Subtle Elements Research Articles

Conformation‐Directed Macrocyclization Reactions

AbstractThe importance of conformational pre‐organization in successful macrocyclization reactions has been recognized ever since Eschenmoser’s synthesis of vitamin B12 and Woodward’s synthesis of erythromycin. Different approaches to productive preorganization are possible depending mainly on the degree of freedom in the choice of the structural elements. In diversity‐oriented synthesis, in which it is not imperative that the molecular framework has a fixed structure, matching building blocks can be used to assemble a macrocycle. In target‐oriented synthesis, more subtle structural elements have to be considered in order to pre‐organize the linear substrate into a folded conformer suitable for ring closure. In this microreview, some selected examples of macrocyclization reactions are presented to illustrate the different rational approaches. Special attention is paid to the role of intramolecular weak forces and protecting groups in the conformational pre‐organization that facilitates macrocyclization reactions. (© Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2005)

Depicting Dynamics Using Principles of Visual Art and Narrations

In visual art, a single static image frequently represents much more than projected 3D scenery. Artists include subtle visual elements outlining movements, indicating past or future events, sketching ongoing activities, or guiding the observer's attention. Artists have found ways to visualize physical as well as nonphysical dynamics of scenes using graphics techniques. In a sense, we can consider these smart depictions - a form of expressive, visual content adopting the styles of visual art and abstraction techniques. These depictions can serve, for example, as pictograms and signs that advise and assist people. They're also present in comic books and storyboards that effectively present dynamics and narrate sequential processes. Taking smart depictions a step further, we created a system that automatically generates smart, compelling images of 3D scenes that depict dynamics following traditional design principles of visual art, visual narrations, and graphic design, such as those found in comic books and storyboards. These media offer a rich vocabulary of visual art deployed as techniques to facilitate visual communication of a wealth of activities and events in static images. In particular, we can symbolize in a single, static image past, ongoing, and future activities as well as events taking place in 3D scenes. Additionally, we can take into account nonvisual information.

Recent technology and the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musics

Although the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musics has been progressing for over a century, many early attempts tended to treat Chinese material in a rather superficial manner. This resulted in mere ‘Orientalist’ Western pieces and rather bland pentatonic/romantic ‘Chinese’ music that simply harmonised the basic outline of popular Chinese melodies with Western chord progressions. The use of recent technologies has greatly accelerated the pace and depth of this hybridisation and solved many of its artistic problems. Technological advances now make it possible and practical to incorporate the subtle but essential elements of traditional Chinese music, and of course other world musics, in works that seem satisfying for Western and non-Western audiences. This paper presents a brief historical overview of the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musical traditions, examines common pitfalls of many early attempts, and reviews how these issues are addressed compositionally and technically in the author's recent electroacoustic pieces, Li Jiang Etudes No. 1, 2 & 3.

Aristotle and the Graces

This paper is a reading of Aristotle's book on justice (Book V of the Ethics) as what he says it is, a study of the disposition or inclination towards doing just (or unjust) acts. In that light, the content of Aristotle's famous treatments of distributive and corrective justice are only incidental, for their true role is as clues to a meaningful picture of the Just and the Unjust person. Aristotle's treatment of Being Just as a specific virtue is the most detailed treatment he offers of any moral virtue. Being Just as distributive justice emerges as a commitment to the equal treatment of all citizens, but to an equality tempered by always contentious considerations of merited reward. Being Just as corrective justice is a commitment to protecting and repairing the sphere of each person's dignity and opportunity from damaging and sometimes malicious interactions. But more is required. For Being Just means overcoming the disordered and misdirected desire that both Aristotle and Plato call wanting - tyrant-like - more-of-and-more-than. If that is overcome by re-directed libido, the virtuous will then have to integrate more subtle elements if they are to achieve an inclination to this tempered, but real equality. These elements are two. One is present only implicitly, the passion Aristotle calls nemesis, a demand that the world - and justice within the world - must never permit an evil person to go unpunished or a good one, to suffer harm. That passion cannot be admitted, but at best can only be temporarily stilled. The second impediment arises from the dynamic of human communities that are made up of diverse and actively striving individuals: such citizens, haunted by suspicion grounded in their own pleonexia, demand that the community be one of laws. That creates a true dilemma, for in Aristotle's estimation, no set of rules can cabin any virtue. The Rule of Law is in tension with the particularity of justice in real life, and that tension is ultimately only bearable through the invention of equity, the trusted deviation from the law to preserve the law. In making this abstract I have had to leave untouched the subject matter of the first and two last chapters, but in my paper I do treat these. More importantly, I also show how all political community and the inclination to seek to be a Just Person rests on a gracious act of reciprocal commitment.

The Adult Attachment Interview and psychoanalytic outcome studies.

During the last two decades, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has attracted growing interest from psychoanalysts concerned with empirical research. The paper discusses the application of Crittenden's Dynamic-Maturational AAI method for assessing the outcome of psychoanalysis. The aim is to demonstrate, through a case presentation, how therapeutic change can be expressed in the AAI. The pre- and post-treatment interviews of one patient, having completed a four-times-a-week psychoanalysis, are presented. It is demonstrated that the detailed discourse analysis of the AAI, based on transcribed tape-recorded interviews, focuses subtle formal elements of language and speech reflecting dominant patterns of affect regulation and object relating. The AAI text analysis provides possibility for coding procedural memory as conveyed by the handling of the relationship to the interviewer, incorporating the dynamic relationship between researcher and subject and thus complying with a methodological prerequisite regarded by many psychoanalysts as necessary for capturing data that are relevant to psychoanalysis. On this background, the method emerges as promising for psychoanalytic outcome studies.

The Adult Attachment Interview and psychoanalytic outcome studies

During the last two decades, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has attracted growing interest from psychoanalysts concerned with empirical research. The paper discusses the application of Crittenden's Dynamic‐Maturational AAI method for assessing the outcome of psychoanalysis. The aim is to demonstrate, through a case presentation, how therapeutic change can be expressed in the AAI. The pre‐ and post‐treatment interviews of one patient, having completed a four‐times‐a‐week psychoanalysis, are presented. It is demonstrated that the detailed discourse analysis of the AAI, based on transcribed tape‐recorded interviews, focuses subtle formal elements of language and speech reflecting dominant patterns of affect regulation and object relating. The AAI text analysis provides possibility for coding procedural memory as conveyed by the handling of the relationship to the interviewer, incorporating the dynamic relationship between researcher and subject and thus complying with a methodological prerequisite regarded by many psychoanalysts as necessary for capturing data that are relevant to psychoanalysis. On this background, the method emerges as promising for psychoanalytic outcome studies.

Reinvention As Reform: Assessing the National Performance Review

The conclusion of the Clinton Administration presents an opportune time to investigate the outcomes of the National Performance Review (NPR). Any such evaluation, however, is complicated by the nature of the objectives sought, many of which relate to subtle and elusive elements of organizational life: empowering employees, inducing a less risk‐adverse culture, and enhancing the quality of service delivery. The strategy employed here as a means of gaining insight into such phenomena was to couple a broad review of government‐wide survey results with an in‐depth investigation into the impact of NPR on a single agency, the Social Security Administration. A conclusion is that many of the NPR's “higher‐order“ objectives have not been met on a systemic basis. While a variety of proximate explanations for this finding can be identified, a more fundamental explanation relates to a failure by the sponsors to adjust their strategy to account for basic differences between NPR and past reforms.

