Development Of Forms Research Articles

Color synesthesia. Insight into perception, emotion, and consciousness.

Purpose of reviewSynesthesia is an extraordinary perceptual phenomenon, in which individuals experience unusual percepts elicited by the activation of an unrelated sensory modality or by a cognitive process. Emotional reactions are commonly associated. The condition prompted philosophical debates on the nature of perception and impacted the course of art history. It recently generated a considerable interest among neuroscientists, but its clinical significance apparently remains underevaluated. This review focuses on the recent studies regarding variants of color synesthesia, the commonest form of the condition.Recent findingsSynesthesia is commonly classified as developmental and acquired. Developmental forms predispose to changes in primary sensory processing and cognitive functions, usually with better performances in certain aspects and worse in others, and to heightened creativity. Acquired forms of synesthesia commonly arise from drug ingestion or neurological disorders, including thalamic lesions and sensory deprivation (e.g., blindness). Cerebral exploration using structural and functional imaging has demonstrated distinct patterns in cortical activation and brain connectivity for controls and synesthetes. Artworks of affected painters are most illustrative of the nature of synesthetic experiences.SummaryResults of the recent investigations on synesthesia offered a remarkable insight into the mechanisms of perception, emotion and consciousness, and deserve attention both from neuroscientists and from clinicians.

The many forms of a pleomorphic bacterial pathogen-the developmental network of Legionella pneumophila.

Legionella pneumophila is a natural intracellular bacterial parasite of free-living freshwater protozoa and an accidental human pathogen that causes Legionnaires' disease. L. pneumophila differentiates, and does it in style. Recent experimental data on L. pneumophila's differentiation point at the existence of a complex network that involves many developmental forms. We intend readers to: (i) understand the biological relevance of L. pneumophila's forms found in freshwater and their potential to transmit Legionnaires' disease, and (ii) learn that the common depiction of L. pneumophila's differentiation as a biphasic developmental cycle that alternates between a replicative and a transmissive form is but an oversimplification of the actual process. Our specific objectives are to provide updates on the molecular factors that regulate L. pneumophila's differentiation (Section The Differentiation Process and Its Regulation), and describe the developmental network of L. pneumophila (Section Dissecting Lp's Developmental Network), which for clarity's sake we have dissected into five separate developmental cycles. Finally, since each developmental form seems to contribute differently to the human pathogenic process and the transmission of Legionnaires' disease, readers are presented with a challenge to develop novel methods to detect the various L. pneumophila forms present in water (Section Practical Implications), as a means to improve our assessment of risk and more effectively prevent legionellosis outbreaks.

Higher skilled working tourists and their leisure lifestyles: a qualitative study of guest language instructors in South Korea

Using interviews conducted with 24 higher skilled working tourists employed as guest language instructors in the Republic of Korea, this paper explores how working tourists could secure an optimal leisure lifestyle in their host countries. Three key findings emerged. First, the respondents were seeking casual, touristic, amateur, hobby and volunteer leisure with their colleagues and with their host community members. But, the rewards and episodic aspects of their leisure, including formal and informal language development, suggested that it incorporated variations in project-based leisure as a core characteristic. Second, these respondents were taking part in guest, host and leisure speech communities that were each offering leisure choices. However, their leisure lifestyle was best when leisure, second language development and acculturation coincided in a leisure speech community. Third, that in a leisure speech community, respondents’ acculturation and friendships improved more so than in either guest or host speech communities. Also, that these respondents’ formal and informal second language learning within their leisure speech communities was essential for an optimal leisure lifestyle. The paper determines that leisure speech communities, occurring along a continuum of monetary, educational and interpersonal resources, could affect the linguistic mobility of higher skilled working tourists. It recommends that future research could examine if a sociolinguistics of leisure could assist in exploring and mapping the leisure lifestyles appearing among mobile populations in a globalising world.

Fibronectin-degrading activity of Trypanosoma cruzi cysteine proteinase plays a role in host cell invasion.

Trypanosoma cruzi, the agent of Chagas disease, binds to diverse extracellular matrix proteins. Such an ability prevails in the parasite forms that circulate in the bloodstream and contributes to host cell invasion. Whether this also applies to the insect-stage metacyclic trypomastigotes, the developmental forms that initiate infection in the mammalian host, is not clear. Using T. cruzi CL strain metacyclic forms, we investigated whether fibronectin bound to the parasites and affected target cell invasion. Fibronectin present in cell culture medium bound to metacyclic forms and was digested by cruzipain, the major T. cruzi cysteine proteinase. G strain, with negligible cruzipain activity, displayed a minimal fibronectin-degrading effect. Binding to fibronectin was mediated by gp82, the metacyclic stage-specific surface molecule implicated in parasite internalization. When exogenous fibronectin was present at concentrations higher than cruzipain can properly digest, or fibronectin expression was stimulated by treatment of epithelial HeLa cells with transforming growth factor beta, the parasite invasion was reduced. Treatment of HeLa cells with purified recombinant cruzipain increased parasite internalization, whereas the treatment of parasites with cysteine proteinase inhibitor had the opposite effect. Metacyclic trypomastigote entry into HeLa cells was not affected by anti-β1 integrin antibody but was inhibited by anti-fibronectin antibody. Overall, our results have indicated that the cysteine proteinase of T. cruzi metacyclic forms, through its fibronectin-degrading activity, is implicated in host cell invasion.

Developmental cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome in ex-preterm survivors following cerebellar injury.

Cerebellar injury is increasingly recognized as an important complication of very preterm birth. However, the neurodevelopmental consequences of early life cerebellar injury in prematurely born infants have not been well elucidated. We performed a literature search of studies published between 1997 and 2014 describing neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants following direct cerebellar injury or indirect cerebellar injury/underdevelopment. Available data suggests that both direct and indirect mechanisms of cerebellar injury appear to stunt cerebellar growth and adversely affect neurodevelopment. This review also provides important insights into the highly integrated cerebral-cerebellar structural and functional correlates. Finally, this review highlights that early life impairment of cerebellar growth extends far beyond motor impairments and plays a critical, previously underrecognized role in the long-term cognitive, behavioral, and social deficits associated with brain injury among premature infants. These data point to a developmental form of the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome previously described in adults. Longitudinal prospective studies using serial advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques are needed to better delineate the full extent of the role of prematurity-related cerebellar injury and topography in the genesis of cognitive, social-behavioral dysfunction.

Manifestations of Service Culture among Street Vendors in Botswana

In the non-western developing world, where the majority of the world’s street vendors can be found, serviceculture is under-researched. For instance, although street vendors are entrepreneurers, it is not always clear how orto what extent they value customers. Nor is it self-evident what kinds of service culture prevail in street vendors’business, or how such culture supports service improvement. Using a qualitative approach, involving a sample of30 street vendors who were interviewed and observed, this research described the basic characteristics of theservice culture practices and values among street vendors in micro-enterprises. The study found that uniqueservice cultures prevail among street vendors, ranging from humane clues evidenced in practices and values inencounters with customers and interaction with each other, to mechanic clues evidenced in the orchestration oftheir physical environment. A major contribution of this study is in showing that understanding the characteristicsof the service culture in terms of practices and values provides useful insights for service quality improvement instreet vending. The study made various recommendations for informal sector development.

Innovation, the informal economy and development: The case of Zambia

National systems of innovation have been serving as the conceptual framework and vehicle to address poverty and national competitiveness in developing countries. Zambia has been building its NSI since 1964, but the existing system suffers from serious shortcomings related to an insufficient conceptually inclusive framework and the absence of direct and concrete pro-poor innovation policy instruments. The system lacks strong interactive dynamics and suffers from weak governance. Zambia has also followed an export-driven industrial economy, but the expected knowledge spill-over gains from large mining operations have not been realised. The paper examines national innovation strategies by emphasising the importance of the informal sector and the potential for innovation at grass-roots level. It examines the evolution of science and technology policies by highlighting how the excluded areas can be included. The absence of pro-poor innovation and lack of inclusive policies are highlighted as factors contributing to low productivity and socioeconomic imbalances.

Clathrin expression in Trypanosoma cruzi

BackgroundClathrin-mediated vesicular trafficking, the mechanism by which proteins and lipids are transported between membrane-bound organelles, accounts for a large proportion of import from the plasma membrane (endocytosis) and transport from the trans-Golgi network towards the endosomal system. Clathrin-mediated events are still poorly understood in the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease in Latin America. In this study, clathrin heavy (TcCHC) and light (TcCLC) chain gene expression and protein localization were investigated in different developmental forms of T. cruzi (epimastigotes, trypomastigotes and amastigotes), using both polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies raised against T. cruzi recombinant proteins.ResultsAnalysis by confocal microscopy revealed an accumulation of TcCHC and TcCLC at the cell anterior, where the flagellar pocket and Golgi complex are located. TcCLC partially colocalized with the Golgi marker TcRAB7-GFP and with ingested albumin, but did not colocalize with transferrin, a protein mostly ingested via uncoated vesicles at the cytostome/cytopharynx complex.ConclusionClathrin heavy and light chains are expressed in T. cruzi. Both proteins typically localize anterior to the kinetoplast, at the flagellar pocket and Golgi complex region. Our data also indicate that in T. cruzi epimastigotes clathrin-mediated endocytosis of albumin occurs at the flagellar pocket, while clathrin-independent endocytosis of transferrin occurs at the cytostome/cytopharynx complex.

LIGHT AND TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOPIC STUDIES ON A HAEMOGREGARINE (ADELEINA: HAEMOGREGARINE) NATURALLY INFECTING THE EGYPTIAN BEAN SKINK MABUYA QUINQUETAENIATA

The Egyptian skinks Mabuya quinquetaeniata were investigated for haemogregarines. The intracellular parasites were found in three developmental forms; trophozoite measured 4 µm; the intermediate form (a newly formed gamont) measured 14 µm and the elongated crescent-shaped one that measured 18 µm and considered as a mature gamont. Meronts were found only in the parenchyma cells of the liver of the infected skinks. The merogonic process began when the free parasites invaded the parenchyma cells, then they became more rounded or oval and began to grow in size. Meanwhile, the parasitophorous vacuole appeared enclosing the parasite and grows in size during the growth of the meronts. The formation of merozoites occurred by ectomerogony. The areas of the surface, overlying the peripheral nuclei, soon become elevated. At a later stage, these elevations become more prominent forming a conical protruding merozoite anlage, which contains tubular structure at the apical pole indicating the formation of the conoid. Moreover, they form subpellicular microtubules, rhoptries, micronemes, mitochondria and also Golgi apparatus. The cytoplasm remaining, after the separation of the merozoites, constituted the residual body, which decreased with the progress of the merogonic phase. The present meronts were found in two forms; the first form (macromeront) measured 18×12 µm and produces about 43 micromerozoites, each measured 13 µm. The second one (micromeront) measured 9×7 µm and producing 11 macromerozoites, each measured 17 µm. On the ultrastructural level, each parasite has a pellicle, which consists of outer and inner membranes, conoid, rhoptries, few micronemes and some of dense bodies.

Antjie Krog and the Autobiography of Postcolonial Becoming

Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull (1998), A Change of Tongue (2003), and Begging to Black (2009) attempt to transform a postcolonial white beneficiary subject through the construction of an “I” that revises rather than reprises the sovereign agency usually associated with Western subjectivity. This iterational form of postcolonial autobiography moves from anti-colonial longing to postcolonial becoming as it rewrites developmental narrative form.

Aflagellar epimastigote forms are found in axenic culture of Trypanosoma caninum

Representatives of the genus Trypanosoma have been traditionally found in epimastigote, espheromastigote and trypomastigote flagellated forms in axenic cultures. Trypanosoma caninum is a trypanosomatid that has recently been reported infecting dogs in endemic areas of canine leishmaniasis in Brazil. It presents specific biological characteristics and it is found exclusively on healthy skin. Here, we describe the evolutive forms of this parasite showing not only the forms commonly found in culture, but also epimastigote forms with no free flagellum. The study was conducted using scanning and transmission electron microscopy and, we demonstrate that typical flagellated epimastigotes originate from forms without flagellum, although the latter may remain without differentiation in the culture. Two hypotheses are considered and discussed in this paper: (i) the aflagellated epimastigotes are a typical developmental forms of T. caninum and (ii) the emergence of these aflagellated forms could be resultant from a disturbed process during cell division caused by interfering specific proteins, which leads to inability to form and regulate the flagellum length. In any case, considering that T. caninum is a parasite that is still little studied, the information brought by our study adds data which may be useful to clarify aspects on the cell cycle of this intriguing parasite that has been found in different regions of Brazil.

Informal Economy in Albania: Size and Consequences on Financial Deepening

The main purpose of this paper is to assess empirically the size of the informal economy in Albania over the last two decades, and its consequences on the financial deepening of the country. We will present a brief review of the informal economy development in Albania, and assess its size employing three empirical approaches: national accounts discrepancies, electrical energy consumption, and simple currency ratio approach. Previous studies on this topic and our findings suggest that the informal sector still accounts for a significant proportion of output and employment in Albania. Operating informally makes it difficult to households and enterprises to prove their creditworthiness since they cannot provide reliable documentation on their financial situation thus holding back financial deepening. Digitalization of information sources can enable better statistical reporting and provide possibilities for cross checking, better measurement of the formal economy and subsequently assessments of the informal sector.

Cloning and expression of transgenes using linear vectors in Trypanosoma cruzi

The identification of new targets for vaccine and drug development for the treatment of Chagas’ disease is dependent on deepening our understanding of the parasite genome. Vectors for genetic manipulation in Trypanosoma cruzi basically include those that remain as circular episomes and those that integrate into the parasite’s genome. Artificial chromosomes are alternative vectors to overcome problematic transgene expression often occurring with conventional vectors in this parasite. We have constructed a series of vectors named pTACs (Trypanosome Artificial Chromosomes), all of them carrying telomeric and subtelomeric sequences and genes conferring resistance to different selection drugs. In addition, one pTAC harbours a modified GFP gene (pTAC-gfp), and another one carries the ornithine decarboxilase gene from Crithidia fasciculata (pTAC-odc). We have encountered artificial chromosomes generated from pTACs in transformed T. cruzi epimastigotes for every version of the designed vectors. These extragenomic elements, in approximately 6–8 copies per cell, remained as linear episomes, contained telomeres and persisted after 150 and 60 generations with or without selection drugs, respectively. The linear molecules remained stable through the different T. cruzi developmental forms. Furthermore, derived artificial chromosomes from pTAC-odc could complement the auxotrophy of T. cruzi for polyamines. Our results show that pTACs constitute useful tools for reverse functional genetics in T. cruzi that will contribute to a better understanding of T. cruzi biology.

Thinking About the Politics of Inclusive Development: Towards a Relational Approach

Moving beyond the mantra that ‘politics matters’, a range of conceptual approaches have recently emerged within international development thinking that seek to capture the specific ways in which politics shapes development. This paper critically assesses whether these approaches, including work on ‘limited access orders’ and ‘political settlements’, can underpin research into how developmental forms of state capacity and elite commitment emerge and can be sustained. It suggests that these new approaches offer powerful insights into certain elements of this puzzle, particularly through a focus on the relational basis of elite behaviour and institutional performance. However, these approaches are also subject to serious limitations, and insights from broader and (in particular) more critical forms of political theory are also required in order to investigate how the politics of development is shaped by ideas as well as incentives, popular as well as elite forms of agency, transnational as well as national factors, and in dynamic as well as more structural ways. The paper proposes an initial conceptual framework that can be operationalized and tested within a programme of primary research to be established by the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre.

Sustainable Regional Development Planning to Green the Spatial Impact of Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper is a synopsis of a research that explored how Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries can effectively green the spatial impact of urbanization, widely regarded as urban sprawl, and facilitate sustainable urban development (SUD) of their cities despite the inevitable rapid urbanization trend in SSA. The research work has strong social science perspective, supported with empirical analysis for environmental and social dimensions in relation to regional urban development and collaborative planning issues in the context of SSA. Strategies to curb aggressive and informal developments that escalates to peripheral areas of cities in SSA, seeing urbanization as an opportunity for green city development on a regional scale were proposed.

A cytoplasmic new catalytic subunit of calcineurin in Trypanosoma cruzi and its molecular and functional characterization.

Parasitological cure for Chagas disease is considered extremely difficult to achieve because of the lack of effective chemotherapeutic agents against Trypanosoma cruzi at different stages of infection. There are currently only two drugs available. These have several limitations and can produce serious side effects. Thus, new chemotherapeutic targets are much sought after. Among T. cruzi components involved in key processes such as parasite proliferation and host cell invasion, Ca2+-dependent molecules play an important role. Calcineurin (CaN) is one such molecule. In this study, we cloned a new isoform of the gene coding for CL strain catalytic subunit CaNA (TcCaNA2) and characterized it molecularly and functionally. There is one copy of the TcCaNA2 gene per haploid genome. It is constitutively transcribed in all T. cruzi developmental forms and is localized predominantly in the cytosol. In the parasite, TcCaNA2 is associated with CaNB. The recombinant protein TcCaNA2 has phosphatase activity that is enhanced by Mn2+/Ni2+. The participation of TcCaNA2 in target cell invasion by metacyclic trypomastigotes was also demonstrated. Metacyclic forms with reduced TcCaNA2 expression following treatment with morpholino antisense oligonucleotides targeted to TcCaNA2 invaded HeLa cells at a lower rate than control parasites treated with morpholino sense oligonucleotides. Similarly, the decreased expression of TcCaNA2 following treatment with antisense morpholino oligonucleotides partially affected the replication of epimastigotes, although to a lesser extent than the decrease in expression following treatment with calcineurin inhibitors. Our findings suggest that the calcineurin activities of TcCaNA2/CaNB and TcCaNA/CaNB, which have distinct cellular localizations (the cytoplasm and the nucleus, respectively), may play a critical role at different stages of T. cruzi development, the former in host cell invasion and the latter in parasite multiplication.

High-Throughput Chemical Screening for Antivirulence Developmental Phenotypes in Trypanosoma brucei

In the bloodstream of mammalian hosts, the sleeping sickness parasite, Trypanosoma brucei, exists as a proliferative slender form or a nonproliferative, transmissible, stumpy form. The transition between these developmental forms is controlled by a density-dependent mechanism that is important for the parasite's infection dynamics, immune evasion via ordered antigenic variation, and disease transmissibility. However, stumpy formation has been lost in most laboratory-adapted trypanosome lines, generating monomorphic parasites that proliferate uncontrolled as slender forms in vitro and in vivo. Nonetheless, these forms are readily amenable to cell culture and high-throughput screening for trypanocidal lead compounds. Here, we have developed and exploited a high-throughput screen for developmental phenotypes using a transgenic monomorphic cell line expressing a reporter under the regulation of gene control signals from the stumpy-specific molecule PAD1. Using a whole-cell fluorescence-based assay to screen over 6,000 small molecules from a kinase-focused compound library, small molecules able to activate stumpy-specific gene expression and proliferation arrest were assayed in a rapid assay format. Independent follow-up validation identified one hit able to induce modest, yet specific, changes in mRNA expression indicative of a partial differentiation to stumpy forms in monomorphs. Further, in pleomorphs this compound induced a stumpy-like phenotype, entailing growth arrest, morphological changes, PAD1 expression, and enhanced differentiation to procyclic forms. This not only provides a potential tool compound for the further understanding of stumpy formation but also demonstrates the use of high-throughput screening in the identification of compounds able to induce specific phenotypes, such as differentiation, in African trypanosomes.

