio (aOR) of 0.85 (95% CI, 0.44 to 1.62) for ICU mortality. In patients with vasopressor dependency, early sodium bicarbonate was associated with higher mean arterial pressure at 6 h and an aOR of 0.52 (95% CI, 0.22 to 1.19) for ICU mortality.
Conclusions
Early metabolic acidosis is common in critically ill patients. Early sodium bicarbonate is administered by clinicians to more severely ill patients but without correction for weight or acidosis severity. Bicarbonate therapy in acidotic vasopressor-dependent patients may be beneficial and warrants further investigation
The cross-sectional interplay between neurochemical profile and brain connectivity
No full textNeurochemical profile and brain connectivity are both critical aspects of brain function. However, our knowledge of their interplay across development is currently poor. We combined single-voxel magnetic resonance spectroscopy and resting functional magnetic resonance imaging in a cross-sectional sample spanning from childhood to adulthood which was reassessed in ~1.5 years (N=293). We revealed the developmental trajectories of 20 neurochemicals in two key developmental brain regions (the intraparietal sulcus, IPS, and the middle frontal gyrus, MFG). We found that certain neurochemicals exhibited similar developmental trajectories across the two regions, while other trajectories were region-specific. Crucially, we mapped the connectivity of the brain regions IPS and MFG to the rest of the brain across development as a function of regional glutamate and GABA concentration. We demonstrated that glutamate concentration within the IPS is modulated by age in explaining IPS connectivity with frontal, temporal and parietal regions. In mature participants, higher glutamate within the IPS was related to more negative connectivity while the opposite pattern was found for younger participants. Our findings offer specific developmental insights on the interplay between the brain’s resting activity and glutamatergic system both of which are crucial for regulating normal functioning and are dysregulated in several clinical conditions
Noncanonical mono(ADP-ribosyl)ation of zinc finger SZF proteins counteracts ubiquitination for protein homeostasis in plant immunity
No full textProtein ADP-ribosylation is a reversible post-translational modification that transfers ADP-ribose from NAD+ onto acceptor proteins. Poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation (PARylation), catalyzed by poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases (PARPs) and poly(ADP-ribose) glycohydrolases (PARGs), which remove the modification, regulates diverse cellular processes. However, the chemistry and physiological functions of mono(ADP-ribosyl)ation (MARylation) remain elusive. Here, we report that Arabidopsis zinc finger proteins SZF1 and SZF2, key regulators of immune gene expression, are MARylated by the noncanonical ADP-ribosyltransferase SRO2. Immune elicitation promotes MARylation of SZF1/SZF2 via dissociation from PARG1, which has an unconventional activity in hydrolyzing both poly(ADP-ribose) and mono(ADP-ribose) from acceptor proteins. MARylation antagonizes polyubiquitination of SZF1 mediated by the SH3 domain-containing proteins SH3P1/SH3P2, thereby stabilizing SZF1 proteins. Our study uncovers a noncanonical ADP-ribosyltransferase mediating MARylation of immune regulators and underpins the molecular mechanism of maintaining protein homeostasis by the counter-regulation of ADP-ribosylation and polyubiquitination to ensure proper immune responses
Binding of Ca2+-independent C2 domains to lipid membranes: a multi-scale molecular dynamics study
No full textC2 domains facilitate protein interactions with lipid bilayers in either a Ca2+-dependent or -independent manner. We used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to explore six Ca2+-independent C2 domains, from KIBRA, PI3KC2α, RIM2, PTEN, SHIP2, and Smurf2. In coarse-grained MD simulations these C2 domains formed transient interactions with zwitterionic bilayers, compared with longer-lived interactions with anionic bilayers containing phosphatidylinositol bisphosphate (PIP2). Type I C2 domains bound non-canonically via the front, back, or side of the β sandwich, whereas type II C2 domains bound canonically, via the top loops. C2 domains interacted strongly with membranes containing PIP2, causing bound anionic lipids to cluster around the protein. Binding modes were refined via atomistic simulations. For PTEN and SHIP2, CG simulations of their phosphatase plus C2 domains with PIP2-containing bilayers were also performed, and the roles of the two domains in membrane localization compared. These studies establish a simulation protocol for membrane-recognition proteins
Turning eastward: New radiocarbon and stable isotopic data for Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers from Fofanovo, Trans-Baikal, Siberia
No full textA considerable amount of bioarchaeological research – including AMS 14C dating and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses (δ13C and δ15N) – has been undertaken on the hunter-gatherers from the area west of Lake Baikal, known as Cis-Baikal. No such work has previously been reported for the east side of the lake, Trans-Baikal. Here, we present new radiocarbon dates and isotopic results for twenty individuals from the Fofanovo cemetery, located along the Selenga River on the southeast coast of Lake Baikal.
Once corrected for an old carbon effect using regression equations developed for Cis-Baikal, the radiocarbon results form 4 chronological clusters: 1) Late Mesolithic (LM), around 7950 cal BP (n = 3); 2) Late Neolithic (LN), between ca. 6000 and 5500 cal BP (n = 5); 3) LN to Early Bronze Age (EBA), between ca. 4900 and 4500 cal BP (n = 2); and the largest cluster 4) later EBA, around 3700 cal BP (n = 10). The LM Cluster 1 dates indicate that formal cemetery use in Trans-Baikal may have begun earlier than in Cis-Baikal. Clusters 2 and 3 reveal a previously unidentified LN component to the cemetery. Additionally, the EBA Cluster 4 appears to be largely synchronous with the EBA in Cis-Baikal.
As a group, the Fofanovo individuals are isotopically distinct from the Middle-Holocene hunter–gatherers in the microregions of Cis-Baikal, exhibiting a combination of low δ13C values (−19.4 ± 0.9‰) but high δ15N values (15.2 ± 0.8‰). This likely reflects the distinctive isotopic ecology of the lower Selenga River, combined with use of aquatic resources from Lake Baikal itself. While further sampling is needed to test its robustness, a statistically significant difference between the LN (n = 6) and EBA (n = 11) was found, suggesting a greater reliance on the seasonal resources of the Selenga River during the EBA.
Further analyses on these and other individuals from the cemetery are planned and will undoubtably provide additional insights into hunter-gatherer subsistence adaptations and dietary variation in Trans-Baikal, highlighting both differences and similarities with those of Cis-Baikal