Mountain Men

This is a piece of fiction about love, drugs, death, and giants in no particular order. Todd and Heather, a young couple a year or two out of college, are camping in the woods and smoking a good deal of weed when the mountain they\u27ve pitched their tent on stands up and begins laying waste to the countryside. While the stoners are trapped on the body of the colossus and forced to work through some relationship issues and possible head trauma, an elderly widower and his dog on the forest floor have their home remodeled by a giant\u27s foot

The Permeability of Network Boundaries: Strategic Alliances in the Japanese Electronics Industry in the 1990s

This paper looks at the choice of strategic partners for alliance formation in the Japanese electronics industry during the post-bubble economic period 1992-97. Results from a dyad analysis of 128 companies suggest that firms tend to look for partners within their existing vertical keiretsu networks of organizations for alliances that target the creation of resources that build on existing knowledge (production or distribution) but that this common keiretsu effect disappears for alliances that involve new knowledge creation (new product or technology development). The role of corporate networks, environmental uncertainty and their implications for our understanding of strategic alliance formation and the dynamics of social networks are discussed.

The effect of immigrants on natives' incomes through the use of capital / BEBR No.878

Includes bibliographical references (p. 19)

Memory as torchlight: Frederick Douglass and public memories of the Haitian Revolution

The following explores how Frederick Douglass and others used public memories of the Haitian Revolution during the nineteenth century

Kant, infinity and his first antinomy

Kant's antinomies are exercises designed to illustrate the limits of human reasoning. He skillfully juxtaposes pairs of arguments and exposes the dangerous propensity for human reasoning to stretch beyond the conditioned and into the transcendental ideas of the unconditional. Kant believes this is a natural process and affirms the limits of pure reason in so much as they should prevent us from believing that we can truly know anything about the unconditional. His first antimony addresses the possibility of a beginning in time or no beginning in time. This thesis will focus on this first antinomy and critically assesses it in set theoretic terms. It is this author's belief that the mathematical nuances of infinite sets and the understanding of mathematical objects bear relevance to the proper interpretation of this antinomy. Ultimately, this composition will illustrate that Kant's argument in the first antinomy is flawed because it fails to account for infinite bounded sets and a conceptualization of the infinite as a mathematical object of reason

TSPO ligands promote cholesterol efflux and suppress oxidative stress and inflammation in choroidal endothelial cells

Choroidal endothelial cells supply oxygen and nutrients to retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells and photoreceptors, recycle metabolites, and dispose of metabolic waste through the choroidal blood circulation. Death of the endothelial cells of the choroid may cause abnormal deposits including unesterified and esterified cholesterol beneath RPE cells and within Bruch’s membrane that contribute to the progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most prevalent cause of blindness in older people. Translocator protein (TSPO) is a cholesterol-binding protein that is involved in mitochondrial cholesterol transport and other cellular functions. We have investigated the role of TSPO in choroidal endothelial cells. Immunocytochemistry showed that TSPO was localized to the mitochondria of choroidal endothelial cells. Choroidal endothelial cells exposed to TSPO ligands (Etifoxine or XBD-173) had significantly increased cholesterol efflux, higher expression of cholesterol homeostasis genes (LXRα, CYP27A1, CYP46A1, ABCA1 and ABCG1), and reduced biosynthesis of cholesterol and phospholipids from [14C]acetate, when compared to untreated controls. Treatment with TSPO ligands also resulted in reduced production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), increased antioxidant capacity, and reduced release of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α and VEGF) induced by oxidized LDL. These data suggest TSPO ligands may offer promise for the treatment of AMD

RECONSIDERING MORAL PERCEPTION: THE DIALECTICAL EMERGENCE OF MORAL PERCEPTUAL CONTENTS DURING EXPERIENCE VIA COGNITIVE PENETRATION AND OPPRESSIVE SOCIALIZATION’S SUPPRESSION OF OUR ABILITY TO ‘SEE’ MORAL REASONS FOR HUMANIZATION AND LIBERATION

Moral perceptions occur when a subject makes an immediate discernment about the moral features of an occurrent experience. This project taxonomizes theories of moral perception into the following two camps: experientialism and judgementalism. I defend a version of experientialism, Moral Perceptual Orientation, by arguing that we, in addition to making moral judgments, have genuine perceptions with moral content during occurrent experience. I then go on to advance a framework for understanding how these perceptions are curated by our background beliefs by developing a view of dialectical consciousness. I do this by synthesizing Herbert Marcuse’s perspective on the epistemic subject with the Phenomenological division of Feminist Affect theory using Buddhist (Mahāyānan) moral psychology to account for the formation of those background beliefs, habits of thought, and affects which shape our moral perceptions. Lastly, I argue that oppressive modes of socialization can curate our moral perceptions by reproducing moral ignorance. This, in turn, perpetuates a form of moral blindness to moral reasons during occurrent experience, something which is a defining feature of our epistemic lives wherever domination and brutalization are valued, personally or structurally, over liberation and humanization

FASN Negatively Regulates NF-kB/P65 Expression in Breast Cancer Cells by Disrupting Its Stability

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)The overexpression of the multi-domain enzyme fatty acid synthase (FASN) has long been associated with poor clinical prognosis and treatment outcome in various cancers. Previous research in the Zhang lab has determined a role for FASN in mediating increases in non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) DNA double-strand break repair activity allowing for increased cancer cell survival, and this mechanism was found to involve inhibition of NF-kB/p65. The mechanism responsible for the regulation of NF-kB/p65 by FASN in cancer cells, however, remains unknown. To this end, I was able to determine that FASN negatively regulates both the expression and activity of NF-kB/p65 in breast cancer cells, and that this effect was likely mediated by the 16-carbon saturated fatty acid palmitate, the end product of FASN catalytic activity. Specifically, FASN was found to negatively regulate p65 expression by disrupting its protein stability as a result of an increase in poly-ubiquitination of p65 protein and subsequent proteasomal degradation. Further, I found that the phosphorylation site Thr254 of p65 is involved in the regulation of p65 protein stability by FASN, in that mutation of this residue resulted in a disruption in p65 stability. Finally, I was able to determine that FASN likely inhibits the ability of the peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase Pin1 to assist in maintaining p65 stability, in that both siRNA knockdown and pharmacological inhibition of Pin1 resulted in a reduction of p65 expression in FASN shRNA knockdown cells. The determination of this signaling mechanism serves to expand our understanding of the role of FASN in breast cancer cells and has the potential to assist in uncovering more effective ways to target the oncogenic FASN pathway to kill breast tumor cells and to overcome resistance to drug treatment

Strategic Alliances in the Japanese Economy: Types, Critiques, Embeddedness, and Change

This paper provides an overview and interpretive analysis of the Japanese strategic alliance process. Both international and domestic alliances are considered, although the emphasis is on domestic partnerships. I argue that the domestic Japanese economy is "underallianced" relative to Japanese firms' extensive involvement in partnerships with foreign firms. This is particularly true if government-sponsored consortia and keiretsu-based tie-ups are excluded. Japanese companies appear, for a variety of institutional and cultural reasons, to have had some difficulty partnering with strangers and competitors and that has led to the formation of fewer synergistic and otherwise constructive intra-country cooperation arrangements than corporate Japan arguably needs. That pattern is changing, however, and there is evidence that the rate of intra-country alliances among Japanese firms is accelerating, particularly when the focus of the alliance is technology and innovation.