493 research outputs found
A paper with an interesting rhythm
No full textThis paper is a performative effort to move with and through the expressive and theoretical spaces of an interest in rhythm. This interest emerges initially from the middle of an encounter with the 5 Rhythms™, a contemporary somatic practice that uses rhythm to facilitate and catalyse expressive movement. Rather than seeking to excavate representational meaning from an encounter with the practice or using it to critically diagnose the corporeal politics of contemporary society, this paper apprehends the creative movement emerging from an encounter with/in the non-representational, performative potential of the 5 Rhythms™. By becoming a deliberately playful effort to hold onto the lines of movement emergent from the affective, kinaesthetic territories of this practice, the paper works to avoid either falling back upon a representational ethics that stops this movement dead in its tracks or becoming seduced by an aesthetics of weightless escape. This effort draws particular support from Deleuze and Guattari's writing on the refrain, a concept that provides a vehicle through which the lines of an interest in rhythm gain expressive and theoretical consistency. Because the territories of the refrain open onto lines of movement that are as much figural as discursive, the paper works to animate the lines of movement emerging from an encounter with the 5 Rhythms™ through a series of non-representational diagrammatic interventions. Finally, in drawing the diagrammatic lines of this movement in-between, the paper becomes not so much a series of lines about moving, but a series of lines moving about. <br/
Drawing out the lines of the event
No full textI said our lives are improvisation and it sounded un-rigid, liberal, in short a good idea. But that kind of thing is hard to keep up..
Diagramming practice and performance
No full textIn this paper I seek to apprehend some of the powers of nonrepresentational practice and performance through an encounter with the rhythmic movement of the body. I concentrate on eurhythmics, a practice that emerged in Geneva in the late 19th century and early 20th century as an effort to improve musical appreciation through rhythmic movement. Drawing on work in cultural and architectural theory, I argue that the historical and cultural geographies of eurhythmics can best be apprehended diagrammatically. Specifically, I situate eurhythmics in diagrammatic relation to the corporeal kinaesthetics of rhythmic movement, to practices of social and cultural transformation, and to architectures of performative potential. By apprehending the geographies of eurhythmics in this way, I not only work to demonstrate that nonrepresentational styles of thinking and working multiply rather than undermine the field of power in which geographers move, but also present a sense of how these powers can become implicated in the very practice and performance of geographical research
Diagramming movement between the cartographic and the choreographic: research report
No full text"Diagramming Movement between the Cartographic and the Choreographic" was an experimental interdisciplinary research project, which in part was concerned with exploring a collaborative research methodology that had a heterarchical structure. Undertaken with geographer Dr Derek McCormack, from Oxford Univerrsity, PhD students and independent artists the project was strand of a larger research project, "Society of Molecules" run by the Senselab, a Research Centre with a global reach that was initiated by Dr Erin Manning of Concordia University, Montreal, and involved researchers from all over the world. "Society of Molecules" employed a global distributive participatory research model, which we echoed at a smaller scale in our UK 'molecule'. Each international molecule was invited to initiate aesthetico-political interventions. The theme that guided our research was the diagramming of movement between the cartographic and the choreographic, using Deleuzian-induced understandings of the cartographic, and introducing the notions of affect that emerged in Deleuze and Guattari's work. The research involved practice-based experimentations/interventions alongside readings of the work of geographers, philosophers and other theorists whose work addressed issues consonant with our concerns, conceptual traces of which could be detected in the practical results of the research experiment. The above are all described and reflected upon in this research report
Portrait of John W. McCormack, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
No full textHandwritten inscription: \u27To Felton M. Johnston, my dearly valued friend with the respect and friendship of [John W. McCormack]\u27https://egrove.olemiss.edu/fmjohnston/1113/thumbnail.jp
Today's lifestyles, tomorrow's cancers: Trends in lifestyle risk factors for cancer in low- and middle-income countries
No full textBackground: The global burden of cancer is projected to increase from 13.3 to 21.4 million incident cases between 2010 and 2030 due to demographic changes alone, dominated by a growing burden in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Lifestyle risk factors for cancer are also changing in these countries and may further influence this burden.Design: We consider examples of changes already occurring in population-level distributions of tobacco and alcohol consumption, body weight, and reproductive lives of women to gauge the magnitude of their projected impact on cancer incidence in future decades.Results: Trends in lifestyle factors vary greatly between settings and by sex. Some common trends point to considerable increases in cancers of the (i) lung in men due to tobacco smoking; (ii) upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) due to increasing tobacco and alcohol consumption, worse in men; (iii) colon from increasing body mass index, and alcohol and tobacco consumption; and (iv) in women, breast due particularly to consistent international trends of younger age at menarche, smaller family size, and, at postmenopausal ages, increasing body weight.Conclusions: In many LMICs, the future cancer burden will be worsened by changing lifestyles. Affected common cancer sites likely to experience the largest increases are lung, colon, UADT, and breast. © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society for Medical Oncology. All rights reserved
Revisiting res ipsa loquitur: Mccormack v Sportsdirect.Com Fitness Limited considered
No full textIn this article, the author considers the recent decision of the Sheriff Appeal Court in Mccormack v Sportsdirect.Com Fitness Limited [2025] SAC (Civ) 15 in which the maxim res ipsa loquitur was found to have been incorrectly applied by the sheriff court.<br/
Author response
No full textPerforin-2 (MPEG1) is an effector of the innate immune system that limits the proliferation and spread of medically relevant Gram-negative, -positive, and acid fast bacteria. We show here that a cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligase (CRL) complex containing cullin-1 and βTrCP monoubiquitylates Perforin-2 in response to pathogen associated molecular patterns such as LPS. Ubiquitylation triggers a rapid redistribution of Perforin-2 and is essential for its bactericidal activity. Enteric pathogens such as
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis
and enteropathogenic
Escherichia coli
disarm host cells by injecting cell cycle inhibiting factors (Cifs) into mammalian cells to deamidate the ubiquitin-like protein NEDD8. Because CRL activity is dependent upon NEDD8, Cif blocks ubiquitin dependent trafficking of Perforin-2 and thus, its bactericidal activity. Collectively, these studies further underscore the biological significance of Perforin-2 and elucidate critical molecular events that culminate in Perforin-2-dependent killing of both intracellular and extracellular, cell-adherent bacteria.
DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06505.001
A wide range of bacteria and other microbes can infect animals and cause disease. Throughout evolution, these microbes and their hosts have been fighting never ending arms races in which the microbes deploy ever more elaborate weapons, while the hosts adapt to defend themselves. An animal's first line of defense is provided by its ‘innate’ immune system. This system is activated by the general features of microbial cells; for example, the molecules that make up the walls surrounding most bacteria. Microbes must defeat the innate immune system in order to cause disease, and ultimately to spread from one host to the next.
One component of innate immunity is a protein called Perforin-2 that is present in most, if not all, animal cells. This protein forms pores on bacterial cells, causing them to split open and die. However, it was not clear how Perforin-2 is switched on and what, if anything, bacteria do to counteract it. To address these questions, McCormack et al. infected human and mice cells with bacteria that cause serious diseases of the digestive tract.
The experiments show that when animal cells detect bacteria, or merely a fragment of their cell wall, a specific group of proteins, called the CRL complex, attaches a molecule called ubiquitin to Perforin-2. Ubiquitin works much like the shipping label of a package, enabling the efficient targeting of Perforin-2 to the invading bacteria. McCormack et al. also show that some bacteria use a protein called a cell cycle inhibiting factor (or Cif for short) to inhibit the CRL complex. This blocks the ubiquitin labeling of Perforin-2, which renders it a useless weapon that can no longer be directed towards bacteria.
Mice that are infected with a bacterium called
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis
become seriously unwell and often die. However, McCormack et al. found that mice infected with mutant
Y. pseudotuberculosis
that lacked Cif remained healthy. Also, mice that lacked Perforin-2 are highly susceptible to infectious diseases. McCormack et al.'s findings reveal how Perforin-2 is activated during the innate immune response and how some bacteria can defeat this pivotal defense. In the current age of antibiotic resistant bacteria, these studies may spur the development of new drugs that restore or increase the activity of Perforin-2.
DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06505.00
Review of George Eliot in Society: Travels Abroad and Sundays at the Priory
No full textThis is a welcome and wholly worthwhile extension of the author\u27s George Eliot\u27s English Travels: Composite Characters and Coded Communication (2005), a densely written and stimulating examination of places and people in Eliot\u27s life which have some resonance, in varying degrees of coding, from the seemingly casual to the subtly integrated, in her published work. McCormack there defined three categories of place identification. These range from \u27absolute certainties\u27 through \u27pretty good cases\u27 to \u27alluring, probable, but irretrievably speculative suppositions\u27, categories certainly applicable to herpresent study, in which her dedication and saturation in George Eliot, the works, the life, and a wide range of biographical and critical commentary, is again evident. It is a direct invitation to see and feel places and people, decode traits, pick up on similarities, mine differences, above all, be aware. McCormack\u27s method is one of intimate identification with the life and the writing life.
The main thrust demonstrates how Eliot\u27s social agenda, with the Sunday salons from 1869 onwards at the Priory as the focus, feeds into her fiction - and initially her poetry - together with comparable assimilations from her travelling life in Europe with Lewes from 1854 onwards up to the fraught honeymoon with Cross in 1880. Throughout, the Haight contention that Eliot was largely reclusive, a view commonly supported, is subjected to intense scrutiny and is vigorously disputed. The Sunday gatherings, carefully assembled, would suggest that Eliot enjoyed being the centre of a salon of her own making, her essay on Madame de Sable providing precursory evidence. The importance of Lewes as initiator, manager, socializing facilitator with an eye alert as always to publishing and critical opportunities, is integral. McCormack uses his unpublished journals and diaries, supplementing them with a detailed attention to known biographical sources which she carefully sifts for reliability or bias
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