Sri lanka's inability to contain ethnic violence as it escalated from sporadic terrorism to mob violence to civil war in recent years has disheartened observers who had looked to the nation as a success story of social and political development. In retrospect, Sri Lanka lacked effective local institutions to integrate the society, and the Sinhalese elite relied on welfare and preferential policies for the Sinhalese majority to maintain power. These alienated the minorities and resulted in Tamil demands for a separate state. This article documents one of the more intractable areas in which ethnic conflict has arisen, land “colonization.” Both major parties competed for the votes of the Sinhalese, but the creation of agricultural settlements in the undeveloped interior of the island, or colonization, is associated primarily with the United National Party (UNP). During the UNP government of recently retired President Junius Richard Jayewardene (1977–88), both the level of violence and the pace of colonization in the Dry Zone between the Sinhalese and Tamil majority areas increased.
Vertebrate
Dlx
genes have been implicated in the differentiation of multiple neuronal subtypes, including cortical GABAergic interneurons, and mutations in
Dlx
genes have been linked to clinical conditions such as epilepsy and autism. Here we show that the single
Drosophila Dlx
homolog,
distal-less
, is required both to specify chemosensory neurons and to regulate the morphologies of their axons and dendrites. We establish that
distal-less
is necessary for development of the mushroom body, a brain region that processes olfactory information. These are important examples of
distal-less
function in an invertebrate nervous system and demonstrate that the
Drosophila
larval olfactory system is a powerful model in which to understand
distal-less
functions during neurogenesis.
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