bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Known World in World Literature: Bakhtin, Glissant, and Edward P. Jones
Authors: Berman Carolyn Vellenga
Published: October 2009

What is the “world” in “world literature”? In publishing, as in literary criticism, this term often applies to the leftovers of the international literary market: works not drawn from the major national publishing markets. It signifies, in effect, “the rest of the world” or perhaps “the unknown world.” Yet if Édouard Glissant is right, this shortcut bred of convenience and contempt aptly names the world-historical significance of the leftovers called “world literature.” This essay reads Glissant's Poetics of Relation as a theory not of Caribbean literature but of world literature; I tease out its approach to “the world” by exploring it alongside a recent novel representing one of the local worlds with which Glissant is most concerned. I focus on Edward P. Jones's depiction of a slave plantation in Virginia in 1855 in The Known World (2003). Reading this novel in light of Mikhail Bakhtin's exploration of the “destruction of the idyll” in the novel, I consider how Jones's work imagines a relationship between a local place (a “known world”) and a totality that extends beyond it. As Glissant has argued, “Not knowing this totality is not a weakness. Not wanting to know it certainly is.” Exploring Jones's novel in light of Bakhtin's and Glissant's theories of linguistic diversity and literary form, I ask how, and to what effect, Jones's novel connects its known world to the unknown one that we might call “the world.”
If the Shoe Fits … Trollope and the Girl
Authors: Byler Lauren
Published: October 2009

Anthony Trollope's infamous obsession with composing novels in as efficient a manner as possible founders on the rhetorical excess of the metaphors he employs to signify utility: shoes and shoe making. Like the ornate metaphors for utility that illustrate and obstruct Trollope's theory of novel production, the girl propels his novels through their marriage plot but can also clog this narrative by failing to form a pair. Despite Trollope's distaste for his popular heroine, Lily Dale, this girl—who buys herself a pair of shoes rather than pairing herself in marriage—may be Trollope's most fitting author surrogate because she exemplifies the uselessness that cannot be extricated from his notion of utility. Her appropriation of his favorite metaphor for utility also offers a way to read his shoe fetish as concealing a fetishistic relation to language in which rhetoric becomes a fetish that disavows the disarticulating force of rhetoric itself. Linking Trollope's autobiography and novels to discourses on shoes and utility by Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger, this essay draws out the compatibility of uselessness and value that Trollope performs even while explicitly championing utilitarian value. All three writers correlate utility and gender, but it is in Trollope's works that we most clearly see the girl emerging as the absolute figure of uselessness. A Victorian cultural fetish, the girl embodies the wealth of human sentiment but also marks the place where sentimentalized subjectivity appears the flimsiest cover for the abject incapacity into which Trollope fears any subject can slide.
The Right to Mobility in Adventure Fiction
Authors: Cohen Margaret
Published: October 2009

From Ian Watt's reading of Robinson Crusoe, novel critics valuing realism as the highest expression of the form have tried to domesticate adventure fiction and the rambling dispositions of its protagonists. In contrast, this essay argues that such rambling explores a foundational human right: the right to mobility. It starts by explaining how this right is articulated in the early modern period at the international geopolitical scale as the freedom of navigation. It then links the freedom of the seas to the empowered agency of Crusoe and fellow mariners across the history of maritime adventure fiction. The essay concludes by suggesting the interest of a historically inflected typology of adventure fiction more generally, depending on the articulation of the right to mobility. One way to access this articulation is to attend to chronotypes of “dangerous passage,” from the enchanted perils confronting Odysseus to the dangers of the matrix and the net in recent cyberfiction.
Envy and Victorian Fiction
Authors: Cohen William A.
Published: October 2009

Among the many elements that divert the nineteenth-century novel's plot and characters from achieving their ends—and thus keep such narratives moving—envy occupies a special place. Envy is so psychologically powerful that it often threatens not only to irretrievably derail the prototypical marriage plot but also to undermine one of the novel's principal ethical aims: to develop a capacity for sympathy among characters and readers. Compared with some other emotions, envy has received relatively little literary-critical attention, but its formative place in the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein begins to suggest why it should have such a consequential literary role. Attending to the primitive, destructive, and relational qualities that Klein associates with this affect enables us to identify a literary current of envy—one that elucidates the emotionally violent, socially destructive impulses that psychically inhere in relations among characters as well as between characters and readers. This article charts some of the brutal terms and effects of such envy in three Victorian novels, investigating its psychical, social, and ethical dimensions in Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit, Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, and George Eliot's Middlemarch.
“Very Abstract and Terribly Concrete”: Capitalism and The Theory of the Novel
Authors: Cunningham David
Published: October 2009

