Wonder, Horror, Mystery

Wonder, Horror, Mystery is a dialogue between two friends, both notable arts critics, that takes the form of a series of letters about movies and religion. One of the friends, J.M. Tyree, is a film critic, creative writer, and agnostic, while the other, Morgan Meis, is a philosophy PhD, art critic, and practicing Catholic. The question of cinema is raised here in a spirit of friendly friction that binds the personal with the critical and the spiritual. What is film? What’s it for? What does it do? Why do we so intensely love or hate films that dare to broach the subjects of the divine and the diabolical? These questions stimulate further thoughts about life, meaning, philosophy, absurdity, friendship, tragedy, humor, death, and God. The letters focus on three filmmakers who challenged secular assumptions in the late 20th century and early 21st century through various modes of cinematic re-enchantment: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The book works backwards in time, giving intensive analysis to Malick’s To The Wonder (2012), Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1988), respectively, in each of the book’s three sections. Meis and Tyree discuss the filmmakers and films as well as related ideas about philosophy, theology, and film theory in an accessible but illuminating way. The discussion ranges from the shamelessly intellectual to the embarrassingly personal. Spoiler alert: No conclusions are reached either about God or the movies. Nonetheless, it is a fun ride

Wonder, Horror, Mystery

Wonder, Horror, Mystery is a dialogue between two friends, both notable arts critics, that takes the form of a series of letters about movies and religion. One of the friends, J.M. Tyree, is a film critic, creative writer, and agnostic, while the other, Morgan Meis, is a philosophy PhD, art critic, and practicing Catholic. The question of cinema is raised here in a spirit of friendly friction that binds the personal with the critical and the spiritual. What is film? What’s it for? What does it do? Why do we so intensely love or hate films that dare to broach the subjects of the divine and the diabolical? These questions stimulate further thoughts about life, meaning, philosophy, absurdity, friendship, tragedy, humor, death, and God. The letters focus on three filmmakers who challenged secular assumptions in the late 20th century and early 21st century through various modes of cinematic re-enchantment: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The book works backwards in time, giving intensive analysis to Malick’s To The Wonder (2012), Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1988), respectively, in each of the book’s three sections. Meis and Tyree discuss the filmmakers and films as well as related ideas about philosophy, theology, and film theory in an accessible but illuminating way. The discussion ranges from the shamelessly intellectual to the embarrassingly personal. Spoiler alert: No conclusions are reached either about God or the movies. Nonetheless, it is a fun ride

A new approach for the limit to tree height using a liquid nanolayer model

Liquids in contact with solids are submitted to intermolecular forces inferring density gradients at the walls. The van der Waals forces make liquid heterogeneous, the stress tensor is not any more spherical as in homogeneous bulks and it is possible to obtain stable thin liquid films wetting vertical walls up to altitudes that incompressible fluid models are not forecasting. Application to micro tubes of xylem enables to understand why the ascent of sap is possible for very high trees like sequoias or giant eucalyptus.Comment: In the conclusion is a complementary comment to the Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics paper. 21 pages, 4 figures. Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics 20, 5 (2008) to appea

Developmental modulation of inulin accumulation in storage organs of transgenic maize and transgenic potato

Many important health promoting and functional characteristics are attributed to the non-digestible polysaccharide, inulin. Its use as a prebiotic in functional food and feed has further increased inulin demand worldwide. Inulin production in crops used for food and feed application, such as maize and potato, may provide a more direct and cost-effective route to provide functional food or feed when compared to native inulin producers. Towards this end we have expressed the inulin synthesizing enzymes, 1-SST and 1-FFT from Jerusalem artichoke in maize and potato. Transgenic maize plants produced inulin type fructan (at 3.2 mg/g kernel) when expressing an endosperm targeted gene cassette. Kernel development and germination were not affected. Potato tubers expressing 1-sst accumulated 1.8 mg inulin/g tuber while tubers with a combined expression of 1-sst and 1-fft accumulated 2.6 mg inulin/g tuber. Inulin accumulation in maize kernels was modulated by kernel development. Inulin levels peaked and then underwent moderate degradation by late kernel development. In potato, inulin production was relatively stable throughout tuber development and little evidence of degradation was observed. The accumulation of 1-kestose in transgenic maize was positively correlated with kernel sucrose concentration. Introduction of the fructan synthetic pathway in a high-sucrose maize background increased inulin accumulation to 41 mg/g kernel. Evidence is presented indicating that sucrose availability is limiting fructan production in transgenic maize