FINDING SMALLEST SUPERTREES UNDER MINOR CONTAINMENT

The diversity of application areas relying on tree-structured data results in wide interest in algorithms which determine differences or similarities among trees. One way of measuring the similarity between trees is to find the smallest common superstructure or supertree, where common elements are typically defined in terms of a mapping or embedding. In the simplest case, a supertree will contain exact copies of each input tree, so that for each input tree, each vertex of a tree can be mapped to a vertex in the supertree such that each edge maps to the corresponding edge. More general mappings allow for the extraction of more subtle common elements captured by looser definitions of similarity. We consider supertrees under the general mapping of minor containment. Minor containment generalizes both subgraph isomorphism and topological embedding; as a consequence of this generality, however, it is NP-complete to determine whether or not G is a minor of H, even for genreal trees. By focusing on trees of bounded degree, we obtain an O(n3) algorithm which determines the smallest tree T such that both of the input trees are minors of T, even when the trees are assumed to be unrooted and unordered.

Toyota Story 2: Still Winning the Productivity Game

The main features of the Toyota Production System (TPS) have been widely publicised and discussed since the 1980s. By now, other car manufacturers might reasonably have been expected to have learned the lessons and fully caught up with Toyota's productivity levels. This has still not happened. Part of the explanation is simply Toyota's high investment in plant and equipment. This article focuses on the complementary human aspects, the subtle elements of Toyota's organisation and culture which have ensured the continuing success of the TPS.

Definition of Regulatory Sequence Elements in the Promoter Region and the First Intron of the Myotonic Dystrophy Protein Kinase Gene

Myotonic dystrophy is the most common inherited adult neuromuscular disorder with a global frequency of 1/8000. The genetic defect is an expanding CTG trinucleotide repeat in the 3'-untranslated region of the myotonic dystrophy protein kinase gene. We present the in vitro characterization of cis regulatory elements controlling transcription of the myotonic dystrophy protein kinase gene in myoblasts and fibroblasts. The region 5' to the initiating ATG contains no consensus TATA or CCAAT box. We have mapped two transcriptional start sites by primer extension. Deletion constructs from this region fused to the bacterial chloramphenicol acetyltransferase reporter gene revealed only subtle muscle specific cis elements. The strongest promoter activity mapped to a 189-base pair fragment. This sequence contains a conserved GC box to which the transcription factor Sp1 binds. Reporter gene constructs containing a 2-kilobase pair first intron fragment of the myotonic dystrophy protein kinase gene enhances reporter activity up to 6-fold in the human rhabdomyosarcoma myoblast cell line TE32 but not in NIH 3T3 fibroblasts. Co-transfection of a MyoD expression vector with reporter constructs containing the first intron into 10 T1/2 fibroblasts resulted in a 10-20-fold enhancement of expression. Deletion analysis of four E-box elements within the first intron reveal that these elements contribute to enhancer activity similarly in TE32 myoblasts and 10 T1/2 fibroblasts. These data suggest that E-boxes within the myotonic dystrophy protein kinase first intron mediate interactions with upstream promoter elements to up-regulate transcription of this gene in myoblasts.

Atomistic Topological Indices Applied to Benzodiazepines using Various Regression Methods

The use of atomic positionally independent molecular representations of a set of benzodiazepines is shown to yield a comparable structure-activity model than the traditional physicochemical representations. The best model was produced using an artificial neural network; the results are compared with models produced by MLR, PCR and PLS. The atomistic representation compares favourably with a functional group representation and the idea of implicit information in such representations is discussed. It appears that the complex inter-relationships between elements of a simple molecular representation may be capable of encoding subtle molecular structural elements.

Vertical Relationships in the Automotive Industry: Do They Matter?

In this note we examine how vertical relationships are related to the efficiency of the operations in the automotive production chain. We first provide an overview of the nature of supplier arrangements by comparing current practices in the countries Japan, US, and Germany. Current best practices show that vertical linkages in the automotive industry have shifted away from simple market transactions and now involve closer long-term interactions coupled however with subtle incentive elements. We outline the economic issues which are present in vertical relationships and include a brief account of differing theoretical perspectives. Then, we use a refined methodology to measure productivity at the industry level for the supplier industries automotive parts and metalworking and for the final assembly industry. It turns out that Japanese industries achieve the highest productivity level at the supplier and at the assembly level. We interpret the empirical results and relate the differences in vertical arrangemen s with the efficiency of both parts in the relation.

Morphological variation and homoplasy: the challenge of Paleozoic coral systematics

The extinct Paleozoic coral groups Rugosa and Tabulata suffer from confused systematics because of extreme morphological variation, pervasive homoplasy, and relatively simple skeletal morphology. Morphological variation occurs within individuals or colonies, between individuals within a population, and between populations. Variation at each level may have both genetic and ecologic components. Homoplasy is very abundant and extended sequences of parallel or convergent character transformations have led to the recognition of “recurrent evolutionary trends” in many lineages.Morphological variation causes much difficulty in the recognition and characterization of coral species and homoplasy is problematic for phylogeny reconstruction. Improved coral systematics require a more holistic approach to both taxonomy and phylogeny analysis, including: 1) population-based species concepts, as opposed to typological approaches; 2) use of more quantitative techniques in species discrimination and description; 3) more attention to subtle morphological elements, such as microstructure; 4) description of ecological settings (depositional environments) to aid in analysis of behavior and to help unravel ecophenotypic plasticity; and 5) use of stratigraphic and geographic distribution data in phylogeny analysis, because skeletal morphology is inadequate by itself.

Race and Ideology: African-American Images in Television Advertising

Although the numerical representation of African-Americans in contemporary television advertising has improved in recent years, the authors’ analysis illustrates how the potentially positive effects of including more African-Americans in advertisements are often mitigated by subtle racist elements that suggest African-American inferiority. Using an interpretive approach, the authors cast the problem within a framework of racism as ideology, that is, the dominant white ideology pervading the advertising industry. Their discussion of six themes identified in their analysis of prime-time television commercials serves to highlight problematic images of African-Americans that continue to persist in contemporary advertising. In the spirit of self-regulation, the authors suggest actions that the advertising industry can take to present more positive and varied portrayals of minority populations.

Basin tectonics and erg response

The alignment and distribution of facies in the major erg (eolian sand sea) deposits in the Permian and Jurassic systems on the Colorado Plateau show remarkable coincidence with modern tectonic elements. This indicates that subtle tectonic elements, precursors to the present ones, were coeval with ancient eolian deposition and controlled erg geometry and facies distribution. No other known controls or processes were capable of producing the observed patterns. Facies and architectural analysis of the Permian and Jurassic erg deposits define several major trends across the Colorado Plateau. The High Plateaus trend, parallel to and slightly east of the Wasatch line, is defined by a zone of thinning and facies change of several erg deposits. The Zuni trend lies along the Zuni lineament and is coincident with facies changes or erg margins of several units. The Colorado trend lies along the course of the modern Colorado River and a number of erg margins and several facies changes coincide with it. Most erg centers, as defined by facies and thickness, lay within paleobasins that include the Circle Cliffs trough, Holbrook, Black Mesa, and Blanding basins, and southern Cordilleran Miogeocline. Most erg deposits thin or pinch out across paleoarches, which include the Sedona, Monument, Emery and Defiance arches. Although the exact relation between the paleostructures and facies distribution is uncertain, it appears likely that some of the structural elements defined areas of greater and less sand accumulation. Areas of greater sand accumulation would be expected to be dominated by facies typical of erg centers and areas of lesser sand accumulation would be expected to be dominated by facies typical of the erg margin and eolian sand sheets. The structures may have also formed straight margins in aqueous environments such as rivers and marine coasts; straight, vertically stacked facies changes are commonly associated with erg margins in the stratigraphic record. Early post-depositional uplift of some arches may have defined straight, thin edges of some eolian sequences. The knowledge that subtle intrabasinal tectonic elements had an effect on eolian deposition can be used to reconstruct basin history; therefore, the mapping of eolian geometry and facies patterns can provide powerful information concerning the tectonic evolution of a sedimentary basin.

