Calls from the climate change community and a more widespread concern for human security have reawakened the interest of geographers and others in disaster politics. A legacy of geographical research on the political causes and consequences of disaster is reviewed and built on to formulate a framework for the analysis of post-disaster political space. This is constructed around the notion of a contested social contract. The Marmara earthquake, Turkey, is used to illustrate the framework and provide empirical detail on the multiple scales and time phasing of post-disaster political change. Priorities for a future research agenda in disaster politics are proposed.

Over the past decade, remote sensing has been used increasingly in the study of active volcanoes and their associated hazards. Ground-based remote sensing techniques, such as those aimed at the analysis of volcanic gases or fumarole temperatures, are now part of routine monitoring operations with additional satellite-based remote sensing methods. It is likely that the use of satellite-based systems will be most beneficial for volcano monitoring in developing country regions and remote areas. In such situations, an operational real-time satellite remote sensing system could provide rapid assessment of volcanic activity levels and potentially be used to derive crucial information for disaster prevention. This would allow key at-risk areas to be rapidly and appropriately targeted. An operational test of such a system has been carried out in the past 3 years in Central America, based on local reception and analysis of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) imagery. Here we analyse the performance and data quality for recent activity of Fuego volcano (Guatemala). We assess the ability of the system to detect, quantify and monitor periods of heightened activity and consider the benefits of such information being available in near-real time to local geoscientists and for hazard mitigation. We show that the system is able to detect significant changes in volcanic activity (November and December 2004, February and December 2005). There are good comparisons for these events with large-scale monitoring systems using additional remote sensing data. This paper provides one of the few evaluations of the direct application of operational AVHRR data to volcanic hazard monitoring and disaster management in developing countries.

Although phosphate (Pi) starvation signaling is well studied in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), it is still largely unknown in rice (Oryza sativa). In this work, a rice leaf tip necrosis1 (ltn1) mutant was identified and characterized. Map-based cloning identified LTN1 as LOC_Os05g48390, the putative ortholog of Arabidopsis PHO2, which plays important roles in Pi starvation signaling. Analysis of transgenic plants harboring a LTN1 promoter::b-glucuronidase construct revealed that LTN1 was preferentially expressed in vascular tissues. The ltn1 mutant exhibited increased Pi uptake and translocation, which led to Pi overaccumulation in shoots. In association with enhanced Pi uptake and transport, some Pi transporters were up-regulated in the ltn1 mutant in the presence of sufficient Pi. Furthermore, the elongation of primary and adventitious roots was enhanced in the ltn1 mutant under Pi starvation, suggesting that LTN1 is involved in Pi-dependent root architecture alteration. Under Pi-sufficient conditions, typical Pi starvation responses such as stimulation of phosphatase and RNase activities, lipid composition alteration, nitrogen assimilation repression, and increased metal uptake were also activated in ltn1. Moreover, analysis of OsmiR399-overexpressing plants showed that LTN1 was down-regulated by OsmiR399. Our results strongly indicate that LTN1 is a crucial Pi starvation signaling component downstream of miR399 involved in the regulation of multiple Pi starvation responses in rice.for 15 min. Finally, the gels were stained with Fast Black K salt and b-naphthyl acid phosphate. For analysis of RNase activity, protein extraction and measurement were carried out as described above, and enzyme assays were according to the protocol described by Yen and Green (1991). www.plant.org Downloaded from on June 9, 2015 -Published by www.plant.org Downloaded from

Shannon Speed is contributing editor of “Human Rights Forum,” the AAA Committee for Human Rights column in Anthropology News.

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