246 research outputs found
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
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
Moving cities: rethinking the materialities of human geographies
No full textIn this paper we offer a discussion of the 'materiality' of the urban. This discussion is offered in the context of recent calls in various areas of the discipline for the necessity of 'rematerializing' human geography. While we agree with the spirit of these calls, if human geography (and, within that, urban geography) is going to return to the material, let alone articulate some kind of rapprochement between the 'material' and 'immaterial', it needs to be clear about the terms it is employing. Therefore, and drawing on a range of work from contemporary cultural theory, sociology, urban studies, urban history, architectural theory and urban geography, we sketch out more precisely what a 'rematerialized' urban geography might involve. Crucially, we argue that, rather than 'grounding' urban geography in more 'concrete' realities, paying increased attention to the material actually requires a more expansive engagement with the immaterial. In developing this argument we outline some important conceptual vehicles with which to work up an understanding of the material as processually emergent, before offering two pathways along which the materialities of the urban might be usefully apprehended, pathways that avoid simple oppositions between the 'material' and 'nonmaterial' while also restating the importance of understanding the complex spatialities of the urban
Rising seas, surprising storms: temporalities of climate and catastrophe in Vermont, New York and the Florida Keys
No full textThe phenomenon of climate change exists in a liminal state between denial and acceptance, past and future, theory and reality, problem and catastrophe, unfolding in the spaces between apparently stable forms. This thesis considers different temporalities emerging within this transition through a creative exploration of extreme weather and climatic events that seeks to foreground the idea of change itself. Research centers around the Florida Keys, a low lying archipelago that is widely expected to become uninhabitable in the next half century due to sea level rise, but only if the islands do not suffer a similar fate much sooner with the sudden arrival of a catastrophic hurricane. While most Keys residents are unconcerned about the growing reality of sea level rise, hurricanes are a constant threat generating a palpable atmosphere of anticipation and corresponding precaution. In resonance with this regular storm activity in the Florida Keys, the project also reflects on the coincidental occurrence of Hurricanes Irene (2011) and Sandy (2012), two errant and devastating storms that visited the northeastern United States over the course of this project and personally affected the author. Thus, extreme weather provides a material entry point into the complex and far-reaching event of climate change, offering an opportunity to theorize transition and to reflect on what might be creatively recuperated from cross currents of climate and catastrophe. In conclusion, the thesis proposes an ontology inspired by the unique reproductive strategy of the mangrove plant that has thickly and extensively colonized the coastline of southern Florida and through which events are understood to possess qualities of latency, accrual and distribution and to give rise to a future that is germinal, a present that is continuously resignified and a past that remains profoundly creative.</p
Towards a non-representational geography of artistic practice
No full textGeography’s engagement with art has a long and varied history which, consistent with broader disciplinary developments, has progressed beyond a focus on the representational content of art products to consideration of artistic practices and experiences. However, persistent tendencies to consider artist, artwork and artistic spatiality as distinct and essential render the ‘geography of art’ under-equipped to address the emergence through artistic practice of particular, contingent, mutable and excessive spatialities and subjectivities. With its emphases on practice, affect and experimentalism, I draw on geographical and psychological non-representational thinking – philosophically, methodologically and analytically – to generate an account of such emergent spatialities and subjectivities. I explore artistic, material and implicit means through which they emerge, from within artistic practice, on both an experimental and auto-ethnographic basis. Working alongside participating artists, I varied the spatial and material conditions of our respective practices to encourage participants to do, think about and articulate their artistic practices differently, and employed interview techniques intended to facilitate access to and articulation from implicit or pre-reflective understanding. Four substantive papers consider different aspects of artistic practice in the context of different theoretical literatures. Through these papers, I argue that artistic practice is a form a mythological thinking without explicit mythic content, and identify paired reciprocal processes of interrogation through which spatialities and subjectivities emerge. I propose that the combination of experimentalism and particular material affects within artistic practice sustains a skills-challenge imbalance, which drives further experimentation and generates increasingly individualized practices. I also argue that artistic practice provides both access to and articulation from implicit understanding, allowing the conveyance of implicit meaning both on its own artistic terms and by facilitating explication into linguistic form. I conclude that, collectively, these varied aspects of artistic practice constitute interpenetrative processes whereby the material and implicit function as one, and that by attending to these processes through the creative and analytical means introduced here, geography’s capacity for a non-representational understanding of artistic practice is greatly enhanced
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
New Songdo City, or, the potentiality of Asian urbanism(s)
No full textThis thesis explores the nexus between 'urban expressionism' and the potentiality of 'Asian urbanism(s)' by exploring ways that different planning paradigms have been located/dislocated in the case of New Songdo City, South Korea. By investigating four expressions of New Songdo City - as an 'Eco-City', a 'Smart City', an 'International City', and as the 'City of the Future' - this thesis argues that urban expressionism can make important contributions to the aims of Asian urbanism(s). Ultimately, this research demonstrates the ways that urban expressionism can be used to destabilize hegemonic Western-centric urban knowledge and city-building practices, and further point to new geographies of theory from which important contributions to urban research can be made.
