Orality-Literacy Studies and the Unity of the Human Race

At the end of a symposium and volume such as this, with its array of varied and brilliant papers, it is difficult to know what to say by way of conclusion other than to express my heartfelt thanks to the impressive contributors in this symposium-festschrift and to its superb organizers. One thing that I am convinced should not be done is to try to summarize the many papers presented and the discussions following them. We have had our say on these matters already. I do not want to be in the position of the speaker who announced, "I am afraid that I have spoken about these matters all too long, so please let me conclude once more." What I shall try to do is to generalize out of all the thought provoking papers we have heard and to say something about orality literacy studies themselves as a whole. I shall have the temerity to generalize as widely as possible, for I have chosen as my subject nothing less than "Orality-Literacy Studies and the Unity of the Human Race." I do believe that what we have been about speaks in its own special way to the subject of human unity which is so urgent in our war-ridden and even war-mongering times

Before Textuality: Orality and Interpretation

Walter J. Ong needs little introduction here. His many books and myriad shorter works - among them The Presence of the Word (1967), Interfaces of the Word (1977), and Orality and Literacy (1982) - have established whole new areas of investigation in the cultural and psychological aspects of comparative studies in oral tradition. His Festschrift was published as volume 2, number 1 of Oral Tradition

Realizing Catholicism: Faith, Learning, and the Future

Father Ong gives a insightful talk on the relation of the Church\u27s Tradition in comparison to the ideas of Romanticism, the mentality of change in America, the development of technology, and the importance of the past to guide the way into the future. Father Ong highlights these ideas to better explain the essence of the term Catholic in that it is related and encompassed throughout the whole of scholarship.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uscc_marianist_award/1000/thumbnail.jp

Hermeneutic forever : voice, text, digitization, and the "I"

Although we tend unreflectively to think of interpretation as carried on in language and as applied to linguistic expression in oral utterance or in text, interpretation can in fact be much larger than language in human life

Astrometry and geodesy with radio interferometry: experiments, models, results

Summarizes current status of radio interferometry at radio frequencies between Earth-based receivers, for astrometric and geodetic applications. Emphasizes theoretical models of VLBI observables that are required to extract results at the present accuracy levels of 1 cm and 1 nanoradian. Highlights the achievements of VLBI during the past two decades in reference frames, Earth orientation, atmospheric effects on microwave propagation, and relativity.Comment: 83 pages, 19 Postscript figures. To be published in Rev. Mod. Phys., Vol. 70, Oct. 199

Flacourtia rukam: biochemistry, functions and utilization

Flacourtia rukam is a species of the Flacourtiaceae. The edible, cherry-like, sweet and sour fruits of the species are not known to be commercially exploited. Phenolic compounds and flavonoids are the main constituents of the fruits, which have also been reported to have good antioxidant properties. However, the available information on the phytochemical and pharmacological aspects of F. rukam indicated it to be very much an underutilized tropical fruit tree. Nevertheless, based on the ethnomedicinal uses of the fruits and other parts of the plant, its economic potential as a health giving food crop should be further investigated and properly evaluated

<i>Trypanosoma brucei</i> DHRF-TS revisited:characterisation of a bifunctional and highly unstable recombinant dihydrofolate reductase-thymidylate synthase

<div><p>Bifunctional dihydrofolate reductase–thymidylate synthase (DHFR-TS) is a chemically and genetically validated target in African trypanosomes, causative agents of sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in cattle. Here we report the kinetic properties and sensitivity of recombinant enzyme to a range of lipophilic and classical antifolate drugs. The purified recombinant enzyme, expressed as a fusion protein with elongation factor Ts (Tsf) in ThyA^- <i>Escherichia coli</i>, retains DHFR activity, but lacks any TS activity. TS activity was found to be extremely unstable (half-life of 28 s) following desalting of clarified bacterial lysates to remove small molecules. Stability could be improved 700-fold by inclusion of dUMP, but not by other pyrimidine or purine (deoxy)-nucleosides or nucleotides. Inclusion of dUMP during purification proved insufficient to prevent inactivation during the purification procedure. Methotrexate and trimetrexate were the most potent inhibitors of DHFR (<i>K</i>_i 0.1 and 0.6 nM, respectively) and FdUMP and nolatrexed of TS (<i>K</i>_i 14 and 39 nM, respectively). All inhibitors showed a marked drop-off in potency of 100- to 1,000-fold against trypanosomes grown in low folate medium lacking thymidine. The most potent inhibitors possessed a terminal glutamate moiety suggesting that transport or subsequent retention by polyglutamylation was important for biological activity. Supplementation of culture medium with folate markedly antagonised the potency of these folate-like inhibitors, as did thymidine in the case of the TS inhibitors raltitrexed and pemetrexed.</p></div