Nietzsche e Clausewitz: A Guerra

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Nietzsche on Film

This is the final version of the article. Available from Edinburgh University Press via the DOI in this record.This article tracks the many appearances of Friedrich Nietzsche throughout the history of cinema. It asks how cinema can do Nietzschean philosophy in ways that are unique to the medium. It also asks why the cinematic medium might be so pertinent to Nietzschean philosophy. Adhering to the implicit premise that, as Jacques Derrida once put it, ‘there is no totality to Nietzsche's text, not even a fragmentary or aphoristic one,’ the essay's mode of argument avoids reductive totalization and instead comprises a playful sampling of variously Nietzschean manifestations across dissimilar films. It begins with an extended account of Baby Face, a 1933 drama from which the abundant references to Nietzsche were either altered or expunged ahead of theatrical release. It then maps some of the philosophical consistencies across two genres in which characters read Nietzsche with apparent frequency: the comedy and the thriller. While comedies and thrillers both treat Nietzsche and his readers with suspicion, and do so for perceptive historical reasons, the essay then asks what an affirmatively Nietzschean film might look like. It explores this possibility through a discussion of cinematic animation in general and then more specifically via several critically familiar films that self-consciously evolve their aesthetic through Nietzsche's philosophy. The essay concludes by affirming Béla Tarr's final film as one of the medium's greatest realizations of a Nietzschean film-philosophy. The Turin Horse, released in 2011, is exemplary because it takes Nietzsche as a narrative premise only to sublate that premise into a unique visual style

In the Shadow of Akimbo Corporatism: Arched Athleticism and the 'Becoming-Human' of a People.

The importance of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari’s development of ‘encounter’ is brought into sharp relief as key to the notion of ‘athleticism’. Here, both are developed as indispensable to each other, forming an a-radical/ana-material groundless ground to power, politics, literary sensibility, indeed sense itself – though all played in a minor key. It is a nuanced encounter which, at one and the same time, if working as encounter, produces an acephaletic knowledge, a body-knowledge, without the Ego-I. This, in itself would have been enough. But in an age of massifying systems, drone warfare and horrific migrations, where corporate tentacles bend the rules akimbo, one finds that this turn to a Deleuzean athleticism offers a different kind of political analysis, a radical difference, which, despite (or because of) the odds, enables a politics of hope and indeed, of a ‘becoming-human’

Becoming invisible: The ethics and politics of imperceptibility

This speculative essay examines ‘invisible’ social identities and the processes by which they are manifested and occasionally sought. Using various literary and academic sources, and loosely informed by an unlikely combination of Stoic philosophy and post-structuralist politics, we argue that invisibility is conventionally viewed as undesirable or ‘suffered’ by individuals or groups that are disadvantaged or marginalised within society. Whilst appreciating this possibility, we argue that social invisibility can also be the result of strategies carefully conceived and consciously pursued. We suggest that forms of social invisibility can be acquired by ethically informed personal action as well as by politically informed collective action. In this context, invisibility can be seen as a strategy of escaping from institutionalised and organisational judgements and which presents a challenge to common notions of voice and identity

The Role of the BMP Signaling Antagonist Noggin in the Development of Prostate Cancer Osteolytic Bone Metastasis

Members of the BMP and Wnt protein families play a relevant role in physiologic and pathologic bone turnover. Extracellular antagonists are crucial for the modulation of their activity. Lack of expression of the BMP antagonist noggin by osteoinductive, carcinoma-derived cell lines is a determinant of the osteoblast response induced by their bone metastases. In contrast, osteolytic, carcinoma-derived cell lines express noggin constitutively. We hypothesized that cancer cell-derived noggin may contribute to the pathogenesis of osteolytic bone metastasis of solid cancers by repressing bone formation. Intra-osseous xenografts of PC-3 prostate cancer cells induced osteolytic lesions characterized not only by enhanced osteoclast-mediated bone resorption, but also by decreased osteoblast-mediated bone formation. Therefore, in this model, uncoupling of the bone remodeling process contributes to osteolysis. Bone formation was preserved in the osteolytic lesions induced by noggin-silenced PC-3 cells, suggesting that cancer cell-derived noggin interferes with physiologic bone coupling. Furthermore, intra-osseous tumor growth of noggin-silenced PC-3 cells was limited, most probably as a result of the persisting osteoblast activity. This investigation provides new evidence for a model of osteolytic bone metastasis where constitutive secretion of noggin by cancer cells mediates inhibition of bone formation, thereby preventing repair of osteolytic lesions generated by an excess of osteoclast-mediated bone resorption. Therefore, noggin suppression may be a novel strategy for the treatment of osteolytic bone metastases

A comprehensive review of techniques for natural fibers as reinforcement in composites::preparation, processing and characterization

