Central Motif Research Articles

Supramolecular Hydrogels with Tunable Chirality for Promising Biomedical Applications.

Chirality exits from molecular-level, supramolecular, and nanoscaled helical structures to the macroscopic level in biological life. Among these various levels, as the central structural motifs in living systems (e.g., double helix in DNA, α-helix, β-sheet in proteins), supramolecular helical systems arising from the asymmetrical spatial stacking of molecular units play a crucial role in a wide diversity of biochemical reactions (e.g., gene replication, molecular recognition, ion transport, enzyme catalysis, and so on). However, the importance of supramolecular chirality and its potential biofunctions has not yet been fully explored. Thus, generating chiral assembly to transfer nature's chiral code to artificial biomaterials is expected to be utilized for developing novel functional biomaterials. As one of the most commonly used biomaterials, supramolecular hydrogels have attracted considerable research interest due to their resemblance to the structure and function of the native extracellular matrix (ECM). Therefore, the performance and manipulation of chiral assembled nanoarchitectures in supramolecular hydrogels may provide useful insights into understanding the role of supramolecular chirality in biology.In this Account, recent progress on chiral supramolecular hydrogels is presented, including how to construct and regulate assembled chiral nanostructures in hydrogels with controllable handedness and then use them to develop chiral hydrogels that could be applied in biology, biochemistry, and medicine. First, a brief introduction is provided to present the basic concept related to supramolecular chirality and the importance of supramolecular chirality in living systems. The chiral assemblies in supramolecular hydrogels are strongly driven by noncovalent interactions between molecular building blocks (such as hydrogen bonding, π-π stacking, hydrophobic, and van der Waals interactions). Consequently, the handedness of these chiral assemblies can be regulated by many extra stimuli including solvents, temperature, pH, metal ions, enzymes, and photoirradiation, which is presented in the second section. This manipulation of the chirality of nanoarchitectures in supramolecular hydrogels can result in the development of potential biofunctions. For example, specific supramolecular chirality-induced biological phenomena (such as controlled cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, protein adsorption, drug delivery, and antibacterial adhesion) are presented in detail in the third section. Finally, the outlook of open challenges and future developments of this rapidly evolving field is provided. This account that highlights the diverse chirality-dependent biological phenomena not only helps us to understand the importance of chirality in life but also provides new ideas for designing and preparing chiral materials for more bioapplications.

Nietzsche's The Gay Science: An Introduction

<i>Nietzsche's</i> The Gay Science: <i>An Introduction</i>

Characterization of tomato protein kinases embedding guanylate cyclase catalytic center motif

Guanylate cyclases (GCs) are enzymes that catalyze the reaction to produce cyclic GMP (cGMP), a key signaling molecule in eukaryotes. Nevertheless, systemic identification and functional analysis of GCs in crop plant species have not yet been conducted. In this study, we systematically identified GC genes in the economically important crop tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and analyzed function of two putative tomato GC genes in disease resistance. Ninety-nine candidate GCs containing GC catalytic center (GC-CC) motif were identified in tomato genome. Intriguingly, all of them were putative protein kinases embedding a GC-CC motif within the protein kinase domain, which was thus tentatively named as GC-kinases here. Two homologs of Arabidopsis PEPRs, SlGC17 and SlGC18 exhibited in vitro GC activity. Co-silencing of SlGC17 and SlGC18 genes significantly reduced resistance to tobacco rattle virus, fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, and bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst) DC3000. Moreover, co-silencing of these two genes attenuated PAMP and DAMP-triggered immunity as shown by obvious decrease of flg22, chitin and AtPep1-elicited Ca2+ and H2O2 burst in SlGC-silenced plants. Additionally, silencing of these genes altered the expression of a set of Ca2+ signaling genes. Furthermore, co-silencing of these GC-kinase genes exhibited stronger effects on all above regulations in comparison with individual silencing. Collectively, our results suggest that GC-kinases might widely exist in tomato and the two SlPEPR-GC genes redundantly play a positive role in resistance to diverse pathogens and PAMP/DAMP-triggered immunity in tomato. Our results provide insights into composition and functions of GC-kinases in tomato.

