Night Soil, Cesspools, and Smelly Hogs on the Streets: Sanitation, Race, and Governance in Early British Columbia

Looking at three communities — Nelson, Vernon, and Prince Rupert — this study traces the early history of urban sanitation in British Columbia. “Health” is interpreted here not just as a medical condition, but as a cultural, social, and moral force that helped shape the character of these new towns. The battle against dirt and disease was linked to civic boosterism and good citizenship. Euro-Canadian medical and engineering professionals created public health hierarchies, established ritualized systems of sanitary practice, and “mapped” sanitary zones within the emerging civic communities. The public health discourse articulated by these men was profoundly racist, constructing Asian residents as the unclean, unhealthy “Other” whose existence threatened good health and social order.Cette étude retrace à travers trois communautés – Nelson, Vernon et Prince Rupert – les débuts de l’hygiène urbaine en Colombie-Britannique. La notion de « santé » n’y est pas vue dans la seule optique médicale mais également dans la perspective d’une force culturelle, sociale et morale ayant contribué à forger le caractère de ces nouvelles agglomérations. La lutte contre la saleté et la maladie était liée à la promotion de l’idée d’un civisme modèle. Les professionnels euro-canadiens de la médecine et du génie créèrent des hiérarchies de santé publique, établirent des systèmes ritualisés de pratique sanitaire et « cartographièrent » des zones sanitaires au sein des collectivités émergentes. Ces hommes tenaient un discours de santé publique pro- fondément raciste, dépeignant les résidents asiatiques comme ces « autres », sales et malsains, dont l’existence menaçait la santé et l’ordre social

CHA Residents and the Plan for Transformation

This series of policy briefs presents findings from more than a decade of research on the people who lived in Chicago Housing Authority properties when the agencylaunched its Plan for Transformation in October 1999. The ongoing, multiyear effort sought to improve resident well-being by renovating or demolishing decaying public housing properties and replacing them with new, mixed-income development

Renovating the Canadian Old Age Home: The Evolution of Residential Care Facilities in B.C., 1930-1960

Canadian historians have largely ignored the old age home. Focussing on British Columbia, this paper covers a pivotal period of institutional transformation from the 1930s through to the 1950s, when health and social welfare professionals sought to reshape the old age home from a custodial poor law facility to a middle-class medical “home” inhabited by deserving senior citizens. New names, architectural styles, décor, and professional involvement within the institution were meant to reform residential accommodation for Canada's elderly. However, professionals' ageism, divisions created by class and gender, and an increasingly frail institutional population made this process problematic.Les historiens canadiens se sont rarement penchés sur l'hospice de vieillards. Centré sur la Colombie-Britannique, cet article examine une période clé de la transformation institutionnelle des années 1930 jusqu'aux années 1950, alors que les professionnels de la santé et du bien-être social cherchent à refaçonner l'hospice, d'établissement de garde légale de vieillards démunis à « foyer » médical pour aînés méritants de classe moyenne. Nouveaux noms, styles architecturaux renouvelés, décors innovateurs, ainsi que la participation de professionnels au sein de l'établissement, visaient tous une réforme du logement pour personnes âgées au Canada. Toutefois, l'âgisme des professionnels, les divisions engendrées par la classe et le sexe, et la vulnérabilité croissante des bénéficiaires ont fait de ce processus un problème

Dynamic self-assembly of microscale rotors and swimmers.

Biological systems often involve the self-assembly of basic components into complex and functioning structures. Artificial systems that mimic such processes can provide a well-controlled setting to explore the principles involved and also synthesize useful micromachines. Our experiments show that immotile, but active, components self-assemble into two types of structure that exhibit the fundamental forms of motility: translation and rotation. Specifically, micron-scale metallic rods are designed to induce extensile surface flows in the presence of a chemical fuel; these rods interact with each other and pair up to form either a swimmer or a rotor. Such pairs can transition reversibly between these two configurations, leading to kinetics reminiscent of bacterial run-and-tumble motion

The structural basis of bacterial manganese import

肺炎球菌が細胞内にマンガンイオンを取り込むしくみ --膜輸送体PsaBCの立体構造の解明--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2021-09-15.Metal ions are essential for all forms of life. In prokaryotes, ATP-binding cassette (ABC) permeases serve as the primary import pathway for many micronutrients including the first-row transition metal manganese. However, the structural features of ionic metal transporting ABC permeases have remained undefined. Here, we present the crystal structure of the manganese transporter PsaBC from Streptococcus pneumoniae in an open-inward conformation. The type II transporter has a tightly closed transmembrane channel due to “extracellular gating” residues that prevent water permeation or ion reflux. Below these residues, the channel contains a hitherto unreported metal coordination site, which is essential for manganese translocation. Mutagenesis of the extracellular gate perturbs manganese uptake, while coordination site mutagenesis abolishes import. These structural features are highly conserved in metal-specific ABC transporters and are represented throughout the kingdoms of life. Collectively, our results define the structure of PsaBC and reveal the features required for divalent cation transport