Derek Walcott : the development of a rooted vision (poetry and drama)

Since his first publications in the late forties, Derek Waleott has made a remarkable achievement as poet and dramatist. This thesis aims to trace his development towards a native vision in the corpus It covers Walcott's published works in poetry and drama from 1949 to 1972. Another Life (New York, 1973), the latest book of poetry which establishes Walcott as a major writer on the world scene, was published too late to be included in this investigation. It was, however, consulted as work in progress, am bears upon our analysis at several important points. Walcott evolves towards a vision of the region as an integral cultural entity whose destiny is in a renascence of the myth-making Imagination. It must start from an elemental self-exploration to fulfil the original purpose of such a role: to arrive at self-awareness in inventing new names for its new angst and aspirations. Roth the need and potential for this renascence derive from history. The dislocations and abnegations of history have left Caribbean man a reduced, isolated figure in the New World. It is a position which returns him to the primal. In dislocating the peoples of the region from their parent myths, however, history has left the vestigial traces of these myths reduced to their essentials. This combines with the closeness to the elemental to make the sense of the archetypal immanent in the New World setting. This means in essence that Wa1cott sees a native rehabilitation solely in terms of a self-dependent effort. It cannot be in terms of the recovery of the spiritual heritage of any parent tradition, such as the AfrIcan. The routes which the myth-making Imagination must traverse preclude any such single orientation. In ''What the Twilight Says", the classic essay which prefaces Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays vi (New York, 1970), he expresses it thus: ". the darkness must be total, and the cave should not contain a single man-made, mnemonic object" (p.5). Placing emphasis on the self-creative effort, Walcott stands mainly for a critical attitude towards the shortcomings of his society, rather than a position of protest. His words in ''What the Twilight Says" show how consistent this approach is with the vision outlined above. It is not merely the debt of history, Walcott explains, which is Caribbean man's claim to the New World, but the spiritual revelation to be attained in his effort to "name" his own modes of experience (p.l7). It is through his own self-exploration that Walcott arrives at these definitions. He starts with a keen sense of the denials of history. As the young colonial artist nurtured on Western tradition, he is confounded in his effort to identify the conflict in the master's terms. Overcoming this, he moves into a period of intense self-exploration to discover the true sources of the predicament in his unique circumstances. Walcott is dependent on the elemental principles of Mind for this effort, and it gives rise to overreaching strains. But he has identified a native image in the process and found his bearings for resolving the residual conflicts of the effort, coming to terms with them, he is able to "name" the destiny of the region, and articulate a native myth. The pattern of this development is parallel in the poetry and the drama, which are complementary to each other in a unified achievement, The two are dealt with separately in this work: Part I deals with the poetry, and Part II, the drama. Thus treated, the complementary pattern between them is focussed more clearly. The emphasis in Walcott is on the individual effort. What emerges in his creative self-exploration in the poetry is authenticated in the original experience of the environment featured in the drama. This pivots on one essential link between the two. Walcott's persona dominates the poetry. In the drama, his main heroes are drawn from the most deprived and representative areas of experience in the region. They represent a pattern of experience which emerges as the direct counterpart to Walcott's own in the poetry - thus showing the rootedness of the vision

Gendered performances in sport: an embodied approach

Despite significant advances in recent years, gender inequalities remain apparent within the context of sport participation and engagement. One of the problems, however, when addressing gender issues in sport is the continued assumption by many sport practitioners that the experiences of women and men will always be different because of perceived physiological characteristics. Adopting a focus based solely upon perceived gendered differences often overlooks the importance of recognising individual experience and the prevailing social influences that impact upon participation, such as age, class, race and ability. An embodied approach, as well as seeking to move beyond mind/body dualisms, incorporates the physiological with the social and psychological. Therefore, it is suggested that while considerations of gender remain important, they need to be interpreted alongside other interconnecting and influential (at varying times and occasions) social and physical factors. It is argued that taking the body as a starting point opens up more possibilities to manoeuvre through the mine field that is gender and sport participation. The appeal of an embodied approach to the study of gender and sport is in its accommodation of a wider multi-disciplinary lens. Particularly, by acknowledging the subjective, corporeal, lived experiences of sport engagement, an embodied approach offers a more flexible starting point to negotiate the theoretical and methodological challenges created by restrictive discourses of difference

In vivo Hypoxia and a Fungal Alcohol Dehydrogenase Influence the Pathogenesis of Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis

Currently, our knowledge of how pathogenic fungi grow in mammalian host environments is limited. Using a chemotherapeutic murine model of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) and 1H-NMR metabolomics, we detected ethanol in the lungs of mice infected with Aspergillus fumigatus. This result suggests that A. fumigatus is exposed to oxygen depleted microenvironments during infection. To test this hypothesis, we utilized a chemical hypoxia detection agent, pimonidazole hydrochloride, in three immunologically distinct murine models of IPA (chemotherapeutic, X-CGD, and corticosteroid). In all three IPA murine models, hypoxia was observed during the course of infection. We next tested the hypothesis that production of ethanol in vivo by the fungus is involved in hypoxia adaptation and fungal pathogenesis. Ethanol deficient A. fumigatus strains showed no growth defects in hypoxia and were able to cause wild type levels of mortality in all 3 murine models. However, lung immunohistopathology and flow cytometry analyses revealed an increase in the inflammatory response in mice infected with an alcohol dehydrogenase null mutant strain that corresponded with a reduction in fungal burden. Consequently, in this study we present the first in vivo observations that hypoxic microenvironments occur during a pulmonary invasive fungal infection and observe that a fungal alcohol dehydrogenase influences fungal pathogenesis in the lung. Thus, environmental conditions encountered by invading pathogenic fungi may result in substantial fungal metabolism changes that influence subsequent host immune responses

London 2012: 'Race' matters and the East End

This article examines legacy claims made by a range of agencies and organizations involved in the London 2012 Olympic Development Programme, and specifically the notion that this will inevitably lead to the regeneration of communities. We advocate the application of critical race theory (CRT) to provide an article that argues that ‘race’ matters in Olympic legacy discourses. We identify the shortcomings of the rhetoric of legacy Olympic-speak and its dissonance with the micro-detail of accumulated historical factors, experiences and day-to-day routines for these communities. It is argued here that single-mega-event policies cannot be the answer to entrenched racial inequalities in sport though they can contribute to alleviating many issues. In shifting ‘race’ from the periphery to the centre, CRT ensures that at the very least these issues are considered alongside others. The notion of ‘community’ is critiqued to the point that slippery legacy discourses become transparent. Ideologies are neither value-free and neutral nor ahistorical as the use of interest convergence here reasonably outlines more than altruism in the agendas underpinning the bid for the London 2012 Games. If lasting legacy is to be achieved, then broader social, cultural and historical factors need to be fully considered by policymakers or policy gaps will be further perpetuated

Potential Benefits of Therapeutic Use of β2-Adrenergic Receptor Agonists in Neuroprotection and Parkinson’s Disease

The β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) is a seven-transmembrane (7TM) G-protein coupled receptor that is expressed on cells of the pulmonary, cardiac, skeletal muscle, and immune systems. Previous work has shown that stimulation of this receptor on immune cells has profound effects on the regulatory activity of both adaptive and innate immune cells. This review examines the functional dichotomy associated with stimulation of β2AR and microglial cells. As well, recent studies targeting these receptors with long-acting agonists are considered with respect to their therapeutic potential in management of Parkinson’s disease

Enhanced Low Oxygen Survival in Arabidopsis through Increased Metabolic Flux in the Fermentative Pathway

We manipulated the enzyme activity levels of the alcohol fermentation pathway, pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC), and alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) in Arabidopsis using sense and antisense overexpression of the corresponding genes (PDC1, PDC2, and ADH1). Transgenic plants were analyzed for levels of fermentation and evaluated for changes in hypoxic survival. Overexpression of either Arabidopsis PDC1 or PDC2 resulted in improved plant survival. In contrast, overexpression of Arabidopsis ADH1 had no effect on flooding survival. These results support the role of PDC as the control step in ethanol fermentation. Although ADH1 null mutants had decreased hypoxic survival, attempts to reduce the level of PDC activity enough to see an effect on plant survival met with limited success. The combination of flooding survival data and metabolite analysis allows identification of critical metabolic flux points. This information can be used to design transgenic strategies to improve hypoxic tolerance in plants

Molecular strategies for improving waterlogging tolerance in plants

Plants, like animals, are obligate aerobes, but due to their inability to move, have evolved adaptation mechanisms that enable them to survive short periods of low oxygen supply, such as those occurring after heavy rain or flooding. Crop plants are often grown on soils subject to waterlogging and many are sensitive to waterlogging of the root zone. The combination of unfavourable weather conditions and suboptimal soil and irrigation techniques can result in severe yield losses. The molecular basis of the adaptation to transient low oxygen conditions has not been completely characterized, but progress has been made towards identifying genes and gene products induced during low oxygen conditions. Promoter elements and transcription factors involved in the regulation of anaerobically induced genes have been characterized. In this paper an account is presented of the molecular strategies that have been used in an attempt to increase flooding tolerance of crop plants