Designing environmentally friendly materials from natural resources represents a great challenge in the last decade. However, the lack of fundamental knowledge in the processing of the raw materials to fabricate the composites structure is still a major challenge for potential applications.Natural fibers extracted from plants are receiving more attention from researchers, scientists and academics due to their use in polymer composites and also their environmentally friendly nature and sustainability. The natural fiber features depend on the preparation and processing of the fibers. Natural plant fibers are extracted either by mechanical retting, dew retting and/or water retting processes. The natural fibers characteristics could be improved by suitable chemicals and surface treatments. This survey proposes a detailed review of the different types of retting processes, chemical and surface treatments and characterization techniques for natural fibers. We summarize major findings from the literature and the treatment effects on the properties of the natural fibers are being highlighted

Hepatic safety of antibiotics used in primary care

Antibiotics used by general practitioners frequently appear in adverse-event reports of drug-induced hepatotoxicity. Most cases are idiosyncratic (the adverse reaction cannot be predicted from the drug's pharmacological profile or from pre-clinical toxicology tests) and occur via an immunological reaction or in response to the presence of hepatotoxic metabolites. With the exception of trovafloxacin and telithromycin (now severely restricted), hepatotoxicity crude incidence remains globally low but variable. Thus, amoxicillin/clavulanate and co-trimoxazole, as well as flucloxacillin, cause hepatotoxic reactions at rates that make them visible in general practice (cases are often isolated, may have a delayed onset, sometimes appear only after cessation of therapy and can produce an array of hepatic lesions that mirror hepatobiliary disease, making causality often difficult to establish). Conversely, hepatotoxic reactions related to macrolides, tetracyclines and fluoroquinolones (in that order, from high to low) are much rarer, and are identifiable only through large-scale studies or worldwide pharmacovigilance reporting. For antibiotics specifically used for tuberculosis, adverse effects range from asymptomatic increases in liver enzymes to acute hepatitis and fulminant hepatic failure. Yet, it is difficult to single out individual drugs, as treatment always entails associations. Patients at risk are mainly those with previous experience of hepatotoxic reaction to antibiotics, the aged or those with impaired hepatic function in the absence of close monitoring, making it important to carefully balance potential risks with expected benefits in primary care. Pharmacogenetic testing using the new genome-wide association studies approach holds promise for better understanding the mechanism(s) underlying hepatotoxicity

Six Novel Susceptibility Loci for Early-Onset Androgenetic Alopecia and Their Unexpected Association with Common Diseases

Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is a highly heritable condition and the most common form of hair loss in humans. Susceptibility loci have been described on the X chromosome and chromosome 20, but these loci explain a minority of its heritable variance. We conducted a large-scale meta-analysis of seven genome-wide association studies for early-onset AGA in 12,806 individuals of European ancestry. While replicating the two AGA loci on the X chromosome and chromosome 20, six novel susceptibility loci reached genome-wide significance (p = 2.62×10−9–1.01×10−12). Unexpectedly, we identified a risk allele at 17q21.31 that was recently associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) at a genome-wide significant level. We then tested the association between early-onset AGA and the risk of PD in a cross-sectional analysis of 568 PD cases and 7,664 controls. Early-onset AGA cases had significantly increased odds of subsequent PD (OR = 1.28, 95% confidence interval: 1.06–1.55, p = 8.9×10−3). Further, the AGA susceptibility alleles at the 17q21.31 locus are on the H1 haplotype, which is under negative selection in Europeans and has been linked to decreased fertility. Combining the risk alleles of six novel and two established susceptibility loci, we created a genotype risk score and tested its association with AGA in an additional sample. Individuals in the highest risk quartile of a genotype score had an approximately six-fold increased risk of early-onset AGA [odds ratio (OR) = 5.78, p = 1.4×10−88]. Our results highlight unexpected associations between early-onset AGA, Parkinson's disease, and decreased fertility, providing important insights into the pathophysiology of these conditions

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of 21,000 cases and 95,000 controls identifies new risk loci for atopic dermatitis

Genetic association studies have identified 21 loci associated with atopic dermatitis risk predominantly in populations of European ancestry. To identify further susceptibility loci for this common, complex skin disease, we performed a meta-analysis of >15 million genetic variants in 21,399 cases and 95,464 controls from populations of European, African, Japanese and Latino ancestry, followed by replication in 32,059 cases and 228,628 controls from 18 studies. We identified ten new risk loci, bringing the total number of known atopic dermatitis risk loci to 31 (with new secondary signals at four of these loci). Notably, the new loci include candidate genes with roles in the regulation of innate host defenses and T cell function, underscoring the important contribution of (auto)immune mechanisms to atopic dermatitis pathogenesis

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms