Chipkin makes sense of Jo'burg's complex Vision

This article gives critical praise to the published work of architect & architectural historian Clive Chipkin on Johannesburg, arguing that his embedded position allows for an intimate portrait of the city and the complexities involved in the making and shaping of its architectural and urban landscape

Innate immune response in avian macrophages elicited by Chlamydia psittaci

Chlamydia psittaci is a gram-negative, obligate, intracellular bacterium, which mainly infects birds and mammals. Not much is known about innate immunity initiated by C. psittaci. The focus of the present study is on chicken macrophage activation and expression of cytokine, chemokine, caspase-1, iNOS and TLR genes during the early phase and mid-cycle period of the developmental cycle of the highly virulent C. psittaci strain 92/1293. C. psittaci significantly augmented the transcript levels for all genes investigated, especially during the mid-cycle period. These results demonstrate a robust innate immune response of chicken macrophages initiated by a C. psittaci infection

Global experts 'off radar'

This issue of ABE Journal, which takes inspiration from a 2008 conference session as well as from the many conversations that took place within one of the working groups of the European funded COST-action “European Architecture beyond Europe,”1 seeks to contribute to a more thorough understanding of a particular type of professional who emerged in architecture and planning milieus from 1945 onwards: the “global expert”. Through a series of contributions, some resulting from long-lasting, in-depth study while others draw on work-in-progress research, a number of individuals are brought to the fore who, despite their often extensive production or prominent roles on a global scale, have remained “off the radar”. Included in this issue are discussions pertaining to people such as Michel Kalt, Henri-Jean Calsat, David Oakley, Erica Mann, or Max Lock, as well as other, more well-known figures such as Louis Kahn, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt and Hassan Fathy. Through this variety, this ABE-journal issue stresses the need to distinguish between various types of such “global experts”, from embedded practitioners to foreign consultants just passing through. More importantly, the issue also seeks to outline some of the challenges confronting architectural historians in writing the history of this new kind of professional. This is done explicitly in the lengthy editorial, which, through a discussion of recent literature, serves as an introduction to the current state of research on the theme. As such, we hope that this issue will help set a possible research agenda on a topic that in the last several years has triggered scholarly attention, yet still requires a sound theoretical and methodological framing

Enhanced Resolution of Poly-(Methyl Methacrylate) Electron Resist by Thermal Processing

Granular nanostructure of electron beam resist had limited the ultimate resolution of electron beam lithography. We report a thermal process to achieve a uniform and homogeneous amorphous thin film of poly methyl methacrylate electron resist. This thermal process consists of a short time-high temperature backing process in addition to precisely optimized development process conditions. Using this novel process, we patterned arrays of holes in a metal film with diameter smaller than 5nm. In addition, line edge roughness and surface roughness of the resist reduced to 1nm and 100pm respectively.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure