bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Avatar, Dark Green Religion: and the Technological Construction of Nature
Authors: Klassen Chris
Published: November 2014

to come
Christianity Would Not Want a World from which Violence was Excluded': God, Bataille and Derrida on the Sovereign Logic of Religious Child Killing
Authors: Mansfield Nick
Published: November 2014

This article explores Georges Bataille's attempts to locate Gilles de Rais (1404–1440)—military figurehead, national hero, serial child-killer, archetype of Bluebeard—in a cultural, historical and political imaginary, and in a religious inscape. Bataille does this in his essay 'The Tragedy of Gilles de Rais', where de Rais finds his place as a remnant of the collapsing world of the feudal seigneur, a world he had outlived, with its military reforms and complex ecclesiastical politics.
Mad Men’s Deceptive (Critique Of) Creativity
Authors: Robert Julie
Published: November 2014

This article analyses Mad Men’s relationship to creativity. Considering popular, industry-specific and scholarly understandings, it uses close readings of the show and its narratological techniques to demonstrate how these potentially contradictory concepts and practices of creativity overlap in the show’s fourth season. The points at which these understandings collide become sources of tension between characters and are marked by narrative gaps that conceal deceptive creativity. The conflicts centre on three primary debates: a) the role of alcohol in the creative process, b) industry-specific norms of creativity, and c) the popular perception that creativity is about expression. Consequently, this article approaches questions about creativity using the show’s own partially elided debates and undermines widely-held romantic beliefs about the creative ‘type’ and the what exactly it means to sell creativity in a corporate setting.
Feminine Shame/Masculine Disgrace: A Literary Excursion through Gender and Embodied Emotion
Authors: Nurka Camille
Published: November 2014

This paper seeks a disarticulation of shame and disgrace, and hypothesises that there is a gendered cultural articulation of the two terms at work that runs counter to the normative understanding of their symbiotic unity. Specifically, I argue that the primary difference is that where shame is embodied, or an emotion fundamentally of the body, disgrace is facialised and thus able to rid itself of the body in its capacity as the privileged representative of the face. I turn to literature—using JM Coetzee’s novel Disgrace (1999) as my example—both to elucidate this distinction and to argue that the meanings of shame and disgrace diverge noticeably when the two terms come into contact with gender. As a consequence, the paper will contend that the book’s dominant narrative of racial reconciliation is in fact articulated through sexually distinct shamed positionalities.
Information Technology and the Experience of Disorder
Authors: Marshall Jonathan Paul
Published: November 2014

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a prime modality of ordering in the contemporary world. However, order creates and needs its own disorder, and ICT has a long record of failing to deliver on its promises and creating the experience of disorder. This paper looks at the myths of ordering around ICT and then looks at people's experiences of ICT disorder. In particular it looks at three factors: the informal networks that develop because of problems with ICT and with ICT help; the failure of management and communication in hierarchy and finally the failure of requirements engineering to live up to its promise. This focus on disorder may suggest a new way of approaching the so-called ‘Information Society’.
How Silent is the Right to Silence?
Authors: Biber Katherine
Published: November 2014

A long-held and fundamental principle of our criminal justice system is that people accused of crimes have a right to silence, arising from the presumption of innocence. Rules of evidence try to protect this ‘right’ during trial, by ensuring that juries understand that adverse inferences cannot be drawn from the silence of the accused. Silence, in court, can mean nothing, and we are not to speculate about what might motivate an accused person to remain silent, or what they might have said had they spoken. However, an examination of the jurisprudence in this area shows that the law is often not dealing with actual silence; sometimes when the law refers to the ‘right to silence’, it seems to mean a ‘refusal to hear’. In other instances, there is actual silence, and yet the law refuses to subject that silence to any critical interpretation, insisting that we cannot infer anything from it. While we have learned, from theatre, music, linguistics, religion and psychology, to develop sophisticated means for interpreting silence, the law demands that we set aside these interpretive tools, hearing silence that isn’t there, and inferring nothing about something.
Productive Parasites: Thinking of Noise as Affect
Authors: Thompson Marie
Published: November 2014

Drawing from Michel Serres’ notion of the parasite, this article provides a nuanced explanation for noise that distinguishes itself from prevailing negative narratives, which often seek to define noise as unwanted, undesirable or damaging sound. Such narratives have left noise vulnerable to moralising polemics, which construct silence and noise as a dichotomy between the past and present, natural and cultural, relaxing and disturbing, and, fundamentally, good and bad. This article facilitates a reconsideration of noise’s ethical connotations by proposing the notion of noise as affect.
Between Noise and Silence: Architecture since the 1970s
Authors: Brown Alexandra , Leach Andrew
Published: November 2014

This essay considers noise in architectural discourse as it might lend form to issues hitherto tabled in rather different terms. We ask what noise offers this discussion or, perhaps better put, what seeing architectural debates in terms of distinctions between noise and silence, random and structured sound, silence as absence and pregnant void might add to disciplinary debates within architectural theory and criticism. By treating these acoustic values analogously rather than literally we wish to suggest that reading the late postmodern moment through this filter opens out new possibilities for a critical assessment of this period and its present-day legacies.
Exemplary Amateurism: Thoughts on DIY Urbanism
Authors: Deslandes Ann
Published: November 2014

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) urbanism has become increasingly recognised as a non-professional and non-technocratic practice of urban alteration and community building. Already thus marked as ‘amateur’ in the contemporary sense (where the lines between amateur, professional, producer and consumer are significantly blurred), two of its key features are support for ‘proam’ cultural production and the ‘meanwhile’ use of commercial buildings. Within this, DIY urbanism is an important reference to economic and spatial scarcity in the Australian, English and North American cities where it has manifested as a discourse. The reference is particularly evident in the proximity to marginal urban space that participants in DIY urbanism share with other potential users of that space, which includes people experiencing primary homelessness. It is through this proximity that DIY urbanism works as a kind of ‘exemplary amateurism’. DIY urbanism demonstrates spatial scarcity in the city — a phenomenon in which amateur labour, 'meanwhile' use of buildings and homelessness are implicated.
Making the Self in a Material World: Food and Moralities of Consumption
Authors: De Solier Isabelle
Published: November 2014

Food is increasingly central to consumer culture today. From fine dining restaurants to farmers’ markets, stainless steel kitchenware to celebrity chef cookbooks, there is a stylish array of culinary commodities available for fashioning our identities. Yet this occurs at a time when commodity consumption more generally is under greater question as a site of self-making, with the rise of anti-consumerist sentiment. This article examines how people negotiate these issues in their identity formation, by focusing on those for whom food is central to their sense of self: ‘foodies’. I draw on theories of consumption, identity and material culture, in particular the work of Daniel Miller, to examine ethnographic research undertaken with foodies in Melbourne, Australia.
Food Cultures: Introduction
Authors: De Solier Isabelle , Duruz Jean
Published: November 2014

An introduction to the themes of the 'Food Cultures' section and an overview of the essays within.
To Love—To Live: Barrow and Cart
Authors: McDonald Lisa , Crowley Vicki
Published: November 2014

From the residue of meaning, an ensemble of shadows. From the glint of souvenir, pliable impressions. In this paper, we work a poetics of encounter, of being, keeping, homage, of paying homage to fragility, to object and to interspecies—ways are found to engage motion from within and around co-extensive bodies. With the consolation of images, we follow the terse rhythms of routine and street where dwelling is a case of affective dissent. Zones of departure appear through testimony as well as chance, taking their own form. A footfall brings us as observers into quiet spaces which refuse self-estrangement as we travel by way of an unquiet ground. Breath, respiration, aspiration. Precipitation. Sculptures of mist are also the language of lives, of kinship between object, footfall and air. A language of brackets, questions, ellipses. There may be a man, a dog, a barrow. There may be a woman, a cart. Air. How shall this image be made?
Imagining ‘Atlanta’: The Cultural Politics and Poetics of Experimental Medicine in East Africa
Authors: Elliott Denielle
Published: November 2014

In East Africa there is a field research station that locals call ‘Atlanta.’ It sits on the outskirts of a rural town, near Lake Victoria, equipped with ‘state-of-the-art’ biotechnological and entomological equipment for monitoring and exploring malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, rotavirus, and other tropical diseases. Drawn from ethnographic fieldwork with clinical trials in East Africa, this paper considers the stories people tell about the landscapes and spaces of experimental medicine to explore the uneven movement of knowledge, scientific practices, and scientists in global medicine. I begin this analytical journey at ‘Atlanta’ to consider what local idioms about such places might tell us about the encounters and travels of science and scientists in East Africa. Last, I draw attention to the social and material effects of global science projects on the lives and landscapes of East Africa.
Cute Studies
Authors: Duncan Pansy
Published: November 2014

A review of Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Harvard University Press, 2012).
Data Motility: The Materiality of Big Social Data
Authors: Coté Mark
Published: November 2014

In this article, the author uses Foucault's largely overlooked but vital concept, the dispositif, in relation to the recent rise of mobility, explosion of data and proliferation of platforms and apps. With a focus on how data an individual generates increasingly moves autonomously of their control, he presents the dispositif of ‘data motility’ to develop a new materialist analysis of the digital human as a discursive and non-discursive assemblage.
Making Room For Ghosts: Memory, History and Family Biography on Film
Authors: Ely-Harper Kerreen
Published: November 2014

This article discusses the role of documentary in memory transmission aimed at uncovering and redressing past legacies. It explores how memories on film are performed and interpreted on film with reference to my documentary, Close To The Bone (Ely-Harper, 2012). It also looks at the contribution documentary film can make to locating, preserving, transforming and protecting autobiographical memories and social histories.
The Fate of Bad Things
Authors: Herring Scott
Published: November 2014

A review of Kevin M. Moist and David Banash (eds), Contemporary Collecting: Objects, Practices and the Fate of Things (Scarecrow Press, 2013).
Listening at Uncanny Places: Forced Displacement and Torture as Silencing Processes
Authors: Ruiz Hermann
Published: November 2014

