Arendt, Hannah

Hannah Arendt (Germany 1906 – United States 1975) is one of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century and is mostly known for her writings on political action, evil, and totalitarianism. She studied philosophy in Marburg and Heidelberg, Germany, with such renowned German philosophers as Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers (Young-Bruehl 1982, 44, 48). Arendt’s political awakening took place when the Nazis ascended to power in Germany, and she joined the resistance movement. In 1937, she fled the Nazi regime first to France and then to the United States, where she lived the rest of her life and produced the majority of her intellectual work (Arendt 2000, 6–7; Young-Bruehl 1982, 92, 113).</p

Hannah Arendt

Peer reviewe

The wilms tumor gene wt1a contributes to blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier function in zebrafish

The Wilms tumor suppressor gene Wt1 encodes a zinc finger transcription factor, which is highly conserved among vertebrates. It is a key regulator of urogenital development and homeostasis but also plays a role in other organs including the spleen and the heart. More recently additional functions for Wt1 in the mammalian central nervous system have been described. In contrast to mammals, bony fish possess two paralogous Wt1 genes, namely wt1a and wt1b. By performing detailed in situ hybridization analyses during zebrafish development, we discovered new expression domains for wt1a in the dorsal hindbrain, the caudal medulla and the spinal cord. Marker analysis identified wt1a expressing cells of the dorsal hindbrain as ependymal cells of the choroid plexus in the myelencephalic ventricle. The choroid plexus acts as a blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier and thus is crucial for brain homeostasis. By employing wt1a mutant larvae and a dye accumulation assay with fluorescent tracers we demonstrate that Wt1a is required for proper choroid plexus formation and function. Thus, Wt1a contributes to the barrier properties of the choroid plexus in zebrafish, revealing an unexpected role for Wt1 in the zebrafish brain

Wilms Tumor 1b Expression Defines a Pro-regenerative Macrophage Subtype and Is Required for Organ Regeneration in the Zebrafish

Organ regeneration is preceded by the recruitment of innate immune cells, which play an active role during repair and regrowth. Here, we studied macrophage subtypes during organ regeneration in the zebrafish, an animal model with a high regenerative capacity. We identified a macrophage subpopulation expressing Wilms tumor 1b (wt1b), which accumulates within regenerating tissues. This wt1b+ macrophage population exhibited an overall pro-regenerative gene expression profile and different migratory behavior compared to the remainder of the macrophages. Functional studies showed that wt1b regulates macrophage migration and retention at the injury area. Furthermore, wt1b-null mutant zebrafish presented signs of impaired macrophage differentiation, delayed fin growth upon caudal fin amputation, and reduced cardiomyocyte proliferation following cardiac injury that correlated with altered macrophage recruitment to the regenerating areas. We describe a pro-regenerative macrophage subtype in the zebrafish and a role for wt1b in organ regeneration.A.B.G.-R. is supported by the Sara Borrell Program (CD11/00165) and CIBER de Enfermedades Cardiovasculares (CB16/11/00286). H.R. was supported by a short-term EMBO fellowship (EMBOSTF7204). I.J.M. was supported by a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship (PIEF-GA-2012-330728). N.M. is supported by Swiss National Science Foundation grant 31003A_15972 and the European Research Council (starting grant 337703–zebra–Heart). The CNIC is supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacio´ n, y Universidades (MCNU), and the Pro CNIC Foundation AGRADECIENTOS: ProCNIC; Severo Ochoa (SEV-2015-0505)S

Indirect Network Effects and Trade Liberalization

Birch pollen-allergic subjects produce polyclonal cross-reactive IgE antibodies that mediate pollen-associated food allergies. The major allergen Bet v 1 and its homologs in plant foods bind IgE in their native protein conformation. Information on location, number and clinical relevance of IgE epitopes is limited. We addressed the use of an allergen-related protein model to identify amino acids critical for IgE binding of PR-10 allergens.Norcoclaurine synthase (NCS) from meadow rue is structurally homologous to Bet v 1 but does not bind Bet v 1-reactive IgE. NCS was used as the template for epitope grafting. NCS variants were tested with sera from 70 birch pollen allergic subjects and with monoclonal antibody BV16 reported to compete with IgE binding to Bet v 1.We generated an NCS variant (Δ29NCSN57/I58E/D60N/V63P/D68K) harboring an IgE epitope of Bet v 1. Bet v 1-type protein folding of the NCS variant was evaluated by 1H-15N-HSQC NMR spectroscopy. BV16 bound the NCS variant and 71% (50/70 sera) of our study population showed significant IgE binding. We observed IgE and BV16 cross-reactivity to the epitope presented by the NCS variant in a subgroup of Bet v 1-related allergens. Moreover BV16 blocked IgE binding to the NCS variant. Antibody cross-reactivity depended on a defined orientation of amino acids within the Bet v 1-type conformation.Our system allows the evaluation of patient-specific epitope profiles and will facilitate both the identification of clinically relevant epitopes as biomarkers and the monitoring of therapeutic outcomes to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of allergies caused by PR-10 proteins

The Odyssey of Dental Anxiety: From Prehistory to the Present. A Narrative Review

Dental anxiety (DA) can be considered as a universal phenomenon with a high prevalence worldwide; DA and pain are also the main causes for medical emergencies in the dental office, so their prevention is an essential part of patient safety and overall quality of care. Being DA and its consequences closely related to the fight-or-flight reaction, it seems reasonable to argue that the odyssey of DA began way back in the distant past, and has since probably evolved in parallel with the development of fight-or-flight reactions, implicit memory and knowledge, and ultimately consciousness. Basic emotions are related to survival functions in an inseparable psychosomatic unity that enable an immediate response to critical situations rather than generating knowledge, which is why many anxious patients are unaware of the cause of their anxiety. Archeological findings suggest that humans have been surprisingly skillful and knowledgeable since prehistory. Neanderthals used medicinal plants; and relics of dental tools bear witness to a kind of Neolithic proto-dentistry. In the two millennia BC, Egyptian and Greek physicians used both plants (such as papaver somniferum) and incubation (a forerunner of modern hypnosis, e.g., in the sleep temples dedicated to Asclepius) in the attempt to provide some form of therapy and painless surgery, whereas modern scientific medicine strongly understated the role of subjectivity and mind-body approaches until recently. DA has a wide range of causes and its management is far from being a matter of identifying the ideal sedative drug. A patient's proper management must include assessing his/her dental anxiety, ensuring good communications, and providing information (iatrosedation), effective local anesthesia, hypnosis, and/or a wise use of sedative drugs where necessary. Any weak link in this chain can cause avoidable suffering, mistrust, and emergencies, as well as having lifelong psychological consequences. Iatrosedation and hypnosis are no less relevant than drugs and should be considered as primary tools for the management of DA. Unlike pharmacological sedation, they allow to help patients cope with the dental procedure and also overcome their anxiety: achieving the latter may enable them to face future dental care autonomously, whereas pharmacological sedation can only afford a transient respite

Challenges in measuring individual differences in functional connectivity using fMRI: The case of healthy aging.

Many studies report individual differences in functional connectivity, such as those related to age. However, estimates of connectivity from fMRI are confounded by other factors, such as vascular health, head motion and changes in the location of functional regions. Here, we investigate the impact of these confounds, and pre-processing strategies that can mitigate them, using data from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing & Neuroscience (www.cam-can.com). This dataset contained two sessions of resting-state fMRI from 214 adults aged 18-88. Functional connectivity between all regions was strongly related to vascular health, most likely reflecting respiratory and cardiac signals. These variations in mean connectivity limit the validity of between-participant comparisons of connectivity estimates, and were best mitigated by regression of mean connectivity over participants. We also showed that high-pass filtering, instead of band-pass filtering, produced stronger and more reliable age-effects. Head motion was correlated with gray-matter volume in selected brain regions, and with various cognitive measures, suggesting that it has a biological (trait) component, and warning against regressing out motion over participants. Finally, we showed that the location of functional regions was more variable in older adults, which was alleviated by smoothing the data, or using a multivariate measure of connectivity. These results demonstrate that analysis choices have a dramatic impact on connectivity differences between individuals, ultimately affecting the associations found between connectivity and cognition. It is important that fMRI connectivity studies address these issues, and we suggest a number of ways to optimize analysis choices. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4125-4156, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Asteroid (101955) Bennu’s weak boulders and thermally anomalous equator

Thermal inertia and surface roughness are proxies for the physical characteristics of planetary surfaces. Global maps of these two properties distinguish the boulder population on near-Earth asteroid (NEA) (101955) Bennu into two types that differ in strength, and both have lower thermal inertia than expected for boulders and meteorites. Neither has strongly temperature-dependent thermal properties. The weaker boulder type probably would not survive atmospheric entry and thus may not be represented in the meteorite collection. The maps also show a high–thermal inertia band at Bennu’s equator, which might be explained by processes such as compaction or strength sorting during mass movement, but these explanations are not wholly consistent with other data. Our findings imply that other C-complex NEAs likely have boulders similar to those on Bennu rather than finer-particulate regoliths. A tentative correlation between albedo and thermal inertia of C-complex NEAs may be due to relative abundances of boulder types

Estimating the Reproducibility of Experimental Philosophy

Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project (XRP) to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy (osf.io/dvkpr). Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in our sample – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward

Resilience trinity: safeguarding ecosystem functioning and services across three different time horizons and decision contexts

Ensuring ecosystem resilience is an intuitive approach to safeguard the functioning of ecosystems and hence the future provisioning of ecosystem services (ES). However, resilience is a multi-faceted concept that is difficult to operationalize. Focusing on resilience mechanisms, such as diversity, network architectures or adaptive capacity, has recently been suggested as means to operationalize resilience. Still, the focus on mechanisms is not specific enough. We suggest a conceptual framework, resilience trinity, to facilitate management based on resilience mechanisms in three distinctive decision contexts and time-horizons: i) reactive, when there is an imminent threat to ES resilience and a high pressure to act, ii) adjustive, when the threat is known in general but there is still time to adapt management, and iii) provident, when time horizons are very long and the nature of the threats is uncertain, leading to a low willingness to act. Resilience has different interpretations and implications at these different time horizons, which also prevail in different disciplines. Social ecology, ecology, and engineering are often implicitly focussing on provident, adjustive, or reactive resilience, respectively, but these different notions and of resilience and their corresponding social, ecological, and economic trade-offs need to be reconciled. Otherwise, we keep risking unintended consequences of reactive actions, or shying away from provident action because of uncertainties that cannot be reduced. The suggested trinity of time horizons and their decision contexts could help ensuring that longer-term management actions are not missed while urgent threats to ES are given priority