Exile: Rupture and Continuity in Jean Vanmai's Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang

This essay focuses on the work of the New Caledonian-born writer Jean Vanmai. His first two novels, Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang, describe the working conditions and exilic existence of the little known Chan Dang, the voluntary workers from Tonkin (North Vietnam) who moved to New Caledonia many decades ago. Descended himself from a Chan Dang family, Vanmai wishes to preserve the memory of the Chan DangDang’s past. In writing the story of the Chan Dang, Vanmai sees himself as the guardian of the Chan Dang’s collective memory, a keeper and defender of their common past. The paper argues that Vanmai's depictions of the Chan Dang have two important effects. First, by sharing with other Vietnamese migrants/refugees the life and experiences of the Tonkinese voluntary workers in New Caledonia, Vanmai breaks the silence surrounding colonial exile and exploitation and provides a full account of the Chan Dang’s exile that can be integrated into the contemporary history of Vietnamese migration. Second, by using different narrative resolutions for each of his protagonists, Vanmai stresses the need to fulfil one’s filial duty among the young Vietnamese generations. With this symbolic filial act, Vanmai pays homage to his Vietnamese ancestors and earns himself a honourable title, that of a true dutiful "son of Chan Dang"

Food and Crime Fiction: Two Complementary Approaches to the Vietnamese Past in Tran-Nhut's Les travers du docteur Porc

With a series of detective novels set in 17th century Dai-Viet that showcase the traditions, beliefs and customs of an exotic culture, in which the food and food habits of the Vietnamese people play a prominent role, Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut, an engineer-turned-novelist of Vietnamese origins, has carved a niche for herself in the popular crime fiction market in France. This paper focuses on the novel Les Travers du Docteur Porc, in which Doctor Porc, forensic investigator and gourmand extraordinaire, adopts the mantle of chief detective from Tran-Nhut’s usual protagonist, the loyal mandarin Tan. In this movement, we argue, the author has shaped two different but complementary approaches to her birth-country’s turbulent past that coalesce in the gargantuan figure of the (politically unencumbered) doctor and connoisseur of Vietnamese cuisine. Whereas the process of ‘solving the crime’ can be read as an attempt to seek answers and restore order in the wake of senseless bloodshed, it is food, we contend, that emerges, not only as a source of pleasure, succour and stability, but as a cultural heritage that war and upheaval failed to destroy

Cambodge, me voici : trauma, post-mémoire et construction d’un espace culturel féminin dans le théâtre parlé de Jean-Baptiste Phou

More than forty years after the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, the trauma of genocide still weighs heavily on the French-Cambodian diaspora. Confronted with the silence of the previous generation who refuses to talk about the genocidal past, Jean-Baptiste Phou uses Khmer spoken theatre to give voice to four Cambodian women and to portray their lives on stage. In this essay we propose a reading of Cambodge, me voici in the light of Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory. The intersection of the axes of the protagonists’ desire and the creation of a familial, feminine and maternal space will allow us to analyse the formation of this diasporic memory and its intra- and intergenerational transmission through two sororal and mother-daughter pairs. We postulate that the choice of casting and the staging of the two, French and Khmer, versions of the play transform the stage into a site of shared memory in which the role played by women in the reparation and transmission of Cambodian cultural heritage is revealed.Plus de quarante ans après la fin du régime Khmer rouge, le poids du génocide pèse encore sur la diaspora franco-cambodgienne. Confronté au silence des aînés qui refusent de parler du passé génocidaire, Jean-Baptiste Phou recourt au théâtre parlé khmer pour donner la parole à quatre femmes cambodgiennes et mettre en scène leur parcours. Dans cet essai nous proposons de lire Cambodge, me voici à la lumière de la post-mémoire de Marianne Hirsch. Le croisement des axes de désir des protagonistes et la création d’un espace familial, féminin et maternel nous permettront d'analyser la formation de la mémoire diasporique des femmes et les modalités de sa transmission intra- et intergénérationnelle à travers deux couples, sororal et mère-fille. Nous postulons que le choix du casting et la mise en scène des deux versions française et khmère de la pièce transforment l’espace scénique en un lieu de partage mémoriel dans lequel se révèle le rôle de réparatrice et de passeuse culturelle attribué aux femmes

Assessing the Scientific Research Productivity of a Brazilian Healthcare Institution: A Case Study at the Heart Institute of São Paulo, Brazil

INTRODUCTION: The present study was motivated by the need to systematically assess the research productivity of the Heart Institute (InCor), Medical School of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. OBJECTIVE: To explore methodology for the assessment of institutional scientific research productivity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Bibliometric indicators based on searches for author affiliation of original scientific articles or reviews published in journals indexed in the databases Web of Science, MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS and SciELO from January 2000 to December 2003 were used in this study. The retrieved records were analyzed according to the index parameters of the journals and modes of access. The number of citations was used to calculate the institutional impact factor. RESULTS: Out of 1253 records retrieved from the five databases, 604 original articles and reviews were analyzed; of these, 246 (41%) articles were published in national journals and 221 (90%) of those were in journals with free online access through SciELO or their own websites. Of the 358 articles published in international journals, 333 (93%) had controlled online access and 223 (67%) were available through the Capes Portal of Journals. The average impact of each article for InCor was 2.224 in the period studied. CONCLUSION: A simple and practical methodology to evaluate the scientific production of health research institutions includes searches in the LILACS database for national journals and in MEDLINE and the Web of Science for international journals. The institutional impact factor of articles indexed in the Web of Science may serve as a measure by which to assess and review the scientific productivity of a research institution

SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types

A first update on mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19

peer reviewe

Exile: Rupture and Continuity in Jean Vanmai's Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang

This essay focuses on the work of the New Caledonian-born writer Jean Vanmai. His first two novels, Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang, describe the working conditions and exilic existence of the little known Chan Dang, the voluntary workers from Tonkin (North Vietnam) who moved to New Caledonia many decades ago. Descended himself from a Chan Dang family, Vanmai wishes to preserve the memory of the Chan DangDang’s past. In writing the story of the Chan Dang, Vanmai sees himself as the guardian of the Chan Dang’s collective memory, a keeper and defender of their common past. The paper argues that Vanmai's depictions of the Chan Dang have two important effects. First, by sharing with other Vietnamese migrants/refugees the life and experiences of the Tonkinese voluntary workers in New Caledonia, Vanmai breaks the silence surrounding colonial exile and exploitation and provides a full account of the Chan Dang’s exile that can be integrated into the contemporary history of Vietnamese migration. Second, by using different narrative resolutions for each of his protagonists, Vanmai stresses the need to fulfil one’s filial duty among the young Vietnamese generations. With this symbolic filial act, Vanmai pays homage to his Vietnamese ancestors and earns himself a honourable title, that of a true dutiful "son of Chan Dang"