Psychogeography and Ground Zero

In this paper I want to discuss a psychogeographical project conducted at the main site of the horrific and monstrous September 11th 2001 attacks in New York, U.S.A. I will explain how I made sense of and reflected on my experiences of being at that site as well as conceptualising how I drew on the situationist practice of psychogeographical walking. I will explain how I drew on the work of the situationists and why their ideas of detournement, spectacle and psychogeography are important. In terms of my experience in being at the site of the attacks, I will also discuss core themes of my research including trauma and violence and the limits of words to explain experience. In recent years in my research, I have connected and considered this work in relation to the current memorialization of the Ground Zero site, to current political events (i.e. the ongoing war on ‘terrorism’, the banking crisis, Occupy, and more recently with the Charlie Hebdo events) and in relation to considering how my research in psychology should connect with political practice and social change

Aging of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome fibroblasts is characterised by hyperproliferation and increased apoptosis

Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that mimics certain aspects of aging prematurely. Recent work has revealed that mutations in the lamin A gene are a cause of the disease. We show here that cellular aging of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome fibroblasts is characterised by a period of hyperproliferation and terminates with a large increase in the rate of apoptosis. The occurrence of cells with abnormal nuclear morphology reported by others is shown to be a result of cell division since the fraction of these abnormalities increases with cellular age. Similarly, the proportion of cells with an abnormal or absent A-type lamina increases with age. These data provide clues as to the cellular basis for premature aging in HGPS and support the view that cellular senescence and tissue homeostasis are important factors in the normal aging process

Psychogeographical counter-tour guiding: Theory and practice

In this paper, will be outlined and explained a mode of tour guiding referred to as ‘psychogeographical’ counter-tour guiding that has been conducted in Manchester, Huddersfield and Leeds with groups such as the Huddersfield Psychogeography Network, the Loiterers Resistance Movement and the Leeds Psychogeography Group. The usage of psychogeography here draws on elements of the situationist practice of playful wandering without destination in order to: experientially make sense of and creatively engage in group dialogue about the changing form of towns and cities and to creatively consider what sort of societies we would really like. In doing this type of counter-tour guiding, it will be explained how the author’s methodological approach to this work is conceptualised as a psychogeographer, counter-tour guider and as a critical psychologist drawing on situationism and reflexivity theories. Connection will also be drawn with other individual and groups doing similar adventures and journeys such as Walk Walk Walk, Wrights and Sites and also the Manchester Area Psychogeographic. Key analytical data and conclusions to the work will also be discussed

Rapid chromosome territory relocation by nuclear motor activity in response to serum removal in primary human fibroblasts

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: Radial chromosome positioning in interphase nuclei is nonrandom and can alter according to developmental, differentiation, proliferation, or disease status. However, it is not yet clear when and how chromosome repositioning is elicited. Results: By investigating the positioning of all human chromosomes in primary fibroblasts that have left the proliferative cell cycle, we have demonstrated that in cells made quiescent by reversible growth arrest, chromosome positioning is altered considerably. We found that with the removal of serum from the culture medium, chromosome repositioning took less than 15 minutes, required energy and was inhibited by drugs affecting the polymerization of myosin and actin. We also observed that when cells became quiescent, the nuclear distribution of nuclear myosin 1ß was dramatically different from that in proliferating cells. If we suppressed the expression of nuclear myosin 1ß by using RNA-interference procedures, the movement of chromosomes after 15 minutes in low serum was inhibited. When high serum was restored to the serum-starved cultures, chromosome repositioning was evident only after 24 to 36 hours, and this coincided with a return to a proliferating distribution of nuclear myosin 1ß. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that genome organization in interphase nuclei is altered considerably when cells leave the proliferative cell cycle and that repositioning of chromosomes relies on efficient functioning of an active nuclear motor complex that contains nuclear myosin 1ß.Brunel Open Access Publishing Fun

Identification of an interchromosomal compartment by polymerization of nuclear-targeted vimentin

A number of structural and functional subnuclear compartments have been described, including regions exclusive of chromosomes previously hypothesized to form a reactive nuclear space. We have now explored this accessible nuclear space and interchromosomal nucleoplasmic domains experimentally using Xenopus vimentin engineered to contain a nuclear localization signal (NLS-vimentin). In stably transfected human cells incubated at 37°C, the NLS-vimentin formed a restricted number of intranuclear speckles. At 28°C, the optimal temperature for assembly of the amphibian protein, NLSvimentin progressively extended with time out from the speckles into strictly orientated intranuclear filamentous arrays. This enabled us to observe the development of a system of interconnecting channel-like areas. Quantitative analysis based on 3-D imaging microscopy revealed that these arrays were localized almost exclusively outside of chromosome territories. During mitosis the filaments disassembled and dispersed throughout the cytoplasm, while in anaphase-telophase the vimentin was recruited back into the nucleus and reassembled into filaments at the chromosome surfaces, in distributions virtually identical to those observed in the previous interphase. The filaments also colocalized with specific nuclear RNAs, coiled bodies and PML bodies, all situated outside of chromosome territories, thereby interlinking these structures. This strongly implies that these nuclear entities coexist in the same interconnected nuclear compartment. The assembling NLS-vimentin is restricted to and can be used to delineate, at least in part, the formerly proposed reticular interchromosomal domain compartment (ICD). The properties of NLS-vimentin make it an excellent tool for performing structural and functional studies on this compartment