Book Review:All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age

All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

Book Review: Robert Frank. Household Inventory Record. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2013.

With the emergence of online distribution of photography, traditional modes of presentation, particularly the photographicbook, may seem to have become outmoded. With a virtually infinite stream of images constantly available, shouldn’t thephysical presentation of images in a printed format be obsolete? And yet photographic books continue to proliferate and to providean alternate mode of perceiving the images that cannot easily, or at all, be reproduced online or in any form of digital presentation

Book Review: The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise. (Author: Georges Perec. Translated by David Bellos. London: Verso, 2011)

The author Georges Perec is best known as a leader of the oulipo movement of French experimental writers. In the early part of the twentieth century, a dominant force in French literature was surrealism, which maintained an aesthetic ideology of freedom that was perhaps best represented by the technique of automatic writing. In such writing an author put down on paper whatever words came into his or her mind in order to supposedly unleash a Freudian id unconstrained by faculties of conscious sense-making. Although the oulipoian writers often have created texts which seem similar to those of the surrealists in their lack of conventional order and sense, their procedure has been to impose constraints rather than disregard them. Influenced by the elaborate procedures used by Raymond Roussel, also a major influence on the surrealists, they forced their writing to follow strict and often arbitrary rules which prevented or limited free expression.

Book Review: Lee Friedlander, The New Cars 1964. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery, 2011.

Book Revie

Feto-Placental Atherosclerotic Lesions in Intrauterine Fetal Demise: Role of Parental Cigarette Smoking

The atherogenic effect of cigarette smoking is already recognizable in coronary arteries of fetuses in the last gestational weeks. In this study we analyzed the atherogenic effect of mother’s and father’s smoking habit on coronary arteries and even on adnexa of 30 human fresh fetuses died from 32 to 41 gestational weeks. In 12 cases only the mothers of the victims were cigarette smokers, in 7 cases only the fathers were smokers, whereas in 11 cases nobody smoked

Cardiac conduction system involvement in metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

While almost all malignant tumors are occasionally found to have metastasized to the heart, the involvement of the heart is not common and is poorly studied. The authors report the histological examination of the heart and conducting tissue on serial sections in a case of sudden death due to a cardiac localization of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Post mortem histologic examination showed the presence of cardiac metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma compressing the atrio-ventricular node and the His bundle. The accurate examination of the cardiac conduction system has been crucial in finding the compression of the conduction system by the tumor as the morphological substrate responsible for lethal electrical cardiac instability and sudden death

Ependymal alterations in sudden intrauterine unexplained death and sudden infant death syndrome: possible primary consequence of prenatal exposure to cigarette smoking

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The ependyma, the lining providing a protective barrier and filtration system separating brain parenchyma from cerebrospinal fluid, is still inadequately understood in humans. In this study we aimed to define, by morphological and immunohistochemical methods, the sequence of developmental steps of the human ependyma in the brainstem (ventricular ependyma) and thoracic spinal cord (central canal ependyma) of a large sample of fetal and infant death victims, aged from 17 gestational weeks to 8 postnatal months. Additionally, we investigated a possible link between alterations of this structure, sudden unexplained fetal and infant death and maternal smoking.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our results demonstrate that in early fetal life the human ependyma shows a pseudostratified cytoarchitecture including many tanycytes and ciliated cells together with numerous apoptotic and reactive astrocytes in the subependymal layer. The ependyma is fully differentiated, with a monolayer of uniform cells, after 32 to 34 gestational weeks. We observed a wide spectrum of ependymal pathological changes in sudden death victims, such as desquamation, clusters of ependymal cells in the subventricular zone, radial glial cells, and the unusual presence of neurons within and over the ependymal lining. These alterations were significantly related to maternal smoking in pregnancy.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We conclude that in smoking mothers, nicotine and its derivatives easily reach the cerebrospinal fluid in the fetus, immediately causing ependymal damage. Consequently, we suggest that the ependyma should be examined in-depth first in victims of sudden fetal or infant death with mothers who smoke.</p

Unexpected Perinatal Loss versus Sids-a Common Neuropathologic Entity

Objective: To evaluate the involvement of alterations of the central autonomic nervous system, particularly of the brainstem and cerebellum, in a wide set of victims of sudden and unexplained perinatal and infant death

Neuropathology of the Guillain-Mollaret Triangle (Dentato-Rubro-Olivary Network) in Sudden Unexplained Perinatal Death and SIDS

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the possible alterations of the triangle of Guillain and Mollaret (G-Mt), a neuronal brainstem/cerebellum network (from the dentate nucleus to red nucleus and inferior olivary nucleus) already known for its involvement in the pathogenesis of the palatal myoclonus, in sudden unexplained perinatal and infant death. In 44 cases of perinatal and infant death victims, aged from 26 gestational weeks to 10 months of life, we investigated, besides the histological morphology of the three nuclei, the c-fos and apoptotic expression, as well as the possible effects elicited by maternal cigarette smoking

Unexplained stillbirth versus SIDS: common congenital diseases of the autonomic nervous system--pathology and nosology

Objective: To contribute to a more balanced assessment of the morphological substrates underlying unexplained perinatal death and SIDS. Methods: In-depth histological, immunohistochemical and genetic examinations were performed on the autonomic nervous and cardiac conduction systems in 95 unexpected perinatal deaths, 140 SIDS and 78 controls (44 infants and 34 perinatal death victims). Results: The study revealed the localization and the nature of a variety of specific congenital abnormalities of the autonomic nervous system, central and peripheral, and of the cardiac conduction system that represent the morphological substrates of the pathophysiological mechanism of sudden fetal death and SIDS. Conclusions: The observation of similar anomalies of the autonomic nervous and the cardiac conduction systems in both unexplained perinatal deaths and SIDS indicates their common congenital nature. Therefore, the definitions of these deaths, currently nosographically distinct, should be unified. \ua9 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved