Colony Structure Research Articles

Effects of Humic Acid Organic Fertilizer on Soil Environment in Black Soil for Paddy Field Under Water Saving Irrigation

In the past decades, the application of organ fertilizer in agricultural soils has attracted wide attention. However, few studies have carefully explored the effects of humic acid organic fertilizer on soil microbial colonies, soil enzyme activities, and soil fertility. To provide a better growing environment for crops, we explore the best regulation mode of humic acid organic fertilizer in the farmland in the Songnen Plain Heilongjiang province. Through field experiment, we selected paddy as the test objective and applied humic acid organic fertilizer. Under the condition of water-saving irrigation, five fertilization levels were set up, which were NPK (local nitrogen level, 110 kg.hm-2 pure nitrogen), NPKH1 (450 kg.hm-2 humic acid organic fertilizer + 77 kg.hm-2 nitrogen), NPKH2 (750 kg.hm-2 humic acid organic fertilizer + 55 kg.hm-2 nitrogen), NPKH3 (1050 kg.hm-2 humic acid organic fertilizer + 33 kg.hm-2 nitrogen) and PKH (1500 kg.hm-2 humic acid organic fertilizer). The effects of different humic acid organic fertilizers on soil microbial colonies, soil enzyme activities, and soil fertility were discussed. The results showed that humic acid organic fertilizer could effectively change the structure of soil microbial colonies, soil enzyme activities, and soil fertility. Compared with NPK treatment, the bacteria, fungi, and actinomycete, urease, and catalase in PKH, NPKH3, NPKH2, and NPKH1 treatments increased, and significantly different under 0-10 cm layer conditions (P<0.05). With the increase of humic acid organic fertilizer application, soil organic matter and soil fertility from superior to inferior was PKH>NPKH3>NPKH2>NPKH1>NPK. Therefore, the application of humic acid organic fertilizer was an effective measure to improve soil fertility and increase the amount of soil colony structure and enzyme activities.

Paradis perdus? (Af)filiative returns in Alice Zeniter’s L’art de perdre (2017) and Zahia Rahmani’s France: Récit d’une enfance (2006)

In recent decades, female descendants of harkis - indigenous Algerian men employed as auxiliary soldiers in the French army during the Algerian War - have privileged the literary text as a site of reconstruction of silenced familial and collective (hi)stories, and of reconnection with their effaced ancestral heritage. This article examines representations of physical, affective, and imaginative “returns” in two literary works by members of different harki (post)generations: France: Récit d’une enfance (2006) by Zahia Rahmani, a daughter of a harki, and L’Art de perdre (2017) by Alice Zeniter, a harki’s granddaughter. It is argued that these multivocal narratives problematize straightforward understandings of belonging and inheritance to interrogate the reparative potential of return - whether real or imagined, spatial or temporal - and to confront the ongoing effects of (neo)colonial narratives and power structures. Both texts present the notion of return as simultaneously intimate and broad in scope, resulting at once from external pressures and personal necessity, and capable of healing certain wounds while resisting definitive closure. Invoking the frequently gendered role of storytelling in Arabo-Berber societies, the novels also establish dialogues and connections with disparate histories, memories, and literary texts, allowing their protagonists to transcend and deconstruct static, assigned identities. The texts’ filiative and affiliative returns across time and space are shown to reflect Marianne Hirsch’s conception of the existence of vertical and horizontal forms of “postmemory” (2012) and Michael Rothberg’s notion of “rhizomatic networks” (2009). It is argued that it is precisely the notion of return which emerges as a creative organizing principle, allowing Rahmani and Zeniter to negotiate aspects of transgenerational trauma, absence, and loss, while also turning their intimate, self-reflexive quests outwards to critique and rewrite pre-established narratives and to inscribe their texts within current interrogations of commemoration and reparation in postcolonial contexts.

From Robert Keayne to Angola, Richard, and Grace: Bernard Bailyn and New England's Place in an Atlantic World

From Robert Keayne to Angola, Richard, and Grace: Bernard Bailyn and New England's Place in an Atlantic World

“From the West, Clouds come hurrying with the wind” - Caribbean & African feminism: Trends Examined

To describe Caribbean and African feminism as interwoven is an understatement. Their correlation is irrefutable, sharing commonalities across concepts of gender and sexuality, labour, and feminist organization. Both feminisms share the distinctive characteristic of being in constant flux, being especially influenced by the colonial structures that continue to pervade our society today. As a result of colonialism, the gender identity and sexuality of the Caribbean and African female subject have been subject to regulation and policing, in order to ensure that the recipients of patriarchal privilege are made explicit. Likewise, attempts have also been made to control the Caribbean and African entrepreneurial community. The space these women have created for themselves in order to escape the racialised and genderised barriers associated with formal labour, is being constantly devalued through the implication that this space is in need of legitimisation. Over time, these feminisms have grown to centre a multitude of social, economic and political concerns. The contributions they have made to society however, are under constant threat of erasure.

Considering the Basotho indigenous education and school system as resources for peace-building education in Lesotho

Lesotho faces political, economic, social, cultural, religious, institutional and interpersonal violence, a situation that prompted the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to introduce a peace-building education program. This indigenous auto-ethnography inquiry arose as the result of the investigator’s realisation that the UNESCO strategy to establish peace education in Lesotho is an exclusive, narrow approach based on the formal Western education system. While UNESCO’s initiative to instil a culture of peace via education is commendable considering the seriousness of the violence in Lesotho, the article contends that the approach excludes many out-of-school youth from learning about developing a culture of peace. The article also reveals some characteristics associated with the Western educational system that contribute to its inability to incorporate all eligible groups in peace-building education. Guided by the theoretical framework of critical interculturality, this article highlighted the Basotho lebollo education system as having the ability to extend peace-building education beyond the confines of Western schooling and education to include out-of-school adolescents. The compatibility of the lebollo school system with peace-building education was proved by its indigenous epistemology and pedagogy. The article recommends a nonviolent strategy devoid of colonial violence and based on mutual respect that can bring lebollo on board for peace-building education, as has happened in response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic.Transdisciplinarity Contribution: This paper contributes to the broad debate that Western formal education ensnared in colonial power structures, has difficulty meeting the educational needs of the African child, despite its noble intentions. Using Basotho indigenous education system as a framework for calling for recognition of indigenous education, the paper makes the case for peacebuilding education as a potential model for indigenous education.

Multi-queen breeding is associated with the origin of inquiline social parasitism in ants

Social parasites exploit the brood care behavior of their hosts to raise their own offspring. Social parasites are common among eusocial Hymenoptera and exhibit a wide range of distinct life history traits in ants, bees, and wasps. In ants, obligate inquiline social parasites are workerless (or nearly-so) species that engage in lifelong interactions with their hosts, taking advantage of the existing host worker forces to reproduce and exploit host colonies’ resources. Inquiline social parasites are phylogenetically diverse with approximately 100 known species that evolved at least 40 times independently in ants. Importantly, ant inquilines tend to be closely related to their hosts, an observation referred to as ‘Emery’s Rule’. Polygyny, the presence of multiple egg-laying queens, was repeatedly suggested to be associated with the origin of inquiline social parasitism, either by providing the opportunity for reproductive cheating, thereby facilitating the origin of social parasite species, and/or by making polygynous species more vulnerable to social parasitism via the acceptance of additional egg-laying queens in their colonies. Although the association between host polygyny and the evolution of social parasitism has been repeatedly discussed in the literature, it has not been statistically tested in a phylogenetic framework across the ants. Here, we conduct a meta-analysis of ant social structure and social parasitism, testing for an association between polygyny and inquiline social parasitism with a phylogenetic correction for independent evolutionary events. We find an imperfect but significant over-representation of polygynous species among hosts of inquiline social parasites, suggesting that while polygyny is not required for the maintenance of inquiline social parasitism, it (or factors associated with it) may favor the origin of socially parasitic behavior. Our results are consistent with an intra-specific origin model for the evolution of inquiline social parasites by sympatric speciation but cannot exclude the alternative, inter-specific allopatric speciation model. The diversity of social parasite behaviors and host colony structures further supports the notion that inquiline social parasites evolved in parallel across unrelated ant genera in the formicoid clade via independent evolutionary pathways.

Stochastic diffusion characterises early colony formation in Mediterranean coral Corallium rubrum

The colony formation in Mediterranean coral Corallium rubrum is initiated by a larva that metamorphoses into the first polyp of the emerging colony approximately two weeks after settlement. The primary polyp then sets up a slow process that eventually, at least after a few years, gives rise to a tree-like rigid colony structure on which other polyps flourish. For a mature colony, this axial skeleton provides support for new polyps. However, the first emergence of the characteristic axial skeleton can take two years or more from the larva stage. The early colony morphology, instead, is shaped exclusively by the polyps’ abundant deposition of sclerites, a magnesian calcite biomineral that has a different granularity from the distinctive red-coloured skeleton. With the appearance of the first polyp, a growing sclerite heap in a mesoglea layer provides a base for the emerging colony. In this paper, to elucidate the mechanical processes of early skeleton development in C. rubrum colonies, we present a computational model whereby the mesoglea layer provides a diffusion medium for the sclerites that the polyps deposit. We show that our stochastic model with three parameters captures the dynamic variability observed in measurements on living colonies. Our simulation results provide evidence for a diffusion process whereby the interplay between polyp budding and sclerite deposition are the main determinants of structure in early colony formation. Our model demonstrates that the frequency of budding events in an early colony can be described as a function of the available mesoglea surface whereas the number of polyps on the colony plays a secondary role in determining this frequency. We show that these model predictions are confirmed by direct observations on the colonies in our sample. Moreover, our results indicate that diffusion is a prevalent mechanism of colony development also at later stages of a colony’s life span.

