A infância na pobreza urbana: linguagem oral e a escrita da história pelas crianças The childhood of urban poverty: verbal language and the children’s writing of the history

Através da convivência com um grupo de 14 crianças entre 3 e 9 anos, em um bairro da periferia de São Paulo, procurou-se verificar a tese de que essas crianças são portadoras de "deficiência de linguagem" devido à pobreza de seu ambiente verbal, da precariedade da linguagem dos adultos e de sua relação verbal com os filhos. O contato com as crianças, com seus pais e com o bairro revelou a complexidade com que elas se utilizam da linguagem verbal; é através dela que elas conquistam seu lugar no mundo dos adultos e sobretudo expressam constantemente suas vivências em seu ambiente próximo. É através de interações verbais muito ricas, do recurso a músicas folclóricas e metáforas, da narrativa dos acontecimentos do bairro e da expressão verbal de suas fantasias e temores que elas se constituem como porta-vozes e como memória viva e coletiva de um bairro no qual a luta não só pela sobrevivência, mas pela vida digna é a principal tarefa que organiza a vida cotidiana.<br>Through the experience of being with a group of children between 3 and 9 years old, in the outskirts of São Paulo, I wanted to verify the thesis that these children are "language impaired" as a consequence of their poor verbal environment, the precarious use of language by parents and the verbal relationship with their children. The contact with the children, the parents and with the neighborhood revealed the complexity in which they use verbal language; it is through the language that the children determine their place in the adult world and above all constantly express their everyday experiences in their surrounding environment. It is through these rich verbal interactions, availability of popular and folklore music and metaphors, narrative occurrences in the neighborhood and the verbal expression of fantasies and fears, that the children become the "spokesmen" of a living and collective memory of the neighborhood. A neighborhood in which the struggle, not only for survival but also for the dignity of life, is the principal task that structures everyday life

Pathogenesis II: Fungal responses to host responses: interaction of host cells with fungi

Most of our knowledge concerning the virulence determinants of pathogenic fungi comes from the infected host, mainly from animal models and more recently from in vitro studies with cell cultures. The fungi usually present intra- and/or extracellular host-parasite interfaces, with the parasitism phenomenon dependent on complementary surface molecules. Among living organisms, this has been characterized as a cohabitation event, where the fungus is able to recognize specific host tissues acting as an attractant, creating stable conditions for its survival. Several fungi pathogenic for humans and animals have evolved special strategies to deliver elements to their cellular targets that may be relevant to their pathogenicity. Most of these pathogens express surface factors that mediate binding to host cells either directly or indirectly, in the latter case binding to host adhesion components such as extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, which act as 'interlinking' molecules. The entry of the pathogen into the host cell is initiated by fungal adherence to the cell surface, which generates an uptake signal that may induce its cytoplasmic internalization. Once this is accomplished, some fungi are able to alter the host cytoskeletal architecture, as manifested by a rearrangement of microtubule and microfilament proteins, and this can also induce epithelial host cells to become apoptotic. It is possible that fungal pathogens induce modulation of different host cell pathways in order to evade host defences and to foster their own proliferation. For a number of pathogens, the ability to bind ECM glycoproteins, the capability of internalization and the induction of apoptosis are considered important factors in virulence. Furthermore, specific recognition between fungal parasites and their host cell targets may be mediated by the interaction of carbohydrate-binding proteins, e.g., lectins on the surface of one type of cell, probably a parasite, that combine with complementary sugars on the surface of host-cell. These interactions supply precise models to study putative adhesins and receptor-containing molecules in the context of the fungus-host interface. The recognition of the host molecules by fungi such as Aspergillus fumigatus, Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and Histoplasma capsulatum, and their molecular mechanisms of adhesion and invasion, are reviewed in this paper