Camp Lwandle: Rehabilitating a migrant labour hostel at the seaside

In southern African narratives of migrant labour, hostels and compounds are represented as typical examples of colonial and apartheid planning. Visual and spatial comparisons are consistently made between the regulatory power of hostels and those of concentration camps. Several of these sites of violence and repression are today being reconfigured as sites of conscience, their artefactual presence on the landscape being constructed as places of remembrance. In this trajectory, a space of seeming anonymity in Lwandle, some 40 km outside of Cape Town, was identified by the newly established museum, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as a structure of significance. The migrant labour compound in Lwandle, of which Hostel 33 is the last remnant, was designed by planners and engineers and laid out as part of a labour camp for male migrant workers in the 1950s. This article explores the ambitious project initiated in 2008, by the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum (and funded largely by the US Ambassadors Cultural Restoration Fund), to restore Hostel 33. Although Hostel 33 was not a very old structure, having been built in 1958/9, nor was it easily considered to have conventional architectural significance, its material presence in present-day Lwandle represents a reminder of the conditions of life in the labour camp. The article traces the work entailed in the restoration process through paying attention to both the built fabric and its materiality, and by giving an account of the explorations into finding ways to restore the hostel to the museum through making it into a site of significance. In place of the centrality of the building as the object of restoration, the work shifted to considering how the hostel could function most effectively as a stage and destination for the Museum’s narrations of the past. Retaining and maintaining Hostel 33 was less concerned with the fabric as an empirical fact of the past, than with its projection into an envisaged future for museum purposes.Department of HE and Training approved lis

Lipids induce expression of serum-responsive transmembrane kinase EhTMKB1-9 in an early branching eukaryote Entamoeba histolytica

Mechanisms underlying the initiation of proliferative response are known only for a few organisms, and are not understood for the medically important organisms including Entamoeba histolytica. The trans membrane kinase EhTMKB1-9 of E. histolytica is one of the early indicators of proliferation and its' expression is regulated by serum, one of the components necessary for cellular proliferation in vitro. In this study we show that bovine serum albumin (BSA) can induce EhTMKB1-9 expression in place of serum, and that both follow the same mechanism. Both serum and BSA use the same promoter element and the activation process is initiated through a PI3 kinase-mediated pathway. We further show that BSA activates EhTMKB1-9 due to the lipids associated with it and that unsaturated fatty acids are responsible for activation. These results suggest that lipid molecules are ligand(s) for initiation of a signaling system that stimulates EhTMKB1-9 expression

Inter- and intra-observer variability in Sonographic measurements of the cross-sectional diameters and area of the umbilical cord and its vessels during pregnancy

Background. The purpose of the study was to evaluate inter- and intra-observer variability in sonographic measurements of the cross-sectional area of the umbilical cord and the diameters of its vessels in low-risk pregnancies of 12 to 40 weeks of gestation. Methods. A prospective cross sectional study was performed in 221 pregnant women at different gestational ages. Measurements were carried out also by a second observer to evaluate inter-observer variability and repeated once again by the first observer to assess intra-observer variability. The linear correlation between the measurements (Spearman's coefficient of correlation) and their reliability through the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), the Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the limits of agreement proposed by Bland and Altman were evaluated. Results. The results showed that inter-observer and intra-observer variability did not show any significant difference between examiners. A good linear correlation between the measurements and reliability was obtained, with values of R, ICC and Cronbach's alpha all above the standard limits. Conclusion. It is possible to conclude that inter- and intra-observer variability in the measurements of the umbilical cord and its vessels was small; their reliability and agreement were good. © 2008 Barbieri et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

The Politics of Race and Class and the Changing Spatial Fortunes of the McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, New York, 1936-2010

This paper explores the changing spatial properties of the McCarren Pool and connects them to the politics of race and class. The pool was a large liberal government project that sought to improve the leisure time of working class Brooklynites and between 1936 and the early 1970s it was a quasi-public functional space. In the 1970s and the early 1980s, the pool became a quasi-public dysfunctional space because the city government reduced its maintenance and staffing levels. Working class whites of the area engaged into neighborhood defense in order to prevent the influx of Latinos and African Americans into parts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint and this included the environs of the McCarren Pool. The pool was shut down in 1983 because of a mechanical failure. Its restoration did not take place because residents and storekeepers near the vicinity of the pool complained that by the 1970s, it was only African Americans and Latinos who patronized the pool and that their presence in the neighborhood undermined white exclusivity. For two decades, the McCarren Pool became a multi-use alternative space frequented by homeless people, graffiti artists, heroin users, teenagers, and drug dealers. Unlike previous decades, during this period, people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds frequented the pool area in a relatively harmonious manner. In the early part of the twenty-first century, a neoliberal city administration allowed a corporation to organize music concerts in the pool premises and promised to restore the facility into an operable swimming pool. The problem with this restoration project is that the history of the pool between the early 1970s and the early 2000s is downplayed and this does not serve well former or future users of the poo

Evaluation of older Adults with obesity for bariatric surgery: Geriatricians' perspective

The prevalence of obesity in the general population is increasing worldwide, and those surviving are at an increased risk for developing comorbidity and physical limitations. With aging, obesity places this high-risk population at an increased risk for future morbidity, institutionalization, and functional decline. Traditional weight loss programs lead to inconsistent improvements in comorbidity, function, and quality of life. Bariatric surgery may offer a reasonable alternative in selected patients to achieve improvements in these outcomes. We present our approach in assessing the physiologic age of older candidates for bariatric surgery from a geriatrician's perspective that may be useful for general internists, bariatricians, and general surgeons alike. We present how a focus on function and physiological parameters of aging provides more predictive power than that on chronological age alone