Accomplishments of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, 2000-2010

Details the investments and impact of a funder collaborative focused on higher education in nine African countries, and each foundation's contribution. Discusses enduring improvements, increased resources, value added, and additional foundation efforts

The terrorism novel in a surrealist mode

The Terrorism Novel in a Surrealist Mode is a practice-led research project comprising a novel (The Science of a Single Cabbage) and an accompanying reflective commentary. The research question to which my novel responds is: Can a surrealist writing mode help expand the terrain of the literary terrorism novel? I distinguish my surrealist “mode” from historical surrealism by identifying the movement as an unfinished project survived by a certain state of mind, while acknowledging the intellectual debt by noting five central preoccupations that are common to surrealism and my project: 1) the interplay of dream-life and conscious experience; 2) playful black humour; 3) anti-fascism; 4) engagement with spectacular crime; and 5) exploitation of paranoia as both a subject and a tool for querying reality as a social and psychological construct. My thesis argues that a surrealist mode can expose and unsettle the implicit givens of what can be termed a terrorism/national security ontology, thereby contesting the assumptions that circumscribe the permissible in our age. By employing this literary mode, The Science of a Single Cabbage contributes to a disruption of terrorism narrative through a destabilising interrogation of the boundaries between the real and the unreal

Effect of Exogenous Interferon and an Interferon Inducer on Western Equine Encephalitis Virus Disease in a Hamster Model

Mice are used as models for western equine encephalitis virus (WEEV) infection, but high mortality is generally only seen with intracranial or intranasal challenge, while peripheral inoculation results in approximately 50% mortality and is not dose-dependent. Hamsters were therefore studied as a model for WEEV infection. Hamsters were highly sensitive to intraperitoneal (i.p.) infection with WEEV. Disease progression was rapid, and virus titers in serum, brain, liver, and kidney of infected hamsters peaked between 2 and 4 days post-virus inoculation (dpi). Foci of virus infection were detected in neurons of the cerebral cortex and midbrain. Pre-treatment i.p. with either interferon alfacon-1 (5 μg/kg/day) or with Ampligen® (3.2 mg/kg/day) resulted in complete survival, reduced brain titers, and improved weight gain. This model of WEEV infection in hamsters appears to serve as a suitable model for the evaluation of potential therapeutic agents for the treatment of WEE disease

The role of substrate in unmasking oxyl character in oxomanganese complexes: the key to selectivity?

The reaction profile for sulfide oxidation by formally Mn(v)=O species depends critically on the electronic structure of the isolated oxidant. In cases where the ground state has dominant oxyl radical character, the oxidation occurs in sequential one-electron steps, the first of which is barrierless. In contrast, if the oxyl radical character is 'masked' in the ground state by electron transfer from either the metal or the porphyrin co-ligand, the interaction between oxidant and substrate is repulsive at large separations, only becoming attractive when the incoming nucleophile approaches close enough to drive an electron out of oxide p pi manifold, thereby 'unmasking' the oxyl radical. The shape of the repulsive wall at long range will depend on the properties of both oxidant and substrate, offering the potential for substrate discrimination that is one of the most remarkable properties of the oxygen evolving complex. The electronic properties of the oxidant depend critically on the identity of the axial co-ligand, but also on the chosen density functional. As a result, hybrid and non-hybrid functionals give very different qualitative descriptions of the oxidation reaction