The Irreducibility of Prayer:Religious Language and the Overcoming of Metaphysics in Contemporary French Philosophy

In my PhD Thesis, I explore the way the phenomenon of prayer is analysed in contemporary French philosophy, with a particular attention to the work of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Jean-Luc Nancy. The overall purpose of this project is to understand the reasons for, and the consequences of, these philosophers’ interest in prayer, in a historical context when prayer seems to have lost its value and meaning. I offer a twofold argument. On the one hand, these philosophical approaches are shaped by the project of the overcoming of metaphysics as articulated by Heidegger. Prayer plays a crucial role in this overcoming, but it has to pay a high price, losing its specificity in favour of a reduction to a pure and undetermined essence. On the other hand, these thinkers commit some sort of “elucidating mistake”: pushed to an extreme, these authors – perhaps not always admitting to it – reveal an irreducible specificity of prayer as a practised and lived act. All in all, this research shows that certain religious phenomena can still assume quite a central importance in contemporary philosophical discourse, and that the borders between philosophy and religion are often more permeable that one thinks

Can Clinical and Surgical Parameters Be Combined to Predict How Long It Will Take a Tibia Fracture to Heal? A Prospective Multicentre Observational Study: The FRACTING Study

Background. Healing of tibia fractures occurs over a wide time range of months, with a number of risk factors contributing to prolonged healing. In this prospective, multicentre, observational study, we investigated the capability of FRACTING (tibia FRACTure prediction healING days) score, calculated soon after tibia fracture treatment, to predict healing time. Methods. The study included 363 patients. Information on patient health, fracture morphology, and surgical treatment adopted were combined to calculate the FRACTING score. Fractures were considered healed when the patient was able to fully weight-bear without pain. Results. 319 fractures (88%) healed within 12 months from treatment. Forty-four fractures healed after 12 months or underwent a second surgery. FRACTING score positively correlated with days to healing: r = 0.63 (p < 0.0001). Average score value was 7.3 \ub1 2.5; ROC analysis showed strong reliability of the score in separating patients healing before versus after 6 months: AUC = 0.823. Conclusions. This study shows that the FRACTING score can be employed both to predict months needed for fracture healing and to identify immediately after treatment patients at risk of prolonged healing. In patients with high score values, new pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments to enhance osteogenesis could be tested selectively, which may finally result in reduced disability time and health cost savings

Five primary sources of organic aerosols in the urban atmosphere of Belgrade (Serbia)

Biomass burning and primary biological aerosol particles (PBAPs) represent important primary sources of organic compounds in the atmosphere. These particles and compounds are able to affect climate and human health. In the present work, using HPLC-orbitrapMS, we determined the atmospheric concentrations of molecular markers such as anhydrosugars and phenolic compounds that are specific for biomass burning, as well as the concentrations of sugars, alcohol sugars and D- and L-amino acids (D-AAs and L-AAs) for studying PBAPs in Belgrade (Serbia) aerosols collected in September-December 2008. In these samples, high levels of all these biomarkers were observed in October. Relative percentages of vanillic (V), syringic compounds (S) and p-coumaric acid (PA), as well as levoglucosan/mannosan (L/M) ratios, helped us discriminate between open fire events and wood combustion for domestic heating during the winter. L-AAs and D-AAs (1% of the total) were observed in Belgrade aerosols mainly in September-October. During open fire events, mean D-AA/L-AA (D/L) ratio values of aspartic acid, threonine, phenylalanine, alanine were significantly higher than mean D/L values of samples unaffected by open fire. High levels of AAs were observed for open biomass burning events.Thanks to four different statistical approaches, we demonstrated that Belgrade aerosols are affected by five sources: a natural source, a source related to fungi spores and degraded material and three other sources linked to biomass burning: biomass combustion in open fields, the combustion of grass and agricultural waste and the combustion of biomass in stoves and industrial plants. The approach employed in this work, involving the determination of specific organic tracers and statistical analysis, proved useful to discriminate among different types of biomass burning events. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved