bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Suprabasin as a novel tumor endothelial cell marker
Authors: Alam Mohammad T. , Nagao‐Kitamoto Hiroko , Ohga Noritaka , Akiyama Kosuke , Maishi Nako , Kawamoto Taisuke , Shinohara Nobuo , Taketomi Akinobu , Shindoh Masanobu , Hida Yasuhiro , Hida Kyoko
Published: October 2014

Recent studies have reported that stromal cells contribute to tumor progression. We previously demonstrated that tumor endothelial cells (TEC) characteristics were different from those of normal endothelial cells (NEC). Furthermore, we performed gene profile analysis in TEC and NEC, revealing that suprabasin (SBSN) was upregulated in TEC compared with NEC. However, its role in TEC is still unknown. Here we showed that SBSN expression was higher in isolated human and mouse TEC than in NEC. SBSN knockdown inhibited the migration and tube formation ability of TEC. We also showed that the AKT pathway was a downstream factor of SBSN. These findings suggest that SBSN is involved in the angiogenic potential of TEC and may be a novel TEC marker.
Late pancreas retransplantation
Authors: Fridell Jonathan A. , Mangus Richard S. , Chen Jeanne M. , Goble Michelle L. , Mujtaba Muhammad A. , Taber Tim E. , Powelson John A.
Published: October 2014

Pancreas retransplantation, excluding immediate retransplantation for graft thrombosis, is a technically treacherous operation with the added challenges of adhesions from the prior transplant and difficulties identifying usable recipient vessels. The goal of this study was to review our single‐center experience with late pancreas retransplantation. Charts for all pancreas transplant recipients between 01/2003 and 04/2013 were reviewed for demographics, graft and patient survival, length of stay (LOS), readmissions, and technical complications. Of 473 pancreas transplants, there were 20 late pancreas retransplants compared to 441 first transplants. There were no significant differences in donor or recipient demographics. There was no significant difference in graft or patient survival. The mean and median lengths of stay were 22 and nine d, respectively (range 5–175 d), and 11 recipients required readmission within the first three months post‐transplant. Five patients were reexplored in the early postoperative period for an enteric leak at the site of the primary allograft (n = 1), complications of percutaneous gastrostomy tube placement (n = 1), hemorrhage (n = 1), and negative laparotomy for hyperglycemia (n = 2). Pancreas retransplantation is technically challenging but can be safely performed with graft and recipient survival comparable to primary transplants.
Impact of induction immunosuppression on survival in heart transplant recipients: a contemporary analysis of agents
Authors: Whitson Bryan A. , Kilic Ahmet , Lehman Amy , Wehr Allison , Hasan Ayesha , Haas Garrie , Hayes Don , Sai‐Sudhakar Chittoor B. , Higgins Robert S.D.
Published: October 2014

Introduction

The impact of induction immunosuppression on long‐term survival in heart transplant recipients is unclear. Over the past three decades, practices have varied as induction agents have changed and experiences grew. We sought to evaluate the effect of contemporary induction immunosuppression agents in heart transplant recipients with the primary endpoint of survival, utilizing national registry data.

Methods

We queried the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) data registry for all heart transplants from 1987 to 2012. We restricted our analysis to adult (≥18 yr) recipients performed from 2001–2011 (to allow for the potential for a minimum of 12 months post‐transplant follow‐up) who received either: no antibody based induction (NONE) or the contemporary agents (INDUCED) of either: basiliximab/daclizumab (IL‐2Rab), alemtuzumab, or ATG/ALG/thymoglobulin. Kaplan‐Meier estimates of the survival function as well as Cox proportional hazards models were utilized.

Results

Of the 17 857 heart transplants that met the inclusion criteria, there were 4635 (26%) reported deaths during the follow‐up period. There were 8216 (46%) patients who were INDUCED. Of the INDUCED agents, 55% were IL‐2Rab, 4% alemtuzumab, and 40% ALG/ATG/thymoglobulin. Donor and recipient characteristics were evaluated. Overall, being INDUCED did not significantly affect survival in univariable (p = 0.522) and multivariable (p = 0.130) Cox models as well as a propensity score adjusted model (p = 0.733). Among those induced, ATG/ALG/thymoglobulin appeared to have superior survival as compared with IL‐2Rab (log‐rank p = 0.007, univariable hazard ratio [HR] = 0.886; 95% CI: 0.811–0.968; p = 0.522). However, in a multivariable Cox model that adjusted for recipient age, VAD, BMI, steroid use, CMV match, and ischemic time, the hazard ratio for ALG/ATG/thymoglobulin vs. IL‐2Rab was no longer statistically significant (HR = 0.948; 95% CI: 0.850–1.058; p = 0.341).

