The lure of utopia

What is the lure of utopia for contemporary art? There has recently been a resurgence of interest in utopia, both as a subject for contemporary artists and as a strategy for making art. Whereas twenty, or perhaps even ten years ago, to call a work of art 'utopian' was to dismiss it as idealistic or naïve, even reactionary, the term seems to have recovered a certain respectability within the critical lexicon of contemporary art. Artists as varied as Tomas Hirschorn, Liam Gillick and Jeremy Deller are making works that are in significant respects utopian; while Goshka Mascuga, Nils Norman, Cary Young and Paul Chan are in various ways investigating utopia as both an impulse and as a legacy inherited from modernism. The utopian imulse is now finding regular embodiment in a great deal of visual art that purports to be critical of the social and political conditions we inhabit. (Excerpt, 1st paragraph)

Inhibition of monocarboxylate transporter 1 by AZD3965 as a therapeutic approach in oncology

PhD ThesisMany tumours display a metabolic phenotype distinct from non‐malignant cells, with an increased reliance on glycolysis. This results in a greater production of lactate even under aerobic conditions. Lactate efflux is facilitated by monocarboxylate transporters 1‐4 (MCT1‐4) and is essential to maintain energy homeostasis. A sub‐group of cancers express only MCT1 and are therefore exclusively reliant on this transporter to export lactate. Inhibition of MCT1 has been proposed as a therapeutic approach to prevent lactate export in tumour cells with low MCT4. In this thesis, inhibition of monocarboxylate transporter 1 (MCT1) was investigated using the oral MCT1 inhibitor AZD3965 which is currently undergoing phase I clinical development. Low MCT4 expression was found to be a common characteristic of Burkitt lymphoma (BL) and Diffuse Large B‐cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) in immortalised cell lines and patient samples. In cell line models AZD3956 treatment caused a rapid accumulation of intracellular lactate and altered cellular metabolite profiles consistent with feedback inhibition of glycolysis including an increase in TCA cycle intermediates. A substantial growth inhibitory response was observed in vitro in BL and DLBCL cell lines and also in an in vivo model of BL following daily oral AZD3965 treatment. The combination with a mitochondrial Complex I inhibitor, BAY 87‐2243, triggered significant lymphoma cell death in vitro and also reduced disease burden in vivo. This work supports the use of AZD3965 in the treatment of lymphoma patients who have become refractory to standard therapy but also highlights the potential need for combination strategies to optimally target the altered tumour metabolic phenotype

Life History and Ecology of Western Blacknose Dace, Boone County, Iowa, 1963-1964

A life history and ecology study of the western blacknose dace, Rhinichthys atratulus meleagris (Agassiz), was made on Elkhorn and Pease creeks, Boone County, Iowa. Total length equals 1.23 standard length; live length equals 1.03 preserved length; and live weight equals 0.90 preserved weight. Dace reached maturity at age II. Spawning occurred from early May through July over gravel. Number of eggs increased with length of females. Scale formation proceeded forward from the caudal peduncle at 16-20 mm standard length. Scale growth was not directly proportional to body growth. Annuli formed between March and May. Fish which lacked scales until spring of the second year lacked a first annulus. Fastest growth occurred during May, June and July for age I and II dace. Age 0 fish reach an average of 24-27 mm in length during their first year. Age I fish reach 49-50 mm. Few fish reach age III. Length-weight relationships differed significantly between sexes and populations. Diptera larvae were the only consistently utilized food item. Predation by creek chubs occurred. Up to 100 nematodes of the genus Rhabdochona per dace were found with no apparent harmful effects. Although dace overwintered in pools of both streams, some moved into the Des Moines River. During summer, dace concentrated in cool headwaters

CD4 T lymphocyte responses to human papillomavirus type 16.

Human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16) is the commonest of the oncogenic papillomaviruses and is the main cause of two thirds of cervical carcinoma worldwide. There is good reason to believe that HPV infection is controlled by a cellular immune response. The demonstration and characterisation of human CD4 positive T lymphocytes primed by HPV 16 would be very useful for the development and evaluation of vaccines to prevent or attenuate HPV 16 infection. To date it has not proved possible to detect such lymphocytes using conventional means. A novel and simple method is described of detecting antigen-specific primed CD4 T cells in the peripheral blood. This has been used to detect cells primed to HPV 16 and to influenza nucleoprotein but could be used to detect responses to other antigens. Using this method, responses to HPV 16 have been detected in three women with documented CIN (these responses were chiefly to E6 and E7) and in two young uncharacterised control individuals (to L1 alone). In three individuals it was possible to repeat the assays and the responses were found to be transient. Using a completely different approach, evidence is presented that DNA immunisation in the hind legs of mice generates a response specific for HPV 16 L1 in the para aortic lymph nodes and that cells taken from these nodes can be restimulated in vitro by HPV 16 L1 protein. A set of overlapping 25mer peptides representing HPV16 E7 and L1 could not restimulate human or murine responses although at least two of them were immunogenic in mice. Reasons for this are discussed

