Dialogue \u27On The Ground\u27: The Complicated Identities and the Complex Negotiations of Catholics and Hindus in South India

Interreligious dialogue is a vital theological concern for the Catholic Church in India. Over the past three decades, church leaders, progressive theologians, and maverick monastics have experimented with various models and forms of interreligious dialogue. Quite distinct from these contrived institutional initiatives is the dynamic of intimate, subtle, and spontaneous ritual exchange and dialogue between ordinary Hindus and Catholics occurring in the arena of popular piety and rituals at the grassroots level - often in opposition to institutional norms and directives - that may be described as dialogue on the ground. In light of ethnographic research at the shrine of St. Anthony at Uvari in Tamil Nadu - that serves as a representative sample of regional shrines in rural south India - this essay focuses on the logic and grammar of a specific public ritual locally known as asanam as an illustrative case-study of the \u27dialogue on the ground,\u27 delineates the social and religious themes embedded in this ritual, and reflects on its implications for interreligious dialogue

Being Catholic the Tamil Way: Assimilation and Differentiation

The ritual life of Tamil Catholics in south India defies tidy, conventional categories like assimilation, differentiation, and othering, since the complex negotiations characteristic of this lived tradition often involve both assimilation and differentiation. This dynamic reflects/reveals their hybrid and liminal cultural and religious condition where boundaries are not fixed or absolute, but constantly fluid, permeable, and negotiable. While this pattern is manifest almost in all spheres of Tamil Catholic life and practice, in this paper I focus on how lay Catholics configure and maintain their tamilness in the realms of devotional music, caste discourse, and public devotional rituals with relevant anecdotal accounts and illustrations drawn from personal experience as well as field research, and reflect on the both/and dynamic characteristic of Tamil Catholic life and practice

Shifting markers of identity in East London's diasporic religious spaces

This article discusses the historical and geographical contexts of diasporic religious buildings in East London, revealing – contrary both to conventional narratives of immigrant integration, mobility, and succession and to identitarian understandings of belonging – that in such spaces and in the concrete devotional practices enacted in them, markers and boundaries of identity (ritual, spatial, and political) are contested, renegotiated, erased, and rewritten. It draws on a series of case-studies: Fieldgate Street Synagogue in its interrelationship with the East London Mosque; St Antony's Catholic Church in Forest Gate where Hindus and Christians worship together; and the intertwined histories of Methodism and Anglicanism in Bow Road. Exploration of the intersections between ethnicity, religiosity, and class illuminates the ambiguity and instability of identity-formation and expression within East London's diasporic faith spaces

Enhanced Hsp70 Expression Protects against Acute Lung Injury by Modulating Apoptotic Pathways

The Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a highly lethal inflammatory lung disorder. Apoptosis plays a key role in its pathogenesis. We showed that an adenovirus expressing the 70 kDa heat shock protein Hsp70 (AdHSP) protected against sepsis-induced lung injury. In this study we tested the hypothesis that AdHSP attenuates apoptosis in sepsis-induced lung injury

Being Tamil, being Hindu:Tamil migrants’ negotiations of the absence of Tamil Hindu spaces in the West Midlands and South West of England

This paper considers the religious practices of Tamil Hindus who have settled in the West Midlands and South West of England in order to explore how devotees of a specific ethno-regional Hindu tradition with a well-established UK infrastructure in the site of its adherents’ population density adapt their religious practices in settlement areas which lack this infrastructure. Unlike the majority of the UK Tamil population who live in the London area, the participants in this study did not have ready access to an ethno-religious infrastructure of Tamil-orientated temples and public rituals. The paper examines two means by which this absence was addressed as well as the intersections and negotiations of religion and ethnicity these entailed: firstly, Tamil Hindus’ attendance of temples in their local area which are orientated towards a broadly imagined Hindu constituency or which cater to a non-Tamil ethno-linguistic or sectarian community; and, secondly, through the ‘DIY’ performance of ethnicised Hindu ritual in non-institutional settings

Screening ethnically diverse human embryonic stem cells identifies a chromosome 20 minimal amplicon conferring growth advantage

The International Stem Cell Initiative analyzed 125 human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines and 11 induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines, from 38 laboratories worldwide, for genetic changes occurring during culture. Most lines were analyzed at an early and late passage. Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis revealed that they included representatives of most major ethnic groups. Most lines remained karyotypically normal, but there was a progressive tendency to acquire changes on prolonged culture, commonly affecting chromosomes 1, 12, 17 and 20. DNA methylation patterns changed haphazardly with no link to time in culture. Structural variants, determined from the SNP arrays, also appeared sporadically. No common variants related to culture were observed on chromosomes 1, 12 and 17, but a minimal amplicon in chromosome 20q11.21, including three genes expressed in human ES cells, ID1, BCL2L1 and HM13, occurred in >20% of the lines. Of these genes, BCL2L1 is a strong candidate for driving culture adaptation of ES cells

Dissecting the Shared Genetic Architecture of Suicide Attempt, Psychiatric Disorders, and Known Risk Factors

Background Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, and nonfatal suicide attempts, which occur far more frequently, are a major source of disability and social and economic burden. Both have substantial genetic etiology, which is partially shared and partially distinct from that of related psychiatric disorders. Methods We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 29,782 suicide attempt (SA) cases and 519,961 controls in the International Suicide Genetics Consortium (ISGC). The GWAS of SA was conditioned on psychiatric disorders using GWAS summary statistics via multitrait-based conditional and joint analysis, to remove genetic effects on SA mediated by psychiatric disorders. We investigated the shared and divergent genetic architectures of SA, psychiatric disorders, and other known risk factors. Results Two loci reached genome-wide significance for SA: the major histocompatibility complex and an intergenic locus on chromosome 7, the latter of which remained associated with SA after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and replicated in an independent cohort from the Million Veteran Program. This locus has been implicated in risk-taking behavior, smoking, and insomnia. SA showed strong genetic correlation with psychiatric disorders, particularly major depression, and also with smoking, pain, risk-taking behavior, sleep disturbances, lower educational attainment, reproductive traits, lower socioeconomic status, and poorer general health. After conditioning on psychiatric disorders, the genetic correlations between SA and psychiatric disorders decreased, whereas those with nonpsychiatric traits remained largely unchanged. Conclusions Our results identify a risk locus that contributes more strongly to SA than other phenotypes and suggest a shared underlying biology between SA and known risk factors that is not mediated by psychiatric disorders.Peer reviewe

Vibration exercise as a warm-up modality for maximal overground sprinting in sub-elite australian rules footballers

A warm-up for maximal overground sprinting is commonly used and is well known to increase sprint performance. These warm-up modalities, however, can be time consuming and fatiguing. Thus, new warm-up modalities are being investigated. Long periods of vibration exercise (VbX) can be used as a warm-up modality for maximal overground sprinting. However, it remains unknown as to whether short periods of VbX can be used. If suitable this would overcome disadvantages associated with traditional warm-up modalities. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of short periods of VbX as a warm-up modality for overground sprinting. It was hypothesised that short periods of VbX can be used as a warm-up modality for maximal overground sprinting