‘Cultivated with great carefulness’ : Chinese market gardening, urban food supplies and public health in Australasia, 1860s-1950s

Abstract: Our article examines Chinese market gardening in Australasia and changes in their agricultural practices, notably the gradual adoption of artificial fertilisers over the twentieth century, consequent with declining supplies of human and animal manure in cities. We highlight the centrality of Chinese market gardens to urban food supplies in Australasia. In light of the public health revolution, we also demonstrate the contentious issue of Chinese use of human waste or nightsoil as fertiliser. We show that urbanisation and the public health revolution transformed manure from a valued agricultural resource into a problematic waste product. Our article reveals a range of attitudes and beliefs towards Chinese market gardening that complicate simplistic narratives of uniform colonial racism

PPAR gamma/mTOR signalling: striking the right balance in cartilage homeostasis

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-20574

3-manifold invariants and periodicity of homology spheres

We show how the periodicity of a homology sphere is reflected in the Reshetikhin-Turaev-Witten invariants of the manifold. These yield a criterion for the periodicity of a homology sphere.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol2/agt-2-34.abs.htm

Researching Chinese Market Gardening: Insights from Archaeology and Material Culture

This paper explores the use of material culture evidence to uncover the economic and social environments of Chinese market gardeners in Australia and New Zealand. In particular it explores the multiple meanings that artefacts associated with Chinese market gardeners can embody and how they mediate between cultures. Four items of material culture are examined to discover how they can shed light on the daily lives of Chinese market gardeners and their social interactions. Two come from archaeological contexts; one is in a museum collection and one is in private ownership. They range in date from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s or 1930s. The first two are utilitarian items of technology: a garden rake and a Clutterbuck oil engine. The second two are more luxury items: an ornate silver fob watch and chain and a collection of fine bone china ceramics imported from Europe. What they have in common is that their owners and users were all Chinese market gardeners. Illustrating how material culture evidence can complement evidence from more traditional sources, the paper draws on documentary sources and oral histories to provide a context in time and place for each of these items

Remembering Wing Yuen Lee: surprises, silences and subtexts in oral testimony

This paper discusses an interview with Noelene Johnston, the daughter of a Chinese herbalist, Wing Yuen Lee, who practised in Murwillumbah in northern New South Wales until 1958. The focus of the interview was on Noelene's memories of her father's herbalist practice and her Chinese identity. The paper explores the complex layering of stories that the interview revealed, the powerful emotions and the many gaps, silences and secrets. The complexities of human relationships that transcend racial and cultural boundaries and the powerful influence which social mores and conventions have on them are considered. The analysis also reveals the strong influence that these social mores and conventions have on individual memory. Finally, through the interview, the paper provides insights into how Chinese and Australian identities are redefined in each generation. Through oral history we gain a more sophisticated understanding of the social interactions between communities and a more complex framework for reinterpreting the Chinese role in Australian history

Chinese Market Gardening in Australia and New Zealand, 1860s - 1960s: A Study in Technology Transfer

Chinese market gardeners were widely dispersed across rural areas of Australia and New Zealand by the late-nineteenth century and could be found in the most marginal areas for agriculture, from the rugged ranges of Central Otago to the deserts of Australia. Adapting practices they brought with them from China, particularly their skills in water management and intensive cultivation, and adopting developments in European technology, they successfully turned the challenges of life in such environments to their advantage. This thesis explores the history of Chinese market gardens and market gardeners in Australia and New Zealand from the 1860s to the 1960s. It interprets that history through the use and adaptation of some key theoretical and conceptual approaches in the social sciences: technology transfer and the diffusion of innovation, transnationalism and social capital. Applying these conceptual approaches, this study positions Chinese market gardeners and the agricultural practices they brought to new lands within the particular environmental, economic and social contexts they encountered and explores how the history of Chinese market gardening in Australia and New Zealand was shaped by such factors as political and legal institutions as well as organisational structures. It places this history within the context of longer term processes of social, economic, environmental and technological change. This study also interprets the history of Chinese market gardening as a process of ongoing interactions between different knowledge systems - indigenous, European and Chinese horticultural traditions. The study reveals remarkable continuity in traditional Chinese horticultural methods and how, at the same time, Chinese market gardening underwent technological change and adaptation in new environments

A Risk Score to Detect Subclinical Rheumatoid Arthritis\textendashAssociated Interstitial Lung Disease

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Virally programmed extracellular vesicles sensitize cancer cells to oncolytic virus and small molecule therapy

Recent advances in cancer therapeutics clearly demonstrate the need for innovative multiplex therapies that attack the tumour on multiple fronts. Oncolytic or "cancer-killing" viruses (OVs) represent up-and-coming multi-mechanistic immunotherapeutic drugs for the treatment of cancer. In this study, we perform an in-vitro screen based on virus-encoded artificial microRNAs (amiRNAs) and find that a unique amiRNA, herein termed amiR-4, confers a replicative advantage to the VSVΔ51 OV platform. Target validation of amiR-4 reveals ARID1A, a protein involved in chromatin remodelling, as an important player in resistance to OV replication. Virus-directed targeting of ARID1A coupled with small-molecule inhibition of the methyltransferase EZH2 leads to the synthetic lethal killing of both infected and uninfected tumour cells. The bystander killing of uninfected cells is mediated by intercellular transfer of extracellular vesicles carrying amiR-4 cargo. Altogether, our findings establish that OVs can serve as replicating vehicles for amiRNA therapeutics with the potential for combination with small molecule and immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy