ion, and flattening the planes of perception emerged from his poster designs of the 1910s–20s prior to his success in the London publishing world from the mid1920s. From 1915, the British transport administrator Frank Pick commissioned a series of posters by Kauffer depicting London boroughs and various English countryside landscapes, as well as advertisements for winter sales reached by underground train. Kauffer’s Winter Sales posters feature abstracted shapes in bold colors to represent commuters in coats with stippled effects and diagonal stripes to represent snow and rain. He assimilated different styles and schools of graphic art into his poster designs and later illustrations, and his range of underground posters united the conventions QUIN / edward mcknight kauffer and the ariel poems 61 of Japanese color prints, Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster designs, and Vorticist painting (Haworth-Booth, Kauffer, 27–28). The Winter Sales posters were particularly admired by Fry for the experimental design and abstract forms, which Fry believed the public were more receptive to on their daily commute: “It is surprising, what alacrity and intelligence people can show in front of a poster which if it had been a picture in a gallery would have been roundly declared unintelligible. The judicious frame of mind evidently slows the wits very perceptibly.” According to Fry, the silhouetted, simplified, and abstracted forms of shoppers braving the weather were readily identified as such on the underground hoardings. Outside the galleries of high art, or indeed beneath them in Kauffer’s subterranean gallery, the public was more receptive to abstract art and experimentation. The ubiquity of poster adverts might allow the modern artist to smuggle in a new style and cultivate new modes of appreciating art. For Kauffer, this abstract simplicity was a fundamental property and requirement of modern poster design. In The Art of the Poster (1924), he stressed that the compositional arrangement of a poster was necessarily different from “pure painting” because of the demands of advertising. The poster must convey a set of facts to the spectator with a perceptible immediacy that also “remain[s] impressed upon his memory.” Kauffer’s reputation as the preeminent “poster-king” has been duly cemented by recent critical and curatorial attention (Lewis, Blasting and Bombardiering, 212). However, his prolific illustration work and book cover designs have received less attention. Elements of Kauffer’s poster design aesthetic, his insistence on symbols and compositional arrangements that were simple but memorable, proved complementary to his burgeoning work as an illustrator. From the 1920s–30s, he worked for some of the most prominent publishers in London, including Francis Meynell at Nonesuch Press, Victor Gollancz, Harold Curwen, Richard de la Mare at Faber and Gwyer, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf at Hogarth Press. Similarly, by the mid-1920s, Eliot was a well-established cultural figure in Bloomsbury through the success of The Waste Land in 1922, and from 1924–25, parts I to IV of The Hollow Men appeared as discrete poems in various combinations in Commerce, the Criterion, the Dial, and Harold Monro’s Chapbook Miscelllany. Kauffer’s first minor illustration of an Eliot poem was a commissioned cul-de-lampe, or typographic ornament, in Monro’s Chapbook magazine for “Doris’s Dream Songs,” which would become parts II and III of The Hollow Men. Eliot insisted on a tailpiece illustration to the poem because he wanted two pages to himself. He informed Monro that “as I particularly should not be willing to appear on the same page with anyone else, I will immediately produce another 1⁄2 page of verse if you have any difficulty with the cul-de-lampe.” To fill the bottom half of the page, Kauffer executed a small black-and-white vignette that alluded to the “cactus land” and “stone images” of the poem. In this tailpiece, we can see key features of Kauffer’s illustrative aesthetic: the use of abstraction and simplification, the interplay of light and shade, and crucially, a discerning eye for textual detail in Eliot’s difficult modernist verse. As Lorraine Janzen Kooistra has noted, an aesthetics of graphic minimalism took hold at many publishers and little magazines of the high modernist period in Britain. On the one hand, a formalist emphasis on the words alone informed the presentation M O D E R N I S M / m o d e r n i t y 62 of verse on the page, free from the contamination of elaborate textual ornaments or worse yet commercial advertisements. On the other hand, avant-garde illustrators of the period sought more ingenious and subtle means of incorporating graphic work into the text that drew nuanced interpretations of the relationship between text and image. Faith Binckes has noted that the status of illustration was elevated in the 1910s–20s as the art of the line and reproducible monotone art in little magazines