For Georg Lukács in his Theory of the Novel, if the abstraction inherent in the act of theorization itself is demanded in some way by the novel form, it is because in “the created reality” of the latter “totality can be systematized only in abstract terms.” Yet equally the novel is evidently distinguished by a new kind of concreteness: a devotion to what Hegel called the “unendingly particular.” Such a dialectic “without synthesis” between its abstract and concrete tendencies is the very historical condition of the novel form. Contra Lukács's own later attempt to redeem a less tragic conception of the novel under the name of realism, this essay seeks to rethink his early debt to Hegel's account of the novel and the subsequent reworking of its terms within a Marxist framework—one that sees in Marx's Capital a refunctioning of Hegel's Spirit as the “real abstraction” of Capital itself: that “self-moving substance which is Subject” in the “shape of money.” For such a reading, the novel is thus to be grasped by critical theory as expressive of what Henri Lefebvre describes as a “predominance of the abstract in modern art [that] accompanies the extension of … the unlimited power of money and capital, very abstract and terribly concrete at one and the same time.” Here modes of abstraction are less a flight from reality and more an index of the various social forms of “real abstraction” constitutive of the “unrepresentable” totality of modernity itself.
The Novel and the Moving Now
Authors: Currie Mark
Published: October 2009

This essay considers the novel as a model of time, specifically as a model for a moving now or nunc movens conception of time. It examines a range of problems with this conception of the novel and argues that the problems themselves are where the interest lies: in the difference in the status of the future between a novel and lived experience and in the process of actively making present the events of a novel referred to in retrospect. The essay offers a hermeneutic circle between presentification and depresentification as an account of the relationship between the time of a novel and the time of life and argues that it is the existence of the future in a written narrative that is the most significant aspect of this circle. The already-there-ness of the future in written narrative, it is argued, gives to the concepts of anticipation and prolepsis a new importance for the understanding of the novel as a temporal structure.
On the Protocols of Victorian Citation
Authors: Dames Nicholas
Published: October 2009

With the birth in Britain of a widespread culture of novel reviewing in the nineteenth century came a practice that has been ignored or derided since the Victorian period ended: protracted excerpting, or the printing of long tranches of the text under review. This is not only an injustice but a misunderstanding of the function of this neglected and abjected form of citation. By turning to a variety of Victorian critics and theorists, the excerpt emerges as a highly developed tool for the analysis of long narrative. The protracted excerpt exists as a way of producing for the reader, in miniature, the affective processes involved in the work as a whole. It is intended as a microcosm of the temporal workings of long narrative. Rather than offering the “see, it works this way” epistemology of close reading, it functions in Victorian reviewing and novel theory as “see, it feels this way”—the science of the excerpt is to find the right passage of text to produce a series of affects identical in nature, if abbreviated in time, to the series of affects the novel under consideration produces. Unlike the censorious critics interested only in the moral effects of fiction or the lazy critics interested only in filling space, the Victorian reviewer emerges as centrally concerned with the novel as a machine for particular affects—and with how (and with what distortions) those affects, emerging over long periods of time and text, could be reproduced in miniature.
The Novel and the Machine in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Drury Joseph
Published: October 2009

The dynamic structural model for the erotics of narrative in the eighteenth century was not l'homme moteur of Freud but l'homme machine of French philosopher Julien de la Mettrie. Set in this context, the narrative digressions symbolized by Corporal Trim's arabesque in Tristram Shandy do not exemplify narrative desire, as Peter Brooks argued in Reading for the Plot as much as frustrate it. A close reading of Tristram Shandy shows that Laurence Sterne intended his novel to resist what he saw as a series of related mid-eighteenth-century cultural developments: a paradigm shift toward using mechanical philosophy in science, the disciplining of the body in order to maximize production and reproduction, and the increasing popularity of novel reading. Sterne's novel features stopped clocks, broken machines, and stories that, despite titillating beginnings, fail to satisfy the concupiscence of readers who turn the pages only to get to the end. The coach whose stages are compared to the breaks between chapters in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews becomes in Sterne's text the speeding post chaise, a new technology in the mid-eighteenth century, which carries Tristram in his flight from death in volume 7. Just as the accident that shatters Tristram's post chaise allows him to discover the ancient pleasures of mule travel, so the disruption of narrative is designed to awaken readers to the polymorphous pleasures of older, slower kinds of reading now facing eclipse in the age of the novel.
Fanaticism and Civil Society: Hogg's Justified Sinner
Authors: Duncan Ian
Published: October 2009

This essay analyzes the challenge issued by James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) to the liberal regime of early nineteenth-century British fiction. Hogg's novel narrates the formation and dissolution of the fanatic whose subject position, historically inside the field of civil society yet ideologically outside it, assumes a relentless antagonism to its norms. The division of narratives maps the conceptual antagonism between civil society, a collective composed of individuals and a formal system of regulated differences, and fanaticism, the moral and psychic disintegration of individualism, upon which the liberal political imagination is founded. Fanaticism appears as the dialectical product of objective historical processes of modernization, a more radical ideology of modernity, rather than some primitive, residual, or atavistic moral force. The essay sketches a genealogy for this representation through Enlightenment theories of sympathy. Confessions of a Justified Sinner narrates the declension of sympathy into a sublime technique that colonizes the other's difference and undoes the self itself.
“Vaulted Over by the Present”: Melancholy and Sovereignty in Mary Shelley's The Last Man
Authors: Elmer Jonathan
Published: October 2009

In 1826, Mary Shelley published The Last Man and James Fenimore Cooper published The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper's novel uses the themes of mourning and extinction as a way of imagining the sequential unfolding in space-time that twenty years later would be labeled Manifest Destiny. Shelley's novel, much more forthrightly political than Cooper's, is not about sequence and unfolding but about withdrawal and implosion. By adopting a different approach to the problems of empire, race, and historical melancholy than Cooper does, Shelley is forced, as it were, into greater formal innovation than the American. The Last Man further exposes an isomorphism between the imperial and the individual in the romantic politics we still inhabit. If England exerts a sovereign sway, an actual geopolitical force emanating, via maritime prowess from a “sea-surrounded nook,” it is because its isolation and individuation are analogous to the source of sovereignty itself, “man's mind alone.” When Verney later exclaims “Thou, England, wert the triumph of man!” what makes England and mankind look like synonyms is this model of sovereignty as isolation leading to extension, individuation become reduplication. But just as the characters' hope that England's isolation will protect them from the plague is dashed, so the ideal of “man's mind alone” becomes, in the form of Lionel Verney adrift in his ship, once again an “inconsiderable speck” on a “shoreless ocean.”
Stem cell biology meets systems biology
Authors: Roeder Ingo , Radtke Freddy
Published: October 2009

Stem cells and their descendents are the building blocks of life. How stem cell populations guarantee their maintenance and/or self-renewal, and how individual stem cells decide to transit from one cell stage to another to generate different cell types are long-standing and fascinating questions in the field. Here, we review the discussions that took place at a recent EMBO conference in Cambridge, UK, in which these questions were placed in the context of the latest advances in stem cell biology in presentations that covered stem cell heterogeneity, cell fate decision-making, induced pluripotency, as well as the mathematical modelling of these phenomena.
The miR-124-Sox9 paramutation: RNA-mediated epigenetic control of embryonic and adult growth
Authors: Grandjean Valérie , Gounon Pierre , Wagner Nicole , Martin Luc , Wagner Kay D. , Bernex Florence , Cuzin François , Rassoulzadegan Minoo
Published: October 2009

The size of the mammalian body is determined by genetic and environmental factors differentially modulating pre- and postnatal growth. We now report a control of growth acting in the mouse from the first cleavages to the postnatal stages. It was evidenced by a hereditary epigenetic modification(paramutation) created by injection of a miR-124 microRNA into fertilized eggs. From the blastocyst to the adult, mouse pups born after microinjection of this miRNA showed a 30% increase in size. At the blastocyst stage, frequent duplication of the inner cell mass resulted in twin pregnancies. A role of sperm RNA as a transgenerational signal was confirmed by the giant phenotype of the progeny of transgenic males expressing miR-124 during spermiogenesis. In E2.5 to E8.5 embryos, increased levels of several transcripts with sequence homology to the microRNA were noted, including those of Sox9, a gene known for its crucial role in the progenitors of several adult tissues. A role in embryonic growth was confirmed by the large size of embryos expressing a Sox9 DNA transgene. Increased expression in the paramutants was not related to a change in miR-124 expression,but to the establishment of a distinct, heritable chromatin structure in the promoter region of Sox9. While the heritability of body size is not readily accounted for by Mendelian genetics, our results suggest the alternate model of RNA-mediated heritable epigenetic modifications.
Cdc42- and IRSp53-dependent contractile filopodia tether presumptive lens and retina to coordinate epithelial invagination
Authors: Chauhan Bharesh K. , Disanza Andrea , Choi Sue-Yeon , Faber Sonya C. , Lou Ming , Beggs Hilary E. , Scita Giorgio , Zheng Yi , Lang Richard A.
Published: October 2009

The vertebrate lens provides an excellent model with which to study the mechanisms required for epithelial invagination. In the mouse, the lens forms from the head surface ectoderm. A domain of ectoderm first thickens to form the lens placode and then invaginates to form the lens pit. The epithelium of the lens placode remains in close apposition to the epithelium of the presumptive retina as these structures undergo a coordinated invagination. Here, we show that F-actin-rich basal filopodia that link adjacent presumptive lens and retinal epithelia function as physical tethers that coordinate invagination. The filopodia, most of which originate in the presumptive lens,form at E9.5 when presumptive lens and retinal epithelia first come into close contact, and have retracted by E11.5 when invagination is complete. At E10.5 -the lens pit stage - there is approximately one filopodium per epithelial cell. Formation of filopodia is dependent on the Rho family GTPase Cdc42 and the Cdc42 effector IRSp53 (Baiap2). Loss of filopodia results in reduced lens pit invagination. Pharmacological manipulation of the actin-myosin contraction pathway showed that the filopodia can respond rapidly in length to change inter-epithelial distance. These data suggest that the lens-retina inter-epithelial filopodia are a fine-tuning mechanism to assist in lens pit invagination by transmitting the forces between presumptive lens and retina. Although invagination of the archenteron in sea urchins and dorsal closure in Drosophila are known to be partly dependent on filopodia, this mechanism of morphogenesis has not previously been identified in vertebrates.
Reliable integrated navigation system based on adaptive fuzzy federated Kalman filter for automated vehicles
Authors: Li Xu , Zhang Weigong
Published: October 2009

There is an increasing interest worldwide in developing automated vehicles on the highway. From the viewpoint of safe driving, their navigation system should be accurate, robust, and reliable. This paper presents a fault-tolerant navigation approach for automated vehicles based on multi-sensor integration utilizing a proposed adaptive fuzzy federated Kalman filter (AF-FKF). The FKF model is first discussed in detail, which fuses multiple and redundant sensors incorporating strapdown inertial navigation system, carrier phase-differential global positioning system, electronic compass, machine vision, and digital map. The adaptive fuzzy FKF algorithm is then proposed to adjust the FKF information-sharing factors adaptively, detect, and isolate the faulty sensor in the FKF effectively. In order to compare the fault-tolerant performance, several traditional navigation methods are also considered. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed integrated navigation approach can detect, isolate, and accommodate different types of sensor failures including hard failures and soft failures. The proposed approach can adapt to highly reliable navigation requirements for automated vehicles in complex situations.
Numerical analysis of fuel—air mixing in a two-dimensional trapped vortex combustor
Authors: Mishra D P , Sudharshan R
Published: October 2009

The concept of trapped vortex combustion is emerging as a viable method of burning fuel effectively in aero-gas turbine engines. In a two-dimensional trapped vortex combustor (TVC), fuel—air mixing is characterized by using the parameter intensity of segregation ( Is). When fuel and oxidizer are present (with some macro-mixing already having taken place), the parameter quantifies the extent of local micro-mixing within the domain. The regions of maximum fuel—oxidizer mixedness are identified to be the vortex edge and dump shear layer of the cavity. These two regions are observed to be zones of very good fuel—air mixing with higher levels of turbulence. Increasing aspect ratio ( L/ D) and the mainstream velocity ( Vms) increases mainstream air entrainment into cavity, resulting in improved fuel—air distribution and mixing. However, an optimal L/ D=1.2 and Vms=40 m/s results in stable vortex being trapped with better fuel distribution throughout the cavity. While non-optimal L/ D and Vms may result in improved mainstream air entrainment, it is found to disrupt the trapped vortex, which is not conducive for combustion. Hence, for a given L/ D, there is an optimal momentum ratio between the cavity injections and mainstream flow, which results in a single large vortex being trapped that can roll up the fuel—air injected and distribute them across the cavity, required for stable combustion in a TVC.
Effect of a splitter plate on flow over a semi-circular cylinder
Authors: Farhadi M , Sedighi K , Fattahi E
Published: October 2009

In this study, two-dimensional unsteady laminar flow over a semi-circular cylinder (SCC) near a splitter plate was investigated numerically. Adding a splitter plate along the wake centreline downstream of the bluff bodies is an efficient passive means of controlling fully developed vortex shedding. Numerical simulations were done for different Reynolds numbers ranging from 100 to 500 in three different gaps ( g: g = 0.0 D to 4.5 D) and two different splitter lengths ( LSP = 1 and 2 D). Results indicate that by increasing the gap ratio, vortex shedding formed in the wake is suppressed and the oscillating amplitude of the lift coefficient decreases. On the other hand, drag, lift, and pressure coefficients representing the flow characteristics also vary as a function of the gap ratio at different Reynolds numbers. Extensive results on streamline patterns, wake characteristics (recirculation length), drag, lift, and pressure coefficients are presented to elucidate the interplay between the gap ratio and the Reynolds number and their influence on drag. Using the splitter plate at the downstream of the SCC causes the stretching of the vortex core and moves the centre of the vortex cores towards the leading edge of the plate. This phenomenon is caused by the reduction of the lift and drag coefficients.
Characterization of aeronautical engine parts welded with capacitor discharge welding technology
Authors: Palano F , Panella F W , Dattoma V
Published: October 2009

Capacitor discharge welding (CDW) is analysed to repair aeronautical components made with Inconel 718 and Ti6Al4V alloys, currently used for compressor and turbine applications. The CDW process is a resistance welding technology; it makes use of high-intensity current pulses, discharged by large capacitors. The use of multipoint contact features allows us to reduce stress concentration effects at the weld toe, obtaining thin weld beads, and achieve good material continuity. Base material and as-welded specimens with the same heat treatment were welded, using different parameters, and mechanically tested; the weld bead extension and the microstructural aspect of the welds were finally analysed. The development of advanced technologies for aeronautical components repair is of particular interest and the structural performances at room and working temperatures for capacitor discharge welds have to be carefully studied.
Robot- and computer-assisted craniotomy (CRANIO): From active systems to synergistic man—machine interaction
Authors: Cunha-Cruz V , Follmann A , Popovic A , Bast P , Wu T , Heger S , Engelhardt M , Schmieder K , Radermacher K
Published: October 2009

