bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Studying the Fault Lines
Authors: Moyn Samuel
Published: March 2011

The very notion of "society" originated as part of a highly optimistic scenario: according to Enlightenment belief, human bonds were evolving in the eighteenth century beyond the need for any social anchor in the transcendent divine, the monarchical ruler, or even the aristocratic upper crust—and the liberation from those old foundations might allow for a stronger social integration than ever before. But then—and almost immediately—a gnawing fear of perilous dissolution set in. "Society" began to seem recognizable only in and through its fissuring. Soon after the French Revolution stories of the collapse of a prior organic whole became popular. If society now existed at all, it was only as a way of thinking about the aggregate effects of a more fundamental individualism: "a word recently coined," Alexis de Tocqueville mordantly remarked, "to express a new idea (our fathers knew only about egoism)." Later in the nineteenth century, sociology proper emerged out of the wary perception that communal Gemeinschaft had now slid into particulate Gesellschaft. And the claim of social fragmentation has been repeated endlessly in the twentieth century. Modernity, in short, is the "age of fracture." So if Daniel T. Rodgers's new overview of the evolution of American social thought in the last few decades says, once again, that the pervasive trademark of our intellectual world is disaggregation, it is tempting to ask, "What else is new?"
Paying the Piper: Is Culture Ever Free?
Authors: Mattson Kevin
Published: March 2011

If we are going to have a civilized society, we need to pay our professional culture producers. We have to consider the merits of subsidies, of providing money that we'll never get back. We need to rethink what provides us with the grounds of creativity—the perpetual search for a bit job, or a job with integrity that allows for the freedom to think and reflect. We can continue to believe that culture is something that will magically crystallize out of thin air, that people will still write books and essays and teach the next generation no matter what they're paid. We can continue to expect free culture on demand and ignore the arguments of the producers of The Hurt Locker . We can remain like the adolescent I once was and demand that culture be free without thinking about the consequences. But we'll be poorer if we do, poorer in ways that are more difficult to measure than the stock ticker.
The Mismeasure of Teaching and Learning: How Contemporary School Reform Fails the Test
Authors: Rose Mike
Published: March 2011

Though I am disheartened by how few reformers express a robust vision of public education, there is no doubt that they are committed to education itself, and particularly for those who have not been well-served by our schools. But to get the kind of teaching we saw in the opening vignettes, to make more of our schools the potent democratic institutions they can and should be, the reform movement will have to generate within itself a much richer sense of teaching and learning. We have a strong belief in our country that to find a measure for something is to understand it; we confuse counting with analysis. Education reform needs a conceptual framework that certainly would include testing and technique, but embedded in the cognitive and emotional world of the classroom.
An Unlikely Pragmatist
Authors: Sleeper Jim
Published: March 2011

Toward the end of James Kloppenberg's Reading Obama , the author ponders an anecdote from the candidate's speech on race in Philadelphia in March 2008: Obama reported that a young white woman named Ashley, telling fellow volunteers in South Carolina why she'd joined the Obama campaign, explained that to save money for her cancer-stricken, bankrupted mother, she'd pretended to love mustard and relish sandwiches. She was volunteering, she said, in hopes of improving health care for families like hers. When an elderly black man's turn came to tell why he'd joined, he said, simply, "'I am here because of Ashley,'" and Obama told his Philadelphia audience that "That single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is where we start." But it's only a start, especially for Kloppenberg, who writes, "Placing the speech in the context drawn from civic republicanism and communitarianism, from discourse ethics and deliberative democracy, from historicism and Rawls' overlapping consensus, from Geertz's hermeneutics and the neopragmatists' emphasis on fallibilism, it is easy to see in the speech most of the principal components of Obama's worldview."
Editor's Page
Authors: Kazin Michael
Published: March 2011

"Democracy is nothing if it is not dangerous," declared Carl Oglesby in 1965. As president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the largest group on the white New Left, he was rebutting liberals who were displeased that communists could freely join his organization. Almost half a century later, Oglesby's maxim has lost none of its ambiguous sting. Consider two signal events that occurred this past winter. All over the Arab world, people thronged the streets and squares of their cities demanding popular elections. Dictators responded to their nonviolent protests with tanks and guns—and remarkably, in two nations at least, with surrender. We admire these heroines and heroes, who faced dangers unknown in the United States since the heyday of segregation. But will those elections, when they come, bring to power religious zealots who want to relegate every woman to subservience to men?
Dead or Alive at Fifty? Reading Jane Jacobs on her Golden Anniversary
Authors: Klemek Christopher
Published: March 2011

I first encountered The Death and Life of Great American Cities in college. A course on U.S. urban history assigned Jane Jacobs's 1961 bombshell of a book during a discussion of urban renewal, and I was a Jacobsean from that moment forward. I recall the dual sensation of confirmation and revelation. In the first case, Jacobs expressed things I somehow already knew, in an inchoate way, as demonstrated by the pull of vibrant urban places. Yet while she didn't fundamentally change my sensibility, she clarified what was before me. It was almost as if scales fell away from my eyes, and I was really seeing cities only for the first time, understanding the deep connections between everything I saw. In this respect, Jacobs's writing was paradigmatically transformative, and I have hardly framed an urban observation since that day that is not somehow indebted to her ideas. Death and Life is simply that kind of book; once you read it, you seem to forever encounter the urban world on its terms.
Free-Market Think Tanks and the Marketing of Education Policy
Authors: Welner Kevin G.
Published: March 2011

"For about two years now, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have been co-opting much of the GOP playbook on education. They support charter schools. They endorse merit pay. They decry teacher tenure and seniority. On alternating Thursdays, they bracingly challenge the teachers' unions." So begins a December 2010 article in National Review Online, authored by Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute. Later in the article, Duncan receives praise from these conservative pundits for embracing spending limitations on American schools and welcoming—in place of those resources—"productivity" increases. The Duncan-Obama approach should sound familiar, even to those who do not follow education policy discussions. Defund, deregulate, de-unionize, and shift to the private sector. Reallocate policy-making authority from democratic institutions to a wealthy oligarchy. Corporate-endowed think tanks like AEI have been successfully promoting this road map for everything else, so why not education?
Letters
Authors: Diamond Joseph M. , Baker Dean , Early Steve , Erlich Mark
Published: March 2011

An exchange between Joseph M. Diamond and Dean Baker on market fundamentalism, and one between Steve Early and Mark Erlich on union democracy in the Brotherhood of Carpenters.
The Hungarian Tragedy
Authors: Müller Jan-Werner
Published: March 2011

In the eyes of many Hungarians, what unfolded in the twenty years since state socialism was liberal democracy—and it has failed. In other words, the perception is that Putinization, a combination of somewhat authoritarian politics and state-supervised economics, is the only model that will ultimately work for ordinary people. In fact, some leading Hungarian intellectuals seem now to have all but accepted the notion that the country was never really democratic and might never get rid of the legacies of feudalism, self-pitying nationalism, and paternalistic state socialism. Some time ago, Tamás regretted that the seeming triumph of the dissidents' human-rights-centered liberalism in the early 1990s went hand in hand with inattention to the plight of the victims of postcommunism and thus sowed the seeds of its own destruction. As he put it in 2009: "We, the froth at the top of it, were celebrating the triumph of freedom and openness and plurality and fantasy and pleasure and all that. That was frivolous, and I am deeply ashamed." That sense of the discrediting of the highest liberal ideals—that it's all just capitalism, in its worst, corruption-ridden form to boot—is the final element of the Hungarian tragedy.
Daniel Bell and The End of Ideology
Authors: Summers John
Published: March 2011

What is the legacy of The End of Ideology today? I think it lies in the sober, anti-romantic, wiser-than-thou style of political analysis and leadership on display January 25, hours after Bell died, in Barack Obama's State of the Union speech. "Obama aims to realize the end-of-ideology politics that Daniel Bell and others glimpsed," David Brooks opined in 2009, as if every Democratic president since John F. Kennedy has not feared an uprising from the Left, after the Left put them in power. Two years into Obama's administration, the ironies and fatuities of the style deserve to be clearly stated. While the president claims the post-ideological, responsible center, he stands accused of promulgating socialism by Americans who have no memory, and little understanding, of socialist ideology; the electorate fights over party dogmas awkwardly labeled neoconservative and neoliberal; civic discourse runs thick with empty rhetoric of rebellion and revolution, interrupted by sporadic episodes of passionless violence; and political society, long lacking the New Deal consensus assumed by Bell and his cohorts, swings from apathy to protest and back again. Such is life after ideology. Bell likened Marxian socialism to a secular religion and stressed its eschatological imperative. About non-Marxist forms of ideology, he had little to say. Of these forms, which focus disagreement and discipline action, contemporary America may need more.
American Jews and Israel
Authors: Gitlin Todd
Published: March 2011

In the world I was born into, Israel was an emotion wrapped in an idea. Simply by existing, the Jewish state was a portal to deliverance, and since I had been carried through that portal at birth, so to speak, a sense of deliverance was my default emotion. I was a war baby, which is to say, born at a moment when the Jews of Europe (including many relatives, though none close) were being slaughtered, and from then on, back to the earliest time when I can remember any awareness of a larger world, raised in the knowledge that I belonged to a people devastated "in the war," as my grandmother used to say, the horrors not yet having been designated with that wrongly sacralized one-word name "Holocaust." But, as in the ancient redemptions, the founding of storybook Israel was the lyrical restart moment; the happiest possible ending (or beginning of an ending) to the grimmest possible story.
American Jews and Israel
Authors: Leonard Sarah
Published: March 2011

I was raised enough of a Jew to take some things for granted: certain blessings rolling off the tongue; instinctual skepticism of pork chops; good deeds ringing in my mind as "mitzvot"; a general support for Israel. I attended a Conservative Hebrew school as a child, lost my faith in God to Holocaust education, and have not voluntarily attended services since the seventh grade. Still, as many a secular, cultural, or spiritual Jew will tell you, you do not escape a Jewish upbringing by skipping services. I know well enough that the feelings toward Judaism and Israel instilled through my upbringing stalk my rational disinterest. These deep-rooted feelings give rise to such impossible desires as that the Jewish state should be different—more just, more compassionate, more understanding of oppression and tragedy—than any other. No amount of conscious secularization can uproot my concern for Israel's fate or waive the feeling that we owe a special empathy to oppressed peoples.
American Jews and Israel
Authors: Mort Jo-Ann
Published: March 2011

