The Persistence of Utopia: Plasticity and Difference from Roland Barthes to Catherine Malabou

The theorizing of utopia is a persistent theme throughout several generations of the French continental tradition, and alongside the process theory of Alfred North Whitehead to a large degree recuperates the concept of utopia from its supposed dismissal by Marx and his intellectual descendants. Most recently, attention to the notion of plasticity, popularized (relatively speaking) by Catherine Malabou, extends speculation on utopian possibility.  Compelled to answer to Marx’s denigration of utopia as fantasy, the tendency was (still is, for many) to compensate for the absence of a programmatic politics by stressing what is “useful” about utopian dreaming, and therefore where or how exactly a utopian text reveals or creates political drive, or motivates political action. In this essay, I argue that theorists have overlooked the use of utopia as not only the reproduction of difference, or what Malabou calls positive plasticity, but also as, therefore, a disruption; Malabou might prefer the term accident here. Tracing the concept of plasticity from Roland Barthes to Malabou, with a nod at Miguel Abensour, this essay teases out the links between a contemporary notion of plasticity to argue, simply put, that utopia is plastic. This plasticity of the concept ensures its political force. These links, obscured in the essay “Plastic,” Barthes makes only later in his writing. But for Malabou, plasticity underlies a principle of futurity and/as generativity, such that new forms, new meanings, new concepts emerge through difference. Utopia’s horizons of potentiality depend on difference, and on non-achievement. Finally, I argue that the persistence of utopia (Abensour) as a form of thinking is the most important, and political, effect of utopian plasticity

Reading Acquisition in Morocco

While interest in reading and writing has always been important to researchers and educational policy-makers, multidisciplinary investigations of the acquisition of literacy are a relatively new enterprise. In the Arabic-speaking wrold, in particular, there have been relatively few efforts to discover what kinds of literacy abilities the child brings to the classroom, and what kinds of home, preschool, and language environments lead to various levels of literacy both in and out of school. The research described here presents data collected during the first three years of the Morocco Literacy Project, whose general aim has been to investigate the process of literacy acquisition and retention in Morocco. The present paper will consider the effects of preschool experience and language background on a sample of primary school children living in contrastin rural and urban environments in Morocco

Humanized pertussis antibodies and uses thereof

The present invention relates to humanized antibodies which bind the pertussis toxin protein and their use as therapeutic agents. In particular, the present invention is directed to improved humanized 1B7 and 11E6 antibodies which bind the pertussis toxin protein.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

The Persistence of Utopia: Plasticity and Difference from Roland Barthes to Catherine Malabou

The theorizing of utopia is a persistent theme throughout several generations of the French continental tradition, and alongside the process theory of Alfred North Whitehead to a large degree recuperates the concept of utopia from its supposed dismissal by Marx and his intellectual descendants. Most recently, attention to the notion of plasticity, popularized (relatively speaking) by Catherine Malabou, extends speculation on utopian possibility.  Compelled to answer to Marx’s denigration of utopia as fantasy, the tendency was (still is, for many) to compensate for the absence of a programmatic politics by stressing what is “useful” about utopian dreaming, and therefore where or how exactly a utopian text reveals or creates political drive, or motivates political action. In this essay, I argue that theorists have overlooked the use of utopia as not only the reproduction of difference, or what Malabou calls positive plasticity, but also as, therefore, a disruption; Malabou might prefer the term accident here. Tracing the concept of plasticity from Roland Barthes to Malabou, with a nod at Miguel Abensour, this essay teases out the links between a contemporary notion of plasticity to argue, simply put, that utopia is plastic. This plasticity of the concept ensures its political force. These links, obscured in the essay “Plastic,” Barthes makes only later in his writing. But for Malabou, plasticity underlies a principle of futurity and/as generativity, such that new forms, new meanings, new concepts emerge through difference. Utopia’s horizons of potentiality depend on difference, and on non-achievement. Finally, I argue that the persistence of utopia (Abensour) as a form of thinking is the most important, and political, effect of utopian plasticity

Functional connectivity in the first year of life in infants at-risk for autism: a preliminary near-infrared spectroscopy study

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been called a “developmental disconnection syndrome,” however the majority of the research examining connectivity in ASD has been conducted exclusively with older children and adults. Yet, prior ASD research suggests that perturbations in neurodevelopmental trajectories begin as early as the first year of life. Prospective longitudinal studies of infants at risk for ASD may provide a window into the emergence of these aberrant patterns of connectivity. The current study employed functional connectivity near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in order to examine the development of intra- and inter-hemispheric functional connectivity in high- and low-risk infants across the first year of life. Methods: NIRS data were collected from 27 infants at high risk for autism (HRA) and 37 low-risk comparison (LRC) infants who contributed a total of 116 data sets at 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-months. At each time point, HRA and LRC groups were matched on age, sex, head circumference, and Mullen Scales of Early Learning scores. Regions of interest (ROI) were selected from anterior and posterior locations of each hemisphere. The average time course for each ROI was calculated and correlations for each ROI pair were computed. Differences in functional connectivity were examined in a cross-sectional manner. Results: At 3-months, HRA infants showed increased overall functional connectivity compared to LRC infants. This was the result of increased connectivity for intra- and inter-hemispheric ROI pairs. No significant differences were found between HRA and LRC infants at 6- and 9-months. However, by 12-months, HRA infants showed decreased connectivity relative to LRC infants. Conclusions: Our preliminary results suggest that atypical functional connectivity may exist within the first year of life in HRA infants, providing support to the growing body of evidence that aberrant patterns of connectivity may be a potential endophenotype for ASD

Neural Processing of Repetition and Non-Repetition Grammars in 7- and 9-Month-Old Infants

An essential aspect of infant language development involves the extraction of meaningful information from a continuous stream of auditory input. Studies have identified early abilities to differentiate auditory input along various dimensions, including the presence or absence of structural regularities. In newborn infants, frontal and temporal regions were found to respond differentially to these regularities (Gervain et al., 2008), and in order to examine the development of this abstract rule learning we presented 7- and 9-month-old infants with syllables containing an ABB pattern (e.g., “balolo”) or an ABC pattern (e.g., “baloti”) and measured activity in left and right lateral brain regions using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). While prior newborn work found increases in oxyhemoglobin (oxyHb) activity in response to ABB blocks as compared to ABC blocks in anterior regions, 7- and 9-month-olds showed no differentiation between grammars in oxyHb. However, changes in deoxyhemoglobin (deoxyHb) pointed to a developmental shift, whereby 7-month-olds showed deoxyHb responding significantly different from zero for ABB blocks, but not ABC blocks, and 9-month-olds showed the opposite pattern, with deoxyHb responding significantly different from zero for the ABC blocks but not the ABB blocks. DeoxyHb responses were more pronounced over anterior regions. A grammar by time interaction also illustrated that during the early blocks, deoxyHb was significantly greater to ABC than in later blocks, but there was no change in ABB activation over time. The shift from stronger activation to ABB in newborns (Gervain et al., 2008) and 7-month-olds in the present study to stronger activation to ABC by 9-month-olds here is discussed in terms of changes in stimulus salience and novelty preference over the first year of life. The present discussion also highlights the importance of future work exploring the coupling between oxyHb and deoxyHb activation in infant NIRS studies

Impact of Obesity in Patients with Candida Bloodstream Infections: A Retrospective Cohort Study

© 2020, The Author(s). Background: Candida species are responsible for 15% of bloodstream infections, leading to prolonged hospitalizations and increased mortality. With the rise in obesity, antifungal dosing is unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine differences in clinical outcomes between obese versus non-obese patients with Candida bloodstream infections. Methods: This retrospective cohort included adult patient’s first episode of Candida bloodstream infection treated with ≥ 48 h of antifungal therapy between 1 June 2013 and 31 August 2019. Patients were excluded for: dual systemic antifungal therapy, polymicrobial infections, or chronic candidiasis. The primary outcome was infection-related length of stay. Secondary outcomes included: time to candidemia resolution, 30-day readmission rates, and in-hospital mortality. Results: Eighty patients were included (28 obese; 52 non-obese). Most were male (55%); median age was 54 years. Median BMI and weight were 36.3 kg/m2 and 103 kg versus 20.4 kg/m2 and 61 kg, respectively (p \u3c 0.01). Baseline characteristics were comparable. C. albicans was isolated in 37.5% of cultures and C. glabrata in 30%. Micafungin was utilized empirically in 72.5% of patients; obese patients received definitive micafungin more frequently (57.1% vs. 21.2%; p \u3c 0.01) and were treated longer (13 versus 10 days; p = 0.04). Infection-related length of stay was 19 days in the obese patients and 13 days in the non-obese patients (p = 0.05). Non-obese patients had a shorter duration of candidemia (5 versus 6 days; p = 0.02). In-hospital mortality was numerically higher in obese patients (21.4% versus 13.5%; p = 0.36). There were no differences in 30-day readmissions between groups. Conclusions: Worse clinical outcomes were observed for obese versus non-obese patients. Further clinical research is warranted

Receptor Tyrosine Kinases Fall into Distinct Classes Based on Their Inferred Signaling Networks

Although many anticancer drugs that target receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) provide clinical benefit, their long-term use is limited by resistance that is often attributed to increased abundance or activation of another RTK that compensates for the inhibited receptor. To uncover common and unique features in the signaling networks of RTKs, we measured time-dependent signaling in six isogenic cell lines, each expressing a different RTK as downstream proteins were systematically perturbed by RNA interference. Network models inferred from the data revealed a conserved set of signaling pathways and RTK-specific features that grouped the RTKs into three distinct classes: (i) an EGFR/FGFR1/c-Met class constituting epidermal growth factor receptor, fibroblast growth factor receptor 1, and the hepatocyte growth factor receptor c-Met; (ii) an IGF-1R/NTRK2 class constituting insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor and neurotrophic tyrosine receptor kinase 2; and (iii) a PDGFRβ class constituting platelet-derived growth factor receptor β. Analysis of cancer cell line data showed that many RTKs of the same class were coexpressed and that increased abundance of an RTK or its cognate ligand frequently correlated with resistance to a drug targeting another RTK of the same class. In contrast, abundance of an RTK or ligand of one class generally did not affect sensitivity to a drug targeting an RTK of a different class. Thus, classifying RTKs by their inferred networks and then therapeutically targeting multiple receptors within a class may delay or prevent the onset of resistance.W. M. Keck FoundationNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R21 CA126720)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (P50 GM068762)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (RC1 HG005354)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (U54-CA112967)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01-CA096504)Alfred and Isabel Bader (Fellowship)Jacques-Emile Dubois (fellowship