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A rare conformation of the prion protein, PrPSc, is found only in mammals with transmissible prion diseases and represents either the infectious agent itself or a major component of it. The mechanism for initiating PrPScformation is unknown. We report that PrP retrogradely transported out of the endoplasmic reticulum produced both amorphous aggregates and a$PrP^{Sc}-like$conformation in the cytosol. The distribution between these forms correlated with the rate of appearance in the cytosol. Once conversion to the$PrP^{Sc}-like$conformation occurred, it was sustained. Thus, PrP has an inherent capacity to promote its own conformational conversion in mammalian cells. These observations might explain the origin of PrPSc.

Subducted slabs of oceanic lithosphere below the western Pacific tend to be stagnant in the transition zone with poorly known mechanical properties. Typical examples are the Izu-Bonin and Japan slabs that meet each other to form a cusplike junction beneath southwest Japan. Here, we show that these two slabs are torn apart at their junction when they bend to flatten over the 660-kilometer discontinuity, as is expected from a simple geometric argument. We present three lines of evidence for this ongoing slab tear.

While there is a vast amount of research on firms' choice of ownership form when entering a foreign market, little attention has been paid to changes in ownership forms of operation abroad after initial entry. Using transaction cost economics and institutional theory we identify a number of factors that may help to explain the likelihood of foreign firms' converting their joint venture with a local firm into a wholly owned subsidiary. We formulate a number of hypotheses and test them against data collected through a questionnaire survey of managers representing foreign subsidiaries in the People's Republic of China (PRC) that are run either as international joint ventures (IJVs) or as wholly owned foreign subsidiaries (WFOEs) that have recently been converted from IJVs into a WFOE. The paper contributes to research by showing that transaction-cost-based thinking is useful for explaining not only the initial choice of ownership mode when entering a new market, but also the potential subsequent changes of this ownership mode. By combining transaction cost theory with arguments from institutional theory, the study identifies a number of factors that contribute to explaining post- entry changes of foreign firms' ownership forms in the PRC, and provides empirical evidence of this phenomenon.

Egypt continues to experience interreligious sectarian conflict between Muslims and Copts since the overthrow of the Mubarak regime. The same factors that had contributed to escalating violence between the two communities continue to be at play in postrevolutionary Egypt. One of the key sites of sectarian conflict is interreligious marriage and conversion, an issue that ignites the passion and ire of both communities. While issues of sexuality and gender are at the center of these conflicts, religion-based family law plays a particularly pernicious role. In this essay, I rethink the nexus between family law, gender, and sectarian conflict through an examination of both the history of the emergence of Egyptian family law and the simultaneous relegation of religion and sexuality to the private sphere in the modern period.

On the basis of an ethnographic analysis of the state-run Jewish conversion project in Israel, I address the question of how bureaucrats come to know the subjects they serve. By analyzing how state agents construct the bureaucratic encounter with converts as a dramaturgical exchange, I theorize performance as an institutional mechanism through which bureaucratic knowledge is produced. The notion of \"dramaturgy\" sheds light not only on the everyday practices of state governmental power but also on the fragile, collaborative dynamics that underwrite the bureaucratic encounter. Such an analysis offers to complicate the notion of \"power/knowledge\" so often associated with bureaucratic institutions.

This essay considers why so many Ottoman autobiographical narratives of conversion began to appear in the latter half of the 16th century. Their authors came from various social milieus, from Sufi mystics to bureaucrats. Based on an analysis of five relatively unknown narratives dating from the late 16th through the early 18th centuries, it is argued that the concurrent emergence of these self-narratives was no accident. A close reading suggests that some converts debated as to which rituals were correct & which scripture-based path led to salvation, debates modern scholars have considered germane solely to post-Reformation Christianity. The author posits that the texts emerged as a consequence of trans-regional confessional polarization enhanced by the competing imperialisms of the time -- between the Ottomans & Safavids on one side & the Ottomans & Hapsburgs on another. This imperial competition, together with the increase in long-distance travel & trade, resulted in considerable traffic not only of people but also of ideas, which made humanist vocabulary, religio-political sensibilities, & even unique genres such as these conversion narratives familiar throughout the early modern Mediterranean world. Adapted from the source document.

This paper gives new confluence proofs for several lambda calculi with permutation-like reduction, including lambda calculi corresponding to intuitionistic and classical natural deduction with disjunction and permutative conversions, and a lambda calculus with explicit substitutions. For lambda calculi with permutative conversion, naïve parallel reduction technique does not work, and (if we consider untyped terms, and hence we do not use strong normalization) traditional notion of residuals is required as Ando pointed out. This paper shows that the difficulties can be avoided by extending the technique proposed by Dehornoy and van Oostrom, called the Z theorem: existence of a mapping on terms with the Z property concludes the confluence. Since it is still hard to directly define a mapping with the Z property for the lambda calculi with permutative conversions, this paper extends the Z theorem to compositional functions, called compositional Z, and shows that we can adopt it to the calculi.

In 2002, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu passed a law that illustrates the centrality of what may be called “authentic religious selves” to postcolonial Indian statecraft. It banned religious conversions brought about by what it termed “material allurement,” and it especially targeted those who might attempt to convert impoverished Dalits, descendants of unfree laborers who now constitute India's lowest castes. Conversion, thus conceived, is itself founded upon the idea that the self must be autonomous; religion ought to be freely chosen and not brought about by “allurement.” Philosophers like Charles Taylor have provided accounts of how selfhood of this kind became lodged in the Western imaginaire, but how was it able to take hold in very different social configurations, and to what effect? By attending to this more specific history, this essay brings a correlated but widely overlooked question to center stage: under what distinctive circumstances are particular selves called upon to actively demonstrate their autonomy and authenticity by divulging putatively secreted contents? In colonial South India, I will argue, the problem of authentic conversion only captured the public imagination when Dalit conversions to Christianity in colonial Madras threatened the stability of the agrarian labor regimes to which they were subject. And today, as in nineteenth-century Madras, it is Dalit selfhood that remains an object of intense public scrutiny and the target of legal interventions.

The year 2012 marked ten years since the end of Sierra Leone’s brutal eleven-year civil war, which had and continues to have a significant impact on girls and women. Sierra Leone reflects the global trend, with women representing a minority of the prison population. With so many competing needs, Sierra Leone often places penal reform low on the priority list of postwar reconstruction efforts. Women in conflict with the law are often seen as perpetrators and thus as less deserving of the limited assistance efforts available than “victims,” such as women who have suffered gender-based violence. The nature of imprisonment, lack of empowerment, and social stigma make female prisoners and former prisoners nearly invisible, resulting in neglect of their experiences and voices. Building on six years of work with girls and women in conflict with the law, this article seeks to examine the factors behind the growing rates of incarceration of women in Sierra Leone. It explores how marginalization, low socioeconomic status, gender disparities in many areas of social and political life, and weak state institutions result in the law having a particular negative effect on women. The difficult experiences of women in detention and the continuing challenges of reintegration can cause further victimization and have detrimental effects on children. International and domestic gender reform efforts need to incorporate and support this neglected population as part of wider gender justice efforts.

Living cells respond to mechanical forces applied to their outer membrane through processes referred to as “mechanosensation”. Faced with hypotonic shock, to circumvent cell lysis, bacteria open large solute-passing channels to reduce the osmotic pressure gradient. In the vascular beds of vertebrate animals blood flow is regulated directly through mechanical distention-induced opening of stretch-activated channels in smooth muscle cells. Touch sensation is thought to originate in mechanically sensitive ion channels in nerve endings, and hearing in mechanically sensitive ion channels located in specialized cells of the ear. While the ubiquity of mechanosensation in living cells is evident, the ion channels underlying the transduction events in vertebrate animals have remained elusive. Here we demonstrate through electrophysiological recordings that voltage-dependent K ⁺ (Kv) channels exhibit exquisite sensitivity to small (physiologically relevant in magnitude) mechanical perturbations of the cell membrane. The demonstrated mechanosensitivity is quantitatively consistent with membrane tension acting on a late-opening transition through stabilization of a dilated pore. This effect causes a shift in the voltage range over which Kv channels open as well as an increase in the maximum open probability. This mechanically induced shift could allow Kv channels and perhaps other voltage-dependent ion channels to play a role in mechanosensation.