‘Ins’ and ‘outs’ of triple therapy

Chronic oral anticoagulant treatment is obligatory in patients (class I) with mechanical heart valves and in patients with atrial fibrillation with CHADS2 score >1. When these patients undergo percutaneous coronary intervention with placement of a stent, there is also an indication for treatment with aspirin and clopidogrel. Unfortunately, triple therapy is known to increase the bleeding risk. For this group of patients, the bottom line is to find the ideal therapy in patients with indications for both chronic anticoagulation therapy and percutaneous intervention to prevent thromboembolic complications such as stent thrombosis without increasing the risk of bleeding. (Neth Heart J 2010;18:444-50.)     

Reading Wacquant as both ‘lumper’ and ‘splitter’

In this short response to Loïc Wacquant's ‘Marginality, Ethnicity and Penality in the Neo-liberal City’, I outline two intellectual conversations that emerge from the author's work. The first develops out of the connections that the author draws between systems of criminal justice and welfare. The second grows out of the disassociation he urges us to see between the logics and trajectories of crime, on the one hand, and criminal justice on the other. I then briefly describe how my own work has been influenced by and contributes to these two ongoing streams of research.     

Structural and Narrative Reconstruction of Rural Residents’ Representations of ‘Nature’, ‘Wildlife’, and ‘Landscape’

The objective of this paper is the structural and narrative reconstruction of representations of ‘nature’, ‘wildlife’ and ‘landscape’, held by rural residents of the Dadia Forest Reserve. Data collection involved in-depth interviews. Employing a social representations’ approach, we recovered representational elements that are expected in the case of rural belief systems, such as negative dispositions towards wolves and foxes, as well as elements of an urban adherence, such as nature’s independence. Representational elements refer to visual aspects of the countryside, which seem compatible with the figurative nucleus of the rural idyll. Concerning ‘wildlife’, residents focused on vultures, which comprise the main tourist attraction of the reserve. Scientific knowledge adds to the complexity of the narrative schema, which corresponds to the representation of ‘wildlife’. Interviewees perceived the rural landscape as an interface between the natural and the human-conditioned environment. Our study shows that interviewees make no reference to environmental conservation or quality of life issues, as it could be expected according to relatively wide definitions of the term ‘environmentalism’. Environmental messages reinforced by ecotourism development seem to be recalled primarily in terms of their compatibility with the perceived economic benefit of local people. Despite ecotourism development, representational elements that diverge from a tourist version of ‘nature’, ‘wildlife’ and ‘landscape’ were not pronounced within rural belief-systems. Further interventions within the study area are needed, in order to address a variety of topics under the environmental conservation discourse and raise the environmental awareness of rural residents.     

‘Classical’ and ‘non-classical’ reproductive steroids in fish

Summary The nature of the steroids secreted by gonads of fish differs significantly from those of the mammals. The classical teleost steroids, oestradiol, testosterone, 11-ketotestosterone and 17,20P, have been measured in a wide variety of teleosts but do not always reflect biological activities. There is increasing evidence that teleost gonads may produce a number of non-classical steroids which may play an important role in their reproductive biology. Such products include metabolites reduced at C5 to 5 or 5, at C3 to 3 or 3, or hydroxylated at 6-, 7-, or 21. Conjugation, as either glucuronides or sulphates, may contribute either to localization of action within the gonad or to production of pheromones during the immediate pre-spawning period. Although it is often possible only to measure the steroids for which assays are readily available, it is important to recognize that there may be production of steroids that are not detected by such assays, but which nevertheless play a major role in reproductive activity. In evolutionary terms, the teleost hydroxylases probably originated in the very early fishes and show parallels with their analogues in amphibians and mammals. Gene sequencing may reveal a possible common ancestor for all vertebrate 6, 7 and 11-hydroxylases.     

Morpho-Physiological and Antioxidant Traits of Marigold cv. ‘Sparse Petal’ and ‘Compact Petal’ as Influenced by Irrigation Intervals

The effect of irrigation intervals was studied on physiological, morphological, and antioxidant traits of two marigold (Calendula officinalis L.) cultivars in Karaj, Iran, in a split-plot experiment based on a randomized complete block design with three replications. The experimental treatments included irrigation at three levels of I1 (irrigation interval of 3 days), I2 (irrigation interval of 5 days), and I3 (irrigation interval of 7 days) as the main plot and cultivar at two levels of V1 (cv. ‘sparse petal’) and V2 (cv. ‘compact petal’) as the sub-plot. The results based on the comparison of the means showed that the increase in irrigation interval from 3 to 7 days decreased the leaf area index, crop growth rate, relative growth rate, and net assimilation rate by 73.53, 85.76, 93.47, and 94.81%, respectively. It also decreased the flower yield, plant height, flower number, and leaf number by 71.92, 41.84, 99.31, and 58.67%, respectively. The interaction between irrigation and cultivar revealed that I3V1 had the highest total phenol content (3013.59 g gallic acid 100 g^?1 tissue) and antioxidant capacity (60.8%). It can be inferred that the treatment of I1 and cv. ‘compact petal’ give the best results for flower yield and physiological and morphological traits, and the treatment of I3 and both cultivars provide the best results for antioxidant traits in the climatic conditions of the Karaj region.

     

Culturalizing politics,hyper-politicizing ‘culture’: ‘White’ vs. ‘Black Turks’ and the making of authoritarian populism in Turkey

This paper focuses on the uses and abuses of two terms, ‘White’ and ‘Black Turk’, which have been significant in the ways modern Turkish society and national identity have been defined and contested in recent decades. Initially emerging in social analysis in the 1990s, ‘White Turk’ was a metaphor for and critique of the class culture, subjectivity and worldviews of the ‘new middle classes’ in a period of rapid integration to neoliberalism and globalized capitalism. Over time, both White and Black Turks have come to be used as part of a politics of identity and a politics of authenticity to characterize who are seen as the ‘authentic self’ and inauthentic others of national identity and to assert different visions for the future of Turkish society. White Turk has been adopted as an identity by outspoken members of the media and business elite, whereas its binary opposite, Black Turk, has been appropriated by Islamist politicians of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a metaphor to characterize the marginalization and purported oppression of their conservative Muslim constituency. As White and Black Turks were adopted as self-proclaimed identities, they provided a basis for a culturalist depiction of Turkish society, contributing over time to an increasingly divisive politics. Even though the AKP initially used the reference to White and Black Turks to appeal to specific demands for inclusion, as it increased its grip on power, it also (hyper)politicized the terms to articulate nativist claims to authenticity. In recent years, this nativist populism has been used to justify increasing authoritarianism and to delegitimize belonging and political participation of those deemed inauthentic others of the body politics.     

Rethinking the ‘everyday’ in ‘ethnicity and everyday life’

While ‘ethnicity and everyday life’ is a familiar collocation, sociologists concerned with racism and ethnicity have not engaged very much with the extensive body of social theory that takes the ‘everyday’ as its central problematic. In this essay, I consider some of the ways in which the sociology of the everyday might be of use to those concerned with investigating ethnicity and racism. For its part, however, the sociology of the everyday has tended to be remarkably blind to the role played by racism and racialization in the modern world. It is thus no less crucial to consider how the experiences of racialized groups might help us rethink influential accounts of the everyday. To this end, I provide a discussion of pioneering texts by C. L. R. James and W. E. B. du Bois, both of whom were driven by their reflections on racism and resistance to recognize the everyday not as an unremarked context, but as, precisely, a problematic one.     

Combining ability and maternal effects in Brassica campestris L. var. ‘yellow sarson’

Summary A diallel analysis of combining ability, including maternal effects, genotype X environment interaction and the progress under selection, is reported in three selected crosses of Brassica campestris L. var. yellow sarson, involving 15 types, including 10 four-valved and 5 two-valved types from different parts of India. Twelve characters, including oil content, were studied in the f₁ generation.The investigation has revealed only marginal superiority of f₁'s over the parents for most of the characters related to yield. There was no relation between heterozygosity and stability of performance over environments for yield or its components or for oil content. Substantial maternal effects were observed which also interacted with environments. Creation of variation for primary and secondary branches would be essential for changing yield level in yellow sarson. The presence of limited additive variation available for selection for yield components should be augmented by biparental mating the early segregating generations to break linkages, and was demonstrated by the recombinants obtained when this method was adopted.The magnitude of genotype — environment interactions in this study, as compared with the total genetic components for yield, oil content, number of siliquae on main axis and presence of large reciprocal variances in relation to general and specific combining ability variances for practically all characters, and the large interaction of , narrowed down the expected effectiveness of selection.Biparental mating in the three best crosses yielded three new recombinants outyielding the best check T 10 by the margins of 14%, 39% and 15%, respectively, in the yield trial. These recombinants had more primary branches and secondary branches, larger main axes and more siliquae with an increased number of seeds per siliqua, than any of the F₁'s in this study.     

Hennigian Phylogenetic Systematics and the ‘Groundplan’ vs. ‘Post-Groundplan’ Approaches: A Reply to Kukalová-Peck

The recent contribution by Jarmila Kukalová-Peck on Hennigian phylogenetics and hexapod limb evolution is critically evaluated.

A Sense of Belonging and Exclusion: ‘Touchability’ and ‘Untouchability’ in Tamil Nadu

In India, touch is a prime marker of status and social relations. Those who are impure are ‘untouchable’,1 The terms ‘Untouchable’ and ‘Untouchability’ have been abandoned due to the humiliating meaning these terms confer, therefore I use them in inverted commas. The politically correct and common terms today are Scheduled Castes, in short sc, or Dalits, or sometimes Harijan. I use them here synonymously. but those who are of a relatively higher purity are also, depending on the context, either ‘untouchable’ or ‘touchable’ only under certain fixed rules. In this paper, I will explore the contexts in which body contact and touch can be part of personal relations. I describe how these body contacts signify important social relations and establish community identity. Further, I will analyse how patterns of body contact on the one hand change during childhood, and on the other hand produce changes in the status of a social persona. The last point to be investigated is the meaning of touch as a sign for public representations.     

Efficient plant regeneration system for New Guinea Impatiens (Impatiens hawkeri W. Bull) CV. ‘Violet’ and ‘Scarlet Bronze Leaf’

Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC) - New Guinea Impatiens (Impatiens hawkeri W. Bull) is an eye-popping landscaping plant of bright and colorful blooms. A highly efficient in vitro plant...     

Acylated anthocyanins and flavonols from purple flowers of Dendrobium cv. ‘Pompadour’

Two rare anthocyanins, cyanidin 3-(6-malonylglucoside)-7,3′-di(6-sinapylglucoside) and the demalonyl derivative, were characterised as the purple floral pigments of Dendrobium cv. ‘Pompadour’. Nine known flavonol glycosides were also identified, including the 3-rutinoside-7-glucosides of kaempferol and quercetin. One new glycoside was detected: the ferulyl ester of quercetin 7-rutinoside-7-glucoside. These flavonoid patterns are typical for plants in the family Orchidaceae.     

‘In vitro’ and ‘in situ’ decomposition of nuisance macroalgae Cladophora glomerata and Pilayella littoralis

The decomposition of two macroalgal species Cladophora glomerata (CHLOROPHYTA) and Pilayella littoralis (PHAEOPHYTA) was studied in the laboratory and field conditions. These species are known to cause the extensive macroalgal blooms in the whole coastal range of the Baltic Sea. The objective of the experiments was to determine decomposition rates of the macroalgae, follow the changes in tissue nutrient content and validate the role of benthic invertebrates in this process. In the laboratory conditions, the differences in the decomposition rates of the algae were mainly due to the oxygen conditions. The weight loss of C. glomerata was slightly higher in anaerobic conditions than in aerobic conditions. If 99% of initial dry weight of P. littoralis was lost in aerobic conditions then only 20% was lost in anaerobic conditions. In general, the loss of phosphorus and nitrogen in algal tissues followed the weight loss. As an exception, the amount of nitrogen changed very little during the decomposition of C. glomerata. In field conditions, the photosynthetic activity exceeded the decomposition rate of C. glomerata at lower temperatures in spring. The decomposition of P. littoralis was estimated at 49% of its initial dry weight. The addition of benthic invertebrates had no effect on the decomposition process. In summer, the decomposition rates were estimated at 65% for C. glomerata and 68% for P. littoralis being in the same order of magnitude as observed in laboratory conditions. If the decomposition of C. glomerata was faster at the end of the experiment, the most significant losses of weight of P. littoralis took place during the first 2 weeks of deployment. Idotea baltica significantly contributed to the loss of C. glomerata. The decomposition rate of P. littoralis was reduced by the presence of Mytilus edulis and increased by Gammarus oceanicus.     