Maroon Movements Against Empire

Marronnage, or escape from slavery, was a longue-durée form of resistance to slavery in Haiti and was also, as Sylvia Wynter argues, a “dialectical response to the capitalist plantation system”—a system that aimed to deny humanity, sever social and cultural ties, and commodified people and their labor power. This article, as well as works by others such as Cedric Robinson (1983), Sylvia Wynter (n.d.), and Jean Casimir (2020), argues that marronnage was a fundamentally anti-capitalist mode of resistance, socio-political critique, and grassroots mobilizing. In the immediate moments when enslaved people fled plantations, they reclaimed possession of themselves and other tangible and intangible resources, such as their time, social relationships, forms of knowledge, and labor skills that enslavers stole from them. When maroons re-appropriated resources and mobilized themselves, they challenged and subverted colonial plantation structures, contributing to the downfall of both Spanish and French imperial slaveries in Haiti. During and after the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804, Africa-born rebels and maroons were central to the mobilizing structures that successfully fought to abolish slavery and overturn colonialism—representing an astounding rupture to the prevailing Atlantic world-system that was dependent upon enslaved labor. Even after the post-independence Haitian government replicated aspects of the colonial administration, as Casimir (2020) points out, the formerly enslaved masses of Haiti organized themselves into communal social arrangements that prioritized subsistence labor and extended kin networks, and continued to rely on marronnage to protest exploitative economic practices. This article explores the trajectory of marronnage in Haiti as a continuous struggle, emphasizing the ways that it exposed the violence, exploitation, and oppression inherently embedded in the Atlantic world-system, and exposed the limits of the governing Haitian states.

The Effect of Temperature on Intestinal Flora Imbalance Based on Time Series Prediction Model

A series of effects caused by temperature change are the biggest problems faced by biological systems. These irregular environmental characteristics have brought new challenges to people and even animal groups. The immune function of human intestinal flora has a great protective effect on other organs and the body environment. It can help the human body carry out intestinal digestion, food absorption, nutritional metabolism, and so on. Based on the above situation, this paper uses the time series prediction model to study the factors affecting the imbalance of intestinal flora in the process of temperature change. Firstly, biological experiments are carried out with animals to simulate the human environment. Based on the sequence information of historical temperature change parameters, a temperature prediction device based on time series model is proposed. The effects of air factors and carbon dioxide content on the prediction results are evaluated by statistical analysis. Secondly, in order to ensure the accuracy of the experimental data, the neural network algorithm is used to optimize the model, and the white blood cell count is used to analyze the influence of temperature change on the intestinal flora structure of the two organisms. Finally, the experimental results are applied to the human environment to analyze the research results. The results showed that with the irregular change of temperature, the number of intestinal flora and internal colony structure also changed. The richness index in the normal temperature environment is relatively large, which can effectively explain the high richness of intestinal microflora in the experimental population. Further analyze the subjects and distinguish the animals according to sex. The number of Bacteroides in the intestinal flora of male animals was higher than that of female animals, but this phenomenon disappeared immediately after physical ligation. In addition, the intestinal flora abundance of female animals is higher than that of male animals, and the metabolic level is faster.

Public health in undergraduate nursing education and workforce readiness.

Student engagement with the community is a cornerstone of undergraduate nursing education in Canada. Working with community from perspectives of social justice, health equity, advocacy, and political action are essential for workforce readiness. We suggest that the erosion of public health theory and clinical courses in baccalaureate nursing programs undermines the potential capability of nurses to address the intersectionality of the social determinants of health. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on populations further demonstrates inequities, particularly among marginalized populations. Public health nursing education supports students' understanding about the health impacts of social injustice, how systemic racism is embedded in colonial and Eurocentric structures, and practices of superiority and privileges.We, as a national group of public health nursing educators, set out to investigate how existing guidelines and competencies support public health in undergraduate education across Canada. Results from a national questionnaire of educators, and of PHN leaders on new graduate practice readiness are presented. Questionnaire responses confirm an erosion of PHN theory and practice in baccalaureate nursing education (BNE) curricula. The results of the questionnaires combined with evidence of PHN since the global pandemic provide educators and practitioners more insight to inform future directions to respond to workforce readiness.