LINGUISTIC STYLISTIC PECULIARITIES OF THE PLAY “BETRAYAL” BY HAROLD PINTER

The article deals with detailed linguistic stylistic analysis of one of Harold Pinter’s “memory plays” Betrayal. The object of our investigation is the text of the play and the subject is its linguistic stylistic peculiarities. This literary work stands out from the rest of the plays due to its autobiographical element – the prototypes of main characters of Betrayal are Pinter himself, his lover Joan Bakewell and her husband. The central motif, as the title suggests, is betrayal which incorporates two types of this phenomenon – a betrayal of a spouse and a betrayal of a friend. We have studied the motif of betrayal realized both in author’s remark and characters’ dialogue at all language levels. It is noticeable that incomplete, elliptical sentences together with aposiopesis prevail – their purpose is to reflect emotional tension presented in characters’ utterances. Among other dominant figures of speech are repetition of different type (alliteration, morphological and lexical repetition, anaphora, epiphora and parallel construction), semantic associative group of words denoting human relationship and marriage, words denoting emotions (mostly adjectives), numerous intensifiers, words with strong emotional connotations and verbal irony. Also, author’s remarks “pause” and “silence”, performing various functions, are conspicuous.

The Chthonic Roots of Leonardo da Vinci’s Youthful Iconography

Background: Leonardo da Vinci painted some of the most iconic works of the High Renaissance, and yet some of their iconographic features remain largely unexamined, as do the relevant large-scale conventions of Christian iconography and the Etruscan roots of the Humanist tradition of the period.Problem statement: An unusual feature that is found in most of Leonardo da Vinci’s depictions of the Virgin Mary is a striking yellow or golden sash around her waist. Such a feature is not found in prior depictions of this central figure of Christian iconography, and in only a few of the works of his immediate pupils, and is thus largely unique to Leonardo. As such, it calls for an analytic appraisal of its derivation as a symbolic trope in his youthful works.Proposition: An association with the myth of Persephone is developed on the basis of several features of his ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ in particular, in which a yellow sash is a central motif. This mythic identification in turn helps to account for the substantial deviation of this work from the specification of its original commission into an extreme version of the mountainous setting that is common to most of Leonardo’s established works. The roots of this symbolism are then considered in relation to the Etruscan resonances of the Florentine milieu in which Leonardo matured.

On What Autoethnography Did in a Study on Student Voice Pedagogies: A Mapping of Returns

In this paper, I invite you into some considerations of what autoethnography might do in research, what it might teach us as researchers. In doing so, I return to an autoethnographic study I engaged in a few years ago which was contoured through the question: How do teachers experience student voice pedagogies? In that study, I experienced autoethnography as a creative methodology that allowed me to go back to two experiences I had with youth, or student voice projects. The paper embodies a return to the autoethnographic study of my doctoral research, which itself was a return to the previously experienced student voice projects; a return that is being propelled by my new position as a professor, supervising students in the mappings of their research landscapes. Returning, thus, becomes a central motif that invites dwelling in the simultaneity of pastpresentfuture – wherein the present is the folding in of the past and the future through attuning to embodied ways of knowing, sensing, being, and doing -- disrupting colonial epistemological legacies of progress and linearity found in conventional and taken-for-granted research practices. I ask, what does it mean to go back, in efforts oriented towards a future (such as social justice)? What might it mean to conceptualize time differently within our research, teaching, and learning? I argue that autoethnography, when engaged through an active nomadism, opens space for learning about our research practices, ourselves as researchers and pedagogues, as well as deeper understandings of our research topics.

Assembly of the 6/3/5/6 tetracyclic core of rearranged-type C19-diterpenoid alkaloids

A synthetic study toward the structurally complex rearranged-type C19-diterpenoid alkaloids leading to construction of the strained 6/3/5/6 tetracyclic core is presented. The synthesis features an intramolecular Diels–Alder cycloaddition reaction to assemble the highly substituted central cyclopropane motif, which may serve as a key strategy for the total synthesis of relevant natural product molecules.

“Behind Those Screens” — Bringing Women Forth: Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal

This article explores the connections between two Pre-Raphaelite women: Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal. Although they are remembered quite differently, the former as a celebrated poet, the latter as the eternal model, both women share common sufferings and artistic themes. In bringing them forth, the article aims to shed light on how Victorian society may have impacted their life and work. The accuracy of various reports of frailty and poor health regarding the artists is inspected. The article ponder on why Siddal’s artistic output lingers in the shadows, while recognizing the influence of the class system and of gender roles on the lives of these women. This task is achieved through an analysis of selected works which display some of the artists’ central motifs. To conclude, the article assesses the societal restrictions which pervade the works of Rossetti and Siddal, how they attempt to bend or bypass them, and in which ways these shaped their well-being and artistic recognition.

Autosomal-dominant adult neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis caused by duplication in DNAJC5 initially missed by Sanger and whole-exome sequencing.

Adult-onset neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (ANCL, Kufs disease) are rare hereditary neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by intralysosomal accumulation of ceroid in tissues. The ceroid accumulation primarily affects the brain, leading to neuronal loss and progressive neurodegeneration. Although several causative genes have been identified (DNAJC5, CLN6, CTSF, GRN, CLN1, CLN5, ATP13A2), the genetic underpinnings of ANCL in some families remain unknown. Here we report one family with autosomal dominant (AD) Kufs disease caused by a 30 bp in-frame duplication in DNAJC5, encoding the cysteine-string protein alpha (CSPα). This variant leads to a duplication of the central core motif of the cysteine-string domain of CSPα and affects palmitoylation-dependent CSPα sorting in cultured neuronal cells similarly to two previously described CSPα variants, p.(Leu115Arg) and p.(Leu116del). Interestingly, the duplication was not detected initially by standard Sanger sequencing due to a preferential PCR amplification of the shorter wild-type allele and allelic dropout of the mutated DNAJC5 allele. It was also missed by subsequent whole-exome sequencing (WES). Its identification was facilitated by reanalysis of original WES data and modification of the PCR and Sanger sequencing protocols. Independently occurring variants in the genomic sequence of DNAJC5 encoding the cysteine-string domain of CSPα suggest that this region may be more prone to DNA replication errors and that insertions or duplications within this domain should be considered in unsolved ANCL cases.

“Nos llevó el ensanche”: Medellín en las novelas urbanas de Manuel Mejía Vallejo

Entre 1973 y 1987 Manuel Mejía Vallejo publicó una serie de novelas urbanas donde puede leerse una imagen de la ciudad de Medellín. En este trabajo se hace una lectura de la ciudad escrita en estas novelas atendiendo a tres elementos que el análisis nos revela como centrales: el progreso, el desalojo y la nostalgia. Desde aquí se planteará cómo para este escritor la urbe ha sido arrasada, el ciudadano se ve atropellado y borrado simbólicamente por el ensanchamiento de calles y la demolición de barrios. El recuerdo es la única salida que los personajes encuentran a esta situación que los deja por fuera de las lógicas de una ciudad que progresa y se moderniza.

Sacramental Vision in Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm

Abstract In this article I explore the central motif of vision in Annie Dillard’s short poetic narrative, Holy the Firm. Attention to the book’s tripartite structure reveals a movement through an aesthetic appreciation of creation, to an intellectual contemplation of the Fall, finally culminating in a mystical vision of wholeness in the redemptive descent of Christ. I turn to Julian of Norwich’s parable of the Lord and Servant in order to illuminate their shared attunement to the workings of divine love in the face of human suffering. For Dillard, Christ’s kenotic love is continually revealed in the Christian sacraments of baptism and communion. Finally, I suggest that through the artist, the thinker, and the nun, Dillard leads her reader toward a sacramental vision of the world, which locates the holy in the everyday.