Conclusion

In a contemporary analysis of heart transplant recipients, an overall analysis of induction agents does not appear to impact survival, as compared to no induction immunosuppression. While ALG/ATG/thymoglobulin appeared to have a beneficial effect on survival compared to IL‐2Rab in the univariable model, this difference was no longer statistically significant once we adjusted for clinically relevant covariates.
Preschoolers with Down syndrome do not yet show the learning and memory impairments seen in adults with Down syndrome
Authors: Roberts Lynette V. , Richmond Jenny L.
Published: October 2014

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit a behavioral phenotype of specific strengths and weaknesses, in addition to a generalized cognitive delay. In particular, adults with DS exhibit specific deficits in learning and memory processes that depend on the hippocampus, and there is some suggestion of impairments on executive function tasks that depend on the prefrontal cortex. While these functions have been investigated in adults with DS, it is largely unclear how these processes develop in young children with DS. Here we tested preschoolers with DS and typically developing children, age‐matched on either receptive language or non‐verbal scores as a proxy for mental age (MA), on a battery of eye‐tracking and behavioral measures that have been shown to depend on the hippocampus or the prefrontal cortex. Preschoolers with DS performed equivalently to MA‐matched controls, suggesting that the disability‐specific memory deficits documented in adults with DS, in addition to a cognitive delay, are not yet evident in preschoolers with DS, and likely emerge progressively with age. Our results reinforce the idea that early childhood may be a critical time frame for targeted early intervention.

A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6GUA6my22Q&list=UU3FIcom6UpITHZOIEa8Onnw
The development of adaptive conformity in young children: effects of uncertainty and consensus
Authors: Morgan Thomas J.H. , Laland Kevin N. , Harris Paul L.
Published: October 2014

Human culture relies on extensive use of social transmission, which must be integrated with independently acquired (i.e. asocial) information for effective decision‐making. Formal evolutionary theory predicts that natural selection should favor adaptive learning strategies, including a bias to copy when uncertain, and a bias to disproportionately copy the majority (known as ‘conformist transmission’). Although the function and causation of these evolved strategies has been comparatively well studied, little is known of their development. We experimentally investigated the development of the bias to copy‐when‐uncertain and conformist transmission in children from the ages of 3 to 7, testing predictions derived from theoretical models. Children first attempted to solve a binary‐choice quantity discrimination task themselves using asocial information, but were then given the decisions of informants, and an opportunity to revise their answer. We investigated whether children's revised judgments were adaptively contingent on (i) the difficulty of the trial and (ii) the degree of consensus amongst informants. As predicted, older but not younger children copied others more on more difficult trials than on easier trials, even though older children also showed a tendency to stick with their initial, asocial decision. We also found that older children, like adults, were disproportionately receptive to non‐total majorities (i.e. were conformist) whereas younger children were receptive only to total (i.e. unanimous) majorities. We conclude that, whilst the mechanism for incorporating social information into decision‐making is initially very blunt, across the course of early childhood it converges on the adaptive learning mechanisms observed in adults and predicted by cultural evolutionary theory.

A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/Qb6JINGYqVk
Ligand binding to WW tandem domains of YAP2 transcriptional regulator is under negative cooperativity
Authors: Schuchardt Brett J. , Mikles David C. , Hoang Lawrence M. , Bhat Vikas , McDonald Caleb B. , Sudol Marius , Farooq Amjad
Published: October 2014

YES‐associated protein 2 (YAP2) transcriptional regulator drives a multitude of cellular processes, including the newly discovered Hippo tumor suppressor pathway, by virtue of the ability of its WW domains to bind and recruit PPXY‐containing ligands to specific subcellular compartments. Herein, we employ an array of biophysical tools to investigate allosteric communication between the WW tandem domains of YAP2. Our data show that the WW tandem domains of YAP2 negatively cooperate when binding to their cognate ligands. Moreover, the molecular origin of such negative cooperativity lies in an unfavorable entropic contribution to the overall free energy relative to ligand binding to isolated WW domains. Consistent with this notion, the WW tandem domains adopt a fixed spatial orientation such that the WW1 domain curves outwards and stacks onto the binding groove of the WW2 domain, thereby sterically hindering ligand binding to both itself and its tandem partner. Although ligand binding to both WW domains disrupts such interdomain stacking interaction, they reorient themselves and adopt an alternative fixed spatial orientation in the liganded state by virtue of their ability to engage laterally so as to allow their binding grooves to point outwards and away from each other. In short, while the ability of WW tandem domains to aid ligand binding is well documented, our demonstration that they may also be subject to negative binding cooperativity represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of the molecular action of this ubiquitous family of protein modules.

Structured digital abstract

A list of the large number of protein‐protein interactions described in this article is available via the INTACT article ID EBI-9824392
Cone beam computed tomography and periapical lesions: a systematic review analysing studies on diagnostic efficacy by a hierarchical model
Authors: Kruse C. , Spin‐Neto R. , Wenzel A. , Kirkevang L.‐L.
Published: October 2014

Aim

To evaluate using a systematic review approach the diagnostic efficacy of CBCT for periapical lesions, focusing on the evidence level of the included studies using a six‐tiered hierarchical model.

Methodology

The MEDLINE bibliographic database was searched from 2000 to July 2013 for studies evaluating the potential of CBCT imaging in the diagnosis and planning of treatment for periapical lesions. The search strategy was limited to English language publications using the following combined terms in the search strategy: apical pathology or endodontic pathology or periapical or lesion or healing and CBCT or cone beam CT. The diagnostic efficacy level of the studies was assessed independently by four reviewers.

Results

The search identified 25 publications that qualitatively or quantitatively assessed the use of CBCT for the diagnosis of periapical lesions, in which the methodology/results comprised at least one of the following parameters: the methods, the imaging protocols or qualitative/quantitative information on how CBCT influenced the diagnosis and/or treatment plan.

Conclusion

From the assessed studies, it can be concluded that although there is a tendency for a higher accuracy for periapical lesion detection using CBCT compared to two‐dimensional imaging methods, no studies have been conducted that justify the standard use of CBCT in diagnosing periapical lesions. In addition, it should be considered that, at the present time, the efficacy of CBCT as the diagnostic imaging method for periapical lesions has been assessed merely at low diagnostic efficacy levels.
MEK inhibition prevents tumour‐shed transforming growth factor‐β‐induced T‐regulatory cell augmentation in tumour milieu
Authors: Hossain Dewan M. S. , Panda Abir K. , Chakrabarty Sreeparna , Bhattacharjee Pushpak , Kajal Kirti , Mohanty Suchismita , Sarkar Irene , Sarkar Diptendra K. , Kar Santosh K. , Sa Gaurisankar
Published: October 2014

Tumour progression is associated with immune‐suppressive conditions that facilitate the escape of tumour cells from the regimen of immune cells, subsequently paralysing the host defence mechanisms. Induction of CD4+ CD25+ FoxP3+ T regulatory (Treg) cells has been implicated in the tumour immune escape mechanism, although the novel anti‐cancer treatment strategies targeting Treg cells remain unknown. The focus of this study is to define the interaction between tumour and immune system, i.e. how immune tolerance starts and gradually leads to the induction of adaptive Treg cells in the tumour microenvironment. Our study identified hyperactivated mitogen‐activated protein kinase kinase (MEK)/extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK) ‐signalling as a potential target for reversing Treg cell augmentation in breast cancer patients. In more mechanistic detail, pharmacological inhibitors of MEK/ERK signalling inhibited transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) production in tumour cells that essentially blocked TGF‐β‐SMAD3/SMAD4‐mediated induction of CD25/interleukin‐2 receptor α on CD4+ T‐cell surface. As a result high‐affinity binding of interleukin‐2 on those cells was prohibited, causing lack of Janus kinase 1 (JAK1)/JAK3‐mediated signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3)/STAT5 activation required for FoxP3 expression. Finally, for a more radical approach towards a safe MEK inhibitor, we validate the potential of multi‐kinase inhibitor curcumin, especially the nano‐curcumin made out of pure curcumin with greater bioavailability; in repealing tumour‐shed TGF‐β‐induced Treg cell augmentation.
Strains of the Morphospecies Ploeotia costata (Euglenozoa) Isolated from the Western North Pacific (Taiwan) Reveal Substantial Genetic Differences
Authors: Chan Ya‐Fan , Chiang Kuo‐Ping , Chang Jeng , Moestrup Øjvind , Chung Chih‐Ching
Published: October 2014

Two phagotrophic euglenid strains (Strains Pac and Tam) were isolated from coastal locations in Taiwan. Ultrastructural characteristics of the strains included five pellicle strips joined at the posterior end. The strips were formed by major grooves with bifurcated edges. At the cell anterior, the feeding structure formed a lip. Underneath the lip was a comb composed of layers of microtubules. Farther back, two supporting rods tapered toward the posterior end, and a number of vanes with attached microtubules were present between the rods. The morphological characteristics agree with Ploeotia costata Strain CCAP 1265/1. However, the 18S rDNA sequences of Strains Pac/Tam lacked a group I intron and possessed three extra insertions of 116, 67, and 53 bp. Phylogenetic analysis indicated low sequence similarity between Strains Pac/Tam and CCAP 1265/1 (92%). The morphospecies P. costata apparently includes a substantial level of DNA sequence divergence, and likely represents multiple molecular species units.
The impact of PNPLA3 (rs738409 C>G) polymorphisms on liver histology and long‐term clinical outcome in chronic hepatitis B patients
Authors: Brouwer Willem P , van der Meer Adriaan J , Boonstra Andre , Pas Suzan D , de Knegt Robert J , de Man Rob A , Hansen Bettina E , ten Kate Fiebo JW , Janssen Harry LA
Published: October 2014

Background & Aims

We aimed to assess the association between the patatin‐like phospholipase domain‐containing‐3 (PNPLA3) I148M polymorphism, liver histology and long‐term outcome in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients.

Methods

We enrolled 531 consecutive treatment naïve CHB patients diagnosed from 1985 to 2012 with an available liver biopsy for reassessment, and sample for genetic testing. Data on all‐cause mortality and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) at long‐term follow‐up were obtained from national database registries.

Results

The prevalence of steatohepatitis increased with PNPLA3 CC (14%), CG (20%) and GG (43%) (P < 0.001). The association was altered by both gender (P = 0.010) and overweight (P = 0.015): the effect of PNPLA3 on steatohepatitis was most pronounced among non‐overweight females (adjusted OR 13.4, 95%CI: 3.7–51.6, P < 0.001), and non‐overweight males (adjusted OR 2.4, 95%CI: 1.4–4.3, P = 0.002). Furthermore, PNPLA3 GG genotype was associated with iron depositions (OR 2.8, 95%CI: 1.2–6.4, P = 0.014) and lobular inflammation (OR 2.2, 95%CI: 1.1–4.5, P = 0.032), but not with advanced fibrosis (OR 1.1, 95%CI: 0.7–1.8, P = 0.566). The median follow‐up was 10.1 years (interquartile range 5.6 – 15.8), during which 13 patients developed HCC and 28 died. Steatohepatitis was associated with all‐cause mortality [Hazard ratio (HR) 3.1, 95%CI: 1.3–7.3, P = 0.006] and HCC (HR 2.8, 95%CI: 0.9–9.2, P = 0.078), but no significant association was observed for PNPLA3.

Conclusions

In this cohort of biopsied CHB patients, PNPLA3 was independently associated with steatosis, steatohepatitis, lobular inflammation and iron depositions, but not with advanced fibrosis, HCC development or all‐cause mortality. The effect of PNPLA3 on steatohepatitis was particularly pronounced among female patients without severe overweight.
Large‐scale introduction of the Indo‐Pacific damselfish Abudefduf vaigiensis into Hawai'i promotes genetic swamping of the endemic congener A. abdominalis
Authors: Coleman Richard R. , Gaither Michelle R. , Kimokeo Bethany , Stanton Frank G. , Bowen Brian W. , Toonen Robert J.
Published: October 2014

Hybridization in the ocean was once considered rare, a process prohibited by the rapid evolution of intrinsic reproductive barriers in a high‐dispersal medium. However, recent genetic surveys have prompted a reappraisal of marine hybridization as an important demographic and evolutionary process. The Hawaiian Archipelago offers an unusual case history in this arena, due to the recent arrival of the widely distributed Indo‐Pacific sergeant (Abudefduf vaigiensis), which is hybridizing with the endemic congener, A. abdominalis. Surveys of mtDNA and three nuclear loci across Hawai'i (N = 396, Abudefduf abdominalis and N = 314, A. vaigiensis) reveal that hybridization is significantly higher in the human‐perturbed southeast archipelago (19.8%), tapering off to 5.9% in the pristine northwest archipelago. While densities of the two species varied throughout Hawai'i, hybridization was highest in regions with similar species densities, contradicting the generalization that the rarity of one species promotes interspecific mating. Our finding of later generation hybrids throughout the archipelago invokes the possibility of genetic swamping of the endemic species. Exaptation, an adaptation with unintended consequences, may explain these findings: the endemic species has transient yellow coloration during reproduction, whereas the introduced species has yellow coloration continuously as adults, in effect a permanent signal of reproductive receptivity. Haplotype diversity is higher in Hawaiian A. vaigiensis than in our samples from the native range, indicating large‐scale colonization almost certainly facilitated by the historically recent surge of marine debris. In this chain of events, marine debris promotes colonization, exaptation promotes hybridization, and introgression invokes the possible collapse of an endemic species.
Physical controls on sand composition and relative durability of detrital minerals during ultra‐long distance littoral and aeolian transport (Namibia and southern Angola)
Authors: Garzanti Eduardo , Resentini Alberto , Andò Sergio , Vezzoli Giovanni , Pereira Alcides , Vermeesch Pieter
Published: October 2014

Sediment in coastal Namibia to southern Angola is supplied dominantly from the Orange River with minor additional fluvial input and negligible modifications by chemical processes, which makes this a great test case for investigating physical controls on sand texture and composition. This study monitored textural, mineralogical and geochemical variability in beach and aeolian‐dune sands along a ca 1750 km stretch of the Atlantic coast of southern Africa by using an integrated set of techniques, including image analysis, laser granulometry, optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and bulk‐sediment geochemistry. These results contrast with previous reports that feldspars and volcanic detritus break down during transport, that sand grains are rounded rapidly in shallow‐marine environments, and that quartzose sands may be produced by physical processes. Mechanical wear is unable to modify the relative abundance of detrital components, including pyroxene and mafic volcanic rock fragments traditionally believed to be destroyed rapidly. The sole exceptions are poorly lithified or cleaved sedimentary/metasedimentary rock fragments, readily lost at the transition to the marine environment, and slow‐settling flaky micas, winnowed and deposited offshore. Coastal sediments tend to be depleted in relatively mobile amphibole, preferentially entrained offshore or re‐deposited in sheltered beaches, while less mobile garnet is retained onshore. No detrital mineral displays a significant increase in grain roundness after 300 to 350 km of longshore transport in high‐energy littoral environments from the Orange mouth to south of the Namib Erg, but all minerals get rapidly rounded after passing into the dunefield. Pyroxene and opaques get rounded faster than harder quartz and garnet, but sand mineralogy remains unchanged. Excepting strong transient selective‐entrainment effects, physical processes are unable to modify sand composition significantly. Selective mechanical breakdown can be largely neglected in quantitative provenance analysis of sand and sandstone even in the case of ultra‐long‐distance transport in high‐energy environments dominated by strong persistent winds and waves.
Fish diversity and biomass in northern Canadian lakes: northern lakes are more diverse and have greater biomass than expected based on species–energy theory
Authors: Samarasin Pasan , Minns Charles K. , Shuter Brian J. , Tonn William M. , Rennie Michael D.
Published: October 2014

Biodiversity in northern Canada (north of 60°N latitude) is threatened, primarily by increasing resource exploitation and by climate change. Unfortunately, we have relatively limited knowledge of aquatic biodiversity for this region, making it difficult to develop suitable policies to manage these threats. Here we describe, quantify, and test hypotheses related to fish biodiversity and biomass in 37 lakes in a diamond mining district (the Barrenlands) in the Northwest Territories, Canada (64°N, 110°W). To estimate species richness and biomass of fish, we took advantage of exhaustive sampling and monitoring surveys conducted in the region and compared our northern estimates against estimates from southern Canadian lakes. We found that most of the 37 northern lakes contained two to four species, with the largest lake containing eight species. Salmonids dominated this system, with lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) being the dominant species in abundance and biomass. Comparative analysis with similar-sized southern Canadian lakes showed no significant difference in the slopes of species richness versus lake area curves. Surprisingly, total fish biomass distributions for northern, Barrenlands lakes were also similar to southern, Ontario lakes. Overall, our results suggest that Barrenlands lakes are important natural resources of Canada that should be conserved for the future. Under anticipated scenarios of climate change, these lakes may represent important refugia for coldwater fishes (e.g., lake trout) as habitats at the southern edges of their ranges become more limiting.
Move it or lose it: movement and mortality of sablefish tagged in Alaska
Authors: Hanselman Dana H. , Heifetz Jonathan , Echave Katy B. , Dressel Sherri C.
Published: October 2014

A basic step in understanding the dynamics of a fish population is to quantify movement and mortality rates. Conventional mark–recapture experiments have provided the foundation for studies on animal movement, particularly for fish. Previous studies have shown rapid mixing of sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) among fishery regulatory areas, with the pattern of movement related to fish size. Over 300 000 tag releases in Alaska and over 27 000 tag recoveries from 1979 to 2009 were analyzed. We used a Markov model to quantify annual movement probabilities among areas for three size groups of sablefish. The negative-binomial likelihood was used to model the tag-recovery data because of significant overdispersion. Annual movement probabilities were high, ranging from 10% to 88% depending on area of occupancy at each time step and size group. Overall, movement probabilities were very different between areas of occupancy and moderately different between size groups. Estimated annual movement of small sablefish from the central Gulf of Alaska had the reverse pattern of a previous study, with 29% moving westward and 39% moving eastward. Movement probabilities also varied annually, with decreasing movement until the late 1990s and increasing movement until 2009. Year-specific magnitude in movement probability of large fish was highly negatively correlated with female spawning biomass estimates from the federal stock assessment. Mean mortality estimates from time at liberty were similar to the federal stock assessment. Incorporating these tag-recovery and movement data into a fully age-structured spatial stock assessment model will inform harvest apportionment strategies to conserve spawning biomass and maximize future yields.
Five Versions of a Dyirbal Legend
Authors: Dixon R. M. W.
Published: October 2014

The Dyirbal peoples of North Queensland believe that at one time the spirit of a departed person could return to visit their relatives. Then one returning spirit saw his own rotting head, which his mother had retained when burying his body. This meant that he must now return permanently to the land of spirits and everyone would follow him when their turn came. This was the origin of death as we know it today. Five versions of this legend were recorded, from three narrators; no one version includes every detail. A similar story was told by the neighboring Yidiñ people. The versions are analyzed, compared, and assessed.
Die Riddere metter Mouwen [The Knight with the Sleeve] and its Discourse on Personal Bonds
Authors: Sullivan Joseph M. , Wyatt Zoë
Published: October 2014

The discourse on love bonds, kinship bonds, feudal–vassalic bonds, bonds brought about through oaths, and religious bonds constitutes the thematic concentration that most greatly characterizes the uniqueness of the Die Riddere metter Mouwen among the romances of the Lancelotcompilatie . The romance imparts to its audience the message that most of these personal bonds may be violated when rejecting them upholds a higher moral good than maintaining them.
Feminine Desire and Conditional Misogyny in Arthur and Gorlagon
Authors: Brady Lindy
Published: October 2014

This essay argues that the adulterous female characters in the exempla of Arthur and Gorlagon are distinguished from Guenevere in the text’s frame narrative. Arthur and Gorlagon is not wholly misogynist, but reserves contempt for female characters who express sexual desire in public spaces.
Avatars, Illness, and Authority: Embodied Experience in Breast Cancer Autopathographics
Authors: Waples Emily
Published: October 2014

This essay argues that the medium of graphic illness memoir, or “autopathographics,” can work to challenge the master plot of “survival” that has circulated as part of breast cancer culture for the past thirty years. Exploring the emergent genre of breast cancer autopathographics through an analysis of two best-selling memoirs published in 2006—Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s Cancer Vixen: A True Story and Miriam Engelberg’s Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics —this essay examines the graphic in two senses: first, it strives to enter an emergent conversation about the uses of the visual-verbal genre of graphic memoir as a means to narrate stories of illness and disability; further, it takes into account the popular usage of the word graphic to note the kind of explicitness or excess for which illness narratives are commonly critiqued. Autopathographics offer new possibilities for women to represent the embodied changes occasioned by cancer in ways that register the uncertainty of the disease’s temporality in the face of metastasis and terminal illness—part of breast cancer’s epidemiological narrative that is too often ignored.
Graphic Analysis: Transitional Phenomena in Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?
Authors: Diedrich Lisa
Published: October 2014

