bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gaze, The
Authors: Murta Anna P.
Published: May 2017

The gaze, more notably the male gaze, is one of the central constructs utilized in film, gender, and postcolonial studies or other fields of academic criticism. Put simply, the gaze is the
look
induced by the message producer and followed by the message receiver in the process of creating meaning. It generally refers to the way in which cinema‐and, later on, other cultural products, visual or not – leads the spectator to look in a certain direction or to view things in a certain way, revealing at the same time the worldview of the characters in the film and the ideologies behind the camera. In her essay “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema,” written in 1973 and published in 1975, feminist scholar Laura Mulvey (1989b) brought the concept of the “male gaze” to prominence by arguing that mainstream Hollywood cinema makes use of three looks – the look of the camera, the look from the narrative characters, and the accomplice look of the spectator – in order to generate male pleasure through women's objectification, thus reinforcing a monolithic patriarchal ideology.
Globalization
Authors: Maus Derek C.
Published: May 2017

Globalization signifies a range of processes that replaces traditionally localized social and cultural structures (e.g., tribes, nation‐states, ethnic groups, languages) with more universal ones. Some cultural historians have defined globalization as simply an intensification of fundamental processes originating in the related systems of European colonialism and international mercantilism dating back to the early Renaissance or even the Hellenistic Mediterranean of antiquity. Others locate globalization's roots squarely in the rise of industrialization in Europe and North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although both of these perspectives are useful in understanding the wider historical context of recent trends, the most common contemporary usage, and the one that is pertinent here, refers to the post‐World War II period that has been marked by the establishment and expansion of political, economic, and social institutions with a trans‐ or supranational influence. Such institutions include the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (the WTO, established in 1995,47 years after the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT] outlined its guiding principles), and in more recent decades a profusion of private nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with explicitly international missions.
G
rossberg,
L
awrence
Authors: Parker Tracey K.
Published: May 2017

Lawrence Grossberg is a prominent cultural studies scholar whose research has focused on American popular culture and youth culture in a predominantly Marxist context. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1947, Grossberg attended the University of Rochester and studied with Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart at the University of Birmingham, England. He completed his PhD in speech communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign in 1976. Grossberg has taught at the University of Illinois and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he is currently the Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies and the director of the university program in cultural studies. Grossberg also serves as senior editor of the journal
Cultural Studies
.
H
all,
S
tuart
Authors: Dworkin Dennis
Published: May 2017

Stuart Hall is one of the founding figures of British cultural studies, providing a number of incisive commentaries that have helped to shape the field. Born in Jamaica in 1932, Hall has lived in Britain since 1951, originally studying literature at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. He has held several academic positions, including director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham and chair of the Sociology Department at the Open University. Hall is a major analyst of the black British experience, and an influential political theorist and public intellectual. He played a critical role in founding the British New Left in the late 1950s and was in the forefront of analyzing the New Right in Britain in the 1970s and ‘80s. Hall is responsible for coining the term “Thatcherism,” and he played a prominent role in rethinking left‐wing politics in an age of globalization and conservative hegemony.
H
ebdige,
D
ick
Authors: Gelder Ken
Published: May 2017

Dick Hebdige (b. 1951) is a British cultural theorist best known for his influential book,
Subculture: The Meaning of Style
(1979). His earliest essays were published in
Resistance through Rituals
(Hall ∓Jefferson 2006 [1975]), a collection of work about youth subcultures produced at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University, where he was a graduate student. In these essays, Hebdige wrote a eulogy for English mods, portraying them as examples of “the first all‐British White Negro,” a description he drew from Norman Mailer's account of the American beat or “hipster.” He also wrote about “Reggae, rastas ∓rudies” – the only essay in
Resistance through Rituals
to deal directly with racial issues among British youth in the 1970s – where he developed his sense of the subversive possibility of subcultural musical styles and celebrated cross‐cultural flows and influences.
H
oggart,
R
ichard
Authors: Gibson Mark
Published: May 2017

Richard Hoggart (b. 1918) was a key figure in the early development of British cultural studies. Together with Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of the field (Hall 1980a). His book
The Uses of Literacy
(1957) was influential in bringing attention to the relation between culture and class in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s and in opening the possibility of a serious interpretative study of popular culture and everyday life. He was the founder and first director (1962–73) of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, which went on to become one of the most important sites for the development of cultural studies as an academic field of study.
Horror
Authors: Jones Darryl
Published: May 2017

Horror is a genre of fiction and film intended to frighten or horrify its audience through the use of images involving monsters, supernatural evil, or abject violence. Because of the often extreme nature of its images and subjects, horror has frequently been dismissed as a peripheral or even harmful diversion from the real business of culture. Yet, as a growing body of theory demonstrates, the study of horror fruitfully combines a number of overlapping intellectual approaches and discourses – philosophical aesthetics, popular cultural studies and sociology, the theory and history of literature, art and film, debates on the ethics and representation. The gothic, a particular subset of horror revisiting imagined versions of the European past to define and shore up a liberal Enlightenment modernity, began as a historically specific discourse in the mid eighteenth century and was heavily theorized even then (see the collections by Clery ∓Miles 2000, and by Myrone 2006, for a great deal of this work). As Chris Baldick (1987) argues, “the politics of monstrosity” that animates much of the thinking on the subject was powerfully systematized by Edmund Burke, first in his essay on the sublime (1990[1759]), and then most powerfully in
Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1968[1790]). Written by an Anglo‐Irishman and in response to French Jacobinism,
Reflections
implicated the gothic in national ideologies and identity politics from its inception. As Raymond Williams argues in
The Country and the City
(1973) and elsewhere, realism, seemingly positing narrative and epistemological certainties, presupposes (or even constructs) a commensurately stable polity. In extremis, realism has been read as an epistemologically imperializing mode, subsuming and controlling rowdy, seditious, polyphonic, or heterodox voices within its centralizing narrative gaze. Much work has been done on the appeal of gothic and horror to those marginalized, peripheral, subaltern, or colonized identities for whom the ideological stability of realism simply could not obtain. One brief example of this will suffice here, the case of Ireland, which seemingly countered or shadowed the “great tradition” of the realist novel in England with an equally vigorous gothic one (Maturin, Le Fanu, Wilde, Stoker) – a case that has been influentially discussed by Terry Eagleton (1995). This, however, is a complicated issue, as the most influential practitioners of Irish gothic have invariably been Anglo‐Irish colonizers, and thus may well reflect the paranoia of a greatly outnumbered Protestant settler class (see, e.g., Killeen 2005). Baldick ∓Mighall (1999) have powerfully taken issue with the intellectual orthodoxy of institutionalized “gothic criticism,” which tends inevitably to construct the gothic as a subversive counter to the dominant conservatism of realism. Certainly,
pace
Fredric Jameson's dismissal of the gothic as “that boring and exhausted paradigm” (1990: 289), this very institutionalizing has led inevitably to a rapid proliferation of critical‐theoretical writing on gothic and horror.
J
ames,
C. L. R.
Authors: Worcester Kent
Published: May 2017

Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901–89) was a writer, editor, public speaker, and political activist whose oeuvre has attracted increased notice across the humanities in recent years. Scholars from a range of disciplines and subfields have shown an interest in James's distinctive approach to cultural and political questions. A profusion of biographical and critical studies has explored various aspects of James's peripatetic life and work as well as his relationship to contemporary debates concerning postcolonialism, cultural studies, and radical democracy. Along with Antonio Gramsci, he may be described as a major twentieth‐century Marxist thinker whose relevance remains uncontestable in the twenty‐first.
K
ittler,
F
riedrich
Authors: Winthrop‐Young Geoffrey
Published: May 2017

Considered one of the most important contemporary theorists in his native Germany, Friedrich Kittler (b. 1943) is best known for his concept of “discourse networks,” defined as “the network of technologies and institutions that allow a given culture to select, store and process relevant data” (Kittler 1990 [1985]). Following the translation of
Discourse Networks
(1990[1985]) and
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
(1999 [1986]) and the publication of the collection
Literature, Media, Information Systems
(1997), he has also acquired a considerable following in the English‐speaking world, especially among those working on media and the intersection of poststructuralism and technoculture.
L
atour,
B
runo
Authors: Freed Mark M.
Published: May 2017

Bruno Latour is a leading figure in the philosophy, sociology, and anthropology of science referred to collectively as “science studies” or “science and technology studies” (STS). He has played an important role in developing the method of sociological analysis called “actor‐network theory” (ANT).
M
etz,
C
hristian
Authors: Ayres Jackson
Published: May 2017

Christian Metz (1931–93) is an important and influential figure in the fields of film theory and film language. Metz is known best for pioneering a scientific approach to film theory, applying both semiotic and psychoanalytic models to the study of film. Born in Beziers, France, Metz received the world's first doctorate in semiology, and taught at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris.
M
orris,
M
eaghan
Authors: Lewis Tania
Published: May 2017

Meaghan Morris is a leading intellectual in the field of cultural studies and one of a handful of Australian cultural theorists whose work has gained a considerable audience in the Anglo‐American academy. Her work spans a wide range of fields from cultural geography to feminism and is strongly informed by French theory, in particular theories of the everyday.
M
ulvey,
L
aura
Authors: Murta Anna P.
Published: May 2017

Laura Mulvey is a prominent cultural critic and filmmaker, known especially well for her readings of the gendering of film. Born in Oxford, England in 1941, Mulvey studied history at St Hilda's College, Oxford University. She is currently Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and was for a number of years associated with the British Film Institute. It was her essay “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema,” first published in
Screen
in 1975, that brought Mulvey to prominence in the women's movement and in the field of cultural studies. Later, the essay would become one of the most frequently cited and reproduced works of scholarly film criticism and would establish Mulvey as a pioneer of multidisciplinary approaches to film. The essay, along with several others, was later published in her collection
Visual and Other Pleasures
(1989).
N
andy,
A
shis
Authors: Idris Farhad
Published: May 2017

Ashis Nandy is an Indian cultural critic whose work covers such topics as nationalism, modernity, history, religion, literature, film, psychology, science, development, and the future. These issues are of fundamental importance in the developing world. Nandy has explored them primarily in the Indian context, in more than a dozen books in the last three decades and, in the process, he has formulated a unique theoretical system of his own.
Oral History and Oral Culture
Authors: Cochran Robert
Published: May 2017

Oral culture is culture based on the spoken rather than the written word; oral history is a record of the past based on spoken accounts. The enabling insights leading to wide‐ranging and spectacularly fruitful new developments in the study of oral cultures originated, paradoxically enough, in classics, that most venerable of humanities disciplines. The American Milman Parry centered his collecting in the 1930s on Serbo‐Croatianguslari,but his influential “oral formulaic theory,” presented in papers published in French in the 1920s, was developed first of all to describe the compositional methods deployed in the creation of Homeric epics (1987[1971]). For Parry, the key to the art of these epics lay in neither memorization nor improvisation, though it featured elements of both; what was crucial was the performance, each iteration unique in its enactment for a particular audience and situation, of a traditional repertoire of lines and parts of lines, scenes, and tales.
Posthumanism
Authors: Badmington Neil
Published: May 2017

Posthumanism considers the possibility that historical phenomena (such as advances in technology or discoveries about animals) are leading to fundamental changes in the human species and its relationship with the world. It thus involves radically rethinking the dominant, familiar humanist account of who “we” are as human beings. According to the humanist model (a clear and influential example of which can be found in the seventeenth‐century writings of Rene Descartes), the figure of the human has a natural and eternal place at the very center of things, where it is clearly distinguished from machines and animals, where it shares with all other human beings a unique and universal essence, where it is the origin of meaning and the sovereign subject of history, and where it acts according to something called “human nature.” For humanists, “Man,” to use the problematic gendered term often employed in accounts of “the human condition,” enjoys a position of automatic and unquestionable hegemony. “Man” is the measure of all things.
S
ahlins,
M
arshall
Authors: Li Victor
Published: May 2017

One of the most important figures in American anthropology, Marshall David Sahlins (b. 1930) is known not only for his ethnographic and historical studies of Polynesian societies but also for his vigorous championing and defense of anthropology's culture concept. Born in Chicago, Sahlins received his master's degree from the University of Michigan in 1952. After earning his doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University in 1954, he returned to teach at Michigan. In the 1960s, along with other faculty members, he organized teach‐ins to protest against the war in Vietnam. In 1973, Sahlins moved to the University of Chicago where he is currently the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology Emeritus.
Science Fiction
Authors: Luckhurst Roger
Published: May 2017

Science fiction is a genre of popular culture, commonly considered to have emerged as a literature in the West in the nineteenth century, which addresses what it means to live in technologically saturated societies. Since its consolidation in mass cultural pulp magazines and novels in the 1920s, the genre has burst the bounds of the printed word and developed distinct forms in comic strips, radio, cinema, television, and computer games. Thus, for some commentators, it has become less a strictly identifiable genre than a generalized mode of technocultural apprehension, and one with increasing significance.
Simulation/Simulacra
Authors: Gómez Rocio
Published: May 2017

In contemporary cultural studies, the terms “simulation” and “simulacra” invariably refer to Jean Baudrillard's theory of postmodern simulation as the representation of a representation, rather than of reality. As a critic of the image in the age of mass media, Baudrillard highlights its ability to destroy the original predecessor of its kind. He details his theories of simulacra in his books,Symbolic Exchange and Death(1993 [1976]) andSimulations(1983), but consistently referred back to it in other books such asThe Consumer Society(1998 [1970]) andThe Evil Demon of Images(1987 [1984]). Simulacra challenge the perception of what is the real, rendering the philosophical study of the real, or metaphysics, useless. By serving as a substitution for the original rather than as a representation of it, the simulacrum creates a distance between itself and the original that negates its origin or reality. This lack of origin spawns what Baudrillard calls the “hyper‐real.” In hyper‐reality images, or signs, no longer allude to their respective original, or real, which is now deemed unnecessary.
Subculture
Authors: Gelder Ken
Published: May 2017

A subculture is best understood as a social group that is in some waynon‐normative or nonconformist. Subcultures are “minor” social formations, usually distinguished from dominant modes of sociality – family, religion, vocation, school, politics, nation, “society” itself – and from what are often rather loosely referred to as “mainstream” cultural practices and tastes. The sociological use of the term developed during the 1940s (e.g., Gordon 1947), even though subcultures of one kind or another have of course been with us for a very long time. But the analysis of subcultures raises two immediate problems which follow from the definition given above. First, in what ways can a subculture's non‐normativity or nonconformity be defined? And second, how can the sociality of a subculture be accounted for?
Television Studies
Authors: Holmes Su
Published: May 2017

Television studies is a discipline that seeks to understand and analyze the medium of television, whether at the level of industry, policy, programs, history, or audience. Television was “studied” and analyzed long before the rise of what we now call “television studies,” which emerged in the 1970s and ‘80s. It initially consisted of research into television that was prompted by anxiety about its negative influence and perceived social and cultural “effects.” The anxiety over the effects of television was especially apparent in the US, where television (like radio before it) was built upon a commercial framework. A key area of concern – which was certainly also traceable in other national contexts – was the relationship between television and the behavior of children. Emerging from within the social sciences tradition, this approach was informed by quantitative methods of analysis, and by statistical techniques of data interpretation (Allen 2004: 3). In the 1950s and ‘60s, during the emergence of the baby boom generation, concerns over juvenile delinquency, as well as the relatively new status of television as a mass medium, ensured that social science studies devoted considerable attention to the (often negatively perceived) relationship between television and the young.
T
hompson,
E. P.
Authors: Dworkin Dennis
Published: May 2017

E. P. Thompson (1924–93) is among the most influential historians of the second half of the twentieth century. His masterpiece,
The Making of the English Working Class
(1968 [1963]), helped define the new social and labor history, which aspired to produce “total history” grounded in a bottom‐up or “history from below” perspective. Thompson's revision of Marxist class theory, his emphasis on the cultural domain of social life, and his stress on the role of human agency in history inspired more than a generation of historians and influenced sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural theorists. In addition to being a historian, Thompson was a poet and a political activist. He was among the founders of the British New Left in the 1950s and a long‐time proponent of nuclear disarmament. A leading figure in the European disarmament movement, he debated Casper Weinberger, Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan, at the Oxford Union in 1984. Thompson's academic career was spent in working‐class adult education, at the University of Leeds, and at the Social History Centre at the University of Warwick, which he helped found in 1968. He resigned from Warwick in 1971, following his critique that the university pandered to the corporate sector, and spent the rest of his life as a political activist and independent scholar.
W
eber,
M
ax
Authors: Sica Alan
Published: May 2017

Karl Emil Maximilian Weber (1864–1920) was one of the most influential German thinkers of the early twentieth century. An important political economist and social historian, he is best known as one of the founders of modern sociology. The first of eight children, Weber was born in Erfurt, now central Germany. His father, Max Weber, Sr., was a lawyer and government magistrate there, who later relocated to Berlin to pursue a notable political career. Weber's mother, Helene Fallenstein, came from a well‐established family of international merchants and professionals, and lived an ethically aware and constrained life of Pietist propriety which strongly influenced the ideas of her eldest son. This contrasted sharply with the pragmatic realpolitik that her husband exemplified while helping to shape the new German nationstate. Weber's early life followed the pattern immortalized by Thomas Mann in
Buddenbrooks
(1902), that of the highly educated, monied bourgeoisie with cosmopolitan interests. Surprisingly, until he finished undergraduate school in 1885, Weber did not seem exceptional, having been bored by conventional schooling. Yet his parents' home in Berlin did provide a cultural setting that suited a sickly young man (weakened by meningitis) with bookish tendencies, since it offered not only enormous “cultural capital,” but also a regular stream of notables, political and scholarly, whom Weber got to know personally as he matured, listening in at his parents' social events.
W
illiams,
R
aymond
Authors: Milner Andrew
Published: May 2017

Raymond Williams was a key figure in the early development of British cultural studies and the founder of “cultural materialism,” a school of literary and cultural theory often likened, perhaps misleadingly, to American “New Historicism.” He was also the single most important intellectual spokesman for the early British New Left. He was a prolific writer, whose work included realist novels and science fiction, television drama and literary criticism, political manifestos and pioneering studies of the mass media, historical philology and high cultural theory. He was born into a Welsh working‐class family in Pandy, Monmouthshire in 1921, won a scholarship to grammar school and later a place at Cambridge University, where he studied English. He served in the British Army during World War II, returned to complete his degree, worked in adult education, then as a lecturer and later Professor of Drama at Cambridge. In his last years, he became increasingly sympathetic to Welsh nationalism and radical ecopolitics. He died of a heart attack at Saffron Walden in Essex, England in 1988, and is buried at Clodock in Monmouthshire.
Effects of trait anger, driving anger, and driving experience on dangerous driving behavior: A moderated mediation analysis
Authors: Ge Yan , Zhang Qian , Zhao Wenguo , Zhang Kan , Qu Weina
Published: May 2017

To explore the effect of anger behind the wheel on driving behavior and accident involvement has been the subject of many studies. However, few studies have explored the interaction between anger and driving experience on dangerous driving behavior. This study is a moderated mediation analysis of the effect of trait anger, driving anger, and driving experience on driving behavior. A sample of 303 drivers was tested using the Trait Anger Scale (TAS), the Driving Anger Scale (DAS), and the Dula Dangerous Driving Index (DDDI). The results showed that trait anger and driving anger were positively correlated with dangerous driving behavior. Driving anger partially mediated the effect of trait anger on dangerous driving behavior. Driving experience moderated the relationship between trait anger and driving anger. It also moderated the effect of driving anger on dangerous driving behavior. These results suggest that drivers with more driving experience may be safer as they are not easily irritated during driving.
A Practical ITO Replacement Strategy: Sputtering‐Free Processing of a Metallic Nanonetwork
Authors: Xian Zhike , Han Bing , Li Songru , Yang Chaobin , Wu Sujuan , Lu Xubing , Gao Xingsen , Zeng Min , Wang Qianming , Bai Pengfei , Naughton Michael J. , Zhou Guofu , Liu Jun‐Ming , Kempa Krzysztof , Gao Jinwei
Published: May 2017

Metallic network, an important indium tin oxide (ITO) replacement, is extensively studied due to its advantages in optoelectronic properties and mechanical flexibility. Vacuum sputtering/evaporation‐free processing is an essential step for roll‐to‐roll production of low‐cost and large‐size metallic network transparent electrodes. In this paper, a high performance metallic crack‐nanonetwork (CNN) is demonstrated by employing a sputtering/evaporation‐free process, which combines advantages of the standard CNN processing with electroless plating, enabled by unique properties of the commercial amorphous fluoropolymer CYTOP. This network shows outstanding optoelectronic performance, with the best figure of merit ≈ 20000 (at T ≈ 86.4% and Rs ≈ 0.13 Ω sq−1), as well as excellent mechanical flexibility and stability. This network outperforms the current industry standard, ITO, in performance and cost, as a result of the elimination of the sputtering/evaporation step. This is therefore a dramatic step toward replacing ITO with a metallic cracking nanonetwork.
Regioselective Synthesis of Heteroatom‐Functionalized Cyclobutene‐triflones and Cyclobutenones
Authors: Alcaide Benito , Almendros Pedro , Lázaro‐Milla Carlos
Published: May 2017

The controlled metal‐free synthesis of a vast variety of heteroatom‐containing cyclobutene‐triflones [bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)cyclobutenes] and cyclobutenones has been developed starting from heteroatom‐substituted alkynes and a pyridinium salt (a latent Tf2C=CH2 source). This powerful methodology, involving cyclization reactions, allows for the selective preparation of oxygen‐, nitrogen‐, bromine‐, chlorine‐, iodine‐, sulfur‐, selenium‐, tellurium‐, phosphorus‐, and silicon‐functionalized cyclobutene derivatives.

magnified image
Osmotic Engine: Translating Osmotic Pressure into Macroscopic Mechanical Force via Poly(Acrylic Acid) Based Hydrogels
Authors: Arens Lukas , Weißenfeld Felix , Klein Christopher O. , Schlag Karin , Wilhelm Manfred
Published: May 2017

Poly(acrylic acid)‐based hydrogels can swell up to 100–1000 times their own weight in desalinated water due to osmotic forces. As the swelling is about a factor of 2–12 lower in seawater‐like saline solutions (4.3 wt% NaCl) than in deionized water, cyclic swelling, and shrinking can potentially be used to move a piston in an osmotic motor. Consequently, chemical energy is translated into mechanical energy. This conversion is driven by differences in chemical potential and by changes in entropy. This is special, as most thermodynamic engines rely instead on the conversion of heat into mechanical energy. To optimize the efficiency of this process, the degree of neutralization, the degree of crosslinking, and the particle size of the hydrogels are varied. Additionally, different osmotic engine prototypes are constructed. The maximum mean power of 0.23 W kg−1 dry hydrogel is found by using an external load of 6 kPa, a polymer with 1.7 mol% crosslinking, a degree of neutralization of 10 mol%, and a particle size of 370–670 µm. As this is achieved only in the first round of optimization, higher values of the maximum power average over one cycle seem realistic.
Photoinitiated Polymerization‐Induced Self‐Assembly (Photo‐PISA): New Insights and Opportunities
Authors: Yeow Jonathan , Boyer Cyrille
Published: May 2017

The polymerization‐induced self‐assembly (PISA) process is a useful synthetic tool for the efficient synthesis of polymeric nanoparticles of different morphologies. Recently, studies on visible light initiated PISA processes have offered a number of key research opportunities that are not readily accessible using traditional thermally initiated systems. For example, visible light mediated PISA (Photo‐PISA) enables a high degree of control over the dispersion polymerization process by manipulation of the wavelength and intensity of incident light. In some cases, the final nanoparticle morphology of a single formulation can be modulated by simple manipulation of these externally controlled parameters. In addition, temporal (and in principle spatial) control over the Photo‐PISA process can be achieved in most cases. Exploitation of the mild room temperature polymerizations conditions can enable the encapsulation of thermally sensitive therapeutics to occur without compromising the polymerization rate and their activities. Finally, the Photo‐PISA process can enable further mechanistic insights into the morphological evolution of nanoparticle formation such as the effects of temperature on the self‐assembly process. The purpose of this mini‐review is therefore to examine some of these recent advances that have been made in Photo‐PISA processes, particularly in light of the specific advantages that may exist in comparison with conventional thermally initiated systems.
Two‐dimensional modeling of an absorbing falling film in its development zone
Authors: Wylock Christophe , Scheid Benoit
Published: May 2017

This work presents the modeling of a vertical falling film expanding or shrinking from the inlet manifold. Considering a stationary approach, the film shape, the flow field and the absorption rate of an ambient gas are computed. For the flow field, one dimensional (1‐D) second‐order weighted integral boundary layer (WIBL) model is shown to accurately reproduce the film deformations. The gas transfer is then solved in a 2‐D predeformed domain to investigate the impact of the film deformations on the gas absorption rate. It is found that a significant mass transfer enhancement, as compared to a flat film, is obtained when the film is expanding due to the concomitant increase of the concentration gradient perpendicular to the interface. On the contrary, a slight hindrance of the mass transfer is observed when the film is shrinking, although it remains in this case very close to the flat film analytical solution. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 4370–4378, 2017
The highly pleiotropic gene SLC39A8 as an opportunity to gain insight into the molecular pathogenesis of schizophrenia
Authors: Costas Javier
Published: May 2017

There is a long way from the initial discovery of a genome‐wide significant signal to mechanistic understanding of the association. Identification of the gene and causal polymorphism usually requires an extensive additional effort. The schizophrenia genome‐wide significant locus at 4q24 may be a rare exception to this pattern. As discussed in this review, the association at this locus is most probably driven by a functional missense variant at the metal cations transporter SLC39A8. The variant, rs13107325, is almost exclusive of European populations and is one of the most pleiotropic variants of the genome, being associated at genome‐wide significant level with several additional traits, such as body mass index, Crohn's disease, blood pressure related‐traits, and serum levels of manganese, N‐terminal pro‐B‐type natriuretic peptide and HDL‐cholesterol. SLC39A8 seems to be subject to recent natural selection in Europeans. It is almost ubiquitously expressed and its physiological role is beginning to be elucidated, mainly in relation to immunity. This manuscript presents arguments in favor of the rs13107325 variant as the functional variant responsible for the association of this locus with schizophrenia, reviews the genetic associations with this gene, the evidences of natural selection on the gene, and the known aspects about its structure and physiological functions. Finally, some hypotheses about putative mechanisms for its association with schizophrenia are presented based on this knowledge, including impaired immunity/inflammation, interference with glutamatergic neurotransmission, homeostasis of essential metals in brain, such as iron, zinc or manganese, or neurotoxicity by heavy metals, such as cadmium or lead.
Safety and tolerability of surfactant nasal irrigation
Authors: Turner Justin H. , Wu Jeffanie , Dorminy Cindy A. , Chandra Rakesh K.
Published: May 2017

Background

Abnormal mucus composition and bacterial biofilms are thought to contribute to the pathophysiology of rhinosinusitis. Addition of a mucoactive surfactant to saline irrigation solution has been hypothesized to address these factors. We evaluated the safety and tolerability of a reformulated surfactant in a sample of normal subjects.

Methods

A total of 33 volunteers were randomly assigned to receive either surfactant solution or buffered saline at baseline in a controlled crossover study design. Each subject underwent rhinoscopic exam and in‐office smell testing via the 40‐question smell identification test (SIT). Those with non‐normosmic results or active rhinitis symptoms were excluded. Subjects were instructed to irrigate twice daily with the selected solution for 1 week while keeping a daily diary. For week 2, treatment was stopped. During week 3, each group switched to the other treatment. Exam, SIT, and degree of congestion were assessed after each phase.

Results

Use of surfactant led to a marginal reduction in mean SIT score of 1.5 points, which was statistically significant (p = 0.012). A clinically meaningful reduction in SIT score, defined as ≥4 points, was observed in 18% (6/33) of subjects after surfactant vs 3% (1/33) after saline (p = 0.046). During the surfactant phase, moderate or severe congestion was reported in 29% (8/28) of subjects completing the diary. In contrast, only 6% (2/32) of subjects reported moderate congestion after the saline phase (p = 0.021).

Conclusion

In normal volunteers, surfactant nasal irrigation may be associated with tolerability issues due to congestion. A subset may experience reduction in olfactory acuity that appears reversible.
Safety and efficacy of a bioabsorbable fluticasone propionate–eluting sinus dressing in postoperative management of endoscopic sinus surgery: a randomized clinical trial
Authors: Adriaensen Gwijde F.J.P.M. , Lim Keng‐Hua , Fokkens Wytske J.
Published: May 2017

Background

Postoperative wound healing after endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is an important factor in procedural success. Local steroids and separation of opposing mucosa are commonly implemented to optimize healing. A bioabsorbable, fluticasone propionate (FP)‐eluting implant, SinuBand FP, was assessed for its safety and efficacy when used in patients with CRS and nasal polyps, who were indicated for ESS including bilateral anterior and posterior ethmoidectomy.

Methods

A first‐in‐human, randomized, partially double‐blind, single‐tertiary‐referral‐center, controlled trial enrolling 30 patients receiving 2 of 3 treatments (1 per sinus, intrapatient control): SinuBand FP, SinuBand (without FP), or standard nasal pack (Merocel®). Primary outcome measures were local safety, ocular safety (intraocular pressure [IOP], lens opacity), and 24‐hour urine cortisol. Secondary measures (evaluated by independent review of postoperative video endoscopies) were ethmoid inflammation, polyp score, adhesion formation, and Lund‐Kennedy score. Patient‐reported outcomes of postoperative pain, nasal congestion, and nasal discharge were collected.

Results

Of 30 enrolled patients (used for safety analysis), 27 patients completed the trial. SinuBand FP showed local safety, ocular safety, and no significant change in 24‐hour urine cortisol. SinuBand FP showed a trend to do better concerning inflammation. Concerning polyp score SinuBand FP did significantly better compared to Merocel (p = 0.03). No significance compared to SinuBand without corticosteroids (p = 0.97). Adhesions were comparable across treatments. Patient reported pain was nominally lower in the SinuBand group.

Conclusion

SinuBand FP was well tolerated and showed evidence of efficacy. A larger study is needed to further evaluate and confirm the benefits of SinuBand FP.
Imaging Endogenous Metal Ions in Living Cells Using a DNAzyme–Catalytic Hairpin Assembly Probe
Authors: Wu Zhenkun , Fan Huanhuan , Satyavolu Nitya Sai Reddy , Wang WenJing , Lake Ryan , Jiang Jian‐Hui , Lu Yi
Published: May 2017

DNAzymes are a promising platform for metal ion detection, and a few DNAzyme‐based sensors have been reported to detect metal ions inside cells. However, these methods required an influx of metal ions to increase their concentrations for detection. To address this major issue, the design of a catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) reaction to amplify the signal from photocaged Na+‐specific DNAzyme to detect endogenous Na+ inside cells is reported. Upon light activation and in the presence of Na+, the NaA43 DNAzyme cleaves its substrate strand and releases a product strand, which becomes an initiator that trigger the subsequent CHA amplification reaction. This strategy allows detection of endogenous Na+ inside cells, which has been demonstrated by both fluorescent imaging of individual cells and flow cytometry of the whole cell population. This method can be generally applied to detect other endogenous metal ions and thus contribute to deeper understanding of the role of metal ions in biological systems.
The Nature of Ion Conduction in Methylammonium Lead Iodide: A Multimethod Approach
Authors: Senocrate Alessandro , Moudrakovski Igor , Kim Gee Yeong , Yang Tae‐Youl , Gregori Giuliano , Grätzel Michael , Maier Joachim
Published: May 2017

By applying a multitude of experimental techniques including 1H, 14N, 207Pb NMR and 127I NMR/NQR, tracer diffusion, reaction cell and doping experiments, as well as stoichiometric variation, conductivity, and polarization experiments, iodine ions are unambiguously shown to be the mobile species in CH3NH3PbI3, with iodine vacancies shown to represent the mechanistic centers under equilibrium conditions. Pb2+ and CH3NH3+ ions do not significantly contribute to the long range transport (upper limits for their contributions are given), whereby the latter exhibit substantial local motion. The decisive electronic contribution to the mixed conductivity in the experimental window stems from electron holes. As holes can be associated with iodine orbitals, local variations of the iodine stoichiometry may be fast and enable light effects on ion transport.
Polyunsaturated C‐Glycosidic 4‐Hydroxy‐2‐pyrone Derivatives: Total Synthesis Shows that Putative Orevactaene Is Likely Identical with Epipyrone A
Authors: Preindl Johannes , Schulthoff Saskia , Wirtz Conny , Lingnau Julia , Fürstner Alois
Published: May 2017

Orevactaene and epipyrone A were previously thought to comprise the same polyunsaturated tail but notably different C‐glycosylated 4‐hydroxy‐2‐pyrone head groups. Total synthesis now shows that the signature bicyclic framework assigned to orevactaene is a chimera; the compound is almost certainly identical with epipyrone A, whose previously unknown stereochemistry has also been established during this study. Key to success was the ready formation of the bicyclic core of putative orevactaene by a sequence of two alkyne cycloisomerization reactions using tungsten and gold catalysis. Equally important was the flexibility in the assembly process gained by the use of heterobimetallic polyunsaturated modules whose termini could be selectively and consecutively addressed in a practical one‐pot cross‐coupling sequence.
Superacids Based on Pentafluoroorthotellurate Derivatives of Aluminum
Authors: Wiesner Anja , Gries Thomas W. , Steinhauer Simon , Beckers Helmut , Riedel Sebastian
Published: May 2017

The new Lewis acid Al(OTeF5)3 and its acetonitrile adduct CH3CN→Al(OTeF5)3 were obtained by a simple one‐step synthesis in batches of up to 15 g. Al(OTeF5)3 and the adduct were characterized by vibrational spectroscopy (IR, Raman) and quantum‐chemical calculations. Furthermore, five different salts of the new weakly coordinating anion [Al(OTeF5)4]− were prepared in a two‐step procedure. [Ph4P][Al(OTeF5)4], Cs[Al(OTeF5)4], [Ph3C][Al(OTeF5)4], as well as the protonated benzene derivatives [C9H13][Al(OTeF5)4] and [C6H7][Al(OTeF5)4] were characterized by low‐temperature single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction and NMR spectroscopy. Arenium salts have rarely been characterized in the solid state and were synthesized in this work in a simplified fashion.
Localized Chemical Remodeling for Live Cell Imaging of Protein‐Specific Glycoform
Authors: Hui Jingjing , Bao Lei , Li Siqiao , Zhang Yi , Feng Yimei , Ding Lin , Ju Huangxian
Published: May 2017

Live cell imaging of protein‐specific glycoforms is important for the elucidation of glycosylation mechanisms and identification of disease states. The currently used metabolic oligosaccharide engineering (MOE) technology permits routinely global chemical remodeling (GCM) for carbohydrate site of interest, but can exert unnecessary whole‐cell scale perturbation and generate unpredictable metabolic efficiency issue. A localized chemical remodeling (LCM) strategy for efficient and reliable access to protein‐specific glycoform information is reported. The proof‐of‐concept protocol developed for MUC1‐specific terminal galactose/N‐acetylgalactosamine (Gal/GalNAc) combines affinity binding, off‐on switchable catalytic activity, and proximity catalysis to create a reactive handle for bioorthogonal labeling and imaging. Noteworthy assay features associated with LCM as compared with MOE include minimum target cell perturbation, short reaction timeframe, effectiveness as a molecular ruler, and quantitative analysis capability.
Study of Zinc Compounds for Improving the Reversibility of the Zinc Anode in Zinc–Air Secondary Batteries
Authors: Park Da‐Jeong , Yang Won‐Geun , Jeong Hee‐Won , Ryu Kwang‐Sun
Published: May 2017

Several studies have focused on rechargeable zinc–air batteries. Among them, the formation of zincate ions has been studied to enhance the reversibility of the zinc anode. In this study, zinc compounds, such as zinc oxide, chloride, and acetate, showed different solubility in KOH; this is related to the generation of zincate ions. A full‐cell test was carried out to compare the electrochemical properties of electrodes. Zinc oxide has a high second discharge capacity of 178 mAh/g. To increase the solubility, the particle size of microsized ZnO was changed to nanosized ZnO. In addition, in the full‐cell test, nanosized ZnO showed a higher cycle capacity than microsized ZnO. The reduction peaks were indicated clearly until 10 cycles in the three‐electrochemical cell. Therefore, it is essential that microsized ZnO be converted easily to zincate ions.
Development of a validated UPLC–MS/MS method for determination of humantenmine in rat plasma and its application in pharmacokinetics and bioavailability studies
Authors: Hu Yanxian , Chen Minghao , Wang Zhaoyu , Lan Yao , Tang Lan , Liu Menghua , Zhao Jie , Hu Ming , Zhang Lulu , Ye Ling
Published: May 2017

Humantenmine (HMT), the most toxic compound isolated from Gelsemium elegans Benth, is a well‐known active herbal compound. A rapid and sensitive ultra‐performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS/MS) method was developed and validated to estimate the absolute oral bioavailability of HMT in rats. Quantification was performed by multiple reaction monitoring using electrospray ionization operated in positive ion mode with transitions of m/z 327.14 → m/z 296.19 for HMT and m/z 323.20 → m/z 236.23 for gelsemine (internal standard, IS). The linear range of the calibration curve was 1–256 nmol/L, with a lower limit of quantification at 1 nmol/L. The accuracy of HMT ranged from 89.39 to 107.5%, and the precision was within 12.24% (RSD). Excellent recovery and negligible matrix effect were observed. HMT remained stable during storage, preparation and analytical procedures. The pharmacokinetics of HMT in rats showed that HMT reached the concentration peak at 12.50 ± 2.74 min with a peak concentration of 28.49 ± 6.65 nmol/L, and the corresponding area under the concentration–time curve (AUC0–t) was 1142.42 ± 202.92 nmol/L min after 200 μg/kg HMT was orally administered to rats. The AUC0–t of HMT given at 20 μg/kg by tail vein administration was 1518.46 ± 192.24 nmol/L min. The calculated absolute bioavailability of HMT was 7.66%.
Fast ultra‐high‐performance liquid chromatography with diode array and mass spectrometry method for determination of tadalafil drug substance and its impurities
Authors: Schreiber Ludovit , Halko Radoslav , Hutta Milan
Published: May 2017

Tadalafil is used for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. Its related patents expired in 2016, and so related generic drug production is predicted to be increased. This work is focused on developing a fast ultra‐high‐performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection and/or mass spectrometry detection for the separation and determination of tadalafil and its impurities in pharmaceutical samples. A modern reversed‐phase stationary phase with sub‐2 μm particle size, Zorbax StableBond Rapid Resolution High Definition with octylsilane chemically bonded phase to totally porous silica particles, was used for the solving this problem. Column temperature was set at 40 ± 0.1°C. A mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and aqueous solution of 0.1% (v/v) trifluoroacetic acid for diode array detection detection and 0.05% (v/v) formic acid, both running at a flow rate of 0.62 mL/min, were used to achieve the required separation of all components within a 5 min run. The limit of detection was 3.5 μg/L and the limit of quantification was 10.0 μg/L for the method for both UV and MS detectors. Accurate mass spectra of tadalafil's related impurities are shown for advanced confirmation. The method is directly transferable to routine analysis of tadalafil in pharmaceutical and control laboratories.