was set in opposition to the elaborate and sometimes gaudy reproductions of paintings as full-color illustrations in Victorian books. In the 1890s, Walter Crane criticized the tradition of photomechanically reproduced paintings as book illustrations prevalent in the late nineteenth century as “simply pictures without frames,” bearing no formal relation to the type and layout of the printed page. Crane preferred linework or woodcut book decorations that shared the same processes of book design and printing as the type and letterpress. The black-and-white graphic austerity of modernist magazines like Rhythm and Blast was celebrated through a critical language of graphic art that emphasized rhythm, pattern, linear simplicity, and abstraction. Like Wadsworth, C. R. W. Nevinson, and William Nicholson, Kauffer’s linear poster art and black-andwhite linework was commended by critics for its tone and rhythm, terms formerly reserved for the art of painting, as we will see was the case in Fry’s discussion of Kauffer’s Burton illustrations. Marianne Moore surmised of Kauffer’s art at large that the “shadows are as arresting as objects” and the reserved “language of blacks and grays is color.” Part I of “Doris’s Dream Songs” printed in Monro’s Chapbook roughly translates into part II of The Hollow Men, recalling “death’s dream kingdom.” On the following page of the Chapbook, part III of the dream song marks a tonal shift with deictic gestures towards a series of desert images: This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. In the barren scene of Eliot’s poem, towering stones and cacti appear as totems in the “dead land,” receiving supplication and prayers without the promise of redemption. Eliot is returning to a favorite trope from The Waste Land by hollowing out a religious iconography: the twinkling star, the stone idols, and elsewhere in the dream songs, the blackened river. Kauffer’s cul-de-lampe fills the empty space of the second page with images appropriate for the barren landscape. Where sections I and II in the Chapbook publication revolve around fluid and immaterial settings—“death’s dream kingdom,” “death’s other kingdom,” “between life and death”—the arid iconography of the final section provides appropriate material for a tailpiece illustration. That Eliot was prepared to add verses rather than be placed alongside another poet shows his intention for a closing section befitting either a blank space or a similarly barren tailpiece. Of QUIN / edward mcknight kauffer and the ariel poems 63 course, the periodical publication of poems or prose alongside corresponding graphic material is typically lost in their standardized reprinting in collections or anthologies. If the Chapbook printing of “Doris’s Dream Songs” shows this in miniature, Eliot’s subsequent Ariel Poems underscores how indirect deictic and ekphrastic gestures take on a new significance when read alongside Kauffer’s cover and frontispiece illustrations. 1925 was a seminal year for Kauffer. He received a retrospective solo exhibition of his poster designs by the Arts League of Service and moved further into the business of book illustration with a substantial commission from Nonesuch and Curwen presses. The Nonesuch Press illustrated edition of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy was a new departure in several respects. It was Kauffer’s first illustrated book, commissioned by Francis Meynell. The project also afforded Curwen Press the opportunity to experiment with watercolor stenciling for several illustrations in forty specially printed vellum copies of the book, making the Nonesuch edition of Burton’s Anatomy the first large scale pochoir stencil operation in Britain. Kauffer therefore availed himself of Curwen’s stencil work from its inception, experimenting with opaque gouache and lighter stippled effects in stencil to create his varied and textured illustrations. Executing the pochoir technique by hand was immensely time consuming, and Harold Curwen employed a team of stencilers, all women from the Curwen bindery, to complete pochoir illustrations in watercolor or gouache. Paul Nash identified a “new aesthetic value for the ‘stencilled’ book” in the light of Curwen Press publications by Kauffer, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, and others. Nash admired how “the colour for each picture is applied separately by hand” at Plaistow, “not impressed by a mechanical device.” There was also an admirable fidelity to original designs as the Curwen stencilers worked by hand. The stencilers used the same brushes as Kauffer in his originals and incorporated small sponges and toothbrushes to create the stippled and splattered effects (Nash, “The Stencil,” 113). In subsequent years Kauffer refined his craft alongside the Curwen stencilers with commissions for Melville’s Benito Cereno (1926), Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1929), Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (193
