Geographic Connections Research Articles

Reshaping the urban hierarchy: patterns of information diffusion on social media

ABSTRACTThe spatial diffusion of information is a process governed by the flow of interpersonal communication. The emergence of the Internet and especially social media platforms has reshaped this process and previous research has studied how online social networks contribute to the diffusion of information. Understanding such processes can help devise methods to maximize or control the reach of information or even identify upcoming events and social movements. Yet activities in cyberspace are still confined to physical locations and this geographic connection tends to be overlooked. In this research, we focus on geographic regions instead of individuals and study how the underlying hierarchical structure of regions relates to their response to the information. We examined the top 30 populated cities and metropolitan areas in the U.S. and retrieved Twitter data related to two selected topics from these regions, the 2015 Nepal Earthquake and the #JesuisCharlie hashtag in response to the Paris attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices. We analyzed the similarity among regions of their response using multiple statistical methods and three urban classifications. Our results indicate that the diffusion of information is impacted by the hierarchy of urban regions and that the Twitter responses act more similar when the populated regions are positioned at the same level in the urban hierarchy.

Abstract PL02-03: The DARC side of breast cancer disparities: Links to African ancestry and immunologic tumor responses

Abstract The disparities in breast cancer mortality among ethnic and race groups in the United States, with highest morality in African Americans (AAs), has persisted for five decades. However, even with the typical delays in diagnosis, more advanced stage distribution at diagnosis, and inadequate multidisciplinary breast cancer treatment, these combined factors do not completely explain breast cancer survival outcomes, which persist after controlling for stage at diagnosis. Paradoxically, population breast cancer mortality rates were similar for both groups until the early-1980’s, at which point the mortality curves separated because of declining mortality rates in WAs contrasted against relatively stable mortality rates in AAs. The mortality gap that emerged very likely reflected the unmasking of differences in the biology of breast cancer between AA and WA women related to prevalence of biomarker expression and the development of targeted therapy for breast cancer cases that were treatable with these therapies, as indicated by target gene expression (i.e. Estrogen Receptor). Unfortunately, the advancement of targeted therapies has failed to address cancers that are more prevalent in non-white patient groups. In fact, the approximately two-fold increased risk of Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) in AA women has been confirmed by population-based incidence rates regionally as well as nationally, and across all age intervals. Compared to non-TNBC, triple negative disease has been confirmed to be an adverse prognostic feature in AA patients, driving some of the mortality disparities. From a global perspective, epidemiological studies of breast cancer incidence and prevalence across the African diaspora resonate a similar theme, that women of African descent have a worse clinical outcome worldwide. Our team has investigated African tumor phenotypes, identifying distribution patterns that are similar among West African women from Nigeria and Ghana. Like the US, these global poor outcomes are also coupled with higher incidence of TNBC among women with western, sub-Saharan African ancestry, across each continent. Interestingly, even within Africa, there are distinctive differences in TNBC frequency between women of West African descent compared to those of East African descent, where East Africans have lower incidence of TNBC. As, historical and genetic evidence indicate that most AA share ancestry with women in West Africa rather than East Africa. These observations suggest a geographic ancestry connection with tumor biology and imply biological differences in tumors may permeate throughout the world population, associated with ancestral lineage. Genomic expression analyses have been utilized in cancer disparities for more than two decades. In this presentation, Dr. Davis will highlight the historical progression of cancer genomics in cancer disparities and expound on recent findings from her research group, the International Center for the Study of Breast Cancer Subtypes. Overall, there are similar themes emerging across race-group analyses that implicate immunological pathways in disparities of tumor phenotypes and clinical outcomes. Specifically, recent reports from ICSBCS show that African-Specific alleles can play a significant role in cancer disease progression, particularly with regard to immune response in tumorigenesis. Citation Format: Melissa B. Davis. The DARC side of breast cancer disparities: Links to African ancestry and immunologic tumor responses [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr PL02-03.

Conceptualizing and characterizing micro-urbanization: A new perspective applied to Africa

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) require sustainable urban development and management for better human life quality. Small urban settlements—those with fewer than 500,000 people—are home to 26.5% of the world’s population. Yet, relatively little research attention has been paid to understanding the structure and dynamics of these smaller cities. In this paper, we propose a new concept, micro-urbanization, to fill this knowledge gap, and develop a methodology to characterize and map it using dense remote sensing time series data and landscape pattern metrics. We define micro-urbanization as a process of urban land change that has five primary characteristics: small, patchy, far from main urban areas, with limited geographic connection with existing urban areas and low urban intensity. We apply the method to two rapidly urbanizing countries in Africa, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Results show that the methodology is capable of detecting micro-urbanization with relatively high spatial and temporal accuracy.

Os micropolos geográficos de ligação do estado de Mato Grosso do Sul e suas articulações territoriais: um estudo dos municípios fronteiriços de Ponta Porã e Corumbá

O objetivo deste artigo é fazer um estudo da geografia urbana regional, no estado de Mato Grosso do Sul - Brasil, tendo como base os micropolos geográficos de ligação, representados pelas cidades de Corumbá, fronteira com a Bolívia, e, de Ponta Porã, fronteira com o Paraguai. Essas cidades apresentam uma condição distinta de cidades de fronteira, que lhes confere uma dinâmica interna e externa de fluxo de pessoas, serviços e capital, característica de suas posições geográficas. Enquanto procedimento metodológico, adotou-se as orientações do trabalho de Oliveira & Martins Jr. (2016) que estabelece uma base metodológica para definição das articulações regionais, nacionais e internacionais dos municípios, pautada em três indicadores, de acordo com suas características: 1) capacidade de autogestão; 2) capacidade de sustentação da base territorial e, por fim, 3) capacidade de articulação regional, nacional e internacional. Essas cidades apresentam uma condição distinta de cidades fronteiriças, dando-lhes uma dinâmica interna e externa de fluxo de pessoas, serviços e capital característica de suas posições geográficas.Palavras-chaves: Regionalização; Fronteira; Indicadores.

West-Central Asia: A comparative analysis of students’ trajectories in Russia (Moscow) from the 1980s and China (Yiwu) from the 2000s

Through an exploration of oral history and ethnographic material, this article makes a comparative examination of the life-trajectories of students from Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan who studied in Russia (Moscow) during the late 1980s, and from Tajikistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia who studied in China in the 2000s. In contrast to the cohort of students in Moscow who were mainly men from places with relatively amicable relations with the USSR, the female students of Muslim background from West and Central Asia regarded China as a place where they could pursue fulfilling forms of economic and personal autonomy. By comparing these two groups of international students, this article sheds light into the nature of historical, geographical and geopolitical connections and disconnections between West-Central Asia, Eurasia (especially Russia) and East Asia (especially China). By centring its attention to the demise of Soviet/Russian education and the emergence of China as a figure of economic prosperity, the article theorises West-Central Asia as a particular arena of interaction suitable to comprehend the networks, ‘third spaces’ or zones of interaction (e.g. Moscow and Yiwu), and forms of connection fostered by these students’ trajectories.

The Balkan Slavic specificity of a Christmas dialogue ritual in Pčinja (Serbia)

N. I. Tolstoy dedicated a lot of attention to the Slavic dialogue ritual in his ethnolinguistic works. This ritual can be found in the Eastern parts of South Slavia, among Serbs, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. The Balkan specifics of the Christmas dialogue ritual in Pčinja (Serbia) is established on the basis of the verbal and actional codes of the ritual. The dialectal narrative in Pčinja, registered in 1998, is a dialogue ritual meant to shield the crops from hail in the coming year. It includes the motif of coaxing feeding a hail cloud, as an areal-semantic reconstruction of the ritual shows. The investigation also defines the semantic and geographical connections of the text to corresponding Macedonian and Bulgarian speech formulas. The areal of the fragment of the traditional folk culture under scrutiny includes the southern part of the Serbian-Bulgarian border area, north eastern and central parts of Macedonia. This can be also proven when the well-known and newly published ethnographical and dialectal data are taken into consideration. In eastern and western Serbia speech clichés are detected, similar to those included into the dialogue-ritual under scrutiny that originates from the border Serbian-Macedonian area of Pčinja. Their similarities and differences with the text of the ritual are demonstrated.

Brasil, a Antessala do Golpe: reformismo fraco, crise orgânica e geopolítica mundial

Utilizando as categorias de análise de Antonio Gramsci em sua intrínseca espacialidade, bem como explorando as fortes conexões geográficas ligadas ao desenvolvimento desigual que toca ao processo histórico da formação social brasileira, e em especial as ligações com a geopolítica mundial e a divisão internacional do trabalho a este desenvolvimento inerentes, o artigo discute as condições que forjaram o golpe de Estado contra Dilma Rousseff no ano de 2016. A abordagem proposta volta-se para a crítica seja da explicação economicista, seja daquela que despreza as relações sociais que se enraízam na produção capitalista. Busca-se com isto uma interpretação em termos de totalidade social, que é o sentido da crise orgânica em Gramsci, pondo em evidência as relações entre estrutura, espaço e superestrutura. Do ponto de vista do processo histórico da formação social brasileira, o artigo parte de um diálogo com interpretações clássicas e atuais que fornecem elementos à definição do problema do desenvolvimento desigual em suas relações internas e internacionais. A conclusão indica que o golpe brasileiro de 2016 resultou de uma complexa imbricação entre as contradições internas da formação social nacional, elas mesmas de aberta expressão espacial, e os mais recentes interesses geopolíticos dos Estados Unidos.

The relation of culture, socio-economics, and friendship to music preferences: A large-scale, cross-country study.

Music listening is an inherently cultural behavior, which may be shaped by users’ backgrounds and contextual characteristics. Due to geographical, socio-economic, linguistic, and cultural factors as well as friendship networks, users in different countries may have different music preferences. Investigating cultural-socio-economic factors that might be associated with between-country differences in music preferences can facilitate music information retrieval, contribute to the prediction of users’ music preferences, and improve music recommendation in cross-country contexts. However, previous literature provides limited empirical evidence of the relationships between possible cross-country differences on a wide range of socio-economic aspects and those in music preferences. To bridge this research gap, and drawing on a large-scale dataset, LFM-1b, this study examines the possible relationship between cross-country differences in artist, album, and genre listening frequencies as well as the cross-country distance in geographical, socio-economic, linguistic, cultural, and friendship connections using the Quadratic Assignment Procedure. Results indicate: (1) there is no significant relationship between geographical and economic distance on album, artist, and genre preferences’ distance at the country-level; (2) the cross-country distance of three cultural dimensions (masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence) is positively associated with both the album and artist preferences distances; (3) the between-country distance in main languages has a positive relationship with the album, artist, and genre preferences distances across countries; (4) the density of friendship connections among countries negatively correlates to the cross-country preference distances in terms of artist and genre. Findings from this study not only expand knowledge of factors related to music preferences at the country level, but also can be integrated into real-world music recommendation systems that consider country-level music preferences.

Students’ Perceptions of Their Engagement Using GIS-Story Maps

This article describes the findings of a qualitative phenomenographic study that explored students’ engagement from the perspective of the students. It describes how the participants perceived their engagement when they learned social studies using GIS Story Maps. Qualitative data collection involved classroom observations, student-written reflections, and oral interviews with fourteen eighth-grade student-participants. The data analysis revealed that students perceive Story Maps as engaging in four qualitatively different ways: generating inquiry, visualizing information, mapping interactively, and cycling. Students also see a geographic and cultural connection between Story Maps and their lives, and additional connections beyond the classroom.

GIS-based method to delimit spheres of influence for a medical consortium: Experience of a pediatric medical consortium, Shanghai.

To improve the utilization efficiency of health care services, the concept of a "regional medical consortium" has attracted more attention during the most recent round of health care reform in China. Shanghai, a municipality of China, has made many efforts to promote its regional medical consortium project. In this paper, the pediatric medical consortium of Shanghai will serve as an example to introduce the main tasks and groundwork of the Shanghai medical consortium and will underscore Shanghai's exploration of the vertical integration of medical resources. This study delimits the service areas of leading hospitals, which can help determine the spheres of influence of top hospitals geographically. With this information, regional hospitals or community hospitals can find alliance hospitals and leading hospitals more easily. These efforts can be realized using ArcGIS for spatial data analysis. According to the locations of leading hospitals and actual patient distributions at these hospitals, the natural areas of influence of leading hospitals are illustrated. Then, hospitals other than leading hospitals can select allied hospitals in the same area of influence. In this way, connections in a medical consortium will be tighter, and hospitals will be better able to meet the actual demands of patients. In this paper, we introduce a geographic method to delimit the spheres of influence of hospitals based on actual health-seeking behaviors of patients by analyzing the spatial distribution of hospitalization probability. Within the boundaries of a sphere of influence, a geographic connection between the leading hospital and the general hospital is established automatically. Based on this geographic connection, leading hospitals should provide technological support to general hospitals located in their sphere of influence, while the general hospitals should provide spare medical resources in return. Thus, the medical consortium can be formed geographically and operate more smoothly.

“Arts Once More United”: Bridging Disciplines through Creative Media Research, Toronto, 1953–551

From 1953 to 1955, the Ford Foundation funded a unique experiment in intermedial study and experimentation at the University of Toronto. The Culture and Communications Seminar and the journal Explorations, led by Edmund Carpenter, Marshall McLuhan, and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, are indicative of the ways in which intermedial studies became organized and institutionalized in the 1950s and 1960s. The scholarly network that took shape during these years of Ford Foundation funding laid the framework in Canada for initiatives in creative media research that have become fundamental aspects of arts and humanities education. This article charts the assemblage of geographic, disciplinary, artistic, and organizational connections that facilitated this educational experiment.

A network-based approach to model the development of city branding in China

Against the background of globalization, city branding has become a useful strategy utilized by decision-makers in cities to promote their cities in the race for limited resources. Urban transformation factors, i.e., economic development stage and geographic position play an important role in city branding choices. We argue that city branding choices of a city can be affected by other cities through city interactions and networking. The effects of city interactions can spread across cities either through spatial proximity-referring physical or geographic connections, or logical proximity-representing city interconnectivity caused by collaboration activities. To test our argument, we develop a two-layer network model using the generalized modeling framework (GEMF) to model city branding choices, based on empirical data of sustainable brand developmental pathways from the three economic regions in China. We examine the general evolution pattern of city branding practices and construct different scenarios to analyze the impact of city interactions. The results indicate that taking city interactions as an additional factor to urban transformation allows for a better prediction on city branding choices. Policy-makers and urban planners need to consider infrastructure and economic development policies in designing city branding strategies.

S.Barisitz. Central asia and the silk road: economic rise and decline over several millennia. Studies in Economic History Series. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017. 282+xv. ISBN: 978‐3‐319‐51212‐9.

The history of the Silk Road that links the East (theOrient, in particular China) and theWest (the Occident, in particular theMediterranean area) is a fascinating topic in premodern economic history. The Road is not an actual road but rather a network of potential geographical connections and its efficacy to function as a mode for transcontinental trade to a large extent depends on heterogeneous and changing institutional conditions. Clearly then, the Road can only truly connect when each of its heterogeneous network elements is reasonably safe and stable. An interesting aspect of the Road is that its history spans so many different cultures, civilizations, and empires. Therefore, changing conditions of time and place are associated with periods in which the Road is a stronger trade route and periods of relative decline. It continued reemergence time and again testifies the importance of historic conditions for international trade that echoes in the recent Chinese plans to create a China-centered trading network (theOne Road, One Belt initiative) that aims to increase connectivity of the Eurasian countries.

基于CiteSpace中国海洋生态经济的文献计量分析

PDF HTML阅读 XML下载 导出引用 引用提醒 基于CiteSpace中国海洋生态经济的文献计量分析 DOI: 10.5846/stxb201803220569 作者: 作者单位: 辽宁师范大学城市与环境学院;辽宁师范大学海洋经济与可持续发展中心,辽宁师范大学城市与环境学院,辽宁师范大学城市与环境学院 作者简介: 通讯作者: 中图分类号: 基金项目: 国家自然科学基金（41501594）；高校人文社会科学重点研究基地重大项目子课题（16JJD790021） Knowledge Maps Analysis of Marine Ecological Economy Research in China Based on the CiteSpace Method Author: Affiliation: College of urban and Environment,Liaoning Normal University;Research Center for Marine Economy and Sustainable Development,Liaoning Normal University,, Fund Project: 摘要 | 图/表 | 访问统计 | 参考文献 | 相似文献 | 引证文献 | 资源附件 | 文章评论 摘要:以CNKI和CSSCI数据库中1980-2017年的1779篇文献为原始数据，基于文献计量分析方法和文献可视化工具，对海洋生态经济领域的研究成果进行信息挖掘。研究发现：①海洋生态经济的研究始于1982年，2009年论文发表数量激增成为学术界的研究热点。②狄乾斌、高强、殷克东等在海洋生态经济方面做出了大量研究，中国海洋大学、国家海洋局和辽宁师范大学为主要研究机构，研究机构之间合作联系主要以部门和地域联系为主，跨区域和跨部门的合作有待增强。③海洋生态经济的研究热点指向"蓝色经济"、"海洋生态系统协调"、"人海可持续发展"等方向。④海洋生态经济研究的综合性不断增强，《海洋开发与管理》是海洋生态经济研究刊文量最多的期刊。 Abstract:A total of 1779 articles published in the CNKI and CSSCI databases between 1980 and 2017 were analyzed using the bibiometric analysis and the tools document visualization methods. Information mining was used to investigate the research results associated with marine ecological economy. The knowledge map of research hot spots, core author groups, major research institutions, and important academic journals was drawn using the visual results. The results indicated that, (1) studies on marine ecological economy began in 1982, and the number of papers published surged in 2009, which meant that it had become an important field of research; (2) Di Qianbin, Gao Qiang, Yin Kedong, and other authors have performed extensive research on marine ecological economy. The Ocean University of China, State Oceanic Administration, and Liaoning Normal University were the major research institutions. Cooperation between research institutions was mainly based on departmental and geographical connections. However, cross-regional and interdisciplinary cooperation needs to be enhanced; (3) results of marine ecological-economy research suggest that "blue economy," "coordination of marine ecosystems," and "human and sea sustainable development" are important areas of research; finally, (4) the comprehensiveness of marine ecological-economic research has been continuously enhanced. The results also suggest that the journal "Ocean Development and Management" has published the most number of papers on marine ecological-economic research.. 参考文献 相似文献 引证文献

“The Ghosts Are Watching”: The Globe's Battlefield Performances ofHenry VI

In the summer of 2013, Shakespeare's Globe, the company based at the Globe reconstruction in London, mounted productions of the three parts of Shakespeare'sHenry VIat Wars of the Roses battlefield sites. The battlefield as performance space, with its rolling hills and buried corpses, mediated the temporal overlap of past and present, as contemporary bodies engaged with the construction of a historical narrative in the fictional play and the actual historical moments of the Wars of the Roses. The associations entrenched in the soil of these sites, the physical remains and histories of the past, encode a connective experience for the contemporary participants interacting with it. The battlefield site, then, is not just a site of historical significance—it is also a site of historical reenactment, where present bodies meet absent ones in the Globe's attempt to converge separated temporalities. The Globe framed the battlefield performances as a way of enlivening history by grounding well-worn Shakespearean texts in the places they represent. But the Globe, in collaboration with The Space, an online arts collective, also filmed the ten-hour marathon event at the Barnet battlefield, live-streamed, and then saved the performance to a digital archive. So the Globe displaced the site of their site-specific experience. Virtual spectatorship, a result of the Globe's efforts to increase access to their battlefield performances by making them available online, adds another layer of absence to the battlefield. The virtual spectator as absent spectator challenges the privileging of a physical viewing experience that the Globe's “open-air” project promotes. The displacement of site disrupts the relationships grounded in the material performance space and its geographical connections, and expands the understanding ofsite-specificby demonstrating how a specific relationship to place might be produced and maintained without physical access to a geographical location. Together with their placement at the historical sites and transmission into virtual spaces, the battlefieldHenry VIs generate a multiplicity of shared viewing experiences. These shared experiences mediate the continuation of a (re)constructed historical and collective memory and highlight the role of spectatorship, both physical and virtual, in the formation of communal and national identity.

Making Geographical Connections – via Nova Scotia, Canada

Geographers explore geographical connections in their imagination and through research as well as citizens across time, space, with an interest in flows in particular, at different scales - here through the lenses of economic, political and historical geography. I try and offer an example of weaving together different geographical connections not ordinarily done so prominently in regional geography approaches.

Phytogeographical relationships and analysis of the flora of South Texas Plains

The southernmost tip of Texas is a part of the Tamaulipan Province of northeastern Mexico which some authors consider in the Madrean Subkingdom of the Holarctic Kingdom, while others the “Xerofitica Mexicana” of the Neotropical Kingdom. To shed more light on this question, a natural flora of fourteen counties in the S TX Plains ecoregion, South Texas Plains flora (S TX), was compiled, studied from a biogeographical perspective, and analyzed in this work. The analysis was based primarily on the species and genera distribution outlines. Phylogenetic literature was searched to find relationships, patterns of migrations, and geographical connections of the species of major clades. Taxonometric and geographic spectra of the S TX flora were obtained and compared with those of two other floras in southern Texas: SC Texas (EP, or Edwards Plateau) and Big Bend Region (BB). There are 1250 native species in 553 genera and 117 families in the S TX flora. These species were classified into 25 geographic (floristic) elements. Herein is presented a checklist of S TX accompanied by the geoelement descriptions, a comparison of geographical spectra of the species and genera in all three floras, and the biogeographical analysis of the S TX flora. South TX, having a flat topography and being on the crossroads of migration routes, has multiple connections with adjacent floristic centers. The Tamaulipan endemism is not particularly high (8% in S TX) in comparison with much higher Chihuahuan endemism in BB (23% in BB; 10% in S TX). Proportions of taxa of the largest families in the three southern Texas floras show much higher numbers of tropical-subtropical, Tamaulipan, Gulf Coast, and Mesoamerican (coastal) species in the S TX flora in comparison with those of EP and BB. North temperate, E North American, and Prairie species are best represented in EP (47%), followed by S TX (36%), with only 17% in BB. The majority of the BB differential species are in the Chihuahuan, SW N American, Sonoran/Apachian, and the Madrean geoelements. The genera of the largest family, Asteraceae, that are differential among the three floras show importance of the Mexican (Madrean) centers of diversity as well as migrations from the Tethyan Subkingdom in the assembly of the S TX flora. Tethyan connections are also evident among the Boraginaceae s. str. and some other groups found in the flora. The spectra of generic and specific geographical elements of S TX illustrate transitional position of its flora. It represents an ecotone between the Western (Madrean) and the Eastern (Atlantic and Gulf Coast) N American Regions, with a very high influence of the various Neotropical elements and a higher affinity to the EP flora than to that of BB.

The oldest iocrinid crinoids from the Early/Middle Ordovician of China: Possible paleogeographic implications

This study reports new crinoid material, which is identified as Muicrinus dawanensis new genus and new species from South China, representing the oldest known iocrinid in the world. These new fossils, which are characterized by bearing simple primibrachials and a helically coiled column, are from the lower-middle part of the Dawan Formation, which ranges from the upper Floian (Lower Ordovician) to the lower Dapingian (Middle Ordovician) (∼470 Ma). A total of 11 related taxa with 80 characters were selected to conduct phylogenetic analyses. Our results indicated that South China specimens are closely related to ones that are endemic to Laurentia. Synapomorphies shared between species in those two cratons include elongate supraradial plates and isotomous arm branching. Furthermore, the phylogenetic closeness of endemic taxa that only occurred in two cratons leads us to suggest a geographic connection between those regions during deep time. Combining biogeographic evidence reported from Cambrian studies, this study supports the “missing-link” configuration of Rodinia during the breakup phase. Based on the crinoid global biodiversity pattern updated here, the potential for discovery of new Paleozoic crinoid faunas in China is very high.

The whale multiple: Spatial formations of whale tourism in Jangsaengpo, South Korea

Whale-watching tourism is widely regarded as a manifestation of the transition from whale hunting to whale protection. However, in Jangsaengpo, South Korea, watching whales and eating whale-meat occur side by side for tourism purposes. Here, the concurrence of the two seemingly conflicting practices is legitimated through the by-catch which enables eating without killing by using “accidentally” caught whales for meat. Bringing together ontological discussions of multinaturalism and the topological analysis of space, this paper examines the ways in which spatial relations are performed to produce multiple whale ontologies within Jangsaengpo's whale tourism. It specifically unfolds diverse geographical connections (from Japan to the US), and their interactions, which enact whales in Jangsaengpo as a multiplicity – what I call “the whale multiple”. This paper first traces Jangsaengpo's historical and contemporary whale-related geographical connections through which an array of actors and entities are enrolled into, and transformed, within the assemblage of whale tourism. It then considers the spatial politics exercised through the by-catch, which configures a concurrence of conflicting whale ontologies. The paper discusses the political implications of the whale multiple which suggests strategic living with different ontological worlds as a way of moving beyond the killing–protecting antagonism. By illustrating the spatial production and configuration of ontological multiplicity, this paper engages with the spatial dimension of the multinatural theorisation of nature.

Genetic signature analysis of Perkinsus marinus in Mexico suggests possible translocation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific coast of Mexico

BackgroundThe protozoan Perkinsus marinus (Mackin, Owen & Collier) Levine, 1978 causes perkinsosis in the American oyster Crassostrea virginica Gmelin, 1791. This pathogen is present in cultured C. virginica from the Gulf of Mexico and has been reported recently in Saccostrea palmula (Carpenter, 1857), Crassostrea corteziensis (Hertlein, 1951) and Crassostrea gigas (Thunberg, 1793) from the Mexican Pacific coast. Transportation of fresh oysters for human consumption and repopulation could be implicated in the transmission and dissemination of this parasite across the Mexican Pacific coast. The aim of this study was two-fold. First, we evaluated the P. marinus infection parameters by PCR and RFTM (Ray’s fluid thioglycollate medium) in C. virginica from four major lagoons (Términos Lagoon, Campeche; Carmen-Pajonal-Machona Lagoon complex, Tabasco; Mandinga Lagoon, Veracruz; and La Pesca Lagoon, Tamaulipas) from the Gulf of Mexico. Secondly, we used DNA sequence analyses of the ribosomal non-transcribed spacer (rNTS) region of P. marinus to determine the possible translocation of this species from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mexican Pacific coast.ResultsPerkinsus marinus prevalence by PCR was 57.7% (338 out of 586 oysters) and 38.2% (224 out of 586 oysters) by RFTM. The highest prevalence was observed in the Carmen-Pajonal-Machona Lagoon complex in the state of Tabasco (73% by PCR and 58% by RFTM) and the estimated weighted prevalence (WP) was less than 1.0 in the four lagoons. Ten unique rDNA-NTS sequences of P. marinus [termed herein the “P. marinus (Pm) haplotype”] were identified in the Gulf of Mexico sample. They shared 96–100% similarity with 18 rDNA-NTS sequences from the GenBank database which were derived from 16 Mexican Pacific coast infections and two sequences from the USA. The phylogenetic tree and the haplotype network showed that the P. marinus rDNA-NTS sequences from Mexico were distant from the rDNA-NTS sequences of P. marinus reported from the USA. The ten rDNA-NTS sequences described herein were restricted to specific locations displaying different geographical connections within the Gulf of Mexico; the Carmen-Pajonal-Machona Pm1 haplotype from the state of Tabasco shared a cluster with P. marinus isolates reported from the Mexican Pacific coast.ConclusionsThe rDNA-NTS sequences of P. marinus from the state of Tabasco shared high similarity with the reference rDNA-NTS sequences from the Mexican Pacific coast. The high similarity suggests a transfer of oysters infected with P. marinus from the Mexican part of the Gulf of Mexico into the Mexican Pacific coast.