716 research outputs found
Anticonvulsant prophylaxis in patients with brain neoplasms
No full textWhat is the evidence regarding anticonvulsant prophylaxis in people with brain neoplams? Miriam Cappelli, Simone Piazza and Jonathan Koffman present the results of a limited systematic literature review
Petr Simon (1944-2018)
No full textThis article is a reflection on the mathematical legacy of Professor Petr Simon.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Analysi
Author Correction: Switching imidazole reactivity by dynamic control of tautomer state in an allosteric foldamer
No full textCorrection to: Nature Communicationshttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38339-2, published online 8 May 2023 In the Acknowledgements section of this article the grant number relating to Programme Grant Molecular Robotics given for Jonathan Clayden and Simon J. Webb was incorrectly given as EP/P027067 and should have been EP/P027067/1. Equally, the grant number relating to Bristol EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Technology-Enhanced Chemical Synthesis for Jean-Paul Heeb was incorrectly given as EP/S024107 and should have been EP/S024107/1. The original article has been updated.</p
Paranoia and irony in the Anglophone dectective narrative and the novels of Umberto Eco
Full text linkThe thesis provides a reading of Umberto Eco's three novels, The Name of the
Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, and The Island of the Day Before, that, while it
acknowledges the importance of the Italian literary tradition in which they stand, also
seeks to explain why their author appeals so frequently to literary models outside
Italy, and in particular the Anglo-American detective genre.
Chapter One explains Eco's relationship to the development of Italian literature
through his lifetime. It is noted that Eco is beginning, both in his semiotics and his
fiction, from a position where post-structuralism has been extensively explored by
neo-avant-gardew riters. Eco positions himself alongsides uchw riters as Italo Calvino
and Jorge Luis Borges, who wish to explore the ludic possibilities of working within
structures, while all the time acknowledging the epistemological limitations of so
doing. Eco's chosen structure, more often than not, is the highly defined genre of
the detective story.
From here, the following chapters engage in close readings of the three novels,
with particular emphasis on The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum,
demonstrating that they explore problems of interpretation central to the detective
narrative. In doing this, they display an intimate knowledge of generic developments
within the detective tradition, and of the philosophical and aesthetic uses made of the
genre by other writers. The embedding of intertextual references to other detective
narratives within Eco's novels is an important factor, as they come together to form
a narrative of epistemological inquiry that itself follows Eco's philosophical progress
through the years. In short, the novels, inter alia, map a systematic inquiry into the
possibility of systematic inquiry. They reserve the space to engage in such an ironic
and self-referential project precisely through their fictionality
Cenozoic drainage history of southern British Columbia
No full textThe author has placed restrictions on the PDF copy of this thesis. The PDF is not printable nor copyable. If you would like the SFU Library to attempt to contact the author to get permission to print a copy, please email your request to [email protected]
Yi xie xing ba ya suo zhong li zi shu de gai nian she ji
No full textWong, Chun Yan Jonathan = 以楔形靶壓縮重離子束的概念設計 / 黃駿仁.Thesis M.Phil. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-144).Abstracts also in Chinese.Title from PDF title page (viewed on 15, September, 2016).Wong, Chun Yan Jonathan = Yi xie xing ba ya suo zhong li zi shu de gai nian she ji / Huang Junren
Introduction
No full textCross-dressing author, envoy, soldier and spy, Charles d'Eon de Beaumont's unusual career fascinated his contemporaries and continues to attract historians, novelists, playvtrights, filmmakers, image makers, cultural theorists and those concerned with manifestations of the extraordinary. D'Eon's significance as a historical figure was already being debated more than 45 years before his death. In 1763, a hostile writer predicted that d'Eon's memory would be associated with dishonour and scandal for both himself and France: 'Il outrage la France jusques dans les siecles a venir.'... Le Livre du Plenipotentiare [i.e. d'Eon's Lettres, mlimoires et nligociations] sera un monument eternel de Ia division des Ministres Francois ... Les Historiens diront que son administration etoit mauvaise ... que dans cette Cour tout etoit livre a la cabale eta la prevention. Les Annales d'Angleterre citeront ces endroits, pour ... le Tableau de la France sous le regne de Louis XV. Cest ainsi que le plus petit mortel deshonore souvent un grand Etat, et le fletrit jusques dans la derniere posterite. [He outrages France right up to centuries to come: ... The book of the Plenipotentiary will be an eternal monument to the division of French ministers ... Historians will say that its administration was bad ... that in that Court everything was given up to faction and prejudice.
The Annals of England will cite those places for ... the picture of France under the reign of Louis XV. This is how the smallest of mortals often dishonours a great State, and blackens it for the whole of posterity.
Wolfgang Koeppen: 'Unmasking' the 'Author' of a Holocaust Testimony
No full textThe possibility that works of art and literature might be forged and that identity might be faked has haunted the cultural imagination for centuries. That spectre seems to have returned with a vengeance recently, with a series of celebrated hoaxes and scandals ranging from the Alan Sokal hoax article in Social Text to Binjamin Wilkomirski's "fake" Holocaust memoir. But as well as creating anxiety, the possibility of "faking it" has now been turned into entertainment. Traditionally these activities have been dismissed as dangerous and immoral, but more recently some scholars have begun to speculate, for example, that all forms of national identity rely on forged myths of origin. Recent cultural theory has likewise called into question traditional notions of authenticity and originality in both personal identity and in works of art. Despite critical pronouncements of the death of the author and the substitution of the simulacrum for the original, however, making a distinction between the genuine and the fake continues to play a major role in our everyday understanding and evaluation of culture, law and politics. Consider, for example, the fiasco surrounding the "forged" Hitler diaries, law suits against auction houses for failing to detect forgeries in the art market, or the problem of plagiarism at universities. It still seems to matter that we can spot the difference, especially in the historical moment when we are capable of making copies that are indistinguishable perhaps even better than the original. This collection of essays considers the moral, aesthetic and political questions that are raised by the long history and current prevalence of fakes and forgeries. The international team of contributors consider the issues thrown up by a wide range of examples, drawn from fields ranging from literature to art history. These case studies include little-known subjects such as Eddie Burrup, the Australian aboriginal artist who turned out to be an 81-year-old white woman, as well as new interpretations of familiar cases such as faked holocaust memoirs. The strength of the collection is that it brings together not only a wide range of cultural examples of fakes and forgeries from different historical periods, but also offers a wide variety of theoretical takes that will form a useful introduction and casebook on this growing field of inquiry
Phytoecdysteroids: understanding their anabolic activity
No full textPhytoecdysteroids, polyhydroxylated ketosteroids, are the plant analogues of insect growth hormones. Although their role in insect molting is well characterized, their function in plants is less clear. Lacking the properties of classic plant hormones, phytoecdysteroids may be involved in plant growth and defense. One of the main benefits of phytoecdysteroids may be their therapeutic effects on mammals, including humans. Their claimed medicinal properties include anabolic, adaptogenic, hepatoprotective, and hypoglycemic activity. Although ethnobotanical use has been supported by some evidence, the research is quite limited, lacking the scientific rigor necessary to be convincing.
Two ecdysteroid containing plants, Ajuga turkestanica, and Spinacia olearaceae (Spinach), were selected as beneficial sources of phytoecdysteroids. Cultivation, analysis of ecdysteroid content, and characterization of anabolic activity were performed to support future medicinal use.
Phytoecdysteroids' anabolic activity, one of their most interesting properties due to the claimed lack of androgenic effect, was studied. Anabolic activity was confirmed in animal studies and a cellular model of skeletal muscle. The cellular model was used to characterize ecdysteroids' effect on protein incorporation and to elucidate the signal transduction pathway involved. Ecdysteroid's lack of androgenic activity was confirmed in vivo and in vitro, with ecdysteroids showing no specific binding to the androgen receptor.
Identification of mammalian nuclear receptors homologous with the insect nuclear ecdysone receptor led to binding and activation assays of potential receptors using ecdysteroids. The discovery of a lesser known membrane bound G Protein Coupled Receptor (GPCR) insect ecdysone receptor, DoEcR, suggested the existence of a hypothetical mammalian membrane bound GPCR ecdysone receptor.
Use of specific inhibitors supported the involvement of G protein signaling, Phospholipase C (PLC), Inositol Phosphate 3 Receptor (IP3R), and Akt. Ecdysteroid stimulated activation of Akt confirmed its role in the anabolic effect. Ecdysteroid generated increases in intracellular calcium were also characterized, with the rapid flux in Ca2+ linked with Akt activation and anabolic activity. The evidence produced suggests the involvement of a putative mammalian GPCR ecdysteroid receptor mediating the anabolic effect through the rapid activation of the PLC/IP3R pathway, generating Ca2+ flux which leads to activation of the Phosphoinositide 3 Kinase/Akt pathway, eventually causing increases in protein incorporation.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-142)by Jonathan Isaac Gorelick-Feldma
Neural mechanisms and functional signficance of peri-saccadic response modulation
No full textActive vision involves fast eye movements (saccades) with brief inter-saccadic fixations. This presents two interesting problems. (1) During each saccade the moving eye creates motion signals on the retina, and yet we are unaware of this sweeping visual input. (2) Upon each brief fixation the visual system is input with a new scene, and tasked to quickly encode many stimulus features. Regarding the first problem, a decrease in contrast sensitivity during saccades (saccadic suppression) is thought to contribute to our lack of intra-saccadic perception. Chapters 2 & 3 of this thesis seek to further understand the neural mechanisms of saccadic suppression. Regarding the second problem, a post-saccadic change in neural activity is thought to specialize processing of newly fixated stimuli. Chapter 4 investigates the changes in visual response properties that occur after a saccade. Chapter 2 used a signal-detection model that describes the psychophysical phenomenon of saccadic suppression in computational terms. The model is built up of visual detectors in which gain, noise, and spatial uncertainty can be varied. Thus saccadic suppression is recast in terms that provide testable predictions of neural activities. We found that saccadic suppression is the result of reduced detector gain. Chapter 3 studied neural responses from permanently implanted multi-electrode arrays in V1 of macaques. Based on our Chapter 2 results, we looked specifically at how contrast responses change during saccades. We found saccadic gain reduction that begins before saccade onset, suggesting that V1 is a neural site of suppression, and that saccadic gain reduction is the result of a corollary discharge signal. Chapter 4 studied the effect of post-saccadic modulation on contrast response properties. Using model fitting and signal detection measures, we showed that post-saccadic modulations in V1 lead to an increased range of discriminable contrasts. We argue that this increased operating range gives a functional benefit when encountering newly fixated stimuli. Chapter 5 concludes by relating the saccadic gain reduction shown in Chapters 2 & 3 to the post-saccadic response changes shown in Chapter 4 – arguing that saccadic suppression can be viewed as part of a more general process to improve post-saccadic vision.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Jonathan Simon Gue
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