Passionate Debate Research Articles

Innate Immune Function of Mitochondrial Metabolism.

Sensing of microbe-associated molecular patterns or danger signals by innate immune receptors drives a complex exchange of information. Innate receptor signaling not only triggers transcriptional events but also induces profound changes in metabolic fluxes, redox balance, and metabolite abundance thereby influencing immune cell function. Mitochondria are at the core of metabolic adaptation to the changing environment. The close interaction between mitochondrial metabolism and immune signaling has emerged as a central regulator of innate sensing. Metabolic processes generate a constant flow of electrons that eventually end up in the mitochondrial electron transport chain (ETC). Two electron carriers and four respiratory complexes that can assemble as larger molecular supercomplexes compose the ETC in the mitochondrial inner membrane. While the meaning and biological relevance of such structural organization is a matter of passionate debates, recent data support that innate stimuli remodel the ETC. We will review the function of mitochondrial metabolism and ETC dynamics as innate rheostats that regulate signaling, transcription, and epigenetics to orchestrate innate immune responses.

Generation Y and the World of Work in the Future

IntroductionEvery generation has its unique defining characteristics, and Generation Y, also known as Digital Natives, Net Generation, Generation@ or Millennials, is the generation which has grown up with the Internet. Generation Y is the term given to the generation succeeding Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Hence, Generation Y refers to a specific generation born from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. However, experts neither agree on an exact year when the era of Generation Y started nor do they claim a distinct year to mark an endpoint of the era. However, what definitely sets apart Generation Y from their forerunners is the fact that they grew up alongside mediatization and globalization.The definition of a whole generation inevitably inspires passionate debates as individuals are different concerning their social, cultural and economic backgrounds. Some scientists even refuse to accept the concept of generations. In their eyes it is virtually impossible to apply one definition to all as it comprises a range of diverse people. However, according to scientific literature portraying Generation Y, there are some characteristics which individuals of Generation Y obviously have in common and which set them apart from previous generations. Individuals of Generation Y differ in terms of attitudes, values and behavioral patterns from their predecessors. As a consequence, they tend to question strict hierarchies and entrenched structures. Although they are described as ambitious and determined, they appreciate a proper work-life balance. Unlike previous generations they are no longer willing to sacrifice their family lives to their careers. Hence, they expect employers to ensure the reconcilability of family and working life. Having grown up in a multioption society, Generation Y expresses a great need for individualism and flexibility, not only in their private lives, but also in their working environments.As Generation Y ascends the career ladder now and in the years to come, they are already influencing German companies and human resources managers. Especially against the backdrop of an anticipated labor shortage, Generation Y and their attitudes will shape the German economy. This article will contribute to an analysis of Generation Y, not only in terms of their chances and choices, but also by identifying the stumbling blocks which might stand in their way when it comes to making a career.Theoretical frameworkIn recent years, mediatization has emerged as an important concept and theoretical framework for considering the interplay between media, culture and society. Some of the most prevalent researchers in mediatization are noted to be Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjarvard, Friedrich Krote and Knut Lundby (Lunt and Livingstone, 2016). Although the idea of mediatization dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, the current concept was not outlined before the last decade (Ekstrom et al., 2016; Hepp, 2013). However, the researchers have not yet reached a consensus about a comprehensive definition of mediatization (Deacon and Stanyer, 2014; Hepp et al., 2015). On the one hand, there are researchers who consider that the concept is based on the institutionalist tradition. On the other hand, there are those who argue that mediatization is based on the socio-constructivist tradition (Hepp, 2013; Birkner, 2015).If mediatization was based on institutionalism, larger and smaller scale institutions, agencies and organizations would shape and regulate the communicative practices of media and the audience would need to adapt to the media and its objectives (Deacon and Stanyer, 2014; Hepp, 2013; Stromback and Van Aelst, 2013).This understanding is contrasted by disciples of the socio-constructivist tradition. One distinctive feature of the socio-constructivist approach is that it takes into account the change of the audience as well. The media and the media audience are both constantly changing and this approach aims to relate these changes to each other (Hepp, 2013; Hepp et al. …

Relationship between boardroom independence and corporate performance: Reflections and perspectives

The perceived economic value of an independent boardroom configuration has progressively emerged as a matter of considerable importance in the academic and popular literature. The normative research paradigm has fundamentally been dominated by positivists who formulate inferential models populated by large sets of archival data. Regrettably, however, several decades of intense inquiries and passionate debates have invariably failed to ascertain (or dispel) the economic value of an independent boardroom configuration. The lingering boardroom independence–corporate performance saga has reached an impasse with no clear resolution in the foreseeable future. In this study, I provide a diagnosis (through the thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews) of why the economic viability of an independent boardroom remains an elusive phenomenon for positivist researchers. A central reason for the research impasse is attributed to ontological complexities intrinsic to the very nature of the corporation, compounded by multiple layers of methodological complexities. Ultimately, the disentanglement of this enigma would require a pivotal reconceptualization of the corporate governance research agenda.

The Passion of Charles Péguy: Literature, Modernity, and the Crisis of Historicism. Glenn H. Roe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. vi+245.

<i>The Passion of Charles Péguy: Literature, Modernity, and the Crisis of Historicism</i>. Glenn H. Roe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. vi+245.

The dark side of ‘Zwarte Piet’: A misunderstood tradition or racism in disguise? A legal analysis

ABSTRACTThere is a passionate debate going on in the Netherlands and Flanders on the figure of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Zwarte Piet is a character that is part of the tradition of ‘Sinterklaas’1: Piet is the black valet of Sinterklaas. Because of the stereotyped depiction of Sinterklaas’ companion (black face, thick rouged lips, curly hair, golden earrings, pageboy dress) it is argued that Zwarte Piet is a form of racism. Activists advocate, therefore, that Zwarte Piet be abolished or that he lose at least his characteristic features, associated with colonialism and slavery. In this article I will argue that understanding the Sinterklaas tradition is very complicated. There is no consensus on the appearance and the origins of Zwarte Piet, the tradition has changed over time and there seems to be (minor) geographical differences between the various European regions (in this article, the focus is on the Netherlands and Flanders). As a consequence, multiple readings and interpretations of the Zwarte Piet figure are possible. Both the opponents of Zwarte Piet and his defenders have good arguments to back their interpretation of the tradition. Under these circumstances, it is not for the law to decide which interpretation should prevail: in dubio, pro libertate. A solution can only be found through societal debate.

Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History par Andrew Denning

Reviewed by: Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History par Andrew Denning Michael Childers Denning, Andrew–Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Pp. 236. It is difficult to think of the Alps and not envision skiers schussing down well-manicured slopes, or quant alpine villages full of winter tourists. Such visions, as Andrew Denning explains in Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History, are products of what he terms "Alpine modernism." Centring the sport as part of an ongoing negotiation in Europeans' relationship with nature, from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, Denning argues that skiing embodied modernist understandings of technology while providing an escape into nature from the increasingly industrialized and structured modern world. Like similar works on environmental and tourism history, Skiing into Modernity explores how changing technological and economic realities shaped cultural understandings of nature. Yet Denning places skiing in the cultural context of fin-de-siècle Europe's embrace of modernism. Observing tautly, "In the Alps, modernity arrived on skis" (p. 9), he traces how the sport combined technological innovation with romantic views of mountain landscapes in creating a distinctive "Alpine modernism" that was at once "reflective of the dynamics and velocity of modern times and uniquely suited to counteract the stresses of these very same modern conditions" (p. 11). In this sense, modern tourism, sport, and leisure were not simply acts of capitalist consumption, but also active, critical pursuits that placed individuals in contact with nature. Beyond using modernism to ground skiing, and hence Europeans' changing views of the Alps, he challenges the notion that the two world wars and the Cold War alone structure our understanding of European history by linking skiing's late-nineteenth-century emergence as a recreational pursuit to the 1970s' rise of winter tourism. European ski resorts, as well as the modern Winter Olympics, emerged from modernist understandings of mountain landscapes. But Denning emphasizes the Second World War's impact on European culture, particularly skiing. Denning explains crucially how skiers embraced modern notions of objective technology and idealized notions of nature. Skiing, as a product of modernism, relied on technological innovations, which in turn allowed skiers to connect with the Alpine world at a visceral level. This innovation both created a distinctly Alpine culture and drove the sport's popularity through the first half of the twentieth century, after which skiing became more democratic, profitable, and significant in defining European culture. Denning divides the book into three roughly chronological sections. Part one traces modern skiing's Scandinavian roots and early introduction to the German and Austrian Alps. Part two moves the story firmly into the twentieth century with continental Europe's embrace of modernism through Alpine skiing. Lastly, part three explores skiing's meteoric rise in popularity and the completion of the Alps' modernization by 1970. While chronological, each section of Skiing into Modernity differs thematically. The first part—the book's strongest—provides a rich history of both skiing's emergence and of Europe's modernization in the late nineteenth century. [End Page 457] Denning's discussion of skiing's roots in Norway and of the Norwegians and Austrians' passionate debate about the sport's definition reflects nationalism's broader influence throughout Europe. He shows the schism between "Nordic" and "Alpine" styles as reflecting both cultural understandings of very different landscape and different interpretations of modernism, thereby enriching the sport's history. Part two first discusses the roles of mobility and technology in crafting skiing's culture in the 1900s and 1910s. Modernity, Denning explains, was mechanical and artificial, yet Alpine skiers sought to "reestablish the organic harmony between humans and nature by reviving forms of mobility" (p. 86). Skiing's physicality and speed combined with modernist ideas of order and control to create an Alpine culture that spanned from Vienna to Sestriere. In this manner, Alpine skiing embodied the Olympic movement's motto of "Citius, altius, fortius" (Faster, higher, stronger). The emergence of the Winter Olympics, especially the 1936 Games in Garmisch-Partenkircken, Germany, confirmed skiing's growing popularity as both spectator sport and leisure activity. The third part—the book's shortest—looks at...

UNA MIRADA A UN GRUPO DE NOMBRES DE LUGAR DE RECIENTE CREACIÓN EN UN MUNICIPIO ESPAÑOL: ALGUNAS SEMEJANZAS Y DIFERENCIAS CON LOS TOPÓNIMOS ANTIGUOS

The present work is focused on toponyms of recent creation. These new place names have generally received less attention among scholars than those with a long history, which have often generated passionate debates and academic papers about their origins. The group analyzed here was discarded from the index list resulting from a toponymy survey made in the village of Gata (Caceres) in 2014. They are less than one hundred years old, and do not appear to be registered as toponyms in any known written source. However, their analysis reveals that the necessity for a social community to give names to the places it inhabits, and the process for the creation of new toponyms has essentially not changed for centuries.

The diabetes counselling course at Knuston Hall: a 30‐year journey

The diabetes counselling course at Knuston Hall: a 30‐year journey

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-quake Chronicle by Gina Athena Ulysse

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-quake Chronicle. By Gina Athena Ulysse. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. ISBN 08195-7546-1. 408 pp. $27.95 US. Paperback.In Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-quake Chronicle, Gina Athena Ulysse makes four timely interventions. First, she challenges and destabilizes popular understandings of Haiti, particularly as portrayed in traditional news and new media. Second, Ulysse demonstrates necessity of merging her intellectual project with public engagement, thus serving as a model in a moment when more scholars are entering public sphere as public intellectuals-appearing on television news programs, blogs, or participating in town-hall meetings as experts. She also troubles narratives of identity and identification by asking questions about who is considered an expert and producer of knowledge and who is considered to be public, and what it means that one identifies as or HaitianAmerican. Finally, Ulysse questions who identifies as allies and roles that self-identified allies play, offering a critique of some taken-for-granted relationships with journalists, nonprofits, and NGOs.The book is a curated collection of thirty pieces: op-eds, blog posts, meditations, and essays that appeared in outlets including Ms. Blog, pbs.org, Huffington Post, Meridians, and Haitian Times. All were composed between 2010 and 2012, a period that Ulysse describes as a writing spree (19). While pieces center on Haiti, they cover a range of topics including experiences of earthquake, earthquake recovery, governments, media representations, religion, colonization, race, class, gender, and performance. These topics are often intricately woven together. Readers will encounter scholarly rigor and Ulysse's unique voice in language that enables engagement by multiple audiences. The author's deeply reflexive discussion of interactions and relationships with multiple versions of Haiti allows, if not compels, readers to also reflect on such entanglements.On multiple levels, then, this book is one that requires readers to question, or even temporarily suspend, everything they know about Haiti. This includes prickly question that some diasporans encounter of how to identify ourselves. Ulysse claims hyphenated term explaining that it is appropriate mathematically and because of how one identity shapes other. She highlights passionate debate around how people identify with Haiti, as either Haitian or HaitianAmerican, and struggle to articulate or name identity in a way that also accounts for lived experience. This debate includes people of Haitian descent born outside Haiti and those born in Haiti who reside elsewhere, including those such as Ulysse who were born in Haiti and live in United States. Of her own positionality, Ulysse writes: I live with a keen awareness that negotiating my Haitis inevitably means accepting that there are limits to my understanding, given complexity of my position as both insider and outsider (xiii).Regardless of reader's relationship to Haiti-as diasporan, Haitibased, ignorant of Haiti beyond US news, or somewhere in between-Why Haiti Needs New Narratives can (and should) be unnerving. Ulysse states that a primary goal is to shift narrative terrain, and such a shift can cause discomfort as it challenges preexisting notions about Haiti. The pieces question private and public relationships people have with Haiti and encourage vigilant reflection. Ulysse writes that we need narratives to explicate its myriad of contradictions (95). Her critiques will speak to readers of postcolonial theory, particularly ways that she writes about the messiness of race, class, and gender in how people misperceive Haiti (81-82).For scholars of cultural, media, and communication studies, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives exemplifies forward-thinking scholarship for which Bernadette Calafell and Herman Gray have called, in that it pays attention to performance, representation, and affective and ideological labor of media. …

