‘Espejos’ distorsionados – usurpación de poder y subversión literaria en "Tirant lo Blanc"

En Tirant lo Blanc de Joanot Martorell, el caballero aspira al dominio sobre el Imperio de Oriente y con ello sobre el propio discurso caballeresco. Mediante un juego de disimulos y desvíos ópticos, la figura del héroe sin embargo se oscurece. Este artículo analiza cómo a través del discurso especular de una conquista amorosa aparentemente cómica el texto camufla el legado ideológico de la conquista musulmana. Al mismo tiempo, la vacuidad del héroe constituido por los meros reflejos turbios de sus ‘dobles’ revela la propia caballería como un simulacro discursivo potencialmente usurpador

L’alphabet convient aux peuples policés“: Schrift und Anti-Moderne bei Boualem Sansal und Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecqs Roman Soumission und Boualem Sansals 2084 (beide 2015) zeichnen mit ihren pseudo-islam(ist)ischen Staaten, welche die westliche ‚Zivilisation‘ überschreiben, antimoderne Alternativgesellschaften. Ausgehend von der Sprach- und Schriftkonzeption der Aufklärung und Derridas kritischer Rousseau-Lektüre soll gezeigt werden, wie beide Romane den Verlust einer ‚zivilisierten‘ Zeichenhaftigkeit ideologisch unterschiedlich verorten und so unterschiedliche Szenarien der westlichen Moderne entwerfen. Während Sansals totalitäre Dystopie den Verlust aufgeklärter Schriftkultur beklagt, setzt Houellebecq der überkommenen Moderne eine utopische Reduktion auf das Somatische entgegen

Amazon.com: Offering Everything from A to Z

Amazon’s focus on customer service has led to an impressive record of growth and profitability. However, late in 2012, the company posted a quarterly loss. This asks whether the company may be sacrificing profits in the interest of growing rapidly. It also explores the incredibly competitive environment Amazon faces

Reduction of patient specific quality assurance through plan complexity metrics for VMAT plans with an open-source TPS script

PURPOSE Volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) is a widespread technique for the delivery of normo-fractionated radiation therapy (NFRT) and stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). It is associated with a significant hardware burden requiring dose rate modulation, collimator movement and gantry rotation synchronisation. Patient specific quality assurance (PSQA) guarantees that the linacs can precisely and accurately deliver the planned dose. However, PSQA requires a significant time allocation and class solutions to reduce this while guaranteeing the deliverability of the plans should be investigated. METHODS In this study, an in-house developed Eclipse Scripting API (ESAPI) script was used to extract five independent plan complexity metrics from N = 667 VMAT treatment fields. The correlation between metrics and portal dosimetry measurements was investigated with Pearson correlation, box plot analysis and receiver operating characteristic curves, which were used to defined the best performing metric and its threshold. RESULTS The incidence of fields failing the clinical PSQA criteria of 3%/2mm (NFRT) and 3%/1.5mm (SBRT) was low (N = 1). The mean MLC opening was the metric with the highest correlation with the portal dosimetry data and among the best in discriminating the requirement of PSQA. The thresholds of 16.12 mm (NFRT) and 7.96 mm (SBRT) corresponded to true positive rates higher than 90%. CONCLUSIONS This work presents a quantitative approach to reduce the time allocation for PSQA by identifying the most complex plans demanding a dedicated measurement. The proposed method requires PSQA for approximately 10% of the plans. The ESAPI script is distributed open-source to ease the investigation and implementation at other institutions

Holistic Approach to Addressing Community Needs in Rural Communities

The purpose of this study was to assess health of a rural Texas community in efforts to better understand and develop a plan of action for developing community intervention for increasing availability of human resources. Researchers asked various questions to understand the availability and accessibility of resources within a rural community using a community needs assessment approach. Participants were recruited by the researchers directly within the community using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The sample size included 361 participants in a rural community. The overall quality of life for the rural participants was slightly lower than what researchers considered to be healthy. Participants also indicated that the current resources within the rural community did not meet the needs for mental health (54%; n = 195), physical health (46.8%; n = 169), or social services (55.4%; n = 200). Implications for such findings suggest the need for strength-based collaboration and services informed by the communities themselves

Plakoglobin is required for maintenance of the cortical actin skeleton in early Xenopus embryos and for cdc42-mediated wound healing

Early Xenopus embryos are large, and during the egg to gastrula stages, when there is little extracellular matrix, the cytoskeletons of the individual blastomeres are thought to maintain their spherical architecture and provide scaffolding for the cellular movements of gastrulation. We showed previously that depletion of plakoglobin protein during the egg to gastrula stages caused collapse of embryonic architecture. Here, we show that this is due to loss of the cortical actin skeleton after depletion of plakoglobin, whereas the microtubule and cytokeratin skeletons are still present. As a functional assay for the actin skeleton, we show that wound healing, an actin-based behavior in embryos, is also abrogated by plakoglobin depletion. Both wound healing and the amount of cortical actin are enhanced by overexpression of plakoglobin. To begin to identify links between plakoglobin and the cortical actin polymerization machinery, we show here that the Rho family GTPase cdc42, is required for wound healing in the Xenopus blastula. Myc-tagged cdc42 colocalizes with actin in purse-strings surrounding wounds. Overexpression of cdc42 dramatically enhances wound healing, whereas depletion of maternal cdc42 mRNA blocks it. In combinatorial experiments we show that cdc42 cannot rescue the effects of plakoglobin depletion, showing that plakoglobin is required for cdc42-mediated cortical actin assembly during wound healing. However, plakoglobin does rescue the effect of cdc42 depletion, suggesting that cdc42 somehow mediates the distribution or function of plakoglobin. Depletion of α-catenin does not remove the cortical actin skeleton, showing that plakoglobin does not mediate its effect by its known linkage through α-catenin to the actin skeleton. We conclude that in Xenopus, the actin skeleton is a major determinant of cell shape and overall architecture in the early embryo, and that plakoglobin plays an essential role in the assembly, maintenance, or organization of this cortical actin

Adaptive fractionation at the MR-linac

Objective. Fractionated radiotherapy typically delivers the same dose in each fraction. Adaptive fractionation (AF) is an approach to exploit inter-fraction motion by increasing the dose on days when the distance of tumor and dose-limiting organs at risk (OAR) is large and decreasing the dose on unfavorable days. We develop an AF algorithm and evaluate the concept for patients with abdominal tumors previously treated at the MR-linac in 5 fractions.Approach. Given daily adapted treatment plans, inter-fractional changes are quantified by sparing factorsδ$_{t}$defined as the OAR-to-tumor dose ratio. The key problem of AF is to decide on the dose to deliver in fractiont, givenδ$_{t}$and the dose delivered in previous fractions, but not knowing futureδ$_{t}$s. Optimal doses that maximize the expected biologically effective dose in the tumor (BED$_{10}$) while staying below a maximum OAR BED$_{3}$constraint are computed using dynamic programming, assuming a normal distribution overδwith mean and variance estimated from previously observed patient-specificδ$_{t}$s. The algorithm is evaluated for 16 MR-linac patients in whom tumor dose was compromised due to proximity of bowel, stomach, or duodenum.Main Results. In 14 out of the 16 patients, AF increased the tumor BED$_{10}$compared to the reference treatment that delivers the same OAR dose in each fraction. However, in 11 of these 14 patients, the increase in BED$_{10}$was below 1 Gy. Two patients with large sparing factor variation had a benefit of more than 10 Gy BED$_{10}$increase. For one patient, AF led to a 5 Gy BED$_{10}$decrease due to an unfavorable order of sparing factors.Significance. On average, AF provided only a small increase in tumor BED. However, AF may yield substantial benefits for individual patients with large variations in the geometry

A Novel Radiomics-Based Tumor Volume Segmentation Algorithm for Lung Tumors in FDG-PET/CT after 3D Motion Correction-A Technical Feasibility and Stability Study

Positron emission tomography (PET) provides important additional information when applied in radiation therapy treatment planning. However, the optimal way to define tumors in PET images is still undetermined. As radiomics features are gaining more and more importance in PET image interpretation as well, we aimed to use textural features for an optimal differentiation between tumoral tissue and surrounding tissue to segment-target lesions based on three textural parameters found to be suitable in previous analysis (Kurtosis, Local Entropy and Long Zone Emphasis). Intended for use in radiation therapy planning, this algorithm was combined with a previously described motion-correction algorithm and validated in phantom data. In addition, feasibility was shown in five patients. The algorithms provided sufficient results for phantom and patient data. The stability of the results was analyzed in 20 consecutive measurements of phantom data. Results for textural feature-based algorithms were slightly worse than those of the threshold-based reference algorithm (mean standard deviation 1.2%-compared to 4.2% to 8.6%) However, the Entropy-based algorithm came the closest to the real volume of the phantom sphere of 6 ccm with a mean measured volume of 26.5 ccm. The threshold-based algorithm found a mean volume of 25.0 ccm. In conclusion, we showed a novel, radiomics-based tumor segmentation algorithm in FDG-PET with promising results in phantom studies concerning recovered lesion volume and reasonable results in stability in consecutive measurements. Segmentation based on Entropy was the most precise in comparison with sphere volume but showed the worst stability in consecutive measurements. Despite these promising results, further studies with larger patient cohorts and histopathological standards need to be performed for further validation of the presented algorithms and their applicability in clinical routines. In addition, their application in other tumor entities needs to be studied