BECKETT’S TRILOGY AND THE DEATHS OF (AUTO)BIOGRAPHICAL FORM

It is an often told story: the period of modernism corresponds to an exhaustion of nineteenth-century models of narrative development, temporal progression, and historical continuity. In contradistinction to such models, modernism in literature and culture more generally has been associated with temporal interruption, immobilization, or spatial form. As exemplary of this tendency of modernist culture, might cite Stephane Mallarme's Preface to Un Coup de des (1895), which states Everything happens by a shortcut, hypothetically; storytelling [le recit] is avoided (105), or Walter Benjamin's unfinished Arcades Project: history decays into images, not into stories (476). Developing from this broad picture, critical descriptions of the novel in this period see modernist fiction as marking the obsolescence of nineteenth-century developmental forms, most prominently the Bildungsroman,1 and accounts of Beckett's fiction have echoed this alignment of literary modernism. In Samuel and the Postcolonial Novel, Patrick Bixby writes, Beckett rewrites the plot of the Bildungsroman so that narrative is directed less toward successful individual development and social assimilation than toward the cancellation of these terms, which are written even further into dissolution and disintegration (8).2Jed Esty has recently provided a critical counter-narrative, arguing that modernist fiction, and in particular the modernist meta- bildungsroman, develops a critical perspective on nineteenth-century developmental and its literary forms, even as it retains elements of them: one way to conceptualize the historical specificity of modernism itself, in fact, is to locate it at the dialectical switchpoint between residual nineteenth-century narratives of global development and emergent twentieth-century critiques of universalist and evolutionary thought (35). This intervention usefully places on the critical agenda the question of how to account for modernism's ongoing engagement with diachronic forms, departing from (or calling for a more nuanced account of) the critical narrative of modernism as antidevelopmental, or invested in spatial or imagistic models. But a lingering problem here is the motivation for modernist fiction's involvement with this strand of nineteenth-century thought. Esty's principal response to this question is that the ideology of developmental historicism retains its purchase more generally in culture, economics, and politics, and the modernist anti-developmental metabildungsroman registers this situation. One danger here, however, is the reduction of inherited developmental forms to the status of ideology or false consciousness.3An alternative approach is to foreground that such forms are not just ideological, but also involve normative or emancipatory impulses, both in their nineteenth-century and modernist versions, and this move opens up another avenue to address the problem of why developmental paradigms retain their currency for modernism. Pursuing this line of thought, the central claim in the following reading of and Theodor Adorno is that modernist narrative might be construed as ambiguously perpetuating normative impulses that structure nineteenthcentury developmental and the novel form - for an accommodation between the subjective organization of experience and the boundlessness of capitalist modernity, between meaningful forms and modernity's denial of such forms. To say this much is not to make a claim for a stable mechanism of subject formation, or to presume a critical autonomy or distance for cultural forms. Rather, an underlying proposition of my discussion is that the literary reflections of and Adorno proceed through the reification, or what Adorno calls neutralization, of cultural forms. For this strain of modernism, the possibility of aesthetic autonomy and critical distance becomes a problem inscribed within the language and interpretive dilemmas of these texts. …

Mapping the Slums of Dhaka from 2006 to 2010

Background. Rapid urban growth in low and middle income countries is frequently characterized by informal developments. The resulting social segregation and slums show disparities in health outcomes for the populations of the world’s megacities. To address these challenges, information on the spatial distribution of slums is necessary, yet the data are rarely available. The goal of this study was to use a remote sensing based approach to map urban slums in Dhaka, the second fastest growing megacity in the world. Methods. Slums were mapped through the visual interpretation of Quickbird satellite imagery between the years 2006 and 2010. Ancillary references included the 2005 census and mapping of slums, Google Earth, and geolocated photographs. The 2006 slums were first delineated and filtered in GIS to avoid small, isolated slums. For 2010, changes to the 2006 slums were defined over the latter’s polygons to retain border consistency. Conclusions. The dataset presented here can be considered a stepping stone for further research on slums and urban expansion in Dhaka. The slum distribution dataset is useful to be pooled with other data to reveal trends of informal settlement growth for local health policy advice in Dhaka.

Induction of macrocyst wall formation by ZYG1 in Dictyostelium discoideum

Abstract Background: Macrocyst is known as the sexual developmental form in cellular slime molds. ZYG1 is known to be involved in zygote formation by cell fusion during macrocyst formation in