In this essay, methods are discussed for enacting “potential spaces,” as demonstrated in D. W. Winnicott’s theoretical and therapeutic practices and as drawn in Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Are You My Mother? , a text in which Winnicott and his work in particular, and therapeutic scenes in general, figure prominently. It juxtaposes Winnicott’s theories and practices next to Bechdel’s in order to create a transitional space between the two that illuminates the graphic elements of Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theories and the psychoanalytic elements of Bechdel’s art practice. What Bechdel practices in Are You My Mother? is not so much graphic medicine as what the essay calls “graphic analysis”—a long and difficult therapeutic and creative process of doing and undoing the self in words and images.
The Black Market: Property, Freedom, and Piracy in Martin Delany’s Blake; or, The Huts of America
Authors: Orihuela Sharada Balachandran
Published: October 2014

“The Black Market: Property, Freedom, and Piracy in Martin Delany’s Blake; or, The Huts of America” examines varied forms of social and political life made possible through an economic framework of piracy. Recognizing that the hemispheric slave trade is a piratical act in the context of the novel, I propose that Delany suggests that slaves too should engage in piracy as a response to the illegal commercial activities undergirding the peculiar institution. In the novel, Blake’s act of piracy exists both at the register of the material theft of property and at the level of the symbolic restructuring of social and political order. By exploring the economic impact of Blake as pirate, Delany presents a form of Black participation in the market that disrupts the proper operations of exchange and doubly creates a Black market. Read alongside the significant historical events of the mid-nineteenth century, Blake helps frame my interest in the intersections of economic freedom and liberal principles as they come to bear on the enslaved Black subject. This mode of analysis reinvigorates of the interplay between economics and literature, forcing us to engage with analyses of power that account for commercial subjectivities emerging in the context of slavery in the Americas, and surfaces the overlooked processes of illegal exchange in the novel.
Pobrecito , Alessandro: Sentiment and Sovereignty in Ramona
Authors: Wolff Nathan
Published: October 2014

As a response to critics who lament Helen Hunt Jackson’s failure to attribute sufficient agency to her Indian protagonists, this essay puts Jackson’s 1884 historical romance, Ramona, in dialogue with Charles Dudley Warner’s “Story of the Doe” and the habeas corpus case of Standing Bear v. Crook. I suggest that Jackson, outraged by the imprisonment and relocation of the Ponca tribe, reworked Warner’s tale of human-animal violence as a means of showing that the legal subject produced by late-nineteenth-century U.S. Indian policy was not an autonomous, rational “person” but rather a creature closer to Giorgio Agamben’s later notion of “bare life”: a quasi-animal life stripped of political ties. While Jackson anticipates critiques of her seemingly sentimental story by diagnosing excesses of feeling as a threat to political conscience and agency, she embraces an affective strategy by the novel’s close, narrating hopelessness, depression, and exhaustion as effects of the structural position of the disenfranchised and the systematic violation of native sovereignty. I ultimately argue that Jackson’s text reveals the biopolitics of the Indian Agency bureaucracy, in which optimism, self-maintenance, and community building were deemed incompatible with the minimal right to the barest life, as protected by habeas corpus.
Whorfianism in Colonial Encounters from Melville to Miéville
Authors: Nediger Will
Published: October 2014

In linguistics, Whorfianism is a name given to the idea that language determines thought. This essay analyzes three novels (Herman Melville’s Typee , Juan José Saer’s The Witness , and China Miéville’s Embassytown ) to examine how Whorfianism influences the description of “exotic” languages and cultures in accounts of colonial encounters.
Narrative Fiction, Experience-Taking, and Progressive Male Standpoints
Authors: Lenz Brooke
Published: October 2014

This essay explores the narrative strategies of Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve and John Fowles’s The Magus . The essay argues that, by encouraging and then deterring what social psychologists call readers’ “experience-taking,” the novels compel readers to entertain the protagonists’ progressive standpoints and to interrogate problematic gender norms.
Textual Authenticity and the Contemporary West: John McPhee’s Rising from the Plains
Authors: Millard Kenneth
Published: October 2014

A critical study of John McPhee’s Rising from the Plains in the context of recent debates about the status of regional studies in a postmodern culture, this essay asks what it means to be authentically Western in a late-twentieth-century culture comprising simulacra.
Baudelaire and the Identity of the Self
Authors: Babuts Nicolae
Published: October 2014

Baudelaire points to “le conseil judiciaire,” the legal guardianship, as the central event that defined his self and the course of his life. Relying on studies of memory in neuroscience and on Baudelaire’s own views of memory and imagination, this essay studies the concept of the Baudelairean self.
David Foster Wallace and the Ethical Challenge of Posthumanism
Authors: Kaiser Wilson
Published: October 2014

David Foster Wallace’s fiction and prose express a strong ethical commitment that does not correspond to normative categories of behaviour or normate bodies. Rather than abandon the problem of ethics, however, Wallace adopts an ethics of affinity, which explores the complex interplay of his characters’ private experiences.
Femininity and Effeminophobia in Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman
Authors: Allan Jonathan A.
Published: October 2014

Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman challenges the critical understanding of male femininity and homosexuality. I argue that the privileging of homosexuality has meant that the study of femininity has been insufficient; as such, this essay draws on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s notion of “effeminophobia” and studies Molina’s femininity.
Precarious World: Rethinking Global Fiction in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Authors: Darda Joseph
Published: October 2014

Through a reading of Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist , this essay outlines a theory of critical global fiction: literary works that contest the forces inhibiting global understanding and advance international coalitions through this struggle itself.
Reading the Spaces of Age in Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”
Authors: Jamieson Sara
Published: October 2014

This essay suggests that Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” participates in a gerontological debate concerning the nature and meaning of residential care for older people, complicating a dominant interpretation of the old age home as a technology of social control that marginalizes and depersonalizes its residents.
Le Poète baudelairien: un Homme révolté ?: Réflexion sur l’esthétique du mal comme révolte métaphysique
Authors: Van de Wiele Aurélie
Published: October 2014

This article explores Charles Baudelaire’s aesthetics of evil through the Camusian concept of “metaphysical revolt.” As defined in L’Homme révolté , this rebellious attitude strives to oppose the existential distress that modern humanity feels when in contact with the absurd and the irrationality of life. In art, individuals who revolt, such as the Surrealists, aim to alleviate metaphysical discomfort by generating aesthetic rules from the world’s contingency and arbitrariness. With these new perceptive norms, the artists are able to reestablish a sense of order and control over existence. By analyzing the creative process and the metaphysical benefits of Baudelaire’s poetics of evil, this study examines the extent to which his aesthetics can be considered a Camusian revolt. (In French)
Suffering for the Novel’s Sake: Female “Mystical Substitution” in Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Un prêtre marié and Bloy’s Le Désespéré
Authors: Don Willemijn
Published: October 2014

This essay analyzes Barbey d’Aurevilly’s 1865 novel Un prêtre marié and Le Désespéré by Léon Bloy (1887) as literary case studies for the Catholic doctrine of vicarious suffering, or “mystical substitution.” In these narratives, women’s abject and self-inflicted suffering fails to obtain the desired, reparative result for the eponymous male characters. Such a failure sheds light on the paradoxical staging of a theological doctrine by Catholic novelists who appropriate women’s mystical experience in order to articulate a relation to the Divine, which eludes verbal rendering, and yet positions them as masters of souls and bodies as well as literary and spiritual leaders.
From Identity to Identifications: Depersonalizing the Subject of the Nervalian Chimère
Authors: Talley Catherine
Published: October 2014

In both his texts and his writing practice, Gérard de Nerval (1808–55) manifests a propensity toward subjective fragmentation and instability. This fragmentation is not simply a symptom of a psychological disorder, but is itself a positive value in the context of Nerval’s un-self-centered poetics. Through his presentation of the actor Brisacier in “À Alexandre Dumas” (1854), Nerval suggests that the writing subject’s relation to what it writes is one of serial identification not intended to arrive at any unified identity. This mobility of identifications is evident, for example, in the unwieldy intertextuality of the sonnet “El Desdichado” (1854), which resists synthesis and makes hybrids of both poem and lyric subject. The circulation of images and subjects in the poem makes it not a work of self-expression or self-creation, but rather a site of encounter for a proliferation of subjects.
A Privileged Reader: An Editorial Collaboration Between Gustave Flaubert and Louis Bouilhet
Authors: Naddaff Ramona
Published: October 2014

Gustave Flaubert’s writing of Madame Bovary has often been considered the work of a genius who labored intensely and in solitude on the writing and rewriting of his novel, first published in 1856 in serial form. This article argues that this is an illusion. In fact, one of the primary contributors in the process of writing Madame Bovary was Flaubert’s dear and intimate friend, Louis Bouilhet. In an analysis of the genesis of a passage from the novel (part one, chapter eight), I aim to demonstrate how Bouilhet was an editorial collaborator whose suggestions and revisions allowed Flaubert the possibility of formulating multiple options in his search for the “mot juste.”
People, Recreation, Wild Lands, and Wilderness
Authors: Aschmann Homer
Published: October 2014

This paper will focus on an immediate social problem, perhaps the most far-reaching and critical of all those that face the human species in this sector of its history: the quality of the environments each of us will experience during his lifetime. The immediacy of the problem, of course, arises in some part from population growth, but more significantly from our far more rapidly expanding technological capabilities. At this point the United States is capable of doing almost anything to the lands within its territories that society may desire.
Post-Gold Rush Population Changes in a Sierra Nevada Mining Region
Authors: Dilsaver Lary M.
Published: October 2014

The California gold rush commonly is perceived to have ended with a mass emigration to other promising mining sites, leaving behind ghost towns and abandoned mining fields where once thousands worked. Empirical archival evidence, however, shows this to be a misleading conclusion. Tests show that while almost all of the population of the rush era departed between 1860 and 1880, these early miners were replaced by two new groups, men seeking nonplacer mining work and their dependents.
Economic Stagnation in the Rural American West: The Example of the San Luis Valley, Colorado
Authors: Lantis David W.
Published: October 2014

The San Luis Valley, a sizable intermontane basin within the Colorado Rockies, is the ranking agriculture area within the Rocky Mountains. Yet it suffers the economic stagnation so typical of much of the rural American West. The paper examines the causes. The writer has known this area, where he spent much of his youth, for 56 years. Recurrently he has returned (most recently in July 1981), including four summers of teaching at the local state college. Alamosa, the central place of the San Luis Valley, has suffered less economically than other towns in the area. But despite the college and county government, Alamosa is experiencing the quasi-stagnation that typifies many smaller American cities apart from metropolitan areas. The writer believes that Alamosa provides a good example of social and economic conditions not always recognized by geographers and others.
Changing Population Patterns in the American West
Authors: Smith Everett G.
Published: October 2014

The map of population change for incorporated places in the West during the 1970s documents the latest round of differential growth rates for American towns. Distributions confirm the scattered clustering of places characteristic of the region since the beginning of European occupation; reveal unexpected vigor in many of the smallest towns; and reflect reevaluation of resources across this land. Most of the people in the West continue to live in a few major metropolitan areas. Energy generated in these areas influences settlement in wide orbits. More remote locations, like the Sevier and Virgin River valleys in Utah, central Oregon, and northern Idaho, that have experienced dynamic change recently represent ripe subjects for geographic analysis. The reward is deeper understanding of this modern epoch.
Inner-City Revitalization and Cultural Succession: The Evolution of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District
Authors: Godfrey Brian J.
Published: October 2014

The Haight-Ashbury, newly "gentrified," is representative of an important contemporary trend in urban America—the movement of predominantly young, white professionals to the inner city. This San Francisco neighborhood attracted widespread attention as a vibrant hippie haunt during the "Summer of Love" of 1967, but quickly deteriorated thereafter into something of a "drug ghetto." Recently the Haight-Ashbury has experienced a remarkable revitalization. Increased property values and rents have displaced small businesses and low-income residents, however, threatening the neighborhood's widely valued social and ethnic diversity. These changes are examined to identify the form, extent, and consequences of gentrification in the Haight-Ashbury.
Wildfire Potential in San Diego County, California
Authors: Krausmann William J.
Published: October 2014

Climate, vegetation, topography, and the pressure of cultural expansion into the wildlands combine to produce highly hazardous fire conditions in San Diego County and other Southern California regions. Historical fire and weather records are analyzed for a stratified random sample of 250 wildfires greater than 40 acres (16 hectares) in size during the period from 1910 to 1979. A definite trend in fire occurrence and fire potential can be ascertained. The most hazardous areas are those having mixed chaparral, or chamise chaparral vegetation that is approximately 50 years old on south-facing slopes. Fire potential is further enhanced if these areas are at an elevation of 492 to 984 feet (150 to 300 meters) along the urban fringe, or at an elevation of 2,493 to 3,986 feet (760 to 1,215 meters) in the peninsular ranges. Areas coinciding with regions receiving mean annual precipitation between 12 and 16 inches (30 to 40 centimeters) and having annual mean maximum temperatures of 76°F (24°C) also have a high potential for fire. The reduction of this fire potential by curtailing human impacts is stressed.
Regional Reality in Economy
Authors: Sauer Carl O. , Kenzer Martin S.
Published: October 2014

Carl Sauer wrote this carefully worded dinner address in 1936 but subsequently decided not to deliver it. History and geography are seen as the foundation subjects of research in the social sciences, excepting perhaps psychology. Contemporary social science is criticized as being heavily burdened with social values and social philosophy, lacking the analytical rigor of the other sciences. Economic man is declared dead; economics has become the science of money. Instead, anthropology appears to hold more promise as a model for the social sciences; methodologically, it is the most advanced field. Anthropology owes a great debt to Friedrich Ratzel's concept of diffusion. By focusing on culture traits, and by utilizing a historico-geographic method, social scientists can identify the economic region and the "intellectual climate." There are no stages of culture; there are only inventions and culture hearths. These hearths are the key to all questions of culture dynamics.
Bald Eagle Habitat Use and Evaluation of Potential Conflict
Authors: Morlan Janet
Published: October 2014

Bald eagles are listed as an endangered species by both federal and California state law. The U.S. Forest Service is directed by the 1973 federal Endangered Species Act to protect essential habitat. Bald eagle sightings had been reported from Ruth Reservoir in northwestern California since 1971. A broken nest tree was found in 1977. In this study, more than 2,000 hours were spent gathering information on eagle population, habitat use, habitat quality assessment and eagle/human interactions. The information was used by the Forest Service in preparation of a management plan and for implementation of management strategies.
Plant Colonization on an Abandoned, Elevated Highway in New York City
Authors: Howard Lance F.
Published: October 2014

Following the closure of a 3-kilometer (1.9 mile) section of the Miller (West Side) Highway in lower Manhattan, New York, in 1973, plants began colonizing strips of wind-deposited sediment along drainage gutters and medians. A survey conducted in September 1981 documents a plant community resulting from eight seasons of growth on a previously unvegetated urban habitat elevated 10 meters above ground level. Native species, Populus deltoides , and Salix spp. dominated the community of 477 woody plants. Included in the community were 11 families, 13 genera, and 18 species. Availability of seed and suitability of microsites determined distribution patterns.