bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Happiness and virtue in Socrates' moral theory
Authors: Vlastos Gregory
Published: April 2013

I Άρετή, εὐδαιμονία: their translation

The key terms in my title pose problems of translation with which I can only deal in the most cursory manner. On ‘virtue’ for ἀρετἡ I need not linger at all, for whatever may be the general usage of ἀρετἡ, Socrates' use of it is fixed beyond doubt by the fact that whenever he brings the general concept under scrutiny – as when he debates its teachability in the Protagoras and the Meno – he assumes without argument that its sole constituents or ‘parts’ (μόρια μέρη) are five qualities which are, incontestably, the Greek terms of moral commendation par excellence: ἀνδρεία, σωφρούνη, δικαιοσύνη, ὁσιότης, σοφία. ‘Happiness’ for εὐδαιμονία is a more contentious matter. Leading Aristotelians, Ross and Ackrill, have claimed that ‘well-being’ would be a better translation. But in their own translations of the E. N. both stick to ‘happiness’ all the same. It is not hard to see why they would and should. ‘Well-being’ has no adjectival or adverbial forms. This may seem a small matter to armchair translators – philosophers dogmatizing on how others should do the job. Not so if one is struggling with its nitty gritty, trying for clause-by-clause English counterparts that might be faithful to the sentence-structure, no less than the sense, of the Greek original. And ‘well-being’ suffers from a further liability: it is a stiff, bookish phrase, bereft of the ease and grace with which the living words of a natural language perform in a wide diversity of contexts. Εὐδαιμονία perfectly fits street-Greek and Aristophanic slapstick, yet also, no less perfectly, the most exalted passages of tragedy.
A complex of times: no more sheep on Romulus' birthday
Authors: Beard Mary
Published: April 2013

This paper argues that one of the functions of the Roman ritual calendar – the sequence of religious festivals as they occurred throughout the year – was to define and delineate Roman power, Roman history and Roman identity; and that it did this by evoking events from different chronological periods of the Roman past and arranging them in a meaningful sequence of time, but not a sequence defined by linear, narrative, history. I am concerned principally with the practice of Roman ritual during the late Republic and early Empire; and my argument depends on taking seriously the discussions of the various festivals preserved in the writings of contemporary Romans and Greeks – men who practised or observed the rituals. I want to stress that we should take the rituals and the preserved exegesis together – and I emphasize together – as an important part of a symbolic, religious discourse that continued to be meaningful in the complex urban society of Rome in the age of Cicero, Augustus, Seneca or Hadrian.
Thoughts on the pragmatics of Ancient Greek
Authors: Collinge N. E.
Published: April 2013

If any branch of linguistic analysis has in recent times been expansive and successful, it is pragmatics. This sector of the study of meaning concerns itself with what utterances achieve in interactive communication; that is, with how speaker works on hearer in real exchanges. The objects of this research are signs and their users (not signs-plus-designata, which is semantics, or expressions-plus-relations, which is part of semantics and all of syntax). It emerged as a riposte to both logical positivism and Carnapian formalism, out of the observations of John Austin, as elaborated by John Searle, and the maxims of Paul Grice. Many have since contributed and the discipline has its ownchefs d'oeuvreand its own journal and several series. To put in a nutshell what is conveyed in volumes, this approach has been by five avenues, as follows.
The First Satire of Juvenal
Authors: Kenney E. J.
Published: April 2013

Juvenal's First Satire is programmatic, a statement of why he proposes to write satire and what kind of satire he proposes to write. Obviously it is important for our understanding of Juvenal as poet and satirist to interpret it correctly. Much of what I have to say on the subject is not new, and I do not flatter myself that I am advancing a ‘solution’ in die sense of an answer that has eluded all other interpreters. My purpose is to suggest fresh emphases that may lead to a more just and satisfying appreciation. In particular I believe that the concluding section of die satire, vv. 147–71, stands in need of more careful appraisal, and it is my primary purpose to discuss that section. That I am considerably in the debt of previous writers on the subject will become clear as the discussion proceeds.

First, a few preliminary (and I fear somewhat polemical) remarks on method and principles.
Working for Ukraine: Ukrainian Seasonal Labour in Germany, 1905-1914
Authors: Lada Krzysztof , Partacz Czesław
Published: April 2013

Between 1905 and 1914, tens of thousands of Ukrainians from East Galicia worked legally as seasonal labourers in Germany each year. This channelling of labour was a reflection of both global trends and local East Galician national and socioeconomic relations. On the communal stage, this movement was a carefully organised operation led by the biggest Ukrainian political party before World War I, the National-Democratic Party (Natsionalno-Demokratychna Partiia, NDP). This article looks at the role of Ukrainian seasonal labour migration to Germany within the Ukrainian nationalist project in Austrian East Galicia. Specifically, it focuses on the information campaign run in the populist-conservative daily newspaper titled Dilo (Deed). Dilo was a primary source of advertisements offering the possibility of seasonal work in Germany. At the centre of this investigation is how this NDP daily reported on the progress of the migration and how it furnished an ideological justification for this shift of the labour force. Of particular interest are both the nationalist-moral and socioeconomic arguments used by Dilo to persuade Ukrainian peasants to go and seek seasonal jobs in Germany. It will be argued that the NDP's drive to send local Ukrainian peasants to Germany as seasonal labourers was presented to them as a way to further the Ukrainian cause, with the campaign itself being seen as a routine extension of nationalist concern and mobilisation. The article thus contributes to the analysis of Ukrainian nationalist economic agitation by drawing attention to the largely unexplored German imperial influence on the shaping of the Ukrainian identity before 1914.
A Writer Looking for His Writing Scene: Paul Valéry's Procedures in His Notebooks around 1894
Authors: Krauthausen Karin
Published: April 2013

Argument

The famousCahiersof Paul Valéry (1871–1945) cannot be reduced to a single scientific discipline, a specific philosophical tradition, or a literary genre. For today's reader these notebooks constitute a formatsui generis, one very often characterized by an “observation of a second order”: in theCahiersValéry uses writing, drawing, and calculating not only for purposes of argumentation; he also pays attention to the significance of such writing, drawing, and calculating processes for the production of knowledge. It is particularly thepracticeof note-taking and sketching in Valéry's notebooks that documents, rehearses, or questions the medial and instrumental conditions of both scientific research and artistic production. This is especially true of the early stages of theCahiersin the years beginning around 1894 when Valéry was intensely searching for notation systems that would be conducive to his research interests. At the time the problem of how to write (as well as calculate and draw) was intrinsically bound up with the way he established his notebooks as a specific scene of writing. By closely examining a number of pages from the early notebooks I hope to show that the emerging regulation of Valéry's writing in theCahiersresults from simple operations that are noted and repeated by the writer until they gradually become procedures. What Valéry'sCahiersshow us, however, is that procedures do not always work in favor of a final synthesis, but may also give rise to a format of eternal beginning. In the following I will present some of the constitutive procedures found in Valéry's early notebooks, procedures that range from a tentative gathering together and simple forms of recursion and variation to the rehearsing or invention of symbolic or graphic forms of notation.
Pragmatics abilities in narrative production: a cross-disorder comparison
Authors: NORBURY COURTENAY FRAZIER , GEMMELL TRACEY , PAUL RHEA
Published: April 2013

We aimed to disentangle contributions of socio-pragmatic and structural language deficits to narrative competence by comparing the narratives of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD;n=25), non-autistic children with language impairments (LI;n=23), and children with typical development (TD;n=27). Groups were matched for age (6½ to 15 years; mean: 10;6) and non-verbal ability; ASD and TD groups were matched on standardized language scores. Despite distinct clinical presentation, children with ASD and LI produced similarly simple narratives that lacked semantic richness and omitted important story elements, when compared to TD peers. Pragmatic errors were common across groups. Within the LI group, pragmatic errors were negatively correlated with story macrostructure scores and with an index of semantic–pragmatic relevance. For the group with ASD, pragmatic errors consisted of comments that, though extraneous, did not detract from the gist of the narrative. These findings underline the importance of both language and socio-pragmatic skill for producing coherent, appropriate narratives.
Autobiographical memory specificity in child sexual abuse victims
Authors: Ogle Christin M. , Block Stephanie D. , Harris Latonya S. , Goodman Gail S. , Pineda Annarheen , Timmer Susan , Urquiza Anthony , Saywitz Karen J.
Published: April 2013

The present study examined the specificity of autobiographical memory in adolescents and adults with versus without child sexual abuse (CSA) histories. Eighty-five participants, approximately half of whom per age group had experienced CSA, were tested on the Autobiographical Memory Interview. Individual difference measures, including those for trauma-related psychopathology, were also administered. Findings revealed developmental differences in the relation between autobiographical memory specificity and CSA. Even with depression statistically controlled, reduced memory specificity in CSA victims relative to controls was observed among adolescents but not among adults. A higher number of posttraumatic stress disorder criteria met predicted more specific childhood memories in participants who reported CSA as their most traumatic life event. These findings contribute to the scientific understanding of childhood trauma and autobiographical memory functioning and underscore the importance of considering the role of age and degree of traumatization within the study of autobiographical memory.
Pubertal timing and depressive symptoms in late adolescence: The moderating role of individual, peer, and parental factors
Authors: Benoit Amelie , Lacourse Eric , Claes Michel
Published: April 2013

This longitudinal study examined personal-accentuation and contextual-amplification models of pubertal timing. In these models, individual and contextual risk factors during childhood and adolescence can magnify the effects of early or late puberty on depression symptoms that occur years later. The moderating role of prepubertal individual factors (emotional problems in late childhood) and interpersonal factors (deviant peer affiliation, early dating, perceived peer popularity, and perceived parental rejection during adolescence) were tested. A representative sample of 1,431 Canadian adolescents between 10–11 and 16–17 years of age was followed biannually. In line with the personal-accentuation model, early puberty has been shown to be a predictor for depression in both girls and boys who presented emotional problems in childhood. This effect was also noted for late maturing boys. Consistent with the contextual-amplification model, early puberty predicted later depression in youth who perceived greater parental rejection. Interpersonal experiences such as early dating in girls and deviant peer affiliation in boys predicted depression in early maturers as well. For girls, early dating was also found to be amplified by childhood emotional problems. In line with biopsychosocial models, results indicate that the effect of pubertal timing on depressive symptoms must be conceptualized through complex interactions between characteristics of adolescents' interpersonal relationships and prepubertal vulnerabilities.
Emotional reactivity and the association between psychopathy-linked narcissism and aggression in detained adolescent boys
Authors: Muñoz Centifanti Luna C. , Kimonis Eva R. , Frick Paul J. , Aucoin Katherine J.
Published: April 2013

Different patterns of emotional reactivity characterize proactive and reactive functions of aggressive behavior, and theory also suggests a link of both types with narcissism. How people with narcissistic traits respond emotionally to competitive scenarios could influence their aggressiveness. Participants were 85 adolescent boys from a detention center. Several indices of emotional functioning were assessed, including attentional bias to negative emotional stimuli and psychophysiological responding. In addition, we included self-report and laboratory measures of aggression and measures of psychopathy-linked narcissism, callous–unemotional traits, and impulsivity. Psychopathy-linked narcissism was uniquely related to unprovoked aggression (i.e., proactive aggression) and to heightened attention to pictures depicting others’ distress. Compared with those scoring low on narcissism, those high on narcissism, who were the least physiologically reactive group, evinced greater proactive aggression, whereas those showing a pattern of coactivation (i.e., sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic reactivity) evinced greater reactive aggression. Results are consistent with descriptions of narcissistic individuals as being hypervigilant to negative cues and exhibiting poor emotion regulation. These characteristics may lead to aggressive and violent behavior aimed at maintaining dominance over others.
A Russian View of European Literary History
Authors: Weststeijn Willem G.
Published: April 2013

This article discusses the theory of the Russian medievalist Dmitry Likhachov regarding the evolution of European literature. In the history of European literature, Likhachov distinguishes a number of so-called ‘megaperiods’, which each consist of a ‘primary’ and a ‘secondary’ cultural period or style. The megaperiods are: Romanesque–Gothic, Renaissance–Baroque, Classicism–Romanticism, Realism–Symbolism, Modernism–Postmodernism. Primary periods generally favour ‘realism’ and are connected with a definite ideology; secondary periods tend to decorativeness, irrationalism and various, even opposite, ideologies. The change from a primary to a secondary period is gradual, from a secondary to a primary one rather sudden. The theory makes us aware of the existence of a kind of ‘rhythm’ in the development of European literature and culture.
Character and consensus in Plato'sProtagoras
Authors: Long Alex
Published: April 2013

If we look to theProtagorasfor philosophical lessons, it may seem an irritating patchwork of niggling argument, irrelevant digressions, false starts and downright fallacy. Read as a play in which the most outstanding and individual minds of a brilliant period meet and engage in a battle of wits, it will give a different impression. That is how it should be read. A serious discussion of the nature of virtue, and how it is acquired, must be left, as Protagoras said, for another occasion - and, we may add, for different company: it is not to be achieved in the competitive atmosphere of a public gathering of Sophists.

TheProtagorasis palpably interested in character, vividly reviving a lost intellectual generation. But it also seems to argue for a conclusion, albeit a very provisional one. How should we relate the dialogue's array of luminaries to its argument? A reader may be tempted, as in the quotation above, to use the dialogue's literary lustre merely to excuse its arguments from charges of philosophical clumsiness. But by the end of the work we have been shown apparently successful arguments for the unity of virtue, with Protagoras' attempt at a counter-example refuted (360d8–e5).
Pausanias at Mantinea: invention and manipulation of local history
Authors: Pretzler Maria
Published: April 2013

Pausanias' qualities as a historian have long been the subject of scholarly attention, not least because some of his historical accounts present modern commentators with seemingly insurmountable problems. In fact, there is no denying that at times, Pausanias gets his history spectacularly wrong. Such apparent errors are all the more problematic because Pausanias' version is sometimes incompatible with major historical works which he, as a very well-read man, should have known. Do we have to assume that Pausanias sometimes chose to present historical accounts which he himself could identify as inaccurate or at least as clashing with other literary works?

In this article I investigate Pausanias' description of Mantinea which contains two of the most blatant examples of his inaccurate historical accounts, both set in the third century BC, and both incompatible with alternative sources: we are offered a lengthy description of a battle that probably never took place, and Pausanias' version of Mantinea's fate after its defeat in 222 BC seems a complete reversal of what Polybius reported much closer to the time. I use these examples to demonstrate how such idiosyncratic versions of history could develop and survive within their local context, and why they may have seemed an attractive addition to Pausanias'Periegesis.
Greek, Latin and the Indian Civil Service
Authors: Vasunia Phiroze
Published: April 2013

The whole question of the future of the East is full of interest, and is, perhaps, the greatest political question in the world.

(Benjamin Jowett)

… a corps of men specially selected, brought up in a rigour of bodily hardship to which no other modern people have subjected their ruling class, trained by cold baths, cricket, and the history of Greece and Rome …

(Philip Mason)

In his essay ‘Comparativism and references to Rome in British imperial attitudes to India’, Javed Majeed shows how Greek and Latin figured prominently in the examinations for the Indian Civil Service, the prestigious administrative body that David Lloyd George called ‘the steel frame’. Greek and Latin were not just used to attract and shape a class of ruling ‘gentlemen’, but were also part of a complex structure of attitude and practice designed ‘to preserve the ICS as a monopoly of European officers’. Majeed's insightful essay sheds light on the role of ICS examinations and on the function of Classics in colonial contexts, although it is mainly about comparative approaches to the British and Roman empires.
Colour and marble in early imperial Rome
Authors: Bradley Mark
Published: April 2013

The proliferation of white and coloured marbles in Rome and the provinces has received detailed attention from archaeologists, and the symbolism underlying the use and distribution of these marbles has been discussed at length by art historians. In addition, there are now several important catalogues of ancient Roman marbles. Their stones are presented attractively in full glory, using state-of-the-art printing technology, page after page of dazzling colour. In case the full extent of the polychromy is lost on the reader, descriptions and labels (particulary those coined in nineteenth-century Italy) reinforce this vivid connection between stone and colour -‘giallo antico’, ‘rosso antico’, ‘porfido’, ‘scisto verde’, ‘nero antico’, ‘marmo bianco’, ‘greyish-blues’, ‘black limestone’, ‘dazzling white’, ‘rot’, ‘gelb’, ‘violett’. It is a very simple exercise for us to align colour and stone.
Long mid vowels in Attic-Ionic and Cretan
Authors: Thompson Rupert
Published: April 2013

§1. Common Greek inherited from proto-Indo-European a simple five vowel system as shown in (1), with one mid vowel on each of the front and back axes. Only the long vowel system is shown here; the short vowel system had the same structure.

The inherited system was inherently stable: there was balance between the short and long vowel systems and between the front and back axes, and with only one mid vowel on each axis, there was no problem of overcrowding. The individual phonemes were, so far as we can tell, optimally distributed in the available phonological space. (The diagram shows the back axis as being shorter than the front, since anatomical constraints mean there is less articulatory space at the back of the mouth; see Laver (1994)272–3).
Hellenistic philosophers onPhaedrus229b–30a
Authors: Brouwer René
Published: April 2013

AtM.7.433 the sceptic Sextus Empiricus infers from the statement that the early Stoics did not profess themselves to be sages that ‘Cleanthes did not know whether he was a human being or a beast more complex than Typhon.’ Since in two other passages, atM.7.264 andPH2.22, Sextus ascribes (variations upon) this confession of ignorance to Socrates rather than Cleanthes, whom Sextus otherwise obviously presents as one of his dogmatic adversaries, it has been alleged that the reference to one of the heads of the Stoic school must simply have been a ‘wilful misreading’ on Sextus' behalf. As I hope to show, there are good reasons for Sextus to refer to a Stoic here, or rather even better reasons for a Stoic to have brought up this reference himself.

As has been picked up well in modern scholarship, Sextus' inference atM.7.433 (as in the other two passages) ultimately refers back to the beginning of thePhaedrus, at 229e–30a, which contains an image (or perhaps even self-portrait) of Socrates.
Women reading men: the female audience of theArs amatoria
Authors: James Sharon L.
Published: April 2013

The female readership of theArs amatoriahas been for two millennia a subject fraught with problems both historical and theoretical. For example: in antiquity, did respectable women read the poem? Almost certainly, and they were almost certainly expected to. Were they intended to? Here less certainty is possible, not only because of the problem of divining authorial intention. Did non-respectable women, the real life analogues to the poem's fictive courtesans, read theArs? Some of them – the elite ones – must have, but lower-level courtesans would have had less opportunity to acquire copies of the poem. On the textual, rather than historical, level, other questions remain, most of them unanswerable, such as the sincerity of the poem's disclaimers tomatronae, the No-Wives-Allowed signs. The deliberate textual confusion betweenmatronaandmeretrixinArs3 blurs clear distinctions and makes it impossible to tell if thepraeceptor Amorisanticipates or seeks respectable, elite women, in addition to his declared readers, the courtesans.
Cold science: Seneca on hail and snow inNatural questions4B
Authors: Williams Gareth
Published: April 2013

