#spatial stratification

[synchodai]

Arcane S2 wasn't as good because it wasn't about air

The common critique of Arcane season two was that "it didn't let the story breathe." I'm going to one-up that and state that season one set up an entire story about breathing and forgot that in season two.

Yes, yes, Arcane was a story about Piltover oppressing the undercity, but unlike a lot of other stories about social stratification, Arcane was very explicit about the methods Piltover uses to disenfranchise Zaun. Season one was clearly a story about eco-apartheid maintained through extractivist practices.

WHAT IS ECO-APARTHEID?

Ecological apartheid (also known as enviromental racism) is a form of disenfranchising and spatially separating a class of people through pollution, exploitation, and abuse of their local environment.

[E]nvironmental apartheid was largely instituted through rural marginalization, the use of rural space as an environmental means of marginalization... - Environmental apartheid: Eco-health and rural marginalization in South Africa

Topside and the undercity are basically one nation state with a blindingly stark fence between them. Piltover and Zaun are simultaneously connected and separated by the Bridge of Progress. Progress unites them and alienates them from one another. Progress is why Piltover is wealthy and clean, and it is why Zaun is impoverished and polluted. It is was on the Bridge of Progress that Silco incited the riot that led to Vi and Powder's orphaning and Vander's betrayal. It's where Ekko and Jinx have their standoff, and where the Hextech core is exchanged. In other words, progress is a border.

WHAT IS EXTRACTIVISM?

Prior to the proliferation of shimmer and the chembarons, industry in the undercity appears to be heavily centralized around one thing — fissure mining. Vi and Powder's parents used to be miners along with Vander and Silco. Jayce and Vi visit one of these mines and she explains the masks the workers use. Oh, and let's not forget the children don't have to yearn for the mines when they're dying in the mines!

The Zaunites' livelihood being dependant on the extraction of natural resources for the benefit of the Piltovans is what is known as extractivism — the exploitation of a resource-rich land and its people by a separate "global North."

In practice, extractivism has been a mechanism of colonial and neocolonial plunder and appropriation. This extractivism, which has appeared in different guises over time, was forged in the exploitation of the raw materials essential for the industrial development and prosperity of the global North. - Extractivism and neoextractivism: two sides of the same curse

The "North," in this case, clearly being Piltover. The resources being abused and exploited here aren't only the fissure mines, but also the bodies of the workers and those born around them. Viktor's illness, for example, is a product of growing up around the gaseous waste of the fissure mines. The Zaunites take the brunt of the side-effects of the pollution so that the topsiders don't have to. The "dregs" are kept below while materials, both people and things, that are deemed useful get to rise to the top. The processing of raw materials and shipping happens in Piltover, so it's the Piltovans who get a final say on the profits.

Silco and the chembarons establish their power by creating an industry that operates outside of fissure mining that doesn't rely on the patronage of the global North. Needless to say, drug dealing isn't exactly a noble trade, but extraction, processing, and distribution are mainly controlled and operated by Zaunites, which allows them a source of wealth and power that they can leverage against Piltover. To use a more recognizable phrase, they own the means of shimmer production.

I find it fascinating that shimmer is made by killing innocent underground creatures. Cannibalizing your own kind for a temporary boost of strength that eventually turns the user into a monster? It's a poignant metaphor about the infighting of not just the chembarons' gangs but of oppressed groups in general. And while shimmer offers power and brings in wealth, that's not what the undercity truly needs and only corrupts it even further.

Nah, the show has been very clear that what Zaun needs is breathable air.

SEASON 2 FORGOT ABOUT AIR

Even outside of the air pollution caused by fissure mining, the theme of breathing and air is everywhere in season one. Ekko and the Firelights' community is built around a tree — the clean air it provides is the reason they've been able to sustain themselves. It is considered an oasis in polluted Zaun. Jinx's is often heralded by brightly colored smoke, and the way she signals to Violet is through a flare that emits it. Silco's altercation with Vander involves him almost drowning — Vander literally choking the air out of him. Silco, in reponse to this traumatic event, teaches Jinx to willingly submerge herself in a place without air by baptizing her in the same filthy water he was choked in.

In other words, air is life and purpose. Zaun's aesthetics are defined by gas masks and smoke. Meanwhile, the scenes in Piltover are clean and clear. Ekko and the Firelights' tree represented hope and the possibility of clean air in Zaun. Viktor was similarly associated to flowers that grew in the underground, symbolizing how beautiful things can live even in the harshest circumstances.

Environmental degradation, more specifically air pollution, is the raison d'être of topside-undercity conflict. Silco says as much when he threatens the other chembarons and reminds them of why he's in charge.

Have you forgotten where we came from? The mines they had us in? Air so thick it clogs your throat — stuck in your eyes. I pulled you all up from the depths, offered you a taste of topside and fresh air. I gave you life. Purpose. But you've grown fat and complacent, too much time in the sun. We came from a world where there was never enough to go around. That is why we fight. Do you remember? - The Boy Savior, Arcane S01E07

But by the second and third acts of season two, pollution may not as well exist in Zaun. How does Viktor's commune plant its flowers and grow its fruits? Does the Firelights' tree ever get cured of its corruption? Did everyone forget that the undercity is literally suffocating? Seriously, why is Ekko's storyline with the tree never resolved? Why give Jinx that monologue about a wispy goddess of air the fissurefolk pray to and never go anywhere with it?

JINX SHOULD HAVE BEEN ASSOCIATED TO JANNA

The Grey presented an opportunity for Jinx to be the revolutionary hero Arcane wanted her to be. The enforcers have clearly aligned themselves with pollution and poison, and Jinx could have been the herald of their wind goddess come to answer the people's prayers for relief. But the people don't rally behind Jinx because of her association to Janna, clean air, or her repelling the invading cops using bioweapons.

I firmly believe that Jinx being a symbol of the revolution because she blew up a government building is missing a few steps. She'll get radicals who already hated Piltover behind her, sure, but the everyday Zaunite would more likely blame her for causing chaos and bringing trouble to their streets. Because the average person doesn't really care who's on the council or if a politician so far from them dies. But they do care if the cops are suddenly at their door with tear gas because an extremist junkie decided to commit arson.

The first act of season two had me very optimistic that the show was picking up where it left off with its enviromental themes. The enforcers use The Grey, polluted air, to surpress dissent and hunt down Jinx. Jinx fights back under a mural of Janna, the goddess of clean air. Her plan involves her using air to push back The Grey and send the gust up to Piltover. After being actively gassed by the enforcers, Jinx and her association to colorful wind becomes a symbol of hope and revolution to the people of the undercity.

Except that's not what happens. The Grey is only shown affecting targeted criminals with no collateral damage to civilians despite it being deployed all over the trenches. The gusts of wind Jinx pushes up to Piltover don't make topsiders experience the air pollution Zaunites suffer. Instead, it just midly inconveniences them with paint splatters. In the end, The Grey is forgotten and has nothing to do with their fight in front of Janna's mural. Caitlyn gets a promotion despite gassing the entire underground with nothing to show for it, and the undercity idolizes Jinx despite her being the reason they were gassed in the first place.

ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION IS INTERPERSONAL RESTORATION

Unlike in the game, Arcane chose topside and the undercity to be originally established as one city — and I don't think that was done without reason. The nation of Zaun and its identity is established as a reaction to the suffering of those underground. A community developed centered around helping one another cope and survive through the pollution. In short, Piltover created Zaun.

Thus, the interplay between Piltover and Zaun extended to all plotlines and the relationships they explored and developed. Jinx and Vi, Vi and Caitlynn, Viktor and Jayce, Ekko and Heimerdinger — these are all relationships that reflect the tension between Zaun and Piltover. Family torn apart by civil war, bitter ex lovers, different ideological approaches to scientific advancement, intuitive inventiveness and practiced genius. Their relationships are born from a common desire and degrade because of that looming border inflicted by the pursuit of progress.

Piltover and Zaun is a single house fractured because of how it threw all its detritus in the basement as it sought to build a tower that will reach the skies. The whole building is threatening to crumble, especially now that someone threw a bomb at it like in the finale of season one. The status quo Arcane and we as a globalized eco-apartheid have is extremely precarious as is any foundation built on abuse and exploitation. A lot of people will cheer on the Jinxes who don't care so much about fixing it than they do burning it all down to express their understandable rage and grief, but that doesn't really fix the problem of having breathable air, does it?

Unfortunately, we'll never know how the show will wrap up the Zaunite plight because it was all but forgotten in season 2. The problem of Zaun was never that they needed to evolve or be perfect — it's that their environment and the people by extension were being suffocated.

In my perfect world, the finale would have addressed the lack of light and clean air in the underground. It would have mirrored how some bodies and relationships can never truly fully recover the damage that has been done. As in real life, restoration is not a substitute for not doing harm in the first place. But it could have ended with a hopeful message that burning it down and running away isn't the answer either.

When Viktor was healing Vander and decided that, despite the unprecedented effort and time, his natural, non-weaponized humanity was worth saving because of how much he means to his local community, I thought that was what they were going for. Alas, they didn't let the show breathe.

[machine-saint]

Certainly. Here's a dense, leftist-theoretical argument in three paragraphs linking playing music out loud on the subway to colonialism:

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Playing music aloud in public, particularly in enclosed, shared environments like the subway, exemplifies a microcosmic enactment of settler-colonial logics of spatial dominance and epistemic imposition. It is not merely a personal act of expression; it is a performative assertion of auditory sovereignty over communal space, wherein one individual or group imposes their sonic regime upon others without consent. This dynamic mirrors the colonial imperative to overwrite Indigenous soundscapes, knowledge systems, and modes of being with hegemonic structures that center the colonizer’s sensibilities. In this way, the act reproduces colonial violence by subordinating pluralistic subjectivities to a dominant, unilateral aesthetic expression, often coded through capitalist, patriarchal, or ethnonational sound forms.

Moreover, this behavior embodies the privatization of public space under late capitalism, where the neoliberal subject externalizes their commodified identity—through curated playlists or aggressive genre signaling—as a tool of social stratification. The subway, historically a site of forced convergence across class and race lines, becomes a contested battleground where the imposition of sound functions as a soft weapon of territorialization. Much like the colonial project justified itself under the guise of "civilizing" or "improving" the Other, playing music aloud asserts an unspoken logic that one's taste, cultural capital, or affective state deserves primacy, regardless of the contextual or communal implications. It erodes the possibility of collective harmony by substituting consent with domination.

Finally, we must understand this phenomenon through the framework of affective colonialism: the colonization not only of land and labor but of mood, atmosphere, and psychological space. The sensory saturation of the subway through uninvited sound becomes an occupation of the auditory commons, mirroring the way colonial regimes occupied and restructured indigenous ecologies. This forced listening replicates extractive paradigms where one's emotional bandwidth is mined, where rest, reflection, or resistance are interrupted by compulsory consumption. Thus, playing music aloud in public is not neutral or benign—it is an ideological act that reiterates colonial patterns of erasure, imposition, and dispossession at the level of everyday life.

---

Let me know if you'd like a version with different political emphasis or tone.

[fatehbaz]

Today's environments of racialized confinement built on yesterday's colonial plantation.

Excerpt:

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[I]t was not simply the enclosing of Malaya's landscape that led to the conditions, framework, and systems of power [...]. [While] enclosure [...] functioned [...] to map and codify the landscape but also to dispossess [...], confinement worked to separate those groups into narrowly prescribed spatial categories that were [...] policed by the state. In the case of Malaya, this separation was governed through race. [...] British administrators [...] weaponized [this policy] [...] with the resettlement of hundreds of thousands [...] into so-called new villages during the emergency period [in the 1950s] [...]. [T]hough British actions during the emergency certainly accelerated forms of confinement [...], the policies and ideas that shaped the creation of these spaces emerged and evolved over the course of the [earlier] colonial period in Malaya. The spatiality of [confinement] [...], in other words, did not simply emerge out of new Cold War military strategies, but was rather built over a geography of confinement established long before the 1940s and 1950s. [...]

The rubber industry, which barely existed at the turn of the twentieth century, quickly became Malaya's primary export commodity by the end of World War One [...]. By 1922, Malaya had over 2,200,000 acres of rubber planted [...]. [F]oreign owned [plantation] estates recruited large numbers of migrant workers from South Asia. Initially brought to Malaya under repressive indentured labor policies [...] [b]etween 1860 and 1957, an estimated four million South Asians traveled to Malaya [...]. [M]obility was a defining characteristic of the plantation labor regime [...]. [T]he infrastructure, living arrangements, and social amenities within the plantation were minutely planned exercises in social control and stratification [...] prescribed along racial and caste lines [...]. The Malayan emergency began in 1948. Following [popular outrage against British plantation managers] [...], the colonial government in Malaya declared a state of emergency across the colony [...] that would last for over a decade. [...] [T]he British colonial state accelerated forms of territorialization and land parcelization in Malaya during the emergency period [as Britain mobilized to crack down on leftist and anticolonial sympathizers].

These efforts [...] involved the complete reimagining and remapping of Malaya's landscape and social geography [...].

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The British undertook this spatial reordering in a number of different ways. One involved the creation of 'White' and 'Black' areas throughout the country. In 'Black' areas, which in early days of the emergency denoted all territory in the colony, people were subject to curfews, food restrictions, and travel bans, including in urban spaces such as Kuala Lumpur and Penang. [...] [B]ut the chief way that the British colonial state manipulated the region's natural and social environment was through its policy of resettlement. Resettlement, which emerged beginning in 1949, was primarily - though not exclusively - directed towards Malaya's large population of Chinese ‘squatters’ [...]. By 1945, [...] an estimated 400,000 Chinese squatters lived in the colony. [...] [T]he British government [...] began the process of forcibly resettling the country's rural Chinese population [...] closer to existing colonial infrastructures such as railways, roads, and rubber estates - where they could be more easily watched and controlled. These new spaces [...] became the centerpiece of Britain's [...] efforts in Malaya [...]. [M]ost new villages were built utilizing a particular planning style that maximized the security of sites and ensured the constant surveillance and policing of its inhabitants. Villages had a perimeter lined with double barbed wire fencing and lighting, guarded entrances, [...] and a police station [...]. Inhabitants of new villages were subject to strict curfews and regular bodily inspections [...].

[These 'White'/'Black' and 'new village' spaces] were not the only methods [of] resettlement or spatial confinement deployed by British forces in the 1950s. In addition to the estimated nearly 450 new villages that British forces established in Malaya, there were also hundreds of so-called 'regrouping areas' created in the colony [...]. These regrouping areas, which included 'labor regrouping areas' as well as 'regrouped Malay kampongs', involved the resettling of Malaya's non-Chinese rural dwellers - especially those within the Indian and Malay communities - into newly constructed spaces. [...] [S]ome of these sites were simply efforts to resettle a commercial firms' working population - for example, moving workers living off-site [...] to 'company housing' on company property [...]. Despite this, the scale of regrouping efforts was noteworthy. In 1954, [...] in addition to the 68 new villages established by Johore by that time, there existed 87 'regrouped Malay kampongs' in the state. In neighboring Pahang, the numbers were even higher. In addition to eighteen 'labour regroupments', there were another 75 'regrouped Malay kampongs' [...] as well as 64 new villages. [...]

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[S]imilar to how spaces like Malay reservations and rubber estates operated in the early colonial period, British agents designed emergency spatial typologies to resettle, confine, and separate the population along racial lines. While Malaya's large Chinese population was primarily resettled in new villages, for instance, spaces such as regrouped Malay kampongs were expressly devoted to the resettlement of the region's Malay communities, while residents of South Asian descent, many of whom worked in the rubber industry, were largely resesttled within or near their places of work in labor regroupment areas. [...]

[A] most striking feature of this new spatial environment [...] [is that] [s]paces such as new villages and regrouping areas [...] were built along familiar pathways and corridors of foreign occupation in the colony, closely mirroring the same [...] geographies that emerged in the early colonial period. [...] [E]mergency spaces such as new villages and regrouping areas were built alongside or on top of the region's large-scale rubber estates, which had emerged in the region [during British colonization] prior to World War Two and that, on a broad scale, had introduced foreign structures of power into areas under 'indirect' colonial rule. This mapping on of sites of confinement and enclosure is significant. While foreign commercial enterprises utilized the introduction of new land laws to occupy Malay's interior [prior to formal colonial annexation] and to install repressive sites of commodity extraction and labor exploitation in the early twentieth century, these same locations became the spatial foundation for later emergency efforts to resettle Malaya's population [...]. In other words, at the same time that British officials during the emergency were accelerating notions of social engineering and policies of confinement adopted from the plantation economy, they were also using the geography of the rubber industry to reimagine and reorganize the spatiality of Malaya on a country-wide scale. [...]

The emergence and expansion of enclosure spaces - whereby the land was surveyed, mapped, and set aside for certain purposes [plantation labor, industrial extraction, and colonial administrative rule] - and confinement spaces - whereby the region's population was separated [...] - meant that, over time, Malaya's social and economic geography became one defined by partition and separation [...].

Colonial-era land policies and spatial typologies have continued to impact life in the contemporary world [...].

---

End quote.

Text above by: David Baillargeon. "Spaces of occupation: Colonial enclosure and confinement in British Malaya". Journal of Historical Geography 73, pages 24-35. July 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Italicized first sentence/heading in this post added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[rc11yhc]

Airbnb's spatial interventions don't just change the way houses are used; they deeply reshape the social fabric of urban space in two ways in particular:

Issue 1: Horizontal Segregation

With the expansion of Airbnb, the city centre of Athens has been gradually occupied by short-term tourists, while long-term local residents have been forced to move to the periphery due to rising rents and declining amenities and urban quality.

As residents are 'pushed out', the downtown neighborhoods begin to undergo a functional transformation - lifestyle services (e.g. supermarkets, schools, community clinics) are gradually replaced by tourist-oriented businesses (e.g. cafes, souvenir stores, bars).

Issue 2: Vertical Segregation

Within a typical Polykatoikia (multi-family house), the higher floors usually have good light and views and are better suited for short-term rental housing, prioritized by landlords for Airbnb use.

In contrast, the lower floors may be rented out for long periods of time to less well-off residents, or even left vacant or used for storage or temporary purposes.

There is a “stratification” of spatial quality and occupancy rights within the same building, resulting in “vertical inequality” within the building.

[willyskristina]

Diagnostic Electrophysiology Catheters Market

Diagnostic Electrophysiology Catheters Market Size, Share, Trends: Medtronic plc Leads

Integration of AI and Machine Learning in EP Procedures Enhances Diagnostic Accuracy

Market Overview:

The global Diagnostic Electrophysiology Catheters Market is projected to develop at an 8.5% CAGR from 2024 to 2031. North America currently dominates the market, accounting for the vast majority of worldwide sales. Key factors include the rising occurrence of cardiac arrhythmias, technological advancements in catheter design, and the increased use of minimally invasive procedures. The market is expanding rapidly, driven by the growing global prevalence of cardiovascular illnesses. Innovations in catheter design, such as high-density mapping catheters and their integration with advanced imaging systems, enhance diagnostic accuracy and procedural efficiency. Furthermore, the increasing geriatric population and rising healthcare expenditure in emerging nations are propelling market growth.

DOWNLOAD FREE SAMPLE

Market Trends:

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms in electrophysiological procedures is transforming the diagnostic landscape. These advanced technologies are being incorporated into catheter systems and mapping software, enabling more accurate detection of arrhythmia origins and complex cardiac substrates. AI-assisted diagnosis allows electrophysiologists to analyze large datasets quickly and accurately, reducing procedure time and improving patient outcomes. This trend is driving demand for smart diagnostic catheters with AI capabilities, fostering collaborations between medical device companies and tech firms to develop innovative solutions. The use of AI in EP procedures is expected to grow, with potential applications in predictive analytics for patient risk stratification and personalized treatment planning.

Market Segmentation:

The Advanced EP Diagnostic Catheters segment, including high-density mapping catheters and contact force sensing catheters, leads the market. These catheters offer higher spatial resolution and signal quality, enabling precise identification of complex arrhythmias. Adoption is growing in specialized electrophysiology centers and teaching hospitals, driving market growth. Recent technological advancements, such as grid-style mapping catheters with numerous electrodes, have resulted in shorter procedure times and improved diagnostic accuracy. Leading companies like Abbott Laboratories have introduced the EnSite X EP System with EnSite Omnipolar Technology, which enhances cardiac mapping precision and signal quality.

Market Key Players:

The diagnostic electrophysiology catheters market is highly competitive, with major players focusing on technological innovation and strategic alliances. Key companies such as Medtronic, Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corporation, Johnson & Johnson (Biosense Webster), Koninklijke Philips N.V., Biotronik SE & Co. KG, Acutus Medical, Cardiac Science Corporation, Microport Scientific Corporation, and Stryker Corporation dominate the market. These firms invest heavily in R&D to introduce catheters with enhanced mapping capabilities and patient safety features.

Contact Us:

Name: Hari Krishna

Email us: hari.krishna@aurorawaveintellects.com

Website: https://aurorawaveintellects.com/

[evoldir]

Fwd: Postdoc: TrentU.CaribouConservationGenomics

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Postdoc: TrentU.CaribouConservationGenomics > Date: 18 April 2024 at 07:16:38 BST > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > > Post-Doctoral Fellows (PDFs) > > The EcoGenomics (https://ift.tt/5d1TRm7) research group under > Principal Investigators Dr. Paul Wilson (Trent University) and Dr. > Micheline Manseau (Environment & Climate Change Canada) is recruiting > multiple PDFs in support of a nation-wide genomics research and > monitoring project on caribou. The partners supporting this position > include Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS); the Ontario Ministry of > Environment, Conservation & Parks (MECP); Ontario Ministry of Natural > Resources & Forestry (OMNRF), and other provincial and territorial > jurisdictions; Indigenous organizations; industry; and funding > agencies such as Genome Canada and NSERC. > > The PDF positions will be based out of Peterborough, Ontario at > Trent University or Ottawa, Ontario at the National Wildlife Research > Centre (Science and Technology, ECCC). > > Different areas of research for PDF recruitment include: > > 1.      Wildlife conservation, population modelling for individuals with >        advanced experience in spatial/network analysis, population >        modelling, or deep learning. These methods will be used to model >        animal density using fecal DNA-based capture-recapture data >        along with a range of environmental variables. The research will >        contribute to 1) our understanding of the environment and its >        change on caribou population density and 2) the development of >        best practices for efficient sampling related to factors such as >        stratification and sample size needed for monitoring caribou >        density and various genetic indicators. > > 2.      Conservation genomics for use in establishing metrics for large- >        scale and long-term Genomic Monitoring of caribou through the >        implementation of sequencing technologies, e.g. high/low >        coverage genomes, amplicon sequencing and the development of >        analytical pipelines supporting genomic indicator metrics. >        Strong genetic, genomic and bioinformatic skills are required. >        Areas of research focus will include indicators of diversity >        (e.g. inbreeding, genomic erosion and load) and genetic >        connectivity. > > 3.      Laboratory-based molecular genomics to implement protocols >        including processing high- and low-coverage genomes; >        characterizing a range of informative markers (e.g. SNPs, CNVs, >        Microhaplotypes); ageing from non-invasive sources; improving >        DNA extraction protocols through automated processing; protocol >        development on multiple platforms, e.g. Illumina and Oxford >        Nanopore MinIon; integration of workflows with an established >        database and automated scoring platform. > > Education & Experience: The PDF positions requires a minimum of a > PhD with work experience being considered an asset.  Salary: $55,000 > - $70,000 per year depending on qualifications. Positions to start > as soon as possible. > > To apply send a cover letter and CV to Dr. Paul Wilson (pawilson@trentu.ca) > or Dr. Micheline Manseau (micheline.manseau@ec.gc.ca) by May 17th, > 2024. Please note your full name and the job title in the subject > line of your email (i.e. First and Last Name ??? Job Title). > > Bridget Redquest

[leedsomics]

Neoadjuvant Therapy Differentially Remodels Carcinoma and Tumor Microenvironment in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: Insights from Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics

Neoadjuvant therapy (NAT) is increasingly used in the treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). However, it is insufficiently understood how it differentially impacts carcinoma and tumor microenvironment (TME). We separately compared gene expression profiles in carcinoma and TME between NAT-treated versus NAT-naive patients using spatial transcriptomics. We found that NAT not only enhances apoptosis and reduces proliferation of carcinoma cells but also profoundly remodels TME. Notably, several key complement genes (C3, C1S, C1R, C4B and C7) were coordinately upregulated in TME, making complement pathway the most significantly altered by NAT. Furthermore, patients with a more pronounced increase of TME complement after NAT demonstrated improved overall survival, more immunomodulatory and neurotropic cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs), increased CD4+ T cells and mast cells, and reduced immune exhaustion. These findings suggest that NAT may alleviate immunosuppression by upregulating complement signaling in TME, which could be a novel biomarker for prognostication and stratification of NAT-treated PDAC patients. http://dlvr.it/SyBCqR

[vital-information]

“Each of these categories has its own temporal scaffold, which also reinforces a notion of developmental time. (For example, race has historically, and continues to be to some extent, structured via the oscillation between the primitive and the civilized; sexuality has tended to be organized through a heterosexual reproductive mandate.)

And temporality, of course, is part of the technology that distinguishes ‘rural’ from ‘urban.’ The ‘rural’ is often temporally naturalized (not unlike reproductive time). What constitutes the rural is a sense of being apart from the whoosh of progress that fills time so that the rural gets marked by either the absence of time or the slowness of time, by its anachronicity, it’s status as stuck in time, it’s backwardness, or it’s engagement with mythical, seasonal reproduction, which is often read nostalgically as outside of capitalist time.

The process of stratification and flattening and disaggregating that theories of intersectionality attempt to interrupt can too easily slip past what a focus on the intersections themselves seeks to arrest. The struggle to name the temporalities of these categories, to hail them as mutually constitutive, and thereby to un-name them as categories and rename them as processes necessarily encounters the elegant temporal ruse of modernity. As Walter Benjamin notes, ‘The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogeneous, empty time.’ This homogeneous, empty time vacuums up the variegated temporalities at work in all these sociohistorical-discursive processes that come to appear as solidified, discrete, and given categories. The collapsing of processes into categories—units of analysis—masks the temporalities these processes engage and perpetuate. As categories of modernity, the temporal structures for race, class, gender, sexuality, and the rural, are unevenly placed in flat-space relation, erasing their temporal contradictions and altercations. Taking time into account allows us then to see how spatial practices that racialize bodies and temporal narratives that render the rural fallow and obsolescent share a particular repertoire of technologies engaged with but hidden in time. A series of Manichean dyads (rich and poor, black and white, rural and urban) seemingly stand tautly opposed, their binary structure tempered and tautened by the Western frame of time. Theories of intersectionality seek to countermand the impossibility of narrating simultaneity and highlight the ways in which processes are transformed into categories; unfortunately, the term itself limits its own ability to undo the serialization and linearity its very expression requires.”

— Mary Pat Brady, “The Waiting Arms of Gold Street” in Queering the Countryside

[ma1up891186]

Social Stratification System in Colombia

A socio-economic stratification system ranging from 1 to 6 divides all cities in Colombia into high and low income neighborhoods.

STRATIFICATION IN BOGOTÁ

Bogotá is a city of mainly strata 2, 3 and 4 residents (low to medium) who live in the city´s periphery. 68 % of Bogotanos live in strata 2 and 3. The poorest population is concentrated in the south and south-west of Bogotá in housing mainly built by the informal market while the rich gather in the north. Even though the social stratification system is intended to help the poor, it also divides the city into zones of wealth and poverty. The stratification system is an income-based spatial division that classifies and demarcates the citizens by law.

STIGMATIZATION OF THE POOR

According to Alejandro Rodríguez, project director of the urban consultancy firm Geografía Urbana, the stratification system keeps Bogotá in a deadlock and prevents physical and social mobility within the city. “We have a problem with social sustainability,” he says, “as the stratification system stigmatizes people and urban districts in the lower strata. Only people in the middle section of the strata will have a chance to move.”

STRATIFICATION AS A PLANNING INSTRUMENT

Former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, however, thinks that the stratification system makes it easier for poor people to settle in areas where they can afford to pay housing and basic services. “It also makes it easier for the city to provide public transportation and schools, water supply and sewage to the areas with the highest needs and lowest income,” he points out. “So social stratification by law is not only a bad thing. If you created more diverse neighborhoods you would also need to implement schools, health care and shops that the lower income families could afford. This would be ideal, but is a great challenge in a city with such a big gap between the rich and poor.”

[x]

It is clear that the combined share of non-motorized and public transport for the low-income groups is very high (90% for stratum 1, 85% for stratum 2, in 2015).

For the highest income groups the situation is quite different with private motorized vehicle use at 47% and 42% for strata 5 and 6, respectively.  There is an unequal spatial distribution of residential locations have on accessibility.

The above graphic shows  there is a clear equality issue. The areas in the south, where most of the lowest income group reside, can reach less than 20% of all jobs in 45 min, whereas the more central locations with higher incomes score much higher. The number of job destinations of survey respondents by zone per km2 (a) and the % of jobs that is accessible within 45 min from each Transport Analysis Zone (b)

[antoine-roquentin]

This chapter began by reflecting on the social as the foundation of democracy, the centrality of equality to any concept and practice of democratic politics, and why social justice is there- fore important to generating and protecting democratic practices and institutions. It concludes by reflecting on why the social matters for generating and protecting a democratic imaginary. In Land and Sea, Carl Schmitt writes, “every ordering of human affairs also materializes in an ordering of space. Consequently, revolutions of human societies always also involve alteration of our conceptions of space. Schmitt develops this point differently in Nomos of the Earth, where he says, “every new age and every new epoch in the coexistence of peoples . . . and power formations of every sort, is founded on new spatial divisions, new enclosures, and new spatial orders of the earth.” In both texts, Schmitt is referring to physical, geopolitical space—annexations, subdivisions, the loss of coastlines, or even dissolutions of nations or inventions of new ones— the kinds of reorganization that often precipitate and follow wars. However, his point bears on nonliteral and even deterritorialized spatialization, such as the neoliberal dismantling and disintegration of the social. Schmitt reminds us that space is not just an architecture for power, but the scene of political imagination and imaginaries. Human orderings of space and the meanings attributed to those orderings shape our conceptualizations of who and what we are, especially in life with others. These orderings may foreground hemispheric locations or topographical features: a nation loses its sea in postwar settlements, a dam changes a river to a lake, a neighborhood is cleaved by the building of a highway or a wall. But they also feature designations of public and private space, gendered space, racialized space, and more. We know this from protests in everything from Little Rock to Gezi Park, from the privatization of public lands to struggles over gentrification and gender- neutral bathrooms. We do not just live in marked territories, but also develop political imaginaries of the common (or lack of it) from spatial semiotics. Alexander Somek draws a second insight from Schmitt’s Land and Sea. This is the link Schmitt establishes between spatial orders and eschatological views. Somek writes, “Schmitt makes us realise . . . that alterations of the order of space also engage . . . the spatial dimension along which we imagine better worlds to arise in the future.” Simply put, we envision pos- sible futures from and in terms of spatial orders of our present, especially in terms of their divisions and coordinates. This insight is significant in considering the implications of dismantling society and producing in its stead an engorged sphere of traditional morality and an expanded operation of markets. As the social vanishes from our ideas, speech, and experience, it vanishes from our visions of the future, both utopian and dystopian. We imagine authoritarian nationalist futures, virtually networked futures, technocratic futures, anarchist futures, transnational cosmopolitan futures, and fascist futures. We speak in vague terms of the “multitude” or “the commons,” absent the concrete democratization of the powers they harbor and by which they would be stewarded. None of these aim to invent twenty-first-century possibilities for democratic rule achieved and supported in part by democratizing social power. None work at the site of social power, even as such power continues to generate domination, stratification, exploitation, exclusion, and abjection. And none gather us as a society to deliberate about and rule society in common. The precise lan- guage is fungible— “the social” and “society” are hardly the only terms that can capture these powers and this gathering. However, something must approximate them to build the political equality required by democratic aspirations. It is a sign of the triumph of neoliberal reason that, in recent decades, the grammar of the social, including its importance to democracy, largely vanished from Left (and not only Right) visions for the future. In the United States, Occupy Wall Street may be credited with pushing it back into public discourse. More recently, new notions of socialism and projects such as the Green New Deal have been mobilized to call for political stewardship of social welfare, broadly conceived. Still broken, and absent from these important discourses of rebellion against neoliberalism’s aim to vanquish society and the social, is the relation of the social to democratic rule.

Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism

[scarlet--wiccan]

headcanons for doctor strange, clea, jericho drumm and wanda maximoff

Hey, I'm really sorry, but I don't know enough about Stephen or Clea to feel comfortable writing about them creatively. I know that Stephen, especially, comes up a lot on this blog because he's involved with characters that I do focus on, but I've literally never read a Doctor Strange comic. However, I was inspired to toss some ideas around about Wanda and Jericho's domestic life together, so I hope you enjoy that.

•Wanda and Jericho were planning to move in together, which would have meant Wanda relocating to New Orléans. With everything that’s happened to her in New York, the idea of getting a fresh start was appealing, and distance isn’t really a problem when your whole family has magic and super speed.

•When Jericho accepted the headmaster position at Strange Academy, they realized he’d be living on campus five days out of the week. Rather than have the both of them live full time at the school, they set up a mirror portal connecting the Headmaster’s chambers to Wanda’s apartment in Manhattan. Essentially, he moved in with her, but the portal allows him to work full time in New Orléans.

•They’ve settled in pretty well together, all things considered. It’s hard to find time to be domestic when you’re a super hero, but neither of them are full-time Avengers at the moment— they’re both focusing on their magical careers. A big part of that is working at the school, of course, and Wanda is also tutoring her sons on the side. Wanda has to travel more often, but her schedule is more flexible.

•They mainly speak to each other in French. It’s their easiest common language, one they both learned well before English. Wanda is picking up a little Haitian.

•They both love to cook, and they make a point to plan and make a nice dinner together at least once a week. Part if their routine is finding new recipes to challenge each other with.

•Wanda is more of a film person, and Jericho is more of a books person, but they’re both music nerds.

•There have been a few family dinners.

•This is the first relationship of Wanda’s that Pietro has been fully supportive of, and he and Jericho are actually pretty good friends. Billy is starstruck by any accomplished magician, but he thinks Jericho is super cool. Tommy is the most wary— he has a hard time with the concept of family, and it takes a while for him to warm up to anyone who’s trying to enter that circle.

• school is on a leyline, and there is, obviously, a tremendous amount of ambient magic on campus. Creating and maintaining the portal was easy, but ensuring security was a real trick. Neither of them are that strong at spatial magic— it was Stephen who headed up the school’s construction, and they didn’t want to ask for his help because it would be safer for the portal to remain separate from the other workings that overlay the campus,

•Fortunately, they are both skilled in sympathetic magic and warding, and with a little finesse they managed to create an airtight, two-way portal that only works for the two of them.

•Something Jericho and Wanda are able to bond over is that, even amongst their mystic peers, their styles and crafts are often considered “low magic”. The stratification of high and low magic is absolutely founded in racist imperialism, and although they’ve more than earned respect of their of their peers, Wanda and Jericho often feel like outsiders amongst high-profile magicians. They have strengths that others do not— the warding on their mirrors being a great example— and a lot of the students admire Jericho more than they do Stephen. “Low magic” and cultural practices have more personal character and, while not always as flashy, tend to invite artistic expression and originality.

•However, they don't collaborate on actual workings that often- they're more likely to compare notes and give advice. They both prefer to work either alone, or in a circle of four or more. The thing that's nice about being in a relationship with a fellow magician is that both parties are comfortable with, and understanding of, the odd schedules they keep and the strange goings-on in each other's lives. It's nice not feeling like the only eccentric in the house.

[melbournenewsvine]

Enhanc3D Genomics raises 10m in Series A financing

Cambridge-based Enhanc3D Genomics Ltd has raised £10m in Series A financing led by BGF and Parkwalk Advisors. Existing private investors and Bioqube Ventures participated in Enhanc3D Genomics’ Series A financing. The company said it will use the proceeds to accelerate the development of its proprietary technology platform GenLink3DTM that allows to rapidly and deeply decode the 3D structure and thus activity non-coding genome to identify new biomarkers and drug targets for asset development. Initially, Enhanc3D Genomicst plan is to generate large datasets across multiple immune-cell types that have broad relevance to auto-immune diseases, cancer and ageing. Enhanc3D will also be expanding its team, moving into larger facilities in Cambridge’s St John’s Innovation Centre, providing the infrastructure to support the next growth phase of the company. Dr Chris Torrance, a cancer researcher and biotechnology entrepreneur, will join Enhanc3D’s Board as Non-Executive Chair. Dr Torrance is the founder and Chairman of Phoremost, a UK-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to ‘Drugging the Undruggable’. Dr Torrance previously founded Horizon Discovery in 2007, which became the fastest growing biotech company in the UK by 2014. Spun out from Professor Peter Fraser’s labo, which pioneered investigation of the dynamic spatial organisation of the genome at the Babraham Institute, Enhanc3D’s vision is to unlock the full potential of the human genome by decoding its 3D architecture. Current whole-genome sequencing techniques only provide a linear view of our DNA, while the 3D organisation modulates biological processes which are crucial for cell differentiation and development. The company’s platform integrates molecular biology technologies with machine learning to map the 3D DNA structure at high resolution to capture promoters and previously unseen genetic markers. While the platform has a breadth of potential therapeutic applications, Enhanc3D will initially focus on identifying novel biomarkers for patient stratification and treatment targets for cancer, ageing and autoimmune conditions. Source link Originally published at Melbourne News Vine

[psitrend]

The exhibition of Jisook Kim & Hilda Shen: Orogenies in New York

New Post has been published on https://china-underground.com/2019/07/15/the-exhibition-of-jisook-kim-hilda-shen-orogenies-in-new-york/

The exhibition of Jisook Kim & Hilda Shen: Orogenies in New York

If you happen to be in New York before August 1st, you are welcome to stop at Orogenies, a double-exhibition event that promotes the works of the artists Jisook Kim and Hilda Shen.

In the setting of FOU GALLERY, an apartment gallery, whose purpose is to offer a selection of original works of art and design of contemporary talents and creatives, the two artists narrate and interpret a common theme: the formation of mountains.

Related: Interview with Hilda Shen, Interview with Jisook Kim

Info about the event: July 6 – August 11, 2019 Location: Fou Gallery, 410 Jefferson Ave #1, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11221 Hours: Saturday 11 am – 6 pm, or by appointment (info@fougallery.com) Curator and Poster Design: Tansy Xiao

Jisook Kim is a South Korean sculptor who represents the delicate coexistence of life, energy and time with a marble technique that incorporates lines drawn and variable in her multidimensional installations.

Kim Jisook

While Hilda Shen is a sculptor, designer who through her works revives the long memories of the lost time creating a wormhole that holds the enigma of the firmament.

Hilda Shen

The focus of both their creations is the reduction of landscapes in detached and isolated imprints of nature: an organic coalescence, all synthesized in ethereal poetics with an allusion of disturbing immensity. Nature and time are reinterpreted through different approaches. The mountains with their chronic crustal movements demonstrate a process of continuity of time with a different rhythm than our human time. The analyzed natural phenomenon, whose spectacularity is irrelevant for human activities, but continuously watched by humanity in the course of history, is artistically translated by the artists through different means and using their own personal visual languages.

Jisook Kim and Hilda Shen – Orogenies, ©Jisook Kim ©Hilda Shen, Photo by Nadia Peichao Lin, image courtesy of Fou Gallery

In the simplified abstract models of Jisook Kim, who was trained as a traditional sculptor in South Korea, the energy of nature is embodied in an artificial but organic form, indicating an ambiguous state of existence that confuses the boundaries between reality and imagination, between human life and the cosmos. Hilda Shen with her sculptures and the idiosyncrasies of Chinese erudite rocks highlights the enormity of the human footprint within the environment.

Jisook Kim, Memory of Emotions, 2017. Ink, pencil, acrylic on paper, 19 x 24 inches ©Jisook Kim, image courtesy Fou Gallery

The first artist evokes and transmits, with light materials and flexibility, through topographic patterns the static serenity of the mountains that lets their power and omnipresence emerge. The second artist instead works with simple materials, arranged in layers that evoke the historical-geographical stratification. Her installations determine the different spatial dimensions.

Hilda Shen, Range of Mountains, 2014-2019. Glazed clay, Variable dimensions, ranging between 1-4 inches ©Hilda Shen, image courtesy of Fou Gallery

The mountains devoid of human artifacts, testify to the greatness of nature. The sense of natural geographical boundaries and the sense of boundaries decided by human beings are different interpretations of life on our planet. The intersection between human time and geological time does not coincide. The mountains change despite they have the same geographical coordinates. Their image is, therefore, a collection of memories of a bygone era, but also in the making.

Orogenies opening, Team photo: Jisook Kim, Hilda Shen, Tansy Xiao, Yilan Wang, Echo He, Fang Yuan, Lin Jing, Nadia Peichao Lin Photograph by Nadia Peichao Lin image courtesy of Fou Gallery

The dialogue between humans, nature, space and time are significant. In addition, the exhibition is also interesting as a concrete example of female collaboration. Further to the two artists, we can appreciate the work of the curator who coordinates the event, Tansy Xiao, the gallery owner Echo He and the official photographer of the event Nadia Peichao Li, and other women of the team, to show that when women team up, their synergies can leave significant signs.

Jisook Kim and Hilda Shen – Orogenies, ©Jisook Kim ©Hilda Shen, Photo by Nadia Peichao Lin, image courtesy of Fou Gallery

Photo courtesy of Fou Gallery Art: ©Jisook Kim ©Hilda Shen Photographer: Nadia Peichao Lin

#HildaShen, #JisookKim

[riccardodiclemente]

Paper - Changes in the time-space dimension of human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic

Here the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.06527

Project page: http://www.riccardodiclemente.com/projects/covid19uk.html

Socio-economic constructs and urban topology are crucial drivers of human mobility patterns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these patterns were re-shaped in their main two components: the spatial dimension represented by the daily travelled distance, and the temporal dimension expressed as the synchronisation time of commuting routines.

Leveraging location-based data from de-identified mobile phone users, we observed that during lockdowns restrictions, the decrease of spatial mobility is interwoven with the emergence of asynchronous mobility dynamics.

The lifting of restriction in urban mobility allowed a faster recovery of the spatial dimension compared to the temporal one. Moreover, the recovery in mobility was different depending on urbanisation levels and economic stratification.

In rural and low-income areas, the spatial mobility dimension suffered a more significant disruption when compared to urbanised and high-income areas.

In contrast, the temporal dimension was more affected in urbanised and high-income areas than in rural and low-income areas.