Landscaping Hispaniola Moreau de Saint-Méry's border politics

This article focuses on Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry's <i>Description Topographique et Politique de la partie espagnole de l'Isle Saint-Domingue </i>(1796) and his <i>Description Topographique, Physique, Civile, Politique et Historique de la partie française de l'Isle Saint-Domingue </i> (1797). The Descriptions were both written before the beginning of the French Revolution and the 1791 slave revolt in Saint Domingue but were published when the colonial frontier had been abolished (at least de jure if not de facto) by the 1795 Peace of Basle. Overall, the article argues that the two Descriptions are ultimately committed to the (re)inscription of the colonial frontier but intriguingly oscillate between its erasure and its reinforcement. It begins by focusing on Saint-Méry's territorial projections and appropriative landscaping of the Spanish colony; it highlights the important role played by the border in the racial politics of Hispaniola and then revisits Saint-Mery's border politics on the island in the light of the author's conviction that France should reannex Louisiana, given to Spain in 1762

Audubon, Another Vision: Derek Walcott's 'White Egrets' and Adam's Task of Giving Things Their Names

In Derek Walcott's 'White Egrets' (2010) the titular birds play a central role in the conversation that the poet opens up with the ornithological artist John James Audubon. Audubon's work is the fruit of complex negotiations between life and death, humans and animals, real presences and emblems. Walcott?s examination of these negotiations enables him to reconsider Audubon?s poetics and ethics of representation whilst rearticulating his own. Walcott referred to poetry (and painting) as 'Adam's task of giving things their names': a statement that might be taken to suggest an exploitative perspective and an anthropocentric approach which dismisses the need to treat nonhumans ethically. 'White Egrets,' instead, emphasizes interaction rather than prevarication, showing that 'naming' the world can only be significant and regenerative if the 'things' to be 'named' play their part in the creative process rather than being sealed off from the human world in order to be reified and exploited

Morning, Paramin Derek Walcott, Peter Doig, and an Ekphrasis of Relation

In Morning, Paramin (2016), 51 new poems by Derek Walcott are in dialogue with 51 paintings by Peter Doig. Walcott, also an accomplished painter, has often engaged with the visual arts, but this is the first volume in which every poem “cor-responds” to a painting, offering unique opportunities to examine Walcott’s ekphrastic practices and the way in which they might offer alternatives to current paradigms. Rejecting the paradigm of a paragonal struggle for dominance, I will argue that Morning, Paramin is shaped by an ekphrasis of Relation (resonating with Glissant’s poetics of Relation) in which the verbal and the visual interact in complex ways, exercising mutual reclaimings of agency and transformative dialogues that engender new composite works of art governed by a noncompetitive, nonexploitative approach; as otherness is reconfigured, the right to “opacity” is upheld, and each image and word contribute to a whole bigger than the sum of its parts

“Not walled facts, their essence”: Derek Walcott’s Tiepolo’s Hound and Camille Pissarro

Life-writing — a genre which goes beyond traditional biography, includes both fact and fiction, and is concerned with either entire lives or days-in-the-lives of individuals, communities, objects, or institutions — has always played an important role in Derek Walcott’s work, from Another Life (1973),Walcott’s autobiography in verse, to his last play O Starry Starry Night (2014), where he re-imagines Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh’s (often tempestuous) cohabitation in the so-called “Yellow House” in 1888 Arles. In Tiepolo’s Hound (2000), Walcott’s life rhymes with that of the Impressionist painter Jacob Camille Pissarro, who was born in the Caribbean island of St Thomas in 1830. In this work, biographical and autobiographical impulses, fact and fiction, are productively combined, as “creation” (what “might have happened”) shapes Walcott’s life-writing as much as “recreation” (what “actually” happened). Walcott’s Pissarro is an individual immersed in a set of historical networks but also a figure at the centre of a web of imagined relations which illuminate the predicament of present and past artists in the Caribbean region and the ways in which they articulate their vision vis-à-vis the metropolitan centre, their relationship with their social and natural environment, and their individual and collective identity. Tiepolo’s Hound is enriched by the inclusion of twenty-six of Walcott’s own paintings which engage in conversation with the poet’s words and add complexity to his meditation on the nature and purpose of (re)writing and (re)creating lives. Extending the catholicity of life-writing to animals, in this case dogs and, in particular, mongrels, Tiepolo’s Hound also entails a careful, if counterintuitive, evaluation of anonymity

Full-wave modeling of broadband near field scanning microwave microscopy

The authors would like to thank professor Dr. Gabriel Gomila from Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya (IBEC) and Universitat de Barcelona for the fruitful discussion and support, as well as to Dr. Georg Gramse from Johannes Kepler University Linz for the experimental data. B.W. thanks the funding from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for the support of his research at Queen Mary University of London, UK. Y.H. would like to thank EU-FP7 Nanomicrowave project for the financial support

