Ensuring the success of IPBES: between interface,market place and parliament

After years of protracted negotiations, the Intergovernmental science–policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was finally established in 2012. One year on and we have already witnessed two plenary sessions which have, so far, defined procedures for nominating members for observatory and decision-making panels as well as experts and knowledge holders for the compilation of reports. The sessions also determined the work programme for the next 4 years (2014–2018). According to its internally formulated criteria, the success of IPBES will be determined by how credible, relevant and legitimate its institution and operations are. More specifically, these criteria suggest that success is contingent on the transparency of the processes within IPBES, the autonomy and quality of scientific knowledge, and the early integration of different stakeholders and diverse knowledge and value systems. Currently, we see IPBES encompassing open and integrative approaches as well as providing a convenient trading floor for particulate and opaque agendas formulated elsewhere. In any case, without the backing of large and effective publics the policy–support function of IPBES will be limited. Local capacity building and supporting communities to actively participate in research projects dealing with biodiversity are essential for furthering a practical and emancipatory understanding of the relationship between political and economic decisions, the state and functioning of biodiversity and ecosystems, and current and future human well-being.     

Inhibition of α-, β- and γ-carbonic anhydrases from the pathogenic bacterium Vibrio cholerae with aromatic sulphonamides and clinically licenced drugs – a joint docking/molecular dynamics study

The binding mode of aromatic sulphonamides and clinically licenced drugs to the three carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1) isoforms from the human pathogen V. cholerae was here thouroghly characterised by a joint docking and molecular dynamics in silico protocol. In fact, VchCA, VchCAβ, and VchCAγ are crucial in the pathogen life cycle and growth and represent innovative targets to fight V. cholerae proliferation overcoming the spreading chemoresistance to the available drugs. A set of 40 sulphonamides/sulfamates VchCAs inhibitors was studied using the proteins homology built 3 D models unveiling the key and stable interactions responsible for a potent CA inhibition. This study has the aim to offer insights and guidelines for the future rational design of potent and selective inhibitors targeting CA isoforms from V. cholerae or other human pathogens.     

Expansion of retinal stem cells and their progeny using cell microcarriers in a bioreactor

Blindness as a consequence of degenerative eye diseases (e.g., age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa) is a major health problem and numbers are expected to increase by up to 50% by 2020. Unfortunately, adult mouse and human retinal stem cells (RSCs), unlike fish and amphibians , are quiescent in vivo and do not regenerate following disease or injury. To replace lost cells, we used microcarriers (MCs) in a suspension stirring bioreactor to help achieve numbers suitable for differentiation and transplantation. We achieved a significant 10-fold enrichment of RSC yield compared to conventional static culture techniques using a combination of FACTIII MCs and relative hypoxia (5%) inside the bioreactor. We found that hypoxia (5% O₂) was associated with better RSC expansion across all platforms; and this can be attributed to hypoxia-induced increases in survival and/or symmetric division of stem cells. In the future, we will target the differentiation of RSCs and their progeny toward rod and cone photoreceptor phenotypes using FACTIII MCs inside bioreactors to expand their populations in order to produce the large numbers of cells needed for transplantation.     

The datafication of nature: data formations and new scales in natural history

In this essay, I consider the scales and connections lost and gained as natural history adopts digital data infrastructures. On the basis of ongoing work in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, I track the relations between insect specimens and their material and digital informational ecologies. Using Latour's notion of the ‘circulating reference’, I follow the insect specimens as they make their way into taxonomies, databases, and digitization apparatuses. In focusing on human-data mediations in museum practices of ordering, describing, and distributing specimens, I show how the datafication of nature makes present conventionally dissociated contexts, including German colonialism. Proposing the concept of a data formation, I suggest that ethnographers have much to contribute in bringing forward the sociocultural and historical specificities and contingencies within data.     

What if Fleming had not discovered penicillin?

What would have happened had Alexander Fleming not discovered penicillin in 1928? Perhaps the obvious answer is that, someone else would have discovered penicillin during 1930s and the Oxford group, would still have purified it sometime in the early 1940s. Here, however, in this counterfactual account of the penicillin story, it is argued that without Fleming, penicillin might still be undiscovered and the antibiotic age would never have dawned. As a result, many of the recent developments in medicine, such as organ transplantation, might have been delayed or, at best, made more hazardous. Penicillin might have come onto the scene a few years later but, had Fleming overlooked the discovery, it seems certain that penicillin would not have saved countless Allied lives, during and after D-Day. Instead of having enjoyed fifty and more years of the antibiotic age, it is argued here, that we would have had to rely upon highly developed sulphonamides, so-called “supasulfas”, and other chemically-derived antibacterial drugs. Indeed, it might be the case that, even well into this new millennium, the antibiotic age has yet to dawn, and medicine is still waiting for someone to chance upon penicillin. Here we discuss what might have happened had Fleming not discovered penicillin and come to the conclusion that the medical armoury available today would have been far different and might have relied solely upon highly developed varieties of sulphonamides or similar, synthetic, non-antibiotic antibacterial agents.     

The influence of zinc,copper, iron and manganese on the mycological production of citric acid in surface cultures

Summary When analytical reagent grade chemicals were used in the preparation of the fermentation medium for citric acid production, enrichment with zinc was found to be essential for establishing, good acid production addition of manganese on the other hand, was found to be inhibitory. Slight inhibition or no effect was obtained on addition of copper and iron respectively.A Greeting to the 70th Birthday of Prof. Dr. A. Rippel-Baldes.