Books on the topic 'Partner proteins'

<p>Comprender los mecanismos que rigen la regeneración hepática es crucial para el manejo apropiado de los procesos regenerativos y el desarrollo de nuevas terapias en situaciones donde es necesario recuperar la masa hepática perdida. Se plantea la siguiente pregunta: ¿Existe alguna relación entre la expresión de Kir6.2 y la regeneración hepática posterior a una hepatectomía parcial (HP)? Se utilizaron ratones de las cepas C57BL/6 (WT, <i>wild-type</i>) como animales control, y ratones <i>knockout</i> para Kir6.2 (Kir-/-), los cuales fueron sometidos a HP de dos tercios. La regeneración hepática posterior a la hepatectomía se evaluó a diferentes tiempos que representan las distintas fases de la regeneración. Se determinó el índice peso hígado/peso corporal (PH/PC). Se determinó el perfil de las transaminasas séricas. Se detectó el antígeno nuclear de proliferación celular (PCNA) y ciclina D1. Se estableció el índice apoptótico mediante la determinación entre la proteína Bax y las proteínas antiapoptóticas Bcl-2/Bcl-xL. En conclusión, la ausencia de la proteína Kir6.2 tiene un impacto negativo en la proliferación que se produce luego de la resección de una parte de la masa hepática. En los ratones carentes de Kir6.2 la regeneración también puede verse comprometida por una mayor tasa de apoptosis. El presente estudio proporciona, por primera vez, evidencias claras de que la proteína Kir6.2 participa en el fenómeno regenerativo luego de una HP de dos tercios en ratones.</p>

La Bioinformática es un área interdisciplinaria que se ocupa del análisis computacional de los sistemas biológicos, siendo una de sus ramas la aplicación de este tipo de análisis a los sistemas moleculares. Si bien una parte de la Bioinformática se ocupa del desarrollo de nuevas metodologías, en la actualidad contamos con un gran conjunto de herramientas computacionales que permiten sistematizar, extraer y analizar la información biológica contenida en secuencias moleculares tanto de ácidos nucleicos como de proteínas. Estas herramientas permiten entre otras cosas, predecir la estructura de proteínas, diseñar ligandos específicos como inhibidores o antibióticos, diseñar racionalmente proteínas, identificar sitios funcionales y predecir la función biológica. Así, la Bioinformática es un campo estrechamente relacionado con la biotecnología, la bioquímica, la biología molecular, la farmacología, y consecuentemente tiene incidencia en distintas áreas como por ejemplo la salud y el agro, tanto en el ámbito académico como industrial. La incorporación de estas herramientas acompañada del marco conceptual adecuado para su utilización y su articulación con resultados experimentales, son los principales objetivos de la asignatura optativa -y de postgrado- Bioinformática, perteneciente a la Licenciatura en Biotecnología y Biología Molecular dictada por el Área Biotecnología y Biología Molecular de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Los docentes a cargo de la materia son el Profesor Gustavo Parisi y los JTPs Mauricio Lozano y María Leticia Ferrelli. El programa de la materia incluye los siguientes temas orientados principalmente al estudio de proteínas: estructura de proteínas, evolución biológica, estudios de similitud secuencial, utilización de bases de datos biológicas, estimación de la estructura de proteínas, estudios basados similitud estructural, modelado molecular, inferencia filogenética, e integración estructura-evolución (predicción de la función biológica). En el contexto de esta asignatura, y con el objetivo de que los estudiantes adquirieran una mayor experiencia práctica en las diferentes temáticas estudiadas, se realizó un trabajo práctico integrador desarrollado a lo largo de 12 clases, durante las cuales se profundizó en la caracterización de una proteína que fue elegida por los estudiantes bajo la supervisión de la cátedra. Como resultado del análisis bioinformático realizado se exigió a los estudiantes la presentación de un trabajo escrito individual, con el objetivo de fijar los conocimientos adquiridos, e introducir a los estudiantes en la escritura científica.

Várias pesquisas sugerem que uma das causas do processo de envelhecimento seja o encurtamento dos telômeros, que correspondem à extremidade dos cromossomos. O comprimento dos telômeros é regulado por uma enzima denominada telomerase e várias outras proteínas que formam um complexo junto à telomerase. Neste jogo, você pode ser um cientista ou um vampiro que podem descobrir o segredo da imortalidade encontrando as proteínas que fazem parte do complexo telômero-telomerase. Com uma breve explicação e algumas partidas, você irá se familiarizar com os nomes destas biomoléculas e suas estruturas bioquímicas.

This chapter looks at the first eight-hour-day campaign of 1866–67 in Chicago, which resulted in the first eight-hour law in the United States. The first eight-hour movement began shortly before the end of the Civil War, spearheaded by Boston mechanic Ira Steward and George McNeill and was soon taken up by native-born and British craft workers joined by German and Irish workers in Chicago. In 1865, Scottish printer Andrew C. Cameron formed Chicago's Grand Eight Hour League as a political organization independent of both the Republican and the Democratic Parties, with fourteen branches operating across the city hosting mass meetings, further pushing state and local politicians to support eight-hour reform. Initial eight-hour agitation quickly produced new arguments for shorter hours that capitalized on the themes of freedom and equality that had been crafted by the abolitionist movement to end slavery but also on themes familiar to those steeped in a heavily Protestant religious culture.

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter consists of an introduction to one of the core parts of modern land law: land registration. It examines some of the key aims of the Land Registration Act 2002, and considers in particular the means by which the Act protects registered parties.

The past decade saw new forms of protest in public squares around the world: from Zuccotti Park to Maidan, from the Yellow Vests’ roundabout occupations to the Querdenker anti-lockdown protests. The performative enactment of an unredeemed ‘people’ reclaiming its rightful sovereignty in such locations suggests intersections with both populism—whose meteoric rise also defined the decade—as well as new forms of political organisation that emerged in the wake of the post-2010 protest wave, from ‘digital parties’ to ‘movement parties’. This edited volume explores these intersections and the manifold tensions underlying them, drawing on numerous theoretical approaches and case studies ranging from South America to Southern Europe. With contributions by Marwan Attalah, M.A.; Morgane Belhadi, M.A.; Dr. Lluis de Nadal; Williames de Sousa da Costa; Dr. Seongcheol Kim; Étienne Levac, B.A.; Marieluise Mühe, M.A.; Prof. Dr. Marina Prentoulis; Dr. Céline Righi; Héctor Ríos-Jara, M.A.; Florian Skelton, B.A. and Dr. Thomás Zicman de Barros.

Sweden started its nuclear programme in the early 1950s. Initially it was generally welcomed as modernization and even supported by environmentalists. The issue became more contested in the 1970s, when protests began and the Centre Party turned anti-nuclear. In the 1980s, the phasing out of nuclear energy until 2010 was decided as a consequence of a referendum. In 2010, however, the parliament decided to allow building a new generation of nuclear power plants. After the Fukushima disaster a new phase of nuclear energy confinement began in 2014 as a consequence of a Red-Green coalition coming to power. Over the years most Swedish parties have reversed their positions on the nuclear power issue. Policy reversals were triggered by party competition and government replacement and reflected changes in public opinion as well as coalition politics.

The long build-up to the Reichstag elections of 1903 produced a dramatic outcome when Social Democrats scored an overwhelming victory. The epithet “Red Saxony” was born overnight, and thereafter it remained a triumphal shout for Social Democrats and a nightmare for their enemies. This chapter begins by examining the 1903 election in its local, regional, and national contexts. The SPD’s organizational strength and élan are considered in light of the shock this election produced. The election also restarted a suffrage reform debate that convulsed Saxon political society until 1909. The Saxon government presented a complicated, hybrid suffrage proposal at the end of 1903. It was torpedoed by the anti-socialist parties in the Landtag. But by 1905 this defense of Saxony’s three-class suffrage had confounded National Liberal attempts to challenge Conservative hegemony, and it fueled further working-class protests.

This chapter provides an informal rationalist model of state formation as an exchange between a central authority and a population. In the model, the central authority protects the population against external threats and the population disarms and pays taxes. The model specifies the conditions under which the exchange is self-enforcing, meaning that the parties prefer the exchange to alternative courses of action. These conditions—costly but winnable interstate war—are historically rare, and the cost of such wars can rise beyond the population’s willingness to sacrifice. At this point, the population prefers to avoid war rather than fight it and may prefer an alternative institution to the state if that institution can prevent war and reduce the level of extraction. Thus the modern centralized state is self-undermining rather than self-enforcing. A final section addresses alternative explanations for state formation.

This chapter examines the politics of implementing the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) in the state of Rajasthan, where an important part of the movement which brought NREGA into being was born. The chapter analyses the results of a survey of NREGA workers in two of the state's districts, as well as findings from more extensive qualitative field research into the political dynamics that have shaped the program's character in various parts of Rajasthan. To place the findings in context, the chapter provides an overview of the state's political history, economic profile, developmental performance, and salient social cleavages. The analysis pays particular attention to efforts by social movement organizations to improve program performance, including through public protests, social audits of works projects, experiments with delivery mechanisms, and engagement with political parties, and senior elected officials and civil servants in the state government.

The long process leading to passage of Saxony’s plural suffrage in January 1909 was described as a “dance.” This chapter begins with a brief overview of how the new suffrage was debated in committee and on the floor of the Landtag. This section digs below the surface of parliamentary rhetoric to try to discover the principal actors’ motives for defending one suffrage proposal over another. The next section examines the Saxon government’s proposal (July 1907) for a hybrid voting system, and the majority parties’ opposition to it. Then Saxony’s final legislative “dance” is analyzed against the backdrop of Social Democratic street protests and last-minute disagreements between National Liberals and Conservatives. A last section examines the calculations of Saxon statisticians and others who wanted to let “just enough” Social Democrats into the Landtag. They attempted to calculate which socio-economic groups would be eligible to receive extra ballots under the plural suffrage.

El conocimiento de la organización de la materia es indispensable para comprender la estructura y función de los seres vivos. Justamente las interrelaciones entre los átomos y las moléculas, son las que permiten el desarrollo de todas las funciones vitales de los organismos animales. Estos están constituidos por miles de moléculas orgánicas diferentes, que se agrupan en cuatro categorías principales: carbohidratos, lípidos, proteínas o ácidos nucleicos. La información genética que controla la vida de cada célula está contenida en sus cromosomas, más específicamente en su ADN, codificándose y transfiriéndose de generación en generación. A lo largo de miles de millones de años surgieron las especies a partir de otras preexistentes por un proceso llamado de "descendencia con modificación" o "evolución". Una de las características de la naturaleza es la gran diversidad de organismos que la componen. La taxonomía, es la ciencia que se encarga de la búsqueda del orden natural, mediante la que se obtienen las distintas clasificaciones animales.

¡Ah, qué huevos ene la ciencia! es un taller de ciencia recreativa que aborda el estudio de conceptos fundamentales de la fisica, la química, la biología y hasta de las matemáticas a partir de un recurso por demás codiano: el huevo de gallina. Sí, además de una fuente rica de proteínas, aminoácidos esenciales, todas las vitaminas (a excepción de la C) y 13 minerales, y de atribuírsele acciones antioxidantes y otras muchas propiedades benéficas para la salud, este sabroso y humilde alimento nos ofrece en esta ocasión el pretexto perfecto para acercarnos a las ciencias básicas de forma sencilla y divertida. Este taller surgió en el club de divulgación Jóvenes por la Ciencia (JC) de la División Académica de Ingeniería y Arquitectura (DAIA) en la Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco (UJAT), y se ha presentado en múltiples lugares, desde las mismas instalaciones de la DAIA, pasando por otras escuelas del estado, congresos nacionales en Zacatecas, Puebla, Michoacán, la Ciudad de México, etc., hasta un evento internacional en Corea del Sur.

Abstract This book revises standard assumptions among historians of Nazi Germany that physical violence against Jews slowly accelerated from 1933 onwards, with a first high point in November 1938 (“Kristallnacht”), and then further escalating to deportations and the mass murder of the Holocaust. Based on documentary evidence from about twenty German archives, the present work shows that there were many hundreds, possibly thousands, of violent attacks on Jews in Germany ranging from brutal assaults, abductions, and expulsions to murder. The work examines in detail the reaction of those German institutions and elites that were still in a position to react and protest in the spring of 1933. It makes two essentially new contributions to the literature on the history of the Third Reich: (1) a detailed examination of the antisemitic violence—from boycotts, violent attacks, robbery, extortion, abductions, and humiliating “pillory marches” to grievous bodily harm and murder—which has hitherto not been adequately recognized; (2) an analysis of the reactions of those institutions that still had the capacity to protest against Nazi attacks and legislative measures—the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, the bureaucracies, and Hitler’s conservative coalition partner, the DNVP—and the mindset of the elites who led them, to determine their various responses to flagrant antisemitic abuses. Individual protests against violent attacks, the April boycott, and Nazi legislative measures were already hazardous in March and April 1933, but established institutions in the German State and society were still able to voice their concerns and raise objections. By doing so, they might have stopped or at least postponed a radicalization that eventually led to the pogrom of 1938 and the Holocaust.

Esta obra ha sido concebida atendiendo a las características del Curso de Química Orgánica que ofrecemos en la Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestales de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata a nuestros alumnos del primer año de las Carreras de Ingeniería Agronómica e Ingeniería Forestal, así como del segundo año de la Licenciatura en Biología. En la misma incorporamos elementos didácticos que hemos introducido y mejorado gradualmente durante varios años, logrando un cierto grado de originalidad de la presentación. La mayoría de los textos existentes de Química Orgánica contempla las necesidades de cursos para estudiantes de Ciencias Químicas, o disciplinas fuertemente relacionadas. Así, por sobreabundancia como por no pertinencia de gran parte de los tópicos, este tipo de obras no resulta adecuado para su uso como texto de cabecera en los cursos citados. El conocimiento de las propiedades de los compuestos de interés biológico es de la mayor importancia en la formación de los alumnos; los conocimientos aportados son básicos para asignaturas posteriores como Bioquímica y Fitoquímica, Fisiología Vegetal, etc. Además de abordar el estudio de los lípidos, hidratos de carbono, y proteínas, la obra presenta los principales metabolitos secundarios de origen vegetal, y además los compuestos heterocíclicos.

Among the top ten oil exporters in the world and a founding member of OPEC, Venezuela currently supplies 11 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. But when the country elected the fiery populist politician Hugo Chavez in 1998, tensions rose with this key trading partner and relations have been strained ever since. In this concise, accessible introduction, Miguel Tinker-Salas--a native of Venezuela who has written extensively about the country--takes a broadly chronological approach to the history of Venezuela, but keeps oil and its effects on the country’s politics, economy, culture, and international relations a central focus. After an introductory section that discusses the legacy of Spanish colonialism, Tinker-Salas explores the “The Era of the Gusher,” a period which began with the discovery of oil in the early 1910s, encompassed the mid-century development and nationalization of the industry, and ended with a change of government in 1989 in response to widespread protests. Tinker-Salas also provides a detailed discussion of Hugo Chavez--his rise to power, his domestic, political and economic policies, and his high-profile forays into international relations. Arranged in helpful question-and-answer format that allows readers to search topics of particular interest, the book covers such questions as: Who is Simón Bolívar and why is he called the George Washington of Latin America? How did the discovery of oil change Venezuela’s relationship to the U.S.? What forces were behind the coups of 1992? Does Chavez really want to be president for life? How does Venezuela interact with China, Russia, and Iran? And much more. Convenient, engaging, and written by a leading expert on the country, Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know offers a lively look at an increasingly important player on the world stage.

Examining racial segregation from 1920s to the 1970s, this book argues that white segregationist women constituted the grassroots workforce for racial segregation. For decades, they censored textbooks, campaigned against the United Nations, denied marriage certificates, celebrated school choice, and lobbied elected officials. They trained generations, built national networks, collapsed their duties as white mothers with those of citizenship, and experimented with a color-blind political discourse. Their work beyond legislative halls empowered the Jim Crow order with a flexibility and a kind of staying power. With white women at the center of the story, massive resistance and the rise of postwar conservatism rises out of white women’s grassroots work in homes, schools, political parties, and culture. Their efforts began before World War II and the Brown Decision and persisted past the removal of “white only” signs in 1964 and through the anti-busing protests. White women’s segregationist politics involved foreign affairs, economic policy, family values, strict constitutionalism, states’ rights, and white supremacy. It stretched across the nation and overlapped with and helped shape the rise of the New Right. In the end, this history compels us to confront the reign of racial segregation as a national story. It asks us to reconsider who sustained the Jim Crow order, who bears responsibility for the persistence of the nation’s inequities, and what it will take to make good on the nation’s promise of equality.

The flaws in the American electoral process have become increasingly apparent in recent years. The contemporary tipping point in public awareness occurred during the 2000 election count, and concern deepened due to several major problems observed in the 2016 campaign, worsening party polarization, and corroding public trust in the legitimacy of the outcome. To gather evidence about the quality of elections around the world, in 2012 the Electoral Integrity Project was established as an independent research project based at Harvard and Sydney universities. The results show that experts rated American elections as the worst among all Western democracies. Without reform, these problems risk damaging the legitimacy of American elections—further weakening public confidence in political parties, Congress, and the U.S. government, depressing voter turnout, and exacerbating the risks of mass protests. This book describes several major challenges observed during the 2016 U.S. elections arising from deepening party polarization over basic voting procedures, the serious risks of hacking and weak cyber-security, the consequences of deregulating campaign spending, and lack of professional and impartial electoral management. This book outlines the core concept and measure of electoral integrity, the key yardstick used to evaluate free and fair elections. Evidence from expert and mass surveys demonstrate the extent of problems in American elections. The book shows how these challenges could be addressed through several practical steps designed to improve electoral procedures and practices. If implemented, the reforms will advance free and fair elections, and liberal democracy, at home and abroad.

Este manual de prácticas de laboratorio considera el aspecto experimental del programa de estudios de la asignatura de Bioquímica Estructural de la Licenciatura en Nutrición de la Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco (UJAT). Dicha asignatura es parte del Área de formación Sustantiva Profesional, por lo que brinda los fundamentos teóricos y metodológicos para desarrollarse en el campo profesional. Las prácticas están diseñadas para realizar actividades tanto en el laboratorio como fuera de él. Su realización contribuirá a comprender las propiedades estructurales y químicas básicas de las proteínas y los glúcidos que han permitido un amplio desarrollo tecnológico. El contenido se encuentra directamente vinculado a los objetivos del programa de estudio, dando énfasis en conocer y comprender las aplicaciones en el ámbito clínico y alimentario. Por otro lado, y dado el enfoque de aprendizaje basado en competencias de las asignaturas de la Licenciatura en Nutrición de la UJAT, se ha incluido una novedosa guía de reporte de prácticas donde el alumno describe el proceso de planeación y ejecución de la práctica en tres ámbitos: individual, por equipo y grupal; con el fin de que evalúe su capacidad para: comprender los fundamentos y planear la práctica, organizarse y trabajar en equipo, comprometerse de forma individual en la práctica grupal e integrarse en el desarrollo de la práctica y el análisis de los resultados.

