Conclusion

Author(s):  
Kirsten Day

This short conclusion reiterates the main thesis of Cowboy Classics: that Westerns help us grapple with identity issues in a culturally relevant way while providing the comfort of chronological distancing, much as Homer and Virgil’s epics did for their societies. As a result, the Western has proven remarkably resilient, with the past decade seeing a number of big-budget films, both originals and remakes, as well as successful TV series. And just as the characterization of epic heroes shaped notions of idealized masculinity in antiquity, the Western hero remains a pervasive model for ideal manhood in America more generally, as is evident both in other film genres – from science fiction and fantasy to detective and gangster films to post-apocalyptic narratives – and in real world scenarios where men are engaged in heroic action on behalf of society (or want to be seen as such). Indeed, the model of masculinity Westerns provide is so deeply ingrained in the American cultural consciousness that it in turn colors our reception of ancient epic, which is itself now often filtered through a “Western” lens.

Author(s):  
Marcin Kowalczyk

The article shows the growing interest of science fiction cinema in the human brain and related concepts, such as mind or consciousness. Nowadays, when distant space travel seems unreachable, artists find the exploration potential of the brain very promising. Thus, the main thesis of this analysis says that the brain has become for science fiction cinema the new universe. An excellent example of this paradigm shift is Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010). In the movie, the mind is depicted as a physical and accessible place, where we can find a lot of mysteries to solve. The characters travel to the deepest parts of subconsciousness because the processes inside the brain are the key to understanding and changing the real world. The article also shows how the director uses the achievements of science fiction cinema and, at the same time, that he postulates a new way of considering the issues relevant to modern neuroscience.


Author(s):  
R. E. Herfert

Studies of the nature of a surface, either metallic or nonmetallic, in the past, have been limited to the instrumentation available for these measurements. In the past, optical microscopy, replica transmission electron microscopy, electron or X-ray diffraction and optical or X-ray spectroscopy have provided the means of surface characterization. Actually, some of these techniques are not purely surface; the depth of penetration may be a few thousands of an inch. Within the last five years, instrumentation has been made available which now makes it practical for use to study the outer few 100A of layers and characterize it completely from a chemical, physical, and crystallographic standpoint. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) provides a means of viewing the surface of a material in situ to magnifications as high as 250,000X.


Author(s):  
Sarah Lloyd

This chapter explores what we can know about the conceptualization and representation of by poorer Britons. It draws on ‘pauper letters’ to parish authorities, written tactically, and on autobiographies and letters composed by the relatively poor, noting echoes of the characterization of happiness by elite social commentators. It draws attention to a growing interest (linked to the development of the concept of nostalgia) in the emotional charge that could be derived from reflection on emotional experience as people contrasted past happiness with present misery, or vice versa. While reading such accounts may lead us to think that we are penetrating the interior lives of marginal people in the past, Lloyd suggests that our response is probably coloured by the fact that we are heirs to these ways of conceptualizing and representing experience. We need to work harder to glean insight from earlier ways of representing happiness and suffering.


Author(s):  
Michael C. Rea

This chapter provides a detailed characterization of the various meanings of the term “divine hiddenness,” carefully and rigorously articulates the version of the problem of divine hiddenness that has dominated contemporary philosophical discussion for the past twenty-five years, and then explains the relationship between that problem and the problem of evil.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (18) ◽  
pp. 6623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Bienz ◽  
Salima Ramdani ◽  
Hans Knecht

Our understanding of the tumorigenesis of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) and the formation of Reed–Sternberg cells (RS-cells) has evolved drastically in the last decades. More recently, a better characterization of the signaling pathways and the cellular interactions at play have paved the way for new targeted therapy in the hopes of improving outcomes. However, important gaps in knowledge remain that may hold the key for significant changes of paradigm in this lymphoma. Here, we discuss the past, present, and future of cHL, and review in detail the more recent discoveries pertaining to genetic instability, anti-apoptotic signaling pathways, the tumoral microenvironment, and host-immune system evasion in cHL.


Author(s):  
Kathleen Kerrigan ◽  
Xuechen Wang ◽  
Benjamin Haaland ◽  
Blythe Adamson ◽  
Shiven Patel ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-300
Author(s):  
Zhenyu Gao ◽  
Yixing Li ◽  
Zhengxin Wang

AbstractThe recently concluded 2019 World Swimming Championships was another major swimming competition that witnessed some great progresses achieved by human athletes in many events. However, some world records created 10 years ago back in the era of high-tech swimsuits remained untouched. With the advancements in technical skills and training methods in the past decade, the inability to break those world records is a strong indication that records with the swimsuit bonus cannot reflect the real progressions achieved by human athletes in history. Many swimming professionals and enthusiasts are eager to know a measure of the real world records had the high-tech swimsuits never been allowed. This paper attempts to restore the real world records in Men’s swimming without high-tech swimsuits by integrating various advanced methods in probabilistic modeling and optimization. Through the modeling and separation of swimsuit bias, natural improvement, and athletes’ intrinsic performance, the result of this paper provides the optimal estimates and the 95% confidence intervals for the real world records. The proposed methodology can also be applied to a variety of similar studies with multi-factor considerations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 2680
Author(s):  
Søren Skaarup Larsen ◽  
Anna B. O. Jensen ◽  
Daniel H. Olesen

GNSS signals arriving at receivers at the surface of the Earth are weak and easily susceptible to interference and jamming. In this paper, the impact of jamming on the reference station in carrier phase-based relative baseline solutions is examined. Several scenarios are investigated in order to assess the robustness of carrier phase-based positioning towards jamming. Among others, these scenarios include a varying baseline length, the use of single- versus dual-frequency observations, and the inclusion of the Galileo and GLONASS constellations to a GPS only solution. The investigations are based on observations recorded at physical reference stations in the Danish TAPAS network during actual jamming incidents, in order to realistically evaluate the impact of real-world jamming on carrier phase-based positioning accuracy. The analyses performed show that, while there are benefits of using observations from several frequencies and constellations in positioning solutions, special care must be taken in solution processing. The selection of which GNSS constellations and observations to include, as well as when they are included, is essential, as blindly adding more jamming-affected observations may lead to worse positioning accuracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (24) ◽  
pp. 9777
Author(s):  
Camille Le Guilcher ◽  
Tomas Luyten ◽  
Jan B. Parys ◽  
Mathieu Pucheault ◽  
Olivier Dellis

The store-operated calcium entry, better known as SOCE, forms the main Ca2+ influx pathway in non-excitable cells, especially in leukocytes, where it is required for cell activation and the immune response. During the past decades, several inhibitors were developed, but they lack specificity or efficacy. From the non-specific SOCE inhibitor 2-aminoethyl diphenylborinate (2-APB), we synthetized 16 new analogues by replacing/modifying the phenyl groups. Among them, our compound P11 showed the best inhibitory capacity with a Ki ≈ 75 nM. Furthermore, below 1 µM, P11 was devoid of any inhibitory activity on the two other main cellular targets of 2-APB, the IP3 receptors, and the SERCA pumps. Interestingly, Jurkat T cells secrete interleukin-2 under phytohemagglutinin stimulation but undergo cell death and stop IL-2 synthesis when stimulated in the presence of increasing P11 concentrations. Thus, P11 could represent the first member of a new and potent family of immunosuppressors.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Jin ◽  
Nerea Bilbao ◽  
Yang Lv ◽  
Xiao-Ye Wang ◽  
Soltani Paniz ◽  
...  

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), quasi-one-dimensional strips of graphene, exhibit a nonzero bandgap due to quantum confinement and edge effects. In the past decade, different types of GNRs with atomically precise structures...


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document