The Unnatural World: Animals and Morality Tales in Hayashi Razan\u27s Kaidan Zensho

Kaidan is a genre of supernatural tales that became popular during Japan’s Edo period. In 1627, Hayashi Razan translated numerous supernatural tales from China and collected them in five volumes in a work known as Kaidan zensho, the “Complete Collection of Strange Works.” Hayashi Razan was an influential Neo-Confucian scholar and was instrumental in establishing Neo-Confucianism as a dominant ideological force in Tokugawa Japan. As his teachings and stories reached a wide audience, and the government was supportive of Neo-Confucian ideas in Japan, his Kaidan tales, which contained subtle didactic elements, enjoyed success. However, Kaidan zensho was never translated into English. Many of the tales within the Kaidan zensho expressed didactic messages by using supernatural depictions of animals as narrative devices. The animals usually were caricatures of a person or group, and were furthermore depicted in a negative fashion. These animals were shown to be unable to act in a moral manner, so their purpose in these tales was to highlight the moral decisions made on the part of the stories’ protagonists. Chapter one of this thesis introduces the kaidan genre, provides context for 17th century Japan, and how Neo-Confucianism influenced Tokugawa government and culture. Chapter two analyzes the Kaidan zensho tales for their use of animals, grouping the stories by theme – benevolence, ingratitude, fear of women, and impermanence. It explains what the animals represent and how they highlight the moral of the story. Chapter three is my original translation of fifteen tales focusing on animals found in Kaidan zensho, with notes to provide context to the stories

A new hazelnut development program in the Lake States

Paper presented at the 12th North American Agroforesty Conference, which was held June 4-9, 2011 in Athens, Georgia.In Ashton, S. F., S.W. Workman, W.G. Hubbard and D.J. Moorhead, eds. Agroforestry: A Profitable Land Use. Proceedings, 12th North American Agroforestry Conference, Athens, GA, June 4-9, 2011.Hazelnut is an intriguing new crop for the Lake States, suited for use as an oilseed and as an edible nut. Several researchers and hobby breeders have attempted to develop this crop for the Lake States with some current small-scale commercial adoption; however, the crop is still in its infancy. A group of researchers, extension specialists and growers are assisting in the development of a hazelnut industry in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Activities include 1) aiding farmers in selecting plant material from existing plantings of seed origin hybrids for their use or broader adoption, 2) screening wild American hazelnut for high-performing plantsfor use by breeders or as potential crop plants, 3) developing clonal propagation methods and 4) providing outreach activities to those currently growing and those interested in growing hazelnuts. We plan to discuss our results to date emphasizing clonal propagation research and the protocols and results of the schreening program for wild American hazelnuts.Mike Demchik (1), Brent McCown (2), Jason Fischbach (3), Anthony Kern (4) and Eric Zeldin (5) ; 1. College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. 2. Horticulture, University of Wisconsin Madison. 3. University of Wisconsin Extension. 4. Northland College. 5. University of Wisconsin.Includes bibliographical references

Update on hazelnut development program in the Lake States

Paper presented at the 13th North American Agroforesty Conference, which was held June 19-21, 2013 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.In Poppy, L., Kort, J., Schroeder, B., Pollock, T., and Soolanayakanahally, R., eds. Agroforestry: Innovations in Agriculture. Proceedings, 13th North American Agroforestry Conference, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 19-21, 2013.Hazelnut (Corylus spp.) is a potential nut crop for the Lake States. In the past, researchers and hobbyists have hybridized American and European hazelnut in an effort to develop a cold hardy, disease resistant hybrid hazelnut. There are relatively few varieties available and most plantings are currently seed origin. For pure American hazelnut, there are nearly no available varieties (at this point we know of two). Our goals are to: select high productivity wild hazelnuts, successfully pilot one or more propagation protocols and field test the selected genotypes. A group representing a diversity of disciplines and Upper Midwest States has been selecting American hazelnut from wild populations in Northern Wisconsin for use as parents in controlled crosses as well as potential clonal planting stock. To date, we have screened 35 sites across 10 WI Counties and have selected more than 30 individuals that meet 1% selection criteria on kernel yield per square foot. We are currently micropropagating these individuals for evaluation in replicated germplasm trials. We have also successfully tested mound layering protocols. This is an intermediate general report and specific results will be reported as they become available.Mike Demchik (1), Jason Fischbach (2), Brent McCown (3), Eric Zeldin (3) and Tony Kern (4) ; 1. University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, 800 Reserve Street, Stevens Point, WI, 54481 USA. 2. University of Wisconsin Extension, 117 East 5th St, Washburn, WI, 54891 USA. 3. Department of Horticulture, 1575 Linden Drive, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706 USA. 4. Department Chair of Biology and Chemistry, 1501 Morningside Avenue, Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa 51106, USA.Includes bibliographical references

New Experimental Limits on Macroscopic Forces Below 100 Microns

Results of an experimental search for new macroscopic forces with Yukawa range between 5 and 500 microns are presented. The experiment uses 1 kHz mechanical oscillators as test masses with a stiff conducting shield between them to suppress backgrounds. No signal is observed above the instrumental thermal noise after 22 hours of integration time. These results provide the strongest limits to date between 10 and 100 microns, improve on previous limits by as much as three orders of magnitude, and rule out half of the remaining parameter space for predictions of string-inspired models with low-energy supersymmetry breaking. New forces of four times gravitational strength or greater are excluded at the 95% confidence level for interaction ranges between 200 and 500 microns.Comment: 25 Pages, 7 Figures: Minor Correction

Widespread Occurrence of Secondary Lipid Biosynthesis Potential in Microbial Lineages

Bacterial production of long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 22:6n-3), is constrained to a narrow subset of marine γ-proteobacteria. The genes responsible for de novo bacterial PUFA biosynthesis, designated pfaEABCD, encode large, multi-domain protein complexes akin to type I iterative fatty acid and polyketide synthases, herein referred to as “Pfa synthases”. In addition to the archetypal Pfa synthase gene products from marine bacteria, we have identified homologous type I FAS/PKS gene clusters in diverse microbial lineages spanning 45 genera representing 10 phyla, presumed to be involved in long-chain fatty acid biosynthesis. In total, 20 distinct types of gene clusters were identified. Collectively, we propose the designation of “secondary lipids” to describe these biosynthetic pathways and products, a proposition consistent with the “secondary metabolite” vernacular. Phylogenomic analysis reveals a high degree of functional conservation within distinct biosynthetic pathways. Incongruence between secondary lipid synthase functional clades and taxonomic group membership combined with the lack of orthologous gene clusters in closely related strains suggests horizontal gene transfer has contributed to the dissemination of specialized lipid biosynthetic activities across disparate microbial lineages

Neural Action Fields for Optic Flow Based Navigation: A Simulation Study of the Fly Lobula Plate Network

Optic flow based navigation is a fundamental way of visual course control described in many different species including man. In the fly, an essential part of optic flow analysis is performed in the lobula plate, a retinotopic map of motion in the environment. There, the so-called lobula plate tangential cells possess large receptive fields with different preferred directions in different parts of the visual field. Previous studies demonstrated an extensive connectivity between different tangential cells, providing, in principle, the structural basis for their large and complex receptive fields. We present a network simulation of the tangential cells, comprising most of the neurons studied so far (22 on each hemisphere) with all the known connectivity between them. On their dendrite, model neurons receive input from a retinotopic array of Reichardt-type motion detectors. Model neurons exhibit receptive fields much like their natural counterparts, demonstrating that the connectivity between the lobula plate tangential cells indeed can account for their complex receptive field structure. We describe the tuning of a model neuron to particular types of ego-motion (rotation as well as translation around/along a given body axis) by its ‘action field’. As we show for model neurons of the vertical system (VS-cells), each of them displays a different type of action field, i.e., responds maximally when the fly is rotating around a particular body axis. However, the tuning width of the rotational action fields is relatively broad, comparable to the one with dendritic input only. The additional intra-lobula-plate connectivity mainly reduces their translational action field amplitude, i.e., their sensitivity to translational movements along any body axis of the fly

The Natural Product Domain Seeker NaPDoS: A Phylogeny Based Bioinformatic Tool to Classify Secondary Metabolite Gene Diversity

New bioinformatic tools are needed to analyze the growing volume of DNA sequence data. This is especially true in the case of secondary metabolite biosynthesis, where the highly repetitive nature of the associated genes creates major challenges for accurate sequence assembly and analysis. Here we introduce the web tool Natural Product Domain Seeker (NaPDoS), which provides an automated method to assess the secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene diversity and novelty of strains or environments. NaPDoS analyses are based on the phylogenetic relationships of sequence tags derived from polyketide synthase (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) genes, respectively. The sequence tags correspond to PKS-derived ketosynthase domains and NRPS-derived condensation domains and are compared to an internal database of experimentally characterized biosynthetic genes. NaPDoS provides a rapid mechanism to extract and classify ketosynthase and condensation domains from PCR products, genomes, and metagenomic datasets. Close database matches provide a mechanism to infer the generalized structures of secondary metabolites while new phylogenetic lineages provide targets for the discovery of new enzyme architectures or mechanisms of secondary metabolite assembly. Here we outline the main features of NaPDoS and test it on four draft genome sequences and two metagenomic datasets. The results provide a rapid method to assess secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene diversity and richness in organisms or environments and a mechanism to identify genes that may be associated with uncharacterized biochemistry

Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene cluster

A wide variety of enzymatic pathways that produce specialized metabolites in bacteria, fungi and plants are known to be encoded in biosynthetic gene clusters. Information about these clusters, pathways and metabolites is currently dispersed throughout the literature, making it difficult to exploit. To facilitate consistent and systematic deposition and retrieval of data on biosynthetic gene clusters, we propose the Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene cluster (MIBiG) data standard.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog

Inside Out; Uchi and Soto in Taksahi Yabe\u27s Saori-chan\u27s House

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

Histoires et définitions de la philosophie sociale

Numéro de : "Recherches sur la philosophie et le langage", ISSN 0754-331X, n°28, 2012International audienceno abstrac