Who Owns the Past? Rapanui Points of View

The Mayor of Rapa Nuj, Petero Edmund, sticks his fingers in his ears. "They're like this!" he how me, describing the Chilean government's refusal to listen. If Chilean officials Iistened, they would hear the Mayor telling them to stop parceling out Rapa Nui land. "The land is part of our culture," he says. It is to preserve and build upon the culture that he wants Rapanui control of the land to be kept as a park, not broken up into individual homesteads. This is only one point of view on the island, but everyone is talking about the land. As the Mayor put it, "Yes, even the Council of Elders is fighting among themselves , which is proper to our spirit around the island there is always some kind of fight. But if you ask any native on the island, what is your objective, what is your point of view about strengthening your position as a native, everyone will agree on the land. No land, no culture. No land, no identity."</p

Treatment of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) infection and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS)

Verotoxigenic Escherichia coli (VTEC) are a specialized group of E. coli that can cause severe colonic disease and renal failure. Their pathogenicity derives from virulence factors that enable the bacteria to colonize the colon and deliver extremely powerful toxins known as verotoxins (VT) or Shiga toxins (Stx) to the systemic circulation. The recent devastating E. coli O104:H4 epidemic in Europe has shown how helpless medical professionals are in terms of offering effective therapies. By examining the sources and distribution of these bacteria, and how they cause disease, we will be in a better position to prevent and treat the inevitable future cases of sporadic disease and victims of common source outbreaks. Due to the complexity of pathogenesis, it is likely a multitargeted approach is warranted. Developments in terms of these treatments are discussed

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference

Recuperating the Culture, or Reinventing it? Rapanui Points of View

Katherine Routledge's remark about Rapa Nui in 1914, that "the inhabitants of today are less real than the men who have gone," prefaced an age of archaeology and studies of culture that has often adopted her attitude. It is often assumed that little of the ancient culture is alive on the island now, that the traditions were lost. In interviews with contemporary Rapa Nui artists and cultural leaders, they voice many points of view about this, reflecting the richness of the island' cultural revival.</p