A familiar controversy in modern science centres on the problematic relationship between the ‘rhetoric’ and the ‘rationality’ of scientific argument. ‘From the dawn of modern science’, writes Philip Kitcher, ‘strenuous announcements have advocated that thinkers are not to be diverted from the conclusions that they ought to reach by the enchantments of language used to clothe a chain of reasoning. Hence the need for a restrained idiom that will “let the facts speak for themselves.” Science is to be a rhetoric-free zone.’ The broad aim of this paper is to suggest certain ways in which Seneca contributes to the ancient end of a controversy that Kitcher traces back to the beginning of the modern scientific era.
Behavioral Distraction by Auditory Deviance Is Mediated by the Sound’s Informational Value *Li and Parmentier share the first authorship of this study.
Authors: Li Biqin , Parmentier Fabrice B.R. , Zhang Ming
Published: April 2013

Sounds deviating from an otherwise repetitive background in some task-irrelevant respect (deviant sounds among standard sounds) capture attention in an obligatory fashion and result in behavioral distraction in an ongoing task. Traditionally, such distraction has been considered as the ineluctable consequence of the deviant sound’s low probability of occurrence relative to that of the standard. Recent evidence from a cross-modal oddball task challenged this idea by showing that deviant sounds only yield distraction in a visual task when auditory distractors (standards and deviants) announce with certainty the imminent presentation of a target stimulus (event information), regardless of whether they predict the target’s temporal onset (temporal information). The present study sought to test for the first time whether this finding may be generalized to a purely auditory oddball task in which distractor and target information form part of the same perceptual stimulus. Participants were asked to judge whether a sound starting from a central location moved left or right while ignoring rare and unpredictable changes in the sound’s identity. By manipulating the temporal and probabilistic relationship between sound onset and movement onset, we disentangled the roles of event and temporal information and found that, as in the auditory-visual oddball task, deviance distraction is mediated by the extent to which distractor information harbingers the presentation of the target information (event information). This finding suggests that the provision of event information by auditory distractors is a fundamental prerequisite of behavioral deviance distraction.
Regulation of TNF‐α with a focus on rheumatoid arthritis
Authors: Moelants Eva AV , Mortier Anneleen , Van Damme Jo , Proost Paul
Published: April 2013

Cytokines and chemokines represent two important groups of proteins that control the human immune system. Dysregulation of the network in which these immunomodulators function can result in uncontrolled inflammation, leading to various diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), characterized by chronic inflammation and bone erosion. Potential triggers of RA include autoantibodies, cytokines and chemokines. The tight regulation of cytokine and chemokine production, and biological activity is important. Tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) is abundantly present in RA patients’ serum and the arthritic synovium. This review, therefore, discusses first the role and regulation of the major proinflammatory cytokine TNF‐α, in particular the regulation of TNF‐α production, post‐translational processing and signaling of TNF‐α and its receptors. Owing to the important role of TNF‐α in RA, the TNF‐α‐producing cells and the dynamics of its expression, the direct and indirect action of this cytokine and possible biological therapy for RA are described.
Basic and applied uses of genome‐scale metabolic network reconstructions of Escherichia coli
Authors: McCloskey Douglas , Palsson Bernhard Ø , Feist Adam M
Published: April 2013

The genome‐scale model (GEM) of metabolism in the bacterium Escherichia coli K‐12 has been in development for over a decade and is now in wide use. GEM‐enabled studies of E. coli have been primarily focused on six applications: (1) metabolic engineering, (2) model‐driven discovery, (3) prediction of cellular phenotypes, (4) analysis of biological network properties, (5) studies of evolutionary processes, and (6) models of interspecies interactions. In this review, we provide an overview of these applications along with a critical assessment of their successes and limitations, and a perspective on likely future developments in the field. Taken together, the studies performed over the past decade have established a genome‐scale mechanistic understanding of genotype–phenotype relationships in E. coli metabolism that forms the basis for similar efforts for other microbial species. Future challenges include the expansion of GEMs by integrating additional cellular processes beyond metabolism, the identification of key constraints based on emerging data types, and the development of computational methods able to handle such large‐scale network models with sufficient accuracy.
Self-cleaning of superhydrophobic surfaces by self-propelled jumping condensate
Authors: Wisdom Katrina M. , Watson Jolanta A. , Qu Xiaopeng , Liu Fangjie , Watson Gregory S. , Chen Chuan-Hua
Published: April 2013

The self-cleaning function of superhydrophobic surfaces is conventionally attributed to the removal of contaminating particles by impacting or rolling water droplets, which implies the action of external forces such as gravity. Here, we demonstrate a unique self-cleaning mechanism whereby the contaminated superhydrophobic surface is exposed to condensing water vapor, and the contaminants are autonomously removed by the self-propelled jumping motion of the resulting liquid condensate, which partially covers or fully encloses the contaminating particles. The jumping motion off the superhydrophobic surface is powered by the surface energy released upon coalescence of the condensed water phase around the contaminants. The jumping-condensate mechanism is shown to spontaneously clean superhydrophobic cicada wings, where the contaminating particles cannot be removed by gravity, wing vibration, or wind flow. Our findings offer insights for the development of self-cleaning materials.
Glycolytic strategy as a tradeoff between energy yield and protein cost
Authors: Flamholz Avi , Noor Elad , Bar-Even Arren , Liebermeister Wolfram , Milo Ron
Published: April 2013

