Unworking Milton: Steps to a Georgics of the Mind

Traditionally read as a poem about laboring subjects who gain power through abstract and abstracting forms of bodily discipline, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) more compellingly foregrounds the erotics of the Garden as a space where humans and nonhumans intra-act materially and sexually. Following Christopher Hill, who long ago pointed to not one but two revolutions in the history of seventeenth-century English radicalism—the first, ‘the one which succeeded[,] . . . the protestant ethic’; and the second, ‘the revolution which never happened,’ which sought ‘communal property, a far wider democracy[,] and rejected the protestant ethic’—I show how Milton’s Paradise Lost gives substance to ‘the revolution which never happened’ by imagining a commons, indeed a communism, in which human beings are not at the center of things, but rather constitute one part of the greater ecology of mind within Milton’s poem. In the space created by this ecological reimagining, plants assume a new agency. I call this reimagining ‘ecology to come.

Activation and Deactivation of a Robust Immobilized Cp*Ir-Transfer Hydrogenation Catalyst: A Multielement in Situ X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy Study

A highly robust immobilized [Cp*IrCl2]2 precatalyst on Wang resin for transfer hydrogenation, which can be recycled up to 30 times, was studied using a novel combination of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at Ir L3-edge, Cl K-edge, and K K-edge. These culminate in in situ XAS experiments that link structural changes of the Ir complex with its catalytic activity and its deactivation. Mercury poisoning and “hot filtration” experiments ruled out leached Ir as the active catalyst. Spectroscopic evidence indicates the exchange of one chloride ligand with an alkoxide to generate the active precatalyst. The exchange of the second chloride ligand, however, leads to a potassium alkoxide–iridate species as the deactivated form of this immobilized catalyst. These findings could be widely applicable to the many homogeneous transfer hydrogenation catalysts with Cp*IrCl substructure

Gardens of happiness: Sir William Temple, temperance and China

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recordSir William Temple, an English statesman and humanist, wrote “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus” in 1685, taking a neo-epicurean approach to happiness and temperance. In accord with Pierre Gassendi’s epicureanism, “happiness” is characterised as freedom from disturbance and pain in mind and body, whereas “temperance” means following nature (Providence and one’s physiopsychological constitution). For Temple, cultivating fruit trees in his garden was analogous to the threefold cultivation of temperance as a virtue in the humoral body (as food), the mind (as freedom from the passions), and the bodyeconomic (as circulating goods) in order to attain happiness. A regimen that was supposed to cure the malaise of Restoration amidst a crisis of unbridled passions, this threefold cultivation of temperance underlines Temple’s reception of China and Confucianism wherein happiness and temperance are highlighted. Thus Temple’s “gardens of happiness” represent not only a reinterpretation of classical ideas, but also his dialogue with China.European CommissionLeverhulme Trus

Automatic Label Creation Framework for FMCW Radar Images Using Camera Data

This work was supported in part by the Project A-SWARM through the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Industry (BMWI) by the Maritime Forschungsstrategie 2025 under Project 03SX485D.Data acquisition and treatment are key issues for any Deep Learning (DL) technique, especially in computer vision tasks. A big effort must be done for the creation of labeled datasets, due to the time this task requires and its complexity in cases where different sensors must be used. This is the case of radar imaging applications, where radar data are dif cult to analyze and must be labeled manually. In this paper, a semi-automatic framework to generate labels for range Doppler maps (radar images) is proposed. This technique is based on a sensor fusion approach with radar and camera sensors. The proposed scheme operates in two steps: The rst step is the environment features extraction, in which the radar data is preprocessed and ltered to remove ghost targets and detect clusters, and camera data are used to extract the information of the targets. In the second step, a rule-based system that considers the extracted features fuses the information to generate labels for the radar data. By using the proposed framework, the experimentation performed suggests that the time required to label the data is reduced as well as the possibility of human error during the labeling task. Our results show that the proposed technique can improve the nal model accuracy with regards the traditional labeling method, carried out by human experts.Project A-SWARM through the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Industry (BMWI) by the Maritime Forschungsstrategie 2025 03SX485

Cryopreservation of ovarian tissue : an emerging technology for female germline preservation of endangered species and breeds.

Many hundreds of exotic species and domestic animal breeds have been lost over the course of the last few decades. In order to avoid a similar fate to other animals threatened with extinction, it is crucial to develop and apply rescue strategies to ensure their survival for the future. One option as a safeguard measure is the cryopreservation of the main source of female gametes enclosed within the ovary: the primordial follicles. So far, there are three options to cryopreserve small ovarian follicles: whole ovary, ovarian cortical tissue or isolated follicles, with the use of slow freezing or vitrification methods. After cryopreservation, the harvested material can be transplanted or cultured, with the aim to produce mature fertilizable oocytes. The objective of this review is to summarize the current status of the cryopreservation of ovarian tissue in domestic species and non-endangered wild mammals as model for threatened and endangered species and breeds, and to provide new insights into techniques that can be applied in the future