Syntheses of bilin chromophores toward the investigation of structure and function of phytochromes

We studied on the syntheses of linear tetrapyrrole (bilin) chromophores including the sterically locked derivatives toward the investigation of structure and function of phytochromes as photoreceptors. The synthesized chromophores were successfully assembled with bacterial and plant apophytochromes in vitro and/or in vivo to demonstrate that they are valuable tools for studies on phytochromes. © 2012 The Japan Institute of Heterocyclic Chemistry

An Investigation of Thresholds in Air Pollution-Mortality Effects

In this paper we introduce and implement new techniques to investigate threshold effects in air pollution-mortality relationships. Our key interest is in measuring the dose-response relationship above and below a given threshold level where we allow for a large number of potential explanatory variables to trigger the threshold effect. This is in contrast to existing approaches that usually focus on a single threshold trigger. We allow for a myriad of threshold effects within a Bayesian statistical framework that accounts for model uncertainty (i.e. uncertainty about which threshold trigger and explanatory variables are appropriate). We apply these techniques in an empirical exercise using daily data from Toronto for 1992-1997. We investigate the existence and nature of threshold effects in the relationship between mortality and ozone (O3), total particulate matter (PM) and an index of other conventionally occurring air pollutants. In general, we find the effects of our considered pollutants on mortality to be statistically indistinguishable from zero with no evidence of thresholds. The one exception is ozone, for which results present an ambiguous picture. Ozone has no significant effect on mortality when we exclude threshold effects from the analysis. Allowing for thresholds we find a positive and significant effect for this pollutant when the threshold trigger is the average change in ozone two days ago. However, this significant effect is not observed after controlling for PM.Threshold-air pollution mortality effects; Bayesian model; averaging; PM; O3

Subject strategies in music : a psychoanalytic approach to musical signification

This book develops psychoanalytic music criticism in the field of postmodern music analysis. It offers psychoanalytic listenings of various musics; from a Romantic symphony to alternative country music, from piano miniatures to TV-opera. The musical rhetoric of melancholy, uncanny, acoustic mirroring, alienation and other subjectivity mechanisms are tracked in the music of Chopin (Nocturne C minor Op. 48), k.d. lang (Constant Craving, Save me), Nordgren (Alex), Schubert (Der Lindenbaum), Sibelius (Kyllikki), and Tchaikovsky (Symphony No. 6, Pathétique). The book also outlines the history and current state of psychoanalytic music analysis and theorizes music as a site of subjectivity

Idealism and Actualization. Saint-Just in Theory, Practice, and Exigency

Louis-Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (1767-1794) was a revolutionary, a statesman, and a political philosopher, yet it is largely only as a revolutionary that he is remembered. As a political person who occupied these three different but overlapping roles, Saint-Just is ideal as the subject and center of a study of actualization, the taking of political ideals into reality. Saint-Just’s political philosophy was that of an idealist, and yet he, by force of circumstance, ability, and audacity, had the opportunity in his short life to attempt to establish and put into practice his political ideals. In his work as a political person Saint-Just created templates for the understanding of the relationship between political theory and political action. Saint-Just’s political theory is examined in relation to his political action, using the concepts of ‘the natural’, ‘the civil’, ‘the social’ and ‘the political’, concepts which are central in Saint-Just’s political philosophy. Saint-Just’s formulations of these concepts, concepts which have also been central to the history of political philosophy, and his understanding of the relations between these concepts, helps to establish him as a political philosopher of some importance, as does the theory and practice approach to politics which his attempts demanded and which his political life demonstrated. In Saint-Just’s function as political philosopher the thesis finds the theoretical element of politics, which becomes redefined in its interaction with Saint-Just’s other functions as statesman and revolutionary, the latter two of which correspond roughly to practice and exigency. As a theorist who is also a statesman in a context of exigency, or revolution, Saint-Just’s political life is a constantly rearranged juxtaposition of theory, practice, and revolution, albeit one which never loses it essential ties to its philosophical base, even in the hours of greatest emergency. Such dedication to a philosophical base, one which refuses to dispense with political philosophy, demonstrates a new conception of political philosophy for the modern world, fills in elements of a theory of revolution as a phenomenon of both theory and action, and provides a contained case for examination of political philosophy and political action, questioning their disunity