Exchanging Symbols: Monuments and Memorials in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Exchanging Symbols: Monuments and Memorials in Post-Apartheid South Africa

FUSARIUM SPECIES FROM AN INDONESIAN GENOTYPE OF FOXTAIL MILLET SEEDS

<p class="abstrakinggris"><span lang="EN-US">As a generalist pathogen in cereals, <em>Fusarium </em>spp. become the most threatening fungi which can conduct its saprogenesis by infecting seeds. Determination of fungal identity and the yield loss risk is needed to modify the effective controlling strategies. However, there is no report on implementing methods for controlling <em>Fusarium </em>spp. on foxtail millet (<em>Setaria italica </em>L. Beauv.). This research was undertaken from July to September 2020 and November to December 2021 under ambient laboratory conditions to identify and evaluate the pathogenicity of seed-borne <em>Fusarium </em>species in foxtail millet. One hundred colonies of seed-borne fungi were isolated from foxtail millet genotype ICERI-6 which was dominated by <em>Fusarium </em>spp. Morphological characterization by observing the structure of colonies and microscopical features indicated that the six isolates (Fu1–Fu6) were identical to <em>Fusarium solani, F. chlamydosporum, F. oxysporum, F. equiseti, F. proliferatum, </em>and <em>F. graminearum</em>, respectively.<em> </em>Molecular identification for the 5.8s rDNA target gene with ITS1 and ITS4 primers has confirmed that the <em>Fusarium</em> spp. were determined as mentioned species. Pathogenicity test using potato dextrose agar medium showed that the germination percentage of seed inoculated by <em>Fusarium</em> spp. was only 1.2% on average at 7 days after incubation. These species led to germination failure as the seeds were covered by fungal mycelia. Seeds that could escape from germination failure performed necrotic spots on the seedlings. These abnormalities would contribute to low productivity in the field. The study has implication in controlling seed-borne disease and that resistant variety breeding becomes important issues to be addressed for future research.</span></p>

‘We are a people’: Sovereignty and disposability in the context of Puerto Rico's post‐Hurricane Maria experience

AbstractThe 2017 North Atlantic hurricane season brought many of the injustices faced by non‐sovereign Caribbean States to the fore. These injustices, which positioned Caribbean people as expendable to colonial powers, highlighted the impact of historically enduring colonial structures of non‐sovereignty on post‐hurricane response and recovery efforts across the region. In this paper, we argue that Puerto Rico's status as a Commonwealth of the United States (U.S.) influenced the nature and outcome of the U.S. Federal Government's response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. Its response was marked by unnecessary delays, silence, and the withholding of information, and the prioritisation of bureaucracy, evidencing the disposability of Black and brown lives and bodies, and signalling the need to collectively leverage the power of an environmental justice agenda. For this to be achieved, we further argue, a people's right to sovereignty and indispensability must be centred.

Sankara Is Not Dead, dir. Lucie Viver

<i>Sankara Is Not Dead,</i> dir. Lucie Viver

Antheridiogen controls spatial dynamics of sex expression in naturally occurring gametophytes of the tree fern Cyathea multiflora.

PremiseAntheridiogen systems are a set of pheromonal mechanisms that control sex expression in fern gametophytes. However, antheridiogen has rarely been studied outside of the laboratory, and little is known about its function in natural settings. Combining predictions based on field and laboratory study, we tested whether the sexual structure of gametophytic colonies of a tree fern were attributable to antheridiogen.MethodsGametophytic colonies of the antheridiogen‐producing tree fern Cyathea multiflora were collected at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica in January 2019. The sex of each gametophyte was determined, mapped, and spatial statistic approaches were used to examine the distribution of sex in each colony.ResultsIn all gametophytic colonies, males were most common, representing 62–68% of individuals. No hermaphroditic gametophytes were identified in any colony. A quadrat‐based method showed female gametophytes were not clustered in each colony, while male gametophytes were clustered. In two of the colonies, the K(r) test statistic for males was greater than expected compared to random simulations of sex expression, indicating male sex expression was spatially associated with females.ConclusionsThis study provides the first documentation of spatial sex expression in natural settings of gametophytes of an antheridiogen‐producing tree fern species. The profound impact of antheridiogen on gametophytic sex expression in field settings suggests this system is intimately tied to mating system, fitness, and genetic diversity in Cyathea multiflora.