This article assesses the implications of listening in the context of the commemoration of a massacre perpetrated in 2000 by paramilitaries in the Colombian Caribbean region Los Montes de María and the subsequent displacement of the survivors from their land. Forced displacement is understood as a process of silencing when it is compared with torture. In forced displacement, as in torture, suffering is inflicted upon the victims to erase their voice, their self, their world. Simultaneously, the voice of the torturer and his regime, his world, is imposed over the victim. While I use this comparison as a conceptual bridge, rather than an absolute equation of the two, I argue that what is at stake in both forced displacement and torture is the capacity to live, perpetuate and recreate a meaningful world. I propose, therefore, that doing justice in the context of forced displacement requires a project of an ethics for listening in which it is necessary to understand voice as an actualisation of a ‘life-world’. Listening implies, then, to remain open to learn from and be changed by the speaker.
Friendship and Postmodern Utopianism
Authors: Gandhi Leela
Published: November 2014

Believers insist that the ghost of utopianism returned to Europe in May 1968, and that it has been haunting the ruins of ‘the political’ ever since. This paper is written in the spirit of belief. It has two claims: first, and incidentally, that utopianism—namely, a politics of alternatives poised at the limits of thought and being, epistemology and ontology—is both expedient and inevitable in regard to a terrain where, à la Foucault, power is everywhere, ‘immanent to the social field, distributed through the brains and bodies of citizens’; and second, and here is the crux of my argument, the movement in our time from nihilism to utopianism has required a careful renegotiation with ideas of community, communication, sociability, conatus. This process, most apparent within contemporary postmodernism, I would like to call, after Derrida, the politics of friendship. The rest of this paper is an attempt to describe the restless itinerary of such a politics, which entails, in the main, postmodernism’s departure from the cult of the hybrid subject toward a non-communitarian understanding of community.
Germany, Difficult Heimat
Authors: Hillman Roger
Published: November 2014

A review of Klaus Neumann's Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2000).
Present Tense Bisexuality
Authors: MacDowall Lachlan
Published: November 2014

A review of Steven Angelides's A History of Bisexuality (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001).
The Doctor and the Charlatan
Authors: Stengers Isabelle
Published: November 2014

We all know, in fact we are sure, that our medical practices are very different from those in the times of Molière or of Louis XVI. In one way or another medicine has today become ‘modern’ in the same way as the whole set of knowledges and practices that call themselves rational. This is obvious, but I would like to interrogate this obviousness. Not to debunk it so as to show that beyond these appearances nothing has changed, but in order to focus in a slightly clearer way on ‘what’ has changed. To be even more precise, I would like to focus on ‘what’ has changed for the doctor, the one who practises medicine.
Germany's Metamorphosis: Memory and the Holocaust in the Berlin Repulic
Authors: Lewis Alison
Published: November 2014

I want to focus on two recent debates in Germany from the same inaugural period of Germany’s SPD–Green government, which both have as their focus the contestation of memory in relation to the Holocaust. In both debates the Holocaust serves as a negative myth of origin and a primal phantasmatic scene of guilt and shame around which German national identifications are organised. The first is the Walser–Bubis debate and the second the much more protracted but no less fierce debate about the building of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, which peaked around the same time. Both debates are important in the German context because they come at the end of a long period of Christian Democratic (CDU) rule and at the beginning of a new SPD era in German politics. They are significant, moreover, because they appear to send contradictory messages about German self- understanding to the international community.
A Loss of Poetics
Authors: Kinsella John
Published: November 2014

To write poetry you don’t have to like it. I’ve been increasingly recognising that language and its correlatives in music and art are not the pure coordinates or sole arbiters of poetry. There are two issues evolving out of these comments that seem pivotal to me. The first pertains to the suggestion that poetry might happen either out of necessity, or, paradoxically, incidentally. The second, that poetry does not rely on an aesthetic response to the tensions involved in reconciling interiority and articulation of the external world. These two simple principles are becoming the turning points for a personal re-evaluation of what constitutes the poem for me as a reader, or more precisely ‘experiencer’, and what it means for me as a maker of poems.
Inside the Matrix: The (Un)reality of Corporate Life
Authors: Michael Rose
Published: November 2014

I’ve only been here three years, so what would I know? I’ve only worked in four areas, how much have I seen? Enough, surely—if the average tenure is eighteen months, as they said when I joined, then I’m practically an old hand. Enough to tell my story like any traveller, write up my notes like a true anthropologist. Or so I thought, until I started. Then I began to wonder. You could spend your whole life here and never get your head around how it works. Indeed, if you spent your life here you’d have no hope of ever getting your head around it: the longer you’re inside the Matrix, the harder it is to see.
Rapid, optical measurement of the atmospheric pressure on a fast research aircraft using open-path TDLAS
Authors: Buchholz B. , Afchine A. , Ebert V.
Published: November 2014

