ALBERT

Description: Geodemographic classifications are categorical measures representing salient multidimensional population and built environment attributes of small areas. The UK Output Area Classification (OAC) is one such classification, created on behalf of the Office for National Statistics, and was built with an open methodology and entirely from 2011 Census variables. However, one criticism of national classifications such as OAC is that they do not adequately accommodate local or regional structures that diverge from national patterns. In this paper we explore this issue with respect to Greater London. We develop a London classification based upon the OAC methodology, and explore the extent to which these patterns are divergent from the national classification.

Description: Information has always had geography. It is from somewhere; about somewhere; it evolves and is transformed somewhere; it is mediated by networks, infrastructures, and technologies: all of which exist in physical, material places. These geographies of information about places matter because they shape how we are able to find and understand different parts of the world. Places invisible or discounted in representations are invisible in practice to many people. In other words, geographic augmentations are much more than just representations of places: they are part of the place itself; they shape it rather than simply reflect it. This fusing of the spatial and informational augmentations that are immutable means that annotations of place emerge as sites of political contestation: with different groups of people trying to impose different narratives on informational augmentations. This paper therefore explores how information geographies have their own geographic distributions: geographies of access, of participation, and of representation. The paper offers a deliberately broad survey of a range of key platforms that mediate, host, and deliver different types of geographic information. It does so using a combination of existing statistics and bespoke data not previously mapped or analysed. Through this effort, the paper demonstrates that in addition to the geographies of uneven access to contemporary modes of communication, uneven geographies of participation and representation are also evident and in some cases are being amplified rather than alleviated. In other words, the paper comprehensively shows one important facet of contemporary information geographies: that geographic information itself is characterised by a host of uneven geographies. The paper concludes that there are few signs that global informational peripheries are achieving comparable levels of participation or representation with traditional information cores, despite the hopes that the fast-paced spread of the internet to three billion people might change this pattern.

Description: Numerous exegeses have been written about the epistemologies of volunteered geographic information (VGI). We contend that VGI is itself a socially constructed epistemology crafted in the discipline of geography, which when re-examined, does not sit comfortably with either GIScience or critical GIS scholarship. Using insights from Albert Borgmann's philosophy of technology we offer a critique that, rather than appreciating the contours of this new form of data, truth appears to derive from traditional analytic views of information found within GIScience. This is assisted by structures that enable VGI to be treated as independent of the process that led to its creation. Allusions to individual emancipation further hamper VGI and problematise participatory practices in mapping/geospatial technologies (e.g. public participation geographic information systems). The paper concludes with implications of this epistemological turn and prescriptions for designing systems and advancing the field to ensure nuanced views of participation within the core conceptualisation of VGI.

Description: Waterborne diseases have emerged as global health problems and their rapid and sensitive detection in environmental water samples is of great importance. Bacterial identification and enumeration in water samples is significant as it helps to maintain safe drinking water for public consumption. Culture-based methods are laborious, time-consuming, and yield false-positive results, whereas viable but nonculturable (VBNCs) microorganisms cannot be recovered. Hence, numerous methods have been developed for rapid detection and quantification of waterborne pathogenic bacteria in water. These rapid methods can be classified into nucleic acid-based, immunology-based, and biosensor-based detection methods. This review summarizes the principle and current state of rapid methods for the monitoring and detection of waterborne bacterial pathogens. Rapid methods outlined are polymerase chain reaction (PCR), digital droplet PCR, real-time PCR, multiplex PCR, DNA microarray, Next-generation sequencing (pyrosequencing, Illumina technology and genomics), and fluorescence in situ hybridization that are categorized as nucleic acid-based methods. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and immunofluorescence are classified into immunology-based methods. Optical, electrochemical, and mass-based biosensors are grouped into biosensor-based methods. Overall, these methods are sensitive, specific, time-effective, and important in prevention and diagnosis of waterborne bacterial diseases. Waterborne diseases pose constant threats to public health. Therefore, public healthcare needs rapid, sensitive, and accurate detection of pathogens for the diagnosis and treatment.

Description: No abstract is available for this article.

Description: Global environmental images have become part of our everyday life experience. We encounter them in news reports, scientific articles and artistic interventions. Yet so far, only the most iconic of these images have received close critical attention from scholars coming mostly from two related fields, science studies and cultural geography. Some of those studies, as for instance research carried out on the famous Apollo photographs, have revealed that the icons of our environmental age do not provide simple readings, that they carry multiple, often contradicting messages, and that they can be vectors of highly ambiguous and even conflicting political beliefs. However, historically informed interdisciplinary research on visual cultures from an environmental perspective is still at its beginning. This essay thus calls for a systematic exploration of the crucial role the visual plays in the creation, circulation, interpretation and adaptation of global environmental knowledge. It is argued that this inquiry cannot be left solely to historians or geographers but calls for a truly interdisciplinary engagement. One central claim is that we need to better understand the constitutive role the visual and associated knowledge practices, conventions and infrastructures play in mediating global environmental phenomena. One possibility, it is argued, is to develop a broader historical framework for understanding how the visual actively shaped scientific and environmental discourse, and how it stimulated the rise of holistic and dynamic understandings of the environment from the nineteenth century onwards. A second important research area that is suggested concerns the crucial role global environmental images play at the interface of science discourse and environmental policy and governance. The essay concludes by suggesting three basic theses which seem particularly promising for future interdisciplinary inquiries into global environmental images. The paper calls for a historically informed interdisciplinary inquiry into global environmental images. e00020

