Serratia marcescens: The Miracle Bacillus

The objectives of this article are to explain the mysterious appearance of crimson-colored bacteria on food and communion bread/wafers, over the centuries, as well as to describe the biological basi

Parent materials of Yellow-brown loams in the Waikato-Coromandel district.

The yellow-brown loams of the Waikato-Coromandel region are derived from weathered airfall volcanic materials. These materials may be either direct airfall deposits, or erosion products of these deposits, described as reworked ash in some publications. In the erosion products small amounts of other rocks may be included in the parent materials, and these additions may modify to a slight degree the chemical and physical properties of the soil as a yellow-brown loam. In larger amounts these additions result in the formation of intergrades to yellow-brown earths or gley soils

Translesion synthesis in mammalian cells

DNA damage blocks the progression of the replication fork. In order to circumvent the damaged bases, cells employ specialized low stringency DNA polymerases, which are able to carry out translesion synthesis (TLS) past different types of damage. The five polymerases used in TLS in human cells have different substrate specificities, enabling them to deal with many different types of damaged bases. PCNA plays a central role in recruiting the TLS polymerases and effecting the polymerase switch from replicative to TLS polymerase. When the fork is blocked PCNA gets ubiquitinated. This increases its affinity for the TLS polymerases, which all have novel ubiquitin-binding motifs, thereby facilitating their engagement at the stalled fork to effect TLS

Purging parliament: a new christian politics in Papua New Guinea?

In November and December 2013, a controversy erupted in Papua New Guinea when the speaker of the national parliament, Theodore Zurenuoc, a devout Christian, tried to rid Parliament House of what he described as ‘ungodly images and idols’. Zurenuoc had already begun by removing the carvings from a lintel above the entrance to Parliament House, but planned to remove many more carvings throughout the building. His plans were strongly opposed, and considerable debate was generated in the two national newspapers and in social media. Those who opposed him saw him as a ‘religious fundamentalist’ and his actions as ‘sacrilege’ and ‘cultural terrorism’,1 while those who supported Zurenuoc’s plans saw him as a ‘God-fearing’, ‘modern-day Reformer’ and ‘God’s anointed vessel’. Despite the protests, which included a number of high-profile critics, and the intercession of the prime minister, the speaker was unrepentant, vowing to continue his work until there were ‘no traces of elements of cult and demonic worship in the national parliament of PNG’ (Evara 2013). (First paragraph of paper)AusAI

"The problem is, I'm not sure I believe in the thunderclap of trauma": Aesthetics of trauma in contemporary American literature

Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), focusing on a nine-year-old boy’s traumatised response to losing his father in the attacks of 11 September 2001, polarised responses from reviewers and critics. The general hostility of newspaper reviewers is epitomised by Harry Siegel, writing in the New York Press, who accused Foer of arch opportunism, arguing that in choosing the novel’s key subject, ‘he snatches 9/11 to invest his conceit with gravitas, thus crossing the line that separates the risible from the villainous’.1 Several literary critics, by contrast, approved of Foer’s formally experimental novel. Philippe Codde, for example, argues that it is precisely the failure of written language and narrative in the face of unrepresentable trauma that ‘has prompted the controversial form of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,’ and that this is also ‘why both of Foer’s novels are such interesting and convincing representations of trauma’.2 Vociferous debates regarding the literary representation of trauma are illustrated by strikingly divergent assessments of novels such as Foer’s. This essay considers those debates, focusing especially on how the discussion of trauma in America, where the phenomenon has so fully entered public discourse, has begun to influence both writers and, interdependently, critics and theorists. In the following I contend that a significant proportion of contemporary literature has reified elements of dominant trauma theory into an often prescriptive aesthetic. Elements of representation that were once highly experimental have become instead aesthetic tropes of the ‘trauma genre’. This essay also discusses a number of writers and texts which resist this trauma aesthetic, either through a rigorously deployed realism or through the employment of more disruptive effects and subjects which have not, at least yet, become ossified into genre clichés

