Eye Socket Research Articles

Bilateral Anophthalmia in Feline

Background: Anophthalmia is a rare, congenital condition, defined as the complete absence of the eye bulb due to inadequate growth of the vesicle or optic dome. The malformation can be primary (in the absence of complete), secondary (in the presence of only residual tissue), or degenerative (in which the eye begins to form, but for some reason, it begins to degenerate). This condition is rare in dogs, cats, cattle, and sheep. Microscopic evaluation of orbital tissue for identification is always recommended. The aim of this study was to report a case of bilateral anophthalmia in a domestic cat.Case: A feline male, healthy, Maine Coon breed with 60 days of life was attended at the one veterinary private clinic. The cat, negative for FIV and FeLV, was born in a commercial cattery, belonging to his mother's third litter, healthy litter with the exception of this feline. He arrived with a complaint of not opening his eyelids, like the rest of the litter. In the clinical examination, it was found the normality of vital signs, absence of other visible anatomical abnormalities, only the ocular region was observed with closed eyelids. The initial suspicions were anophthalmia and microphthalmia. The patient was referred for an ocular ultrasound, which showed the complete absence of the right and left eye bulbs. The right and left orbital cavities had only a volume of soft, amorphous, and predominantly homogeneous tissue. After the ultrasound report, the patient underwent a surgical procedure to remove a fragment of tissue from the eye socket, which was sent for histopathological examination to confirm anophthalmia and discard the differential diagnosis of microphthalmia. Microscopy revealed immature, epithelial, and glandular tissue in the middle of discrete and moderate connective tissue, loosely arranged. In some fragments, cartilaginous tissue was also revealed. Thus, the histological findings are compatible with immature, pseudoformed tissues and without neoplastic characteristics. The diagnosis of secondary anophthalmia was reached with use of ultrasound and histological reports.Discussion: Congenital malformations in domestic cats are less frequent than in dogs, some of which are rare, and little reported. Secondary anophthalmia in the reported patient was confirmed by histological and ultrasound examination. Bilateral secondary anophthalmia is characterized by the absence of the eyeball, but with the presence of adjacent tissue. The animal was submitted to an ocular ultrasound examination and the complete absence of ocular bulbs was found. The differential diagnosis of microphthalmia was ruled out because there was no evidence of the eyeball. Microphthalmia is a common congenital ophthalmic disorder in veterinary medicine. Representative fragments were submitted to histopathological examination, where immature, epithelial tissue was found. In some fragments sent for analysis, cartilaginous tissue was observed. The histological findings are compatible with immature, pseudoformed tissues, thus verifying bilateral congenital anophthalmia in the reported animal. The clinical examination in these cases serves to ensure that the animal does not have any other congenital changes, allowing a favorable prognosis in puppies. Based on the information presented, the animal in this study has bilateral secondary congenital anophthalmia, with a favorable prognosis for the patient to live with certain normality, with quality and well-being.

Spontaneous External Digestive Fistula of Tuberculosis Origin, Medical Treatment: About a Case at the Timbuktu Hospital

In the literature, the management of enterocutaneous fistula of tuberculosis origin is rare. The aim of this work was to report a case of external digestive fistula of tuberculosis origin in a 10-year-old girl in northern Mali in a situation of armed conflict. She was a 10-year-old patient who was admitted to our general surgery ward for external digestive fistula evolving for more than (4) four years, at admission the general. The karnofsky index was at 40%, she could not sit or hold a cup to drink water. A 3 cm enterocutaneous fistula deafened foul-smelling liquid stools, on clinical examination, the conjunctivas were pale, the lips were dry, the eyes were sunk in the eye sockets, the ribs visible from a distance. The paraclinical aspects (Itra-Dermo-Reaction (IDR) to tubercria, anatomopathology) were positive, specifying the place of medical treatment and evolution under medical treatment. Digestive fistula of tuberculosis origin is a rare condition in surgical settings.

No Market for Unfixable Suffering, and: Seeing Myself in Christina Ricci's Character from After.Life, and: Participant 055, and: In Isolation, I Remember You

No Market for Unfixable Suffering, and: Seeing Myself in Christina Ricci's Character from After.Life, and: Participant 055, and: In Isolation, I Remember You Brandi Nicole Martin (bio) No Market for Unfixable Suffering So I watercolor my skin graftand thereby beautify its hue,reframe so I was never "crushed under"or "burned by car muffler" but instead delicious,a palatable image, a crumb on the lipof the reader's hungry God. The alternative,more difficult: one day, doctors laced me to a table,tilted it upward so my legs would avoidforming clots. This was after the brain bleed,but I was still a numb puddle, an inkblot,nothing but regret and a hideous floating head.Ashamed to have visitors, friendswho covered their mouths and let no cries outtill they later drove home and prayed,thanking their Creator that they were maybegrieving, a little mentally ill—but not, hallelujah, as bad off as me.My therapist says I might always be angry.My therapist says my shadow grows from megarbled as a limb. My therapist as Virgil,pointing through the echelon of Hell,where sinners stumble toward uswith their heads yanked backward,some cruel torsion forcing face toward kidneys,and I weep when I realize that I'm that one, over there,the bent-necked girl who woke todaywith a crick in her cervical spine.Later I'll Google every way I might die.abandon hope, all who readwhat i write. My mother says dirtpacked so tight in my eye sockets [End Page 61] that some nights she still sees me swollen,her bloated daughter, legs snapped like kindling,legs folded up over my body as I lay there,a fucking pretzel—No, wait!All around us, death whorls a cosmosof limitless cobalt light! Are you listening yet?Stay with me. I'll be your guide. [End Page 62] Seeing Myself in Christina Ricci's Character from After.Life Ten minutes in, the woman diedand woke on a mortuary slab.A van ran her sedan off the road.The undertaker might've lied—I don't know—when he told herNo, you're really dead, justnot ready to let go and move on.Motionless and rimy, she could stilltalk, felt very much alive, and I thought,Ages ago, my tubed throat.Forever since God nailed the hemof my hospital gown to the floor,wedged me between a timeline I fearand a grave I lean into,daring myself to slip. I've felt caughtever since, though, lopsided, I do treadthrough boring halls, call my mom,and fret about not making rent.I regret everything I touch.I watched the funeral director stitchthe girl's bright wound, and it was 1) grotesque enough to remind me where I am 2) familiar as a favorite pair of jeans. Sometimes I need to be shocked awake.Listen. I pressed pause. I walked away. [End Page 63] Participant 055 1.EEG cap a man binds to my scalpto hold the outbursts in but keep sanityrattling at the door. I'm swathedin wires again and the man says Nota needle before nettling my templeslike I'm on another gurney ride to nowhere, scent of pennies and the disembodiedbeeps. A computer he wheels nearwill prompt You should notlook away. Pain is negation,so when the door shuts, my mindgets stuck and the study begins. 2. When threatened with an image I must remember the curt flash of a shape, but instead I see fingers unlock and dovetail on repeat— image: a shotgun aimed at the viewer and thenMemory: an IV bag glistens into dew and thenimage: a woman strokes a cock (as if that shocks) and thenMemory: my sloshing shot after shot when he was gone and thenMemory: the windshield explodes into matter and moon and thenimage: a leg splits to grisly pink underneath and thenMemory: my own barbecued calf and thenMemory: its tang and its visible throb and thenMemory: my mother's pork roast slips supple from its...

ПЕРЕЛОМЫ СКУЛОВЕРХНЕЧЕЛЮСТНОГО И СКУЛО-ОРБИТАЛЬНО-ВЕРХНЕЧЕЛЮСТНОГО КОМПЛЕКСОВ

During the period 2017-2021, 112 patients with fractures of the zygomaticomaxillary and zygomatic-orbito-maxillary complexes were diagnosed and surgically treated. The patients were divided into 2 groups. In the first group, after a comprehensive study of the clinical and radiological picture of the injury area, 86 patients were treated in the traditional way. The essence of the method was to create access through a small puncture-incision along the lower edge of the zygomatic bone and perform the reposition of fragments using the hook of A.A. Limberg. The remaining 26 patients were treated with open reposition and rigid fixation of bone fragments with transconjunctival, intraoral, and sometimes blepharoplastic incisions using titanium microplates and micro-screws. The results of the “traction test” were checked to identify the infringement of the lower oblique muscle of the eyeball. A computed tomography scan revealed a symptom of a “hanging drop” in combination with damage to the bottom of the eye socket. Despite such disadvantages as the need for a longer intervention, high financial costs and additional skills of the operating surgeon, after the treatment of the second group of patients, there was a decrease in postoperative complications and thus an improvement in the results of surgical treatment.

Postcolonial Modernism and the Camera Eye: Eliot Elisofon's Photographs of African Art

Postcolonial Modernism and the Camera Eye:Eliot Elisofon's Photographs of African Art Emily Hyde (bio) 1959: The Atlantic magazine devotes its April issue to "Africa South of the Sahara." Articles on the politics of decolonization frame a large number of contributions on art and culture. A short story by Chinua Achebe appears alongside the work of Nadine Gordimer, Tom Mboya, Léon Damas, Léopold Sédar-Senghor, Amos Tutuola, and David Diop. "The Sacrificial Egg" is Achebe's first story published in the United States, and its timing supports the US release of his novel Things Fall Apart. Unlike that classic novel, the story begins in a recognizably modern Nigeria, with a young clerk named Julius Obi sitting alone in a colonial shipping office, gazing at his typewriter. But The Atlantic upstages this narrative by suspending a dark ovoid shape with curling horns above the title and author information, its square eye sockets emptying out onto a yellow block of color on the page behind it (fig. 1). It is a photograph of an Ogoni mask, and it is credited to Eliot Elisofon's 1958 book The Sculpture of Africa.1 In fact, photographs from Elisofon's book hang above all the fiction and poetry published in this issue of The Atlantic. This photograph does not, it almost goes without saying, illustrate Achebe's story, in which no mask explicitly appears, or the ethnic background of the author, which is Igbo. The connection appears to be purely visual: the mask is egg-shaped. Elisofon's photographs of African art appeared on the pages of American magazines throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, and as these photographs circulated in the mass media they illustrated two different histories. First, they were intended to enhance American understanding of the African continent, its [End Page 607] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Chinua Achebe, "The Sacrificial Egg," The Atlantic 203, no. 4 (1959): 61. From The Atlantic. © 1959 The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Used under license. history, and its peoples during the era of decolonization. But because Elisofon also reanimated early-twentieth-century ideas of modernist primitivism, his photographs simultaneously illustrated modernism's midcentury institutionalization in the United States. Understanding Elisofon's photographs in this period thus requires historicizing them on the news-driven pages of LIFE, The Atlantic, and THINK (IBM's in-house magazine). As Serge Guilbaut has memorably put it, New York stole the idea of modern art from Paris in this period, and Eliosofon's photographs of African art were part of this appropriation: against the backdrop of African decolonization, they reenacted modernist primitivism for American consumption in the mass media.2 As a result, though they appear to be very much of their midcentury time period, Elisofon's photographs [End Page 608] in fact counteract the progressive temporality underlying American reporting on the emergence of new, independent nations in Africa and their relation to the ascendant global power of the United States. On the whole, then, this article is about tangled temporalities: there are multiple pasts in the midcentury present of Elisofon's photographs; there is an inexorable sense of progress alongside clear evidence of stasis; there is repetition to the point of anachronism; yet there is very little of that form of temporality we call the future. For example, the photograph of the Ogoni mask that illustrated Achebe's story in The Atlantic was doubly anachronistic. Denying contemporaneity to Julius Obi and his typewriter, this primitivizing illustration is a throwback to a premodern African past, but only by way of early twentieth-century European modernism.3 Elisofon hits the double beat of this retrogressive temporality in his lengthy illustrated essay, "African Sculpture," which immediately precedes Achebe's story. There he argues that only wan imitations of traditional African art forms were currently being made, in 1959, mostly for tourists.4 But he also argues that traditional African art is only recognizable as Art because of its discovery by early twentieth-century modernist painters in Paris. Modernist primitivism relies on an origin story set in 1907, when Picasso encountered African masks at the Trocadéro Ethnography Museum in Paris, then renounced...

A Dynamic Costal Cartilage Platform Promotes Ocular Prosthetic Excursion: Preliminary Report.

Background:The quality of life of the face involves mainly its configuration, and it plays an important functional role in communication skills. Thus, having artificial eyes is extremely essential in maintaining the quality of life of patients who have lost their eyeballs. We will present the details of the technique, including tips and innovations for eye socket reconstruction using spherical costal cartilage implant, which leads to dynamic and aesthetic results.Methods:There were 19 cases of eye socket reconstruction using costal cartilages from 2008 to 2020. The patient age range was 18–77 years old. There were 10 cases of anophthalmia and 9 cases of ocular phthisis. In our operative method, we created the costal cartilage implant by harvesting the sixth costal cartilage of the affected side. If extraocular muscle remained, we sutured each muscle to the cartilage.Results:Our method made application of thin artificial eyes possible in all cases. Regarding postoperative complications, there were 1 case of postoperative infection and 1 case of vascular failure of temporoparietal fascial flap. Seventeen cases were wet socket, and 2 cases were dry socket. We had attained movement of the artificial eye in 15 cases.Conclusions:Eye socket reconstruction is considered one of the most challenging operations, and various postoperative complications appear in the long term. Costal cartilages are considered as the most suitable materials to create the base of artificial eyes.

Manufacturing of customized implants for orbital fractures using 3D printing

An orbital fracture is a traumatic injury to the bone in the eye socket. These fractures modify the orbital bone dimensions and the functioning of the intraorbital contents. In this study, a surgical method that includes positioning, aligning and fixing implants to restore orbital fractures was adapted. Notably, it is difficult to achieve an original three-dimensional orbital shape through the process of forming and cutting implants; however, this problem was solved by creating customized implants using computed tomography (CT) images of the patient. The objective of this work is to reconstruct the damaged orbital floor defects by means of a 3D printed implant and restore the orbital floor to its original shape. A case study of an orbital fracture has been included in this study. CT images were used to create a computer-aided design (CAD) model of orbital floor implants, which were designed to maintain orbital floor symmetry from right to left and vice versa. Furthermore, the designed implants were manufactured through a material extrusion process with biocompatible material. The application of the material extrusion process with biocompatible material resulted in the fabrication of implants at a minimal cost. Therefore, the customized models used in the patient’s intra-operation can minimize the operational time and maximize surgical safety.

Microbial succession from a subsequent secondary death event following mass mortality

BackgroundEach death event can be characterized by its associated microbes – a living community of bacteria composed of carcass, soil, and insect-introduced bacterial species – a necrobiome. With the possibility for close succession of these death events, it may be beneficial to characterize how the magnitude of an initial death event may impact the decomposition and necrobiomes of subsequent death events in close proximity. In this paper we hope to characterize the microbial communities associated with a proximate subsequent death event, and distinguish any changes within those communities based on the magnitude of an initial death event and the biomass of preexisting carcass (es) undergoing decomposition. For this experiment, 6 feral swine carcasses in containers were placed in the vicinity of preexisting and ongoing carcass decomposition at sites of three different scales of decomposing carcass biomass. Swab samples were collected from the skin and eye sockets of the container pigs and subjected to 16 s rRNA sequencing and OTU assignment.ResultsPERMANOVA analysis of the bacterial taxa showed that there was no significant difference in the bacterial communities based on initial mortality event biomass size, but we did see a change in the bacterial communities over time, and slight differences between the skin and ocular cavity communities. Even without soil input, necrobiome communities can change rapidly. Further characterization of the bacterial necrobiome included utilization of the Random Forest algorithm to identify the most important predictors for time of decomposition. Sample sets were also scanned for notable human and swine-associated pathogens.ConclusionsThe applications from this study are many, ranging from establishing the environmental impacts of mass mortality events to understanding the importance of scavenger, and scavenger microbial community input on decomposition.

Gendered Violence as Revelation in John le Carré’s <em>The Night Manager</em>

Gendered Violence as Revelation in John le Carré’s <em>The Night Manager</em>

The Harderian gland: Endocrine function and hormonal control

The Harderian gland (HG) is an exocrine gland located within the eye socket in a variety of tetrapods. During the 1980s and 1990s the HG elicited great interest in the scientific community due to its morphological and functional complexity, and from a phylogenetic point of view. A comparative approach has contributed to a better understanding of its physiology. Whereas the chemical nature of its secretions (mucous, serous or lipids) varies between different groups of tetrapods, the lipids represent the more common component among different species. Indeed, besides being an accessory to lubricate the nictitating membrane, the lipids may have a pheromonal function. Porphyrins and melatonin secretion is a feature of the rodent HG. The porphyrins, being phototransducers, could modulate HG melatonin production. The melatonin synthesis suggests an involvement of the HG in the retinal-pineal axis. Finally, StAR protein and steroidogenic enzyme activities in the rat HG suggests that the gland contributes to steroid hormone synthesis. Over the past twenty years, much has become known on the hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) HG, unique among rodents in displaying a remarkable sexual dimorphism concerning the contents of porphyrins and melatonin. Mainly for this reason, the hamster HG has been used as a model to compare, under normal conditions, the physiological oxidative stress between females (strong) and males (moderate). Androgens are responsible for the sexual dimorphism in hamster and they are known to control the HG secretory activity in different species. Furthermore, HG is a target of pituitary, pineal and thyroid hormones. This review offers a comparative panorama of the endocrine activity of the HG as well as the hormonal control of its secretory activity, with a particular emphasis on the sex dimorphic aspects of the hamster HG.

Effects of impulse forces acting on the eye socket walls – strength analysis

1. Al-Sukhun J., Lindqvist C., Kontio R., 2006, Modelling of orbital deformation using finite-element analysis, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 3, 7, 255-262. CrossRef Google Scholar

Armored eyes of the whale shark.

This report elaborates on adaptations of the eyes of the whale shark Rhincodon typus (Elasmobranchii, Rhincodontidae), including the discovery that they are covered with dermal denticles, which is a novel mechanism of eye protection in vertebrates. The eye denticle differs in morphology from that of the dermal denticles distributed over the rest of the body, consistent with a different function (abrasion resistance). We also demonstrate that the whale shark has a strong ability to retract the eyeball into the eye socket. The retraction distance was calculated to be approximately half the diameter of the eye, which is comparable to those of other vertebrates that are known to have highly retractable eyes. These highly protective features of the whale shark eye seem to emphasize the importance of vision for environmental perception, which contradicts the general, though poorly established, notion of low reliance on vision in this species.

Orbital blowout trauma occurring at the workplace – clinical, biomechanical and legal aspects

Introduction and objective: Craniofacial injury at the workplace may lead to orbital blowout fractures. The aim of the study is the development of own numerical model of the eye orbit, assessment of the damage zones, and comparing them with clinical examinations. In addition, the current legal status of patients after injuries is presented Material and methods: In laboratory tests performed on bones collected from the upper and medial orbital wall (examination on fresh corpses), the Young’s modulus was determined for these bones. Based on the CT image, a numerical model of the eye orbit was created. The damage zones within the eye socket were assessed after a blow (dynamic model) to the inferior and lateral walls, and only to the inferior wall. Comparative clinical material were 9 patients with orbital blowout fracture treated at the Clinic of Otolaryngology Results: Experiment 1: the damage zone covered an area of 0.54cm2, and was located medially and laterally from the infraorbital nerve canal. Experiment 2: the damage zone was smaller – 0.38 cm2, and located medially to the infraorbital nerve canal. The results obtained in the experiment were compared with the CT image of the eye sockets of patients after injuries. On this basis, presumptions were made concerning the mechanism of the trauma. Conclusions: The finite element method is a good tool for assessing the pathomechanism of trauma, as well as for an attempt to determine the circumstances of the event. Based on analysis of the numerical and clinical images, the necessity for using protective measures which absorb the impact to the inferior wall and temporal areas should be emphasised, as well as the fact that using merely goggles is insufficient protection of the eye orbit.

Quantifying the Wollaston Illusion.