Abstract. Because of the high travel speed, the complex flow dynamics around an aircraft, and the complex dependency of the fluid dynamics on numerous airborne parameters, it is quite difficult to obtain accurate pressure values at a specific instrument location of an aircraft's fuselage. Complex simulations using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models can in theory computationally "transfer" pressure values from one location to another. However, for long flight patterns, this process is inconvenient and cumbersome. Furthermore, these CFD transfer models require a local experimental validation, which is rarely available. In this paper, we describe an integrated approach for a spectroscopic, calibration-free, in-flight pressure determination in an open-path White cell on an aircraft fuselage using ambient, atmospheric water vapour as the "sensor species". The presented measurements are realised with the HAI (Hygrometer for Atmospheric Investigations) instrument, built for multiphase water detection via calibration-free TDLAS (tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy). The pressure determination is based on raw data used for H2O concentration measurement, but with a different post-flight evaluation method, and can therefore be conducted at deferred time intervals on any desired flight track. The spectroscopic pressure is compared in-flight with the static ambient pressure of the aircraft avionic system and a micro-mechanical pressure sensor, located next to the open-path cell, over a pressure range from 150 to 800 hPa, and a water vapour concentration range of more than 3 orders of magnitude. The correlation between the micro-mechanical pressure sensor measurements and the spectroscopic pressure measurements shows an average deviation from linearity of only 0.14% and a small offset of 9.5 hPa. For the spectroscopic pressure evaluation we derive measurement uncertainties under laboratory conditions of 3.2 and 5.1% during in-flight operation on the HALO airplane. Under certain flight conditions we quantified, for the first time, stalling-induced, dynamic pressure deviations of up to 30% (at 200 hPa) between the avionic sensor and the optical and mechanical pressure sensors integrated in HAI. Such severe local pressure deviations from the typically used avionic pressure are important to take into account for other airborne sensors employed on such fast flying platforms as the HALO aircraft.
Gas emissions at the continental margin west of Svalbard: mapping, sampling, and quantification
Authors: Sahling H. , Römer M. , Pape T. , Bergès B. , dos Santos Fereirra C. , Boelmann J. , Geprägs P. , Tomczyk M. , Nowald N. , Dimmler W. , Schroedter L. , Glockzin M. , Bohrmann G.
Published: November 2014

Abstract. We mapped, sampled, and quantified gas emissions at the continental margin west of Svalbard during R/V Heincke cruise He-387 in late summer 2012. Hydroacoustic mapping revealed that gas emissions were not limited to a zone just above 396 m water depth. Flares from this depth have gained significant attention in the scientific community in recent years because they may be caused by bottom-water warming-induced hydrate dissolution in the course of global warming and/or by recurring seasonal hydrate formation and decay. We found that gas emissions occurred widespread between about 80 and 415 m water depth, which indicates that hydrate dissolution might only be one of several triggers for active hydrocarbon seepage in that area. Gas emissions were remarkably intensive at the main ridge of the Forlandet moraine complex in 80 to 90 m water depths, and may be related to thawing permafrost. Focused seafloor investigations were performed with the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) "Cherokee". Geochemical analyses of gas bubbles sampled at about 240 m water depth as well as at the 396 m gas emission sites revealed that the vent gas is primarily composed of methane (> 99.70%) of microbial origin (average δ13C = −55.7‰ V-PDB). Estimates of the regional gas bubble flux from the seafloor to the water column in the area of possible hydrate decomposition were achieved by combining flare mapping using multibeam and single-beam echosounder data, bubble stream mapping using a ROV-mounted horizontally looking sonar, and quantification of individual bubble streams using ROV imagery and bubble counting. We estimated that about 53 × 106 mol methane were annually emitted at the two areas and allow for a large range of uncertainty due to our method (9 to 118 × 106 mol yr−1). First, these amounts show that gas emissions at the continental margin west of Svalbard were on the same order of magnitude as bubble emissions at other geological settings; second, they may be used to calibrate models predicting hydrate dissolution at present and in the future; and third, they may serve as a baseline (year 2012) estimate of the bubble flux that will potentially increase in the future due to ever-increasing global-warming-induced bottom water warming and hydrate dissociation.
Carbon isotopes in the ocean model of the Community Earth System Model (CESM1)
Authors: Jahn A. , Lindsay K. , Giraud X. , Gruber N. , Otto-Bliesner B. L. , Liu Z. , Brady E. C.
Published: November 2014

Abstract. Carbon isotopes in the ocean are frequently used as paleo climate proxies and as present-day geochemical ocean tracers. In order to allow a more direct comparison of climate model results with this large and currently underutilized dataset, we added a carbon isotope module to the ocean model of the Community Earth System Model (CESM), containing the cycling of the stable isotope 13C and the radioactive isotope 14C. We implemented the 14C tracer in two ways: in the "abiotic" case, the 14C tracer is only subject to air–sea gas exchange, physical transport, and radioactive decay, while in the "biotic" version, the 14C additionally follows the 13C tracer through all biogeochemical and ecological processes. Thus, the abiotic 14C tracer can be run without the ecosystem module, requiring significantly less computational resources. The carbon isotope module calculates the carbon isotopic fractionation during gas exchange, photosynthesis, and calcium carbonate formation, while any subsequent biological process such as remineralization as well as any external inputs are assumed to occur without fractionation. Given the uncertainty associated with the biological fractionation during photosynthesis, we implemented and tested three parameterizations of different complexity. Compared to present-day observations, the model is able to simulate the oceanic 14C bomb uptake and the 13C Suess effect reasonably well compared to observations and other model studies. At the same time, the carbon isotopes reveal biases in the physical model, for example a too sluggish ventilation of the deep Pacific Ocean.
Factors controlling Slope Environmental Lapse Rate (SELR) of temperature in the monsoon and cold-arid glacio-hydrological regimes of the Himalaya
Authors: Thayyen R. J. , Dimri A. P.
Published: November 2014