Expression of AMPA and NMDA receptor subunits in the cervical spinal cord of wobbler mice

BACKGROUND: The localisation of AMPA and NMDA receptor subunits was studied in a model of degeneration of cervical spinal motoneurons, the wobbler mouse. Cervical regions from early or late symptomatic wobbler mice (4 or 12 weeks of age) were compared to lumbar tracts (unaffected) and to those of healthy mice. RESULTS: No differences were found in the distribution of AMPA and NMDA receptor subunits at both ages. Western blots analysis showed a trend of reduction in AMPA and NMDA receptor subunits, mainly GluR1 and NR2A, exclusively in the cervical region of late symptomatic mice in the triton-insoluble post-synaptic fraction but not whole homogenates. Colocalisation experiments evidenced the expression of GluR1 and NR2A receptors in activated astrocytes from the cervical spinal cord of wobbler mice, GluR2 did not colocalise with GFAP positive cells. No differences were found in the expression of AMPA and NMDA receptor subunits in the lumbar tract of wobbler mice, where neither motoneuron loss nor reactive gliosis occurs. CONCLUSION: In late symptomatic wobbler mice altered levels of GluR1 and NR2A receptor subunits may be a consequence of motoneuron loss rather than an early feature of motoneuron vulnerability

Acute Stress Induces Contrasting Changes in AMPA Receptor Subunit Phosphorylation within the Prefrontal Cortex, Amygdala and Hippocampus

Exposure to stress causes differential neural modifications in various limbic regions, namely the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. We investigated whether α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor (AMPAR) phosphorylation is involved with these stress effects. Using an acute inescapable stress protocol with rats, we found opposite effects on AMPA receptor phosphorylation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and dorsal hippocampus (DH) compared to the amygdala and ventral hippocampus (VH). After stress, the phosphorylation of Ser831-GluA1 was markedly decreased in the mPFC and DH, whereas the phosphorylation of Ser845-GluA1 was increased in the amygdala and VH. Stress also modulated the GluA2 subunit with a decrease in the phosphorylation of both Tyr876-GluA2 and Ser880-GluA2 residues in the amygdala, and an increase in the phosphorylation of Ser880-GluA2 in the mPFC. These results demonstrate that exposure to acute stress causes subunit-specific and region-specific changes in glutamatergic transmission, which likely lead to the reduced synaptic efficacy in the mPFC and DH and augmented activity in the amygdala and VH. In addition, these findings suggest that modifications of glutamate receptor phosphorylation could mediate the disruptive effects of stress on cognition. They also provide a means to reconcile the contrasting effects that stress has on synaptic plasticity in these regions. Taken together, the results provide support for a brain region-oriented approach to therapeutics

Changes in arginase isoforms in a murine model of neonatal brain hypoxia-ischemia.

BackgroundArginases (ARG isoforms, ARG-1/ARG-2) are key regulatory enzymes of inflammation and tissue repair; however, their role after neonatal brain hypoxia (H) and hypoxia-ischemia (HI) remains unknown.MethodsC57BL/6 mice subjected to the Vannucci procedure on postnatal day (P9) were sacrificed at different timepoints. The degree of brain damage was assessed histologically. ARG spatiotemporal localization was determined via immunohistochemistry. ARG expression was measured by Western blot and activity spectrophotometrically.ResultsARG isoform expression increased during neurodevelopment (P9-P17) in the cortex and hippocampus. This was suppressed with H and HI only in the hippocampus. In the cortex, both isoforms increased with H alone and only ARG-2 increased with HI at 3 days. ARG activity during neurodevelopment remained unchanged, but increased at 1 day with H and not HI. ARG-1 localized with microglia at the injury site as early as 4 h after injury, while ARG-2 localized with neurons.ConclusionsARG isoform expression increases with age from P9 to P17, but is suppressed by injury specifically in the hippocampus and not in the cortex. Both levels and activity of ARG isoforms increase with H, while ARG-1 immunolabelling is upregulated in the HI cortex. Evidently, ARG isoforms in the brain differ in spatiotemporal localization, expression, and activity during neurodevelopment and after injury.ImpactArginase isoforms change during neurodevelopment and after neonatal brain HI. This is the first study investigating the key enzymes of inflammation and tissue repair called arginases following murine neonatal brain HI. The highly region- and cell-specific expression suggests the possibility of specific functions of arginases. ARG-1 in microglia at the injury site may regulate neuroinflammation, while ARG-2 in neurons of developmental structures may impact neurodevelopment. While further studies are needed to describe the exact role of ARGs after neonatal brain HI, our study adds valuable data on anatomical localization and expression of ARGs in brain during development and after stroke