1,278 research outputs found
Lutz Weltmann Correspondence Collection. 1923-1969 Bulk dates: 1930-1955
No full textThe Lutz Weltmann Correspondence Collection largely holds professional correspondence from others to Lutz Weltmann, a critic, publisher, author and teacher. Such correspondence often references various literary projects of Weltmann's or of the correspondents. One letter by him includes a brief curriculum vitae.Lutz Weltmann was born on February 15, 1901 in Elbing (now Elblag, Poland). He attended the universities of Berlin and Freiburg, receiving his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Freiburg in 1924. From 1924-1933 he was the theater and literature critic of Rudolf Mosse newspapers in Berlin, including the Berliner Volkszeitung, but also contributed as a freelance writer for the Frankfurter General-Anzeiger and the Kölnische Zeitung, among others. From 1927-1933 he was co-editor of the monthly Die Literatur (later titled Das literarische Echo). In 1934 he authored some articles for the Jüdisches Jahrbuch on Spinoza and in 1936 he lectured on Samuel Cooper for the Jüdischer Kulturbund and produced Jizchok Leib Perez's Die goldene Kette for the Kulturbund's theater. In the course of his work he came to know many other authors, critics and others in the field of literature and theater.After emigrating to England in 1939, he served in the British Pioneer Corps from 1940-1943. The following year he earned his teaching diploma in London in 1944 and then taught at various schools in Kent, London and Essex. He also wrote from England for West German newspapers after the war. During this time he was assistant editor of the series The Goethe Year 1749-1949- Das Goethe-Jahr 1749-1949, celebrating the bi-centenary of the birth of Goethe, and wrote a book on Kasimir Edschmid. He also wrote three unpublished works on Christopher Fry, T.S. Eliot, and on Shakespeare.All letters on the list "Briefe on Lutz Weltmann" not previously digitized were consolidated into this collectionProcesseddigitize
"Y'all come and have fun": discovering a New Jersey country and western music scene in a box of postcards
No full textSeveral years ago, Rutgers University's Special Collections and University Archives was given a checkbox containing fifty-six postcards advertising country and western music shows at venues around New Jersey. The postcards, primarily from the 1960s, promoted shows featuring Grand Ole Opry stars like Wanda Jackson, Hank Thompson, and Elton Britt. Preliminary research revealed that the postcards touted performances by regional and local musicians, as well. A closer look at the cards began to expose how a small, hyper-local ephemeral collection could bring to light and contribute to a larger history; in this case, a once thriving but little explored New Jersey country and western music scene. The research that forms this article focuses on one venue, the Copa Club in the city of Secaucus, and its owners, brothers and musicians Shorty and Smokey Warren, as a specific case study. This collection of postcards, like so much ephemeral material in archives, could have remained undervalued and under-researched. In this case, a close consideration set forth a journey that included research in local archives and interviews with scene participants. As a result, this article explores the past of an important musical genre that evolved along with social changes in the United States. This piece contributes to the scholarship around uses and value of ephemera, as well as scholarship that continues to challenge the southern origin story of country music and examine vital locales of country music outside the South.Peer reviewe
Cabin in the Pines: Albert Music Hall and constructions of a Pine Barrens musical tradition
No full textAlbert Music Hall is an outpost of bluegrass, folk, and country music in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, offering hours of live music every Saturday night. It has formally been in existence since the 1970s under the auspices of the Pinelands Cultural Society, but it traces its roots back to the 1950s, when brothers Joe and George Albert started hosting informal musical gatherings at their Pines fox hunting cabin, known in the area as the Homeplace. What started as locals playing old-time and country music at a rustic cabin deep in the woods has evolved into a more formal venue that features musicians from around New Jersey and beyond. Albert Music Hall has persisted as an island of an older, more rural, and isolated Pines in an industrialized, urbanized state. Through an examination of the language, material culture, and music of the venue, this paper considers questions and constructions of authenticity in relation to notions of what a true Pine Barrens musical experience might be for Albert Music Hall audiences and musicians.Peer reviewe
Going against the archival grain: case studies of pop culture archives of a music scene, regional zines, and local beer
No full textPopular culture collecting in academic special collections and archives is sometimes still viewed within the institution as a challenge to traditional collection development, which has tended to emphasize the mainstream and enshrine privilege and hegemonic structures. This is especially the case when the cultures and media emphasized in such collecting might be categorized as being counter-cultural, DIY, or somehow ‘other.’ This article consists of three case studies that emphasize recently developed popular culture-based collections at Rutgers University’s Special Collections and University Archives that focus on voices and communities outside archival norms of collecting: the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive, the New Jersey Regional Zine Collection, and the New Jersey Beer Collection. An emphasis on how faculty and staff have developed these collections by working with participants and creators outside mainstream popular culture leads to examples of how faculty and staff have engaged in critical pedagogy and outreach, particularly among students. Woven throughout are examples of challenges faculty and staff have faced around institutional acceptance, inclusivity, and cultural sensitivities along with work to overcome the challenges. The article concludes by considering future popular culture collection-building endeavors and engagement among students and community members.Peer reviewe
Chronic Pain and the Endocannabinoid System: Smart Lipids – A Novel Therapeutic Option?
