Affective life, “vulnerable” youths, and international volunteering in a residential care programme in Cusco, Peru

This paper critically engages with the implications of the “affect turn” in the geographies of development and volunteering. By way of considering “affective life” at a residential youth care centre in Peru through an ethnographic study, we aim to contribute to current discussions of “(self‐)transformation” taking place through affectivity in the experience of volunteering. Conceptually, our approach to investigating “affective life” and volunteering involves two steps. First, we critically review this body of work's recent focus on the individualistic mode of volunteer self‐transformation in encountering “vulnerable others.” We identify the need to think about affect and embodiment also from the perspectives of the “vulnerable” groups whose lives are entangled with the presence of international volunteering. Second, we argue for an affect‐informed approach to socio‐politically shaped vulnerability, with a particular emphasis on lived experiences and affective capacities related to enduring social and material conditions. Against the backdrop of marginalisation of adolescent mothers from rural and indigenous backgrounds, many of whom are survivors of sexual abuse, we analyse the experiences of these youths living at a specific residential care centre and interacting with volunteers on a daily basis. In doing so, we employ a series of perspectives from the residents, while taking into account the organisational environment. We also show the complex ways in which resident–volunteer encounters are at play in life‐enhancing affective states, capacities, and relations emerging among the residents. Our findings on the residents' self‐ and shared capacity of transformation highlights the importance of attending to the spatialities of affective life in academic work focused on the contemporary geographies of international volunteering

The floating churches of Volgograd: river topologies and warped spatalities of faith

This paper explores creative reuse as an alternative modality to upcycle the ateriality and documentary capacities of things, beyond the linear entrapments of historical or functional redundancy. Drawing on an amphibious ethnography of Volgograd’s riverscapes, we analyse the floating churches inaugurated after the collapse of the Soviet Union to support the revival of faith practices. Acting as mobile centres of religious activity, they morph various temporalities, functions and places into multidimensional operative domains that range from the embodied practices of sailing and engaging in religious rituals to the making of sacred space at a regional level. We conclude by suggesting that their perations and impact rely on topologies of fixed points and shifting spatialities,which provide a salient vehicle for broader geographical interrogations of memory, creativity and mobility

Rethinking the camp: On spatial technologies of power and resistance

In light of the recent proliferation and co-presence of institutional and makeshift camps and encampments in Europe, this article explores the current multifaceted geographies of the camp and their formal and informal spatialities. By engaging with key work in ‘camp studies’ we analyse contemporary institutional and makeshift refugee camps in their complex relationship. While the review of the existing literature is a fundamental starting point for our analysis, in this article we propose to depart from a perspective exclusively focussed on institutional camps to incorporate a reflection on the informal encampments that have recently proliferated in Europe. In particular, we reflect on how these makeshift spatial formations are associated with the presence and workings of institutional camps, at times in a complementary, almost symbiotic relationship. We conclude by suggesting that camps should not be studied in isolation and that both institutional and informal camps should be examined as dynamic spaces that may be transformed and appropriated by their residents, becoming part of the current fragmented mobilities of irregular migrations across Europe and of the related political geographies of bordering, smuggling, and humanitarian care

ALK Status Testing in Non–Small-Cell Lung Carcinoma by FISH on ThinPrep Slides with Cytology Material

Introduction:Oncogenic anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene rearrangements in non–small-cell lung carcinomas (NSCLC) provide the basis for targeted therapy with crizotinib and other specific ALK inhibitors. Treatment eligibility is conventionally determined by the Food and Drug Administration–approved companion diagnostic fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) assay on paraffin-embedded tissue (PET). On limited samples such as fine needle aspiration–derived cytoblocks, FISH for ALK is often uninformative. FISH performed on liquid-based ThinPrep slides (ThinPrep-FISH) may represent a robust alternative.Methods:Two hundred thirty cytology samples from 217 patients with advanced NSCLC, including a consecutive series of 179 specimens, were used to generate matched ThinPrep slides and paraffin cytoblocks. The same ThinPrep slides used for cytologic diagnosis were assessed by standard ALK break-apart two-color probe FISH, after etching of tumor areas. Ultrasensitive ALK immunohistochemistry (IHC) on corresponding cytoblocks [D5F3 antibody, OptiView signal amplification] served as the reference data set.Results:ThinPrep-FISH ALK signals were robust in 228 of 230 cases and not compromised by nuclear truncation inherent in paraffin-embedded tissue–FISH; only two samples displayed no signals. Nine of 178 informative cases (5%) in the consecutive series and 18 of 228 informative cases (7.8%) overall were ALK rearranged by ThinPrep-FISH. In 154 informative matched ThinPrep-FISH and cytoblock-IHC samples, 152 were concordant (10, 6.5% ALK status positive; 142, 92.2% ALK status negative), and two (1.3%) were ThinPrep-FISH positive but IHC negative (sensitivity 100%, specificity 98.6%, overall agreement 98.7%).Conclusion:Detection of ALK gene rearrangements in liquid cytology ThinPrep slides derived from patients with NSCLC can be confidently used for clinical ALK molecular testing

Replication fork stalling by bulky DNA damage: localization at active origins and checkpoint modulation

The integrity of the genome is threatened by DNA damage that blocks the progression of replication forks. Little is known about the genomic locations of replication fork stalling, and its determinants and consequences in vivo. Here we show that bulky DNA damaging agents induce localized fork stalling at yeast replication origins, and that localized stalling is dependent on proximal origin activity and is modulated by the intra–S–phase checkpoint. Fork stalling preceded the formation of sister chromatid junctions required for bypassing DNA damage. Despite DNA adduct formation, localized fork stalling was abrogated at an origin inactivated by a point mutation and prominent stalling was not detected at naturally-inactive origins in the replicon. The intra–S–phase checkpoint contributed to the high-level of fork stalling at early origins, while checkpoint inactivation led to initiation, localized stalling and chromatid joining at a late origin. Our results indicate that replication forks initially encountering a bulky DNA adduct exhibit a dual nature of stalling: a checkpoint-independent arrest that triggers sister chromatid junction formation, as well as a checkpoint-enhanced arrest at early origins that accompanies the repression of late origin firing. We propose that the initial checkpoint-enhanced arrest reflects events that facilitate fork resolution at subsequent lesions

Terrain, politics, history

This article is based on the 2019 Dialogues in Human Geography plenary lecture at the Royal Geographical Society. It has four parts. The first discusses my work on territory in relation to recent work by geographers and others on the vertical, the volumetric, the voluminous, and the milieu as ways of thinking space in three-dimensions, of a fluid and dynamic earth. Second, it proposes using the concept of terrain to analyse the political materiality of territory. Third, it adds some cautions to this, through thinking about the history of the concept of terrain in geographical thought, which has tended to associate it with either physical or military geography. Finally, it suggests that this work is a way geographers might begin to respond to the challenge recently made by Bruno Latour, where he suggests that ‘belonging to a territory is the phenomenon most in need of rethinking and careful redescription; learning new ways to inhabit the Earth is our biggest challenge’. Responding to Latour continues this thinking about the relations between territory, Earth, land, and ground, and their limits