Protein-energy wasting (PEW) is associated with adverse outcomes in hemodialysis patients. This study compares the simplified creatinine index (SCI) and circulating inflammatory markers as nutritional screening tools for hemodialysis patients. Maintenance hemodialysis patients (230 total patients, 34.8% women, 64.0 ± 14.3 years old) from a tertiary medical center were assessed for demographic data, body composition analysis, biochemistry tests, and circulating inflammatory biomarkers. The SCI was calculated using Canaud’s formula. Reduced fat-free mass index (FFMI), a surrogate of lean body mass, was identified according to the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism guidelines. Nutritional status was assessed by the geriatric nutritional risk index (GNRI) and International Society of Renal Nutrition and Metabolism (ISRNM) criteria. Multivariate logistic regression revealed independent risk factors for low FFMI and malnutrition. Of the patients, 47.4% had low FFMI. Patients with a reduction in FFMI tended to be older females with lower body mass index, SCI, and GNRI scores but significantly higher levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and IL-8. SCI was found to be an independent predictor for reduced FFMI (OR 0.57, 95% CI 0.40–0.81) and presence of PEW according to ISRNM criteria (OR 0.38, 95% CI 0.21–0.68). Although a positive association between systemic inflammatory markers and low FFMI was observed, this association disappeared in multivariate analysis. Moreover, the inflammatory markers examined in this study were not associated with malnutrition after adjusting for potential confounders. Compared with markers of systemic inflammation, SCI achieved better performance in assessing the nutritional status of hemodialysis patients.
Conflict regions bear the heaviest brunt of food insecurity and undernutrition. South Sudan is one of the fragile countries following years of conflict that led to large displacements. Moderate to severe undernutrition among under-five children has been associated with elevated morbidity and mortality. This study, therefore, was conducted to assess the magnitude and factors influencing undernutrition (wasting, underweight and stunting) among children aged 6 to 59 months in Yambio County, South Sudan. A cross-sectional study was conducted from 26 October to 6 November 2018 in Yambio County, South Sudan among 630 children aged 6–59 months from the 348 households surveyed in 39 clusters using two-stage cluster sampling design. Data were collected using questionnaires and nutritional anthropometric measurements. The Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions (SMART) Methodology was followed to obtain the prevalence of wasting, underweight and stunting based on respective z scores and according to the 2006 world health organization child growth standards. Data were exported to Stata version 16 for further analysis. Bivariate analysis of independent variables and undernutrition was done using binary logistic regression. Mixed effects logistic regression analysis was conducted to control for possible confounders and account for random effects at household and cluster levels. Unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios (cOR and aOR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) and p-values were computed. P-values of ≤0.05 were considered statistically significant. The prevalence of undernutrition explained by wasting (weight-for-height Z-score (WHZ) < − 2), underweight (weight-for-age z-scores (WAZ) < − 2) and stunting (height-for-age z-scores (WHZ) < − 2) were 2.3% (1.3–4.1, 95% CI), 4.8% (3.1–7.5, 95% CI) and 23.8% (19.1–29.2, 95% CI). Male sex (aOR [95% CI], p-value: 5.6 [1.10–30.04], p = 0.038), older child’s age (aOR [95% CI], p-value: 30.4 [2.65–347.60], p = 0.006) and non-residents (cOR [95% CI], p-value: 4.2 [1.4–12.2] p = 0.009) were associated with increased risk of wasting. Household size (cOR [95% CI], p-value: 1.09 [1.01–1.18] p = 0.029) and younger child age (cOR [95% CI], p-value: 4.2 [1.34–13.23] p = 0.014) were significantly associated with underweight. Younger child age (aOR [95% CI], p-value: 5.4 [1.82–16.44] p = 0.003) and agricultural livelihood (aOR [95% CI], p-value: 3.4 [1.61–7.02] p = 0.001) were associated with stunting. Based on a cut off of less than − 2 standard deviations for 2006 World Health Organization (WHO) child growth standards, the wasting prevalence was very low, underweight prevalence was low while stunting prevalence was high. The county lies in the only livelihood region in South Sudan with bimodal reliable rainfall pattern and it seems that the impact of the 2016 conflicts that lead to large displacements may not have greatly affected under-five undernutrition. Interventions targeted at improving food diversity, increasing nutrition knowledge and enhancing resilience in male children might reduce undernutrition. In the short-term, investment in continued surveillance of nutritional status should be a main focus.