Naturalism and Steinbeck's "curious compromise" in The Grapes of Wrath

In the seventy years since the publication of The Grapes of Wrath, the extent of the influence of naturalism upon the work and the quality of Steinbeck’s naturalistic discourse has been frequently debated. Only ten years after its publication, Woodburn O. Ross noted Steinbeck’s “partial affiliation” with naturalism, concluding that he is, “up to a certain point, the complete naturalist” (433). Prior to this, as David Wyatt observes in the introduction to his collection on the novel, Edmund Wilson “set the terms of the initial critical debate…by casting Steinbeck as the crudest sort of naturalist” (5). More recently, critics have noted a considerable sophistication in Steinbeck’s naturalistic-biological themes, in particular with regard to the ways in which naturalism is synthesized with numerous other discourses. Given that this issue has been rehearsed at length throughout the novel’s existence, the starting point for this essay is to assume that there are a number of naturalistic attributes detectable in The Grapes of Wrath. In what follows, naturalism is treated as just one of this novel’s discursive formulations amongst many other literary, philosophical and sociological theoretical bases. This complex blending and clashing of discourses—to paraphrase Barthes’ oft-quoted axiom—has previously been noted by a number of critics. Donald Pizer, for example, identifies “primitivist, Marxist, Christian, and scientific discourses in The Grapes of Wrath” (Bloom 86), while Ralph Willett and John White suggest that the novel embraces “nostalgia for the agrarian past, a documentary desire to record contemporary fact (soil erosion, foreclosures, industrialized farming, Hoovervilles), a populist faith in ‘the people’, and an indignation against man-made suffering” (229)

"Maybe that's what happens if you touch the Doctor, even for a second": Trauma in Doctor Who

When the BBC television series Doctor Who returned in 2005, this followed an absence of 16 years (barring the 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann). During this hiatus theories associated with trauma were widely disseminated in the West. Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was first defined in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the term’s preeminence was in its infancy at the time of the cancellation of the original run of Doctor Who in 1989. In the 1963-1989 series direct treatment of trauma was thus sparse and unsystematic, whereas in the more theoretically-aware period of 2005 to the present day, the new series has engaged extensively and self-consciously with theories of trauma. The following essay analyses both series’ approach to issues of trauma with a two-fold intention. Firstly, to highlight the different approaches taken to trauma in the series’ two runs: the more metaphorical and piecemeal approach in the original, compared to the way in which the current series has drawn more directly and systematically on existing theory, to the extent that trauma has become a crucial concept underpinning its popular success. Secondly, the essay analyses ways in which an academic discourse such as trauma studies is articulated in and disseminated through the realm of popular culture

Improving catalyst activity in secondary amine catalysed transformations

The effect on catalyst performance of altering substituents at the 2-position of the Macmillan imidazolidinone has been examined. Condensation of L-phenylalanine N-methyl amide with acetophenone derivatives results in a series of imidazolidinones whose salts can be used to accelerate the Diels-Alder cycloaddition. Electron withdrawing groups significantly increases the overall rate of cycloaddition without compromise in selectivity. The most effective catalyst was shown to be efficient for a variety of substrates and the applicability of this catalyst to alternative secondary amine catalysed transformations is also discussed

Neurocognitive function in HIV infected patients on antiretroviral therapy

OBJECTIVE To describe factors associated with neurocognitive (NC) function in HIV-positive patients on stable combination antiretroviral therapy. DESIGN We undertook a cross-sectional analysis assessing NC data obtained at baseline in patients entering the Protease-Inhibitor-Monotherapy-Versus-Ongoing-Triple therapy (PIVOT) trial. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE NC testing comprised of 5 domains. Raw results were z-transformed using standard and demographically adjusted normative datasets (ND). Global z-scores (NPZ-5) were derived from averaging the 5 domains and percentage of subjects with test scores >1 standard deviation (SD) below population means in at least two domains (abnormal Frascati score) calculated. Patient characteristics associated with NC results were assessed using multivariable linear regression. RESULTS Of the 587 patients in PIVOT, 557 had full NC results and were included. 77% were male, 68% Caucasian and 28% of Black ethnicity. Mean (SD) baseline and nadir CD4+ lymphocyte counts were 553(217) and 177(117) cells/µL, respectively, and HIV RNA was <50 copies/mL in all. Median (IQR) NPZ-5 score was -0.5 (-1.2/-0) overall, and -0.3 (-0.7/0.1) and -1.4 (-2/-0.8) in subjects of Caucasian and Black ethnicity, respectively. Abnormal Frascati scores using the standard-ND were observed in 51%, 38%, and 81%, respectively, of subjects overall, Caucasian and Black ethnicity (p<0.001), but in 62% and 69% of Caucasian and Black subjects using demographically adjusted-ND (p = 0.20). In the multivariate analysis, only Black ethnicity was associated with poorer NPZ-5 scores (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS In this large group of HIV-infected subjects with viral load suppression, ethnicity but not HIV-disease factors is closely associated with NC results. The prevalence of abnormal results is highly dependent on control datasets utilised. TRIAL REGISTRY ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01230580