Whole genome comparison of Campylobacter jejuni human isolates using a low-cost microarray reveals extensive genetic diversity.

Campylobacter jejuni is the leading cause of bacterial food-borne diarrhoeal disease throughout the world, and yet is still a poorly understood pathogen. Whole genome microarray comparisons of 11 C. jejuni strains of diverse origin identified genes in up to 30 NCTC 11168 loci ranging from 0.7 to 18.7 kb that are either absent or highly divergent in these isolates. Many of these regions are associated with the biosynthesis of surface structures including flagella, lipo-oligosaccharide, and the newly identified capsule. Other strain-variable genes of known function include those responsible for iron acquisition, DNA restriction/modification, and sialylation. In fact, at least 21% of genes in the sequenced strain appear dispensable as they are absent or highly divergent in one or more of the isolates tested, thus defining 1300 C. jejuni core genes. Such core genes contribute mainly to metabolic, biosynthetic, cellular, and regulatory processes, but many virulence determinants are also conserved. Comparison of the capsule biosynthesis locus revealed conservation of all the genes in this region in strains with the same Penner serotype as strain NCTC 11168. By contrast, between 5 and 17 NCTC 11168 genes in this region are either absent or highly divergent in strains of a different serotype from the sequenced strain, providing further evidence that the capsule accounts for Penner serotype specificity. These studies reveal extensive genetic diversity among C. jejuni strains and pave the way toward identifying correlates of pathogenicity and developing improved epidemiological tools for this problematic pathogen.

A martyr for modernity: Qiu Jin -- feminist warrior, and revolutionary.

Qui Jin, at one level, was an oriental twentieth-century Judith, the mythical Jewish widow from Bethulia who cut off the head of Holofernes, the Assyrian general besieging the city, thus saving the Israelites from destruction. Qui Jin was, as Judith was, a self-reliant heroine who when others seemed 'helpless and demoralized undertook to save them single-handedly', or in her case virtually single-handedly. This, of course, was both her making and her unmaking. In Chinese terms the story of Qui Jin, like the story of Judith if less famous, less publicised, more recent, is the story of an icon at once central and at the same time marginal to tradition. She contradicted the most cherished customs on Confucian Chinese culture. She was a radical force who thrust her way to the centre of the concentric circles of customs surrounding this culture and was pushed back to the margins by conservatism. Nevertheless Qui Jin was not without success. She challenged a long-established mythology of exclusively masterful patriarchy - and created a counter myth of purposeful patriotic feminism. She was a counter-cultural icon who changed perceptions of Chinese femininity. She gave courage, confidence and purpose to those women who came after her and absorbed her ambitions for modern Chinese womanhood. For them she was a modern national heroine and a personification of a modern nation of equal men and women. For Qui Jin the body was an instrument of female revolution to be trained, strengthened and prepared for confrontation. As a revolutionary militant she was a failure; as a revolutionary talisman she was a success. For the Chinese women of the 1911 Revolution hers was an exemplary emancipatory story: subscribe, struggle, sacrifice. Patriotism through feminism is the purpose. Her heroism was firmly outside the historic patriarchal order. Her adulation is thus all the more remarkable because of the profound traditions she rejected, the controversial mannerisms she adopted, the uncompromising attitudes she embraced. She eschewed motherhood, abandoned marriage, dismissed femininity, and yet won acclaim in the most traditional of cultures. Qui Jin was hardly a cynosure of universal acclaim but she was admired, respected and emulated by radical Chinese women and men seeking a new society accommodating women. Her modern feminism struggled to overcome an ancient patriarchy. Here was her appeal. She exuded no moral ambiguity. Consequently, if she was demonized by the conventional; she was deified by the radical - and inspired them as the contemplated and attempted to construct the future. There is a point, of course, that should not be overlooked. Qui Jin, in fact, is not divorced from occidental culture and political iconography. Qui Jin is closely associated with the attitudes, aspirations and fantasies of modern Western feminism. As Margarita Stocker observes, a 'romantic heroine, angry feminist, radical, activist is one example of a pervasive figure', in modern Western cultural mythology 'a figure we may sum up as the Woman with a Gun'. Force, that potent means to power, is available to the gun user irrespective of age of sex, with a resulting 'crucial alteration in the sexual politics of violence'. The Woman with a Gun can now be emphatically heroic - without duplicity, without deceitfulness, without subterfuge. Moral ambiguity in action has been abandoned. She becomes an unambiguous potent force - an armed woman faces an armed man on equal terms - physically, psychologically, morally. Equality offers the legal right and responsibility to kill in the name of patriotism. Modern culture has just caught up with Qui Jin.

The early evolution of modern sport in Latin America: a mainly English middle-class inspiration.

In any consideration of cultural diffusion, what matters is not only what happens to a cultural form when it arrives, but that it arrives. In the twentieth century, Latin America, like too many other areas of the world, has been a place of diplomatic turmoil, social inequality, political paranoia, capitalist exploitation and class conflict. However, despite all this, and through all this, it may be stated factually and without sentimentality, that it has also been a place where people have survived and thrived, worked, loved and played. Modern sport has brought to their play both unhappy moments of disillusion and disappointment and marvellous opportunities for illusion and pleasure. Modern sport, with its beauty spots and warts, is the reality and while there are things to criticize, there are also many things to applaud. Along with others, the English middle class played a not insignificant part in the arrival of modern sport in Latin America.