Stories from a CNC factory in Ahmedabad

Around 1997, the temple making industry of western India witnessed a fundamental shift in production processes, brought about by digital modes of drawing and fabrication. This involved not only adjusting everyday working practices to the new technologies but adjusting the technologies themselves. This article is concerned with the design and making of the Shree Krishna temple in West Bromwich, United Kingdom in a CNC factory in Ahmedabad, India. Through accounts of a hereditary temple architect, a clay modeler and a software engineer it shows how digital modes of production have not only altered architectural labour in fundamental ways, but also created new understandings of improvisation, pragmatics and relations with historical artefacts. The article complicates commonly held dichotomies between “craft and automation”, and between “tradition and technology” by bringing to the fore new problems as well as creative interventions of a range of actors, producing new forms of expertise, qualities, and affects

QuantiFERON-TB Gold assay for the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection.

Tuberculin skin test (TST) has been used for 100 years for the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI). In recent years, increasing interest in the diagnosis of TB has led to the development of new assays. QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-G) is an IFN-gamma-release assay that measures the release of interferon after stimulation in vitro by Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens. The main advantage of this assay with respect to TST is the lack of crossreaction with bacillus Calmette-Guérin and most nontuberculous mycobacteria. QFT-G also eliminates the need for the patient to return for test reading in 48-72 h. In the immunocompromised host and in pediatric populations, studies suggest that the QFT-G better correlates with the risk of TB than the TST, but data remain inconclusive. In contrast to TST, there are no prospective studies regarding the association of the QFT-G result and the risk for development of TB. Given its advantages, the QFT-G may become the standard test for the diagnosis of LTBI