Vibrio parahaemolyticus es la principal causa de gastroenteritis transmitida por mariscos en todo el mundo. La virulencia de V. parahaemolyticus se ha atribuido hasta ahora principalmente a la hemolisina directa termoestable (TDH) y la hemolisina relacionada con TDH (TRH). Recientemente el Sistema de Secreción de tipo III del cromosoma II (T3SS2), el cual codifica para varios efectores, ha sido relacionado con citotoxicidad y enterotoxicidad. Después de la aparición y posterior caída de la cepa pandémica, se han notificado casos de diarrea producidos por cepas clínicas que carecen de los genes tdh, trh y T3SS2 en muchos países, incluido Chile. Estas cepas, llamadas “no toxigénicas”, constituyen el 9-10% de los casos de diarrea a nivel mundial y aunque se han hecho avances en la descripción de los factores de virulencia de V. parahaemolyticus, la capacidad de las cepas no toxigénicas para causar enfermedad no ha sido completamente entendida. El hecho de que los genes tdh y trh se utilizan para estimar la carga de cepas patógenas en los mariscos durante el análisis de riesgo llama la atención sobre cuán fiables son estos análisis para detectar la gran variedad de cepas potencialmente patógenas presentes en las aguas y productos marinos. Por otra parte se conoce que en Vibrio, la evolución de la virulencia, parece estar estrechamente asociada a su capacidad para generar diversidad genética, en parte, a través de la modificación de la expresión génica, aunque mayoritariamente a través de transferencia genética horizontal (HGT). Con base en lo descrito anteriormente, esta propuesta hipotetiza que las cepas no toxigénicas de Vibrio parahaemolyticus han adquirido nuevos factores de virulencia mediante transferencia genética horizontal. Es por ello que el objetivo de esta tesis es: Identificar y caracterizar nuevos factores de virulencia en cepas chilenas no toxigénicas de Vibrio parahaemolyticus adquiridos mediante transferencia génica horizontal. Esta tesis está organizada en tres capítulos, el capítulo 1 comprende el marco teórico, el planteamiento del problema, la hipótesis y los objetivos. El capítulo 2, correspondiente al desarrollo del objetivo 1, en el cual se caracteriza el genoma de seis cepas no toxigénicas de V. parahaemolyticus aisladas del Sur de Chile. Uno de los principales hallazgos de este estudio fue la variabilidad genética de estas cepas al analizar su genoma accesorio. Este análisis mostró además la presencia de nuevas islas genómicas y elementos tipo profagos que codifican toxinas como zonula occludens (Zot) y repeats-in-toxin (RTX), ambas descritas en otros patógenos como V. cholerae donde se consideran factores de virulencia, aunque últimamente se ha descrito que la pérdida de RTX no afecta la virulencia de esta bacteria. En el capítulo 3 y final de esta tesis, se aborda el objetivo 2 que corresponde a la caracterización de posibles nuevos factores de virulencia, en este caso, la toxina Zonula Occludens (Zot). Aunque se sabe que Zot aumenta la permeabilidad epitelial intestinal por interacción con el receptor celular de zonulina PAR2 y esta unión desencadena una cascada de eventos intracelulares que conducen al desensamblaje de las uniones estrechas intercelulares, lo que se ha asociado con la producción de la diarrea en V. cholerae, el potencial patógeno de Zot de V. parahaemolyticus no se ha investigado aún. La cepa clínica PMC53.7, tdh/trh/T3SS2/negativa, resultó ser altamente citotóxica en cultivo celular de Caco-2 y contiene en su genoma accesorio un gen homólogo de zot. Con este antecedente, se caracterizó la toxina Zot en la cepa clínica PMC53.7 de V. parahaemolyticus y sus efectos sobre la barrera epitelial intestinal. El gen zot de PMC53.7 se clonó y se expresó en Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) y los efectos sobre la barrera epitelial intestinal se examinaron usando el modelo celular Caco-2. Se evaluó el cambio en la distribución de las proteínas de transmembrana asociadas a uniones estrechas (ZO-1 y ocludina), y en la distribución de actina en monocapas de Caco-2. Tras el tratamiento con Zot, se observó una modificación de la morfología celular. El cambio en las distribuciones de ocludina y F-actina se observó como una fragmentación de los límites brillantes de las células, con áreas de baja y alta intensidad, lo que indica una pérdida y redistribución de las proteínas asociadas a uniones estrechas. Los resultados de este trabajo sugieren que V. parahaemolyticus Zot puede contribuir a la virulencia de cepas no toxigénicas. En resumen, estos estudios han arrojado información sobre la diversidad de cepas de V. parahaemolyticus del sur del Pacífico, en especial aquellas que no poseen los principales factores de virulencia descritos para este microorganismo. Además, se caracteriza por primera vez una toxina Zot de V. parahaemolyticus en una cepa aislada de un paciente. Finalmente, los ensayos preliminares realizados en cultivo celular demostraron un posible potencial patógeno de esta toxina en la barrera epitelial intestinal.

esistance features a selection of overtly non-conformist positions in the contemporary visual art scene of Albania vis-à-vis the most recent social, political, and economic turmoils in the Western Balkans – a region marked by the dark side of political governances that have remained “democratic” in their outward appearance (especially toward the European Union), while dramatically leaning toward autocratic regimes in the eyes of their own citizens. Regardless of their citizens’ primary interests, and despite some positive signals surfacing in the international media, almost every attempt to establish lasting conditions for democratic governance in the Western Balkans has been shrouded in the veil of profit-driven political scandals, personal greed for more and more power over the people’s rights, and the extinction of public property in pursuit of social elite’s corporate and private interests. Additionally, and more specifically related to Tirana, artists and citizens have, over the years, been involved in various types of revolt, expressing their disagreements with the ongoing destruction of public property in the name of “modernization and development”: a movement led by local political powers through financially and strategically motivated processes of architectural cannibalism – not only at the expense of erasing Albanian cultural heritage or long-term residents’ habitats, but also at the expense of taking human lives under the pretext of “urbanization.” The most obvious instance of this economy of destruction was the complex of buildings linked to the National Theater of Albania in downtown Tirana that has served as a symbolic and material place of citizens’ resistance: for more than two years, together with local artists, they have been opposing the government’s plans to demolish the old complex in order to build a new one – until this finally happened in Spring 2020, in the midst of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic. Rooted in the atmosphere of the National Theater Protests in Tirana, RESISTANCE was conceived in Summer 2019 by ZETA Center for Contemporary Art as the International Artists-in-Residence Program, in cooperation with three partner organizations from Kosovo, Serbia and North Macedonia (Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art in Prishtina; Ilija & Mangelos Foundation in Novi Sad; and Faculty of Things That Can’t Be Learned in Bitola) and supported by Swiss Cultural Fund in Albania, a project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Gradually, the project expanded into an exhibition (Heterotopias of Resistance, curated by Blerta Hoçia and featuring works by Lori Lako, Fatlum Doçi, Edona Kryeziu, Nina Galiç, Darko Vukiç, Nikola Slavevski, and Natasha Nedelkova) and a series of interviews and panel discussions (with contributions by Lindita Komani, Edmond Budina, Ervin Goci, Ergin Zaloshnja, Pleurad Xhafa, Gentian Shkurti, Stefano Romano, Luçjan Bedeni, HAVEIT, Leonard Qylafi, Jonida Gashi, and Fatmira Nikolli). The results of both have been collected and presented in the format of a publication that, besides serving as an indispensable reading material concerning visual arts and politics in contemporary Albania, especially to those abroad, functions by itself as a form of resistance against contagious cultural policies in weak post-socialist “democracies” in Southeastern Europe.

O Cerrado é uma formação vegetacional inexistente em qualquer outro lugar no planeta, é único e predominante na Região Centro Oeste do Brasil. É redundante afirmar que no Cerrado encontramos uma rica flora destacando-se entre as savanas do planeta. É o segundo bioma brasileiro em extensão ocupando entorno de um quarto do território do país. Nele encontra-se um terço da biodiversidade nacional e 5 % da flora e fauna mundial. Grande parte da flora é endêmica o que significa ser de distribuição geográfica restrita, ou seja, existir somente neste bioma. Se as espécies desaparecerem é para sempre. Economicamente se destaca como um representativo centro de produção de commodities como a soja, o milho e o boi. Essas atividades são conduzidas, via de regra, a custas da retirada da vegetação nativa exclusiva, o que ameaça este bioma de extinção. Ademais essas culturas têm raízes superficiais consequentemente quando as chuvas caem, a água não infiltra como deveria. Como efeito com o passar dos tempos, tem reduzida a capacidade de armazenar e de conduzir a água subterrânea para poços e minas, assim as nascentes decrescem, afetando o nível dos aquíferos o que compromete o ciclo hidrológico. O avanço das atividades do agronegócio, eliminando a vegetação dos Cerrados pode, ainda, estar comprometendo a agricultura em suas diferentes formas de produção, a economia, a indústria e o meio ambiente, sobretudo por comprometer o fornecimento de água. Isso desconsiderando o abastecimento público. A água é vital para a vida humana e sua disponibilidade está umbilicalmente associada a presença da vegetação, de árvores. A água depende de árvores para completar seu ciclo. De mais a mais, muitos ignoram que numerosas espécies dos Cerrados fornecem frutos, sementes ou palmitos saborosos e nutritivos com possibilidade de serem economicamente aproveitados seja na indústria alimentícia ou farmacêutica, ou ainda fornecendo frutos in natura como também madeiras ou oferecendo proteção ambiental ou é fonte de alimento para várias espécies de animais silvestres. Os frutos como o araticum (Annona crassiflora Mart.), o pequi (Caryocar brasiliense Camb.), a cagaita (Eugenia dysenterica DC.), o jatobá (Hymenaea stigonocarpa Mart. Ex Hayne), o baru (Dipteryx alata Vog.), a mangaba (Hancornia speciosa Gomes), o buriti (Mauritia flexuosa L), a guariroba (Syagrus oleraceae L.), entre outras, constituem fontes importantes de fibras, proteínas, vitaminas, minerais, ácidos graxos saturados e insaturados presentes em polpas e sementes. Ademais as espécies nativas possuem características sensoriais como cor, sabor e aroma peculiares e penetrantes. Várias plantas são utilizadas em virtude destes atrativos como condimento a exemplo da pimenta-demacaco (Xylopia aromática); para aromatizar como os frutos do murici (Byrsonima crassifolia), na cachaça ou da amburana (Amburana claudii Schwacke &Taub), aromatizante para o fumo ou ainda a mama-cadela (Brosimum gaudichaudii Tréc), cujas raízes também são usadas como aromatizante de tabaco para cachimbo ou cigarro de palha ou artesanal. Concomitantemente muitas espécies além dos frutos fornecem madeiras. Estas madeiras são detentoras de particularidades como cor, textura, dureza e fibras de desenhos exóticos, passíveis de atender a um nicho de mercado sofisticado como o de design de móveis, especialmente no mercado internacional. Similarmente muitas de suas espécies são utilizadas para o fabrico de cosméticos comercializados nacional e internacionalmente, sendo exemplo o buriti. Contudo excetuando-se o pequi, a guariroba e o baru, os demais frutos do Cerrado são explorados apenas por populações tradicionais. O uso sustentável dos recursos naturais necessita combinar ações que proporcionem o desenvolvimento da região, o bem-estar social e a proteção da fauna e da flora. E, ainda, é fundamental como alternativa social e econômica de inclusão e geração de renda para os que dependem de recursos do bioma onde vivem. Neste contexto essa publicação tem a primordial função de aglutinar informações sobre atividades que, de maneira sustentável, sejam a solução para o uso dos recursos naturais desse bioma sob a ótica sócioecológica e socioeconômica. Neste sentido busca, de maneira acessível, apresentar ao público leitor algumas alternativas sustentáveis. Alternativas econômicas de baixo impacto ambiental que possam gerar renda conciliada com a conservação/preservação dos Cerrados. Soluções consideradas tecnologias leves em substituição àquelas empregadas pelo agronegócio que vêm pondo em risco a continuidade deste bioma. Enfim, a valorizar os Cerrados como ambiente de vida e de sobrevivência. Assim serão propostas estratégias, atitudes ou atividades que postas em prática, contribuam para a conservação dos Cerrados, ainda por ser o bioma essencial para o ciclo hidrológico no Brasil Central. As atividades propostas são o extrativismo orientado, o ecoturismo, a agricultura sustentável: agroecologia e a arborização urbana com espécies nativas dos Cerrados. Além de elencar outras possibilidades como a criação de animais silvestres e a apicultura. Essas são alguns entre outros meios de garantir a conservação/preservação deste bioma essencial no ciclo hidrológico e um símbolo cultural goiano, especialmente na gastronomia.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.