Industrial competitiveness of the auto parts industries in four large Asian countries : the role of government policy in a challenging international environment

Rationalization and stabilization following the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s combined with the expansion and liberalization of regional and global trade to create significant parts industries in China, Indonesia, and the Republic of Korea. Conventional policies of stabilization and liberalization, however, cannot fully explain growth patterns. Japan and Korea grewinto major players before liberalizing trade and investment, while even after extensive liberalization Indonesia has yet to move from extensive to intensive growth. These anomalies suggest that to explain success in the auto parts industry we need to move beyond liberalization to look at policies and institutions promoting economies of scale, skill formation, quality upgrading, supplier-linkage cooperation, and innovation. In Japan, the regional and global leader, innovative assemblers led industrial development and supported key suppliers, but the government also supported diffusion of quality control techniques and new technology to small and medium enterprises, and encouraged stable employment among core employees. Korea remains weaker on both small and medium enterprise and employment fronts, but government-encouraged consolidation around a small number of business groups, an extended period of protection, and support for export promotion led to economies of scale. Liberalization of foreign investment after the financial crisis helped ameliorate the excessive statism of earlier policies and strengthened the parts industry. In China, liberalization for WTO entry, rapid expansion in demand, and strong support by local governments encouraged a wave of foreign investment in both assembly and parts. In contrast, institutional weaknesses continue to constrain development opportunities in Indonesia.Technology Industry,Economic Theory&Research,Water and Industry,Markets and Market Access,Non Bank Financial Institutions

Adaptation without natural selection

Document is itself an extended abstract

Phosphonium based poly(ionic liquid)/ ionic liquid membranes for high temperature ion conductance: Influence of ionic liquid structure and loading on membrane stability and performance

Ionic liquids are novel materials for use in catalysis, electrochemistry, and energy storage due to their high thermal and chemical stability as well as high ion conductivity. Development of ionic liquid monomers allows the production of polymeric ionic liquid materials which combine the versatility of ionic liquid materials with the mechanical stability of traditional polymeric membranes. Previous research has shown that inclusion of non-polymerizable free-ionic liquid in polymer and ionic liquid monomer formulations allows an increase in mechanical stability and ionic liquid properties. Further, free-ionic liquid loading improves the flexibility of membrane materials through hybridization of material properties. This research focused on the influence of ionic liquid structure and loading in poly(ionic liquid)/ionic liquid materials with regards to ion conductivity and mechanical stability. This material complex has been successful at the development of free-standing membranes with thicknesses down to 10 μm. Reduction of ionic liquid alkyl chain length resulted in increased thermal stability of membrane materials with negligible changes in ion conductivity performance at high temperatures. Further, an increase of free-ionic liquid loading resulted in an increase in overall ion conductivity and membrane mechanical stability. However, at ionic liquid loadings greater than 40 wt%, mechanical stability diminishes due to ionic liquid leakage. Through the use of poly(ionic liquid)/ionic liquid composite materials, novel membranes can be developed for a multitude of applications with greater flexibility, tunability, and performance. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with: How individual habituation of agent interactions improves global utility

Simple distributed strategies that modify the behaviour of selfish individuals in a manner that enhances cooperation or global efficiency have proved difficult to identify. We consider a network of selfish agents who each optimise their individual utilities by coordinating (or anti-coordinating) with their neighbours, to maximise the pay-offs from randomly weighted pair-wise games. In general, agents will opt for the behaviour that is the best compromise (for them) of the many conflicting constraints created by their neighbours, but the attractors of the system as a whole will not maximise total utility. We then consider agents that act as 'creatures of habit' by increasing their preference to coordinate (anti-coordinate) with whichever neighbours they are coordinated (anti-coordinated) with at the present moment. These preferences change slowly while the system is repeatedly perturbed such that it settles to many different local attractors. We find that under these conditions, with each perturbation there is a progressively higher chance of the system settling to a configuration with high total utility. Eventually, only one attractor remains, and that attractor is very likely to maximise (or almost maximise) global utility. This counterintutitve result can be understood using theory from computational neuroscience; we show that this simple form of habituation is equivalent to Hebbian learning, and the improved optimisation of global utility that is observed results from wellknown generalisation capabilities of associative memory acting at the network scale. This causes the system of selfish agents, each acting individually but habitually, to collectively identify configurations that maximise total utility