An organizing framework to break down Western-centric views of knowledge in North–South research
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Turner H
PROVIDER: S-EPMC10891260 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:The ENPKG framework organizes large heterogeneous metabolomics data sets as a knowledge graph, offering exciting opportunities for drug discovery and chemodiversity characterization.
| S-EPMC10979503 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundIn the present study we have investigated the cultural transmission of two types of traditional plant knowledge in two communities of North-western Patagonia, Argentina. In the Pilcaniyeu community, we studied the transmission of traditional knowledge related to horticultural practices in home-gardens, greenhouses and gardens; while in the community of Cuyin Manzano, we studied wild plant gathering customs.MethodsEthnobotanical fieldwork was conducted by means of semi-structured interviews, in which we investigated which plants are used, at what life history phase was learned, modes of transmission and who the principal transmitters were in childhood and adulthood. In both communities, each of this three aspects related to cultural transmission were categorized and the frequencies of each category were obtained. The total number of species recorded in each community was also calculated. Frequencies were analyzed with the Chi-square test of independence.Results and discussionIn both communities, transmission of traditional plant knowledge begins at an early age, as a family custom, in which women play a predominant role. Wild plant use and horticultural knowledge continue to be learned during adulthood. This was particularly registered associated with horticultural learning, which receives greater influence from extension agents who are introducing new practices and technology. This outside influence, which implies novelty, could imply syncretism but also traditional knowledge loss.ConclusionGiven the remarkable acculturation processes occurring at present in rural communities of Northwestern Patagonia, it might be of vital importance to document traditional knowledge of ancient practices. Moreover, it could be interesting to share our results with both populations in order to encourage participatory activities within the communities which could enhance traditional knowledge horizontal transmission, particularly among elder adults and youngsters.
| S-EPMC2614966 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Bacterial community structures and their activities in the ocean are tightly coupled with organic matter fluxes and thus control ocean biogeochemical cycles. Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU), halogenated nucleoside and thymidine analogue, has been recently used to monitor actively growing bacteria (AGB) in natural environments. We labelled DNA of proliferating cells in seawater bacterial assemblages with BrdU and determined community structures of the bacteria that were possible key species in mediating biochemical reactions in the ocean. Surface seawater samples were collected along a north-south transect in the North Pacific in October 2003 and subjected to BrdU magnetic beads immunocapture and PCR-DGGE (BUMP-DGGE) analysis. Change of BrdU-incorporated community structures reflected the change of water masses along a north-south transect from subarctic to subtropical gyres in the North Pacific. We identified 25 bands referred to AGB as BrdU-incorporated phylotypes, belonging to Alphaproteobacteria (5 bands), Betaproteobacteria (1 band), Gammaproteobacteria (4 bands), Cytophaga-Flavobacterium-Bacteroides (CFB) group bacteria (5 bands), Gram-positive bacteria (6 bands), and Cyanobacteria (4 bands). BrdU-incorporated phylotypes belonging to Vibrionales, Alteromonadales and Gram-positive bacteria appeared only at sampling stations in a subtropical gyre, while those belonging to Roseobacter-related bacteria and CFB group bacteria appeared at the stations in both subarctic and subtropical gyres. Our result revealed phylogenetic affiliation of AGB and their dynamic change along with north-south environmental gradients in open oceans. Different species of AGB utilize different amount and kinds of substrates, which can affect the change of organic matter fluxes along transect.
| S-EPMC2327212 | biostudies-literature
Project description:During the termination of the last glacial period the western U.S. experienced exceptionally wet conditions, driven by changes in location and strength of the mid-latitude winter storm track. The distribution of modern winter precipitation is frequently characterized by a north-south wet/dry dipole pattern, controlled by interaction of the storm track with ocean-atmosphere conditions over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Here we show that a dipole pattern of similar geographic extent persisted and switched sign during millennial-scale abrupt climate changes of the last deglaciation, based on a new lake level reconstruction for pluvial Lake Chewaucan (northwestern U.S.), and a compilation of regional paleoclimate records. This suggests the dipole pattern is robust, and one mode may be favored for centuries, thereby creating persistent contrasting wet/dry conditions across the western U.S. The TraCE-21k climate model simulation shows an equatorward enhancement of winter storm track activity in the northeastern Pacific, favoring wet conditions in southwestern U.S. during the second half of Heinrich Stadial 1 (16.1-14.6 ka) and consistent with paleoclimate evidence. During the Bølling/Allerød (14.6-12.8 ka), the northeastern Pacific storm track contracted poleward, consistent with wetter conditions concentrated poleward toward the northwest U.S.
| S-EPMC6423015 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The number, scale and ambition of transdisciplinary research initiatives between the global north and the global south is increasing, yet there is very little theoretical or empirical scholarship on how to lead and manage implementation to promote responsible practice. Within science, technology and innovation (STI) studies and decolonising research frameworks, and utilising collaborative autoethnography, this study codifies experience with implementing the 'Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments' (RISE) program (2017-2020). Our specific aim is to explore the leadership and management tensions and challenges of implementing transboundary transdisciplinary research. The findings reaffirm the importance of research leaders and managers carefully operationalising north-south research by critically reflecting on power asymmetries between disciplines, partners and locations, leveraging the potential for transdisciplinary consortia to build research capabilities in the global south, and creating a culture of reflexivity on the historical and social positionality in which research is designed, funded, implemented and evaluated. The findings foreground the role of boundary-spanning 'integrators' and 'pracademics', roles that have received little attention to date but are essential for effective delivery and societal impact beyond scientific advances. A framework for implementing north-south transdisciplinary research is outlined with five domains: (1) collaborative leadership; (2) agile management; (3) flexible consortia; (4) researcher positionality; and (5) co-design and participation. The framework can support efforts for responsibly designing and implementing large, transdisciplinary, cross-country research programs in line with ambitions for decolonising north-south research.
| S-EPMC11245643 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Humans and other animals have a remarkable capacity to translate their position from one spatial frame of reference to another. The ability to seamlessly move between top-down and first-person views is important for navigation, memory formation, and other cognitive tasks. Evidence suggests that the medial temporal lobe and other cortical regions contribute to this function. To understand how a neural system might carry out these computations, we used variational autoencoders (VAEs) to reconstruct the first-person view from the top-down view of a robot simulation, and vice versa. Many latent variables in the VAEs had similar responses to those seen in neuron recordings, including location-specific activity, head direction tuning, and encoding of distance to local objects. Place-specific responses were prominent when reconstructing a first-person view from a top-down view, but head direction-specific responses were prominent when reconstructing a top-down view from a first-person view. In both cases, the model could recover from perturbations without retraining, but rather through remapping. These results could advance our understanding of how brain regions support viewpoint linkages and transformations.
| S-EPMC9659407 | biostudies-literature
Project description:North Western Potato psyllid Iso-Seq sequence reads and transcriptome
| PRJNA609951 | ENA
Project description:We describe a multi-scale, liver-centric in silico modeling framework for acetaminophen pharmacology and metabolism. We focus on a computational model to characterize whole body uptake and clearance, liver transport and phase I and phase II metabolism. We do this by incorporating sub-models that span three scales; Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling of acetaminophen uptake and distribution at the whole body level, cell and blood flow modeling at the tissue/organ level and metabolism at the sub-cellular level. We have used standard modeling modalities at each of the three scales. In particular, we have used the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) to create both the whole-body and sub-cellular scales. Our modeling approach allows us to run the individual sub-models separately and allows us to easily exchange models at a particular scale without the need to extensively rework the sub-models at other scales. In addition, the use of SBML greatly facilitates the inclusion of biological annotations directly in the model code. The model was calibrated using human in vivo data for acetaminophen and its sulfate and glucuronate metabolites. We then carried out extensive parameter sensitivity studies including the pairwise interaction of parameters. We also simulated population variation of exposure and sensitivity to acetaminophen. Our modeling framework can be extended to the prediction of liver toxicity following acetaminophen overdose, or used as a general purpose pharmacokinetic model for xenobiotics.
| S-EPMC5026379 | biostudies-literature
Project description:With the rapid progress of biological research, great demands are proposed for integrative knowledge-sharing systems to efficiently support collaboration of biological researchers from various fields. To fulfill such requirements, we have developed a data-centric knowledge-sharing platform WebLab for biologists to fetch, analyze, manipulate and share data under an intuitive web interface. Dedicated space is provided for users to store their input data and analysis results. Users can upload local data or fetch public data from remote databases, and then perform analysis using more than 260 integrated bioinformatic tools. These tools can be further organized as customized analysis workflows to accomplish complex tasks automatically. In addition to conventional biological data, WebLab also provides rich supports for scientific literatures, such as searching against full text of uploaded literatures and exporting citations into various well-known citation managers such as EndNote and BibTex. To facilitate team work among colleagues, WebLab provides a powerful and flexible sharing mechanism, which allows users to share input data, analysis results, scientific literatures and customized workflows to specified users or groups with sophisticated privilege settings. WebLab is publicly available at http://weblab.cbi.pku.edu.cn, with all source code released as Free Software.
| S-EPMC2703900 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study presents spatial distribution, sources and toxicological risks of As, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn in the surface sediments from north-western Karnataka, southern India. Heavy metals (except Hg) are 1-5 times enriched than upper continental crust. High concentration of Cr, Ni, Cu, and Zn is in the central Kudalgaon, Devarayi, and Tavargatti and in the south-western Ganeshgudi area, whereas Arsenic is enriched in the north-eastern Alnavar, Kakkeri,Tavargatti and Pb, and Hg in the north-western Kapoli, Devarayi, Manjarpal villages. The ecological risk index, toxic risk index, and mean probable-effects-levels quotient of heavy metals suggest that ~ 40% of the area is prone to very high risk especially for Cr and As to the hydrological, biological, and ecological systems. Multivariate statistical analysis suggests possible geogenic sources for Ni, Cr, Cu, and Zn and anthropogenic sources such as emissions from vehicles and agricultural sectors for As, Hg, and Pb. This study is the first of its kind in the area, which will help, in better formulation of environmental pollution and risk related remedial measures to conserve the natural ecosystem and the well-being of humans.
| S-EPMC9499933 | biostudies-literature