Searching for a Common Ancestry: Linguistic and Biological Analogies in Comic Art

Sometimes comic book readers randomly encounter images in a comic that closely resemble images in other comics. This artwork could appear to the reader to have been copied, even directly 'lifted' from older or better-known comics. Sometimes, however, it does seem like any similarities have been generated independently, by chance or serendipity. In this note we draw on the work of Umberto Eco, William Lethaby, Walter Benjamin and Carl Jung to describe a multidisciplinary conceptual framework to analyse similar images using a heuristic approach involving two analogy concepts drawn from two different disciplines: linguistics and biology. When the origin of similarity between images is well documented, we propose the linguistic analogy approach can explain the phenomenon of recurrent images. When the similarity between two images appears to be unexplainable, or the result of mere chance, we propose that the concept of biological analogy can be helpful to explain the superficial resemblance of elements that have different origins

Environmental Emission of Pharmaceuticals from Wastewater Treatment Plants in the USA

The residual drugs, drug bioconjugates, and their metabolites, mostly from human and veterinary usage, are routinely flushed down the drain, and enter wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Increasing population, excessive use of allopathic medicine, continual introduction of novel drugs, and existing inefficient wastewater treatment processes result in the discharge of large volumes of pharmaceuticals and their metabolites from the WWTPs into the environment. The effluent from the WWTPs globally contaminate ~25% of rivers and the lakes. Pharmaceuticals in the environment, as contaminants of emerging concerns, behave as pseudo-persistent despite their relatively short environmental half-lives in the environment. Therefore, residual levels of pharmaceuticals in the environment not only pose a threat to the wildlife but also affect human health through contaminated food and drinking water. This chapter highlights WWTPs as point-sources of their environmental emissions and various effects on the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem

Regular oscillatory behavior of aqueous solutions of Cull salts related to edects on equilibrium dynamics of ortho/para hydrogen spin isomers of water

Abstract Cell surface and growth-related NADH oxidases with protein disulfide-thiol interchange activity, ECTO-NOX, exhibit copper-dependent, clock-related, temperature-independent and entrainable patterns of regular oscillations in the rate of oxidation of NAD(P)H as do aqueous solutions of copper salts. Because of time scale similarities, a basis for the oscillatory patterns in nuclear spin orientations of the hydrogen atoms of the copperassociated water was sought. Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) measurements at 9302 eV on pure water were periodic with a ca. 3.5 min peak to peak separation. Decomposition fits revealed 5 unequally spaced maxima similar to those observed previously for C