ASU Scholarship Showcase

Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area‐based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case‐study cities. The article examines the claims of the so‐called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on‐ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT‐driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.`

Attitudes and habits are extremely resistant to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring long-term, massive societal changes. During the pandemic, people are being compelled to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. Going forward, a critical question is whether these experiences will result in changed behaviors and preferences in the long term. This paper presents initial findings on the likelihood of long-term changes in telework, daily travel, restaurant patronage, and air travel based on survey data collected from adults in the United States in Spring 2020. These data suggest that a sizable fraction of the increase in telework and decreases in both business air travel and restaurant patronage are likely here to stay. As for daily travel modes, public transit may not fully recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels, but many of our respondents are planning to bike and walk more than they used to. These data reflect the responses of a sample that is higher income and more highly educated than the US population. The response of these particular groups to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps especially important to understand, however, because their consumption patterns give them a large influence on many sectors of the economy.

Investigation into the causes underlying the rapid, global amphibian decline provides critical insight into the effects of changing ecosystems. Hypothesized and confirmed links between amphibian declines, disease, and environmental changes are increasingly represented in published literature. However, there are few long-term amphibian studies that include data on population size, abnormality/injury rates, disease, and habitat variables to adequately assess changes through time. We cultured and identified microorganisms isolated from abnormal/injured and repressed tissue regeneration sites of the endangered Ozark Hellbender, Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi, to discover potential causative agents responsible for their significant decline in health and population. This organism and our study site were chosen because the population and habitat of C. a. bishopi have been intensively studied from 1969–2009, and the abnormality/injury rate and apparent lack of regeneration were established.

Although many bacterial and fungal isolates recovered were common environmental organisms, several opportunistic pathogens were identified in association with only the injured tissues of C.a. bishopi. Bacterial isolates included Aeromonas hydrophila, a known amphibian pathogen, Granulicetella adiacens, Gordonai terrae, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Aerococcus viridans, Streptococcus pneumoniae and a variety of Pseudomonads, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, P. stutzeri, and P. alcaligenes. Fungal isolates included species in the genera Penicillium, Acremonium, Cladosporium, Curvularia, Fusarium, Streptomycetes, and the Class Hyphomycetes. Many of the opportunistic pathogens identified are known to form biofilms. Lack of isolation of the same organism from all wounds suggests that the etiological agent responsible for the damage to C. a. bishopi may not be a single organism. To our knowledge, this is the first study to profile the external microbial consortia cultured from a Cryptobranchid salamander. The incidence of abnormalities/injury and retarded regeneration in C. a. bishopi may have many contributing factors including disease and habitat degradation. Results from this study may provide insight into other amphibian population declines.

The probiotic effects of Lactobacillus reuteri have been speculated to partly depend on its capacity to produce the antimicrobial substance reuterin during the reduction of glycerol in the gut. In this study, the potential of this process to protect human intestinal epithelial cells against infection with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium was investigated. We used a three-dimensional (3-D) organotypic model of human colonic epithelium that was previously validated and applied to study interactions between S. Typhimurium and the intestinal epithelium that lead to enteric salmonellosis. Using this model system, we show that L. reuteri protects the intestinal cells against the early stages of Salmonella infection and that this effect is significantly increased when L. reuteri is stimulated to produce reuterin from glycerol. More specifically, the reuterin-containing ferment of L. reuteri caused a reduction in Salmonella adherence and invasion (1 log unit), and intracellular survival (2 log units). In contrast, the L. reuteri ferment without reuterin stimulated growth of the intracellular Salmonella population with 1 log unit. The short-term exposure to reuterin or the reuterin-containing ferment had no observed negative impact on intestinal epithelial cell health. However, long-term exposure (24 h) induced a complete loss of cell-cell contact within the epithelial aggregates and compromised cell viability. Collectively, these results shed light on a potential role for reuterin in inhibiting Salmonella-induced intestinal infections and may support the combined application of glycerol and L. reuteri. While future in vitro and in vivo studies of reuterin on intestinal health should fine-tune our understanding of the mechanistic effects, in particular in the presence of a complex gut microbiota, this the first report of a reuterin effect on the enteric infection process in any mammalian cell type.

This study presents the first global transcriptional profiling and phenotypic characterization of the major human opportunistic fungal pathogen, Candida albicans, grown in spaceflight conditions. Microarray analysis revealed that C. albicans subjected to short-term spaceflight culture differentially regulated 452 genes compared to synchronous ground controls, which represented 8.3% of the analyzed ORFs. Spaceflight-cultured C. albicans–induced genes involved in cell aggregation (similar to flocculation), which was validated by microscopic and flow cytometry analysis. We also observed enhanced random budding of spaceflight-cultured cells as opposed to bipolar budding patterns for ground samples, in accordance with the gene expression data. Furthermore, genes involved in antifungal agent and stress resistance were differentially regulated in spaceflight, including induction of ABC transporters and members of the major facilitator family, downregulation of ergosterol-encoding genes, and upregulation of genes involved in oxidative stress resistance.