No full textThe development of a high-end cannabinoid-based therapy is the result of intense translational research, aiming to convert recent discoveries in the laboratory into better treatments for patients. Novel compounds and new regimes for drug treatment are emerging. Given that previously unreported signaling mechanisms for cannabinoids have been uncovered, clinical studies detailing their high therapeutic potential are mandatory. The advent of novel genomic, optogenetic, and viral tracing and imaging techniques will help to further detail therapeutically relevant functional and structural features. An evolutionarily highly conserved group of neuromodulatory lipids, their receptors, and anabolic and catabolic enzymes are involved in a remarkable variety of physiological and pathological processes and has been termed the endocannabinoid system (ECS). A large body of data has emerged in recent years, pointing to a crucial role of this system in the regulation of the behavioral domains of acquired fear, anxiety, and stress-coping. Besides neurons, also glia cells and components of the immune system can differentially fine-tune patterns of neuronal activity. Dysregulation of ECS signaling can lead to a lowering of stress resilience and increased incidence of psychiatric disorders. Chronic pain may be understood as a disease process evoked by fear-conditioned nociceptive input and appears as the dark side of neuronal plasticity. By taking a toll on every part of your life, this abnormal persistent memory of an aversive state can be more damaging than its initial experience. All strategies for the treatment of chronic pain conditions must consider stress-related comorbid conditions since cognitive factors such as beliefs, expectations, and prior experience (memory of pain) are key modulators of the perception of pain. The anxiolytic and anti-stress effects of medical cannabinoids can substantially modulate the efficacy and tolerability of therapeutic interventions and will help to pave the way to a successful multimodal therapy. Why some individuals are more susceptible to the effects of stress remains to be uncovered. The development of personalized prevention or treatment strategies for anxiety and depression related to chronic pain must also consider gender differences. An emotional basis of chronic pain opens a new horizon of opportunities for developing treatment strategies beyond the repeated sole use of acutely acting analgesics. A phase I trial to determine the pharmacokinetics, psychotropic effects, and safety profile of a novel nanoparticle-based cannabinoid spray for oromucosal delivery highlights a remarkable innovation in galenic technology and urges clinical studies further detailing the huge therapeutic potential of medical cannabis (Lorenzl et al.; this issue)
CAN LONG HORIZON DATA BEAT RANDOM WALK UNDER ENGEL-WEST EXPLANATION?
No full textEngel and West (2004a) provide an explanation to reconcile the random walk behavior of exchange rate and linear present value asset pricing models. In this paper, we study the long horizon property of exchange rate under Engel-West explanation. It is found that the long horizon data can not significantly improve our chance of beating random walk. This result is consistent with recent empirical studies on the long horizon exchange rate. Under E-W explanation, the change of exchange rate can be more serially correlated in the long horizon data, but this change in most cases is only marginal. Depending on the persistence of change in fundamentals, two patterns may exist between the autocorrelation of exchange rate change and the time horizon. Both of these two patterns are found existing in the real data of exchange rates. These results support E-W explanation for exchange rate puzzle.Foreign exchange rate, present-value models, exchange rate and fundamentals, random walk
Stress-Related Dysfunction of Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis—An Attempt for Understanding Resilience?
