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Faith for Faithful Disbelievers: Christopher Morse as Systematic Theologian

Christopher Morse has set out to salvage "dogmatics" as a theological discipline, but a first-year seminarian might naturally wonder if her teacher isn’t dodging the big issue. The most natural question for dogmatics would seem to be: What should any individual Christian, personally, believe? Yet even the faith statements Morse eventually offers are usually stated in terms of doctrine as in "the Christian Faith" or "the church’s faith in God the Creator," and a reader is bound to wonder if these locutions aren’t more sociological than personal, presented in terms of "the deposit of faith"—the "traditioned" symbolic representations of the "social facts" associated with worship. Now it’s true that when it comes to what should not be included among those doctrines, Morse’s recommendations seem to take on a more personal aspect

Book Review: The Difference Heaven Makes: Rehearing the Gospel as News

These days, anyone speaking of "heaven" in theologically serious tones has some explaining to do. That person faces what Christopher Morse might call an "accountability" requirement. Morse has invested an entire career in working out what this means, and his new book, in addition to its other benefits, provides a window onto how this procedure -- which so many students have heard so much about -- actually works. As with scripture itself, however, its best secrets are not revealed by a casual reading. The Difference Heaven Makes begins by pointing out that talking about heaven is not easy for many of us. Or shouldn’t be. Easy talk about "heavenly" matters easily drifts either into complacent sentimentality or anxious superstition, and so we had better listen carefully before just looking "Lo, here" and "lo, there.

A platform for the discovery of new macrolide antibiotics.

The chemical modification of structurally complex fermentation products, a process known as semisynthesis, has been an important tool in the discovery and manufacture of antibiotics for the treatment of various infectious diseases. However, many of the therapeutics obtained in this way are no longer effective, because bacterial resistance to these compounds has developed. Here we present a practical, fully synthetic route to macrolide antibiotics by the convergent assembly of simple chemical building blocks, enabling the synthesis of diverse structures not accessible by traditional semisynthetic approaches. More than 300 new macrolide antibiotic candidates, as well as the clinical candidate solithromycin, have been synthesized using our convergent approach. Evaluation of these compounds against a panel of pathogenic bacteria revealed that the majority of these structures had antibiotic activity, some efficacious against strains resistant to macrolides in current use. The chemistry we describe here provides a platform for the discovery of new macrolide antibiotics and may also serve as the basis for their manufacture

Law, Social Norms and Welfare as Means of Public Administration: Case Study of Mahalla Institutions in Uzbekistan

Despite numerous challenges, since its independence, Uzbekistan, with the exception of the May 2005 Andijan events, has enjoyed extraordinary political stability and not recorded any considerable cases of interethnic or interfaith conflict, regime change or civil war, whereas neighboring Kyrgyzstan, labeled an “island of democracy” by the Western world, has experienced numerous conflicts and chaos, ranging from “color revolutions” to ethnic conflict. However, for understanding Uzbekistan’s ability to cope with internal and external challenges, little recourse is made to the post-independence discourse on public administration known as “mahalla reforms”. In spite of the significant existing body of literature on the mahalla, there has been little systematic scholarly investigation of the role of mahalla in maintaining political stability and security in Uzbekistan. Previous studies did not provide an account of how the law, social norms and welfare come to interplay in the mahalla system and how this influences the public administration developments in Uzbekistan. This paper begins to redress this lacuna by analyzing public-administration reforms in post-independence Uzbekistan, namely mahalla reforms, with an effort to show how political and social stability is established through mahalla, and to what extent those reforms have affected the position of individuals vis-à-vis the public-administration system. In undertaking this task, the paper employs three theoretical concepts: the theory of norms, the welfare-pentagon model and the theory of social control. In this paper, I argue that public-administration reforms since 1991 have transformed mahalla into a comprehensive system of social control; and therefore, mahalla can be places of democratic involvement or sites of authoritarianism in Uzbekistan

Enhanced text spacing improves reading performance in individuals with macular disease

The search by many investigators for a solution to the reading problems encountered by individuals with no central vision has been long and, to date, not very fruitful. Most textual manipulations, including font size, have led to only modest gains in reading speed. Previous work on spatial integrative properties of peripheral retina suggests that 'visual crowding' may be a major factor contributing to inefficient reading. Crowding refers to the fact that juxtaposed targets viewed eccentrically may be difficult to identify. The purpose of this study was to assess the combined effects of line spacing and word spacing on the ability of individuals with age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) to read short passages of text that were printed with either high (87.5%) or low contrast (17.5%) letters. Low contrast text was used to avoid potential ceiling effects and to mimic a possible reduction in letter contrast with light scatter from media opacities. For both low and high contrast text, the fastest reading speeds we measured were for passages of text with double line and double word spacing. In comparison with standard single spacing, double word/line spacing increased reading speed by approximately 26% with high contrast text (p < 0.001), and by 46% with low contrast text (p < 0.001). In addition, double line/word spacing more than halved the number of reading errors obtained with single spaced text. We compare our results with previous reading studies on ARMD patients, and conclude that crowding is detrimental to reading and that its effects can be reduced with enhanced text spacing. Spacing is particularly important when the contrast of the text is reduced, as may occur with intraocular light scatter or poor viewing conditions. We recommend that macular disease patients should employ double line spacing and double-character word spacing to maximize their reading efficiency. © 2013 Blackmore-Wright et al

The electroretinogram:a useful tool for evaluating age-related macular disease?

