Conspiring in Dreams: between Misdeeds and saving one’s Soul

Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg (1009-1018), was not an example of a virtuous, pious ecclesiastic; rather, he more closely exemplified an Amtsbischof and mentally anguished sinner. In the last book of his Chronicle, he narrates a dream in which he finds himself surrounded by a hostile crowd that incites him to consume a drink, which he considers suspicious and peculiar: allegedly, it causes him to feel unpleasant sensations while performing his duties. Thietmar believes this apparition (the crowd) is the result of his sinful weakness. The humility and exaggerated feelings of guilt shown by the chronicler have been properly attributed to the Christian fear of endangering the salvation of his soul. However, this concern is not an abstract one. I will analyse the textual framework within which the dream is narrated with the aim of assessing the role played by certain concrete situations related to local conflicts in fomenting Thietmar´s growing preoccupation with his salvation and the repercussions of his actions on his bishopric at large. In particular, I will point to Thietmar?s concern about restoring the rights of the see and insuring that it was well-administered.Fil: Neyra, Andrea Vanina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Escuela de Humanidades; Argentin

Advances and challenges in barcoding pathogenic and environmental Leptospira

Leptospirosis is a zoonotic bacterial disease of global importance. A large spectrum of asymptomatic animal hosts can carry the infection and contribute to the burden of human disease. Environmental sources of human contamination also point to the importance of a hydrotelluric reservoir. Leptospirosis can be caused by as many as 15 different pathogenic or intermediate Leptospira species. However, classification of these bacteria remains complicated through the use of both serological and genetic classification systems that show poor correlation. With the advent of molecular techniques, DNA-based barcoding offers a conceptual framework that can be used for leptospirosis surveillance as well as source tracking. In this review, we summarize some of the current techniques, highlight significant successes and weaknesses and point to the future opportunities and challenges to successfully establish a widely applicable barcoding scheme for Leptospira

Cell-cell communication between Mouse mammary epithelial cells and 3T3-L1 preadipocytes: effect on triglyceride accumulation and cell proliferation

Interaction between parenchyma and stroma is essential for organogenesis, morphogenesis, and differentiation. Mammary gland has being the chosen model for developmental biologist because the most striking changes in morphology and function take place after birth. We have demonstrated a regulation of triglyceride accumulation by protein factors synthesized by normal mouse mammary gland epithelial cells (NMMG), acting on a cell line, 3T3-L1, long used as a model for adipogenesis. In this paper, we demonstrate that this inhibitory effect seems to be shared by other cells of epithelial origin but not by other cell types. We found a regulation of cell proliferation when NMMG cells are cultured in the presence of conditioned media from Swiss 3T3 or 3T3-L1 cells. We found a possible point of regulation for the mammary factor on a key enzyme of the lipid metabolic pathway, the glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. The inhibitory factor seems to have an effect on this enzyme´s activity and reduces it. The results presented herein contribute to the understanding of cell-cell communication in a model of a normal mammary gland.Fil: Julianelli, Vanina Laura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Química Biológica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Guerra, Liliana Noemi. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Química Biológica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Calvo, Juan Carlos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Química Biológica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; Argentin

Las lecciones de los lectores. A propósito de la recepción literaria

En este artículo, propongo revisar las premisas y los modelos teóricosque abordan los procesos de recepción literaria. Con el interés de revisar aquellos caminos que resultaron poco conducentes en la investigación de la lectura, intento desmontar una serie de prejuiciosque, de manera implícita, la condicionan y planteo una serie de interrogantes y cuestionamientos que tiendan a su superación.Sobre esta base, ensayo una reconceptualización de la lectura orientada a incorporar la dimensión subjetiva, un aspecto pocoatendido en estos estudios. Mi hipótesis es que cualquier lectura puede instalar un diálogo subjetivo capaz de producir una transformación personal y que esta posibilidad no depende tiránicamente de la obra sino también del lector y de la manera enla se produce el encuentro con el texto. Finalmente, propongo una secuencia de ejes de entrevista que aspira a hacer emerger los procesos subjetivos articulados por la lectura

Pédagogies féministes et conscientisation

In this article, I provide an overview of a debate in contemporary U.S. feminist theories education, confrontingthinkers who support a pedagogy inspired by critical pedagogy and poststructuralists, focusing on the question of« conscientisation ». Since poststructuralist feminism is mainly negative, I will try to move beyond itsdeconstruction using pragmatist philosophy.L'objet de cet article est de revenir sur un débat au sein du féminisme états-unien contemporain entre les partisane-s d'une pédagogie critique ou pédagogie « libératrice » et les théoricien-ne-s qui se réclament du poststructuralisme.Une synthèse des principaux arguments sera proposée, et l'accent sera particulièrement mis sur lesdiscussions autour de la notion de « conscientisation ». Les écrits des féministes post-structuralistes ayant pour laplupart une teneur critique, un prolongement de ces travaux vers des pistes plus positives sera ensuite esquissé, dansune reconstruction qui emprunte à la philosophie pragmatiste

Heuristic Ranking in Tightly Coupled Probabilistic Description Logics

The Semantic Web effort has steadily been gaining traction in the recent years. In particular,Web search companies are recently realizing that their products need to evolve towards having richer semantic search capabilities. Description logics (DLs) have been adopted as the formal underpinnings for Semantic Web languages used in describing ontologies. Reasoning under uncertainty has recently taken a leading role in this arena, given the nature of data found on theWeb. In this paper, we present a probabilistic extension of the DL EL++ (which underlies the OWL2 EL profile) using Markov logic networks (MLNs) as probabilistic semantics. This extension is tightly coupled, meaning that probabilistic annotations in formulas can refer to objects in the ontology. We show that, even though the tightly coupled nature of our language means that many basic operations are data-intractable, we can leverage a sublanguage of MLNs that allows to rank the atomic consequences of an ontology relative to their probability values (called ranking queries) even when these values are not fully computed. We present an anytime algorithm to answer ranking queries, and provide an upper bound on the error that it incurs, as well as a criterion to decide when results are guaranteed to be correct.Comment: Appears in Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2012

First-principles calculations of heat capacities of ultrafast laser-excited electrons in metals

Ultrafast laser excitation can induce fast increases of the electronic subsystem temperature. The subsequent electronic evolutions in terms of band structure and energy distribution can determine the change of several thermodynamic properties, including one essential for energy deposition; the electronic heat capacity. Using density functional calculations performed at finite electronic temperatures, the electronic heat capacities dependent on electronic temperatures are obtained for a series of metals, including free electron like, transition and noble metals. The effect of exchange and correlation functionals and the presence of semicore electrons on electronic heat capacities are first evaluated and found to be negligible in most cases. Then, we tested the validity of the free electron approaches, varying the number of free electrons per atom. This shows that only simple metals can be correctly fitted with these approaches. For transition metals, the presence of localized d electrons produces a strong deviation toward high energies of the electronic heat capacities, implying that more energy is needed to thermally excite them, compared to free sp electrons. This is attributed to collective excitation effects strengthened by a change of the electronic screening at high temperature