The Turtle Garden: Tan Kah Kee’s last spiritual world

This paper explores the role of diasporic subjects in China’s heritage-making through a case study of the Turtle Garden built by Tan Kah Kee in Xiamen, China. Tan is the first person with Overseas Chinese background who built museums in the P.R. China and has been regarded as a symbol of Overseas Chinese patriotism. This paper argues that the Turtle Garden, conceptualised as a postcolonial ‘carnivalesque’ space, is more than a civic museum for public education. It reflects the owner’s highly complex and sometimes conflicting museum outlook embedded in his life experience as a migrant, his encounter with (British) colonialism in Malaya, and integrated with his desire and despair about the Chinese Communist Party’s nation-building project in the 1950s. Rather than a sign of devotion to the socialist motherland as simplistically depicted in China’s discourse, the garden symbolises Tan’s last ‘spiritual world’ where he simultaneously engaged with soul-searching as a returned Overseas Chinese and alternative diasporic imagining of Chinese identities and nation. It brings to light the value of heritage-making outside centralised heritage discourses, and offers an invaluable analytical lens to disentangle the contested and ever shifting relationship between diasporic subjects, cultural heritage and nation-(re)building in the Chinese context and beyond

Efficacy of NS-018, a potent and selective JAK2/Src inhibitor, in primary cells and mouse models of myeloproliferative neoplasms

Aberrant activation of Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) caused by somatic mutation of JAK2 (JAK2V617F) or the thrombopoietin receptor (MPLW515L) plays an essential role in the pathogenesis of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), suggesting that inhibition of aberrant JAK2 activation would have a therapeutic benefit. Our novel JAK2 inhibitor, NS-018, was highly active against JAK2 with a 50% inhibition (IC50) of <1 n, and had 30–50-fold greater selectivity for JAK2 over other JAK-family kinases, such as JAK1, JAK3 and tyrosine kinase 2. In addition to JAK2, NS-018 inhibited Src-family kinases. NS-018 showed potent antiproliferative activity against cell lines expressing a constitutively activated JAK2 (the JAK2V617F or MPLW515L mutations or the TEL–JAK2 fusion gene; IC50=11–120 n), but showed only minimal cytotoxicity against most other hematopoietic cell lines without a constitutively activated JAK2. Furthermore, NS-018 preferentially suppressed in vitro erythropoietin-independent endogenous colony formation from polycythemia vera patients. NS-018 also markedly reduced splenomegaly and prolonged the survival of mice inoculated with Ba/F3 cells harboring JAK2V617F. In addition, NS-018 significantly reduced leukocytosis, hepatosplenomegaly and extramedullary hematopoiesis, improved nutritional status, and prolonged survival in JAK2V617F transgenic mice. These results suggest that NS-018 will be a promising candidate for the treatment of MPNs

The Origin of Malarial Parasites in Orangutans

Background Recent findings of Plasmodium in African apes have changed our perspectives on the evolution of malarial parasites in hominids. However, phylogenetic analyses of primate malarias are still missing information from Southeast Asian apes. In this study, we report molecular data for a malaria parasite lineage found in orangutans. Methodology/Principal Findings We screened twenty-four blood samples from Pongo pygmaeus (Kalimantan, Indonesia) for Plasmodium parasites by PCR. For all the malaria positive orangutan samples, parasite mitochondrial genomes (mtDNA) and two antigens: merozoite surface protein 1 42 kDa (MSP-142) and circumsporozoite protein gene (CSP) were amplified, cloned, and sequenced. Fifteen orangutans tested positive and yielded 5 distinct mitochondrial haplotypes not previously found. The haplotypes detected exhibited low genetic divergence among them, indicating that they belong to one species. We report phylogenetic analyses using mitochondrial genomes, MSP-142 and CSP. We found that the orangutan malaria parasite lineage was part of a monophyletic group that includes all the known non-human primate malaria parasites found in Southeast Asia; specifically, it shares a recent common ancestor with P. inui (a macaque parasite) and P. hylobati (a gibbon parasite) suggesting that this lineage originated as a result of a host switch. The genetic diversity of MSP-142 in orangutans seems to be under negative selection. This result is similar to previous findings in non-human primate malarias closely related to P. vivax. As has been previously observed in the other Plasmodium species found in non-human primates, the CSP shows high polymorphism in the number of repeats. However, it has clearly distinctive motifs from those previously found in other malarial parasites. Conclusion The evidence available from Asian apes indicates that these parasites originated independently from those found in Africa, likely as the result of host switches from other non-human primates

Relativistic Binaries in Globular Clusters

Galactic globular clusters are old, dense star systems typically containing 10\super{4}--10\super{7} stars. As an old population of stars, globular clusters contain many collapsed and degenerate objects. As a dense population of stars, globular clusters are the scene of many interesting close dynamical interactions between stars. These dynamical interactions can alter the evolution of individual stars and can produce tight binary systems containing one or two compact objects. In this review, we discuss theoretical models of globular cluster evolution and binary evolution, techniques for simulating this evolution that leads to relativistic binaries, and current and possible future observational evidence for this population. Our discussion of globular cluster evolution will focus on the processes that boost the production of hard binary systems and the subsequent interaction of these binaries that can alter the properties of both bodies and can lead to exotic objects. Direct {\it N}-body integrations and Fokker--Planck simulations of the evolution of globular clusters that incorporate tidal interactions and lead to predictions of relativistic binary populations are also discussed. We discuss the current observational evidence for cataclysmic variables, millisecond pulsars, and low-mass X-ray binaries as well as possible future detection of relativistic binaries with gravitational radiation.Comment: 88 pages, 13 figures. Submitted update of Living Reviews articl