American Intellectual History and the Cultural Turn

American Intellectual History and the Cultural Turn Ryan C. McIlhenny (bio) Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. x + 222 pp. Notes and index. $18.95. It seems that no other branch of historical study is as buoyant as intellectual history. There have been dips in terms of its popularity, especially in relation to what may be the sexier developments within cultural studies, but intellectual history consistently reappears to provide critical assessment not only of historical changes but also changes in the methods of historical research. In the generation after Merle Curti, Perry Miller, or Henry Commager, intellectual history went through a revival in the late 1970s, due in no insignificant way to the Wingspread Conference of 1977, a gathering of historians including Paul Conkin, John Higham, Gordon Wood, David Hollinger, Dorothy Ross, Henry May, and Thomas Bender. Wingspread played an important role in joining older approaches to intellectual history with new creative discoveries within the humanities, breathing new life into this mode of historical writing. Distinct from the history of ideas and the history of philosophy, intellectual historians, according to Peter Gordon, see ideas as “historically conditioned” and thereby “best understood within some larger context, whether it be the context of social struggle and institutional change, intellectual biography (individual or collective), or some larger context of cultural or linguistic dispositions (now often called ‘discourses’).”1 Aware of the historical conditions from which ideas emerge—not to mention, as Daniel Wickberg does in American Labyrinth (2018), the contingency of contexts—intellectual historians are also cognizant of how such contingencies shape the way that they understand the methods of their own craft. Disciplines across the intellectual spectrum have been influenced by developments in cultural studies. Scholars—not just those in the humanities or social sciences, but also in the hard sciences—have demonstrated greater historical awareness, becoming increasingly wary of presenting ideas as normative or static. Social history steeped in the turbid currents of the 1960s, emphasizing long-ignored marginalized groups, was followed almost immediately by cultural history, which considered at a deeper philosophical level the social identities created through textual discourse. The [End Page 165] attendees at Wingspread, as well as those who helped author the collection of essays in New Directions in Intellectual History (1979), engaged the messiness of ideas, especially those articulated by iconoclastic intellectuals like Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, and Clifford Geertz. The cultural presupposes the social and thus edges ever closer to the philosophical. Cultural historians are often reluctant to attribute causation to ideas, but Ratner-Rosenhagen and others would argue that causation can be the result of ideas, including cultural ones related to identity. Consequently, the cultural, especially in regard to ideas, has provided fodder for intellectual historians, since both are “invested in decoding meaning,” write Raymond Haberski and Andrew Hartman in American Labyrinth (2018), and thus “interested in language as a historical source.”2 For James Livingston, cultural change “is the groundwork of intellectual innovation.”3 Benjamin Alpers likewise suggests that cultural history has had an important impact on “intellectual historical practice” and that cultural and intellectual history should be viewed “as a single subfield.”4 Since the 1980s, cultural history has emphasized the pluralistic and unintended happenings from below and from the periphery, challenging first-principles foundationalism, eschewing any form of unidirectional history—whether top-down, bottom-up, or side-to-side (core-periphery)—and welcoming the ongoing creations of and negotiations within these spaces. The revolt of cultural scholars against simplistic bifurcations has led to an acceptance of ideas as contingent, inherently unstable, yet rich with possibilities, revitalizing in turn a dialectical method without a rigid teleology. Since Wingspread, contemporary intellectual historians have come to appreciate such dynamism, expanding interpretive boundaries and injecting the field with new and relevant insights. Following the success of American Nietzsche (2011), Ratner-Rosenhagen’s The Ideas that Made America embraces the creative possibilities of intellectual history, making the multiple worlds of ideas more palatable for readers. Daniel Rodgers, a leading figure among contemporary intellectual historians, identifies movement “as a central motif in intellectual history,” comparing it to a kind of “borderlands history.”5 Ratner-Rosenhagen agrees...

Au54(Et3P)18Cl12: a structurally related cluster to Au32(Et3P)12Cl8 gives insight into the formation process.

The reaction of Et3PAuCl with NaBH4 in EtOH leads to the metalloid gold cluster Au32(Et3P)12Cl8 (Au32) or Au54(Et3P)18Cl12 (Au54) depending on the work-up procedure of the reaction mixture. The molecular structure of Au54 is determined by X-ray diffraction and can be described as a fusion of two Au32 clusters showing a similar solubility. The metalloid cluster Au54 can be either described by a shell model or as a combination of tetrahedral Au4X units (X = Cl, Et3P); edge and face sharing, whereas tetrahedral Au4 units are a central motif in gold cluster chemistry. This novel Au54 gold cluster gives another unique insight into the formation or decomposition process of metalloid clusters, indicating that Au32 and Au54 form from a single yet unknown cluster source.

A non-ideal world

Nature is a central motif in Russian literature. There were certain phases from the 18th to the 20th centuries when an intense interest in various natural phenomena and ecological issues could be observed among works of literature. What is less well known is that in contemporary Russian literature, too, current ecological and environmental problems are also taken up in numerous works, which take an active, and often critical, stance in the Russian environmental debate.

В «мрачном» и «таинственном» мире произведений Михаила Елизарова (безумие и «черная магия» в повести Ногти)

Mikhail Elizarov (born 1973 in Ukraine) undoubtedly belongs to the most “bizarre” and controversial contemporary Russian writers (more precisely, he is a Russian and Ukrainian writer). Elizarov is also known as a musician and a songwriter. He is the winner of literary award The Russian Booker Prize (in 2008) for his novel The Librarian (this novel was called one of the most controversial prize-winning novels). Elizarov’s literary works “balance” on the verge of postmodernist and realistic practice; the writer is known for scandalous but intellectual high-energy prose (sometimes he is compared to Nikolai Gogol, sometimes – to Vladimir Sorokin). The purpose of this article is to show and discuss distinguishing features of Elizarov’s prose, to identify central motifs and themes in his selected literary works. The story Fingernails is analyzed in this paper. Special attention is paid to Elizarov’s conception of madness and abnormality, and also to his point of view on relationship between “normal” and “abnormal” (strange, different from what is usual or expected).

What Climate Did to Consent, 1748–1818

During the eighteenth century, climate led a dual life as both a major concept within political theory and a central motif of formal-aesthetic discourses. This article brings together the work of Montesquieu and Mary Shelley to explore how fiction's fascination with extreme climates and sublime landscapes tapped into the questions of embodiment, mass behavior, and race that climate raised for political theorists.

«Я не участвую, не существую в мире…»: диалог с символизмом и экзистенциализмом в стихотворении Бориса Поплавского «Снова в венке из воска»

The article discusses aesthetic and philosophical synthesis in the late lyrics of B.&nbsp;Poplavsky, namely the combination of the features of symbolism and existentialism in the poem «Again in a Wreath of Wax» (1931-1934) from the posthumous book of poems «Snowy Hour». It has been revealed that the work of the poet of the “Paris note” is an example of the “borderline” poetics. Its motive-shaped system and space-time structure are considered. Time and its death-refraction are the central motifs of the miniature, which correlate with the symbolist themes of intoxication, the delimitation of the external and internal worlds, etc. In this case, the ek-stasis situation plays a special role, setting the development of a lyrical plot based on the hero's understanding of the surrounding reality and his presence in it as non-being and non-existence. The core motive of the work is overcoming the world and self-immersion. The borderline (double-world) situations of the lyric hero are examined in the light of the philosophical and literary searches of the poet himself, as well as on the basis of their comparison with the ideas of J.P.&nbsp;Sartre and N.&nbsp;Berdyaev. The poem, in accordance with its name, is a wreath with two "knots". The latter are borderline situations working as the limits for the development of some lines of the lyrical plot. The hero of the poem is ultimately presented as dissolved in time, melted like snow, and under-embodied, as an anthropomorphic soul without a full shell, which, building on the traditions of Russian symbolism, acts as a living dialogue and a form of existentialist reasoning.

Godzenie skończoności i eschatologii u Rilkego i T.S. Eliota

Balance of Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S. Eliot This text takes up the relation of the modernist lyric (Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S. Eliot) to Martin Heidegger’s existentialist conception of time and the naturalistic anthropology it has spawned. Building on that, I argue that Rilke’s Duino Elegies not only anticipate central motifs of existentialism but, in qualified ways, part ways with that outlook. I then take up the second of Eliot’s Four Quartets to show that, more emphatically than Rilke, Eliot maintains that poetry of any substance can only be written insofar as it is grounded in an eschatological framework. East Coker in particular shows Eliot’s seeking to balance the apocalypticism of a world once again mired in global warfare with a hope, however, subdued, for mankind’s eventual redemption.