Abstract. Moisture, temperature and precipitation interplay forced through the orographic processes sustains the Himalayan cryospheric system. However, factors controlling the Slope Environmental Lapse Rate (SELR) of temperature along the higher Himalayan mountain slopes across various glacio-hydrologic regimes remain as a key knowledge gap. Present study dwells on the orographic processes driving the moisture–temperature interplay in the monsoon and cold-arid glacio-hydrological regimes of the Himalaya. Systematic data collection at three altitudes between 2540 and 3763 m a.s.l. in the Garhwal Himalaya (hereafter called monsoon regime) and between 3500 and 5600 m a.s.l. in the Ladakh Himalaya (herefater called cold-arid regime) revealed moistrue control on temperature distribution at temporal and spatial scales. Observed daily SELR of temperature ranges between 9.0 to 1.9 °C km−1 and 17.0 to 2.8 °C km−1 in the monsoon and cold-arid regimes respectively highlighting strong regional variability. Moisture influx to the region, either from Indian summer monsoon (ISM) or from Indian winter monsoon (IWM) forced lowering of SELR. This phenophena of "monsoon lowering" of SELR is due to the release latent heat of condensation from orographically focred lifted air parcel. Seasonal response of SELR in the monsoon regime is found to be closly linked with the variations in the local lifting condensation levels (LCL). Contrary to this, cold-arid system is characterised by the extremely high values of daily SELR upto 17 °C km−1 signifying the extremely arid conditions prevailing in summer. Distinctly lower SELR devoid of monsoon lowering at higher altitude sections of monsoon and cold-arid regimes suggests sustained wetter high altitude regimes. We have proposed a SELR model for both glacio-hydrological regimes demostrating with two sections each using a derivative of the Clausius–Clapeyron relationship by deriving monthly SELR indices. It has been proposed that the manifestations of presence or absence of moisture is the single most important factor determining the temperature distribution along the higher Himalayan slopes driven by the orographic forcings. This work also suggests that the arbitary use of temperature lapse rate to extrapolate temperature to the higher Himalaya is extremely untenable.
Chemical Constituents and Biological Activities of Cirsium leucopsis, C. sipyleum, and C. eriophorum
Authors: Boğa Mehmet , Yılmaz Pelin Köseoğlu , Cebe Deniz Barıș , Fatima Mashhad , Siddiqui Bina S. , Kolak Ufuk
Published: November 2014

Two endemic Cirsium species, C. leucopsis DC. and C. sipyleum O. Schwarz, and C. eriophorum (L.) Scop. growing in Turkey were investigated to establish their secondary metabolites, fatty acid compositions, and antioxidant and anticholinesterase potentials. Spectroscopic methods were used to elucidate the structures of thirteen known compounds (p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, vanillic acid, cisepoxyconiferyl alcohol, syringin, balanophonin, 1′-O-methyl-balanophonin, apigenin, kaempferol-3- O-β-D-glucopyranoside, kaempferol-3-O-α-L-rhamnopyranoside, taraxasterol, taraxasterol acetate, β-sitosterol, β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside). cis-Epoxyconiferyl alcohol and 1′-O-methylbalanophonin were isolated for the first time from Cirsium species. Palmitic acid (47:1%) was found to be the main fatty acid of C. leucopsis, linoleic acid in both C. sipyleum (42:1%) and C. eriophorum (37:8%). Assays of b-carotene bleaching, scavenging of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radicals, 2,2-azinobis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium (ABTS) cation radicals, and superoxide anion radicals, as well as cupric reducing antioxidant capacity (CUPRAC) were used to determine the antioxidant activities of the extracts and isolated compounds. Vanillic acid, balanophonin, and kaempferol-3-O-α-L-rhamnopyranoside exhibited strong antioxidant activity. Taraxasterol was a potent inhibitor of acetyl- and butyrylcholinesterase activity, respectively.
A Robust Parameterization for Unbounded Covariates Within the Cox Proportional Hazards Model
Authors: Jackson Richard J. , Cox Trevor F.
Published: November 2014

The Cox proportional hazards model is widely used in the analysis of medical data either for survival or time to a particular event. Factors and continuous covariates can be easily incorporated into the model and hazard ratios calculated. The model can however be distorted when extreme value observations occur within a continuous covariate and the hazard ratio can become extremely large. To overcome this, transformations of the covariate are often made, which can be simple, e.g. log, or more sophisticated such as the fitting of a fractional polynomial. This paper takes a different approach and makes a transformation based on the logistic function that has the property that the hazard ratio is bounded. The models are introduced and discussed. Model diagnostics based on Schoenfeld residuals and the influence function are established and then data from a pancreatic cancer trial are used to illustrate the model.
Predictive Modelling of Patient Reported Radiotherapy-Related Toxicity by the Application of Symptom Clustering and Autoregression
Authors: Lemanska A. , Cox A. , Kirkby N. F. , Chen T. , Faithfull S.
Published: November 2014

Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) are increasingly being used in research to explore experiences of cancer survivors. Techniques to predict symptoms, with the aim of providing triage care, rely on the ability to analyse trends in symptoms or quality of life and at present are limited. The secondary analysis in this study uses a statistical method involving the application of autoregression (AR) to PROMs in order to predict symptom intensity following radiotherapy, and to explore its feasibility as an analytical tool. The technique is demonstrated using an existing dataset of 94 prostate cancer patients who completed a validated battery of PROMs over time. In addition the relationship between symptoms was investigated and symptom clusters were identified to determine their value in assisting predictive modeling. Three symptom clusters, namely urinary, gastrointestinal and emotional were identified. The study indicates that incorporating symptom clustering into predictive modeling helps to identify the most informative predictor variables. The analysis also showed that the degree of rise of symptom intensity during radiotherapy has the ability to predict later radiotherapy-related symptoms. The method was most successful for the prediction of urinary and gastrointestinal symptoms. Quantitative or qualitative prediction was possible on different symptoms. The application of this technique to predict radiotherapy outcomes could lead to increased use of PROMs within clinical practice. This in turn would contribute to improvements in both patient care after radiotherapy and also strategies to prevent side effects. In order to further evaluate the predictive ability of the approach, the analysis of a larger dataset with a longer follow up was identified as the next step.
Application of Survival Tree Based on Texture Features Obtained through MRI of Patients with Brain Metastases from Breast Cancer
Authors: Shimokawa Asanao , Narita Yoshitaka , Shibui Soichiro , Miyaoka Etsuo
Published: November 2014

The information obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered to possess great potential for providing the prognosis of cancer patients, although not been established. The goal of this study was to evaluate the covariates of the texture patterns obtained from MRI scans of patients with breast cancer brain metastases, which influence the survival time prognosis. The data of forty patients were analyzed using 29 covariates. Twenty-six covariates, which are focused on the texture patterns, were calculated from the gray-level co-occurrence matrix and wavelet coefficients obtained by transform of preoperative T1-weighted MRI scans. The remaining three covariates were age, Karnofsky Performance Scale, and the indicator of whether solitary or multiple metastases were present. These covariates are commonly used as the prognostic factors in medical research. The tree structure prognosis models were constructed by applying the survival tree method to these covariates. The obtained survival trees separated the patients into two or three groups between which there was a statistically significant distance. For the purpose of comparison, Cox regression analyses were performed to determine which covariates showed significant predictive values. All the covariates selected in the Cox analysis and survival tree method were texture features only. In particular, the energy of the gray-level co-occurrence matrix and wavelet coefficients showed a high performance in tree structure analysis. From these results, we conclude that the features obtained from simple medical images can be used to estimate the prognosis of brain metastases patients.
LQAS in Health Monitoring – Insights from a Bayesian Perspective
Authors: Mensah David Kwamena , Hewson Paul
Published: November 2014

Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) is strongly advocated for use in monitoring the health status of populations, largely in the developing world. It is advocated both for the monitoring of small areas as well as for making global assessments of the health status of a larger region. This paper contrasts the interpretation offered by LQAS methods to that offered by Bayesian hierarchical models. It considers applications to previously reported local area data and presents a reanalysis of published data on vaccine coverage in Peru as well as HTLV-1 prevalence in Benin. The desirability of using Bayesian methods in the field may be challenged; nevertheless this work amplifies previously expressed concerns about the way the LQAS method can be used. It raises questions about the ability of the LQAS approach to make, sufficiently often, the correct decisions in order to be useful in monitoring health programmes at the local level.
Socialist Drive
Authors: Seow Victor
Published: November 2014

In 1956, the First Auto Works, the People's Republic of China's first automobile manufacturing plant, began production in the city of Changchun. The vehicles that rolled off its assembly line, most notably the ‘Liberation’ truck, became part of a growing transportation assemblage through which the socialist economy moved. The automobile drove many of the processes that were to define Chinese Communist rule, including the transformation of the built environment, the pursuit of industrial modernity, the coordination of the planned economy, and the division of city and countryside. Originally intended for the integration of industrial and agricultural sectors, motorised mobility was to become a means of state extraction in rural communes during the tragedy that was the Great Leap Forward.
Rebuilding the City, Leaving it behind
Authors: Wells Christopher
Published: November 2014

As U.S. cities burgeoned in the late nineteenth century, their environmental problems multiplied. In response, some urban elites worked to rebuild the city to alleviate its environmental ills; others relocated to more environmentally enticing surroundings in new suburban developments. For members of both groups, new forms of transportation infrastructure profoundly shaped how they responded to the era's environmental crisis. Whereas efforts to rebuild and retrofit downtown were hampered by the difficulties and expense of working in densely built and populated areas, efforts to build on the urban fringe faced few serious obstacles. As a result, the most significant late nineteenth-century attempts to use transportation to remake city dwellers' relationships with nature in the United States - including tools developed with an eye on rebuilding dense city centers - exercised far greater influence on the expanding periphery of cities than on their environmentally fraught cores.
Functional fission of parvalbumin interneuron classes during fast network events
Authors: Varga Csaba , Oijala Mikko , Lish Jonathan , Szabo Gergely G , Bezaire Marianne , Marchionni Ivan , Golshani Peyman , Soltesz Ivan
Published: November 2014

Fast spiking, parvalbumin (PV) expressing hippocampal interneurons are classified into basket, axo-axonic (chandelier), and bistratified cells. These cell classes play key roles in regulating local circuit operations and rhythmogenesis by releasing GABA in precise temporal patterns onto distinct domains of principal cells. In this study, we show that each of the three major PV cell classes further splits into functionally distinct sub-classes during fast network events in vivo. During the slower (<10 Hz) theta oscillations, each cell class exhibited its own characteristic, relatively uniform firing behavior. However, during faster (>90 Hz) oscillations, within-class differences in PV interneuron discharges emerged, which segregated along specific features of dendritic structure or somatic location. Functional divergence of PV sub-classes during fast but not slow network oscillations effectively doubles the repertoire of spatio-temporal patterns of GABA release available for rapid circuit operations.
Reassembling Gondwana: A new high quality constraint from vibroseis exploration of the sub‐ice shelf geology of the East Antarctic continental margin
Authors: Kristoffersen Yngve , Hofstede Coen , Diez Anja , Blenkner Richard , Lambrecht Astrid , Mayer Christoph , Eisen Olaf
Published: November 2014

The breakup of Gondwana is manifested by coeval early Jurassic Karoo magmatism in South Africa and East Antarctica. In South Africa, the large volumes of volcanic rocks of the adjoining Lebombo and Mwenetzi‐Save monoclines represent a volcanic rift margin, and in East Antarctica, a corresponding feature, the Explora Wedge is buried below sediments and floating ice shelves on the continental margin of Dronning Maud Land. We use the seismic vibrator source to explore the sub‐ice geology in Antarctica, and the new seismic reflection and available regional aeromagnetic data enable us to outline a dogleg landward extent of the Explora Wedge in Dronning Maud Land. The congruent inboard wedge geometries on the two continents define a high quality constraint, which facilitate for the first time, a geologically consistent and tight reconstruction of Africa relative to East Antarctica within Gondwana. The uncertainties in correlations of major geological features (mobile belts) from one continent to the other may now be of the order of ten's of kilometers rather than hundreds of kilometers.
Clinical significance of autoantibodies in a large cohort of patients with chronic graft‐versus‐host disease defined by NIH criteria
Authors: Kuzmina Zoya , Gounden Verena , Curtis Lauren , Avila Daniele , RNP Tiffani Taylor , Baruffaldi Judy , Cowen Edward W. , Naik Haley B. , Hasni Sarfaraz A. , Mays Jacqueline W. , Mitchell Sandra , Baird Kristin , Steinberg Seth M. , Pavletic Steven Z.
Published: November 2014

There is an unmet need for identifying new clinical biomarkers in chronic Graft‐versus‐Host‐disease (cGVHD) suitable for diagnosis and disease monitoring. Circulating autoantibodies represent an ongoing immune response and suggest a pathogenic role for B cells in cGVHD. Autoantibodies could be useful markers of cGVHD disease activity, severity, or organ specificity; however, their clinical utility is not established. The focus of this study was to determine the incidence and associations of a broad array of clinical autoantibodies with cGVHD manifestations in a large patient cohort characterized by NIH criteria. A panel of 21 circulating antibodies commonly used in clinical medicine was tested in 280 cGVHD patients (70% severe) enrolled in a cross‐sectional prospective natural history study. Median cGVHD duration was two years. Patients with circulating autoantibodies (62%) had significantly higher levels of IgM (P < 0.0001), IgG (P < 0.0001), and IgA (P = 0.001), elevated uric acid (P = 0.008) and total protein (P = 0.0004), and higher numbers of CD3+ (P = 0.002), CD4+ (P = 0.001), CD8+ (P = 0.023) T cells, and CD19+ B cells (P < 0.0001). Multiple antibodies were detected in 35% of patients. Prior rituximab therapy (n = 66) was associated with reduced presence of autoantibodies (48 vs. 66% P = 0.01). Only oral cGVHD was significantly associated with presence of autoantibodies in this study (P = 0.028). No significant associations were found between cGVHD activity and severity, and presence of autoantibodies. Circulating autoantibodies are common in patients with advanced cGVHD. Their presence is associated with better quantitative immunologic reconstitution but does not have utility as a clinical biomarker of cGVHD. Am. J. Hematol. 90:114–119, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Isolated horizontal positional nystagmus from a posterior fossa lesion
Authors: Lee Hyo‐Jeong , Kim Eun Soo , Kim Minbum , Chu Hosuk , Ma Hyeo‐Il , Lee Joong Seob , Koo Ja‐Won , Kim Hyung‐Jong , Hong Sung Kwang
Published: November 2014

