Re-Novating Troy: Chrematistics, Imagination, and Hybrid Temporalities in Chaucer's Troy stories

It is the purpose of this essay to show how, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troy stories (The House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde), literary innovation figures as temporal and categorical purification and hybridization. I aim to show that Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde implicitly stages literary innovation in terms of the textual strategies that are explicitly described and simultaneously enacted in his House of Fame. At the risk of oversimplification, my view of a Chaucerian poetics of literary re-novation runs something like this: The texts mentioned suggest, I believe, that poetic composition first and foremost begins at the nexus of a continuous multiplication of narratives and the concomitant necessity (and impossibility) of mapping, of distinguishing foregoing and authorized traditions. Categorizing narratives into traditions, however, results, at best, in an illusion of authorized knowledge. Within the fictional economy of Chaucer’s works, the purification of tradition inevitably leads to hybridizations, as new poetry ultimately emerges in the construction and subsequent deconstruction of narratives from contexts, especially temporal contexts

Stürmische Zeitlichkeiten. Geschichte, Chronologie und Autorschaft in William Shakespeares "Tempest"

In diesem Working Paper soll gezeigt werden, dass William Shakespeares Tempest die Genese des Shakespeareschen Modells literarischer Autorschaft auf die Bühne bringt, indem die Konstruktion verschiedener Geschichten ausstellt wird, mit deren Hilfe das dynastische-soziale und das ästhetisch Neue in fortschrittsteleologische Erzählungen eingepasst werden. Solche Novationsgeschichten schließen auch Shakespeares Autorschaftsmodell selbst ein, das sich – unter nur scheinbarer Auslassung des Mittelalters – direkt von der Antike in die ‚Gegenwart‘ herleitet. Dabei unterlaufen die direkten Bezugnahmen auf Fragen der Zeit und die sich in Gattungssignaturen manifestierenden zeitliche Setzungen allerdings die ständig ausgestellte ‚chronologische‘ Neuheit. Das Stück stellt fortschrittsteleologische Geschichtsschreibung vor allem dadurch in Frage, dass es chronologisch-lineare Zeitverläufe lediglich über die Auflösung und Hybridisierung von Zeitlichkeiten konstruiert. Im Tempest sind es gerade die mit dem Mittelalter assoziierten Figuren, die das Projekt der Chronologie implodieren lassen; und dies in einer Weise, die zeigt, dass Chronologien und Teleologien paradoxerweise nur über ihre Dekonstruktion herzustellen sind

Psychoanalytic and cognitive-behavior therapy of chronic depression : study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Despite limited effectiveness of short-term psychotherapy for chronic depression, there is a lack of trials of long-term psychotherapy. Our study is the first to determine the effectiveness of controlled long-term psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral (CBT) treatments and to assess the effects of preferential vs. randomized assessment. Methods/design: Patients are assigned to treatment according to their preference or randomized (if they have no clear preference). Up to 80 sessions of psychodynamic or psychoanalytically oriented treatments (PAT) or up to 60 sessions of CBT are offered during the first year in the study. After the first year, PAT can be continued according to the ‘naturalistic’ usual method of treating such patients within the system of German health care (normally from 240 up to 300 sessions over two to three years). CBT therapists may extend their treatment up to 80 sessions, but focus mainly maintenance and relapse prevention. We plan to recruit a total of 240 patients (60 per arm). A total of 11 assessments are conducted throughout treatment and up to three years after initiation of treatment. The primary outcome measures are the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptoms (QIDS, independent clinician rating) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) after the first year. Discussion: We combine a naturalistic approach with randomized controlled trials(RCTs)to investigate how effectively chronic depression can be treated on an outpatient basis by the two forms of treatment reimbursed in the German healthcare system and we will determine the effects of treatment preference vs. randomization

Dimensional renormalization of Yukawa theories wia Wilsonian methods

In the 't Hooft-Veltman dimensional regularization scheme it is necessary to introduce finite counterterms to satisfy chiral Ward identities. It is a non-trivial task to evaluate these counterterms even at two loops. We suggest the use of Wilsonian exact renormalization group techniques to reduce the computation of these counterterms to simple master integrals. We illustrate this method by a detailed study of a generic Yukawa model with massless fermions at two loops.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures, revised version: minor errors corrected, a reference adde

Damaging 2D Quantum Gravity

We investigate numerically the behaviour of damage spreading in a Kauffman cellular automaton with quenched rules on a dynamical $\phi^3$ graph, which is equivalent to coupling the model to discretized 2D gravity. The model is interesting from the cellular automaton point of view as it lies midway between a fully quenched automaton with fixed rules and fixed connectivity and a (soluble) fully annealed automaton with varying rules and varying connectivity. In addition, we simulate the automaton on a fixed $\phi^3$ graph coming from a 2D gravity simulation as a means of exploring the graph geometry.Comment: 6 pages, COLO-HEP-332;LPTHE-Orsay-93-5

