Janet Stewart

The application of comparative genomic hybridization as an additional tool in the chromosome analysis of acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes

In acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) there are frequently complex karyotypes with multiple structurally altered chromosomes, many of which are marker chromosomes of unknown origin. The aim of this study was to apply comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) to cases of AML or MDS in transformation submitted for routine cytogenetic analysis to investigate whether this approach would yield any further information and, if possible, to predict which cases would benefit from CGH analysis. Nineteen cases with AML or MDS in transformation were analyzed. CGH revealed nine cases with gains or losses of chromosomal material. In six of these cases the chromosomal location of this material was not apparent from cytogenetic analysis especially when multiple markers were present. By using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) with specific libraries for the chromosome regions that showed discordance between CGH and conventional cytogenetics, we were able to identify the chromosome location of material within the karyotype. In this group of six patients, four cases of an unbalanced translocation involving regions of chromosomes 5 and 17 were characterized. Three of these cases had additional abnormalities, including two cases with regions of amplification in which oncogenes are located (MYC, MLL) and one case with a dic(7;21)(p10;p10). In all six cases it was possible to characterize complex chromosomal aberrations such as derivative chromosomes, marker chromosomes, and ring chromosomes. This study demonstrates that CGH can detect true gain and loss of critical chromosome regions more accurately than conventional karyotyping in cases with very complex karyotypes, and can thus prove useful in predicting prognosis and pinpointing areas of the genome that require further study. Also, CGH can be a useful technique to identify the origin of marker chromosomes, and it can assist in choice of probes for confirmatory FISH, when there is no clue provided from the analysis of G-banded chromosomes.

Detection of t(12;21) in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia by fluorescence in situ hybridization.

Metaphase preparations from 36 patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have been retrospectively screened by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to determine the incidence of translocation (12;21) and the potential usefulness of FISH as an adjunct to conventional cytogenetic analysis. With the use of specific chromosome paints, 4 of 31 patients with B-lineage childhood ALL (13%) demonstrated rearrangements of chromosomes 12 and 21, and therefore, were considered to harbor the translocation, which had not previously been detected by conventional karyotyping. However, none of these positive cases revealed the standard reciprocal t(12;21)(p12;q22) as the sole abnormality involving chromosomes 12 and 21. The study confirms the feasibility and advantages of introducing FISH screening for t(12;21) in pediatric ALL cases and demonstrates the usefulness of FISH screening as a backup to concurrent cytogenetic analysis to resolve variant translocations and aberrant results. The presence of t(12;21) has also been correlated to clinical data to assess the prognostic significance of this translocation on its own or in association with other prognostic features.

Sociology, Culture and Energy: The Case of Wilhelm Ostwald’s ‘Sociological Energetics’ – A Translation and Exposition of a Classic Text

Sociology has largely ignored the contribution of the German Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald to the sociology of energy, mainly due to Max Weber’s (1909) dismissive reception of Ostwald’s ‘energetical thought’. This article reclaims Ostwald’s significance for contemporary sociology, through a translation and exposition of ‘Sociological Energetics’, first published in 1908 as the final chapter of a popular book on energy. Ostwald’s deliberations, which derive from his engagement in contemporary debates on thermodynamics and energetics, brought him into contact with classical sociologists, including Rudolf Goldscheid, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies and Weber. Ostwald’s contribution to sociology lies in his focus on the cultural significance of energy relations and transformations. In their encounters with Ostwald and energetics, Simmel, Tönnies and Weber all reveal the potential importance of Ostwald’s work on energy relations in thinking productively about the relationship between technology and culture.

Appearing in Public

Damaschke (1912) opened his treatise on the ‘Popular Art of Public Speaking’ in a somewhat counter-intuitive fashion, by putting forward the now familiar argument that the spoken word lost its aura with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century. This is the stuff of a narrative that later gained popularity, principally through the works of Marshall McLuhan (1962) and Walter Ong (1958, 1967, 1982), both of whom sought to explore and criticise aspects of the ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’, a term that McLuhan coined to encompass the constellation of changes in communication between humans experienced in European society in the wake of the introduction of the movable type. Damaschke’s work, of course, predates these accounts and does not share their emphasis on history. He was writing in direct response to a fundamental shift in oral culture in the late nineteenth century, which is described persuasively in Gert Ueding and Bernd Steinbrink’s overview of the history of rhetoric in the German-speaking countries as a narrative of both decline and durability through change (1994: 134–56).

‘Nicht die Kunst darf sich vereinnahmen lassen’: Franzobel, Literature and Politics in the ‘New Austria’

In the 1999 Austrian ‘Bundeswahl’, the FPO polled 27% of the vote, plunging Austria into political turmoil (Armin Thurnher). ‘Kulturpolitik’ assumed a pivotal role in the election, and continues to be an area of conflict in the ‘New Austria’, where there is evidence of the ‘aestheticisation of politics’ (Walter Benjamin). Benjamin argued that this could be countered only by the ‘politicisation of the aesthetic’. Political commentators have identified re-politicisation as a marker of life in the ‘New Austria’, and this extends to the literary sphere. A new generation of writers is emerging that has not been involved in the protracted lambasting of the Social Partnership seen in the work of established Austrian literary figures, such as Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek. Franzobel, who came from avantgarde circles to win the Bachmann prize in 1995, is one such writer. He commands the respect of those involved in experimental literature, while also being acclaimed as a popular playwright and a novelist. Through an analysis of his political essays and literary works, this article discusses the role of the writer in the recently re-politicised Vienna within the context of the often controversial, often productive relationship between politics and literature in modern Austria.

Talking Of Modernity: The Viennese ‘Vortrag’ As Form

As part of his project to define the meaning of modernity in fin de siecle Vienna, Adolf Loos (1870–1933) held lectures in cities throughout Europe. Although the lecture represented an important vehicle for the dissemination of his ideas and those of others, there is a lack of research into the lecture form in modernity. In the light of the fluid boundary between the lecture and the essay in Loos’s œuvre, this article extends Adorno’s analysis of the modernity of the essay form to the lecture, showing that both forms are embedded in the socio-cultural location of the metropolis. It then investigates the nature of the distinction between the essay and the lecture, rejecting an explanation founded on the difference between text and speech in favour of a more complex model based on the ‘language-game’ (Wittgenstein, 1953). This model allows exploration of self-presentation (Goffmann, 1959) through the performance of the lecture and also affords us insight into the manner in which the lecture form encouraged interdisciplinary exchanges via the circulation of individuals in modernity (Simmel, 1958), providing the foundation for a more detailed analysis of the lecture as form.

Filming Vienna 1900: The Poetics of Cinema and the Politics of Ornament in Raúl Ruiz's Klimt

Raúl Ruiz’s 2006 movie Klimt offers a sophisticated attempt to translate the visual art theory of Klimt’s Vienna into cinematic form. Reading this film alongside Ruiz’s reflections on film theory, this article explores how Ruiz employed key ideas from this period about ornament, spatiality and “surface effects,” reproducibility, and optic and haptic visuality in his search for a new cinematic language that might offer an alternative to mainstream cinema and the cinema of the “classical” avant-garde.

Making Globalization Visible? The Oil Assemblage, the Work of Sociology and the Work of Art:

This article sets out to rethink the relationship between the work of art and the work of sociology, drawing on Jacques Ranciere’s writing on the work of art to provide the basis for recognizing affinities and differences between these two processes. In juxtaposing the sociology of globalization with the art of globalization, beginning with their common desire to understand globalization through rendering invisible forces visible, the article suggests ways in which artistic practice might be said to be ‘proto-sociological’, while also considering the role that aesthetic categories play in producing sociological knowledge. These questions are approached through a detailed case study that focuses on the cultural response to the oil industry offered by Ursula Biemann in her film essay, Black Sea Files (2005). The article argues that to grasp a phenomenon as complex as globalization, collaborative work between different forms of knowledge construction plays a crucial role.

Epilogue: Public Speaking and the City of the Future

Potsdamer Platz, Ground Zero, Kartal-Pendik, Fiera Milano, City in the Desert. These iconic names denote a series of masterplans for the (re)development of global cities produced by ‘starchitects’ such as Renzo Piano, Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas. In his opening address to the 1908 Architecture Congress in Vienna, Otto Wagner expressed disquiet at the power that developers were increasingly able to wield over architects (Hevesi 1986: 293–4). A century later, it seems that global city developments rise or fall on their ability to brand themselves through association with a big name architect. Offering provocative and ambitious visions for new urban formations, these architects assume a role akin to that of the Loosian ‘Uber-architect’. Like this figure, and the early twentieth century architects it inspired, they occupy this position thanks not only to their flair in fashioning the built environment, but also to the result of their ability to contribute to the discursive construction of the city by appearing in public on the global stage; if Loos was at home on the European express train, these contemporary architects make their home on intercontinental flights. A number of these ‘starchitects’ first made their mark through writing and speaking about architecture and the city, rather than through their contributions to the built environment.

Architects and the Urban Public

Peter Behrens, Josef Frank, Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, Hermann Muthesius, Hans Poelzig, Bruno Taut, Otto Wagner: merely listing these names is enough to remind us of the prominence of German-speaking architects in the early twentieth century, but what is it that makes their work so compelling? To a large extent, it is due to the role that these architects played as public intellectuals engaged in the discursive construction of the modern city; their fame is based not only on their architectural output, but also on their ability to talk and write about their work and its physical and social context. They ere able to reach out beyond a specialist architectural audience to engage directly with the end-users of their products and ideas, in effect facilitating the construction of an urban public that would enable the circulation of their ideas in discursive space. Adolf Loos was for many years better known for his provocative polemical statements and articles, such as the programmatic modernist lecture ‘Ornament and Crime’, than for his architecture (1982: 78–88).1 Otto Wagner’s name is synonymous with Modern Architecture, a collection of lectures first published in 1896 ([1902] 1988). Hermann Muthesius, another inveterate public speaker, was one of the architects contributing to a lecture series that was part of the 1910 General Municipal Exhibition in Berlin, and in 1926, Hans Poelzig and Peter Behrens were named among the participants in a set of lectures on ‘The Architecture of our Times’.