bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Cyprus Conundrum in Turkish Foreign Policy
Authors: Dizdaroğlu Cihan
Published: May 2024

Starting from its relations with Greece and the EU, as this chapter demonstrates, Turkey’s relationships with several other countries have been affected by the continuation of the Cyprus problem. As Turkey’s EU membership process is inseparably linked with the Cyprus problem, which is still prevalent at the time of writing, this has caused a waning of eagerness for reform as well as Turkey’s distancing itself from the EU. The EU’s backing of the RoC in the tensions over the eastern Mediterranean further exacerbates the Turkey–EU relationship. As the prospects for the solution of the Cyprus problem are still bleak considering the parties’ current positions, there is a need for new approaches to trigger a change in the conundrum. Hydrocarbon resources in the eastern Mediterranean might play a catalyser role for all involved actors to initiate a collaborative spirit that will gradually pave the way to easing tensions in each deadlock.
Every Drop Counts: A Century of Hydraulic Infrastructure Development in Turkey
Authors: Bilgen Arda
Published: May 2024

In this chapter, I provide a concise overview of hydraulic infrastructure development and, relatedly, water resources development in Turkey since 1923. By focusing on the major dam, hydroelectric power plant (HEPP), irrigation and water transfer projects implemented across Turkey, I discuss the continuities, changes and challenges in the way the country has conceived of and approached infrastructure, water and the politics of both throughout its developmental history. In this way, I seek to present a synoptic piece that benefits particularly those students, researchers and practitioners who are new to, or interested in expanding their knowledge on, the topic. Overall, I argue that Turkey has made significant progress in hydraulic infrastructure development in 100 years, but the time is ripe to abandon the dominant techno-economic perspective on water and instead adopt a socio-political perspective that captures the complex web of relations between infrastructure, nature, society, politics and water.
Affective Fear: Vulnerability and Risk in Anti-VD Campaign Counternarratives
Authors: Peebles Tavera Stephanie
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines how Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Annie Nathan Meyer rescript the medico-legal discourse of popular Anti-VD Campaign films whose stock seduction narrative and outbreak narrative represents venereal disease as a rationale for implementing public sex education programs. Meyer and Gilman uproot cultural narratives of contagion that figure disease as originating from the female sex, but they also redeploy the rhetoric of fear from Anti-VD Campaign films in their own counter-campaign narratives, a move which has long-standing implications for queer communities and people of color in cultural narratives of contagion. This narratological and rhetorical move is particularly salient for crip/queer characters of color who Gilman uses in The Crux to appeal to the logic of science through the emotional rhetoric of fear, and specifically, the fear of illness and of disability. This chapter continues the theorization of disability and gender as affective phenomenon that contribute to cultural narratives of contagion around marginalized bodies well into the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century.
Stevenson as a Writer of French
Authors: Ashley Katherine
Published: May 2024

This chapter studies Stevenson as a writer of French and explores how he plays with French in his correspondence, how he incorporates French and discussions of language difference into his fiction and non-fiction, how he imitated French style at the beginning of his career and how this impacted his future writing. It studies the creative process whereby French and French literature contributed to Stevenson’s writing voice and to the disruption of textual stability in favour of aesthetic variation and stylistic self-awareness. The chapter shows that, for Stevenson, language contact and literary cross-pollination are a means of challenging the foundations of the realist novel. The chapter is divided into four sections: ‘Playing with French’; ‘French in Stevenson’s Published Works: (Anti-)Realism’; ‘French Style and English Literature’; ‘From Petits Poèmes en prose to Novels’.
Stevenson in French Literary History
Authors: Ashley Katherine
Published: May 2024

This chapter analyses Stevenson’s place in the development of French literature and positions his work within debates taking place on the evolution of the novel in fin-de-siècle France. The importance of Stevenson’s fiction to the elaboration of the French adventure novel in the early twentieth century is well known. This chapter shows that even before this, Stevenson’s writing offered a counter-model to Naturalism. The chapter discusses how French critics were unconcerned with internal debates in the Anglo-Scottish literary field because they considered France as the arbiter of literary norms, and shows how Stevenson appealed to French critics because he rejected literary schools and forged his own path in terms of genre, form and style. The chapter is divided into three sections: ‘Generational Differences’; ‘Beyond Naturalism’; ‘Towards a New Novel’.
The Multiple Legacies of Sultan Qaboos: Heritage and Omani Nation–building
Authors: Hightower Victoria Penziner , Worrall James
Published: May 2024

This chapter outlines the development of heritage policy and outcomes over the course of Qaboos’ reign by tracing Oman’s heritage structures, institutions, and narratives by period. Qaboos used heritage to create a more inclusive, flexible, and unifying Omani identity, one that made space for religious, sectarian, and tribal differences as a bulwark against division and conflict. This chapter demonstrates the contingent nature of Oman’s heritage program. The development of both public and private initiatives were clearly governed by the vagaries of resources, attention, opportunities, and threats more than any specific vision over the long arc of Qaboos’ reign.
Empathetic Effort in Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Bernie
Authors: Wilkins Kim
Published: May 2024

This chapter analyzes Linklater’s films Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (2019) and Bernie (2011) as efforts in interpersonal understanding. Both films narratively center on drastic, and perplexing, actions committed by eccentric characters: supposedly unpremeditated murder in Bernie and the sudden willful disappearance, paired with abdication of a filial role, in Where’d You Go, Bernadette?. The case made is that these films are less governed by a desire to explain these drastic actions than they are invested in the effort of trying to understand them. One of the ways in which this effort manifests is, in characteristic Linklater form, through conversation. Indeed, considering these films through the lens of the conversation privileges inconclusiveness and as such, draws the effort of understanding into focus.
Keeping Time in Dazed and Confused , Everybody Wants Some!! , and Boyhood
Authors: Isaacs Bruce
Published: May 2024

Richard Linklater’s body of work represents one of the most richly complex meditations on cinema’s temporal experience. This chapter attempts to engage Linklater’s “temporal cinema” as a coherent philosophical model and statement of intention. Linklater’s films—from the curious and highly idiosyncratic periodization of films such as Dazed and Confused (1993) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) to Boyhood’s (2014) radical experience with “real-time” narration—problematize easy models for understanding temporal experience. It describes Linklater’s image of time through a Bergsonian model, discussing the interrelation of past and present images of time.
‘Spectrality is in part a mode of historicity’: Representations of Spectrality in Queer Historiography and Contemporary Fiction
Authors: Palmer Paulina
Published: May 2024

This chapter utilises Carla Freccero’s Queer/Early/Modern as a theoretical lens through which to inspect queer spectrality in late twentieth and early twenty-first ghost stories. The author conducts in-depth readings of Jeannine Allard’s Légende: The Story of Philippa and Aurelie (1984), Rebecca S. Buck’s Ghosts of Winter (2011), Jameson Currier’s short story, ‘The Country House’(2007), and Rosie Garland’s The Night Brother (2017). The tales in this chapter all feature contemporary queer characters who are haunted by queer ghosts from the past, which is a theme found in many LGBTQIA2+ Gothic literary works post-1969. The non-linear feature of ‘queer time’ ala Jack Halberstam, illustrates both a juxtaposition to and a reckoning with the often closeted and violent past experienced by queer and trans people with contemporary queer and trans people who are either fully out of the closet or who are still struggling with their identity and place in a heteronormative and cisnormative world. The author intertwines the queer spectral with the queer historiographical which opens up new avenues through which to understand queer literature and queer history.
Introduction
Authors: Demoor Marysa , Van Dijck Cedric , Van Puymbroeck Birgit
Published: May 2024

The First World War produced and sustained a dazzling number of periodical publications. Despite a growing awareness of periodicals as cultural artefacts and unique sources, the wartime periodical press–its specificity, its diversity, its long-lasting impact–has not received much scholarly consideration. Ranging across the Greater War period, this Introduction surveys three aspects of the press. (1) ‘Developments and Transformations’ places the war in the broader history and development of the press, paying close attention to how the war presented difficulties (e.g. paper rationing, censorship) and opportunities (e.g. new journals, women journalists), as well as accelerated technological developments (e.g. photography). (2) ‘Forms and Functions’ discusses the various uses of the periodical press in wartime, from distracting and entertaining to creating communities and conveying information about the war (including propaganda). (3) ‘Cultural and Geographical Contexts’ explores how a global war both disrupted international connections (e.g. increased costs for cable news, destruction of infrastructure) and offered new opportunities for cross-cultural encounters (e.g. collaborations, translations).
Networks
Authors: King Edmund G. C.
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the various networks (and network effects) that enabled the production and dissemination of periodicals during the First World War. Focusing on unit and trench journals from a range of national armies, it applies principles derived from network theory (in particular, actor-network theory and the model of the communication circuit) to First World War reading and printing cultures. It asks how journal editors established printing networks to bring their publications into existence, as well as describing the range of distribution networks (both formal and informal) that helped place them in the hands of a diverse community of readers. Finally, it examines the unit journal as a site of social networking, both for authors and editors, and for individual readers in the conflict’s camps, barracks, hospitals, and forward areas, for whom trench and unit periodicals provided both a focus for collective identity and a link with the outside world.
Authors
Authors: Banerjee Argha Kumar
Published: May 2024

During the years of the First World War, most of the British dailies and periodicals served as a creative forum for contemporary literary writers to negotiate with the unprecedented impact of the ongoing hostilities. The contributors to these periodicals ranged from established writers like Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling on the one hand to several younger combatant poets and women writers on the other. Besides playing an important role in influencing public opinion through reputed authors, periodicals were significant in shaping the literary reputations of younger British writers as well. Notwithstanding the brevity of their existence, magazines and dailies often managed to provide a major outlet for wider cultural expressions of the British society during the war years. Closely examining the wide range of such a colossal input, this analysis examines the crucial significance of British periodicals in the writings of the First World War. The chapter argues that such a diverse miscellany, enmeshed in a matrix of conflicting political ideologues, meticulously and faithfully chronicles the British literary landscape of the Great War.
Beginnings
Authors: Foster Samuel
Published: May 2024

While the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the thrones of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, are popularly viewed as the catalyst for the First World War, the conflict’s deeper regional and historical origins have attracted growing scholarly attention. Long before that fateful Sunday morning, Austria-Hungary was already engaged in an escalating diplomatic and economic conflict with the neighbouring Kingdom of Serbia, to which responsibility for the murders was promptly assigned. This chapter explores the origins and evolution of this pre-existing conflict as reflected in the historical development of Austro-Hungarian and Serbian newspapers and print journalism. It focuses in particular on these periodicals’ complex relationship with state authority and the manner in which the press in both countries came to serve as a conduit for political and cultural influence. Nowhere was this more evident than in Sarajevo’s immediate aftermath, with tabloids and broadsheets on both sides continuing to stoke instability through an increasingly vitriolic war of words.
Alliances
Authors: Forno Mauro
Published: May 2024

The Italian press experienced the months between the outbreak of war and the country’s entry into the conflict on 24 May 1915, with the awareness of being able to play a leading role. There is little doubt that the majority of Italian citizens were of neutralist sentiments at this time. Yet, in an international context in which nationalistic tendencies rapidly asserted themselves, the thunderous clamour of a minority part of the country ultimately prevailed, capable of erasing the frustrating years of Giolittian ‘mediocrity’. By sweeping away the incrustations of old political languages, their messages were able to outline the objectives to be achieved, the means to be used and the enemies to be fought. Standing up as representatives of the healthy and productive part of the nation, they managed to powerfully inflame the population. The references to the return to the motherland of Italians subjected to the Austrian yoke, to the war as a necessary step to guarantee the country a future as a protagonist, to the ‘bloodbath’ required of young people as a necessary cleansing for the regeneration of a people stunned by the grey Giolittian, were emotionally engaging, while the neutralist press, especially Catholic and socialist, was unable to oppose other equally effective messages.
India
Authors: Das Santanu
Published: May 2024

This chapter recovers the buried world of the periodical press in British India at the time of the First World War. It focuses on a selection of the Indian periodicals, both pro-imperial and anti-colonial, and ranging across high and low culture – Punjabi and Gujrati newspapers, English-language publications and finally, on Bengali periodicals – to examine how the war was discussed and debated in South Asia. Two questions guide the chapter: first, does colonial periodical culture put pressure on the conceptualisation of the ‘wartime periodical’? Second, does periodical culture provide fresh insights into the relationship between India and the First World War? The discussions range from Punjabi recruitment songs to the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore and prose of Aurobindo to experiences in Mesopotamia, all through pages of wartime periodicals.
Curious Women Conscientious Objectors to Military Service in the Male Conscription System in Turkey
Authors: Çaltekın Demet Asli
Published: May 2024

Chapter 6, utilising Cynthia Enloe’s feminist curiosity, provides empirical evidence to show how the link between militarism, gender and conscientious objection is understood and challenged in Turkey, where women are not conscripted yet they declare their conscientious objection. It explores the impacts of militarism on women and offers a picture of women’s demilitarisation attempts in Turkey. It illustrates how conscription constitutes only a single dimension of militarism and how militarism also affects women’s lives, even though they are not subject to compulsory military service. Therefore, by studying curious women conscientious objectors in the male-conscription system, this chapter approaches conscientious objection from a wider perspective and broadens the discussion on the right to conscientious objection by studying those who have previously been assumed to be ‘irrelevant’.
Introduction
Authors: Purnama Ari
Published: May 2024

This chapter introduces the book's scope, research questions, and main argument, focusing on the comprehensive study of the transformation of Indonesian cinema, particularly in its visual style, in the two decades following the end of Suharto’s regime (1998-2018). It argues that the rejuvenation of Indonesian cinema is significantly attributed to renewed visual aesthetics, primarily through enhanced cinematography and mise en scène. The chapter outlines the role of visual stylisation, such as lighting, production design, and camera movement, in revamping the Indonesian film looks, attracting local audiences accustomed to international films. The chapter establishes the importance of studying Indonesian cinema not only from political, social, and cultural perspectives but also for its artistic innovations. It includes personal observations and experiences that illustrate the growing popularity and artistic evolution of Indonesian cinema. Additionally, the chapter sets the stage for the book by discussing pivotal moments leading to its inception and previewing the book’s objectives, which include demonstrating the artistic richness of contemporary Indonesian cinema and advocating for its aesthetic study. The chapter concludes by laying out the book’s structure, methodology, and theoretical framework, which will be further explored in subsequent chapters.
Concluding Notes: All The Stylistic Pieces Matter
Authors: Purnama Ari
Published: May 2024

This chapter offers concluding notes by providing an overview of what the main findings of the book mean for the study of Indonesian cinema, specifically, and the scholarly enterprise of film aesthetics, broadly. It points out the transformative use of lighting, production design, and camera movement by contemporary Indonesian filmmakers, positioning these films as significant aesthetic objects on par with other Indonesian art forms. The chapter underscores the role of visual stylization in representing Indonesia's cultural diversity and moving beyond mere ideological narratives. It critiques the inward focus of existing functional theories of film style, advocating for their expansion to include the cultural specifying function. Additionally, the chapter acknowledges its limitations, such as the focus on specific stylistic devices and theoretical assumptions about audience impact. It suggests future research directions, including spectatorship studies and exploring connections with other Indonesian arts. Ultimately, the chapter challenges the conventional view of style as a superficial aspect of filmmaking, arguing instead that style is a set of fundamental decisions taken by the agent of creative-cultural activity, be it the artist, the writer, the designer, the cinematographer, the art director or any other individual working in a creative-cultural domain.
What is Peoria for? (I): Postindustrial Life and the Language of Place in The Pale King
Authors: McRae Andrew Laurie
Published: May 2024

This chapter approaches The Pale King through the connected discourses of ‘postindustrial’ society and of ‘place’ and its supposed decline in post-Fordist America, drawing more heavily on archival material to establish connections between work and space as a major theme in the novel’s early period of composition. It explores the development of Toni Ware’s story, showing how Wallace both develops and disrupts relationships between characters and place in a way that is closely connected to changing geographies of postindustrial labour. It then follows the composition of the text’s opening scene, tracing the careful balancing of pastoral and postindustrial registers in this section. Finally, through the construction of the story of Claude Sylvanshine, the chapter demonstrates how Wallace’s initial interest in the possibilities of place-writing developed into a larger concern about the nature and efficacy of literary practice in this ‘postindustrial’ context.
Film and Fashion in Japan, 1923-39
Authors: Barnett Lois J. E.
Published: May 2024

Film and Fashion in Japan, 1923-39 examines the interaction between the audience member and Japan's film and fashion industries, focusing on Western-inspired fashion objects as opposed to indigenous Japanese items. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Barnett examines the semiotics of dress onscreen within Japan’s transcultural media climate, consulting not only film- or fashion-related theoretical bases but also historical and gender-based approaches.
The work consults surviving films, print media and advertising materials, allowing insights into lost films and the period's thriving commercial context. It focuses on the expressive Modern Girl image (the Japanese equivalent of the Hollywood flapper); sportswear and hybridised dress styles (which combined Japanese and Western-influenced aesthetics) and their relationship with body; and menswear in the early work of the director Ozu Yasujirō. This book discusses the role of fashion consumption in defining emergent modern identities and their relationships with new spaces, questioning their arising in the Japanese context and within the global sphere.
Women and the sporting body
Authors: Barnett Lois J. E.
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses sporting stars and their roles in marketing Japanese-made Western-style sportswear goods and the role of images of these star bodies in stimulating spectators of all genders to purchase these products.
The chapter particularly focuses on how these fashion images and their corresponding written copy and use in film scenes encouraged the spectator-as-consumer to compare their own body to that seen onscreen, generating a form of body-image-focused anxiety which provokes the spectator to purchase the product in an effort to “purchase” the desirable body they see in the media they are consuming.
This analysis is framed within the context of the impending (and later cancelled) 1940 Olympics, when the sporting physical strength of Japanese bodies was to be exhibited before the world. This chapter applies these concepts specifically to sporting images of female stars and the responses of female-identifying audiences and consumers.
Men and the sporting body
Authors: Barnett Lois J. E.
Published: May 2024

This chapter analyses male sporting star images, especially focusing on sporting images of Suzuki Denmei, a competitive swimmer turned cinematic sporting star who blended the aesthetics and qualities of Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, both of whom experienced immense popularity in Japan.
The chapter also considers the relationship between hybridised dress styles and male bodies onscreen, comparing this to the relationship between female stars and hybridised dress aesthetics.
Finally, the chapter questions the role of the male star in encouraging fashion consumption: could the male star encourage the male spectator to purchase fashion goods in order to emulate a male star’s ‘look’, and is this comparable to the consumption process surrounding female spectators and stars?
The Art of Feeling
Authors: Kingston-Reese Alexandra
Published: May 2024

‘Don DeLillo is the poet of entropy’, writes John Banville in his review of Point Omega for the New York Review of Books in 2010. ‘The world he sets up in his fictions’, he continues, ‘is a tightly wound machine gradually running down, and in it all action is a kind of lapsing drift.’ This chapter considers the critical stakes, formal implications, and the cultural, ethical, and aesthetic work of negative affects in DeLillo’s novels, particularly Players (1977), Point Omega (2010), and The Silence (2020). First considering the characterisation of DeLillo’s early work by critics and reviewers as difficult, and DeLillo’s own observations about the writer’s responsibility to occupy an oppositional stance—“against power, corporations, the state, and the whole system of consumption and of debilitating entertainments”—the chapter submits that the affective turn of the 1990s compels us to look again at the emotion generated and stilted within his fiction. Examining categories of ‘the swirl’, ‘tone’, ‘the gesture’, and ‘the glint’, this chapter considers how DeLillo’s novels show that negative affects such as detachment, attenuation, exhaustion, withdrawal, inertia, drift, and entropy, don’t just service plots concerned with trauma, loss, and fear, but have significant aesthetic, formal, and stylistic implications.
Time and Loss: DeLillo and the Imagination of Archaeology
Authors: Cowart David
Published: May 2024

This essay examines what might be called DeLillo’s archaeological imagination, which, in addition to unusual conceits in Great Jones Street and Ratner's Star, figures importantly in The Names (in evocations of the Parthenon and accounts of an ostensibly minor excavation on a Cycladic Island). In work following the 9/11 climacteric, DeLillo seems haunted by the swiftness with which America might join ancient Athens and other superannuated empires in the dustbin of history. In the Waste Land spectacle of toppling towers, he sees a strange modern tendency to instantaneous ruin, ruin superimposed on dynamic contemporaneity. Because it took only a single, harrowing day to reduce the Twin Towers to that “smoky remnant of filigree”, the events of 9/11 seem to announce a speeding up of the pace normally followed by a civilization’s decline and fall. The author’s sensitivity to the past extends as well to language as indexed in time: epigraphers and paleolinguists curate ancient tongues just as archaeologists shore sherds against temporal oblivion. The ruins of language yield their secrets in artefacts like the Rosetta Stone, a photograph of which hung for many years in DeLillo’s study. Grammatically, withal, language accommodates the play of present and past.
L’objet trouvé and the Pressure of History: DeLillo’s Aesthetic of Found Things and the 1970s
Authors: Jelfs Tim
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines DeLillo’s novels of the 1970s, from Americana (1971) to Running Dog (1978), to explore the author’s aesthetic of found things during an early phase in his career. It argues that what is most striking about DeLillo’s aesthetic of the objet trouvé as it was developing over this period is a certain tension between transposition and transformation. For while DeLillo is an artist, his medium remains language, and he is above all a maker of his own written things: sentences, paragraphs, books.
As such, his rendering of things in his novels of the 1970s is an act of aesthetic transmutation, in which the extra-textual object is always transformed and imbued with fresh cultural, historical, and ontological valences by virtue of its journey into DeLillo’s texts. While DeLillo’s treatment of the dreck that Gore Vidal argued was a characteristic of American literary postmodernism undoubtedly makes of such stuff object matter for existential meditation, it also indexes a sense of post-World War II American power as predicated upon a system of commodity production and “trashmaking”, doomed by its own unsustainability.
Screening Fundamentalism, Fanaticism and Terrorism in Don DeLillo’s Post-9/11 Fiction
Authors: Naydan Liliana M.
Published: May 2024

As Don DeLillo writes in Mao II, “a curious knot … binds novelists and terrorists”. But how do the 9/11 terrorist attacks change the nature of this knot? And how does their continuous replay on television influence American conceptions of fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism? What less screen-worthy kinds of fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism pervade contemporary American life? And how can literary fiction counter narrow notions about fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism that visually devised, screen-based arguments propagate? These are questions that this chapter explores in considering the rhetorical goals of DeLillo’s post-9/11 aesthetic representations of screen-based media and human relationships with them. Through readings of Cosmopolis (2003), “Hammer and Sickle” (2010), Point Omega (2010), “The Starveling” (2011), and The Silence (2020), it argues that DeLillo critiques screen culture for the ways in which it primes Americans to view fundamentalism, fanaticism, and the apparent product of terrorism that they produce as external, Islamic threats. Instead, DeLillo suggests that these complex phenomena exist in homegrown varieties that Americans fail to see fully, despite—or perhaps because of—the intensely visual culture in which they live.
The Milk Street mystery: Thomas More’s birthplace
Authors: Paul Joanne
Published: May 2024

Cresacre More’s assertion that Thomas More was born at Milk Street has frequently been taken at face value, and there is no existing scholarly discussion of its veracity. This article begins by laying out the material which supports the case for Milk Street, namely that More’s father, John More, lived there. However, this evidence only places John More at Milk Street in the 1520s or, at the earliest, in 1499. On the other hand, there is significant archival evidence to suggest that John More raised his family near where he and More’s mother married, at St Giles without Cripplegate. The suggestion that the Mores lived in the extramural area around Cripplegate fits with recent research into these areas and lifecycle mobility around London. This article contends that the balance of evidence weighs more heavily against a location on Milk Street as the birthplace for Thomas More, and toward one in Cripplegate without.
3D printing and bioprinting in the battle against diabetes and its chronic complications
Authors: Sathisaran Indumathi
Published: May 2024

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder characterized by high blood sugar. Uncontrolled blood glucose affects the circulatory system in an organism by intervening blood circulation. The high blood glucose can lead to macrovascular (large blood vessels) and microvascular (small blood vessels) complications. Due to this, the vital organs (notably brain, eyes, feet, heart, kidneys, lungs and nerves) get worsen in diabetic patients if not treated at the earliest. Therefore, acquiring treatment at an appropriate time is very important for managing diabetes and other complications that are caused due to diabetes. The root cause for the occurrence of various health complications in diabetic patients is the uncontrolled blood glucose levels. This review presents a consolidated account of the applications of various types of three-dimensional (3D) printing and bioprinting technologies in treating diabetes as well as the complications caused due to impaired blood glucose levels. Herein, the development of biosensors (for the diagnosis), oral drug formulations, transdermal drug carriers, orthotic insoles and scaffolds (for the treatment) are discussed. Next to this, the fabrication of 3D bioprinted organs and cell-seeded hydrogels (pancreas engineering for producing insulin and bone engineering for managing bone defects) are explained. As the final application, 3D bioprinting of diabetic disease models for high-throughput screening of ant-diabetic drugs are discussed. Lastly, the challenges and future perspective associated with the use of 3D printing and bioprinting technologies against diabetes and its related chronic complications have been put forward.
The view of synthetic biology in the field of ethics: a thematic systematic review
Authors: Kurtoğlu Ayşe , Yıldız Abdullah , Arda Berna
Published: May 2024

Synthetic biology is designing and creating biological tools and systems for useful purposes. It uses knowledge from biology, such as biotechnology, molecular biology, biophysics, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and other disciplines, such as engineering, mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. It is recognized as both a branch of science and technology. The scope of synthetic biology ranges from modifying existing organisms to gain new properties to creating a living organism from non-living components. Synthetic biology has many applications in important fields such as energy, chemistry, medicine, environment, agriculture, national security, and nanotechnology. The development of synthetic biology also raises ethical and social debates. This article aims to identify the place of ethics in synthetic biology. In this context, the theoretical ethical debates on synthetic biology from the 2000s to 2020, when the development of synthetic biology was relatively faster, were analyzed using the systematic review method. Based on the results of the analysis, the main ethical problems related to the field, problems that are likely to arise, and suggestions for solutions to these problems are included. The data collection phase of the study included a literature review conducted according to protocols, including planning, screening, selection and evaluation. The analysis and synthesis process was carried out in the next stage, and the main themes related to synthetic biology and ethics were identified. Searches were conducted in Web of Science, Scopus, PhilPapers and MEDLINE databases. Theoretical research articles and reviews published in peer-reviewed journals until the end of 2020 were included in the study. The language of publications was English. According to preliminary data, 1,453 publications were retrieved from the four databases. Considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 58 publications were analyzed in the study. Ethical debates on synthetic biology have been conducted on various issues. In this context, the ethical debates in this article were examined under five themes: the moral status of synthetic biology products, synthetic biology and the meaning of life, synthetic biology and metaphors, synthetic biology and knowledge, and expectations, concerns, and problem solving: risk versus caution.
Novel anti-Acanthamoeba effects elicited by a repurposed poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor AZ9482
Authors: Chen Lijun , Han Wei , Jing Wenwen , Feng Meng , Zhou Qingtong , Cheng Xunjia
Published: May 2024

Introduction

Acanthamoeba infection is a serious public health concern, necessitating the development of effective and safe anti-Acanthamoeba chemotherapies. Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerases (PARPs) govern a colossal amount of biological processes, such as DNA damage repair, protein degradation and apoptosis. Multiple PARP-targeted compounds have been approved for cancer treatment. However, repurposing of PARP inhibitors to treat Acanthamoeba is poorly understood.

Methods

In the present study, we attempted to fill these knowledge gaps by performing anti-Acanthamoeba efficacy assays, cell biology experiments, bioinformatics, and transcriptomic analyses.

Results

Using a homology model of Acanthamoeba poly (ADP-ribose) polymerases (PARPs), molecular docking of approved drugs revealed three potential inhibitory compounds: olaparib, venadaparib and AZ9482. In particular, venadaparib exhibited superior docking scores (−13.71) and favorable predicted binding free energy (−89.28 kcal/mol), followed by AZ9482, which showed a docking score of −13.20 and a binding free energy of −92.13 kcal/mol. Notably, the positively charged cyclopropylamine in venadaparib established a salt bridge (through E535) and a hydrogen bond (via N531) within the binding pocket. For comparison, AZ9482 was well stacked by the surrounding aromatic residues including H625, Y652, Y659 and Y670. In an assessment of trophozoites viability, AZ9482 exhibited a dose-and time-dependent anti-trophozoite effect by suppressing Acanthamoeba PARP activity, unlike olaparib and venadaparib. An Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide apoptosis assay revealed AZ9482 induced trophozoite necrotic cell death rather than apoptosis. Transcriptomics analyses conducted on Acanthamoeba trophozoites treated with AZ9482 demonstrated an atlas of differentially regulated proteins and genes, and found that AZ9482 rapidly upregulates a multitude of DNA damage repair pathways in trophozoites, and intriguingly downregulates several virulent genes. Analyzing gene expression related to DNA damage repair pathway and the rate of apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) sites indicated DNA damage efficacy and repair modulation in Acanthamoeba trophozoites following AZ9482 treatment.

Discussion

Collectively, these findings highlight AZ9482, as a structurally unique PARP inhibitor, provides a promising prototype for advancing anti-Acanthamoeba drug research.
Promoting transdisciplinary collaboration in academia: uniting for climate-resilient health
Authors: Qamar Wajiha , Qayum Mehran , Nisa Waqar un , Khaleeq Nadia , Ali Asma
Published: May 2024

In a world where some regions are directly experiencing the effects of the climate change, while others are more vulnerable; this article dives into the deep and frequently catastrophic impact of the climate change on vulnerable countries. This review emphasizes the need for transdisciplinary academic collaboration, including social scientists, healthcare professionals, engineers, policy experts, and climate scientists, and underscores academia’s potential role in advancing climate-resilient health systems in these areas. The study promotes inclusive research that prioritizes at-risk groups, involves communities, and supports culturally sensible methodologies. Beyond their traditional tasks, academia has an obligation for action, learning, innovation, and change. To address the complex health concerns brought on by the planetary crisis, collaboration across academic fields and in tandem with communities, governments, and international organizations is crucial. Ongoing collaboration between academia, governments, and stakeholders is crucial to developing healthcare systems and technologies that are climate resilient. The complex role of academia involves developing pioneering solutions in healthcare for a sustainable future, advocating for policies based on evidence, and educating the next generation of professionals.
Climate variability and change in Ecuador: dynamic downscaling of regional projections with RegCM4 and HadGEM2-ES for informed adaptation strategies
Authors: Portalanza Diego , Torres Malena , Rosso Flavia , Zuluaga Cristian Felipe , Durigon Angelica , Horgan Finbarr G. , Alava Eduardo , Ferraz Simone
Published: May 2024

Ecuador, a country with distinct coastal (CO), highland (HL), and Amazon (AM) regions that are characterized by unique climatic, ecological, and socio-economic features is highly vulnerable to climate change. This study focuses on these three regions, highlighting their individual importance in the broader context of Ecuador's climate vulnerability. Utilizing dynamically downscaled data from the Regional Climate Model (RCM), we generated precipitation and air temperature projections for the period 2070–2099 under three different climate change scenarios. We indicate projected temperature increases across all three regions: mean temperature increases for the CO, HL and AM regions are of 1.35, 1.55, and 1.21°C, respectively. Each year, the largest temperature increases are predicted for the third quarter (June–August), with the smallest increases predicted for the last quarter (December–February). Precipitation patterns show varied changes, with CO exhibiting a positive mean daily change, in contrast to a mean negative change in the AM region. These region-specific projections underscore the differential impacts of climate change within Ecuador and highlight the necessity for tailored adaptation measures. The study's novel approach, focusing on distinct regional impacts within a single nation, offers valuable insights for policymakers, aiding in the development of effective, region-specific climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. This targeted approach is crucial to address unique challenges faced by different regions, thereby supporting national resilience strategies.
The association between frailty and in-hospital mortality in critically ill patients with congestive heart failure: results from MIMIC-IV database
Authors: Su Dongsheng , Wang Fengyun , Yang Yanhua , Zhu Yinchuan , Wang Tong , Zheng Keyang , Tang Jianmin
Published: May 2024

Background

Frailty correlates with adverse outcomes in many cardiovascular diseases and is prevalent in individuals with heart failure (HF). The Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS) offers an integrated, validated solution for frailty assessment in acute care settings, but its application in critically ill patients with congestive HF lacks exploration. This study aimed to identify the association between frailty assessed by the HFRS and in-hospital mortality in critically ill patients with congestive HF.

Methods

This observational study retrospectively enrolled 12,179 critically ill patients with congestive HF. Data from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care IV database was used. The HFRS was calculated to assess frailty. Patients were categorized into three groups: non-frailty (HFRS < 5, n = 7,961), pre-frailty (5 ≤ HFRS < 15, n = 3,684), and frailty (HFRS ≥ 15, n = 534). Outcomes included in-hospital mortality, length of intensive care unit stay, and length of hospital stay. Multiple logistic regression and Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoothing (LOWESS) smoother were used to investigate the association between frailty and outcomes. Subgroup analysis was employed to elucidate the correlation between frailty levels and in-hospital mortality across diverse subgroups.

Results

12,179 patients were enrolled, 6,679 (54.8%) were male, and the average age was 71.05 ± 13.94 years. The overall in-hospital mortality was 11.7%. In-hospital mortality increased with the escalation of frailty levels (non-frailty vs. pre-frailty vs. frailty: 9.7% vs. 14.8% vs. 20.2%, P < 0.001). The LOWESS curve demonstrated that the HFRS was monotonically positively correlated with in-hospital mortality. Upon controlling for potential confounders, both pre-frailty and frailty statuses were found to be independently linked to a heightened risk of mortality during hospitalization (odds ratio [95% confidence interval]: pre-frailty vs. non-frailty: 1.27 [1.10–1.47], P = 0.001; frailty vs. non-frailty: 1.40 [1.07–1.83], P = 0.015; P for trend < 0.001). Significant interactions between frailty levels and in-hospital mortality were observed in the following subgroups: race, heart rate, creatinine, antiplatelet drug, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, chronic renal disease, and sepsis.

Conclusion

In critically ill patients with congestive HF, frailty as assessed by the HFRS emerged as an independent predictor for the risk of in-hospital mortality. Prospective, randomized studies are required to determine whether improvement of frailty levels could improve clinical prognosis.
Short- and long-term performance of risk calculation tools for mortality in patients with acute coronary syndrome
Authors: Aizawa Takatoku , Nagao Tomoaki , Oda Yusuke , Nakano Suguru , Ito Kazuki , Shirai Yusuke , Hosoya Natsuko , Sawasaki Kohei , Arai Junji , Fujita Shinya , Muto Masahiro , Oda Teiji , Maekawa Yuichiro
Published: May 2024

Background

The mortality rate of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) remains high. Therefore, patients with ACS should undergo early risk stratification, for which various risk calculation tools are available. However, it remains uncertain whether the predictive performance varies over time between risk calculation tools for different target periods. This study aimed to compare the predictive performance of risk calculation tools in estimating short- and long-term mortality risks in patients with ACS, while considering different observation periods using time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis.

Methods

This study included 404 consecutive patients with ACS who underwent coronary angiography at our hospital from March 2017 to January 2021. The ACTION and GRACE scores for short-term risk stratification purposes and CRUSADE scores for long-term risk stratification purposes were calculated for all participants. The participants were followed up for 36 months to assess mortality. Using time-dependent ROC analysis, we evaluated the area under the curve (AUC) of the ACTION, CRUSADE, and GRACE scores at 1, 6, 12, 24, and 36 months.

Results

Sixty-six patients died during the observation periods. The AUCs at 1, 6, 12, 24, and 36 months of the ACTION score were 0.942, 0.925, 0.889, 0.856, and 0.832; those of the CRUSADE score were 0.881, 0.883, 0.862, 0.876, and 0.862; and those of the GRACE score 0.949, 0.928, 0.888, 0.875, and 0.860, respectively.

Conclusions

The ACTION and GRACE scores were excellent risk stratification tools for mortality in the short term. The prognostic performance of each risk score was almost similar in the long term, but the CRUSADE score might be a superior risk stratification tool in the longer term than 3 years.