bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Cytokine Treatment Improves Parenchymal and Vascular Damage of Salivary Glands after Irradiation
Authors: Lombaert Isabelle M.A. , Brunsting Jeanette F. , Wierenga Pieter K. , Kampinga Harm H. , de Haan Gerald , Coppes Robert P. 
Published: December 2008

Abstract
Purpose: During radiotherapy for head and neck cancer, co-irradiation (IR) of salivary glands results in acute and often lifelong hyposalivation. Recently, we showed that bone marrow-derived cells (BMC) can partially facilitate postradiation regeneration of the mouse submandibular gland. In this study, we investigate whether optimized mobilization of BMCs can further facilitate regeneration of radiation-damaged salivary glands.
Experimental Design: Salivary glands of mice reconstituted with eGFP+ bone marrow cells were irradiated with a single dose of 15 Gy. One month later, BMCs were mobilized using granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) or the combination of FMS-like tyrosine kinase-3 ligand, stem cell factor, and G-CSF (termed F/S/G) as mobilizing agents. Salivary gland function and morphology were evaluated at 90 days post-IR by measuring the saliva flow rate, the number of acinar cells, and the functionality of the vasculature.
Results: Compared with G-CSF alone, the combined F/S/G treatment mobilized a 10-fold higher number and different types of BMCs to the bloodstream and increased the number of eGFP+ cells in the irradiated submandibular gland from 49% to 65%. Both treatments reduced radiation-induced hyposalivation from almost nothing in the untreated group to ∼20% of normal amount. Surprisingly, however, F/S/G treatment resulted in significant less damage to submandibular blood vessels and induced BMC-derived neovascularization.
Conclusions: Post-IR F/S/G treatment facilitates regeneration of the submandibular gland and ameliorates vascular damage. The latter is partly due to BMCs differentiating in vascular cells but is likely to also result from direct stimulation of existing blood vessel cells.
A Tale of Two Worlds: The Late Tang Poetic Presentation of The Romance of the Peach Blossom Font
Authors: Chan Timothy Wai Keung 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis article examines late Tang poetic representations of the early fifth-century tale of Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao's romance with divine maidens at a Shangri-La-like peach blossom font. Shi poems by such poets as Liu Yuxi (772-822) and Yuan Zhen (779-831), and a group of Huajian ("among the flowers") ci poems under the tune "Nüguanzi" ("The Daoist Priestess") by Wen Tingyun (ca. 812-866) and others, reveal the exploration of the old tale as a rich source of allegorical tropes. In particular, the late Tang poets consistently revitalize the Liu-Ruan tale's bifurcation between the immortal and the mortal worlds, a division between "two worlds" that enabled them to express a range of different meanings at different levels, for example in politics or when talking of love affairs. Cet article s'intéresse aux représentations chez les poètes de la fin des Tang du récit (remontant au début du ve siècle) de l'idylle entre Liu Chen et Ruan Zhao et de jeunes immortelles à une source aux pêchers évoquant le paradis terrestre. Les poèmes shi de Liu Yuxi (772-822) ou Yuan Zhen (779-831), ainsi qu'un groupe de ci "parmi les fleurs" (huajian) sur l'air de la "prêtresse taoïste" (Nüguanzi) par Wen Tingyun (ca. 812-866) et d'autres, montrent qu'on trouvait dans ce vieux récit une riche source de tropes allégoriques. En particulier, les poètes de la fin des Tang se sont systématiquement appliqués à revivifier le thème de la bifurcation entre le monde des immortels et celui des mortels sur laquelle repose l'histoire de Liu et Ruan. Cette division entre deux mondes leur permettait d'exprimer des contenus à des niveaux variés, par exemple dans le domaine politique ou dans celui des relations amoureuses.
The Economics of the Jiaxing Edition of the Buddhist Tripitaka
Authors: Dai Lianbin 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis essay draws on economic information in the colophons and catalogues of the Jiaxing Tripitaka to examine the fluctuations of its costs and price in the late Ming and early Qing. The price of the texts included in the Jiaxing Tripitaka increased from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, as did the costs for transcribing and carving wood-blocks. Relative to the value of rice in the Yangzi Delta from 1589 to 1715, the value of a volume of the Tripitaka generally rose. Yet the relative value of a book is not the same as its affordability, which is determined by the book's price, its value relative to other commodities, the real income of the purchaser, and other economic and non-economic elements. It is hoped that this investigation will contribute new views to the history of books in late imperial China. Cette étude se fonde sur les données de nature économique contenues dans les colophons et les catalogues du Tripitaka publié à Jiaxing pour étudier les variations de par son coût de production et de son prix de vente à la fin des Ming et au début des Qing. Le prix des ouvrages inclus dans le Tripitaka de Jiaxing a augmenté à partir du milieu du XVIIe siècle, de même que le coût de la transcription et de la gravure. La valeur des volumes du Tripitaka s'est en général accrue par rapport à celle du riz dans le delta du Yangzi entre 1589 et 1715. Cependant la valeur relative d'un livre n'est pas la même chose que son accessibilité, déterminée par le prix de l'ouvrage, sa valeur par rapport à d'autres produits, le revenu réel de l'acheteur, ainsi que d'autres facteurs économiques ou non. L'on espère que cette recherche apportera de nouveaux éléments à l'histoire du livre dans la Chine impériale tardive.
Global Ethics, Christian Theology, and the Challenge of Sustainability
Authors: Jenkins Willis 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis paper considers how theology confronts sustainability as a global problem, and what that confrontation can contribute to the challenge of global ethics. After reviewing major models of religious engagement with global ethics, I argue for an analogical conception in which Christian social practices generate moral patterns with the capacity to meet the integrative challenge of global ethics. Theological reflection on those practices then helps sustain the discourse of sustainability as an effective working concept.
Ecological Restoration as Public Spiritual Practice
Authors: Van Wieren Gretel 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThe practice of ecological restoration is the attempt to repair ecosystems that have been damaged or degraded, most often by past human activities. Restoration includes everything from removing dams to planting native trees, grasses and wildflowers to bio-reactivating soil to controlling invasive plants to recontouring land. Beyond this, ecological restoration is the attempt to restore humans' relationship with nature. In the actual activities of restoring land, humans are in important ways restored to land. This paper argues that one of the ways in which restoration practice reconnects humans to nature is in a spiritual-moral sense. In addition to performing ecological work, restoration performs sacred work and serves as a form of public witness; and it can engender spiritual-moral experiences within participants. For these reasons, we can view restoration not only as a promising contemporary environmental practice, but also as a burgeoning public spiritual practice.
An Alternative Theoretical Perspective to the Analysis of Global Trends on Consumer Debt
Authors: Biza-Khupe Simangaliso 
Published: December 2008

AbstractAlarming global trends in consumer debt have remained a subject of interest for many decades. Despite literature being replete with studies on the subject, the role that information intermediaries play in influencing financial rationality of consumer credit decisions has remained unexplored. This article presents a perspective that is being proposed for the first time. It is proposed that the rationality of consumer credit decision in an economy is determined by the combined effect of a most commonly used primary financial information intermediary and the propensity for consumers to rely on the advice of a primary financial information intermediary. This perspective of analyzing consumer debt acquisition is instrumental to policymakers, consumer lobbyists, and marketers.
Soiling Cultural Studies
Authors: Sebina Tiro 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis paper takes its cue from Leon Trotsky's formulation in Literature and Revolution that "Culture feeds on the sap of economics, and a material surplus is necessary, so that culture may grow, develop and become subtle" (Trotsky (1925) 1991:46). The discussion seeks to put Cultural Studies in its proper place by focusing on its materialist beginnings. The central concern of this deliberation is to underline the efficacy of insights proffered by materialist analyses of culture and cultural formations.
Postcolonial Theory: A Language for a Critique of Globalization?
Authors: Lunga Violet Bridget 
Published: December 2008

AbstractPostcolonial and globalization theory are both complex terms intertwined in an equally complicated relationship. Some theorists have been reluctant to establish a useful relationship between the two theories. In this paper, I will argue that postcolonial theory has a contribution to make to globalization and vice versa and that postcolonialism and globalization can indeed occupy the same discursive space. In conceptualizing the relationship, I present brief definitions of the concepts. I discuss definitions of these terms separately, not to emphasize differences but rather to highlight points of convergence. Postcolonial and global theories are not incompatible at all. Their histories are interconnected. To be useful, the relationship between postcolonial and globalization theory must be conceptualized within actual historical and political contexts and not disconnected from actual issues of power. This implies and emphasizes the imperative to understand the two concepts within a framework of political intervention.
Mapping Pathways within Italian Autonomist Marxism: A Preliminary Survey
Authors: Wright Steve 
Published: December 2008

Borio, Pozzi and Roggero (eds.) 2005 have characterised
operaismo
as 'neither a homogenous doctrinaire corpus, nor a unitary political subject', but rather 'multiple pathways with their roots in a common theoretical matrix'. Starting with a diagram drawn up by Primo Moroni in the 1980s, this paper will explore a number of the ways in which those paths might be mapped out, in terms of key categories and projects, above all for the years that follow 1979.
The Forgotten Face of Postcoloniality: Moroccan Prison Narratives, Human Rights, and the Politics of Resistance
Authors: Moukhlis Salah 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis article argues that the promise of postcolonial discourse to expose the ramifications of the colonial encounter has been lacking insofar as it ignored many constituencies who write in indigenous languages. Within this context, this article examines three novels by Moroccan writers in Arabic, 'Abd al-Qādir al-Shāwī's Al-Sāhatu al-sharafiyah (The Square of Honor, 1999), Khadījah al-Marwāzī's Sīrat al-ramād (Biography of Ash, 2000), and Sa'īd Hajī's Dhākiratu al-fīnīq: sīratun dhātiyatun li wajhin min sanawāt al-rasās (Memory of the Phoenix: An Autobiography from the Years of Lead, 2006). These texts chronicle the lives of political prisoners and their experiences inside Moroccan prisons during the 1970s and 1980s. As testimonial narratives they expose the relationship between the social, cultural, religious, and political in postcolonial Morocco and show how these discourses shape its system of government and cultural practices. The article thus highlights violations of human rights in post-independence Morocco and the literature that came out to expose and eventually resist these violations. Such focus, the article argues, would perhaps invite a new critical interest in Maghrebian literature that looks beyond the identity politics and cultural othering so familiar in the francophone text.
The Sūra of the Poets Revisited
Authors: Shahîd Irfan 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThe sūra of the poets (xxvi) is unique among all the sūras of the Qur'ān. It is the only sūra which treats in a significant manner the secular art of Arabic poetry (verses 224-227) in the context of the defense of the Qur'ān as the Word of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (verses 1-9). For Arabic poetry, verse 227 documents the birth of an entirely new genre in the history of Arabic poetry, the Islamic, and what is more, it legitimates poetic composition along strictly Islamic lines, bringing poetry within the purview of the Shari'a. For Qur'ānic studies, verse 226 "and they say what they do not do," has been closely examined and the examination has yielded the conclusion that this "unfulfilled promise" on the part of the poets is the key to discovering what the important Qur'ānic dogma inimitability, I' jāz, consists in. The regnant view of later times understood it in literary terms, but the detailed microscopic examination of the verses, 224-226 has revealed the soundness of this view, already confirmed in the Qur'ān itself. Hence, the twofold significance of these crucial verses in the sūra of the poets to both the history of Arabic poetry and to Qur'ānic studies and the importance of their correct exegesis, discussed by the present writer in JAL (2004, pp 175-220).This has been challenged recently by Michael Zwettler in a long article which appeared in JAL (2007, pp 111-166) and so has reopened the debate on the sūra. It is therefore necessary to examine the arguments, advanced in this article, necessary for both the history of Arabic poetry and of Qur'ānic studies, and also for considering some new elements to be found in this article. This will be done in the spirit of a dialogue, that is essential for advancing the frontiers of knowledge in both disciplines, the literary and the Qur'ānic.
Bringing Chaos to Order: Historical Memory and the Manipulation of History
Authors: Ascough Richard 
Published: December 2008

AbstractIn modern approaches to biblical and classical studies enlightenment scientific models have dominated historical investigation. As such, the notion of memories and traditions, even when they are assumed to be invented, are presented as reflecting a linear projection of history, with singular causes of change. Modern science, however, has moved beyond the Newtonian view of mechanics that undergirds such a view and is working with models of chaos and complexity. Social scientists and humanists are lagging behind and are only now beginning to understand the implications for their disciplines. This paper adds another voice to the small but growing cadre of promoters of a non-linear notion of historiography by noting its implications for a project of redescribing Graeco-Roman antiquity.
From Mad Ritual to Philosophical Inquiry: Ancient and Modern Fictions of Continuity and Discontinuity
Authors: Evans Nancy 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis paper will explore one of the more creative and influential moments of mythmaking and fictionalizing from the ancient Mediterranean world: the (re-)invention of prophetic madness as recorded in Plato's Phaedrus. The fictionalized encounter between Socrates and Phaedrus ranged over topics ranging from homoerotic lovers to the skills of rhetoricians. In the midst of this dialogue Socrates famously interrupts himself with the palinode where he invokes ancient rites of purification that facilitate human access to knowledge of the divine. Here Socrates investigates the links between prophecy and divine madness, and ultimately applies the purported gifts of this madness to pursuits that are generally considered to be more rational. Overlapping social identities and cultic traditions are alluded to in the palinode; drawing from the work of Walter Burkert, Eric Hobsbawm, Bruce Lincoln and Jonathan Z. Smith the paper concludes with an inquiry into whether the multiple religious identities that lie behind this dialogue could be thought to advance and invent a tradition that later came to be known as philosophy.
'Is It not Sufficient to Be a Human Being?' Memory, Christianity and White Identity in Africa
Authors: Snyman Gerrie 
Published: December 2008

AbstractWithin a hierarchy of senses where sight dominates, race constitutes a regime of visibility with whiteness as the master signifier in the Western world. The essay explores the impossibility to think beyond race in a world that is still deeply racist. Racism is not undone once people have seen through it. In illustrating the performativity of race in terms of white identity issues, the discussion starts with a brief look at what constitutes identity and what is memory's function in constructing particular identities. The argument then turns towards an understanding of Africa's specific memory of Christianity's racialising mission by focussing on how the binaries of Spirit / Flesh became a racial binary of black and white that apparently continues in a post-modern empire without colonies. Subsequently, the essay focuses on an example of this entrapment, namely Bernal's book Black Athena and the ensuing debate where African and Western identities became markers of each other. Lastly, the discussion looks at the way Bernal's construction of memory in President Thabo Mbeki's challenge of Western hegemony and the role of whiteness in our thinking. The essay concludes that whiteness needs to be exposed in terms of the religious roots of its assumed naturalness, eternity and truth that went with its power.
Concerning the Measurement and Magnitude of Heat, Water Vapor, and Carbon Dioxide Exchange from a Semiarid Grassland
Authors: Alfieri Joseph G. , Blanken Peter D. , Smith David , Morgan Jack 
Published: December 2008

AbstractGrassland environments constitute approximately 40% of the earth’s vegetated surface, and they play a key role in a number of processes linking the land surface with the atmosphere. To investigate these linkages, a variety of techniques, including field and modeling studies, are required. Using data collected at the Central Plains Experimental Range (CPER) in northeastern Colorado from 25 March to 10 November 2004, this study compares two common ways of measuring turbulent fluxes of latent heat, sensible heat, and carbon dioxide in the field: the eddy covariance (EC) and Bowen ratio energy balance (BREB) methods. The turbulent fluxes measured by each of these methods were compared in terms of magnitude and seasonal behavior and were combined to calculate eddy diffusivities and examine turbulent transport. Relative to the EC method, the BREB method tended to overestimate the magnitude of the sensible heat, latent heat, and carbon dioxide fluxes. As a result, substantial differences in both the diurnal pattern and long-term magnitudes of the water and carbon budgets were apparent depending on which method was used. These differences arise from (i) the forced closure of the surface energy balance and (ii) the assumption of similarity between the eddy diffusivities required by the BREB method. An empirical method was developed that allows the BREB and EC datasets to be reconciled; this method was tested successfully using data collected at the CPER site during 2005. Ultimately, however, the BREB and EC methods show important differences that must be recognized and taken into account when analyzing issues related to the energy, water, or carbon cycles.
Nonstationary Synchronization of Equatorial QBO with SAO in Observations and a Model
Authors: Kuai Le , Shia Run-Lie , Jiang Xun , Tung Ka-Kit , Yung Yuk L. 
Published: December 2008

Abstract
It has often been suggested that the period of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) has a tendency to synchronize with the semiannual oscillation (SAO). Apparently the synchronization is better the higher up the observation extends. Using 45 yr of the 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA-40) data of the equatorial stratosphere up to the stratopause, the authors confirm that this synchronization is not just a tendency but a robust phenomenon in the upper stratosphere. A QBO period starts when a westerly SAO (w-SAO) descends from the stratopause to 7 hPa and initiates the westerly phase of the QBO (w-QBO) below. It ends when another w-SAO, a few SAO periods later, descends again to 7 hPa to initiate the next w-QBO. The fact that it is the westerly but not the easterly SAO (e-SAO) that initiates the QBO is also explained by the general easterly bias of the angular momentum in the equatorial stratosphere so that the e-SAO does not create a zero-wind line, unlike the w-SAO. The currently observed average QBO period of 28 months, which is not an integer multiple of SAO periods, is a result of intermittent jumps of the QBO period from four SAO to five SAO periods. The same behavior is also found in the Two and a Half Dimensional Interactive Isentropic Research (THINAIR) model. It is found that the nonstationary behavior in both the observation and model is caused not by the 11-yr solar-cycle forcing but by the incompatibility of the QBO’s natural period (determined by its wave forcing) and the “quantized” period determined by the SAO. The wave forcing parameter for the QBO period in the current climate probably lies between four SAO and five SAO periods. If the wave forcing for the QBO is tuned so that its natural period is compatible with the SAO period above (e.g., at 24 or 30 months), nonstationary behavior disappears.
The Role of Boundary Layer Processes in Limiting PV Homogenization
Authors: Zhang Yang , Stone Peter H. , Solomon Amy 
Published: December 2008

Abstract
A β-plane multilevel quasigeostrophic channel model with interactive static stability and a simplified parameterization of atmospheric boundary layer physics is used to study the role of different boundary layer processes in eddy equilibration and their relative effect in maintaining the strong boundary layer potential vorticity (PV) gradient.
The model results show that vertical thermal diffusion, along with the surface heat exchange, is primarily responsible for limiting PV homogenization by baroclinic eddies in the boundary layer. Under fixed SST boundary conditions, these two processes act as the source of the mean flow baroclinicity in the lower levels and result in stronger eddy heat fluxes.
Reducing surface friction alone does not result in efficient elimination of the boundary layer PV gradient, but the equilibrium state temperature gradient is still largely influenced by surface friction and its response to changes in surface friction is not monotonic. In the regime of strong surface friction, with reduced poleward eddy heat flux, a strong temperature gradient is still retained. When the surface friction is sufficiently weak along with the stronger zonal wind, the critical level at the center of the jet drops below the surface. As a result, in the lower levels, the eddy heat flux forcing on the mean flow moves away from the center of the jet and the equilibrium state varies only slightly with the strength of the vertical momentum diffusion in the boundary layer.