The improvements in genomics methods coupled with readily accessible high-throughput sequencing have contributed to our understanding of microbial species, metagenomes, infectious diseases and more. To maximize the impact of these genomics studies, it is important that data from biological samples will become publicly available with standardized metadata. The availability of data at public archives provides the hope that greater insights could be obtained through integration with multi-omics data, reproducibility of published studies, or meta-analyses of large diverse datasets. These datasets should include a description of the host, organism, environmental source of the specimen, spatial-temporal information and other relevant metadata, but unfortunately these attributes are often missing and when present, they show inconsistencies in the use of metadata standards and ontologies. METAGENOTE (https://metagenote.niaid.nih.gov) is a web portal that greatly facilitates the annotation of samples from genomic studies and streamlines the submission process of sequencing files and metadata to the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) (Leinonen R, et al, Nucleic Acids Res, 39:D19-21, 2011) for public access. This platform offers a wide selection of packages for different types of biological and experimental studies with a special emphasis on the standardization of metadata reporting. These packages follow the guidelines from the MIxS standards developed by the Genomics Standard Consortium (GSC) and adopted by the three partners of the International Nucleotides Sequencing Database Collaboration (INSDC) (Cochrane G, et al, Nucleic Acids Res, 44:D48-50, 2016) - National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ). METAGENOTE then compiles, validates and manages the submission through an easy-to-use web interface minimizing submission errors and eliminating the need for submitting sequencing files via a separate file transfer mechanism. METAGENOTE is a public resource that focuses on simplifying the annotation and submission process of data with its corresponding metadata. Users of METAGENOTE will benefit from the easy to use annotation interface but most importantly will be encouraged to publish metadata following standards and ontologies that make the public data available for reuse.
Mining residues management is one of the greatest challenges for mining companies around the world. The increasing consciousness of the general public and governments about the potential threat that those residues can pose to the environment is demanding consistent and precise methodologies for assessing the potential release of toxic metals. On this regard, the modified BCR® sequential extraction procedure (SEP) is frequently the chosen assessing protocol. However, this protocol was designed to study soils and sediments with low to moderate metal pollution, and validation of its applicability to mining residues is missing. The present research covers this gap of knowledge by subjecting selected highly polluted mining residues to the modified BCR®SEP. On the light of these results, it was confirmed that most of the metal bearing minerals in the mining residues were not completely dissolved in the corresponding SEP and, therefore, the application of BCR®SEP to mining residues systematically leads to an underestimation of metals mobility. The necessary changes to optimize the BCR®SEP to study mining residues would set a extraction procedure distinctively different from the original; thus it is strongly recommended to use alternative approaches to assess toxic metals mobility in highly polluted mining residues.
The circulation of poor-quality medicines continues to undermine the fight against many life-threatening diseases. Anti-malarial medicines appear to have been particularly compromised and present a major public health threat in malaria-endemic countries, negatively affecting individuals and their communities. Concerted collaborative efforts are required from global, regional and national organizations, involving the public and private sectors, to address the problem. While many initiatives are underway, a number of unmet needs deserve urgent and increased multisector attention. At the global level, there is a need for an international public health legal framework or treaty on poor-quality medicines, with statutes suitable for integration into national laws. In addition, increased international efforts are required to strengthen the governance of global supply chains and enhance cooperation between national medicine regulation authorities and law enforcement bodies. Increased investment is needed in innovative technologies that will enable healthcare teams to detect poor-quality medicines at all levels of the supply chain. At the regional level, a number of initiatives would be beneficial—key areas are standardization, simplification, and reciprocal recognition of registration processes and development of quality control capacity in regional centres of excellence that are better aligned with public health needs; improved surveillance methods and creation of a framework for compulsory and transparent reporting of poor-quality medicines; additional support for national medicine regulation authorities and other national partner authorities; and an increase in support for regional laboratories to boost their capabilities in detecting poor-quality medicines. It is vital that all stakeholders involved in efforts against poor-quality anti-malarial medicines extend and strengthen their actions in these critical areas and thus effectively support global health development and malaria elimination programmes.