Language, Immigration and Acculturation in the Short Stories of Ha Jin

The Problems of Acculturation: Flushing, Queens, in the Short Stories of Ha Jin Abstract: Noted author Ha Jin is often thought of as a Chinese author despite the fact that all of his writing has been written in English. Two of his later works, A Free Life (2007) and A Good Fall (2009) are set among the Chinese community in Flushing, Queens. This essay examines three short stories An English Professor, A Pension Plan, and Temporary Love from A Good Fall. In these works, Jin discusses the problems of acculturation these immigrants face, including learning English, finding employment, and dealing with forced separation. The stories depict the treacherous territory the immigrants, as well as the author himself at times, traverse as they dwell between two languages, two cultures, two literatures, two countries

Physiology, Propaganda, and Pound Animals: Medical Research and Animal Welfare in Mid-Twentieth Century America

In 1952, the University of Michigan physiologist Robert Gesell shocked his colleagues at the business meeting of the American Physiological Society by reading a prepared statement in which he claimed that some of the animal experimentation being carried out by scientists was inhumane. He especially attacked the National Society for Medical Research (NSMR), an organization that had been founded to defend animal experimentation. This incident was part of a broader struggle taking place at the time between scientists and animal welfare advocates with respect to what restrictions, if any, should be placed on animal research. A particularly controversial issue was whether or not pound animals should be made available to laboratories for research. Two of the prominent players in this controversy were the NSMR and the Animal Welfare Institute, founded and run by Gesell’s daughter, Christine Stevens. This article focuses on the interaction between these two organizations within the broader context of the debate over animal experimentation in the mid-twentieth century

Determination of yeast cell viability: viable count vs ATP-based bioluminescence assay

During fed-batch cultivation to produce heterologous protein with yeast cells, cell viability should be determined quickly. Indeed, the early arrest of cell proliferation is a phenomenon often observed in auxotrophic yeast strains such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae BY4741 and ascribable to stressful environmental conditions arising in fed-batch systems. Choosing a cell viability assay can be a challenging task because the growth arrest is not easily attributable to one of the many mechanisms of cell death. In this work, two techniques used to assay cell viability have been compared: the viable cell count on agar plate and the bioluminescence assay based on the luciferase reaction to measure the amount of ATP from viable cells. To compare the methods, either the maximum specific velocity of growth or its specific death rate (kd) at 50 and 53 ◦C of BY4741 strain, were determined. In the first case, both the viable count and the bioluminescence assay gave the same results, showing that the amount of ATP in exponentially growing cells correlates with cell viability. On the contrary, during thermal inactivation the kd value obtained via bioluminescence, resulted always smaller than that obtained by viable cell count even though it was always possible to correlate the kd value obtained by bioluminescence with that obtained by viable count, through a factor. Apparently, in the operative condition examined, cell death either did not lead to the loss of membrane integrity, nor allow the endogenous ATPases to destroy any remaining ATP; thus the ATP levels did not fall precipitously. In the light of the results obtained, due to the ease of use, high sensitivity and action in real-time, ATP-based bioluminescence assay is the natural candidate to replace the cell viable count method which contrarily requires many replicates and extende

Two Surgeon General's reports on smoking and cancer: a historical investigation of the practice of causal inference

BACKGROUND: The epidemiologic literature is replete with conceptual discussions about causal inference, but little is known about how the causal criteria are applied in public health practice. The criteria for causal inference in use today by epidemiologists have been shaped substantially by their use over time in reports of the U.S. Surgeon General on Smoking and Health. METHODS: We reviewed two classic reports on smoking and health from expert committees convened by the US Surgeon General, in 1964 and 1982, in order to evaluate and contrast how the committees applied causal criteria to the available evidence for the different cancer sites at different time periods. We focus on the evidence for four cancer sites in particular that received detailed reviews in the reports: lung, larynx, esophagus and bladder. RESULTS: We found that strength of association and coherence (especially dose-response, biological plausibility and epidemiologic sense) appeared to carry the most weight; consistency carried less weight, and temporality and specificity were apparently not applied at all in some cases. No causal claim was made for associations with a summary odds ratio of less than 3.0. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the causal criteria as described in textbooks and the Surgeon General reports can have variable interpretations and applications in practice. While the authors of these reports may have considered evidential factors that they did not explicitly cite, such lack of transparency of methods undermines the purpose of the causal criteria to promote objective, evidence-based decision making. Further empirical study and critical examination of the process by which causal conclusions are reached can play an important role in advancing the practice of epidemiology by helping public health scientists to better understand the practice of causal inference

Non-smoking lung cancer and environmental exposure

While lung cancer mortality has been decreasing in many countries due to tobacco control efforts, at least one quarter of global lung cancer cases occur among non-smokers. There is growing attention to the role of environmental exposures, such as radon and air pollution, in lung cancer. Additionally, recent research efforts have sought to elucidate the distinct characteristics of and mechanisms involved in lung cancer among never smokers. Continued research on non-smoking lung cancer is critical to identifying new opportunities for intervention and addressing the global burden of lung cancer.