Berührung auf Todeshöhe: Maurice Blanchots Uneingestehbare Gemeinschaft (Bataille, Nancy, Duras)

Focusing on Maurice Blanchot’s La Communauté inavouable (1983), this text investigates possibilities of thinking and performing communities that interact with and constitute one another “à hauteur de mort” (Bataille).Following the twofold structure of Blanchot’s text, the first part of the essay in its first part unfolds the notion of communitas in order to show how Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, and Jean-Luc Nancy formulated a new concept of community by distinguishing it from liberal, socialist, Christian or fascist forms of community that all had become extremely problematic by the beginning of the Second World War at the latest. By doing so they themselves performed an ‘unavowable community.’The second part of the essay engages with Marguerite Duras’ La Maladie de la mort, a novella that is the main subject of the second part of La Communauté inavouable. Here, the performative power of language is delineated by means of the idea of a ‘community of lovers’ that manifests itself, in contrast to romantic forms of togetherness and unity, precisely in the breakdown of communicatio and communitas.Peer Reviewe

Formação continuada e desempenho estudantil : o caso de Araucária - Paraná

Orientadora: Profª Drª Rose Meri TrojanDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Educação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, Cultura e Tecnologia. Defesa: Curitiba, 19/08/2010Bibliografia: fls. 123-128Área de concentração: Educação e trabalhoResumo: A presente pesquisa objetiva analisar a relação entre a formação continuada dos professores e o desempenho dos estudantes das séries iniciais do Ensino Fundamental, ao se observarem os resultados obtidos nas avaliações em larga escala realizadas atualmente no Brasil, em especial na Prova Brasil nos anos de 2005 e 2007. Para atender aos objetivos esperados, estabelece-se relação entre formação continuada e qualidade de ensino na educação pública. Apresentam-se conceitos e finalidades da formação continuada relacionando-os a períodos da história da educação brasileira. Destaca-se, ainda, o que diz a lei nacional sobre a formação dos professores e faz-se um contraponto com as contribuições da formação continuada e as críticas realizadas em função de suas limitações. Traça-se um panorama da política de formação continuada no Brasil, no Estado do Paraná e na Região Metropolitana de Curitiba. E, ao optar pelo estudo de caso, apresentam-se as políticas de formação continuada no Município de Araucária- PR, bem como algumas características do Município em relação à população e economia e, mais especificamente, à educação, a fim de situar e contextualizar a pesquisa. Consideram-se as horas de formação continuada oferecidas pela Secretaria Municipal de Educação nas disciplinas de Língua Portuguesa e Matemática, como nas demais atividades de formação, no período de 2001 a 2008 e observa-se de que forma interferem no desempenho dos estudantes. Para concluir, faz-se também uma relação entre os processos e as políticas de formação continuada no Município, como o Plano Municipal de Educação e as atuais demandas no Brasil, incluindo o Plano de Ações Articuladas de Araucária.Abstract: The objective of the following study is to analyze the relationship between the increase in education of teachers and the educational results obtained by students of the primary, or elementary grade levels, obtained mainly by large scale exams, conducted in Brazil, and in particular in the Prova Brasil from 2005 to 2007. To reach the following objectives, a correlation has been established between the further education of professors and the quality of education in the public school system. The study presents concepts and goals of the continuous formation relating to periods of the educational history of Brazil. One aspect that greatly stands out in the study is what the national law states regarding teacher education and is a counterpoint to the contributions of teacher education and the subsequent criticisms related to its limitations. The study creates a picture of the politics of continual teacher education in Brazil, particularly in the metropolitan area of Curitiba, in the state of Paraná. Furthermore, by opting to analyze a case study, the politics revolving continual teacher education in the township of Araucária, Paraná, are laid out, as well as characteristics of the township related to the population and economy, and more specifically, education, with the purpose of putting the following study into context. One vital aspect that is taken into consideration is the quantity of hours that the teacher must put in throughout his or her education in the courses that are offered by the Municipal Secretary of Education in the subjects of the Portuguese language and mathematics, as well as in other educational activities, throughout the years of 2001 to 2008, while also observing how these activities interfere in the performance of the student. In conclusion, a relationship is also established between the processes and the politics of continual education in the municipality, such as the Municipal Educational Plan, and the current demands of the country, including the Plano de Ações Articuladas de Araucária

Infância, educação e desigualdade no Brasil

O texto discute as estatísticas oficiais referentes ao atendimento na Educação Infantil no Brasil, a partir da perspectiva que considera a infância como categoria estrutural necessária para a compreensão da dinâmica social e a criança como sujeito e protagonista na construção de seu próprio processo de desenvolvimento. A análise mostra a evolução do atendimento no que diz respeito ao aumento da oferta e do acesso, ainda permanecendo graves desigualdades quando considerado a comparação do atendimento nas creches e pré-escolas, zona rural e urbana e renda familiar. Quanto à qualidade do atendimento, a situação ainda é bastante insatisfatória, especialmente, quando se trata das instituições públicas que atendem às crianças de classes sociais menos favorecida

R+EVUE THE B-SIDE

Visible from only one perspective at a time, architecture suffers the fate of never revealing itself as a whole. An inherent duplicity arises between what can be seen and what remains hidden. The back side—which never shows a representative face nor welcomes us into the building and rarely gets printed in glossy architecture magazines—is the overlooked side of architecture. As a result, we studied the backs of a few famous buildings. What we found is the B-side of architecture. Liberated from the front’s representative obligations, the B-side is an ambiguous space of programmatic, representative, contextual or even ideological experimentation. We represent our discoveries through a series of analytical and experimental drawings

R+EVUE 20%

Organizational and administrative activities have shed their typological corset. Having cut spatial ties to the office, they are now at home almost anywhere. According to current studies, around 20% of office space in Germany will be obsolete in the medium term . This corresponds to a floor area of more than 75 million square meters. Calculated against the average per capita living space of 47,7 sqm , this represents enough space to house almost 2 million people. This equation is grossly simplified. It is problematic for, amongst other reasons, its exclusion of variables such as a building’s structural character, its urban location, and its proximity to technical and social infrastructures. The current demand for living space - especially in metropolitan areas - and the simultaneous necessity to establish more sustainable architectural practices, makes the conversion of existing buildings inevitable. This brings the above-mentioned issues to the fore, and will require the analysis of these buildings’ potentials and the architectural tools for exploiting them. R+EVUE 2 presents ten case studies, each making use of the same already-vacant office structure: an administrative building from the 1970s in Hamburg Wansbek. The object under investigation serves as a stand-in for the office buildings which pervade the peripheries of large German cities. Through consideration of this building’s specific structural and urban characteristics, various strategies for reappropriation are examined. The studies were produced systematically: the same office structure superimposed with ten residential projects, selected to form a broad typological spectrum. The frictions and conflicts which arise during this overlay process become catalysts for specific design solutions and raise more general questions about the reappropriation of existing structures. By adapting the characteristic typological features of the residential buildings to the structure of the office building, new and unexpected approaches are generated. The depth and extent of each study’s intervention is measurable against the existing structure. In the form of red-yellow plans and visualizations, both demolition measures and structural additions are clearly illustrated. The excerpt from the portfolio of office buildings is contrasted with a selection of residential building references. The ten residential building references cover a wide range of different circulation typologies, apartment types, construction principles and scales. The different housing references are all projected onto the structure of one vacant office building. Because its concrete skeleton is typical for an entire generation of commercial structures, the findings of the housing projections resonate beyond this specific case study

SIREs: searching for iron-responsive elements

The iron regulatory protein/iron-responsive element regulatory system plays a crucial role in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression and its disruption results in human disease. IREs are cis-acting regulatory motifs present in mRNAs that encode proteins involved in iron metabolism. They function as binding sites for two related trans-acting factors, namely the IRP-1 and -2. Among cis-acting RNA regulatory elements, the IRE is one of the best characterized. It is defined by a combination of RNA sequence and structure. However, currently available programs to predict IREs do not show a satisfactory level of sensitivity and fail to detect some of the functional IREs. Here, we report an improved software for the prediction of IREs implemented as a user-friendly web server tool. The SIREs web server uses a simple data input interface and provides structure analysis, predicted RNA folds, folding energy data and an overall quality flag based on properties of well characterized IREs. Results are reported in a tabular format and as a schematic visual representation that highlights important features of the IRE. The SIREs (Search for iron-responsive elements) web server is freely available on the web at http://ccbg.imppc.org/sires/index.htm

Ligand recognition determinants of guanine riboswitches

Guanine riboswitches negatively modulate transcription upon guanine binding. The aptamer domain is organized around a three-way junction which forms the ligand binding site. Using currently available 89 guanine aptamer sequences, a consensus secondary structure is deduced and reveals differences from the previously identified aptamer consensus. Three positions are found to display different nucleotide requirements. Using a 2-aminopurine binding assay, we show that variations are allowed depending on the aptamer context. However, changes at position 48 markedly decrease ligand binding in a context-independent fashion. This is consistent with previous observations with the adenine riboswitch in which position 48 was proposed to interact with position 74, which normally base pairs with the ligand. The in vivo transcriptional control of endogenous Bacillus subtilis guanine riboswitches was studied using RT-qPCR assays. The ratio of elongated/terminated transcripts is decreased in presence of a high concentration of guanine but is dependent on the riboswitch analyzed. In general, the aptamer-2AP complex affinity correlates well with the in vivo regulation efficiency of the corresponding riboswitch. These studies suggest that core variations of guanine aptamers are used to produce a spectrum of ligand binding affinities which is used in vivo by host riboswitches to perform gene regulation

Maximum expected accuracy structural neighbors of an RNA secondary structure

International audienceBACKGROUND: Since RNA molecules regulate genes and control alternative splicing by allostery, it is important to develop algorithms to predict RNA conformational switches. Some tools, such as paRNAss, RNAshapes and RNAbor, can be used to predict potential conformational switches; nevertheless, no existent tool can detect general (i.e., not family specific) entire riboswitches (both aptamer and expression platform) with accuracy. Thus, the development of additional algorithms to detect conformational switches seems important, especially since the difference in free energy between the two metastable secondary structures may be as large as 15-20 kcal/mol. It has recently emerged that RNA secondary structure can be more accurately predicted by computing the maximum expected accuracy (MEA) structure, rather than the minimum free energy (MFE) structure. RESULTS: Given an arbitrary RNA secondary structure S₀ for an RNA nucleotide sequence a = a₁,..., a(n), we say that another secondary structure S of a is a k-neighbor of S₀, if the base pair distance between S₀ and S is k. In this paper, we prove that the Boltzmann probability of all k-neighbors of the minimum free energy structure S₀ can be approximated with accuracy ε and confidence 1 - p, simultaneously for all 0 ≤ k N(ε,p,K)=Φ⁻¹(p/2K)²/4ε², where Φ(z) is the cumulative distribution function (CDF) for the standard normal distribution. We go on to describe the algorithm RNAborMEA, which for an arbitrary initial structure S₀ and for all values 0 ≤ k < K, computes the secondary structure MEA(k), having maximum expected accuracy over all k-neighbors of S₀. Computation time is O(n³ * K²), and memory requirements are O(n² * K). We analyze a sample TPP riboswitch, and apply our algorithm to the class of purine riboswitches. CONCLUSIONS: The approximation of RNAbor by sampling, with rigorous bound on accuracy, together with the computation of maximum expected accuracy k-neighbors by RNAborMEA, provide additional tools toward conformational switch detection. Results from RNAborMEA are quite distinct from other tools, such as RNAbor, RNAshapes and paRNAss, hence may provide orthogonal information when looking for suboptimal structures or conformational switches. Source code for RNAborMEA can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/rnabormea/ or http://bioinformatics.bc.edu/clotelab/RNAborMEA/

Subtle genetic changes enhance virulence of methicillin resistant and sensitive Staphylococcus aureus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Community acquired (CA) methicillin-resistant <it>Staphylococcus aureus </it>(MRSA) increasingly causes disease worldwide. USA300 has emerged as the predominant clone causing superficial and invasive infections in children and adults in the USA. Epidemiological studies suggest that USA300 is more virulent than other CA-MRSA. The genetic determinants that render virulence and dominance to USA300 remain unclear.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We sequenced the genomes of two pediatric USA300 isolates: one CA-MRSA and one CA-methicillin susceptible (MSSA), isolated at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. DNA sequencing was performed by Sanger dideoxy whole genome shotgun (WGS) and 454 Life Sciences pyrosequencing strategies. The sequence of the USA300 MRSA strain was rigorously annotated. In USA300-MRSA 2658 chromosomal open reading frames were predicted and 3.1 and 27 kilobase (kb) plasmids were identified. USA300-MSSA contained a 20 kb plasmid with some homology to the 27 kb plasmid found in USA300-MRSA. Two regions found in US300-MRSA were absent in USA300-MSSA. One of these carried the arginine deiminase operon that appears to have been acquired from <it>S. epidermidis</it>. The USA300 sequence was aligned with other sequenced <it>S. aureus </it>genomes and regions unique to USA300 MRSA were identified.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>USA300-MRSA is highly similar to other MRSA strains based on whole genome alignments and gene content, indicating that the differences in pathogenesis are due to subtle changes rather than to large-scale acquisition of virulence factor genes. The USA300 Houston isolate differs from another sequenced USA300 strain isolate, derived from a patient in San Francisco, in plasmid content and a number of sequence polymorphisms. Such differences will provide new insights into the evolution of pathogens.</p