From printshop to piazza: the dissemination of cheap print in sixteenth century Venice

PhDThis thesis is concerned with the smallest and cheapest products of the Venetian presses in the sixteenth century. Pamphlets and printed fliers were the most accessible articles of printed matter to the wider public, and they are crucial to understanding how the technology of printing infiltrated the urban life of Venice in this period. To this end, Chapter One is concerned with the spaces of print dissemination in the city, mapping information about the locations of presses, bookshops, and stalls in the city. A particular focus is the street trade in cheap print, how this interacted with established shops and was drawn to particular times and spaces of public gathering. Chapters Two and Three consider the chief producers and disseminators of cheap print: printers and publishers, and vendors both established and itinerant. I examine the people who came to make up the printing industry in this developmental phase, and the role that the production of cheap print played in the process of establishing a successful business. A focus on performers who published or sold cheap print-enacting the oral dissemination of texts in tandem with their printed diffusion-suggests how broader publics, of every shade from illiterate to literate, were becoming acculturated to an expanding print culture. Chapter Four then concentrates on representative examples of printed pamphlets produced in Venice by itinerant publishers and performers in collaboration with members of the local printing industry, for example, tales of chivalry, poems about recent wars, charlatans' recipes, and prognostications. Finally, in Chapter Five I consider how cheap print dissemination fared in the intensifying climate of control and censorship of the Counter-Reformation era

TTFields alone and in combination with chemotherapeutic agents effectively reduce the viability of MDR cell sub-lines that over-express ABC transporters

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Exposure of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents may result in reduced sensitivity to structurally unrelated agents, a phenomenon known as multidrug resistance, MDR. The purpose of this study is to investigate cell growth inhibition of wild type and the corresponding MDR cells by Tumor Treating Fields - TTFields, a new cancer treatment modality that is free of systemic toxicity. The TTFields were applied alone and in combination with paclitaxel and doxorubicin.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Three pairs of wild type/MDR cell lines, having resistivity resulting from over-expression of ABC transporters, were studied: a clonal derivative (C11) of parental Chinese hamster ovary AA8 cells and their emetine-resistant sub-line Emt^R1; human breast cancer cells MCF-7 and their mitoxantrone-resistant sub lines MCF-7/Mx and human breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 and their doxorubicin resistant MDA-MB-231/Dox cells. TTFields were applied for 72 hours with and without the chemotherapeutic agents. The numbers of viable cells in the treated cultures and the untreated control groups were determined using the XTT assay. Student t-test was applied to asses the significance of the differences between results obtained for each of the three cell pairs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>TTFields caused a similar reduction in the number of viable cells of wild type and MDR cells. Treatments by TTFields/drug combinations resulted in a similar increased reduction in cell survival of wild type and MDR cells. TTFields had no effect on intracellular doxorubicin accumulation in both wild type and MDR cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results indicate that TTFields alone and in combination with paclitaxel and doxorubicin effectively reduce the viability of both wild type and MDR cell sub-lines and thus can potentially be used as an effective treatment of drug resistant tumors.</p

When The News Was Sung: Ballads as News Media in Early Modern Europe

News songs differ in crucial ways to the other news media of the early modern period like newsletters, newspapers, or diplomatic correspondence – they differ even from the prose broadsheets and pamphlets that they so closely resemble. As historians of news we need to ask different kinds of questions of these multi-media artifacts. For example, how does the presentation in a performative genre affect the dissemination and reception of information about events? What part do orality and aurality play in how the news was sold and received? Here the activities and social status of street singers play an important role. We must consider the production, format and distribution of these songs in order to understand their impact. We also need to pay attention to the conjunction between text and melody, and the ways in which this affected the presentation of a news event. On a broader scale, what kind of information can ballads provide about specific news events that other documents cannot or will not provide? Can they offer us a new medium by which to interpret historical events? And lastly, how should historians deal with these profoundly emotive texts? The combination of sensationalist language and affecting music meant that songs had the potential to provoke a more powerful response than any other contemporary news source, and this emotional potency can at times be challenging for a modern historian to decipher and explain. This article will attempt to answer some of these questions and suggest some of the skills we as historians need to develop in order to appreciate the full meaning of songs as the most popular of news media in early modern Europe

In the mouths of charlatans. Street performers and the dissemination of pamphlets in Renaissance Italy

This article examines the role of street performers such as ballad singers and charlatans in the publication and sale of cheap printed pamphlets in northern Italian cities during the Renaissance. These mobile and usually socially marginal figures quickly became involved in the printing industry after its initiation in the later fifteenth century, and in this way carried on their established role as crucial cultural mediators, moving texts between different places, different social spheres, and different media. As well as publishing, performing, and selling works such as chivalric ballads, poetic accounts of recent wars, prognostications, and medical remedies, performers also were involved in the dissemination of texts more traditionally considered as ‘high’ literature, belonging to the restricted cultural sphere of the court or salon. In this way, they contributed to the wide dissemination of the works of eminent Renaissance authors, whether those authors approved of it or not. However, growing restrictions on the dissemination of print in the later sixteenth century reduced the freedom of movement of street performers, and diminished the remarkably creative and vibrant literary and performative culture in which they had played a central role