Getting it Right: Images of Indigenous Peoples in Canadian Fiction in the Eighties

G E T T I N G IT R I G H T : IM A G E S O F IN D IG E N O U S P E O P L E S IN C A N A D IA N F IC T IO N IN T H E E I G H T I E S TERRY GOLDIE Memorial University of Newfoundland I n some ways, the eighties seem like quite a humble age. We had faith in technological progress in the fifties and then pledged our devotion to backto -the-land primitivism in the late sixties and early seventies, but we now are completely sure that we don’t know what to believe. In contrast to the visions found in the writing of earlier unacknowledged legislators, the fiction of the eighties often asserts its limitations: “ I can’t claim to be giving you any more than what dribbles off the end of my pen: no blinding insights, no glimpses of the noumenal sphere.” Yet that rejection of past Shelleyan arrogance is not complete. The patina of humility often hides the hubris of the present, a disease to which all periods succumb. Such an attitude leads to certain assumptions. The first is that the past is a cloud of complacent — or bull-headed — ignorance. The second is that our contemporary open-mindedness has overcome such selfdeception . That faith in the present is the source of my title. About five years ago I was listening to a CBC radio interview with the Canadian writer Mel Dagg. He was commenting on representations of the Indian in Canadian literature.1 Although more than willing to admit the racism and stereotyping of earlier periods, he claimed that today some authors are “ getting it right.” As a prime example, he selected W. P. Kinsella’s stories of life on an Alberta reserve. Any thinker with an historical sense should be able to recognize the danger in judging contemporary material as the success in opposition to past failures. Michel Foucault asserts in “ Prison Talk” : I adopt the methodical precaution and the radical but unaggressive scepticism which makes it a principle not to regard the point in time where we are now standing as the outcome of a teleological progression which it would be one’s business to reconstruct historically: that scepticism regarding ourselves and what we are, our here and now, which prevents one from assuming that what we have is better than — or more than — in the past. (49) E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C anada, x iv , i , March 1988 Foucault opposes complacent teleology with a recognition of the “systems of power” which control the “Truth” of a culture, in the past, present, and future (“Truth and Power” 114 ). The most useful source of analysis is not chronological but ideological distance. Historical perspective might provide a shift sufficient to re-examine a past text, but something else must be added to decipher the subtle unconsidered elements which shape a contemporary text. A good example is provided by Charles Mair, who most would no doubt now consider “racist” in many ways and whom Dagg would no doubt view as having “gotten it wrong.” Mair believed himself to be very much on the Indian’s side. Pauline Johnson, a Metis who identified as an Indian and was a strong and articulate supporter of native rights, said, in a letter to Mair, “Oh! you are half an Indian, I know — the best half of a man, anyway — his heart” (letter of 18 December 1892; Shrive 19 1). Lacking chronological distance, Johnson had insufficient ideological perspective to provide an ade­ quate analysis. Chronology does not save the indigene from a limiting semiotic process. Throughout Canadian culture, from the beginning to the present, the image of the Indian and Inuk exists within a limited semiotic field, in which the image, the signifier, has at best a tenuous relationship with the referent, the indigene of “ real life.” 2 The borders of this field are best seen in light of the “ standard commodities” which Edward Said notes in Orientalism (190). These are the aspects of the image given most...

Tectonic analysis of lineaments near a spreading axis, northeastern Iceland

Some aspects of Iceland geodynamics are investigated from Landsat multispectral scanner (MSS) digital data in conjunction with field studies. Lineaments at the 1: 500,000 scale were mapped from computer processed imagery designed to enhance subtle structural fabric elements within the data. The analyses indicate pervasive north and west-northwest-trending lineaments. These trends are interpreted in terms of alternative complex models involving Riedel shear deformation or thermoelastic contraction adjacent to a spreading center. West-northwest-trending lineaments are concentrated along the Husavik-Flatey fault system. East of Axarfjördur, a 20-km wide band of west-northwest lineaments could mark the onshore continuation of the Grimsey submarine fault proposed on the basis of earthquake distributions.

The normal retinal fluorescein angiogram I. A study of the fluoresceinangiographic appearance of the retina in normal subjects without ophthalmoscopically obvious pathological changes.

Retinal fluorescein angiography and colour fundus photography was performed in the one eye of 48 clinically healthy middle aged subjects, 21 females and 27 males, without ophthalmoscopically obvious fundus abnormalities. A region of retina 45 degrees around the fovea was analysed for morphological elements in colour photographs, red-free photographs and fluorescein angiograms. Subtle morphological elements, small and 'large' fluorescent spots, were noted in 20 out of 48 subjects (= eyes) (42%) during the early and middle phases of the fluorescein angiogram. In 15 subjects the number and location of fluorescent spots (n = 40) corresponded to spots in the colour and red-free photographs. In 10 out of the 15 subjects (67%) with fluorescent spots the corresponding spots in the colour and red-free photographs were indistinctly outlined. Fluorescent spots without corresponding spots in colour and red-free photographs (n = 18) were found in 10 subjects. Thirty-eight per cent of all the fluorescent spots (n = 22) persisted with variable intensity in the late phases of the angiograms. Colour photographs disclosed variable numbers of yellowish spots in 34 subjects (71%). Sixty-four per cent of the spots (71 our of 111 spots) in colour photographs could not be visualized by fluorescein angiography. These spots were characteristically distinctly outlined. The retinal spots were chiefly located in the upper and lower regions temporal to the fovea both in colour photographs (71% of the spots) and the fluorescein angiograms (62% of the spots). The occurrence of morphological elements of the retina did not correlate with age or smoking habits. The appearance of minor morphological elements in the retina of normal subjects seems to variate widely as assessed by fluorescein angiography and fundus colour photography.

Dudley Maurice Newitt, 28 April 1894 - 14 March 1980

The interleaved texture of human growth can sometimes be followed back to more than one kind of early experience, and often stems from more than one genetic element. Subtle and continuous elements affecting the life of Dudley Newitt came from his youthful experience and from his parentage. These had superimposed upon them uncommon events which helped to segment his life into strongly marked periods. In his origins Newitt was basically a Fen-man. His father’s great grandfather was a moderately prosperous farmer in Chatteris on the Isle of Ely, of which he was at one time High Constable. Dudley’s tenacity and toughness were characteristic of the Fens, though he was not without a romantic streak. When we visited Ely and its cathedral together in the 1950s it was not fanciful in me to observe the quickening of his countenance. But his own grandfather had left the Fens in search of his fortune when barely grown up—walking to London, eating vegetables from the fields. He married the daughter of an ironmonger in Ware in whose shop he found his first job on leaving the Fens. In typical Victorian entrepreneurial pattern for the industrious apprentice, he subsequently built racecourses, managed hotels, speculated in land in England and in South Africa, made a small fortune and lost two. Newitt’s maternal grandparents were a craftsman in Windsor who is reputed to have made the leather upholstery for Queen Victoria’s state coaches, and the daughter of a small farmer from the Welsh border country.

The right to refuse treatment: ethical issues.

To understand the emerging concept of the right to refuse treatment in mental institutions, several underlying ethical issues must be examined. For example, the right is limited by such factors as the competence of the patient, the distinction between apparent and real refusal of treatment, and the desirability of some balance between the state's police power and parens patriae power. The most difficult ethical problems arise when a mentally ill individual is competent and not dangerous, needs treatment, and yet refuses it. In addition, most problems concerning the right to refuse treatment occur in large, understaffed, and underfunded public institutions whose nature affects the alternative treatments available, the quality of life without treatment, and the subtle coercive elements associated with any total institution. The author discusses these and other ethical issues pertaining to justifications for the right, limits to the right, treatment setting, and the treatments themselves.