Microcredit and the Financial Frontiers of Racial Neoliberalism

Over the past decades of neoliberal globalization, microcredit has been a widely supported project that claims to address global poverty, inequality, and uneven development through debt-based solutions involving small interest-bearing loans that can be used to fund small-scale business entrepreneurship. Microcredit’s promise, though never fulfilled, reflects an approach to development within a broader shift toward financial capitalism, privatization through individualized debt creation, and shrinkage of the social state. Moreover, microcredit (more broadly, microfinance) seeks legitimation in narratives of inclusion, participation, and gender empowerment. In fact, social capital belonging to the targeted populations of microcredit programs in the “global South” is itself often tapped in the service of value extraction. This article forwards a view of microcredit as operating within a logic of racial capitalism. The approach seeks to ground critiques of microcredit’s core neoliberal elements within a longer history and broader appreciation of racialized and colonial structures of finance.

Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp

Social insects are highly diverse in their social structures, aside from the consistent presence of reproductive castes. Among social insects, the Australian paper wasp Ropalidia plebeiana constructs extremely dense colony aggregations consisting of hundreds of colonies within a few square meters; however, little is known about the aggregation structures. We genetically analyzed the colony and population structure of R. plebeiana, and concomitant variations in colony sex ratios. In spring, the foundress (candidate queen) group started their colonies on a single old comb from the previous season, subsequently dividing these old combs via relatedness-based comb-cutting. Female philopatry, a prerequisite condition of Local Resource Competition (LRC), was confirmed. The colony sex ratio of reproductive individuals (male and female offspring for the next generation) became slightly male-biased in larger colonies, as predicted under LRC. However, the number of foundresses was positively associated with the number of reproductive individuals, suggesting that Local Resource Enhancement (LRE) also operates. Although the population structure appears to meet the prerequisites of LRC, the sex ratio appears to be modulated by factors other than LRC. Rather, through LRE, the availability of female helpers at the founding stage is likely to mitigate the sex ratios predicted under LRC.

Whose settler colonial state? Arctic Railway, state transformation and settler self-indigenization in Northern Finland

ABSTRACT Settler colonial theory has effectively highlighted the continuity of colonial structures, but less attention has been paid on how also the settler state has transformed over time, and how such changes have affected the manifold relationships between the state, the settlers and the natives. This article addresses trajectories of settler colonial change in Finland, building on theories of state spatial transformation and taking the recurring plans to build a Railway across the Sámi homeland as its point of departure. The article suggests that central to the change is the destabilization of the relationship between the state and Northern Finland’s older, ‘endogenous’ settler communities. This has facilitated a popular turn to settler self-Indigenization, whereby settlers make new claims to being ‘Indigenous’, usually building on records of a distant (possibly) Indigenous ancestor. Since self-Indigenization directly challenges Indigenous self-determination, it articulates a new form of elimination of the native. The task for critical scholarship is not only to situate, contextualize and challenge such identity claims, but also to question the logic that continues to set especially older settler communities in opposition to Indigenous rights and self-determination, in the context of extractive and neoliberal development that ultimately may undermine both.

Improving the tensile ductility in the fully pearlitic steel using sequential refinement of colony and laminated structure

The enhanced ductility is achieved in pearlitic steels via the successive refinement of colony and lamellar structure induced by the undercooling treatment. The increased high-angle boundaries and low-angle ones with a pronounced accumulation of misorientation within only several micrometers scale are produced in these refined colonies, and both boundary architectures provide larger resistance to dislocations and cracks. The thinned cementite plate with the decreased misfit strain and improved flexibility exhibits better deformation accommodation with thickened ferrite plates, which greatly delays the deformation among colonies. The cooperation between lamellar structure and colony coupled with its well-improved uniformity is responsible for the enhancement of both uniform and localized ductility, whereas the thinned cementite lamellas with the decreased resistance to dislocations and low-density dislocations primarily account for its reduced strength. This work provides new perspectives for potential technological applications in drawing processes for fully pearlitic steels with high performance.

Informal Street Vending in Harare

The informal street vendor in Zimbabwe has become a subject of abuse and neglect. The condition of subalternity suffered by blacks under colonial structures has been transferred to the vendor in the postcolonial epoch. The apparatus used by colonial regimes to keep the blacks at the peripheries of the city-scape are the ones now used to keep the vendor in subalternity – a condition where the vendor is a subject robbed of a voice, agency and visibility. In this study we situate the position of the subalternised vendor, showing how an intersection of identities of vulnerability subjugate the vendor to a neglected place at the periphery of economic society. Using sociological and postcolonial analysis we show how the position of the informal vendor in Harare as a subaltern has led policy makers in Zimbabwe to turn a blind eye to their plight and to treat them as a nuisance and as enemies.