Israel, for me, fills that hole. And even though I don't live there for a myriad of reasons that even I can't fully explain, I travel there as often as possible, and may yet live there, at least part time. I am entwined with the politics of Israel—advocating for it to normalize and live with a viable Palestine by its side. I feed off of its culture, its smells, and the rhythms of its craziness more than I do those of my homeland, America. It is my home away from home, but it is also my home, the place where I feel a deep sense of connection even in the midst of a jumble of its own contradictions and my own, too. Were I to lose that "home," the place for which I fight and keep my Jewish soul, I would finally be homeless. And, there is a chance that could happen—if Israel doesn't forgo its pyrrhic hold on the West Bank and its unwillingness to negotiate with what I believe to be true partners, the current Palestinian leadership. That's because this home for me isn't simply about nefesh, or about the smell of the sea lapping onto the Tel Aviv beach. It is also about politics and justice, that worn-out description of Israel as a "light unto the nations."
American Jews and Israel
Authors: Shulevitz Judith
Published: March 2011

To be precise, I was asked to write about my relationship with the state of Israel, which struck me, at first, as impossible, because I don't have a relationship with the state of Israel. I have some salty opinions about the state of Israel, especially since Benjamin Netanyahu became its prime minister again. My relationship, though, is with the place called Israel, with its extreme landscapes and eclectic architecture; modern cities and ancient cities; villages and kibbutzim and moshavim; aggressive street mores and religious radicals. When I say place, of course, I also mean people, with many of whom I share a history and certain presuppositions, and through whom I understand what little I understand about the place. To the degree that I have insight into ha-matzav—the situation—it's because I've been to settlements on the West Bank, where I have relatives, and Ramallah, where personal connections led me to a Palestinian pollster who had a gift for decoding his environment for an American Jew. The Israel I feel bonded to is an amalgam of those places and people, as well as the synagogues and art galleries and cafés I've been to, the Hebrew I've been able to eavesdrop on, the pathetically small number of Israelis I know well, and—because I'm the sort of person who comes to know the world mainly by reading about it and dreaming my way toward it—the history and literature I've read. Obviously, the place called Israel is shaped through and through by the state of Israel, its government, military, judiciary, schools, cultural institutions, economic policies, and so on. But, like Ahad Ha'am in his day, I would be horrified to think that the whole of Israel could be reduced to the exercise of, as he harshly put it, "material power and political dominion."
Scalar Additive Operators in the Languages of Europe
Authors: Gast Volker , van der Auwera Johan
Published: March 2011

Scalar additive operators, such as Engl. even , Fr. même, Germ. sogar , Sp. aun , and so forth, vary crosslinguistically in terms of their distributional behavior, in particular with respect to semantic and pragmatic properties of the sentential environment (scale-reversing vs. scale-preserving, negative vs. nonnegative). This article proposes a semantic framework for the crosslinguistic analysis of scalar additive operators and a typology based on that framework. Five major types of operators are distinguished and the distribution of these types in forty European languages is surveyed. The synchronic patterns found in the languages of the sample are interpreted in the light of historical developments in the domain of investigation, and implications for the division of labor between lexical meaning and sentential context are discussed.
Learning What NOT to Say: The Role of Statistical Preemption and Categorization in A -Adjective Production
Authors: Boyd Jeremy K. , Goldberg Adele E.
Published: March 2011

A persistent mystery in language acquisition is how speakers are able to learn seemingly arbitrary distributional restrictions. This article investigates one such case: the fact that speakers resist using certain adjectives prenominally (e.g. ?? the asleep man ). Experiment 1 indicates that speakers tentatively generalize or categorize the distributional restriction beyond their previous experience. Experiment 2 demonstrates that speakers are sensitive to statistical preemption —that is, speakers learn not to use a formulation if an alternative formulation with the same function is consistently witnessed. Moreover, they are able to generalize the restriction to apply to other members of the category as well. Finally, experiment 3 finds evidence that speakers discount a pseudopreemptive context, rationally ignoring it as uninformative.
The Surfeit of the Stimulus: Analytic Biases Filter Lexical Statistics in Turkish Laryngeal Alternations
Authors: Becker Michael , Ketrez Nihan , Nevins Andrew
Published: March 2011

In an experimental task with novel words, we find that some lexical statistical regularities of Turkish phonotactics are productively extended in nonce words, while others are not. In particular, while laryngeal alternation rates in the lexicon can be predicted by the place of articulation of the stem-final stop, by word-length, and by the preceding vowel quality, this laryngeal alternation is only productively conditioned by place of articulation and word-length. Speakers’ responses in a novel word task demonstrate that although they are attuned to the place of articulation and size effects, they ignore preceding vowels, even though the lexicon contains this information in abundance. We interpret this finding as evidence that speakers distinguish between phonologically motivated generalizations and accidental generalizations. We propose that universal grammar (UG), a set of analytic biases, acts as a filter on the generalizations that humans can make: UG contains information about possible and impossible interactions between phonological elements. Omnivorous statistical models that do not have information about possible interactions incorrectly reproduce accidental generalizations, thus failing to model speakers’ behavior.*
Pronominal Possessors and Feature Uniqueness
Authors: Dobrovie-Sorin Carmen , Giurgea Ion
Published: March 2011

This article explains the correlation between agreeing and nonagreeing forms of pronominal possessors and their person features in Romanian and other Indo-European languages: first- and second-person pronouns agree, whereas third-person pronouns are nonagreeing forms marked with genitive case. We show that the distribution of agreeing and nonagreeing pronominal forms follows from a constraint of feature uniqueness , which prevents a pronominal root from merging with more than one set of inflectional features (distinguished from lexical features, which belong to the root). The analysis is shown to extend to the agreeing third-person possessors found in most Romance and Germanic languages and to the Slavic agreeing nominal possessors.
Quantifiers Undone: Reversing Predictable Speech Errors in Comprehension
Authors: Frazier Lyn , Clifton Charles
Published: March 2011

Speakers predictably make errors during spontaneous speech. Listeners may identify such errors and repair the input, or their analysis of the input, accordingly. Two written questionnaire studies investigated error compensation mechanisms in sentences with doubled quantifiers such as Many students often turn in their assignments late . Results show a considerable number of undoubled interpretations for all items tested (though fewer for sentences containing doubled negation than for sentences containing many-often , every-always , or few-seldom ). This evidence shows that the compositional form-meaning pairing supplied by the grammar is not the only systematic mapping between form and meaning. Implicit knowledge of the workings of the performance systems provides an additional mechanism for pairing sentence form and meaning. Alternate accounts of the data based on either a concord interpretation or an emphatic interpretation of the doubled quantifier do not explain why listeners fail to apprehend the ‘extra meaning’ added by the potentially redundant material only in limited circumstances.
Techno-Primitivism: Á Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover
Authors: Trotter David
Published: March 2011

This article aims to undo the double abstraction at work in current enquiries into modernism's material culture: of form and function from raw material, and of meaning from form and function. It argues for the emergence in modernist literature of a "techno-primitivism" attuned to the tensions between the raw and the cooked, between plantation and chemical laboratory, made manifest by the production and marketing of rubber (a semi-synthetic plastic) during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The focus is on Lawrence's understanding of Connie Chatterley as an exemplary modern woman in the final version of Lady Chatterley's Lover .
The Laws of Comparison: H. D. and Cinematic Formalism
Authors: Foltz Jonathan
Published: March 2011

The influx of Russian film theory through the journal Close-Up (1927-1933) provided English audiences with their first glimpse of Russian Formalism, many of whose proponents, most notably Victor Shklovsky, had turned to film criticism and production in the early twenties. Drawing on H. D.'s review of a film written by Shklovsky and her essay on Carl Dreyer's Joan of Arc , this essay reads H. D.'s contributions to Close-Up in conjunction with her prose experiments, to identify a tension between her idealization of film as a universal language and her lingering anxiety that film restricts the creative agency of spectatorship.
The Transcultural Roots of Modernism: Imagist Poetry, Japanese Visual Culture, and the Western Museum System
Authors: Arrowsmith Rupert Richard
Published: March 2011

If the direct and massive influence of Asia on Western literature of the last century were adequately acknowledged and researched, it would be possible to see Anglo-American Modernist poetry as part of a global, rather than a merely provincial, cultural development. This article demonstrates that imagist poetry, traditionally regarded as the first authentically Modernist literary initiative to appear in English, was in fact a response to a dramatic resurgence in pan-Asian cultural awareness that had begun in Tokyo during the closing years of the nineteenth century, and which spread across Eastern Asia and the Indian Subcontinent to reach Europe a few years before the onset of the First World War. A large quantity of previously unpublished documentary evidence is presented to show that the imagist experiments of Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, Amy Lowell, and John Gould Fletcher were indebted to an engagement with Japanese visual culture that was far deeper than has ever previously been suggested. The venues for these seminal meetings between East and West were the museums of Britain and the United States.
Scrapping Modernism: Marianne Moore and the Making of the Modern Collage Poem
Authors: Brinkman Bartholomew
Published: March 2011

The scrapbook was an important vehicle for the chronicling of personal history and the negotiation of identity in a culture of mass print, frequently modeling other modern cultural and literary forms. This essay argues that Marianne Moore's early scrapbooks informed both the subject matter and the form of her developing collage poetry in their material display of juxtaposition, assemblage, pasting-over, anchoring, and enjambment. In doing so, it challenges the common critical notion that the collage poem was an exclusive extension of the visual avantgarde, pointing to a popular scrapbooking tradition as basis for poetic collage.
"Sweet Fascism in the Piney Woods": Absalom, Absalom! as Fascist Fable
Authors: Follansbee Jeanne A.
Published: March 2011

The fascist dictator, like the Cavalier and the Southern demagogue, supplied William Faulkner with a set of tropes that shaped Absalom, Absalom! The parallels between Thomas Sutpen and fascist dictators emerge from and reveal contemporary anxieties about the rise of an American Hitler. Moreover, the novel's structure, by emphasizing the oral transmission of history, dramatizes the constitutive role of storytelling in constructing a national myth and demonstrates the production of fascist subjects. This process depends on Rosa Coldfield, who, by serving as the fascist "mother" to Sutpen's fascist "father," mediates the erotic identification of white Southern men with Sutpen.
The Chinese Parrot: Technê -Pop Culture and the Oriental Detective Film
Authors: Williams R. John
Published: March 2011

This essay attempts to reframe the discussion around which scholars have typically investigated the oriental detective genre. Rather than focusing on the question of whether or not Charlie Chan and his various spin-offs are racist caricatures or else heroic defenders of justice, this essay argues that the oriental detective genre be seen as an iteration of a discourse devoted to positing Asian aesthetics and philosophy as a seemingly more therapeutic and creative way of living within the accelerating cultures of mechanization and mechanical reproduction. By following the appearance of the "Chinese parrot" as it makes its way through a discursive convergence of machine culture, corporate aesthetics, and ethnic and racial stereotyping, this essay shows that the supposedly "oriental" philosophy of Charlie Chan and his iterations was consistently promoted as a means of undoing the dangerous intrusion of technology into modern life, and that, as such, the oriental detective genre was itself presented as a happily self-reflexive product of mechanical reproduction.
A Signaling Cascade of Nuclear Calcium-CREB-ATF3 Activated by Synaptic NMDA Receptors Defines a Gene Repression Module That Protects against Extrasynaptic NMDA Receptor-Induced Neuronal Cell Death and Ischemic Brain Damage
Authors: Zhang Sheng-Jia , Buchthal Bettina , Lau David , Hayer Stefanie , Dick Oliver , Schwaninger Markus , Veltkamp Roland , Zou Ming , Weiss Ursula , Bading Hilmar
Published: March 2011

Synapse-to-nucleus signaling triggered by synaptic NMDA receptors can lead to the buildup of a neuroprotective shield. Nuclear calcium activating the cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) plays a key role in neuroprotection acquired by synaptic activity. Here we show that in mouse hippocampal neurons, the transcription factorAtf3(activating transcription factor 3) is a direct target of CREB. Induction of ATF3 expression by CREB in hippocampal neurons was initiated by calcium entry through synaptic NMDA receptors and required nuclear calcium transients and calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV activity. Acting as a transcriptional repressor, ATF3 protects cultured hippocampal neurons from apoptosis and extrasynaptic NMDA receptor-induced cell death triggered by bath application of NMDA or oxygen–glucose deprivation. Expression of ATF3in vivousing stereotaxic delivery of recombinant adeno-associated virus reduces brain damage following a cerebral ischemic insult in mice. Conversion of ATF3 to a transcriptional activator transforms ATF3 into a potent prodeath protein that kills neurons in cell culture and, when expressedin vivoin the hippocampus, ablates the neuronal cell layer. These results link nuclear calcium-CREB signaling to an ATF3-mediated neuroprotective gene repression program, indicating that activity-dependent shutoff of genes is an important process for survival. ATF3 supplementation may counteract age- and disease-related neuronal cell loss caused by a reduction in synaptic activity, malfunctioning of calcium signaling toward and within the nucleus (“nuclear calciopathy”), or increases in death signaling by extrasynaptic NMDA receptors.
Trafficking of AMPA Receptors at Plasma Membranes of Hippocampal Neurons
Authors: Tao-Cheng Jung-Hwa , Crocker Virginia T. , Winters Christine A. , Azzam Rita , Chludzinski John , Reese Thomas S.
Published: March 2011

The number of AMPA receptors at synapses depends on receptor cycling. Because receptors diffuse rapidly in plasma membranes, their exocytosis and endocytosis need not occur near synapses. Here, pre-embedding immunogold electron microscopy is applied to dissociated rat hippocampal cultures to provide sensitive, high-resolution snapshots of the distribution of surface AMPA receptors in spines, dendrites, and cell bodies that will be informative about trafficking of AMPA receptors. The density of the label for GluR2 varies, but is consistent throughout cell body and dendrites in each individual neuron, except at postsynaptic densities (PSDs), where it is typically higher. Glutamate receptor 2 (GluR2) labels at PSDs significantly increase after synaptic activation by glycine treatment and increase further upon depolarization by high K+. Islands of densely packed labels have consistent size and density but vary in frequency under different experimental conditions. These patches of label, which occur on plasma membranes of cell bodies and dendrites but not near PSDs, are taken to be the aftermath of exocytosis of AMPA receptors. A subpopulation of clathrin-coated pits in cell bodies and dendrites label for GluR2, and the number and amount of label in individual pits increase after NMDA treatment. Coated pits near synapses typically lack GluR2 label under basal conditions, but ∼40% of peri-PSD pits label for GluR2 after NMDA treatment. Thus, exocytosis and endocytosis of AMPA receptors occur mainly at extrasynaptic locations on cell bodies and dendrites. Receptors are not preferentially exocytosed near PSDs, but may be removed via endocytosis at peri-PSD locations after activation of NMDA receptors.
Diffuse Traumatic Axonal Injury in the Mouse Induces Atrophy, c-Jun Activation, and Axonal Outgrowth in the Axotomized Neuronal Population
Authors: Greer John E. , McGinn Melissa J. , Povlishock John T.
Published: March 2011

Traumatic axonal injury (TAI) is a consistent component of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and is associated with much of its morbidity. Little is known regarding the long-term retrograde neuronal consequences of TAI and/or the potential that TAI could lead to anterograde axonal reorganization and repair. To investigate the repertoire of anterograde and retrograde responses triggered by TIA, Thy1-YFP-H mice were subjected to mild central fluid percussion injury and killed at various times between 15 min and 28 d post-injury. Based upon confocal assessment of the endogenous neuronal fluorescence, such injury was found to result in diffuse TAI throughout layer V of the neocortex within yellow fluorescent protein (YFP)-positive axons. When these fluorescent approaches were coupled with various quantitative and immunohistochemical approaches, we found that this TAI did not result in neuronal death over the 28 d period assessed. Rather, it elicited neuronal atrophy. Within these same axotomized neuronal populations, TAI was also found to induce an early and sustained activation of the transcription factors c-Jun and ATF-3 (activating transcription factor 3), known regulators of axon regeneration. Parallel ultrastructural studies confirmed that these reactive changes are consistent with atrophy in the absence of neuronal death. Concurrent with those events ongoing in the neuronal cell bodies, their downstream axonal segments revealed, as early as 1 d post-injury, morphological changes consistent with reactive sprouting that was accompanied by significant axonal elongation over time. Collectively, these TAI-linked events are consistent with sustained neuronal recovery, an activation of a regenerative genetic program, and subsequent axonal reorganization suggestive of some form of regenerative response.
Temporally Specified Genetic Ablation of Neurogenesis Impairs Cognitive Recovery after Traumatic Brain Injury
Authors: Blaiss Cory A. , Yu Tzong-Shiue , Zhang Gui , Chen Jian , Dimchev Georgi , Parada Luis F. , Powell Craig M. , Kernie Steven G.
Published: March 2011

Significant spontaneous recovery occurs after essentially all forms of serious brain injury, although the mechanisms underlying this recovery are unknown. Given that many forms of brain injury such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) induce hippocampal neurogenesis, we investigated whether these newly generated neurons might play a role in recovery. By modeling TBI in transgenic mice, we determined that injury-induced newly generated neurons persisted over time and elaborated extensive dendritic trees that stably incorporated themselves throughout all neuronal layers of the dentate gyrus. When we selectively ablated dividing stem/progenitors at the time of injury with ganciclovir in a nestin–HSV–TK transgenic model, we eliminated injury-induced neurogenesis and subsequently diminished the progenitor pool. Moreover, using hippocampal-specific behavioral tests, we demonstrated that only injured animals with neurogenesis ablated at the time of injury lost the ability to learn spatial memory tasks. These data demonstrate a functional role for adult neurogenesis after brain injury and offer compelling and testable therapeutic options that might enhance recovery.
Chronic Cocaine Self-Administration in Rhesus Monkeys: Impact on Associative Learning, Cognitive Control, and Working Memory
Authors: Porter Jessica N. , Olsen Adam S. , Gurnsey Kate , Dugan Brian P. , Jedema Hank P. , Bradberry Charles W.
Published: March 2011

Cocaine users display a wide range of cognitive impairments. Because treatment outcome is dependent on baseline cognitive ability, it is clinically important to understand the underlying neurobiology of these deficits. Therefore, it is crucial to determine whether cocaine exposure by itself is an etiological factor and, if so, to determine the overall nature of cognitive deficits associated with cocaine use. This will help to guide therapeutic approaches that address cognitive components of cocaine use to improve treatment outcome. We used rhesus monkeys in a longitudinal study in which 14 animals were characterized before assignment to matched control (n= 6) and cocaine self-administration (n= 8) groups. Self-administration took place on 4 consecutive days/week over 9 months, with a maximum (and typical) daily cumulative intake of 3.0 mg/kg. Weekly cognitive assessments (total of 36) were conducted after a 72 h drug-free period. We used a stimulus discrimination task with reversal to evaluate associative learning and the cognitive control/flexibility needed to adapt to changes in reward contingencies. After extended self-administration, initial accuracy on the stimulus discrimination indicated intact associative learning. However, animals were impaired at maintaining high levels of accuracy needed to reach criterion and initiate the reversal. Increasing the reward contrast between stimuli permitted evaluation of reversal performance and revealed striking deficits in the cocaine group. Impairments in visual working memory were also observed using a delayed match-to-sample task. These results suggest a combination of generalized, possibly attentional, impairments, along with a more specific cognitive control impairment implicating orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction.
Amyloid β-Induced Death in Neurons Involves Glial and Neuronal Hemichannels
Authors: Orellana Juan A. , Shoji Kenji F. , Abudara Verónica , Ezan Pascal , Amigou Edwige , Sáez Pablo J. , Jiang Jean X. , Naus Christian C. , Sáez Juan C. , Giaume Christian
Published: March 2011

The mechanisms involved in Alzheimer's disease are not completely understood and how glial cells contribute to this neurodegenerative disease remains to be elucidated. Because inflammatory treatments and products released from activated microglia increase glial hemichannel activity, we investigated whether amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) could regulate these channels in glial cells and affect neuronal viability. Microglia, astrocytes, or neuronal cultures as well as acute hippocampal slices made from GFAP-eGFP transgenic mice were treated with the active fragment of Aβ. Hemichannel activity was monitored by single-channel recordings and by time-lapse ethidium uptake, whereas neuronal death was assessed by Fluoro-Jade C staining. We report that low concentrations of Aβ25–35increased hemichannel activity in all three cell types and microglia initiate these effects triggered by Aβ. Finally, neuronal damage occurs by activation of neuronal hemichannels induced by ATP and glutamate released from Aβ25–35-activated glia. These responses were observed in the presence of external calcium and were differently inhibited by hemichannel blockers, whereas the Aβ25–35-induced neuronal damage was importantly reduced in acute slices made from Cx43 knock-out mice. Thus, Aβ leads to a cascade of hemichannel activation in which microglia promote the release of glutamate and ATP through glial (microglia and astrocytes) hemichannels that induces neuronal death by triggering hemichannels in neurons. Consequently, this work opens novel avenues for alternative treatments that target glial cells and neurons to maintain neuronal survival in the presence of Aβ.
Preoptic–Raphé Connections for Thermoregulatory Vasomotor Control
Authors: Tanaka Mutsumi , McKinley Michael J. , McAllen Robin M.
Published: March 2011

Blood flow to glabrous skin such as the rat's tail determines heat dissipation from the body and is regulated by sympathetic vasoconstrictor nerves. Tail vasoconstrictor activity is tonically inhibited by neurons in two distinct preoptic regions, rostromedial (RMPO) and caudolateral (CLPO) regions, whose actions may be via direct projections to medullary raphé premotor neurons. In urethane-anesthetized rats, we sought single preoptic neurons that were antidromically activated from the medullary raphé and could subserve this function. Nine of 45 raphé-projecting preoptic neurons, predominantly in the CLPO, showed spontaneous activity under warm conditions and were inhibited by cooling the trunk skin (warm-responsive). Unexpectedly, 14 raphé-projecting preoptic neurons (mostly in the RMPO) were activated by skin cooling (cold-responsive), suggesting that an excitatory pathway from this region could contribute to tail vasoconstriction. Supporting this, neuronal disinhibition in the RMPO by microinjecting the GABAAreceptor antagonist bicuculline (0.5 mm, 15 nl) caused a rapid increase in tail sympathetic nerve activity (SNA). Similar injections into the CLPO were without effect. Electrical stimulation of the RMPO also activated tail SNA, with a latency ∼25 ms longer than to stimulation of the medullary raphé. Injection of the glutamate receptor antagonist kynurenate (50 mm, 120 nl) into the medullary raphé suppressed tail SNA responses to both RMPO bicuculline and skin cooling. These findings suggest that both inhibitory and excitatory descending drives regulate tail vasoconstriction in the cold and that warm- and cold-responsive raphé-projecting preoptic neurons may mediate these actions.
Initial Phase of Neuropathic Pain within a Few Hours after Nerve Injury in Mice
Authors: Komagata Seiji , Chen Shanlin , Suzuki Akiko , Yamashita Haruyoshi , Hishida Ryuichi , Maeda Takeyasu , Shibata Minoru , Shibuki Katsuei
Published: March 2011

We tested a hypothesis that the spinal plasticity induced within a few hours after nerve injury may produce changes in cortical activities and an initial phase of neuropathic pain. Somatosensory cortical responses elicited by vibratory stimulation were visualized by transcranial flavoprotein fluorescence imaging in mice. These responses were reduced immediately after cutting the sensory nerves. However, the remaining cortical responses mediated by nearby nerves were potentiated within a few hours after nerve cutting. Nerve injury induces neuropathic pain. In the present study, mice exhibited tactile allodynia 1–2 weeks after nerve injury. Lesioning of the ipsilateral dorsal column, mediating tactile cortical responses, abolished somatic cortical responses to tactile stimuli. However, nontactile cortical responses appeared in response to the same tactile stimuli within a few hours after nerve injury, indicating that tactile allodynia was acutely initiated. We investigated the trigger mechanisms underlying the cortical changes. Endogenous glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), found in the Meissner corpuscles, induced basal firing ∼0.1 Hz or less in its Aβ tactile afferents, and disruption of the basal firing triggered the potentiation of nontactile cortical responses. Application of 10 nmLY341495 [(2S)-2-amino-2-[(1S,2S)-2-carboxycycloprop-1-yl]-3-(xanth-9-yl) propanoic acid], a specific antagonist of group II metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs), on to the surface of the spinal cord also induced the potentiation of nontactile cortical responses. Together, it is suggested that low-frequency afferent firing produced by GDNF in touch-sensitive nerve fibers continuously activated spinal group II mGluRs and that failure of this activation triggered tactile allodynia.
Potentiale einer flachheitsbasierten Antriebssteuerung am Beispiel Regalbediengerät
Authors: Schipplick Michael , Günther Willibald A.
Published: March 2011

Schnelle und leistungsfähige Fördergeräte sind unabdingbar für eine effiziente und wirtschaftliche Abwicklung intralogistischer Aufgaben. In diesem Zusammenhang gilt es für die Weiterentwicklung von Regalbediengeräten den Zielkonflikt zwischen dem Wunsch nach höherer Dynamik und der gleichzeitigen Reduktion der durch die Dynamik hervorgerufenen Schwingungen der Gerätestruktur zu lösen. Der Einsatz eines flachheitsbasierten Steuerungsansatzes eröffnet hier neue Optimierungsmöglichkeiten.
Das Auswärtige Amt, die NS-Diktatur und der Holocaust. Kritische Bemerkungen zu einem Kommissionsbericht
Authors: Hürter Johannes
Published: March 2011

Vorspann

„Das Amt und die Vergangenheit“ – ein Buch schlägt hohe Wellen. Kann man im Auswärtigen Amt des NS-Staats eine homogene „verbrecherische Organisation“ sehen? Waren die Diplomaten wirklich Hauptakteure der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltpolitik, besonders des Holocaust? Über diese Fragen wurde bisher aufgeregt und polemisch gestritten. Es ist an der Zeit, die Ergebnisse der Historikerkommission einer eingehenden wissenschaftlichen Prüfung zu unterziehen. Johannes Hürter, Historiker am Institut für Zeitgeschichte, der mit einer kritischen Studie über Hitlers Heerführer hervorgetreten ist, versucht die Debatte auf eine sachliche Ebene zu bringen und weitere Diskussionen anzustoßen.
Himmlers Orden. Das Auslese- und Beitrittsverfahren der Allgemeinen SS
Authors: Hein Bastian
Published: March 2011

Vorspann

Die SS bezeichnete sich selbst als „Elitetruppe“ des „Führers“ und als „verschworene Gemeinschaft“ ideologiefester Nationalsozialisten. Aber stimmten Anspruch und Realität tatsächlich überein? Gelang es Himmler wirklich, eine Auslese zu treffen und die gut 200.000 Freiwilligen aus allen Schichten auf seine „rassische“ Linie zu bringen? Bastian Hein vom Institut für Zeitgeschichte geht diesen Fragen nach und zeigt, wie deutsche Männer zu Mitgliedern des „Schwarzen Ordens“ wurden – und wie dieser Initiationsprozess mit dem „verbrecherischen“ Charakter der Schutzstaffel zusammenhängt.
Judicialização do acesso a medicamentos no Estado de Minas Gerais, Brasil
Authors: Machado Marina Amaral de Ávila , Acurcio Francisco de Assis , Brandão Cristina Mariano Ruas , Faleiros Daniel Resende , Guerra Jr Augusto Afonso , Cherchiglia Mariângela Leal , Andrade Eli Iola Gurgel
Published: March 2011

OBJETIVO: Analisar o perfil dos requerentes e dos medicamentos pleiteados em ações judiciais. MÉTODOS: Estudo descritivo sobre 827 processos judiciais com 1.777 pedidos de medicamentos de 2005 a 2006 no Estado de Minas Gerais. Avaliaram-se os tipos de atendimento no sistema de saúde e a representação dos autores junto ao Poder Judiciário. Os medicamentos foram descritos segundo registro na Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária, essencialidade, inclusão programática no Sistema Único de Saúde e evidências de eficácia. RESULTADOS: Mais de 70% dos autores foram atendidos no sistema privado de saúde e 60,3% foram representados por advogados particulares. O diagnóstico mais freqüente foi o de artrite reumatóide (23,1%) e os imunossupressores foram os medicamentos mais solicitados (principalmente adalimumabe e etanercepte). Aproximadamente 5% dos medicamentos pleiteados não eram registrados na Agência, 19,6% estavam presentes na Relação Nacional de Medicamentos Essenciais, 24,3% compunham o Programa de Medicamentos de Alto Custo e 53,9% apresentavam evidência consistente de eficácia. Dentre os medicamentos não disponíveis no sistema público, 79,0% apresentavam alternativa terapêutica nos programas de assistência farmacêutica. CONCLUSÕES: O fenômeno da judicialização na saúde pode indicar falhas do sistema público de saúde, uma vez que há solicitações de medicamentos constantes de suas listas. Todavia, constitui um obstáculo para a prática do uso racional de medicamentos e para a consolidação das premissas da Política Nacional de Medicamentos, principalmente quando são solicitados medicamentos sem comprovação de eficácia e não padronizados pelo Sistema Único de Saúde.
Varíola e vacina no Brasil no século XX: institucionalização da educação sanitária
Authors: Fernandes Tania Maria Dias , Chagas Daiana Crús , Souza Érica Mello de
Published: March 2011

O objetivo deste texto é discutir algumas ações que possibilitaram a erradicação da varíola no Brasil, considerando os principais contextos e as políticas adotadas para as doenças entre 1920 e 1970, assumindo como destaque as medidas educativas no campo da saúde e estabelecendo uma discussão acerca do conteúdo educacional dos programas adotados. Observam-se, ao longo deste período, a configuração de políticas de saúde e a criação de organismos estatais direcionados a doenças e ações específicas, o que no caso da varíola somente ocorreu na década de 1960, quando foram criadas a Campanha Nacional contra a Varíola e a Campanha Nacional de Erradicação da Varíola. A educação sanitária e as relações com estas instituições foram de fundamental importância para a divulgação e implementação de ações estatais que possibilitaram ampliação da cobertura vacinal com a aceitação de seu uso pela população, o alcance do controle e a erradicação da doença.