Staged Action: Six Plays From the American Workers\u27 Theatre

[Excerpt] This collection is an attempt to restore and revitalize interest in a largely forgotten American theatrical genre, the workers\u27 theatre movement. Workers\u27 theatre is a term that is used broadly to define theatre from the working class or theatre about working-class people. Here it refers to a unique and specific movement in the American theatre of the 1920s and 1930s to employ the stage to address issues concerning the worker and the workers\u27 movement. A simple definition was given by Hollace Ransdell of the Affiliated Schools for Workers in 1936: a workers\u27 theatre play deals truthfully with the lives and problems of the masses of the people, directly or suggestively, in a way that workers can understand and appreciate . These plays need not be written by workers themselves, and, in fact, many were written by figures sympathetic to the labor movement. The plays themselves are a series of fascinating, moving, occasionally frustrating dramas that often passionately explore the possibilities of the workers\u27 movement. Even during the Great Depression, these plays never displayed the pessimistic images of the future as reflected in the contemporary fiction of Steinbeck and Dos Passos. Instead, the plays of the American workers\u27 theatre clung tightly to stirring, Utopian visions, as was hoped for in the early writings that formed a basis for the movement

Edge Magnetoplasmons in Quantum Hall Line Junction Systems

A quantum Hall line junction system consists of a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid (LL) and two chiral channels that allow density waves incident upon and reflected by the LL to be measured separately. We demonstrate that interactions in a quantum Hall line junction system can be probed by studying edge magnetoplasmon absorption spectra and their polarization dependences. Strong interactions in the junction lead to collective modes that are isolated in either Luttinger liquid or contact subsystems.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B Rapid Communicatio

Overcoming the Legacy of Mistrust: African Americans’ Mistrust of Medical Profession

Recent studies show that racism still exists in the American medical profession, the fact of which legitimizes the historically long-legacy of mistrust towards medical profession and health authorities among African Americans. Thus, it was suspected that the participation of black patients in end-of-life care has always been significantly low stemmed primarily from their mistrust of the medical profession. On the other hand, much research finds that there are other reasons than the mistrust which makes African Americans feel reluctant to the end-of-life care, such as cultural-religious difference and genuine misunderstanding of the services. If so, two crucial questions are raised. One is how pervasive or significant the mistrust is, compared to the other factors, when they opt out of the end-of-life care. The other is if there is a remedy or solution to the seemingly broken relationship. While no studies available answer these questions, we have conducted an experiment to explore them. The research was performed at two Philadelphia hospitals of Mercy Health System, and the result shows that Black patients’ mistrust is not too great to overcome and that education can remove the epistemic obstacles as well as overcome the mistrust

Cold preservation of the human colon and ileum with University of Wisconsin solution

The inclusion of the colon in the intestinal graft resulted in worsening patient and graft outcome and increased the incidence of infection and rejection. In this study, we examine the role of ischemia on the barrier function of the epithelium during cold ischemia. Samples were collected from 15 harvested and transplanted human donor grafts (colon, 10; ileum, 6), which were immersed in University of Wisconsin (UW) solution. Ischemia (6, 12, 24, and 45 h) and reoxygenation were performed to evaluate the mucosal electrical status using the Ussing chamber technique. The functions of enterocytes and crypt cells were tested by glucose and theophylline challenge. Modified Park's classification was applied to evaluate the severity of mucosal damage under light microscopy. The colon had higher levels of baseline potential difference, short-circuit current, and resistance than the ileum during 6-48 h of ischemia. Colonic epithelial cells responded well to theophylline stimulation at 24 h of ischemia, while there was no ileal response. The colonic mucosa was histopathologically well preserved in UW solution for 48 h, and mucosal damage induced by reoxygenation was less than in the ileum. In conclusion, electrophysiologically and histopathologically, the colon is less susceptible to cold preservation damage than the ileum during storage with UW solution

Pomeron exchange and exclusive electroproduction of rho-mesons in QCD

A Pomeron-exchange model of exclusive electroproduction of $\rho$-mesons is examined using a dressed-quark propagator. It is shown that by representing the photon-$\rho$-meson-Pomeron coupling by a nonperturbative, confined-quark loop, one obtains predictions for $\rho$-meson electroproduction that are in good agreement with experiment.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, uses epsfig and elsart.sty. Minor revisions to match version publishe

Putting the brakes on the unfolded protein response

The unfolded protein response is an ancient cellular pathway for rapidly responding to endoplasmic reticulum stress. Two studies in this issue (Rubio et al. 2011. J. Cell. Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.201007077 and Chawla et al. 2011. J. Cell. Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.201008071) provide insight into how the unfolded protein response is tamped down to restore normal endoplasmic reticulum function. Although both papers implicate the Ire1 kinase domain as the key effector of the off-switch mechanism, alternate models for how this is achieved are proposed

MicroRNA-146a regulates ICOS–ICOSL signalling to limit accumulation of T follicular helper cells and germinal centres

Tight control of T follicular helper (Tfh) cells is required for optimal maturation of the germinal centre (GC) response. The molecular mechanisms controlling Tfh-cell differentiation remain incompletely understood. Here we show that microRNA-146a (miR-146a) is highly expressed in Tfh cells and peak miR-146a expression marks the decline of the Tfh response after immunization. Loss of miR-146a causes cell-intrinsic accumulation of Tfh and GC B cells. MiR-146a represses several Tfh-cell-expressed messenger RNAs, and of these, ICOS is the most strongly cell autonomously upregulated target in miR-146a-deficient T cells. In addition, miR-146a deficiency leads to increased ICOSL expression on GC B cells and antigen-presenting cells. Partial blockade of ICOS signalling, either by injections of low dose of ICOSL blocking antibody or by halving the gene dose of Icos in miR-146a-deficient T cells, prevents the Tfh and GC B-cell accumulation. Collectively, miR-146a emerges as a post-transcriptional brake to limit Tfh cells and GC responses.This work was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) program and project grants and Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship to C.G.V., International Postgraduate Research Scholarship to A.P., NHMRC/MSRA Betty Cuthbert Fellowship to M.A.J., National Research Service Award F30HL110691 and UCLA/Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program to J.L.Z

High expression of glycolytic genes in Cirrhosis correlates with the risk of developing liver cancer

© 2018 Lee, Carella, Papa and Bubici. A marked increase in the rate of glycolysis is a key event in the pathogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the main type of primary liver cancer. Liver cirrhosis is considered to be a key player in HCC pathogenesis as it precedes HCC in up to 90% of patients. Intriguingly, the biochemical events that underlie the progression of cirrhosis to HCC are not well understood. In this study, we examined the expression profile of metabolic gene transcripts in liver samples from patients with HCC and patients with cirrhosis. We found that gene expression of glycolytic enzymes is up-regulated in precancerous cirrhotic livers and significantly associated with an elevated risk for developing HCC. Surprisingly, expression levels of genes involved in mitochondrial oxidative metabolism are markedly increased in HCC compared to normal livers but remain unchanged in cirrhosis. Our findings suggest that key glycolytic enzymes such as hexokinase 2 (HK2), aldolase A (ALDOA), and pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) may represent potential markers and molecular targets for early detection and chemoprevention of HCC