Language, self-referencing and bioethics: Can law mediate between evolution and religion?

Summary In the field of bioethics, religious and scientific perspectives generally are in agreement on moral questions such as the value of life. But a profound gulf emerges when it comes to issues related to procreation and death. This paper attempts to analyze the basic assumptions and presuppositions that underlie the bioethical debates surrounding abortion, embryo experimentation and assisted dying. Theistic perspectives are likely to accept the evolution of the physical body, but assert that the uniqueness of human language and the differences between the Homo sapien mind and that of all other animals are not the product of Darwinian selection, but rather the consequence of an ontological lacuna marked by divine intervention. This squarely places the debate about personhood between evolutionary continuity and the creation of an immortal soul connected to the presence of a Deity. The blunt confrontation between these two universes has produced an intractable duality of solitudes in the world of bioethics. It is now widely accepted that animals are conscious, in that they do experience the qualia of sensations such as colour, sound, smell, and pain. They express emotions of fear, anger, affection and grief. It is acknowledged that animal intelligence is manifested in responses to environmental needs, and that their mental processes indicate a sense of selfhood. What then distinguishes the human mind is its unique capacity for self-reflection and meta-consciousness, or consciousness of consciousness, which together form the basis of “personhood”. The capacity for self-reflection is a necessary condition for human language. Unlike animal communication, speech presupposes the subjectivity of dialogue as in “I” and “you”. No human language omits a sign of the self. Historically, the law has formed the focal point in the bioethics divide in contest between prohibition and regulation, versus liberty and free choice. Since individual agency is the foundation of the rule of law, restrictions on choice must be justified in terms of the limitations of rights. Officially, therefore, religious doctrines such as the belief in an immortal soul are kept aside in our secular courts of law, thereby underlining our commitment to the separation of church and state. We often find, nevertheless, that there are discrete attributions through Charters of Rights and Constitutions, to the Deity as the governing force behind the legal system. Almost in all cases, the insertions of religious belief into our Western legal systems are reformulated within the discourse of legal rights. The acute challenges between religious and non religious positions in bioethics normally appear when the “religionists” superimpose their will on the “secularists” about matters that invite prohibition and sanctions. These claims according to religious belief bring passionate debate into the public forum. The conundrums that emerge when we try to use bioethics as a basis for decision making, either in the legislature, in the courts, or indeed within clinical settings, are connected to the fact that in our society, there is a no man's land where agnostic belief systems continue to confuse rather than clarify the presuppositions behind the decisions we make. Because of this, the rule of law remains in a frustrated position. To support the rule of law, we suggest that there is no better principle than that of human dignity and respect for individual right of action to contain a tendency of religion or ideology to compromise the individual “right to choose”.

What is a Computer Simulation? A Review of a Passionate Debate

Where should computer simulations be located on the ‘usual methodological map’ (Galison 1996, 120) which distinguishes experiment from (mathematical) theory? Specifically, do simulations ultimately qualify as experiments or as thought experiments? Ever since Galison raised that question, a passionate debate has developed, pushing many issues to the forefront of discussions concerning the epistemology and methodology of computer simulation. This review article illuminates the positions in that debate, evaluates the discourse and gives an outlook on questions that have not yet been addressed.

Uncovering the stem cell hierarchy by genetic lineage tracing in the mammary gland

AbstractThe mammary gland is the distinct feature that gives the name to the class of mammals and distinguishes them from other animals. Functionally, the mammary gland is a secretory organ which main role is to produce milk to nourish the offspring. Organogenesis of the mammary gland starts during embryogenesis but occurs mainly after birth at puberty under the influence of hormonal cues. Throughout the adult life as well as during pregnancy, the mammary gland shows a remarkable regenerative ability, thus constituting an excellent model for studying stem cell biology. Although the mammary gland consists of a relatively simple epithelial structure with a luminal and a basal cell layers, these are indeed composed by distinct subsets of mammary epithelial cells. Flow cytometry and transplantation assay have identified several subpopulations of stem and/or progenitor cells in the mammary gland. Yet, physiological and developmental relevant information can only be obtained when investigating the stem cell hierarchy in the intact mammary gland. Genetic lineage tracing studies have offered unprecedented levels of information regarding the organization of the stem cell compartment and possible role of resident stem and/or progenitor cells at different stages of the mammary gland organogenesis. These studies, although creating a passionate debate, highlight the existence of heterogeneous stem cell compartment, where bipotent as well as unipotent mammary stem cells seems to co-exist. Genetic lineage tracing experiments provide relevant information on stem cells that are key for understanding both normal development as well as associated pathologies in human. It holds the promise of providing new insights into the cell-of-origin and heterogeneity of breast tumorigenesis.

Imaging Technologies in Breast Cancer Screening Beyond Mammography

Still there is a passionate debate in medical world about the best screening method for Breast Cancer. Early detection is an effective way to diagnose and manage breast cancer. Mammography is the most widely used screening modality, with solid evidence of benefit for women aged 40 to 74 years. Even then it has also undergone increased scrutiny for False-Positives with additional testing which increase radiation dose, cost and anxiety. False-Negatives with false sense of security and potential delay in cancer diagnosis. To overcome these challenges, new imaging technologies for breast cancer screening have been developed, including; X- ray Mammography, Contrast Enhanced Mammography, Digital Mammography, Ultrasound, Automated Whole Breast Ultrasound (AWBU), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) are being evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of different medical imaging techniques used in the diagnosis of breast cancer. We compare their effectiveness, advantages, and disadvantages for detecting early-stage breast cancer. We mainly focusing on the comparison of these technologies with mammography for the diagnosis of breast cancer. Here we recommend Digital Mammography is the best available screening method for the early detection of Breast Cancer. Even though the optimal screening will ultimately require a personalized approach. It based on the metrics of cancer risk with selective application of specific screening technologies best suited to the individual’s age, risk, and breast density.

Lost in Transnationalism? GMOs in India and the Eclipse of Equitable Development Discourse

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been at the centre of passionate debates in recent years, about their safety, their political economic impact and arguably as a litmus test for broader discourses about development. In India, this debate, focusing on Bt cotton, and more recently on Bt eggplant (brinjal), has been particularly vociferous. This article adds context to the debate by showing how rival perspectives on the role of GMOs in economic development have found differing channels of influence and support, many of them transnational in nature. Drawing on interviews with participants in India, from all sides of the argument—non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research, private and governmental sectors—this article argues that a ‘third’ perspective on the introduction of GMOs, that of ‘equitable development’, has been eclipsed by the transnational resources and media presence of both ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ stances. This article therefore aims to link the study of transnational advocacy with the political economy of development, a link which has not been apparent in much recent literature on advocacy networks.

Au nom de la raison neurobiologique

ProblemNeurobiology, adorned with the most recent discoveries of the molecular biology, the genetics and the cognitive sciences, is present everywhere: In the report of the man with his body, with his intellectual faculties, with his perception of others and himself. Our social conducts, morality and our affects would be governed by neuronal substrata. Are things so simple? MethodologyTo try to answer this question, the author is going to use the opposition “to explain” and “understand”, in a long-standing and often passionate debate which concerns the epistemology and the ontology, two modalities to be inflexible. Different thus of methods: In the mind of Dilthey, we explain the nature (submitted to the principle of the causality) but we understand the psychic life (which sends back to the sphere of the sense). ResultsIf the debate to explain and understand is further and far from being simple, the author adduces to draw from it some conclusions by questioning the speech of the promising of a reductionist neurobiology which believe to explain everything including all our actions in the name of the neurobiological reason: (1) if this is the case, we would be slaves of a history which already has its fate: The neurobiological-shaped man is neurobiological, (2) this speech is based on the mechanism of the tautology, that is it goes round in circles, teaches us absolutely nothing, (3) if the same neurobiologist asserts the opposite, why while reporting me what I say, I have no precise and localizable perception of my consciousness? (4) if the consciousness has no appropriate place or, to say it differently, if there is no intellectual topic appropriate to the consciousness, then what takes place in me will remain forever untranslatable and will be condemned to the silence. To go out of one, exist thus, I need the immediate and permanent help of an other one (or of contradiction), (5) if this process is purely an event of the brain then all our actions, all our gestures, in brief all that it is allowed us to live has to take place as it takes place, (6) finally to assert it brings us nothing more because the explanation always leaves something aside: the phenomenon of the life in which he is imperceptible. The example of the alcoholic is significant: if a change of the intellectual mechanisms is responsible of his alcohol addiction, why the alcoholic, by wanting to drink “how everybody”, makes as if written history beforehand was of not much importance? If the alcoholic began thinking of his own cerebral dysfunction while he lives, his life would have no shape. Indeed, if he receives the message and knows the felling about which it is a question. Indeed, if he receives the message and knows the feeling about which it is a question, he cannot, by force of circumstance, feel what his brain passes on to him: he does not witness what appears in its brain. On the other and he witnesses the world in which he lives but also on his condition of mortal. So, without objects to be cultivated, that is without the world of the presence which is the one of the existence and not the understanding, the neurobiological explanation of his alcohol addiction will concern a knowledge but will ignore any life. It means that there is well a gap to live and theorize and that the alcoholic is not reduced to a cerebral dysfunction: he is in the life of relation, that is it is capable of taking up himself by using its real-life experience. The psychopathology implications are going to show themselves here of a very big importance: any reduction comes to truncate the understanding of the man sick coach in reality we constantly have to deal with the “global and complete” man, with the anthropology of the human fate. ConclusionIf the science brings us news discovered in this domain, it has to keep always in mind that the life remains imperceptible and deeply moving. Without this existential event which allows us “to live”, the air will become unbreathable in our more and more technical-scientific world: it would like being sentenced to asphyxiation.

A Mausoleum for Bach? Holy Relics and Urban Planning in Early Communist Leipzig, 1945–1950

In the immediate aftermath of Nazi misrule and wartime bombing, as Germans struggled to survive amid the ruins of their national identity and architectural treasures, passionate debates arose over how to devise usable symbols for the new post-Nazi cityscape. This article features the zealous dispute in Leipzig over how to make Johann Sebastian Bach a symbolic centerpiece, either by erecting a splendid new mausoleum where Bach had been buried or by moving his remains to a new shrine in the Thomaskirche, where Bach had served as cantor. So great were the perceived stakes that even Communist officials took opposing sides in this fight for the postwar urban memory landscape.

Slavery and War in the Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State Building in the United States and Brazil, 1861-1870 by Vitor Izecksohn

Slavery and War in Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State Building in United States and Brazil, 1861-1870. By Vitor Izecksohn. A Nation Divided: Studies in Civil War Era. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2014. Pp. xiv, 251. $45.00, ISBN 978-08139-3585-0.) Slavery and War in Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State Building in United States and Brazil, 1861-1870 artfully compares how wartime recruitment refracted both on state-local political dynamics and on of slavery in United States and Brazil during Civil War and Triple Alliance War, respectively. More specifically, book explores how black enlistment, including free and freed men, affected broader social and political legacies of conflicts. A professor of U.S. and Latin American history at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Vitor Izecksohn works from archival collections in both United States and Brazil. The product is a balanced and well-structured study that is sure to stimulate passionate debates in U.S. and Brazilian classrooms on workings of race and citizenship in two largest slave nations in Americas. Beginning with a comparative overview of how military traditions informed citizenship narratives in both places, Izecksohn draws out two baseline differences that will guide his later thinking about each war's consequences. First, he argues that prior to need for mass mobilization, in United States in militias was considered an honorable obligation, well suited to citizens, whereas the Brazilian vision of military service was derogatory (p. 11). Izecksohn posits this contrast in ideological terms, linking militia service in United States to political traditions of strong local power. In Brazil, however, where political power remained more centralized, seigneurial legitimacy was actually demonstrated through finding exemptions from military obligations. These differences in how local power was constructed in turn shaped effects of mass recruitment and slave enlistment. The second key difference pertains to race and relationship to slavery and citizenship. Izecksohn highlights widespread enrollment of free people of color in Imperial [Brazilian] army and notes that its American counterpart remained a segregated institution (p. 11). This, too, should have been explained in ideological terms. The impetus for interracial narratives of belonging in Brazil, as well as possibilities for free Afro-Brazilians to meaningfully engage in public life, was, in fact, ideological and not demographic. …

Supramolecular Organization of Respiratory Complexes.

Since the discovery of the existence of superassemblies between mitochondrial respiratory complexes, such superassemblies have been the object of a passionate debate. It is accepted that respiratory supercomplexes are structures that occur in vivo, although which superstructures are naturally occurring and what could be their functional role remain open questions. The main difficulty is to make compatible the existence of superassemblies with the corpus of data that drove the field to abandon the early understanding of the physical arrangement of the mitochondrial respiratory chain as a compact physical entity (the solid model). This review provides a nonexhaustive overview of the evolution of our understanding of the structural organization of the electron transport chain from the original idea of a compact organization to a view of freely moving complexes connected by electron carriers. Today supercomplexes are viewed not as a revival of the old solid model but rather as a refined revision of the fluid model, which incorporates a new layer of structural and functional complexity.

Youth plus experience: the discovery of 51 Pegasi b

In 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced they discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first planet ever found around a star other than the Sun. This discovery turned out to be a milestone of recent astronomy, as it opened up a new field of research that is growing impressively these days. However, 51 Pegasi b has surprising properties as compared to the planets of the Solar System, as it is a giant planet on a very close-in orbit around its parent star. Hence, its discovery was unexpected and its actual existence did not go unchallenged. In the following years, a passionate debate sprang up, and finally astronomers accepted it, but at the price of a deep revision of our understanding of how planetary systems are formed and evolve. In the present paper, we reconstruct the dynamics of the discovery of 51 Pegasi b and the first exoplanets, the quarrel that arose among astronomers and the final acceptance of the existence of planets with unexpected characteristics. This remarkable story is recounted by means of published literature as well as interviews with several of its main protagonists.

Shareholder Exit Signs on US and EU Highways

This article discusses legal exit rights (referred to in the United States as appraisal rights and in civil law Europe as withdrawal rights), in the United States, France and Romania. We selected these three countries because they are representative of strong, average and respectively weak capital markets, with varying levels of shareholder activism and litigation (high, normal and respectively low). Additionally, the selection of these countries enabled us to compare the structure of legal exit rights in the United States and in Europe and, within Europe, between two politically, economically and culturally sister countries (France and Romania) which should be so close legally but yet we conclude are so far apart, at least with respect to legal exit rights.Until recently, this topic had not received much attention, in literature or in practice. Now, in all three countries, it is raising passionate debates, albeit for different reasons, and we observed a recent and significant increase of the exercise of legal exit rights. In the United States, a phenomenon of “appraisal activism” has emerged, led by specialized and aggressive hedge funds. In France, shareholder activism in general is on the rise and new regulations or proposals pertaining to legal exit rights have recently been adopted or are currently being debated. In Romania, the second most important stock market is currently being dissolved, which triggered potential legal exit rights at more than 800 public companies.The scope and procedures applicable to the exercise of legal exit rights differ greatly in the three countries analyzed. That was easy to conclude. While comparative law scholarship often has a tendency to emphasize differences between jurisdictions, we join an emerging trend in comparative law scholarship by choosing to focus on similarities. Consequently, the more difficult part of our analysis was to bring together, under an umbrella of common terminology and concepts, very different institutions having separate sources and historical backgrounds. We offer a common language and a general analytic framework for legal exit rights, from the pragmatic perspective of current practitioners in each of the countries surveyed. In doing so, a certain extent of deliberate imprecision and generalization were unavoidable. At the end of this process and within the analytic framework created, we found that numerous similarities in the regulation of legal exit rights exist in these three countries. We explored the identified similarities, which should allow each country to benefit from the experience of the others.In particular, our analysis indicated that the scope of legal exit rights for public companies is not correlated with the strength of the capital markets and that shareholders are granted a broader scope of legal exit rights in private companies than in public companies (with the exception of France). It also indicated that there is extreme variation regarding exit rights for limited liability companies (almost exclusively contractual exit rights in the United States and France in contrast with broad legal exit rights in Romania) but that there is generally less state intervention and more contractual freedom regarding the determination of the fair price with respect to companies other than joint stock companies. Moreover, it indicated that the frequency of use of legal exit rights is not proportional with the level of shareholder litigation.