No full textNewborn neurons in the adult hippocampus are regulated by many intrinsic and extrinsic cues. It is well accepted that elevated glucocorticoid levels lead to downregulation of adult neurogenesis, which this review discusses as one reason why psychiatric diseases, such as major depression, develop after long-term stress exposure. In reverse, adult neurogenesis has been suggested to protect against stress-induced major depression, and hence, could serve as a resilience mechanism. In this review, we will summarize current knowledge about the functional relation of adult neurogenesis and stress in health and disease. A special focus will lie on the mechanisms underlying the cascades of events from prolonged high glucocorticoid concentrations to reduced numbers of newborn neurons. In addition to neurotransmitter and neurotrophic factor dysregulation, these mechanisms include immunomodulatory pathways, as well as microbiota changes influencing the gut-brain axis. Finally, we discuss recent findings delineating the role of adult neurogenesis in stress resilience
Prophylactic Palmitoylethanolamide Prolongs Survival and Decreases Detrimental Inflammation in Aged Mice With Bacterial Meningitis
No full textEasy-to-achieve interventions to promote healthy longevity are desired to diminish the incidence and severity of infections, as well as associated disability upon recovery. The dietary supplement palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) exerts anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. Here, we investigated the effect of prophylactic PEA on the early immune response, clinical course, and survival of old mice after intracerebral E. coli K1 infection. Nineteen-month-old wild type mice were treated intraperitoneally with two doses of either 0.1 mg PEA/kg in 250 μl vehicle solution (n = 19) or with 250 μl vehicle solution only as controls (n = 19), 12 h and 30 min prior to intracerebral E. coli K1 infection. The intraperitoneal route was chosen to reduce distress in mice and to ensure exact dosing. Survival time, bacterial loads in cerebellum, blood, spleen, liver, and microglia counts and activation scores in the brain were evaluated. We measured the levels of IL-1β, IL-6, MIP-1α, and CXCL1 in cerebellum and spleen, as well as of bioactive lipids in serum in PEA- and vehicle-treated animals 24 h after infection. In the absence of antibiotic therapy, the median survival time of PEA-pre-treated infected mice was prolonged by 18 h compared to mice of the vehicle-pre-treated infected group (P = 0.031). PEA prophylaxis delayed the onset of clinical symptoms (P = 0.037). This protective effect was associated with lower bacterial loads in the spleen, liver, and blood compared to those of vehicle-injected animals (P ≤ 0.037). PEA-pre-treated animals showed diminished levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines in spleen 24 h after infection, as well as reduced serum concentrations of arachidonic acid and of one of its metabolites, 20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid. In the brain, prophylactic PEA tended to reduce bacterial titers and attenuated microglial activation in aged infected animals (P = 0.042). Our findings suggest that prophylactic PEA can counteract infection associated detrimental responses in old animals. Accordingly, PEA treatment slowed the onset of infection symptoms and prolonged the survival of old infected mice. In a clinical setting, prophylactic administration of PEA might extend the potential therapeutic window where antibiotic therapy can be initiated to rescue elderly patients
Further evidence for the existence of a specific process for the membrane transport of anandamide
No full textIndirect evidence for the existence of a specific protein-mediated process for the cellular uptake of endocannabinoids has been reported, but recent results suggested that such a process, at least for AEA [N-arachidonoylethanolamine (anandamide)], is facilitated uniquely by its intracellular hydrolysis by FAAH (fatty acid amide hydrolase) [Glaser, Abumrad, Fatade, Kaczocha, Studholme and Deutsch (2003) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 100, 4269-4274]. In the present study, we show that FAAH alone cannot account for the facilitated diffusion of AEA across the cell membrane. In particular, (i) using a short incubation time (90 s) to avoid AEA hydrolysis by FAAH, AEA accumulation into rat basophilic leukaemia or C6 cells was saturable at low muM concentrations of substrate and non-saturable at higher concentrations; (ii) time-dependent and, at low muM concentrations of substrate, saturable AEA accumulation was observed also using mouse brain synaptosomes; (iii) using synaptosomes prepared from FAAH-deficient mice, saturable AEA accumulation was still observed, although with a lower efficacy; (iv) when 36 AEA and N-oleoylethanolamine analogues, most of which with phenyl rings in the polar head group region, were tested as inhibitors of AEA cellular uptake, strict structural and stereochemical requirements were needed to observe significant inhibition, and in no case the inhibition of FAAH overlapped with the inhibition of AEA uptake; and (v) AEA biosynthesis by cells and sensory neurons was followed by AEA release, and this latter process, which cannot be facilitated by FAAH, was still blocked by an inhibitor of AEA uptake. We suggest that at least one protein different from FAAH is required to facilitate AEA transport across the plasma membrane in a selective and bi-directional way
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