This dissertation is the first systematic study of contemporary Chinese site-based art, a mode of art practice that takes place in everyday urban spaces such as city streets, construction sites, and ...other unconventional locations. Combining extensive archival research and artist interviews, the study concentrates on the “long 1990s,” a period I have defined to include parts of the late 1980s and early 2000s. The “long 1990s” brings into focus a set of discursive issues and a corresponding set of socio-structural conditions including rapid urbanization, increased transregional mobility, and a growing market economy—both of which motivated site-based art practice. While many scholars have examined urban art practices in China during this period, I draw specific attention to the growing importance of working “on-site” to reveal how questions around site and space became central to contemporary Chinese art practice.Site-based art practice in China had roots in the late 1980s but flourished in the 1990s as more artists began to literally take to the streets to merge their art and their own physical bodies with the everyday realities of the here and now. Although this form of art practice was in dialogue with site-based art practices in Europe and North American, I demonstrate the ways in which it was distinct, particularly in its integration of both site and time, a crucial aspect that current discourses around site-specificity overlooks. I develop the term “on-site” (xianchang), which was first used by Chinese filmmakers and artists in the mid-1990s to describe aesthetic practices that take place on-location, as a culturally specific yet expansive conceptual framework to understand site-based art practice.While recent attention to politically committed, socially engaged art has prompted aesthetic practices to be seen as either a passive reflection of socio-economic realities or a form of resistance against them, I show how working on-site allowed artists and their artworks to become active and critical participants in the social sphere without holding a predetermined social or political agenda. Considering how these art practices contributed to the expansion of physical, discursive, and social spaces, I reveal the ways in which on-site art practices articulated new forms of cultural expression in the public realm, transformed overlooked areas of the city into centers of social exchange, and linked these centers to sites abroad. Through four roughly chronological, thematic chapters that move from Chengdu and Lhasa, to Guangzhou, Beijing, Paris, and Berlin, the dissertation provides a transregional account of on-site art in China and an analytical method for examining how these practices emerged from and interacted with each local context. Through this history, I explore a set of interrelated questions: Why did artists begin working on-site during this period? How did they incorporate specific sites into the formal language of their art practice? And what were the aesthetic and socio-political stakes for doing so?By framing site-based practice as a form of space-making, I illuminate how art, urban social life, and the built environment mutually transformed one another during a period of unprecedented urban change. My research demonstrates that since the 1990s Chinese artists have expanded static notions of site to connect the spatial and temporal specificities of local sites to multiple other sites within a transregional, global context.
BMS-247550 Bristol-Myers Squibb/GBF Lin, Nancy; Brakora, Katherine; Seiden, Michael
Current opinion in investigational drugs (London, England : 2000)
4, Številka:
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Journal Article
Bristol-Myers Squibb and the German Research Centre for Biotechnology are developing BMS-247550 as one of a series of epothilones, for the potential treatment of various forms of cancer. BMS-247550 ...had successfully completed phase I trials by September 2000 and by February 2001, phase II trials had been initiated for a variety of tumor types in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute; at this time, DNA filing was expected in 2003, and commercialization in 2004. By April 2002, phase I trials in children had also been initiated. As of May 2002, phase II studies had been conducted in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer and breast cancer.
The experience of fleeing one's homeland to escape war is as old as human history itself. As of the beginning of 2006, there were an estimated 20.8 million people around the world who had been ...forcibly displaced from their homes and were under the care of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR, 2006). According to the latest estimates (UNHCR), the two countries from which the largest numbers of refugees originate are Afghanistan and Sudan, with 1.9 million and 693,300 people who have fled to other countries, respectively. 1 Although refugees generally come from developing countries and most find refuge in a neighboring country also in the developing world, a minority of these refugees permanently resettle in more distant developed countries like the United States (Ogata, 2005). As a nation primarily composed of immigrants, this country has hosted refugees from all around the world. Two groups who have made their homes in the United States are Cambodian refugees who came here in the 1980's and the Southern Sudanese who came to this country more recently in the early 2000's. Their experiences shed light on how people develop their identities in the context of war. As a field, we are only beginning to explore how refugee experiences shape people's identities. This study explores how people who have permanently resettled to the United States after fleeing war in Cambodia and Sudan have been affected by their experiences of flight. Specifically, the following questions are addressed: How do the experiences of fleeing one's homeland due to war and conflict influence one's self and identity? What is the process of self and identity development/change in the context of fleeing war? 1This figure does not include some 4.3 million Palestinians refugees who come under a separate mandate.
This dissertation is a history of an Indian Buddhist biographical collection—the Wish-Fulfilling Vine—in the cultural imagination and discourse of Tibet during the seventeenth and eighteenth ...centuries. The Wish-Fulfilling Vine of Bodhisattva Avadanas (Skt. Bodhisattvavadanakalpalata, Tb. Byang chub sems dpa'i rtogs pa brjod pa dpag bsam gyi 'khri shing) by Kshemendra is an eleventh-century Sanskrit anthology of stories about the previous existences of the Buddha and his disciples, along with events from the Buddha's final life. Translated into Tibetan and incorporated into the Tibetan Buddhist canon, by the seventeenth century the Vine occupied a place of high prestige in Tibet. I argue that adaptations of the Vine—condensed literary digests, paintings, and woodcuts—constitute sophisticated forms of commentary that reveal the ingenuity and concerns of their producers. In addition to didactic and iconic functions in Buddhist practice, cultural productions of the Vine served as sites of discourse about knowledge, authority, ideal Buddhist exemplars, and authentic Indic origins. With prominent monastic intellectuals and rulers as producers and patrons of its editions and adaptations, the Vine offers perspectives into the elite culture of Tibet, in its monastic and courtly aspects. Each chapter is organized around a prominent figure who designed, sponsored, or otherwise promoted cultural productions of the Wish-Fulfilling Vine. In Chapter One I trace how the Fifth Dalai Lama and his court popularized the Vine through public instruction, paintings, and literary activities. These conspicuously cultured displays promoted renewed interest in Sanskrit and the Indic origins of Buddhism, while contributing to broader projects of knowledge production and state-building. In Chapter Two I demonstrate how the lay Pho lha dynasty appropriated the Vine, sponsoring two large-scale multimedia productions while developing models for lay kingship and patronage. In Chapter Three I argue that Si tu Pan chen, an influential monk of Sde dge in eastern Tibet, articulated his vision of the ideal monastic through the design of Vine paintings and other literary and visual productions on the Buddha's life. In Chapter Four I study Zhu chen, court chaplain of Sde dge, and his work on the Vine as commentaries on cultural production.
Summary Purpose To assess the safety, tolerability, and clinical outcomes of an adjuvant chemotherapy regimen designed to incorporate a non-cross-resistant agent (paclitaxel, T) with a maximally ...dose-intensified regimen of doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (AC) in conjunction with hematopoietic growth factor support (recombinant human granulocyte-colony stimulating factor; G-CSF; Filgrastim). A secondary aim was to assess if a higher dose (10 mcg/kg/day) of G-CSF is more efficacious than the conventional dose (5 mcg/kg/day) in this setting. Patients and Methods Female patients with early-stage, node-positive invasive breast cancer were eligible for this multicenter, cooperative group feasibility trial that was designed as the pilot study for a larger randomized clinical trial. The protocol treatment comprised five cycles of dose-intensified AC (75 and 2000 mg/m2 /cycle, respectively, intravenously every three weeks) with G-CSF support, followed by an additional four cycles of T (175 mg/m2 by 3 h intravenous infusion, every three weeks). Patients were randomized to receive one of two dose levels of G-CSF (5 vs. 10 mcg/kg/day) during AC chemotherapy. Data on both short-term toxicity and long-term survival were collected. Results One hundred and seventy two node-positive patients with operable primary breast cancer were accrued to this trial between February 1993 and April 1994. 130 of the 172 patients (76%) completed all protocol-specified therapy. Of the 42 early study withdrawals, 23 were due to unacceptable acute treatment-related toxicity. No differences in toxicities or clinical outcomes were noted between the two different dose levels of G-CSF support. At 6.8 years median follow-up, relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) rates for all patients are 70% and 78%, respectively. Ten patients developed second malignancies during follow-up, including three cases with a hematologic malignancy (2% incidence). Conclusion The delivery of dose-intensified AC followed by T was feasible in this large-scale pilot trial, although significant acute toxicities were commonly encountered. The data confirmed the acceptable tolerability of T after aggressive myelotoxic therapy in the adjuvant setting, leading to a larger randomized clinical trial comparing three dose levels of doxorubicin in AC with or without the addition of T (CALGB 9344). Supportive care using twice the conventional dose of G-CSF did not significantly improve the tolerability or change the toxicities of this regimen, and the occurrence of secondary malignancies is consistent with the emerging risk profile of dose-intensive regimens with growth factor support. With long-term follow-up, the clinical outcomes remain relatively favorable and correlate with such expected prognostic factors as the number of involved nodes and hormone receptor status.
A chip with filtering, amplification, and non-linear frequency multiplication was manufactured using a novel combination of established fabrication processes. The conversion gain of the x2 multiplier ...was 35 dB, with >90 dB suppression of the fundamental and >75 dB suppression of the 3 rd harmonic.
Stem cell factor (SCF) binding to the c-kit receptor triggers homodimerization and intermolecular tyrosine phosphorylation of the c-kit receptor, thus initiating signal transduction. Receptor ...dimerization is a critical early step in this process. Prior biochemical studies of c-kit receptor dimerization have mainly used affinity cross-linking techniques, which are beset with problems including low efficiency of cross-linking and the usual requirement for radiolabeled SCF to detect the cross-linked complex. We used the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) technique to examine the effects of SCF and other hematopoietic cytokines on c-kitreceptor dimerization. The nonneutralizing anti–c-kit receptor monoclonal antibody 104D2 was directly conjugated to fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) or to the carbocyanine dye Cy3 and used to label cytokine-responsive human hematopoietic cell lines. The ability of SCF to induce c-kit receptor dimerization was assessed by flow cytometric analysis of FRET between the donor fluorochrome FITC and the acceptor fluorochrome Cy3. SCF induced a dose-dependent increase inc-kit receptor dimerization that correlated well with the concentrations of SCF required to stimulate cell proliferation. Receptor dimerization was detectable within 3 minutes after the addition of SCF and was maximal 30 minutes after the addition of SCF. Confocal microscopy showed redistribution of the c-kit receptor (from a diffuse distribution on the cell surface to “caps” at one end of the cell) within 3 minutes after SCF addition, followed by receptor internalization. Reappearance of the c-kit receptor on the cell surface required new protein synthesis, suggesting that thec-kit receptor is not recycled to the cell surface after internalization. Finally, erythropoietin (Epo), but not the structurally and functionally related cytokine thrombopoietin (Tpo), stimulated c-kit receptor dimerization detectable by FRET, and tyrosine phosphorylation of the c-kit receptor. These results suggest that exposure to Epo can activate the c-kit receptor and provide further evidence for cross-talk between the Epo andc-kit receptors in human hematopoietic cell lines. Studies with progeny of burst-forming unit-erythroid (BFU-E) suggest that the FRET technique is sufficiently sensitive to detectc-kit receptor dimerization on normal human hematopoietic cells.
Antibacterial dimethylaminododecyl methacrylate (DMADDM) was recently synthesized. The objectives of this study were to:(1) investigate antibacterial activity of DMADDM-containing primer on ...Streptococcus mutans impregnated into dentin blocks for the first time, and (2) compare the antibacterial efficacy of DMADDM with a previous quaternary ammonium dimethacrylate (QADM). Scotchbond Multi-Purpose (SBMP) bonding agent was used. DMADDM and QADM were mixed into SBMP primer. Six primers were tested:SBMP control primer P, P+2.5%DMADDM, P+5%DMADDM, P+7.5%DMADDM, P+10%DMADDM, and P+10%QADM. S. mutans were impregnated into human dentin blocks, and each primer was applied to dentin to test its ability to kill bacteria in dentinal tubules. Bacteria in dentin were collected via a sonication method, and the colony-forming units (CFU) and inhibition zones were measured. The bacterial inhibition zone of P+10%DMADDM was 10 times that of control primer (Po0.05). CFU in dentin with P+10%DMADDM was reduced by three orders of magnitude, compared with control. DMADDM had a much stronger antibacterial effect than QADM, and antibacterial efficacy increased with increasing DMADDM concentration. Dentin shear bond strengths were similar among all groups (P40.1). In conclusion, antibacterial DMADDM-containing primer was validated to kill bacteria inside dentin blocks, possessing a much stronger antibacterial potency than the previous QADM. DMADDM-containing bonding agent was effective in eradicating bacteria in dentin, and its efficacy was directly proportional to DMADDM mass fraction. Therefore, DMADDM may be promising for use in bonding agents as well as in other restorative and preventive materials to inhibit bacteria.
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