Dante’s Terza Rima in Th e Divine Comedy: Th e Road of Th erapy

Wisdom’s pursuit through symbols, metaphors, poetry, and therapy is a path of indirection, less available the more one’s pursuit is direct. Wisdom may be gained through particular processes of knowing, pilgrimages towards the truth of things. Dante’s 14th century poem engages a new rhyme scheme to further this pursuit of knowing towards wisdom. He called it terza rima, or third rhyme. Its structure, the essay argues, embodies two movements of the soul: the journey towards knowing, one which is always bending back in memory, and the movement of therapy itself, wherein one becomes more conscious by seeing in the present a confl uence of one’s history and one’s destiny at the same instant

The Myth of Nature and the Nature of Myth: Becoming Transparent to Transcendence

The works by the American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, as well as the poetry of John Keats, especially his “Ode to a Nightingale,” offer new ways to reimagine our relation to the earth, to the dead and to language’s continued vitality. Beginning with a brief overview of some of the major tenets of Campbell’s guiding force of the “monomyth,” which gathers all the various world mythologies as inflections of one universal story, the essay then moves into a discussion of Keats’ poem in order to reveal the power of poetic utterance in reconfiguring a vital mythology. If there is to be a renewed mythos, it may come out of a revisioned care of language itself as a transport vehicle towards the transcendent or invisible realms of being that poetry exposes us to through its aesthetic and linguistic corridors. The purpose of yoking mythology to poetry is to realign consciousness along a mytho-poetic axis of insight and understanding

Persuasion: an analysis and common frame of reference for IS research

Information Systems (IS) researchers persistently examine how Information and Communications Technology (ICT) changes attitudes and behaviours but rarely leverage the persuasion literature when doing so. The hesitance of IS researchers to leverage persuasion literature may be due to this literature’s well-documented complexity. This study aims to reduce the difficulty of understanding and applying persuasion theory within IS research. The study achieves this aim by developing a common frame of reference to help IS researchers to conceptualise persuasion and to conceptually differentiate persuasion from related concepts. In doing this, the study also comprehensively summarises existing research and theory and provides a set of suggestions to guide future IS research into persuasion and behaviour change

Gorgonians Are Foundation Species on Sponge-Dominated Mesophotic Coral Reefs in the Caribbean

Foundation species (FS) regulate ecological processes within communities often facilitating biodiversity and habitat complexity. Typically FS are dominant structure-forming taxa; but less dominant taxa having disproportionate ecological impacts to the community can also be FS. Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) are deep coral reef (∼30–150 m) communities, often dominated by emergent sponges in the Caribbean Basin. Despite the potential competitive advantage of sponges on MCEs, gorgonians are also common constituents of these reefs. Data from the Bahamas demonstrate increased biodiversity and densities of sponges on mesophotic reefs with gorgonians relative to reefs without these species. Drawing upon fifteen years of field surveys at five sites in the Caribbean Basin we assessed in situ interactions between gorgonians and sponges to quantify outcomes consistent with competition (i.e., tissue necrosis and overgrowth). Gorgonians were effective competitors against a variety of sponges, and two allelochemicals produced by Ellisella elongata were mechanistically important in interactions with Agelas clathrodes. We also examined invertebrate recruitment patterns near gorgonians to assess their role in facilitating MCE biodiversity. Our results indicate that live gorgonians, Antillogorgia bipinnata and E. elongata, facilitate biodiverse recruitment into MCEs, indicating that this process is governed by more than passive hydrodynamics. Collectively, these data indicate that these gorgonians exhibit both positive and negative ecological interactions (i.e., facilitation and competition, respectively) with sponges, and other taxa. Thus, these gorgonians are FS of MCE communities within the Caribbean Basin that display several traits contributing to the ecological structure of these understudied communities