Contrary to the textbook portrayal of glycolysis as a single pathway conserved across all domains of life, not all sugar-consuming organisms use the canonical Embden–Meyerhoff–Parnass (EMP) glycolytic pathway. Prokaryotic glucose metabolism is particularly diverse, including several alternative glycolytic pathways, the most common of which is the Entner–Doudoroff (ED) pathway. The prevalence of the ED pathway is puzzling as it produces only one ATP per glucose—half as much as the EMP pathway. We argue that the diversity of prokaryotic glucose metabolism may reflect a tradeoff between a pathway’s energy (ATP) yield and the amount of enzymatic protein required to catalyze pathway flux. We introduce methods for analyzing pathways in terms of thermodynamics and kinetics and show that the ED pathway is expected to require several-fold less enzymatic protein to achieve the same glucose conversion rate as the EMP pathway. Through genomic analysis, we further show that prokaryotes use different glycolytic pathways depending on their energy supply. Specifically, energy-deprived anaerobes overwhelmingly rely upon the higher ATP yield of the EMP pathway, whereas the ED pathway is common among facultative anaerobes and even more common among aerobes. In addition to demonstrating how protein costs can explain the use of alternative metabolic strategies, this study illustrates a direct connection between an organism’s environment and the thermodynamic and biochemical properties of the metabolic pathways it employs.
Differential hERG ion channel activity of ultrasmall gold nanoparticles
Authors: Leifert Annika , Pan Yu , Kinkeldey Anne , Schiefer Frank , Setzler Julia , Scheel Olaf , Lichtenbeld Hera , Schmid Günter , Wenzel Wolfgang , Jahnen-Dechent Willi , Simon Ulrich
Published: April 2013

Understanding the mechanism of toxicity of nanomaterials remains a challenge with respect to both mechanisms involved and product regulation. Here we show toxicity of ultrasmall gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Depending on the ligand chemistry, 1.4-nm-diameter AuNPs failed electrophysiology-based safety testing using human embryonic kidney cell line 293 cells expressing human ether-á-go-go-Related gene (hERG), a Food and Drug Administration-established drug safety test. In patch-clamp experiments, phosphine-stabilized AuNPs irreversibly blocked hERG channels, whereas thiol-stabilized AuNPs of similar size had no effect in vitro, and neither particle blocked the channel in vivo. We conclude that safety regulations may need to be reevaluated and adapted to reflect the fact that the binding modality of surface functional groups becomes a relevant parameter for the design of nanoscale bioactive compounds.
Neural predictors of individual differences in response to math tutoring in primary-grade school children
Authors: Supekar Kaustubh , Swigart Anna G. , Tenison Caitlin , Jolles Dietsje D. , Rosenberg-Lee Miriam , Fuchs Lynn , Menon Vinod
Published: April 2013

Now, more than ever, the ability to acquire mathematical skills efficiently is critical for academic and professional success, yet little is known about the behavioral and neural mechanisms that drive some children to acquire these skills faster than others. Here we investigate the behavioral and neural predictors of individual differences in arithmetic skill acquisition in response to 8-wk of one-to-one math tutoring. Twenty-four children in grade 3 (ages 8–9 y), a critical period for acquisition of basic mathematical skills, underwent structural and resting-state functional MRI scans pretutoring. A significant shift in arithmetic problem-solving strategies from counting to fact retrieval was observed with tutoring. Notably, the speed and accuracy of arithmetic problem solving increased with tutoring, with some children improving significantly more than others. Next, we examined whether pretutoring behavioral and brain measures could predict individual differences in arithmetic performance improvements with tutoring. No behavioral measures, including intelligence quotient, working memory, or mathematical abilities, predicted performance improvements. In contrast, pretutoring hippocampal volume predicted performance improvements. Furthermore, pretutoring intrinsic functional connectivity of the hippocampus with dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices and the basal ganglia also predicted performance improvements. Our findings provide evidence that individual differences in morphometry and connectivity of brain regions associated with learning and memory, and not regions typically involved in arithmetic processing, are strong predictors of responsiveness to math tutoring in children. More generally, our study suggests that quantitative measures of brain structure and intrinsic brain organization can provide a more sensitive marker of skill acquisition than behavioral measures.
Ash from the Toba supereruption in Lake Malawi shows no volcanic winter in East Africa at 75 ka
Authors: Lane Christine S. , Chorn Ben T. , Johnson Thomas C.
Published: April 2013

The most explosive volcanic event of the Quaternary was the eruption of Mt. Toba, Sumatra, 75,000 y ago, which produced voluminous ash deposits found across much of the Indian Ocean, Indian Peninsula, and South China Sea. A major climatic downturn observed within the Greenland ice cores has been attributed to the cooling effects of the ash and aerosols ejected during the eruption of the Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT). These events coincided roughly with a hypothesized human genetic bottleneck, when the number of our species in Africa may have been reduced to near extinction. Some have speculated that the demise of early modern humans at that time was due in part to a dramatic climate shift triggered by the supereruption. Others have argued that environmental conditions would not have been so severe to have such an impact on our ancestors, and furthermore, that modern humans may have already expanded beyond Africa by this time. We report an observation of the YTT in Africa, recovered as a cryptotephra layer in Lake Malawi sediments, >7,000 km west of the source volcano. The YTT isochron provides an accurate and precise age estimate for the Lake Malawi paleoclimate record, which revises the chronology of past climatic events in East Africa. The YTT in Lake Malawi is not accompanied by a major change in sediment composition or evidence for substantial temperature change, implying that the eruption did not significantly impact the climate of East Africa and was not the cause of a human genetic bottleneck at that time.
Activation of heme biosynthesis by a small molecule that is toxic to fermenting
Staphylococcus aureus
Authors: Mike Laura A. , Dutter Brendan F. , Stauff Devin L. , Moore Jessica L. , Vitko Nicholas P. , Aranmolate Olusegun , Kehl-Fie Thomas E. , Sullivan Sarah , Reid Paul R. , DuBois Jennifer L. , Richardson Anthony R. , Caprioli Richard M. , Sulikowski Gary A. , Skaar Eric P.
Published: April 2013

Staphylococcus aureus
is a significant infectious threat to global public health. Acquisition or synthesis of heme is required for
S. aureus
to capture energy through respiration, but an excess of this critical cofactor is toxic to bacteria.
S. aureus
employs the heme sensor system (HssRS) to overcome heme toxicity; however, the mechanism of heme sensing is not defined. Here, we describe the identification of a small molecule activator of HssRS that induces endogenous heme biosynthesis by perturbing central metabolism. This molecule is toxic to fermenting
S. aureus
, including clinically relevant small colony variants. The utility of targeting fermenting bacteria is exemplified by the fact that this compound prevents the emergence of antibiotic resistance, enhances phagocyte killing, and reduces
S. aureus
pathogenesis. Not only is this small molecule a powerful tool for studying bacterial heme biosynthesis and central metabolism; it also establishes targeting of fermentation as a viable antibacterial strategy.
Mo(ve)ments in the academic supervision relationship: Ethics in practice
Authors: Kotzé Elmarie
Published: April 2013

Context: The context of the article is a supervisory relationship between an academic supervisor and a student‐researcher and an ethic of risk within the research and supervision. Focus: The challenges for supervisor and student, and thus the supervisory relationship, and the strategies to move beyond the ethical dilemmas encountered in the research project, within an ethic of risk, form the focus of the article. Discussion: This article highlights the moments when a student counsellor/ researcher came to an impasse in transcribing and analysing data generated in an auto‐ethnography, and the author, the academic supervisor's responses to these difficulties. The use of specific knowledge, skills and strategies in the supervisory relationship opened space for agency and movement within these moments of impasse. Text work and researcher identity work was facilitated through the use of particular listening skills and narrative therapy informed questions.
Properties of long gamma-ray bursts from massive compact binaries
Authors: Church Ross P. , Levan Andrew J. , Davies Melvyn B. , Kim Chunglee
Published: April 2013

We consider the implications of a model for long-duration gamma-ray bursts in which the progenitor is spun up in a close binary by tidal interactions with a massive black-hole companion. We investigate a sample of such binaries produced by a binary population synthesis, and show that the model predicts several common features in the accretion on to the newly formed black hole. In all cases, the accretion rate declines as approximatelyt−5/3until a break at a time of order 104 s. The accretion rate declines steeply thereafter. Subsequently, there is flaring activity, with the flare peaking between 104and 105 s, the peak time being correlated with the flare energy. We show that these times are set by the semi-major axis of the binary, and hence the process of tidal spin-up; furthermore, they are consistent with flares seen in the X-ray light curves of some long gamma-ray bursts.
Merging white dwarfs and thermonuclear supernovae
Authors: van Kerkwijk M. H.
Published: April 2013

Thermonuclear supernovae result when interaction with a companion reignites nuclear fusion in a carbon–oxygen white dwarf, causing a thermonuclear runaway, a catastrophic gain in pressure and the disintegration of the whole white dwarf. It is usually thought that fusion is reignited in near-pycnonuclear conditions when the white dwarf approaches the Chandrasekhar mass. I briefly describe two long-standing problems faced by this scenario, and the suggestion that these supernovae instead result from mergers of carbon–oxygen white dwarfs, including those that produce sub-Chandrasekhar-mass remnants. I then turn to possible observational tests, in particular, those that test the absence or presence of electron captures during the burning.
High-energy transients
Authors: Gehrels Neil , Cannizzo John K.
Published: April 2013

