Reconstruction of the insulin-like signalling pathway of Haemonchus contortus

Background: In the present study, we reconstructed the insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 signalling (IIS) pathway for Haemonchus contortus, which is one of the most important eukaryotic pathogens of livestock worldwide and is related to the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Methods: We curated full-length open-reading frames from assembled transcripts, defined the complement of genes that encode proteins involved in this pathway and then investigated the transcription profiles of these genes for all key developmental stages of H. contortus. Results: The core components of the IIS pathway are similar to their respective homologs in C. elegans. However, there is considerable variation in the numbers of isoforms between H. contortus and C. elegans and an absence of AKT-2 and DDL-2 homologs from H. contortus. Interestingly, DAF-16 has a single isoform in H. contortus compared with 12 in C. elegans, suggesting novel functional roles in the parasitic nematode. Some IIS proteins, such as DAF-18 and SGK-1, vary in their functional domains, indicating distinct roles from their homologs in C. elegans. Conclusions: This study paves the way for the further characterization of key signalling pathways in other socioeconomically important parasites and should help understand the complex mechanisms involved in developmental processes

Childing an ecopedagogy of refusal

This paper dwells upon what was agitated in a research methods workshop that invited postgraduate researchers to take seriously materiality, movement, bodies and affect - as a starting place to explore how ecopedagogies might become both more capacious and creative. We explored ways to contemplate how generating knowledge - about education and worldly relationalities to environments – might be pursued in less familiar ways. The workshop began with a brief introduction to the praxis of ‘childing’ (Kohan & Kennedy, 2008; Osgood, 2023; Osgood, et al 2023) that encouraged a willingness to embrace uncertainty, speculation and curiosity. This mode of pedagogy actively displaces more recognisable conventions that are typically in search of representation, knowability, linearity and solutions. The workshop introduced participants to a range of feminist theories and philosophies but Haraway’s (1991) invitation to: 'serious play', go visiting, and to engage in a praxis that might reorient both thought and practice became central. This paper dwells upon and amongst what was agitated through the workshop and how embracing this mode of enquiry resonates across disciplinary boundaries and has lasting affects – that can shift what we might understand by ‘environment’, ‘sustainability’, ‘child’ and ‘pedagogy'

Reconfiguring the ‘Male Montessorian’: the mattering of gender through pink towering practices

This paper attempts to open out investigations in ECEC by working beyond anthropocentric accounts of gender. Drawing upon feminist new materialist philosophies we ask whether it might be possible to reconfigure ideas about gender that recognise it as produced through everyday processes and material-affective entanglements. In order to do this, we work with Montessori materials, spaces and practices to grapple with the ways that gender is produced through human-material-semiotic encounters. By focusing on familiar Montessori objects, we follow diffractive lines of enquiry to extend investigations and generate new knowledge about gender in ECEC. This shift in focus allows other accounts about gender to find expression. We argue gender can be encountered as more than an exclusively human matter; and we go on to debate what that might potentiate (i.e. that if gender is fleeting, shifting, and produced within micro-moments there is freedom to break free from narrow framings that fix people, such as ‘the Male Montessorian’, in unhelpful ways). An approach that foregrounds affect and materiality makes a hopeful, generative and expansive contribution to the field

Grappling with the miseducation of Montessori: a feminist posthuman re-reading of ‘child’ in early childhood contexts

This paper demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and practices with, ‘child’ in Montessori early childhood contexts. It complicates Montessori’s contemporary reputation as a ‘middle-class phenomenon’ by returning to the earliest Montessori schools as a justice-oriented project for working-class children and families. Grappling with the contradictions and inconsistencies of Montessori thought, this paper both acknowledges the legacy of Montessori's feminism, whilst also situating her project within the wider colonial capitalist context in which it emerged. A critical engagement with Montessori education unsettles modernist conceptualisations of ‘child’ and its civilising agenda on minds and bodies. Specifically, Montessori child observation (as a civilising mission) is disrupted and re-read from a feminist posthumanist orientation to generate more relational, queer and expansive accounts of how child is produced through observation. Working with three ‘encounters’ from fieldwork at a Montessori nursery we attend to the material discursive affective manifestation of social class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’ and what that means for child figurations in Montessori contexts. We conclude by embracing Snaza’s ‘bewildering education’, to reach towards different imaginaries of ‘child’ that are not reliant on dialectics of ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’, and that allows ‘child’ to be taken seriously, without risking erasure of fleshy, leaky, porous, codified bodies in Montessori spaces

Fluctuation spectrum of fluid membranes coupled to an elastic meshwork: jump of the effective surface tension at the mesh size

We identify a class of composite membranes: fluid bilayers coupled to an elastic meshwork, that are such that the meshwork's energy is a function $F_\mathrm{el}[A_\xi]$ \textit{not} of the real microscopic membrane area $A$, but of a \textit{smoothed} membrane's area $A_\xi$, which corresponds to the area of the membrane coarse-grained at the mesh size $\xi$. We show that the meshwork modifies the membrane tension $\sigma$ both below and above the scale $\xi$, inducing a tension-jump $\Delta\sigma=dF_\mathrm{el}/dA_\xi$. The predictions of our model account for the fluctuation spectrum of red blood cells membranes coupled to their cytoskeleton. Our results indicate that the cytoskeleton might be under extensional stress, which would provide a means to regulate available membrane area. We also predict an observable tension jump for membranes decorated with polymer "brushes"

Assignment of the Human and Mouse Prion Protein Genes to Homologous Chromosomes

Purified preparations of scrapie prions contain one major macromolecule, designated prion protein (PrP). Genes encoding PrP are found in normal animals and humans but not within the infectious particles. The PrP gene was assigned to human chromosome 20 and the corresponding mouse chromosome 2 using somatic cell hybrids. In situ hybridization studies mapped the human PrP gene to band 20p12→pter. Our results should lead to studies of genetic loci syntenic with the PrP gene, which may play a role in the pathogenesis of prion diseases or other degenerative neurologic disorders

Beyond anthropocentric boundaries, childing as an embodied kind of praxis: a conversation with Jayne Osgood and Sid Mohandas

This intra-view explores the idea of "childing" as an embodied, relational kind of praxis that challenges colonial and anthropocentric frameworks in education. The authors discuss how childing disrupts linear notions of time, hierarchies of knowledge, and conventional adult-child binaries by focusing on sensibilities and relationalities. Grounded in critical posthumanist theories and thinking with Indigenous perspectives, childing invites disruption, care, re-membering, and re-turning to land and more-than-human relations, fostering experiential and inclusive ways of being, doing and knowing. The conversation highlights how embracing childing can unsettle colonial influences, and open new spaces for learning across early childhood to higher education contexts

Two-parameter uniformly elliptic Sturm–Liouville problems with eigenparameter-dependent boundary conditions

We consider the two-parameter Sturm–Liouville system –y "1+q1y1=(λr11+μr12)y1 [0,1], with the boundary conditions y'1(0)/y1(0)=cotΑ1 and y'1(1)/y1(1)=a1λ+b1/c1λ+d1 and –y" 2+q2y2=(λr21+μr22)y2 on [0,1] with the boundary conditions y'2(0)/y2(0)=cotΑ2 and y'2(1)/y2(1)=a2μ+b2/c2μ+d2 subject to the uniform-left-definite and uniform-ellipticity conditions; where and qi and rij are continuous real valued functions on [0,1], the angle Αi is in [0, π) and ai, bi, ci, di, and are real numbers with δ i = aidi - bici > 0 and ci ≠0 for i,j = 1,2. Results are given on asymptotics, oscillation of eigenfunctions and location of eigenvalues

Multi-Particle Collision Dynamics -- a Particle-Based Mesoscale Simulation Approach to the Hydrodynamics of Complex Fluids

In this review, we describe and analyze a mesoscale simulation method for fluid flow, which was introduced by Malevanets and Kapral in 1999, and is now called multi-particle collision dynamics (MPC) or stochastic rotation dynamics (SRD). The method consists of alternating streaming and collision steps in an ensemble of point particles. The multi-particle collisions are performed by grouping particles in collision cells, and mass, momentum, and energy are locally conserved. This simulation technique captures both full hydrodynamic interactions and thermal fluctuations. The first part of the review begins with a description of several widely used MPC algorithms and then discusses important features of the original SRD algorithm and frequently used variations. Two complementary approaches for deriving the hydrodynamic equations and evaluating the transport coefficients are reviewed. It is then shown how MPC algorithms can be generalized to model non-ideal fluids, and binary mixtures with a consolute point. The importance of angular-momentum conservation for systems like phase-separated liquids with different viscosities is discussed. The second part of the review describes a number of recent applications of MPC algorithms to study colloid and polymer dynamics, the behavior of vesicles and cells in hydrodynamic flows, and the dynamics of viscoelastic fluids

Chromosome assignment of two cloned DNA probes hybridizing predominantly to human sex chromosomes

In situ hybridization experiments were carried out with two clones, YACG 35 and 2.8, which had been selected from two genomic libraries strongly enriched for the human Y chromosome. Besides the human Y chromosome, both sequences strongly hybridized to the human X chromosome, with few minor binding sites on autosomes. In particular, on the X chromosome DNA from clone YACG 35 hybridized to the centromeric region and the distal part of the short arm (Xp2.2). On the Y chromosome, the sequence was assigned to one site situated in the border region between Yq1.1 and Yq1.2. DNA from clone 2.8 also hybridized to the centromeric region of the X and the distal part of the short arm (Xq2.2). On the Y, however, two binding sites were observed (Yp1.1 and Yq1.2). The findings indicate that sex chromosomal sequences may be localized in homologous regions (as suggested from meiotic pairing) but also at ectopic sites