Biosynthesis of S-associated proteins following self- and cross-pollinations in Brassica campestris L. var. ‘T. 15’

Summary Homozygote plants for the (S) self-incompatibility gene have been produced in Brassica campestris L. var. T 15. Stigmas from plants designated S ₁ S ₁, S ₂ S ₂ and S ₄ S ₄ were extracted and their protein separated on an isoelectric focusing mini-gel. Differences were observed between proteins from stigmas of the three S-homozygous groups: S-genotype specific proteins were determined for S ₁ S ₁ and S ₂ S ₂ stigmas that were absent in the self-compatible S ₄ S ₄ stigmas. Carbon dioxide (CO₂), which is known to block the self-incompatibility reaction in Brassica, was applied to [³⁵S]-methionine unpollinated, self- and cross-pollinated stigmas to observe the effect of external CO₂ on the synthesis of these S-associated proteins. The results indicate that pollination triggers a dramatic reduction in protein synthesis in general and in the synthesis of S₂-associated protein after self-pollination in particular.     

Micropropagation of Calluna vulgaris cv. ‘H.E. Beale’

Axillary shoot producing cultures were obtained from microcuttings and shoot tips of Calluna vulgaris cv. H.E. Beale. For cultures derived from microcuttings the highest multiplication rate of 38 shoots (5 mm or longer) was obtained on a reduced salt medium with the addition of 0.5 mgl^-1 2-isopentenyladenine (2iP) during an 8 week subculture. For shoot tip derived cultures 0.2 mgl^-1 6-benzyladenine (BA) was the best cytokinin and led to a multiplication rate of 26 for a 6 week subculture. The addition of 1 g/l casein hydrolysate to a multiplication medium enhanced shoot proliferation in presence of 0.5 mgl^-1 BA.Despite various auxin treatments shoots formed no roots in vitro but rooted readily if transferred to a peat substrate ex vitro. A high rooting percentage (80%) was also obtained with shoots taken from the end of a multiplication phase and rooted directly. An additional subculture on low auxin containing media before transfer to peat substrate is recommended because the shoot condition can be improved in this way. A high number of rooted plantlets was produced, so the methods described will allow mass propagation.     

Micropropagation of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Vitis vinifera</Emphasis> L. cv. ‘Malagouzia’ and ‘Xinomavro’

The effects of six basal media on in vitro shoot proliferation of the greek grapevines Vitis vinifera L. cv. ‘Malagouzia’ and ‘Xinomavro’ were investigated. Galzy and Zlenco proved to be the most effective for ‘Malagouzia’ and ‘Xinomavro’, respectively. If only BA was present in the medium, shoot development was poor and the plantlets were chlorotic. When the medium was supplemented with BA and NAA, growth was enhanced. The best ratio (in μM) of growth regulators was 0.5/0.3 for ‘Malagouzia’, and 0.1/0.03 for ‘Xinomavro’, which resulted in the highest number of microshoots per explant and greatest proliferation rate. The development of ‘Malagouzia’ and ‘Xinomavro’ explants at 21±2 and 26±2°C was also investigated, revealing the higher temperature to be more effective. Regarding rooting, 0.5 μM IBA improved root formation at 26°C for ‘Malagouzia’ and 0.5 μM IBA at 21°C for ‘Xinomavro’. Moreover, 0.5 μM IBA resulted in a higher rooting percentage (>95%) and proved to be more beneficial for the overall morphological appearance of the plantlets of ‘Malagouzia’. After acclimatization, survival of microshoots cultivated in media with IBA was higher than those in NAA.