Pharmacology

The popular trope which depicts the origin of life on earth as emerging from a ?chemical soup? continues to have an enduring hold over the imagination. Of course, whether this ?soup? was a prebiotic puddle on the surface of this third rock from the Sun, originally ?canned?, superheated and pressurised in one of its internal faults, or a kind of extraterrestrial material reheated in some way after having reached the early Earth from elsewhere in universe, may not be known for sure. Nevertheless, advances in sciences such as paleogenomics and paleohistology have shown us that at least a part of the story of the origin of life can be traced in each and every cell of our living bodies

Censuren slut/The ends of censorship

First presented at the Gothenburg Film Festival (2008), at a public event at the Atlante Cinema. A discussion of 100 years film censorship in Sweden on the occasion of the staging of a film/video installation, 'Magic Bullet', by the artist Markus Ohrn. Makes reference to Jacques Derrida's and Judith Bulter's accounts of how there can never be a total absence of censorship and discusses the history of censorship in the UK and Sweden

Probing the surface chemistry of self-assembled peptide hydrogels using solution-state NMR spectroscopy

The surface chemistry of self-assembled hydrogel fibres – their charge, hydrophobicity and ion-binding dynamics – is recognised to play an important role in determining how the gels develop as well as their suitability for different applications. However, to date there are no established methodologies for the study of this surface chemistry. Here, we demonstrate how solution-state NMR spectroscopy can be employed to measure the surface chemical properties of the fibres in a range of hydrogels formed from N-functionalised dipeptides, an effective and versatile class of gelator that has attracted much attention. By studying the interactions with the gel fibres of a diverse range of probe molecules and ions, we can simultaneously study a number of surface chemical properties of the NMR invisible fibres in an essentially non-invasive manner. Our results yield fresh insights into the materials. Most notably, gel fibres assembled using different tiggering methods bear differing amounts of negative charge as a result of a partial deprotonation of the carboxylic acid groups of the gelators. We also demonstrate how chemical shift imaging (CSI) techniques can be applied to follow the formation of hydrogels along chemical gradients. We apply CSI to study the binding of Ca2+ and subsequent gelation of peptide assemblies at alkaline pH. Using metal ion-binding molecules as probes, we are able to detect the presence of bound Ca2+ ions on the surface of the gel fibres. We briefly explore how knowledge of the surface chemical properties of hydrogels could be used to inform their practical application in fields such as drug delivery and environmental remediation

Facial masculinity:How the choice of measurement method enables to detect its influence on behaviour

Recent research has explored the relationship between facial masculinity, human male behaviour and males' perceived features (i.e. attractiveness). The methods of measurement of facial masculinity employed in the literature are quite diverse. In the present paper, we use several methods of measuring facial masculinity to study the effect of this feature on risk attitudes and trustworthiness. We employ two strategic interactions to measure these two traits, a first-price auction and a trust game. We find that facial width-to-height ratio is the best predictor of trustworthiness, and that measures of masculinity which use Geometric Morphometrics are the best suited to link masculinity and bidding behaviour. However, we observe that the link between masculinity and bidding in the first-price auction might be driven by competitiveness and not by risk aversion only. Finally, we test the relationship between facial measures of masculinity and perceived masculinity. As a conclusion, we suggest that researchers in the field should measure masculinity using one of these methods in order to obtain comparable results. We also encourage researchers to revise the existing literature on this topic following these measurement methods

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

Levinas on Ecology and Nature

Most attempts to articulate the relevance of Levinas’ philosophy to the project of rethinking nature, ecology and ‘the environment‘ in view of the perceived impending planetary crisis, focus on his key ethical concepts such as the face-to-face, transcendence, absolute alterity and Infinity. The implicit anthropocentrism of this dimension of his schema is often found to be a decisive impasse regarding the question of the ethical status of the non-human. This chapter explains why recurrent focus on the ethical relation and ‘the beyond’ should balanced by attention to his philosophy of existence; his empiricism, his analyses of individuation, immanence and Totality, in order to uncover Levinasian resources for rethinking nature, ecology the environment such that their relevance to the human/ non-human relation might be revealed. Through a reading Existents and Existence and Totality and Infinity focussing on the ‘dark side’ of the face-to-face, the chapter finds Levinas’ notion of the milieu to be the key to this possibility

The ethics of travel by Syed Manzurul Islam

Book review article of The ethics of travel: from Marco Polo to Kafka by Syed Manzurul Islam, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996, ISBN 071904119

Futural Dispatches on Responsibility for the Earth, or, ‘What on Earth Is Ethical Responsibility?’

This article explores the question of the limits of ethical responsibility in the context of the contemporary ecological crisis. Drawing centrally on a selection of writings by Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and, in the second half of the article especially, Timothy Morton, it attempts to show how the conceptualization of the Earth/environment/biosphere (tropes for the ‘ecological whole’) as an object of ethical concern is problematic and exacerbated in the context of the posthumanist critique of anthropocentrism. If a generalized anthropization of the planet represents the ‘ethical failure’ of the Earth by ‘the human’—the material mark of which is the geo-physical terraforming associated with anthropocene—who or what, might be anticipated to be able to bear, or to live-up to, the ethical responsibility for its continued survival? The article critically brings elements of the philosophy of these thinkers into conjunction to discuss how the future of life/death might be properly considered an ethical matter at all, or alternatively, as the ‘end’ of ethical responsibility. Whilst Morton appears to recognize the potential of deconstructive thinking and Levinasian ethics for ecological thought, it is argued here that his reading of these is at odds with the object-oriented ontological thinking he more stridently identifies with. This messy collision in Morton’s ecological theory is used here as a springboard to explain how a strategic reprise of a certain humanism—or theoretical human exceptionalism—might be key to appreciating how humans taking responsibility for the current ecological crisis is the condition of a futural ethical openness to the non-human

Nietzsche's future perfect and the eternal return: toward a genealogy of ideas

A discussion of Nietzsche' critique of the history of idea

Foucault's alimentary philosophy: care of the self and responsibility for the other

Discussion of several themes in Foucault' History of Sexuality, Vols.1 and 2, in partucular of the relationship between the formation of the self and the ethical realtonship to others