In the early 19th century, William H. Wollaston impressed the Royal Society of London with engravings of portraits. He manipulated facial features, such as the nose, and thereby dramatically changed the perceived gaze direction, although the eye region with iris and eye socket had remained unaltered. This Wollaston illusion has been replicated numerous times but never with the original stimuli. We took the eyes (pupil and iris) from Wollaston's most prominent engraving and measured their perceived gaze direction in an analog fashion. We then systematically added facial features (eye socket, eyebrows, nose, skull, and hair). These features had the power to divert perceived gaze direction by up to 20°, which confirms Wollaston's phenomenal observation. The effect can be thought of as an attractor effect, that is, cues that indicate a slight change in head orientation have the power to divert perceived gaze direction.

Empirical study on specific absorption rate of head tissues due to induced heating of 4G cell phone radiation

Exposures to electromagnetic radiation mainly from the extended use of mobile phones may initiate biological damages in the human body at the macromolecular level. Several studies on human and animal models have shown significant changes in the functions of neural cells. Present empirical study analyses the thermal changes and the specific absorption rates (SAR) of brain, eye and skin tissues due to prolonged exposure to mobile phone radiation. A phantom, simulating human head with skin, skull and brain was used for the study. The Phantom was exposed to radiation for longer durations (600 s and more) and the temperature variations at different specific points were studied with sensitive thermocouple probes. SAR (1 g of contiguous tissue) values were determined using the variations of temperature and other parameters. The average rise in brain temperature was found to be 0.10 ± 0.05 °C at 30 mm deep in the brain and the estimated SAR was 0.66 ± 0.35 Wkg-1. The increase in temperature for the eye socket was 0.03 ± 0.02 °C with SAR 0.15 ± 0.08 Wkg-1. The average rise in temperature for skin was 0.14 ± 0.05 °C and the SAR was 0.66 ± 0.42 Wkg-1. Although the measured SAR lie within the safe limit of 2 Wkg-1 recommended by the international regulatory body, considering the tremendous growth in the number of mobile phone users and prolonged use of mobile phone in communication purposes, the cumulative effects could be a real concern for human health.

Multiple morphological abnormalities in a blue shark Prionace glauca (Linnaeus, 1758) embryo from the Peruvian coast, southeast Pacific

This study reports for the first time a case of multiple morphological abnormalities in a blue shark Prionace glauca embryo collected on the Peruvian coast, southeast Pacific. External exploration and radiograph picture showed duplicated parts in the cephalic region (mouths and eye sockets) and trunk anomalies (thoracic lordosis and rolled caudal fin). The duplicate face parts in a single head seen in the embryo, suggest a diprosopia anomaly.

Unknowability and Pleasure: The Case of the Vanishing Referent

Soon after experiencing the Blitz in London, the Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen published short story that has become one of her most admired and best loved writings: Mysterious (Bowen 1999, 728–40). Kor sounds to the ear like the core of something, and indeed in the story figures as an ultimate elsewhere, which the story's heroine, Pepita, yearns to reach. Arthur, Pepita's boy, is on leave, but the lovers have nowhere to go. moon is full, and London eerily, implacably illuminated; as Pepita wanders with Arthur, Kor appears in her mind's eye: an elusive, distant place, its mysteriousness intensified by its name, attached to no known on the globe, the circumflex on the O adding glamour and exoticism to the monosyllable's percussive sound. But the word also conjures London as a ghost city that cannot be known. Bowen's story is spiky, reproducing in its jagged, interrupted scenes and brusque relations the enigma of the imaginary lost and enchanted where Pepita later drifts. Frustrated, exasperated by the littleness of the here and now, sleeping uneasily in her moon-washed room, she dreams of Kor. Kor first appears in the 1886–87 novel She by Rider Haggard, creator of torrid imperialist adventures, including King Solomon's Mines; his virulent fantasies epitomize the passionate repulsion and attraction [End Page 29] that the empire-builders felt for the territories the British and others had invaded and taken possession of, which they often cast as female in their mental imagery. (As Helene Cixous identified in her classic work, The Laugh of the Medusa, women were dark continent too [Cixous, Cohen, and Cohen 1976, 877–78].) Kor is queendom ruled by Ayesha—She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed—who has passed through the fire of eternal life. At the arrival of the explorer hero Leo Vincey, however, She crumbles into dust, her body and her dominion laid to waste by the advent of the white man and the modern world. Bowen read She when she was 12 and, in radio talk in l947, singled out as turning point of her life. The book, she said in radio interview, stands for the first totally violent impact I ever received from print. After She, print was to fill me with apprehension. I was prepared to handle any book like bomb. In this talk for the BBC, Bowen went on to make the crucial point that it was not the woman that attracted her … but the man Holly, the writer [in the story]. It was he [Holly] 'not ever, really, She-who-must-be-obeyed, who controlled the magic'… It was the power of the pen … 'the inventive pen' that was the revelation, the 'power in the cave'…. (Haule 1986, 206). The scholar James M. Haule comments, very perceptively: Though is the writer's power that Bowen acknowledged openly, the image of the female capable of power beyond moral control would not be forgotten. It would return in her work in various guises; but like She, would be always 'veiled, veiled' (1986, 206). The image of Kor communicates heady fin-de-siecle mixture of women, death, desire, beauty, exoticism. Haggard is riffing on the lost cities of the desert in A Thousand and One Nights, and especially the tale called The City of Brass, where everything is stilled around the effigy of its queen, who is mummified, her eye sockets filled with quicksilver so she looks alive; round her bier stand automata that slice off the head of anyone approaching her body to take the jewels that cover her (Lyons and Irwin 2008, 2: 518–548). Bowen likewise explicitly invokes territorial ambitions of empire, but Kor, the matriarchal [End Page 30] ghost city, lies beyond their—our—reach. These associations hover in her story, and the effect is highly charged, thrilling as if live adrenalin were delivered directly from the Haggard novel via Bowen's moonlit scenes into our nervous...

Protective face masks through centuries, from XVII century plague doctors to current health care professionals managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The adoption of items similar to face masks by human beings dates back to the remote past. With specific regard to the use of face protections for medical purposes, from the beginning of the XVII century onwards in Europe physicians in charge of curing patients with plague wore a complicated, and subsequently typical, costume. The face mask included eye sockets of glass and leather headdresses with long, pointed beaks. These beaks were filled with scented spices, aromatic substances and perfumes to filter out the plague and to mask "bad air", which was considered to be the vehicle of the disease. In the XVIII and XIX centuries a number of advances regarding personal protection devices in health care were achieved. In the course of the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), health care professionals began to use face masks in a routine way to protect themselves and their patients. From the sixties (XX century) onwards, the explosion of health care technology has led to a continuous refinement in the study of individual protection devices, also because, even in the presence of an increasing number of powerful antimicrobial agents, infectious diseases have remained dominant during these last decades. It is not by chance, therefore, that one of the consequences of the 2020 ongoing COVID-19 pandemic should be the fact that face masks have become essential again both inside and outside health care environments. Even if more than a century has passed from Fluegge's historical definition of bacteria-laden droplets, the role of certain medical-preventive achievements of the past, including the paradigmatic model of protective face masks, continues to remain pivotal in this third millennium.

Siwei Jianbu decoction improves painful paclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy in mouse model by modulating the NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathways.

Background: Paclitaxel, a commonly used chemotherapeutic agent, is usually associated with peripheral neuropathy. Paclitaxel induced peripheral neuropathy (PIPN) can be dose limiting and may have detrimental influence on patients' quality of life. However, the mechanism of PIPN remains unclear. Medicinal herbs and their formulas might offer neuronal protection with their multitarget and integrated benefits in chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). Siwei Jianbu decoction (J12) is a classic formula of traditional Chinese medicine which can promote blood circulation and treat diabetic nephropathy in clinical with the symptoms of weakness and pain. Methods: The effects of J12 were treated in C57BL/6 mice before injected with Paclitaxel.Behaviour studies: Measurement of mechanical hyperalgesia, thermal nociception and cold allodynia. On the last day at the end of week 6, DRGs were obtained from mice for western blot and immunohistochemical analysis containing NF-κB, p-ERK1/2 and p-SAPK/JNK protein expression. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction: mRNA expression of NF-κB, IL-1β and TNF-α was analyzed. Additionally, the blood samples collected from the eye socket of the mouse were prepared to examine the levels of NF-κB, TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β using ELISA assay kits. Results: Hypersensitivity tests and pathology analysis have demonstrated that J12 could improve paclitaxel-induced peripheral pain. J12 acts by inhibiting the activation of (C-Jun N-terminal kinases) JNK, (extracellular signal-regulated kinase) ERK1/2 phosphorylation in (Mitogen-activated protein kinases) MAPK signaling pathway and the nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) in C57BL/6 mice model, J12 also inhibits the production of inflammatory cytokines including tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), interleukin 1β (IL-1β) and IL-6. Conclusion: The present study showed that J12 ameliorates paclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathic pain.

BIOARCHAEOLOGY OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS OF THE EARLY BRONZE AGE ON THE BASIS OF MATERIALS FROM THE BURIAL GROUNDS OF THE VOLGOGRAD REGION

The paper studies the burials and anthropological materials of children (Early Bronze Age; Yamna culture), originating from the burial complexes of the Lower Volga using the method of paleopathological examination of skeletal remains and through the interpretation of the archaeological material. The skeletal remains of seven indi-viduals whose age did not exceed 15–16 years were examined. The bone material exhibited varying degrees of preservation. In 6 skeletal remains, only fragments of the cranium were examined, whereas in 5 individuals it was possible to examine the postcranial remains along with the skull bones. In this study, we applied a procedure for studying pathological abnormalities in the human skeleton developed by A.P. Buzhilova [1998]. Different me-thodological recommendations were used when recording bone porosis [Ortner, Ericksen, 1997; Ortner, Putschar, 1981; Lukacs, et al., 2001; Brown, Ortner, 2011; Maclellan, 2011]. The analysis of anthropological series helped to assess the incidence of porotic hyperostosis of eye sockets (cribra orbitalia) and cranial roof bones; to detect the signs of inflammatory processes in the bones of the postcranial skeleton in the form of periostitis, inflamma-tion on the inner surface of the bones of the cranial vault, as well as the pathological conditions of the dental sys-tem [Hegen, 1971; Stuart-Macadam, 1992; Waldron et al., 2009; Walker et al., 2009; Suby, 2014; Zuckerman et al., 2014]. The analysis of archaeological materials from children's burials of the Early Bronze Age revealed that almost all burials of children and adolescents are inlet, i.e. they do not have their individual barrows. The collec-tion of items is extremely small and is primarily represented by ceramics of very poor quality. A low proportion of children's burials attributed to the Yamna culture is observed in the Lower Volga burial grounds. As a rule, chil-dren are buried together with adults, so separate burials are very rare. Two of the seven studied individuals were 4 to 7 years old, while the remaining five individuals were buried at the age of 8–16. The reason for the small number of children's burials of the Yamna culture is associated with the low social status of the immature part of the population, which, in turn, may suggest some special, poorly fixed archaeologically, burial ritual for the bulk of children, given that subsequently the number of children's individual burials increased quite significantly on the same territory. Nevertheless, their design and accompanying items are not much different from those of adult burials. Young individuals of the Early Bronze Age are characterised by markers of episodic stress that occurred during various periods of childhood, predominantly from 2 to 4 years old. The stress can be associated with the transition from the dairy diet to the solid food diet. The widespread occurrence of tartar in immature individuals can indicate the specificity of their diet, which was based on soft and, possibly, fatty food. In addition, it may indi-cate a lack of oral hygiene, which is quite natural for the historical period. Vitamin deficiency recorded in the stu-died group results either from exposure to negative factors during the late transition from breastfeeding to solid food or from chronic hunger. Young people of the Early Bronze Age had non-specific inflammations, which, most likely, were not systematic, but occurred sporadically. We can presume that children and adolescents of the stu-died age lived peacefully and participated in the economic activities of the social groups. Being exposed to epi-sodic stresses, immature individuals of the pit culture successfully adapted to environmental factors.