Scenes with the Earth as Actor: Agency and the Early-Modern Earth

This essay asks how several major figures of Renaissance and early-modern philosophy saw the Earth as agential. It argues that the Earth's agency served as a well-articulated and fundamental concept in their philosophies. That is, figures like Giordano Bruno and Johannes Kepler conceived of the Earth's agency such that it solved key problems in their cosmological systems. The essay is inspired by Bruno Latour's ecological thought, even as it acts as a corrective to certain of his assertions about early modernity. The essay concludes with some practical lessons that might be taken from early modernity

Tripartite Poetics: A Reexamination of Plato\u27s Aesthetics

Traditional approaches taken in analyzing Plato\u27s aesthetics tend to privilege either the critical dialogues (especially the critiques present throughout Republic), or the dialogues which present poetry in a more positive light. Placing emphasis on one of these approaches leads to the exclusion, in varying degrees, of the opposing position. However, if poetry is reevaluated and given a tripartite structure a reconciliation of these positions can be arrived at. Tripartition is not uncommon in Plato\u27s corpus, and by investigating Plato’s sense of poetry as though it possessed three components— a material component, an intellectual component, and a truthful component— a better understanding of Plato\u27s broader aesthetics becomes possible. Each part of poetry roughly corresponds to, and affects a capacity of the soul, with the appetitive and material, spirited and intellectual, and reason-able and truthful creating pairs. Examining the relationship between poetry and the soul reveals subtle nuances in poetry, and allows for poetry to ascend higher than the critiques suggest. Along with the tripartition, there needs to be a greater focus on, and understanding of the ‘divine inspirer’ in Plato’s philosophical works. By elucidating the figure of the ‘divine inspirer’ the truth component of both poetry and philosophy can be drawn into a closer relationship. The historiographical nature of poetry, when traced to a divine source, can be viewed as possessing truth, which validates poetry. So, by deconstructing poetry into three distinct components, and recognizing the role of the divine inspirer in Plato’s conception, a constructive understanding of poetry that legitimizes both the critical and positive discussions of poetry presented in across the dialogues can be constructed

Introduction: History of early astronomy in Centaurus

Since its founding, Centaurus has served as a journal of reference for the history of astronomy. To celebrate this tradition, our first virtual issue assembles ten articles from our archives and one article that is in currently in press. Together, these articles show off the range of contributions in history of astronomy that have appeared in the pages of Centaurus from the 1950s onward. Articles cover a number of contexts that have strongly informed the development of mathematical astronomy and celestial physics in Europe: from ancient (Babylonian, Greek, Roman) to medieval (Arabic, Jewish, Latin) to early-modern. A second important theme of this issue arises naturally from these contributions placed side-by-side: the history of European astronomical development is one of trade, circulation, appropriation, innovation and continuity, over great differences in culture and geography

Association between diabetes, diabetes treatment and risk of developing endometrial cancer.

BackgroundA growing body of evidence suggests that diabetes is a risk factor for endometrial cancer incidence. However, most of these studies used case-control study designs and did not adjust for obesity, an established risk factor for endometrial cancer. In addition, few epidemiological studies have examined the association between diabetes treatment and endometrial cancer risk. The objective of this study was to assess the relationships among diabetes, diabetes treatment and endometrial cancer risk in postmenopausal women participating in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI).MethodsA total of 88 107 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 years who were free of cancer and had no hysterectomy at baseline were followed until date of endometrial cancer diagnosis, death, hysterectomy or loss to follow-up, whichever came first. Endometrial cancers were confirmed by central medical record and pathology report review. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) (95% confidence interval (CI)) for diagnosis of diabetes and metformin treatment as risk factors for endometrial cancer.ResultsOver a mean of 11 years of follow-up, 1241 endometrial cancers developed. In the primary analysis that focused on prevalent diabetes at enrolment, compared with women without diabetes, women with self-reported diabetes, and the subset of women with treated diabetes, had significantly higher risk of endometrial cancer without adjusting for BMI (HR=1.44, 95% CI: 1.13-1.85 for diabetes, HR=1.57, 95% CI: 1.19-2.07 for treated diabetes). However after adjusting for BMI, the associations between diabetes, diabetes treatment, diabetes duration and the risk of endometrial cancer became non-significant. Elevated risk was noted when considering combining diabetes diagnosed at baseline and during follow-up as time-dependent exposure (HR=1.31, 95% CI: 1.08-1.59) even after adjusting for BMI. No significant association was observed between metformin use and endometrial cancer risk.ConclusionsOur results suggest that the relationship observed in previous research between diabetes and endometrial cancer incidence may be largely confounded by body weight, although some modest independent elevated risk remains

Resolving Discrepancy between Nucleotides and Amino Acids in Deep-Level Arthropod Phylogenomics: Differentiating Serine Codons in 21-Amino-Acid Models

BACKGROUND: In a previous study of higher-level arthropod phylogeny, analyses of nucleotide sequences from 62 protein-coding nuclear genes for 80 panarthopod species yielded significantly higher bootstrap support for selected nodes than did amino acids. This study investigates the cause of that discrepancy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINIDINGS: The hypothesis is tested that failure to distinguish the serine residues encoded by two disjunct clusters of codons (TCN, AGY) in amino acid analyses leads to this discrepancy. In one test, the two clusters of serine codons (Ser1, Ser2) are conceptually translated as separate amino acids. Analysis of the resulting 21-amino-acid data matrix shows striking increases in bootstrap support, in some cases matching that in nucleotide analyses. In a second approach, nucleotide and 20-amino-acid data sets are artificially altered through targeted deletions, modifications, and replacements, revealing the pivotal contributions of distinct Ser1 and Ser2 codons. We confirm that previous methods of coding nonsynonymous nucleotide change are robust and computationally efficient by introducing two new degeneracy coding methods. We demonstrate for degeneracy coding that neither compositional heterogeneity at the level of nucleotides nor codon usage bias between Ser1 and Ser2 clusters of codons (or their separately coded amino acids) is a major source of non-phylogenetic signal. CONCLUSIONS: The incongruity in support between amino-acid and nucleotide analyses of the forementioned arthropod data set is resolved by showing that “standard” 20-amino-acid analyses yield lower node support specifically when serine provides crucial signal. Separate coding of Ser1 and Ser2 residues yields support commensurate with that found by degenerated nucleotides, without introducing phylogenetic artifacts. While exclusion of all serine data leads to reduced support for serine-sensitive nodes, these nodes are still recovered in the ML topology, indicating that the enhanced signal from Ser1 and Ser2 is not qualitatively different from that of the other amino acids.This study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, U.S.A. (grant numbers 0531626, 1042845 and 0120635). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

The Subduction experiment : cruise report R/V Oceanus cruise number 250 legs 1 and 2 subduction 2 mooring deployment and recovery cruise, 25 January-26 February 1992

Subduction is the mechanism by which water masses formed in the mixed layer and near the surface of the ocean find their way into the upper thermocline. The subduction process and its underlying mechanisms were studied through a combination of Eulerian and Langrangian measurements of velocity, measurements of tracer distrbutions and hydrographic propertes and modeling. An array of five surface moorings carrying meteorological and oceanographic instrumentation were deployed for a period of two years beginning in June 1991 as part of an Office of Naval Research (ONR) funded Subduction experiment. Three eight month deployments were planned. The initial deployment of five surface moorings took place during the third leg of R/V Oceanus cruise number 240. The moorings were deployed at 18°N 34°W, 18°N 22°W, 25.5°N 29°W, 33°N 22°W and 33°N 34°W. A Vector Averaging Wind Recorder (VAWR) and an Improved Meteorological Recorder (IMET) collected wind speed and wind direction, sea surface temperature, air temperature, short wave radiation, barometric pressure and relative humidity. The IMET also measured precipitation. The moorings were heavily instrumented below the surface with Vector Measuring Current Meters (VMCM) and single point temperature recorders. Expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data were collected and meteorological observations were made while transitting between mooring locations. This report describes the work that took place during R/V Oceanus cruise 250 which was the second scheduled Subduction mooring cruise. During this cruise the first setting of the moorings were recovered and redeployed for a second eight month period. This report includes a description of the instrumentation that was deployed and recovered, has information about the underway measurements (XBT and meteorological observations) that were made including plots of the data and presents a chronology of the cruise events.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research under contract N00014-90-J-1490