Urban expressions are made evident by various entwined urban rhetorics and worlding practices that operationalize multiple mediums of communication. Consequently, New Songdo City is, first and foremost, a city of simultaneity. To investigate this simultaneity, this research utilizes an exploratory case study approach and multiple qualitative methods that include semi-structured interviewing, focus groups, and surveys to gather insights from residents of Songdo, local experts, public and private sector actors, and other key stakeholder groups. Visual analysis is also used to explore mixed-mediums of data, including promotional videos, images, exhibition displays, magazines, and advertisements. The methods used to undertake this thesis provide a glimpse in to the development of New Songdo City and capture different urban expressions that are articulated by the city through various examples of urban rhetoric and worlding practices.
The urban expressions presented in the New Songdo City case are analysed through the lens of Asian urbanism(s) and investigate the ways that hegemonic Western and Euro-centric conceptualizations of âthe urbanâ and âthe cityâ have been deployed, articulated, experienced, challenged, and complicated. By extension, this thesis also contributes to a more nuanced conceptualization of Asian urbanism(s) as well as the relevance of New Songdo City for urban theory in South Korean, Asian, and more generalizable contexts.</p
Stratospheric envelopes: Notes for a speculative mode of atmospheric address
No full textAs a contribution to ongoing research into the affective experiences of atmospheres, this paper speculates about the modes of atmospheric address emerging from experiments within the stratosphere. In order to do so it draws upon archival material associated with Commander Malcolm D. Ross who, during the 1950s and early 1960s, spent more time than any other person in the stratosphere. Coupling accounts of Ross’s experimental ascents with his interest in creative writing and communication, this paper uses three unopened letters carried by Ross into the stratosphere as a point of departure for layering together three strands of thinking. The first is a consideration of the stratosphere as a zone of exchange, experiment and experience. The second is a reflection on the envelope as a spatiotemporal form, a limit, and a lure for thinking. And the third is a discussion of the modes of atmospheric sensing made possible by stratospheric flights. These three strands are worked together in order to develop a distinctive speculative mode of atmospheric address. Such modes of address can contribute to wider efforts across the Geohumanities to account for the differentiated materiality and movement of the earth’s atmosphere
Elemental infrastructures for atmospheric media: On stratospheric variations, value and the commons
No full textThis paper draws together ongoing efforts to recast the materiality and meaning of infrastructures with recent critical and creative engagements around questions of the elemental. In doing so, the paper develops the concept of elemental infrastructures in order to grasp how the elemental is not just a material resource acted upon or transformed by infrastructures, but is becoming part of the generative ontology and condition of infrastructural capacities. The argument of the paper is developed via a discussion of recent experiments with contemporary forms of atmospheric media in which different configurations of the elemental, from helium to stratospheric winds, are being worked together in order to shape new infrastructural arrangements. In speculating with these experiments the paper considers what it might mean to develop an expanded sense of infrastructural value from variations in an elemental commons
Engineering affective atmospheres on the moving geographies of the 1897 Andrée expedition
No full textInternational audienceHow might the dynamic materiality of atmosphere be addressed in ways that register simultaneously its meteorological and affective qualities? The present article considers this question via a discussion of the kinds of atmospheric spaces in which the emergence and experience of modern balloon (or aerostatic) flight is implicated. In doing so it argues that aerostatic flight can be understood simultaneously as a technology for moving through atmosphere in a meteorological sense as an event generative, at least potentially, of atmospheres in an affective sense. This argument is exemplified via a discussion of a particularly notable instance of balloon flight: the attempt, in 1897 by a Swedish engineer, Salomon August Andrée, and two companions, to fly to the North Pole in a hydrogen-filled balloon. Drawing upon a range of contemporaneous accounts, the article makes three claims about the expedition: first, that it can be understood, following Spinoza, as an effort to engineer a mode of addressing the meteorological atmosphere as a relational field of ; second, that the passage of the expedition can be understood in terms of the registering of atmospheres (in both meteorological and affective terms) in moving, sensing bodies; and third, that the expedition was also generative of a distributed space of anticipation and expectancy. In concluding, the article speculates upon how conceiving of atmospheric space as simultaneously as meteorological and affective might contribute to recent attempts to rethink the materialities of cultural geographies
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