Finally, downregulation of genes involved in actin cytoskeleton was observed. Interestingly, the transcriptional regulator Cap1 and over 30% of the Cap1 regulon was differentially expressed in spaceflight-cultured C. albicans. A potential role for Cap1 in the spaceflight response of C. albicans is suggested, as this regulator is involved in random budding, cell aggregation, and oxidative stress resistance; all related to observed spaceflight-associated changes of C. albicans. While culture of C. albicans in microgravity potentiates a global change in gene expression that could induce a virulence-related phenotype, no increased virulence in a murine intraperitoneal (i.p.) infection model was observed under the conditions of this study. Collectively, our data represent an important basis for the assessment of the risk that commensal flora could play during human spaceflight missions. Furthermore, since the low fluid-shear environment of microgravity is relevant to physical forces encountered by pathogens during the infection process, insights gained from this study could identify novel infectious disease mechanisms, with downstream benefits for the general public.

Astronauts are exposed to a unique combination of stressors during spaceflight, which leads to alterations in their physiology and potentially increases their susceptibility to disease, including infectious diseases. To evaluate the potential impact of the spaceflight environment on the regulation of molecular pathways mediating cellular stress responses, we performed a first-of-its-kind pilot study to assess spaceflight-related gene-expression changes in the whole blood of astronauts. Using an array comprised of 234 well-characterized stress-response genes, we profiled transcriptomic changes in six astronauts (four men and two women) from blood preserved before and immediately following the spaceflight. Differentially regulated transcripts included those important for DNA repair, oxidative stress, and protein folding/degradation, including HSP90AB1, HSP27, GPX1, XRCC1, BAG-1, HHR23A, FAP48, and C-FOS. No gender-specific differences or relationship to number of missions flown was observed. This study provides a first assessment of transcriptomic changes occurring in the whole blood of astronauts in response to spaceflight.

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium strains belonging to sequence type ST313 are a major cause of fatal bacteremia among HIV-infected adults and children in sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike “classical” non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS), gastroenteritis is often absent during ST313 infections and isolates are most commonly recovered from blood, rather than from stool. This is consistent with observations in animals, in which ST313 strains displayed lower levels of intestinal colonization and higher recovery from deeper tissues relative to classic NTS isolates. A better understanding of the key environmental factors regulating these systemic infections is urgently needed. Our previous studies using dynamic Rotating Wall Vessel (RWV) bioreactor technology demonstrated that physiological levels of fluid shear regulate virulence, gene expression, and stress response profiles of classic S. Typhimurium. Here we provide the first demonstration that fluid shear alters the virulence potential and pathogenesis-related stress responses of ST313 strain D23580 in a manner that differs from classic NTS.

Background: In Africa and Asia, sugarcane is the host of at least seven different virus species in the genus Mastrevirus of the family Geminiviridae. However, with the exception of Sugarcane white streak virus in Barbados, no other sugarcane-infecting mastrevirus has been reported in the New World. Conservation and exchange of sugarcane germplasm using stalk cuttings facilitates the spread of sugarcane-infecting viruses.

Methods: A virion-associated nucleic acids (VANA)-based metagenomics approach was used to detect mastrevirus sequences in 717 sugarcane samples from Florida (USA), Guadeloupe (French West Indies), and Réunion (Mascarene Islands). Contig assembly was performed using CAP3 and sequence searches using BLASTn and BLASTx. Mastrevirus full genomes were enriched from total DNA by rolling circle amplification, cloned and sequenced. Nucleotide and amino acid sequence identities were determined using SDT v1.2. Phylogenetic analyses were conducted using MEGA6 and PHYML3.

Results: We identified a new sugarcane-infecting mastrevirus in six plants sampled from germplasm collections in Florida and Guadeloupe. Full genome sequences were determined and analyzed for three virus isolates from Florida, and three from Guadeloupe. These six genomes share >88% genome-wide pairwise identity with one another and between 89 and 97% identity with a recently identified mastrevirus (KR150789) from a sugarcane plant sampled in China. Sequences similar to these were also identified in sugarcane plants in Réunion.

Conclusions: As these virus isolates share <64% genome-wide identity with all other known mastreviruses, we propose classifying them within a new mastrevirus species named Sugarcane striate virus. This is the first report of sugarcane striate virus (SCStV) in the Western Hemisphere, a virus that most likely originated in Asia. The distribution, vector, and impact of SCStV on sugarcane production remains to be determined.

Four genomovirus genomes were recovered from thrips (Echinothrips americanus) collected in Florida, USA. These represent four new species which are members of the Gemycircularvirus (n = 2), Gemyduguivirus (n = 1), and Gemykibivirus (n = 1) genera. This is the first record, to our knowledge, of genomoviruses associated with a phytophagous insect.