Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies

Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies. Marc Berg and Annemarie Mol. eds. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1998. + 270 pp.     

Divided Bodies: Lyme Disease,Contested Illness,and Evidence-Based Medicine

Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry -     

Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self

Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self . Lesley Alexandra Sharp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, xiv. 307 pp.     

Lipid Bodies in Inflammatory Cells: Structure, Function, and Current Imaging Techniques

Lipid bodies (LBs), also known as lipid droplets, have increasingly been recognized as functionally active organelles linked to diverse biological functions and human diseases. These organelles are actively formed in vivo within cells from the immune system, such as macrophages, neutrophils, and eosinophils, in response to different inflammatory conditions and are sites for synthesis and storage of inflammatory mediators. In this review, the authors discuss structural and functional aspects of LBs and current imaging techniques to visualize these organelles in cells engaged in inflammatory processes, including infectious diseases. The dynamic morphological aspects of LBs in leukocytes as inducible, newly formable organelles, elicitable in response to stimuli that lead to cellular activation, contribute to the evolving understanding of LBs as organelles that are critical regulators of different inflammatory diseases, key markers of leukocyte activation, and attractive targets for novel anti-inflammatory therapies.     

Misfolded protein aggregates: mechanisms, structures and potential for disease transmission

Some of the most prevalent human degenerative diseases appear as a result of the misfolding and aggregation of proteins. Compelling evidence suggest that misfolded protein aggregates play an important role in cell dysfunction and tissue damage, leading to the disease. Prion protein (Prion diseases), amyloid-beta (Alzheimer's disease), alpha-synuclein (Parkinson's disease), Huntingtin (Huntington's disease), serum amyloid A (AA amyloidosis) and islet amyloid polypeptide (type 2 diabetes) are some of the proteins that trigger disease when they get misfolded. The recent understanding of the crucial role of misfolded proteins as well as the structural requirements and mechanism of protein misfolding have raised the possibility that these diseases may be transmissible by self-propagation of the protein misfolding process in a similar way as the infamous prions transmit prion diseases. Future research in this field should aim to clarify this possibility and translate the knowledge of the basic disease mechanisms into development of novel strategies for early diagnosis and efficient treatment.     

Civet Cats, Fried Grasshoppers, and David Beckham's Pajamas: Unruly Bodies after SARS

This article discusses the viscerality of consumption; in particular, consumption-as-eating and consumption-as-spending as a set of heterogeneous, contestatory discourses and practices of identity production and subject formation. To do so, I bring together two intersecting events: the Chinese government's ban on wild animal markets during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, and Chinese and European media frenzy over the visit to China by the Spanish football club Real Madrid in the wake of the epidemic. In discussing these events, I pay specific attention to unruly bodies—both human and nonhuman—as consumables and those who consume them. In examining translocal encounters of these unruly bodies, I suggest that, in post-SARS China, discourses and practices of consumption produce emergent socialities that at once refigure racialized Orientalist tropes and conjure up discrepant neoliberal imaginaries of lifestyle and consumer choice.     

Formation,collective motion,and merging of macroscopic bacterial aggregates

Chemotactic bacteria form emergent spatial patterns of variable cell density within cultures that are initially spatially uniform. These patterns are the result of chemical gradients that are created from the directed movement and metabolic activity of billions of cells. A recent study on pattern formation in wild bacterial isolates has revealed unique collective behaviors of the bacteria Enterobacter cloacae. As in other bacterial species, Enterobacter cloacae form macroscopic aggregates. Once formed, these bacterial clusters can migrate several millimeters, sometimes resulting in the merging of two or more clusters. To better understand these phenomena, we examine the formation and dynamics of thousands of bacterial clusters that form within a 22 cm square culture dish filled with soft agar over two days. At the macroscale, the aggregates display spatial order at short length scales, and the migration of cell clusters is superdiffusive, with a merging acceleration that is correlated with aggregate size. At the microscale, aggregates are composed of immotile cells surrounded by low density regions of motile cells. The collective movement of the aggregates is the result of an asymmetric flux of bacteria at the boundary. An agent-based model is developed to examine how these phenomena are the result of both chemotactic movement and a change in motility at high cell density. These results identify and characterize a new mechanism for collective bacterial motility driven by a transient, density-dependent change in motility.     

Thrombocytosis,circulating platelet aggregates,and neurological dysfunction.

In 12 patients whose neurological dysfunction was associated with thrombocytosis or evidence of abnormal platelet activation, or both, correction of the platelet disorder corresponded with reversal of the neurological symptoms. This suggests that platelet abnormalities may, in certain cases, produce several syndromes of neurological dysfunction, presumably as a result of obstruction of the cerebral microcirculation.     

Healthy Bodies,Toxic Medicines: College Students and the Rhetorics of Flu Vaccination

This article examines flu vaccination beliefs and practices produced during a survey of undergraduate students in Spring 2012 (IRB#10-732). This research uses the methods of rhetorical analysis — or the study of persuasive features and arguments used in language — to examine statements respondents made regarding flu and flu vaccine. In these responses, students generated unique categories of arguments about the perceived dangers of flu vaccination, including the assertion that vaccines cause disease (including illnesses and conditions other than flu), that vaccines are toxic medicines, and that vaccines carry unknown, population-wide risks that are inadequately acknowledged. This study provides insight into vaccination beliefs and rationales among a population at risk of flu (college students) and suggests that further study of this population may yield important keys to addressing flu vaccine concerns as expressed by college students. Rhetorical analysis also offers a useful set of methods to understanding vaccination beliefs and practices, adding to existing methods of study and analysis of vaccination practices and beliefs in medicine and public health.     

Ammonification in soil aggregates: Effect of some physical,physico-chemical and chemical properties

Aggregate diameter affected significantly the intensity of ammonification in chernozemic rendzina but not in lessivē soil. In the latter the process was influenced significantly by the number of microorganisms able to grow on asparagine agar. A high correlation, though not significant at the level of 0.05, was found between the ammonification intensity and the content of pores of radius: 3–1.5, 7.5–5.0, 0.5–0.25 and 0.01–0.005 μm in chernozemic rendzina and those measuring 1.5–0.5, 0.025–0.01, 0.01–0.005 and >7.5 μm in lessivē soil aggregates as well as the percentage of soil particles of 100–50 μm in chernozemic rendzina aggregates and the internal surface area and organic C in aggregates of lessivē soil.     

Comparisons of Cells, Refractile Bodies, and Spores of Bacillus popilliae

Spores of Bacillus popilliae from infected larvae and refractile bodies produced in a Trypticase-barbiturate medium were similar but distinct from vegetative cells of this organism in protein, nucleic acid, and enzyme composition. The spores and refractile bodies were found to have catalase activity, some of which was heat-resistant. This enzyme was not found in the vegetative cells. The spores contained dipicolinic acid, but the refractile bodies did not. The latter were similar to cells in having considerably higher levels of phosphate extractable with cold trichloroacetic acid and of poly-beta-hydroxybutyrate than had the spores. Electron microscopy demonstrated conclusively that the refractile bodies are distinctly different from either cells or spores of B. popilliae. The possibility that these bodies are formed as a result of an aborted sporulation process is discussed.     

Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves

Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves. Kamran Asdar Ali. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. xii. 233 pp.