Isolated vertigo with horizontal positional nystagmus as an impending sign of a central lesion has rarely been reported. Here we present neuro‐otologic findings of patients with these clinical signs. Lesion overlays from 6 patients with ageotropic positional nystagmus revealed that the nodulus and vermis are common areas of injury. In contrast, 2 patients with geotropic positional nystagmus had cerebellar peduncle and lateral medullary lesions. These clinical findings suggest that vertigo with horizontal positional nystagmus, even in the absence of other initial neurological signs, may indicate a posterior fossa lesion, including that in the nodulus, vermis, and deep cerebellar structures. Ann Neurol 2014;76:905–910
Mutual exacerbation of peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor γ coactivator 1α deregulation and α‐synuclein oligomerization
Authors: Eschbach Judith , von Einem Björn , Müller Kathrin , Bayer Hanna , Scheffold Annika , Morrison Bradley E. , Rudolph K. Lenhard , Thal Dietmar R. , Witting Anke , Weydt Patrick , Otto Markus , Fauler Michael , Liss Birgit , McLean Pamela J. , Spada Albert R. La , Ludolph Albert C. , Weishaupt Jochen H. , Danzer Karin M.
Published: November 2014

Objective

Aggregation of α‐synuclein (α‐syn) and α‐syn cytotoxicity are hallmarks of sporadic and familial Parkinson disease (PD), with accumulating evidence that prefibrillar oligomers and protofibrils are the pathogenic species in PD and related synucleinopathies. Peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor γ coactivator 1α (PGC‐1α), a key regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis and cellular energy metabolism, has recently been associated with the pathophysiology of PD. Despite extensive effort on studying the function of PGC‐1α in mitochondria, no studies have addressed whether PGC‐1α directly influences oligomerization of α‐syn or whether α‐syn oligomers impact PGC‐1α expression.

Materials and Methods

We tested whether pharmacological or genetic activation of PGC‐1α or PGC‐11α knockdown could modulate the oligomerization of α‐syn in vitro by using an α‐syn ‐fragment complementation assay.

Results

In this study, we found that both PGC‐1α reference gene (RG‐PGC‐1α) and the central nervous system (CNS)‐specific PGC‐1α (CNS‐PGC‐1α) are downregulated in human PD brain, in A30P α‐syn transgenic animals, and in a cell culture model for α‐syn oligomerization. Importantly, downregulation of both RG‐PGC‐1α and CNS‐PGC‐1α in cell culture or neurons from RG‐PGC‐1α–deficient mice leads to a strong induction of α‐syn oligomerization and toxicity. In contrast, pharmacological activation or genetic overexpression of RG‐PGC‐1α reduced α‐syn oligomerization and rescued α‐syn–mediated toxicity.

Interpretation

Based on our results, we propose that PGC‐1α downregulation and α‐syn oligomerization form a vicious circle, thereby influencing and/or potentiating each other. Our data indicate that restoration of PGC‐1α is a promising approach for development of effective drugs for the treatment of PD and related synucleinopathies. ANN NEUROL 2015;77:15–32
Pediatric super‐refractory status epilepticus treated with allopregnanolone
Authors: Broomall Eileen , Natale JoAnne E. , Grimason Michele , Goldstein Joshua , Smith Craig M. , Chang Celia , Kanes Stephen , Rogawski Michael A. , Wainwright Mark S.
Published: November 2014

Super‐refractory status epilepticus is a life‐threatening condition. Resistance to benzodiazepine and barbiturate treatment for this disorder is thought to be due to internalization of synaptic γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA)A receptors, and withdrawal of benzodiazepines and barbiturates during treatment often triggers seizure recurrence. The neurosteroid allopregnanolone acts as a positive allosteric modulator of synaptic and extrasynaptic GABAA receptors. Here we describe the use of allopregnanolone in 2 pediatric patients with super‐refractory status epilepticus. This treatment allowed the general anesthetic infusions to be weaned with resolution of status epilepticus. This is the first report of allopregnanolone use to treat status epilepticus in children. Ann Neurol 2014;76:911–915
Damage to histaminergic tuberomammillary neurons and other hypothalamic neurons with traumatic brain injury
Authors: Valko Philipp O. , Gavrilov Yury V. , Yamamoto Mihoko , Finn Kristen , Reddy Hasini , Haybaeck Johannes , Weis Serge , Scammell Thomas E. , Baumann Christian R.
Published: November 2014

The need for increased sleep after traumatic brain injury is a common and disabling complaint, yet its etiology is unknown. Previous studies have demonstrated diffuse damage to various hypothalamic systems, but the integrity of the histaminergic tuberomammillary nucleus, a major arousal‐promoting system located in the posterior hypothalamus, has never been examined in head trauma patients. Here, we demonstrate that severe head trauma is associated with a marked loss (41%) of histaminergic neurons. Reduced histamine signaling may contribute to increased sleep need, and therapies that enhance histaminergic tone may improve arousal after head trauma or other conditions. ANN NEUROL 2015;77:177–182