Literary-theoretical Transformations of Social Models

This study investigates transformations of classical antiquity oikonomia and chrematistics from the Middle Ages to the present-day.From an ancient- historical, philosophical, literary and cultural-science perspective, it reconstructs exemplary acquisitions and reinterpretations of economic knowledge. The study argues that the modern economy has benefited from transformation relationships with the oikonomia of classical antiquity, which exhibit no unambiguously economic, efficient and profit-maximising character. For this reason, in addition to actual historical aspects, our interest also includes issues relating to the poetology of economic knowledge, the metaphorology and scenaristics of the house, the theoretical, narrative and literary representation economies and the promotion of ‘economy’ to an ordering category per se

Ticagrelor, but not clopidogrel, reduces arterial thrombosis via endothelial tissue factor suppression

The P2Y12 antagonist ticagrelor reduces mortality in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), compared with clopidogrel, and the mechanisms underlying this effect are not clearly understood. Arterial thrombosis is the key event in ACS; however, direct vascular effects of either ticagrelor or clopidogrel with focus on arterial thrombosis and its key trigger tissue factor have not been previously investigated.Methods and results: Human aortic endothelial cells were treated with ticagrelor or clopidogrel active metabolite (CAM) and stimulated with tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α); effects on procoagulant tissue factor (TF) expression and activity, its counter-player TF pathway inhibitor (TFPI) and the underlying mechanisms were determined. Further, arterial thrombosis by photochemical injury of the common carotid artery, and TF expression in the murine endothelium were examined in C57BL/6 mice treated with ticagrelor or clopidogrel. Ticagrelor, but not CAM, reduced TNF-α-induced TF expression via proteasomal degradation and TF activity, independently of the P2Y12 receptor and the equilibrative nucleoside transporter 1 (ENT1), an additional target of ticagrelor. In C57BL/6 mice, ticagrelor prolonged time to arterial occlusion, compared with clopidogrel, despite comparable antiplatelet effects. In line with our in vitro results, ticagrelor, but not clopidogrel, reduced TF expression in the endothelium of murine arteries.Conclusion: Ticagrelor, unlike clopidogrel, exhibits endothelial-specific antithrombotic properties and blunts arterial thrombus formation. The additional antithrombotic properties displayed by ticagrelor may explain its greater efficacy in reducing thrombotic events in clinical trials. These findings may provide the basis for new indications for ticagrelor

Reverted exhaustion phenotype of circulating lymphocytes as immune correlate of anti-PD1 first-line treatment in Hodgkin lymphoma

While classical Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is highly susceptible to anti-programmed death protein 1 (PD1) antibodies, the exact modes of action remain controversial. To elucidate the circulating lymphocyte phenotype and systemic effects during anti-PD1 1st-line HL treatment we applied multicolor flow cytometry, FluoroSpot and NanoString to sequential samples of 81 HL patients from the NIVAHL trial (NCT03004833) compared to healthy controls. HL patients showed a decreased CD4 T-cell fraction, a higher percentage of effector-memory T cells and higher expression of activation markers at baseline. Strikingly, and in contrast to solid cancers, expression for 10 out of 16 analyzed co-inhibitory molecules on T cells (e.g., PD1, LAG3, Tim3) was higher in HL. Overall, we observed a sustained decrease of the exhausted T-cell phenotype during anti-PD1 treatment. FluoroSpot of 42.3% of patients revealed T-cell responses against ≥1 of five analyzed tumor-associated antigens. Importantly, these responses were more frequently observed in samples from patients with early excellent response to anti-PD1 therapy. In summary, an initially exhausted lymphocyte phenotype rapidly reverted during anti-PD1 1st-line treatment. The frequently observed IFN-y responses against shared tumor-associated antigens indicate T-cell-mediated cytotoxicity and could represent an important resource for immune monitoring and cellular therapy of HL

Thrombocytopenia and Acute Renal Failure in Puumala Hantavirus Infections

Low platelet counts are a novel predictive marker suitable for risk-adapted patient management

USP9X stabilizes XIAP to regulate mitotic cell death and chemoresistance in aggressive B-cell lymphoma

The mitotic spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) maintains genome stability and marks an important target for antineoplastic therapies. However, it has remained unclear how cells execute cell fate decisions under conditions of SAC‐induced mitotic arrest. Here, we identify USP9X as the mitotic deubiquitinase of the X‐linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein (XIAP) and demonstrate that deubiquitylation and stabilization of XIAP by USP9X lead to increased resistance toward mitotic spindle poisons. We find that primary human aggressive B‐cell lymphoma samples exhibit high USP9X expression that correlate with XIAP overexpression. We show that high USP9X/XIAP expression is associated with shorter event‐free survival in patients treated with spindle poison‐containing chemotherapy. Accordingly, aggressive B‐cell lymphoma lines with USP9X and associated XIAP overexpression exhibit increased chemoresistance, reversed by specific inhibition of either USP9X or XIAP. Moreover, knockdown of USP9X or XIAP significantly delays lymphoma development and increases sensitivity to spindle poisons in a murine Eμ‐Myc lymphoma model. Together, we specify the USP9X–XIAP axis as a regulator of the mitotic cell fate decision and propose that USP9X and XIAP are potential prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets in aggressive B‐cell lymphoma