How Land Came into the Picture: Rendering History in the Fourteenth-Century Jami al-Tawarikh.

The manuscripts from the Ilkhanate (1258-1370), the Iranian part of the Mongol Empire, contain paintings that evoke an illusion of three-dimensional space and passage of time for the first time in the Islamic world. They also show signs of modeling, wash, and calligraphic strokes and include scrolling clouds, rolling hills, and sinuous tree trunks, techniques and motifs that were absent in pre-Ilkhanid Islamic arts and that seem to originate in Chinese landscape paintings. This new way of rendering land was one of the most significant stylistic changes that occurred in the Ilkhanid paintings. The dissertation focuses on the representations of nature in the Jami al-Tawarikh ("Compendium of Chronicles" 1306-7), the world history written by vizier Rashid al-Din. It considers an epistemological analogy between the additive pictorial space in the Jami al-Tawarikh paintings and the layered and interpolated historical spaces in the text of the Jami al-Tawarikh. Rashid al-Din centers the Islamic world on the Ilkhanid land space, which is contrastingly called "a far distant corner" in the Yuan Shi. The political dialectic between center and periphery may have been visualized in some of the Jami al-Tawarikh paintings, in which the representations of nature dominate the center while the protagonists are relegated to the sides. In the Jami al-Tawarikh paintings, the visual elements seem to move at various velocities; while some clouds curl tightly, hills may move up and down at a lower frequency, and the figures may seem rooted firmly on the ground. These movements evoke a sense of differently-paced times, not unlike the scientist Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's (1201-1274) theorization of motion and time in the treatise, Tadhkira fi ‘ilm al-hay’a ("A Memoir on the Science of Astronomy"), that they are perceived quantities that depend on the reference point of the observer. The stylistic changes in the Ilkhanid paintings were so drastic that it is considered that the tradition of Persian painting began in the Ilkhanid period. The renditions of land in the Jami al-Tawarikh paintings may have newly provided a visual language parallel and correlative to the verbal one as a means of conceptualizing space, time, and memory.Ph.D.History of ArtUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61559/1/mycho_1.pd

Highly sensitive colorimetric detection of allergies based on an immunoassay using peroxidase-mimicking nanozymes

Nanomaterials that exhibit enzyme-like characteristics, which are called nanozymes, have recently attracted significant attention due to their potential to overcome the intrinsic limitations of natural enzymes, such as low stability and relatively high cost for preparation and purification. In this study, we report a highly efficient colorimetric allergy detection system based on an immunoassay utilizing the peroxidase- mimicking activity of hierarchically structured platinum nanoparticles (H-Pt NPs). The H-Pt NPs had a diameter of 30 nm, and were synthesized by a seed-mediated growth method, which led to a significant amount of peroxidase-like activity. This activity mainly occurs because of the high catalytic power of the Pt element, and the fact that the H-Pt NPs have a large surface area available for catalytic events. The H-Pt NPs were conjugated to an antibody for the detection of immunoglobulin E (IgE) in the analytes; IgE is a representative marker for the diagnosis of allergies. They were then successfully integrated into a conventionally used allergy diagnostic test, the ImmunoCAP diagnostic test, as a replacement for natural signaling enzymes. Using this strategy, total and specific IgE levels were detected within 5 min at room temperature, with high specificity and sensitivity. The practical utility of the immunoassay was also successfully verified by correctly determining the levels of both total and specific IgE in real human serum samples with high precision and reproducibility. The present H-Pt NP-based immunoassay system would serve as a platform for rapid, robust, and convenient analysis of IgE, and can be extended to the construction of diagnostic systems for a variety of clinically important target molecules.11Ysciescopu

Influence of oxygen vacancy on the electronic structure of HfO2_2 film

We investigated the unoccupied part of the electronic structure of the oxygen-deficient hafnium oxide (HfO$_{\sim1.8}$) using soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy at O $K$ and Hf $N_3$ edges. Band-tail states beneath the unoccupied Hf 5$d$ band are observed in the O $K$-edge spectra; combined with ultraviolet photoemission spectrum, this indicates the non-negligible occupation of Hf 5$d$ state. However, Hf $N_3$-edge magnetic circular dichroism spectrum reveals the absence of a long-range ferromagnetic spin order in the oxide. Thus the small amount of $d$ electron gained by the vacancy formation does not show inter-site correlation, contrary to a recent report [M. Venkatesan {\it et al.}, Nature {\bf 430}, 630 (2004)].Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

(E)-2,2′-[3-(2-Nitro­phen­yl)prop-2-ene-1,1-di­yl]bis­(3-hy­droxy-5,5-dimethyl­cyclo­hex-2-en-1-one)

In the title compound, C25H29NO6, each of the cyclo­hexenone rings adopts a half-chair conformation. Each of the pairs of hy­droxy and carbonyl O atoms are oriented to allow for the formation of intra­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, which are typical of xanthene derivatives. The nitro group is rotationally disordered over two orientations in a 0.544 (6):0.456 (6) ratio. In the crystal, weak inter­molecualr C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link mol­ecules into layers parallel to the ab plane

Bacterial community analysis of sediment seep in Kagoshima Bay, Japan

1902-1906Microorganisms in the deep-sea environments such as hydrothermal vent and cold-seep regions are primary energy producers and an important community in these ecosystems. We have used 454-Pyrosequencing and 16S rDNA clone library methods to determine the diversity of bacteria in the sediment of the seep regions around the vestimentiferan tubeworm habitat at Kagoshima Bay. Taxonomic composition from both libraries suggested that 454-Pyrosequencing methods can represent more diverse groups than the conventional clone library methods. Most abundant taxa with higher folds were Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes found in both methods. Through the 454-Pyrosequencing method, we were able to detect underrepresented taxa as well as non-detectable taxa. This analyses and comparison provide bacterial taxonomic group detection efficiency of both library types and emphasize the different uses and utilities for exploring the unknown microbial domain

Quantitative agreement of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions for domain-wall motion and spin-wave propagation

The magnetic exchange interaction is the one of the key factors governing the basic characteristics of magnetic systems. Unlike the symmetric nature of the Heisenberg exchange interaction, the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) generates an antisymmetric exchange interaction which offers challenging opportunities in spintronics with intriguing antisymmetric phenomena. The role of the DMI, however, is still being debated, largely because distinct strengths of DMI have been measured for different magnetic objects, particularly chiral magnetic domain walls (DWs) and non-reciprocal spin waves (SWs). In this paper, we show that, after careful data analysis, both the DWs and SWs experience the same strength of DMI. This was confirmed by spin-torque efficiency measurement for the DWs, and Brillouin light scattering measurement for the SWs. This observation, therefore, indicates the unique role of the DMI on the magnetic DW and SW dynamics and also guarantees the compatibility of several DMI-measurement schemes recently proposed.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure

Elevated matrix metalloproteinase-9 in patients with systemic sclerosis

Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of cancer, autoimmune disease, and various pathologic conditions characterized by excessive fibrosis. In this study, we investigated the expression of MMP-9 and its clinical significance in systemic sclerosis (SSc). The patients (n = 42) with SSc had higher concentrations of MMP-9 and of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) and a higher ratio of MMP-9 to TIMP-1 in sera than healthy controls (n = 32). Serum MMP-9 concentrations were significantly higher in the diffuse type (n = 23) than the limited type of SSc (n = 19). Serum concentrations of MMP-9 correlated well with the degree of skin involvement, as determined by the Rodnan score and with serum concentrations of transforming growth factor β. Moreover, dermal fibroblasts from patients with SSc produced more MMP-9 than those from healthy controls when they were stimulated with IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor α, or transforming growth factor β. Such an increase in MMP-9 production was partially blocked by treatment with cyclosporin A. In summary, the serum MMP-9 concentrations were elevated in SSc patients and correlated well with skin scores. The increased MMP-9 concentrations may be attributable to overproduction by dermal fibroblasts in SSc. These findings suggest that the enhanced production of MMP-9 may contribute to fibrogenic remodeling during the progression of skin sclerosis in SSc