Computer and robot assistance in craniotomy/craniectomy procedures is intended to increase precision and efficiency of the removal of calvarial tumours, enabling the preoperative design and manufacturing of the corresponding implant. In the framework of the CRANIO project, an active robotic system was developed to automate the milling processes based on a predefined resection planning. This approach allows for a very efficient milling process, but lacks feedback of the intra-operative process to the surgeon. To better integrate the surgeon into the process, a new teleoperated synergistic architecture was designed. This enables the surgeon to realize changes during the procedure and use their human cognitive capabilities. The preoperative planning information is used as guidance for the user interacting with the system through a master—slave architecture. In this article, the CRANIO system is presented together with this new synergistic approach. Experiments have been performed to evaluate the accuracy of the system in active and synergistic modes for the bone milling procedure. The laboratory studies showed the general feasibility of the new concept for the selected medical procedure and determined the accuracy of the system. Although the integration of the surgeon partially reduces the efficiency of the milling process compared with a purely active (automatic) milling, it provides more feedback and flexibility to the user during the intra-operative procedure.
Trackerless ultrasound-integrated bone cement detection using a modular minirobot in revision total hip replacement
Authors: Heger S , Niggemeyer M , de la Fuente M , Mumme T , Radermacher K
Published: October 2009

Medical robots are superior to freehand manipulation if an accurate, precise, and time-efficient implementation of a preplanned intervention is required. In the first part of this contribution a new modular minirobot for automatic ultrasound-based bone cement detection followed by subsequent cement milling in revision total hip replacement is presented. A minirobot integrated ultrasound module eliminates the need for external position tracking (e.g. by an optical system) as well as patient registration since the scanned contours can be directly provided within the robot's coordinate system. Further, the modular minirobot concept allows kinematics, workspace, and mechanical parameters to be easily adapted to the requirements of related or even new surgical applications. In the experimental part, the impact of ultrasound module integration on the implementation of optimized scanning strategies is investigated and evaluated in a laboratory set-up. As wave mode conversion and refraction artefacts due to angular sound incidence influence the detection accuracy, the transducer alignment can be optimized with respect to the number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) provided by the minirobot. A model-based scanning approach using two degrees of freedom (2DOFs), three degrees of freedom (3DOFs), and four degrees of freedom (4DOFs) respectively is presented. For automated scanning path calculation, a 2DOF distal—proximal prescan has been performed to estimate the principal components of the cement cavity's geometry using either a model-based or a statistical approach. In a cadaver study, the model-based approach consistently outperformed the statistical approach. The 3DOFs and 4DOFs scanning strategies yielded a significantly higher scanning accuracy if compared with the 2DOFs approach whereas the 3DOFs approach represents a trade-off between system complexity and detection accuracy.
The effect of the screw pull-out rate on cortical screw purchase in unreamed and reamed synthetic long bones
Authors: Zdero R , Shah S , Mosli M , Bougherara H , Schemitsch E H
Published: October 2009

Orthopaedic fracture fixation constructs are typically mounted on to human long bones using cortical screws. Biomechanical studies are increasingly employing commercially available synthetic bones. The aim of this investigation was to examine the effect of the screw pull-out rate and canal reaming on the cortical bone screw purchase strength in synthetic bone. Cylinders made of synthetic material were used to simulate unreamed (foam-filled) and reamed (hollow) human long bone with an outer diameter of 35 mm and a cortex wall thickness of 4 mm. The unreamed and reamed cylinders each had 56 sites along their lengths into which orthopaedic cortical bone screws (major diameter, 3.5 mm) were inserted to engage both cortices. The 16 test groups ( n = 7 screw sites per group) had screws extracted at rates of 1 mm/min, 5 mm/min, 10 mm/min, 20 mm/min, 30 mm/min, 40 mm/min, 50 mm/min, and 60 mm/min. The failure force and failure stress increased and were highly linearly correlated with pull-out rate for reamed ( R2 = 0.60 and 0.60), but not for unreamed ( R2 = 0.00 and 0.00) specimens. The failure displacement and failure energy were relatively unchanged with pull-out rate, yielding low coefficients for unreamed ( R2 = 0.25 and 0.00) and reamed ( R2 = 0.27 and 0.00) groups. Unreamed versus reamed specimens were statistically different for failure force ( p = 0.000) and stress ( p = 0.000), but not for failure displacement ( p = 0.297) and energy (0.054< p<1.000). This is the first study to perform an extensive investigation of the screw pull-out rate in unreamed and reamed synthetic long bone.
Dependence of Chemical Shift Difference on Core-Level
Authors: Nagashima Umpei , Nagaoka Shin-ichi
Published: October 2009

A reason for the greater chemical shift difference observed in a deep core level than a shallow level is presented.
Direct Comparison of Chiral Substituent Effects for Viologens in Stereoselective Photoinduced Electron-Transfer Reactions with Zinc Myoglobin
Authors: Takashima Hiroshi , Shibata Satomi , Sekiguchi Yuka , Imai Yoshitane , Tsukahara Keiichi
Published: October 2009

In order to understand the detailed mechanisms of stereoselective photoinduced electron-transfer (ET) reactions of zinc-substituted myoglobin (ZnMb) with optically active viologens by flash photolysis, we prepared new optically active agents, such as (R,R)- and (S,S)-1,1′-bis(3-hydroxy-2-methylpropyl)-4,4′-bipyridinediylium dichloride ([BMV]Cl2). The photo-excited triplet state of ZnMb, 3(ZnMb)*, was successfully quenched by (R,R)- and (S,S)-[BMV]2+ ions to form the radical pair of ZnMb cation (ZnMb•+) and (R,R)- and (S,S)-[BMV]•+, followed by a thermal back ET reaction to the ground state. The ratio of the rate constants (kq) for ET quenching at 25 °C, kq(R,R)/kq(S,S) = 1.1, indicates that the (R,R)-[BMV]2+ preferentially quenches 3(ZnMb)*. The selectivity of the rate constants (kb) for the back ET from (R,R)- and (S,S)-[BMV]•+ to ZnMb•+ at 25 °C was kb(R,R)/kb(S,S) = 0.83. The highest stereoselectivity of 1.3 for [BMV]•+ was found at low temperature (10 °C) in the thermal back ET reaction, where ΔΔH≠(R–S) = 6.2 ± 1.9 kJ mol−1 and ΔΔS≠(R–S) = 19 ± 2 J mol−1 K−1 were obtained. The structural differences between [BMV]2+ and the other viologens imply that the bulky aromatic substituent seems to be more important than the distance from the chiral center to the viologen moiety in order to enhance the ET stereoselectivity.
Structure and Enantio-Differentiating Behaviors of Nickel(II) Complexes with Chiral Schiff Base Ligands Derived from 1,1′-Binaphthyl-2,2′-diamine
Authors: Saito Mariko , Sato Hisako , Mori Yukie , Fukuda Yutaka
Published: October 2009

Crystal structures of nickel(II), copper(II), and palladium(II) complexes with (R)-/(S)-2,2′-bis(salicylideneamino)-1,1′-binaphthyl were determined. The nickel complex 1 is binuclear consisting of two Ni2+ ions and homochiral two ligand dianions in the crystal. Each Ni2+ ion has a trans-N2O2 square-planar coordination sphere. Either the metal ion or the ligand is less distorted in binuclear complex 1 as compared with the mononuclear copper(II) complex, which has an intermediate structure between square-planar and tetrahedral forms. When dissolved in solvent, complex 1 dissociates into mononuclear species. It is likely that crystallization involves partial ligand-exchange of a mononuclear complex with another molecule of the same chirality to form a homochiral dimer in a self-sorting fashion. Nickel complex with 2,2′-bis(4-methoxysalicylideneamino)-1,1′-binaphthyl (2) forms a 1:1 adduct with (R)-2-(1-hydroxyethyl)pyridine in chloroform solution. The binding constant of (R)-2 is twofold higher than that of (S)-2, which means that the adduct formation proceeds with enantio-differentiation.
Columnar Structure Formed by Dimeric FeII Schiff Base Complex: Twisted-Overlap Salophen Platforms and Ferromagnetic Interaction
Authors: Yu Zhong , Shimizu Toshiyuki , Tominaga Toshi , Okubo Takashi , Maekawa Masahiko , Kuroda-Sowa Takayoshi
Published: October 2009

Columnar assembly of dimeric FeII Schiff base complex based on twisted-overlap orientation of salophen platforms exhibits ferromagnetic interactions at low temperature, which is ascribable to μ-phenoxy-bridged Fe…Fe interactions and π–π interactions.
A Polymer Complex [Cu(O2CC6F5)2(pyz)]n Formed from Copper(II) Pentafluorobenzoate and Pyrazine
Authors: Handa Makoto , Ishitobi Yoshiyuki , Yakuwa Taku , Yoshioka Daisuke , Ishida Hideaki , Mikuriya Masahiro , Hiromitsu Ichiro , Tanaka Hidekazu , Ikeue Takahisa
Published: October 2009

The reaction of copper(II) pentafluorobenzoate ([Cu2(O2CC6F5)4]) with pyrazine (pyz) in methanol gave a polymer complex [Cu(O2CC6F5)2(pyz)]n. The pyz-bridged structure of Cu(O2CC6F5)2 was characterized by X-ray crystal structure analysis. Temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility showed the existence of an antiferromagnetic interaction (J = −3.0 cm−1) within the polymer.
Chemistry of Anthracene–Acetylene Oligomers. XIV. Convenient Synthesis of Anthrylethynes by Double Elimination Reaction from Aldehydes and Sulfones
Authors: Toyota Shinji , Azami Rie , Iwanaga Tetsuo , Matsuo Daisuke , Orita Akihiro , Otera Junzo
Published: October 2009

Three dianthrylethynes and an anthracene–acetylene trimer were conveniently synthesized by double elimination reactions starting from anthraldehydes and [(phenylsulfonyl)methyl]anthracenes. In the optimal one-shot process, a THF solution of these substrates and diethyl chlorophosphate was treated with LiHMDS at room temperature to give the desired alkynes in excellent yields without chromatographic purification. The structure of one of the intermediate vinyl sulfones was determined by X-ray crystallography.
A Highly Selective Catalytic System for the Cross-Coupling of (E)-Styryl Bromide with Benzeneboronic Acid: Application to the Synthesis of All-Trans Poly(arylenevinylene)s
Authors: Wakioka Masayuki , Mutoh Yuichiro , Takita Ryo , Ozawa Fumiyuki
Published: October 2009

A highly selective system for palladium-catalyzed polycondensation of (E,E)-1,4-bis(2-bromoethenyl)benzene ((E,E)-1) with 2,5-dioctyloxybenzene-1,4-diboronic acid (2a) to give all-trans poly[( p-phenylenevinylene)-alt-(2,5-dioctyloxy-1,4-phenylenevinylene)] (all-trans 3) has been investigated using (E)-styryl bromide ((E)-4) and 2,5-dioctyloxybenzeneboronic acid (5a) as model compounds of (E,E)-1 and 2a, respectively. The reaction of (E)-4 and 5a in toluene in the presence of Pd(PPh3)4 catalyst and aqueous K2CO3 base affords considerable amounts of homocoupling products (i.e., 1,4-diphenylbutadiene (13%) and 2,2′,5,5′-tetraoctyloxybiphenyl (22%)), together with (E)-2,5-dioctyloxystilbene ((E)-6a) as the cross-coupling product (30%). The use of aqueous NaOH as a strong base and Bu4NBr as a phase-transfer catalyst notably reduces the homocoupling products, and the use of Pd(PBut3)2 instead of Pd(PPh3)4 results in almost perfect selectivity of the cross-coupling product (E)-6a. Under optimized catalytic conditions, the desired all-trans 3 has been successfully prepared without notable defects in the polymer chain.
Injury Prevention: Avoiding One of Golf's More Painful Hazards
Authors: Lindsay David M , Versteegh Theo H , Vandervoort Anthony A
Published: October 2009

Although the sport of golf may be mistakenly perceived as a benign physical activity, there are in fact patterns of problems such as strains to the upper limb and low-back pain that have the potential to interfere with the professional golfer's livelihood and recreational golfer's enjoyment. In this article, a summary of the literature has been provided outlining the nature and extent of common musculoskeletal injuries that golfers deal with as well as some of the risk factors that may increase injury susceptibility. A detailed overview of prevention strategies to minimize the risk of suffering a golf injury has also been provided. Since many injuries arise from poor swing biomechanics, taking instruction with a knowledgeable golf instructor can be an important first step towards injury prevention. However, if a golfing client already has an injury which originated or is aggravated by playing or practicing, then the personalized help of a physician or physiotherapist experienced in golf biomechanics is also warranted. Proper attention to prevention will ensure a lifetime of enjoyable golf “par”ticipation.
A Biomechanical Investigation into Weight Distribution and Kinematic Parameters during the Putting Stroke
Authors: Hurrion Paul
Published: October 2009

This study examined the set-up position of 30 elite PGA professional golfers (2007 Season), in comparison with 30 amateur golfers (Handicap +3 to 9) while attempting the same putt of 25ft on a flat surface with a stimpmeter reading of 12. Video analysis at 50 frames per second was used to record kinematic parameters of the golfers' set-up and posture. All golfers performed their typical putting action while standing on an RSscan International 1.0 m × 0.4 m pressure platform. The RSscan Footscan® and Quintic Biomechanics 9.03 v14 software were synchronised to enable key positions of the putting stroke to be identified. Each golfer used their own personal putter. The main difference between the amateur and professional golfers was in set-up. This was found to be significant with amateurs' weight distribution 59.60% Right and 40.40% Left while the Professional Group was 48.34% Left and 51.66% Right, much closer to a balanced set-up. Students' t-test was used to compare the group means for each parameter with a level of significance set at p < 0.05. There is a trend to suggest that the wider the stance, the smaller the centre of pressure movement during the putting stroke. Although there was no significant difference in stance width, there was a significant difference in the total amount of centre of pressure movement (p < 0.05) between the two groups of golfers.
Functional and anatomical profile of visual motion impairments in stroke patients correlate with fMRI in normal subjects
Authors: Vaina Lucia M. , Sikoglu Elif M. , Soloviev Sergei , LeMay Marjorie , Squatrito Salvatore , Pandiani Gabriella , Cowey Alan
Published: October 2009

We used six psychophysical tasks to measure sensitivity to different types of global motion in 45 healthy adults and in 57 stroke patients who had recovered from the initial results of the stroke, but a large subset of them had enduring deficits on selective visual motion perception tasks. The patients were divided into four groups on the basis of the location of their cortical lesion: occipito‐temporal, occipito‐parietal, rostro‐dorsal parietal, or frontal‐prefrontal. The six tasks were: direction discrimination, speed discrimination, motion coherence, motion discontinuity, two‐dimensional form‐from‐motion, and motion coherence – radial. We found both qualitative and quantitative differences among the motion impairments in the four groups: patients with frontal lesions or occipito‐temporal lesions were not impaired on any task. The other two groups had substantial impairments, most severe in the group with occipito‐parietal damage. We also tested eight healthy control subjects on the same tasks while they were scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The BOLD signal provoked by the different tasks correlated well with the locus of the lesions that led to impairments among the different tasks. The results highlight the advantage of using psychophysical techniques and a variety of visual tasks with neurological patients to tease apart the contribution of different cortical areas to motion processing.
Rationale for Consolidation to Improve Progression-Free Survival in Patients with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: A Review of the Evidence
Authors: Morschhauser Franck , Dreyling Martin , Rohatiner Ama , Hagemeister Fredrick , Bischof Delaloye Angelika
Published: October 2009

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) comprises both indolent forms, including follicular lymphoma (FL) and marginal zone lymphoma (MZL), and aggressive forms, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). FL and DLBCL are the most common subtypes of indolent and aggressive NHL, respectively. Although these lymphomas exhibit different clinical behaviors and outcomes, the prognosis is negatively affected in both DLBCL and FL by the lack of a complete response (CR) with standard treatment options. The aim of therapy should therefore be achievement of a CR, which is not only associated with longer progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival times, but is also a prerequisite for a cure, particularly in DLBCL.

Consolidation treatment with radioimmunotherapy (RIT) is an innovative treatment approach to increase CR rates. Phase II studies have indicated promising results with yttrium-90 (90Y)-ibritumomab tiuxetan and iodine-131 (131I)-tositumomab as consolidation following induction therapy for previously untreated patients with advanced FL. More recently, investigators reported a marked increase in CR rates and significant improvements in PFS using standard chemotherapy regimens followed by 90Y-ibritumomab tiuxetan in a phase III randomized trial in patients with previously untreated FL. Data also suggest that RIT may play a role in the treatment of high-risk DLBCL, with encouraging PFS results from a phase II trial of 90Y-ibritumomab tiuxetan consolidation following induction with rituximab plus chemotherapy in elderly patients with previously untreated DLBCL. With the higher CR rates and longer PFS times observed in patients with FL and DLBCL, as well as encouraging early data from MZL and MCL consolidation trials, RIT appears to have an important role in the treatment of patients with NHL.
Expert Opinions on Positron Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography Imaging in Lymphoma
Authors: Delbeke Dominique , Stroobants Sigrid , de Kerviler Eric , Gisselbrecht Christian , Meignan Michel , Conti Peter S.
Published: October 2009

Revised guidelines for the staging and response criteria of Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) were recently published to include the expanding role of positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) using 18F-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose. Here, we discuss the new guidelines and the need for standardized PET acquisition and interpretation in HL and NHL. We also discuss how the role for CT is evolving in the process of making treatment decisions and provide insight on how best to standardize the use of PET/CT for making therapeutic choices.
Radioimmunotherapy for Stem Cell Transplantation in Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: In Pursuit of a Complete Response
Authors: Gisselbrecht Christian , Vose Julie , Nademanee Auayporn , Gianni Alessandro M. , Nagler Arnon
Published: October 2009

High-dose chemotherapy (HDC) conditioning given in association with autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) or reduced-intensity conditioning (RIC) with allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) are established treatment approaches for patients with chemotherapy-sensitive, relapsed, aggressive, or low-grade non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). These approaches have been shown to be the only curative option for patients with relapsed NHL. Despite data suggesting that prolonged event-free survival can be achieved with SCT combined with HDC, there are problems that may limit the utility of this approach for a broad patient population. For example, older patients, who make up the majority of the NHL population, may not be able to withstand the toxicities associated with this intensive regimen, and this therapy combination, especially when it includes the use of total-body irradiation, has been associated with a greater risk for secondary malignancies. Furthermore, relapse is the most common cause of treatment failure after HDC with ASCT and there is a poor success rate for those patients with either chemotherapy-refractory or heavily pretreated, multiple-relapsed disease. Consequently, there is an urgent need for other effective and well-tolerated approaches that will eradicate the residual disease that may persist before SCT, thus improving outcomes for patients with this life-threatening disease. In addition, approaches with better safety profiles would allow older patients to benefit from this therapeutic option. Because lymphomas are highly sensitive to radiation, radioimmunotherapy (RIT) has been used with great success in consolidation therapy and, as a result, there is great interest in exploring the use of RIT, either as a single agent or as augmentation of HDC, as part of a conditioning regimen for ASCT. The flexibility of including RIT as part of conditioning therapy also allows it to be combined with RIC to reduce the toxic effects of HDC. This treatment option replaces any concomitant loss of chemotherapy efficacy with a gain in RIT efficacy. The data so far suggest that the use of RIT in the autologous setting can improve clinical outcome with no added toxicity in these patients, whereas similar positive findings have been reported in preliminary studies of yttrium-90 ibritumomab tiuxetan combined with RIC and alloSCT in high-risk patients.
Apoptomirs: small molecules have gained the license to kill
Authors: Vecchione Andrea , Croce Carlo M
Published: October 2009

Apoptosis is a tightly regulated form of cell death and represents an important process during normal development. In the past years, the scientific community has produced remarkable advances in our understanding of cancer biology, realizing that apoptosis and the genes that control it have a profound effect on the malignant phenotype. Recently, a new class of non-coding RNA genes, known as microRNA (miRNA or miR), have been demonstrated to play important roles in diverse biological processes, including development, cell differentiation, proliferation, and apoptosis. This suggests that other oncogenic mechanisms are needed to produce selective pressure to override apoptosis during multistage carcinogenesis. Intriguingly, since most cytotoxic anticancer agents induce apoptosis, it is possible that defects in apoptotic programs may contribute to treatment failure. Several studies strongly suggest a role for microRNAs in modulating sensitive/resistant phenotypes to cytotoxic therapy, calling for further investigation and validation of microRNA functions and targets in order to improve sensitivity to cancer treatments, thus ultimately improving prognosis and survival. Here, we review the current findings about microRNAs focusing on their involvement in the apoptotic process.