With an ageing population, the number of age-related macular disease (ARMD) cases will inevitably rise. This gives greater impetus for the need to identify the disease earlier and assess treatments to slow disease progression. Differing electroretinogram (ERG) modalities have been reviewed in relation to the objective assessment of retinal function in ARMD and for monitoring the effectiveness of clinical interventions. Conflicting results have been found with regard to the efficacy of ERG findings in the investigation of ARMD in previous years. The newer multifocal ERG paradigm provides spatial topographical information about retinal function in ARMD. It has shown promising results in monitoring effectiveness of clinical interventions and studies are continuing in this area. Better knowledge of retinal function in ARMD may lead to enhanced treatments at each phase of the disease

Development and evaluation of human AP endonuclease inhibitors in melanoma and glioma cell lines

AimsModulation of DNA base excision repair (BER) has the potential to enhance response to chemotherapy and improve outcomes in tumours such as melanoma and glioma. APE1, a critical protein in BER that processes potentially cytotoxic abasic sites (AP sites), is a promising new target in cancer. In the current study, we aimed to develop small molecule inhibitors of APE1 for cancer therapy.MethodsAn industry-standard high throughput virtual screening strategy was adopted. The Sybyl8.0 (Tripos, St Louis, MO, USA) molecular modelling software suite was used to build inhibitor templates. Similarity searching strategies were then applied using ROCS 2.3 (Open Eye Scientific, Santa Fe, NM, USA) to extract pharmacophorically related subsets of compounds from a chemically diverse database of 2.6 million compounds. The compounds in these subsets were subjected to docking against the active site of the APE1 model, using the genetic algorithm-based programme GOLD2.7 (CCDC, Cambridge, UK). Predicted ligand poses were ranked on the basis of several scoring functions. The top virtual hits with promising pharmaceutical properties underwent detailed in vitro analyses using fluorescence-based APE1 cleavage assays and counter screened using endonuclease IV cleavage assays, fluorescence quenching assays and radiolabelled oligonucleotide assays. Biochemical APE1 inhibitors were then subjected to detailed cytotoxicity analyses.ResultsSeveral specific APE1 inhibitors were isolated by this approach. The IC(50) for APE1 inhibition ranged between 30 nM and 50 μM. We demonstrated that APE1 inhibitors lead to accumulation of AP sites in genomic DNA and potentiated the cytotoxicity of alkylating agents in melanoma and glioma cell lines.ConclusionsOur study provides evidence that APE1 is an emerging drug target and could have therapeutic application in patients with melanoma and glioma

Eye movements during visual search in patients with glaucoma

Background: Glaucoma has been shown to lead to disability in many daily tasks including visual search. This study aims to determine whether the saccadic eye movements of people with glaucoma differ from those of people with normal vision, and to investigate the association between eye movements and impaired visual search. Methods: Forty patients (mean age: 67 [SD: 9] years) with a range of glaucomatous visual field (VF) defects in both eyes (mean best eye mean deviation [MD]: –5.9 (SD: 5.4) dB) and 40 age-related people with normal vision (mean age: 66 [SD: 10] years) were timed as they searched for a series of target objects in computer displayed photographs of real world scenes. Eye movements were simultaneously recorded using an eye tracker. Average number of saccades per second, average saccade amplitude and average search duration across trials were recorded. These response variables were compared with measurements of VF and contrast sensitivity. Results: The average rate of saccades made by the patient group was significantly smaller than the number made by controls during the visual search task (P = 0.02; mean reduction of 5.6% (95% CI: 0.1 to 10.4%). There was no difference in average saccade amplitude between the patients and the controls (P = 0.09). Average number of saccades was weakly correlated with aspects of visual function, with patients with worse contrast sensitivity (PR logCS; Spearman’s rho: 0.42; P = 0.006) and more severe VF defects (best eye MD; Spearman’s rho: 0.34; P = 0.037) tending to make less eye movements during the task. Average detection time in the search task was associated with the average rate of saccades in the patient group (Spearman’s rho = −0.65; P < 0.001) but this was not apparent in the controls. Conclusions: The average rate of saccades made during visual search by this group of patients was fewer than those made by people with normal vision of a similar average age. There was wide variability in saccade rate in the patients but there was an association between an increase in this measure and better performance in the search task. Assessment of eye movements in individuals with glaucoma might provide insight into the functional deficits of the disease