From Service to Experience: Understanding and Defining the Hospitality Business

Failure adequately to define or understand hospitality as a commercial phenomenon has created a fragmented academic environment and a schizophrenia in the industry that has the potential to limit its development as a global industry. This article suggests that, by redefining hospitality as behaviour and experience, a new perspective emerges that has exciting implications for the management of hospitality businesses. A framework to describe hospitality in the commercial domain is proposed. This framework suggests a focus on the host–guest relationship, generosity, theatre and performance, ‘lots of little surprises’, and the security of strangers – a focus that provides guests with experiences that are personal, memorable and add value to their lives

Annual Thermal Stress Increases a Soft Coral’s Susceptibility to Bleaching

© 2019 by the authors. Bioassay-guided fractionation of an EtOAc extract of the broth of the endophytic fungus Nemania sp. UM10M (Xylariaceae) isolated from a diseased Torreya taxifolia leaf afforded three known cytochalasins, 19,20-epoxycytochalasins C (1) and D (2), and 18-deoxy-19,20-epoxy-cytochalasin C (3). All three compounds showed potent in vitro antiplasmodial activity and phytotoxicity with no cytotoxicity to Vero cells. These compounds exhibited moderate to weak cytotoxicity to some of the cell lines of a panel of solid tumor (SK-MEL, KB, BT-549, and SK-OV-3) and kidney epithelial cells (LLC-PK11). Evaluation of in vivo antimalarial activity of 19,20-epoxycytochalasin C (1) in a mouse model at 100 mg/kg dose showed that this compound had weak suppressive antiplasmodial activity and was toxic to animals

Using Stable Isotope Analyses to Assess the Trophic Ecology of Scleractinian Corals

Studies on the trophic ecology of scleractinian corals often include stable isotope analyses of tissue and symbiont carbon and nitrogen. These approaches have provided critical insights into the trophic sources and sinks that are essential to understanding larger-scale carbon and nitrogen budgets on coral reefs. While stable isotopes have identified most shallow water (\u3c30 m) corals as mixotrophic, with variable dependencies on autotrophic versus heterotrophic resources, corals in the mesophotic zone (~30–150 m) transition to heterotrophy with increasing depth because of decreased photosynthetic productivity. Recently, these interpretations of the stable isotope data to distinguish between autotrophy and heterotrophy have been criticized because they are confounded by increased nutrients, reverse translocation of photosynthate, and changes in irradiance that do not influence photosynthate translocation. Here we critically examine the studies that support these criticisms and show that they are contextually not relevant to interpreting the transition to heterotrophy in corals from shallow to mesophotic depths. Additionally, new data and a re-analysis of previously published data show that additional information (e.g., skeletal isotopic analysis) improves the interpretation of bulk stable isotope data in determining when a transition from primary dependence on autotrophy to heterotrophy occurs in scleractinian corals

Sirolimus Enhances Cyclosporine A-Induced Cytotoxicity in Human Renal Glomerular Mesangial Cells

End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is an ever increasing problem worldwide. However the mechanisms underlying disease progression are not fully elucidated. This work addressed nephrotoxicity induced by the immunosuppressive agents' cyclosporine A (CsA) and sirolimus (SRL). Nephrotoxicity is the major limiting factor in long term use of CsA. SRL causes less nephrotoxicity than CsA. Therefore investigations into the differential effects of these agents may identify potential mechanisms of nephrotoxicity and means to prevent ESRD induced by therapeutic drugs. Using ELISA, Western blotting, quantitative PCR and a reporter gene assay we detailed the differential effects of CsA and SRL in human renal mesangial cells. CsA treatment increased profibrotic TGF-β1 secretion in human mesangial cells whereas SRL did not, indicating a role for TGF-β in CsA toxicity. However we observed a synergistic nephrotoxic effect when CsA and SRL were co-administered. These synergistic alterations may have been due to an increase in CTGF which was not evident when the immunosuppressive drugs were used alone. The CsA/SRL combination therapy significantly enhanced Smad signalling and altered the extracellular matrix regulator matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9). Inhibition of the ERK 1/2 pathway, attenuated these CsA/SRL induced alterations indicating a potentially significant role for this pathway