The Place, the Poem, and the Jew: Levinas, Blanchot, Hölderlin, Celan

The Place, the Poem, and the Jew: Levinas, Blanchot, Hölderlin, Celan Vivian Liska (bio) Translated by Ashraf Noor The thought of Emmanuel Levinas is often—and justifiably—associated with suspicion with regard to visual art, aesthetics, and literature, which he considers as secondary if not antagonistic to ethics. It is thus all the more significant that he maintains a constant interest in the work of a rare few writers and poets, particularly, in the early 1970s, that of the Romanian Jewish poet Paul Celan, whose mother tongue was German. What is at stake in Levinas’s reading of Celan goes far beyond a simple commentary on this major oeuvre of post-war European literature. It aims at the heart of the relation between poetry and philosophy and of a frequently controversial interrogation in which important figures of modern Western philosophy participate. In the following remarks, the traces of this debate in Levinas’s writings, particularly in those relating to Judaism, will be delineated in view of a central motif: the question of place. Levinas’s rare writings on poetry configure the place and the non-place at the intersection—or rather at the locus of interaction—of history, philosophy, and poetry between Greek and Jew. A reflection on Emmanuel Levinas’s approach to poetry leads to a constellation of the following names: Levinas, Blanchot, Hölderlin, Celan. These four figures conjoined paratactically form a chiasm as to the relationship between the poem, the place, and the Jew. Levinas and Celan meet at the outer poles of this figure of thought, at extremities whose relation is illuminated by the other two names, Blanchot and Hölderlin, which both unite and separate them. At the center of the chiasm is a name that is not expressed explicitly, but which nevertheless [End Page 699] constitutes the axis of this poetico-philosophical constellation: Martin Heidegger. This chiasm will be deployed in terms of a central motif: the question of place, more particularly the conceptual pairs of exile and Heimat, errancy and rootedness, homelessness and dwelling, all considered in respect to the poem, to poetry. In his essay titled “Paul Celan. De l’être à l’autre” (Paul Celan: From Being to the Other), first published in La Revue des Belles Letters in 1972, shortly after the poet’s suicide, Emmanuel Levinas implicitly retrieves and illustrates a central idea formulated in his earlier essay “La Trace de l’Autre” (The Trace of the Other). In this essay, Levi-nas distinguishes between Greek and Jew via the opposition between Ulysses’ and Abraham’s respective relations to place. Presenting a stark dichotomy, Levinas writes: “To the myth of Ulysses returning to Ithaca, we wish to oppose the story of Abraham who leaves his fatherland forever for a yet unknown land” (1986, 348).1 Ulysses’ journey is directed towards the eventual return to his native land, his Heimat; for Levinas, this orientation signifies a turning in upon oneself and contrasts with Abraham’s departure, which is oriented solely towards a foreign destination, a territory that is, so far, nothing but a promise. Between Ulysses and Abraham, as envisaged by Levinas, the fundamental difference between Greek and Jew, between Homer and the Hebrew Bible is at stake. The Greek route remains that of Ulysses, whose protracted, adventure-laden journey through the world is in fact nothing other than a return to himself, to his native island—“complying with the Same, misapprehending the Other” 2—as opposed to “the Biblical movement of the Same towards the Other” (Levinas, 1996a, 51). The closure and totality re-established through the return homewards as final destination in the Greek experience contrast with the Jewish destination, which corresponds to an incessant movement towards the other. Levinas describes this movement, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, as an indifference to land and soil: “Judaism has always been free with regard to place” (1990, 231).3 With this laudatory statement, Levinas seems to not only support the traditional idea of the Jew as the eternal wanderer, but also to affirm [End Page 700] exile as both a positive mode of existence and, metaphorically, as an ethical modality of thought opening towards a non-retrievable alterity. Levinas’s claim would...

Assessing the Health Care Experiences of Rural Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM).

Research investigating the health care experiences of men who have sex with men (MSM) predominately concerns urban populations. This study examines the health care experiences of MSM residing in rural Oklahoma. A total of 40 MSM (aged 21 through 66) living in rural areas were interviewed. Data were analyzed using a qualitative approach to identify emerging concepts. Three themes emerged from the data: First, participants cited cultural differences related to religious conservative ideologies as a central motif of health care experiences. Next, doctor-patient relationship quality was a contributing factor to health care experiences. Last, health care experiences were predicated on the idea of doctors' knowledge of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health issues. Certain health care aspects regarding the rural experiences of MSM that were identified differed between rural and urban MSM. Implications include support for programs that bridge the gap between practitioners and patients, while better informing both MSM and health care providers of current LGBT health issues.