Banyan Commune Project

Banyan Commune is a community art project of Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou, China. The article examines how Guangdong Times Museum has positioned itself through Banyan Commune project to seek a locality in the complex flux and symbiosis of the Pearl River Delta in relation to de-Euro-American-centered art world dominance, and to build a new type of relationship with its community. By presenting several cases of Banyan Commune project and analyzing the reflections of their practice, with a focus on the anthropological and immersive mapping practice employed by the museum and the artists to learn about and to feel the community, the article explores the contexts, the connections, and the potentiality of the type of innovative community art as experimented by Banyan Commune. Keywords: community art; institutional critique; urbanization; mapping; post-globalization

Multifrequency Monitoring of the Blazar PKS 2005-489

We present a multifrequency monitoring campaign of PKS 2005–489, a bright and highly variable blazar. Simultaneous observations were completed over a 13 day period in the X-ray with RXTE, in the optical at the CTIO 0.9 m telescope, at TeV energies with CANGAROO-II, and at submillimetre wavelengths with SEST. Previous multiwavelength monitoring campaigns of PKS 2005–489 and other blazars have found complex flux and spectral variability behaviour, with different modes and timescales from days to hours and shorter.PKS 2005–489 was observed in transition from a quiescent state into the early stages of a flare. A gradual increase in flux density was observed at optical and X-ray wavelengths during 19–27 August 2000, and a dramatic increase in X-ray emission was observed starting on 2 September 2000. Intraday and spectral variability were not detected during the campaign.

Loss of fatty acid control of gluconeogenesis and PDH complex flux in adrenalectomized rats

This work aimed to determine the role played by the adrenal gland in the fatty acid control of gluconeogenesis in isolated perfused rat livers. The gluconeogenic substrate concentration responses were not altered in adrenalectomized (ADX) rats. This observation indicates that glucocorticoids are not essential to maintain normal basal gluconeogenic rates. In contrast, fatty acid failed to stimulate gluconeogenesis from lactate and elicited attenuated stimulation with pyruvate as substrate in livers from ADX rats. Fatty acid-induced stimulation of respiration and ketone body production were similar in control and ADX rats. Thus the diminished responsiveness of the gluconeogenic pathway to fatty acid cannot be the result of different rates of energy production and/or generation of reducing power. Fatty acids did not inhibit pyruvate decarboxylation in livers from ADX rats. Even though mitochondria isolated from livers of ADX rats showed normal basal rates of pyruvate metabolism, fatty acids failed to inhibit pyruvate decarboxylation and the activity of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex. This novel observation of the glucocorticoid effect in controlling the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex responsiveness indicates that the mitochondrial partitioning of pyruvate between carboxylation and decarboxylation reactions may be altered in livers from ADX rats. We propose that the diminished effect of fatty acid in stimulating gluconeogenesis in livers from ADX rats is the result of a limited pyruvate availability for the carboxylase reaction due to a lack of inhibition of flux through the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex.