Critics have suggested that news headlines about genetics with inappropriately deterministic content will produce increased levels of determinism in the public, even when news article contents are not highly deterministic. This might result from a replacement effect (headlines stand in for the content of the article because few people read it fully) or from a framing effect (headlines frame the interpretation of the article content). A quantitative impact study and an interview method were used to test the impact of the framing effect in a news article on genes and diabetes. This exploratory study found no support for a framing effect. Directions for future research are discussed.

We examined the pattern of tuberculosis (TB) transmission (i.e., reactivation versus recent transmission) and the impact of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in Harare, Zimbabwe. Consecutive adult smear-positive pulmonary TB patients presenting to an urban hospital in Harare were enrolled. A detailed epidemiological questionnaire was completed, and tests for HIV type 1 and CD4 cell counts were performed for each patient. Molecular fingerprinting of the genomic DNA recovered from cultures of sputum was performed by two molecular typing methods: spacer oligonucleotide typing (spoligotyping) and analysis of variable number of tandem DNA repeats (VNTRs). A cluster was defined as isolates from two or more patients that shared the same spoligotype pattern or the same VNTR pattern, or both. DNA suitable for typing was recovered from 224 patients. The prevalence of HIV infection was 79%. Of 187 patient isolates (78.6%) typed by both spoligotyping and analysis of VNTRs, 147 were identified as part of a cluster by both methods. By spoligotyping alone, 84.1% of patient isolates were grouped into 20 clusters. The cluster size was generally <8 patient isolates, although three large clusters comprised 68, 25, and 23 patient isolates. A total of 89.4% of the patient isolates grouped into 12 clusters defined by analysis of VNTRs, with 2 large clusters consisting of 127 and 13 patient isolates, respectively. Thirty-six percent of patient isolates with a shared spoligotype and 17% with a shared VNTR pattern were geographically linked within Harare, but they were not linked on the basis of the patient's home district. In a multivariate analysis, there were no independent predictors of clustering, including HIV infection status. Comparison with the International Spoligotype database (Pasteur Institute, Pointe à Pitre, Guadeloupe) demonstrated that our three largest spoligotype clusters are well recognized and ubiquitous in Africa. In this epidemiologically well characterized urban population with a high prevalence of HIV infection, we identified a very high level of strain clustering, indicating substantial ongoing recent TB transmission. Geographic linkage could be detected in a proportion of these clusters. A small group of actively circulating strains accounted for most of the cases of TB transmission.Tuberculosis (TB) has reemerged as an important public health problem in Zimbabwe. Following a stabilization of the TB rates in the early 1980s at approximately 50 per 100,000 population, since 1987 there has been a dramatic increase to 250 per 100,000 population, which is largely attributable to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa (9, 28).Strain-specific markers for the differentiation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex strains are reliable tools for the identification of specific strains and are useful for epidemiological studies of TB. The most extensively used differentiation method is restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) typing, which uses the insertion sequence IS6110...

Glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase (QARS) deficiency has been described to be a cause of a neurodegenerative disorder associated with severe developmental delay, microcephaly, delayed myelination, and intractable epilepsy. The epilepsy is thought to be more severe than other tRNA synthetase disorders. Only a few cases have been reported in the literature and there is little information about response to different treatment options. The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that is used in treatment resistant epilepsy of various etiologies. There are reports that the diet can also improve neuro-cognitive parameters. The authors report a case of a patient with glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase deficiency and treatment resistant seizures where there was a marked and early favorable response in terms of seizures, alertness and behavior to the ketogenic diet.

The essay examines the political and creative relationships between curators and artists operating in the field of cultural production known as the international performance festival circuit. Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital, a metaphorical currency that confers prestige on an individual and is exchanged between agents vying for status and power in the field, is applied to both the overall dynamic of the festival network and to individuals who occupy positions in the network. The social Darwinist character of Bourdieu’s theory is balanced by a group of theories that describe the gestalt of an aesthetic encounter as something sought-after, treasured, and undertaken for its own sake. Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, Dewey’s theory of qualitative thought, and Fischer-Lichte’s “radical concept of presence” help make the case that aesthetic encounters have the potential to become what the essay calls “touchstone experiences”: somatically felt events that are prized by curators and artists, and that become the basis for the drive to accumulate symbolic capital—capital which is then leveraged to create more touchstone experiences. Curators and artists on both sides of the Atlantic are interviewed, providing personal insight into the creative and practical concerns that drive them to develop work for the festival circuit. What emerges is a complex web of relationships among the various producers of performance in this particular field of cultural production: the festival network becomes, for the artist, either a potential market in which to promote work or a restrictive gate that blocks access to a larger audience; the curator becomes both a gate-keeper regulating access and a cultural agent providing a platform for cultural exchange and offering local artists exposure to diverse practices from elsewhere. The differences in real and symbolic wealth between the Canadian and European contexts is also considered in the essay, with an emphasis on how European cultural institutions provide opportunities and obstacles to Canadian artists seeking to promote their work overseas.