We present an overview of high-energy transients in astrophysics, highlighting important advances over the past 50 years. We begin with early discoveries of γ-ray transients, and then delve into physical details associated with a variety of phenomena. We discuss some of the unexpected transients found by Fermi and Swift, many of which are not easily classifiable or in some way challenge conventional wisdom. These objects are important insofar as they underscore the necessity of future, more detailed studies.
The square kilometre array and the transient universe
Authors: Stappers B. W.
Published: April 2013

The square kilometre array (SKA) is a next generation radio telescope that will be built in southern Africa and Australasia. It will be built in two phases and will use a range of detectors, from aperture arrays to dishes, to span the frequency range from a few tens of megahertz to a few gigahertz. The combination of great sensitivity, wide field of view and unprecedented computing power mean that the SKA will be an excellent instrument for studying the transient radio universe. Transient radio emission is generated in extremes of: gravitational and magnetic fields, velocity, temperature, pressure and density. While we know about plenty of source classes for this type of short duration radio emission, there is still a large range of transient parameter space that has not yet been sampled owing to the limitations of current generation radio telescopes.
Divergent DNA-Binding Specificities of a Group of ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTOR Transcription Factors Involved in Plant Defense
Authors: Shoji Tsubasa , Mishima Masaki , Hashimoto Takashi
Published: April 2013

Transcription factors (TFs) recognize target DNA sequences with distinct DNA-binding domains (DBDs). The DBD of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTOR1 (AtERF1) uses three consecutive β-strands to recognize a GCC-containing sequence, but tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) ERF189 and periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) Octadecanoid-derivative Responsive Catharanthus AP2-domain protein3 (ORCA3) of the same TF subgroup appear to target similar but divergent DNA sequences. Here, we examined how DNA-binding specificities of these TFs have diverged in each plant lineage to regulate distinct defense metabolisms. Extensive mutational analyses of these DBDs suggest that two modes of protein-DNA interactions independently contribute to binding specificity and affinity. Substitution of a conserved arginine to lysine in the first β-strand of ERF189 relaxes its interaction with the second GC pair of the GCC DNA sequence. By contrast, an increased number of basic amino acids in the first two β-strands of ORCA3 allows this TF to recognize more than one GCC-related target, presumably via increased electrostatic interactions with the negatively charged phosphate backbone of DNA. Divergent DNA-binding specificities of the ERFs may have arisen through mutational changes of these amino acid residues.
Turbulent flow and heat transfer enhancement of forced convection over heated baffles in a channel
Authors: Saim Rachid , Benzenine Hamidou , Öztop Hakan F. , Al‐Salem Khaled
Published: April 2013

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the turbulent fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics for rectangular channel provided with solid plate baffles which are arranged on the bottom and top channel walls in a periodically staggered way.

Design/methodology/approach

The turbulent governing equations are solved by a finite volume method with the second‐order up winding scheme and the k‐ω turbulence model to describe the turbulent structure. The velocity and pressure terms of momentum equations are solved by SIMPLE (semi‐implicit method for pressure‐linked equation) algorithm. The parameters studied include the entrance Reynolds number Re (5.103‐2.104), the baffles height are fixed at (h=0.08 m); whereas three different baffle spacing were considered S1 = D, S2 = D/2 and S3=3D/2 and the working medium is air.

Findings

In this work, it is found that vortex shedding generated by the baffle on the upper wall can additionally enhance heat transfer along the baffle surfaces. The wavy flow significantly changes the recirculating zone behind the last baffle. Finally, changing the baffles spacing seemed to reduce to changing the heat transfer surface between the solid and the fluid in the sense that higher heat transfer is obtained for lower spacing between baffles.

Originality/value

The results of the numerical calculations of the flow field indicate that the flow patterns around the solid baffles depending on the spacing of the baffles and it significantly influences the local heat transfer coefficient distributions. The problem is inversely proportional for the friction factor.
A bottom‐up approach for productivity measurement and improvement
Authors: Jagoda Kalinga , Lonseth Robert , Lonseth Adam
Published: April 2013

Purpose

The steady incline in oil prices combined with the recent credit crisis and downturns in financial markets has driven organizations to re‐evaluate their manufacturing processes and bottom line. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a bottom‐up approach that may be used by firms in planning, managing and forecasting productivity improvements.

Design/methodology/approach

A multiple‐case study approach was used: two comprehensive cases and seven short cases were used to illustrate the model.

Findings

The lack of understanding of the relationship between productivity, profitability and performance has led to the application of piece‐meal solutions for problems in productivity. Bottom‐up approach in improving productivity will provide better results than top‐down approach.

Originality/value

This paper describes the bottom‐up approach which has been successfully used for managing productivity improvement initiatives.