Description: Cyanobacteria, such as the toxin producer Microcystis aeruginosa , are predicted to be favored by global warming both directly, through elevated water temperatures, and indirectly, through factors such as prolonged stratification of waterbodies. M. aeruginosa is able to produce the hepatotoxin microcystin, which causes great concern in freshwater management worldwide. However, little is known about the expression of microcystin synthesis genes in response to climate change-related factors. In this study, a new RT-qPCR assay employing four reference genes ( GAPDH , gltA, rpoC1, and rpoD ) was developed to assess the expression of two target genes (the microcystin synthesis genes mcyB and mcyD ). This assay was used to investigate changes in mcyB and mcyD expression in response to selected environmental factors associated with global warming. A 10°C rise in temperature significantly increased mcyB expression, but not mcyD expression. Neither mixing nor the addition of microcystin-LR (10 μg L −1 or 60 μg L −1 ) significantly altered mcyB and mcyD expression. The expression levels of mcyB and mcyD were correlated but not identical. Cyanobacteria, such as the toxin producer Microcystis aeruginosa , are predicted to be favored by global warming. In this study, a new RT-qPCR assay was used to investigate the changes in mcyB and mcyD expression, genes responsible for the biosynthesis of the cyanotoxin microcystin, in response to selected environmental factors associated with global warming.

Description: A growing body of work has explored the effects of visual imagery on shifting forms of environmental consciousness and politics. Circulating images of, for example, the ‘whole Earth’ have been ascribed agency in the emergence of new forms of planetary awareness and political globalism. This essay identifies a new form of global environmental image, in the shape of photographic montage depictions of future places transformed by the effects of climate change. Montage enables artists and designers to import the spatial formations of distant places into more familiar locations, in the process producing novel renderings of the interconnections of global environmental change. The future-conditional – ‘if x, then y’ – has become a key register of scientific and artistic engagement with climate change, and practices of visual montage have offered means of reconciling the transformations of space and time in the imagination of putative futures. The essay situates such images within a longer lineage of depictions of the tropical and the ruined, and focuses on contemporary montage depictions of climate-change-induced migration. It argues that many of these ‘global montages’ problematically reinforce extant notions of geographical otherness. Yet montage, as a technique, also renders visible the choices, cuts, juxtapositions and arguments which lie behind any representation, thus offering the seed of a more reflexive mode of future-conditional image-making. This article explores photomontage depictions of future cities under climate change as a novel form of global environmental image. Montages assemble new viewpoints through the juxtaposition of photographic fragments from diverse spaces, in a fashion which can reify conceptions of geographical otherness, but which also contains the seed of a more reflexive mode of future-conditional image-making. Montage makes the choices which underpin any image an object of representation itself, and therefore has a radical potential which is yet to be fully realised in imagings of climatic futures. e00019

Description: Lactobacillus plantarum produces a number of antimicrobial peptides (bacteriocins) that mostly target closely related bacteria. Although bacteriocins are important for the ecology of these bacteria, very little is known about how the peptides target sensitive cells. In this work, a putative membrane protein receptor of the two-peptide bacteriocin plantaricin JK was identified by comparing Illumina sequence reads from plantaricin JK-resistant mutants to a crude assembly of the sensitive wild-type Weissella viridescens genome using the polymorphism discovery tool VAAL. Ten resistant mutants harbored altogether seven independent mutations in a gene encoding an APC superfamily protein with 12 transmembrane helices. The APC superfamily transporter thus is likely to serve as a target for plantaricin JK on sensitive cells. Strains of Weissella viridescent with increased resistance to the two-peptide bacteriocin plantaricin JK carry mutations in a gene encoding a APC superfamily protein. The protein is likely to be an amino acid permease. The results indicate that the APC superfamily protein is involved in the action mechanism of plantaricin JK, possibly as a membrane receptor of the bacteriocin.

Description: In rod-shaped bacteria, the proper placement of the division septum at the midcell relies, at least partially, on the proteins of the Min system as an inhibitor of cell division. The main principle of Min system function involves the formation of an inhibitor gradient along the cell axis; however, the establishment of this gradient differs between two well-studied gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria. While in gram-negative Escherichia coli, the Min system undergoes pole-to-pole oscillation, in gram-positive Bacillus subtilis , proper spatial inhibition is achieved by the preferential attraction of the Min proteins to the cell poles. Nevertheless, when E.coli Min proteins are inserted into B.subtilis cells, they still oscillate, which negatively affects asymmetric septation during sporulation in this organism. Interestingly, homologs of both Min systems were found to be present in various combinations in the genomes of anaerobic and endospore-forming Clostridia , including the pathogenic Clostridium difficile . Here, we have investigated the localization and behavior of C.difficile Min protein homologs and showed that MinDE proteins of C.difficile can oscillate when expressed together in B.subtilis cells. We have also investigated the effects of this oscillation on B.subtilis sporulation, and observed decreased sporulation efficiency in strains harboring the MinDE genes. Additionally, we have evaluated the effects of C.difficile Min protein expression on vegetative division in this heterologous host. The placement of the bacterial division septum at the midcell site is very precise and it is partially controlled by Min system in many rod-shaped bacteria. Escherichia coli Min system oscillates from pole to pole in contrast with less dynamic Bacillus subtilis Min system. Interestingly, many Clostridia species contain homologs proteins from both Min systems. Because of C.difficile anaerobic life style and its confined genetic toolbox, we investigated the mechanism of action of the C.difficile Min proteins in B.subtilis and we showed that this system exhibits oscillatory behavior in the host.