Occupational Exposure to Carbon Nanotubes and Carbon Nanofibres: More Than a Cobweb

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and carbon nanofibers (CNFs) are erroneously considered as singular material entities. Instead, they should be regarded as a heterogeneous class of materials bearing different properties eliciting peculiar biological outcomes both in vitro and in vivo. Given the pace at which the industrial production of CNTs/CNFs is increasing, it is becoming of utmost importance to acquire comprehensive knowledge regarding their biological activity and their hazardous effects in humans. Animal studies carried out by inhalation showed that some CNTs/CNFs species can cause deleterious effects such as inflammation and lung tissue remodeling. Their physico-chemical properties, biological behavior and biopersistence make them similar to asbestos fibers. Human studies suggest some mild effects in workers handling CNT/CNF. However, owing to their cross-sectional design, researchers have been as yet unable to firmly demonstrate a causal relationship between such an exposure and the observed effects. Estimation of acceptable exposure levels should warrant a proper risk management. The aim of this review is to challenge the conception of CNTs/CNFs as a single, unified material entity and prompt the establishment of standardized hazard and exposure assessment methodologies able to properly feeding risk assessment and management frameworks.

Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics

The methods of statistical physics are exemplified in the classical perfect gas—each atom is a single dynamical entity. Such methods can be applied in ecology to the distribution of cosmopolitan species over many sites. The analogue of an atom is a class of species distinguished by the number of sites at which it occurs, hardly a material entity; yet, the methods of statistical physics nonetheless seem applicable. This paper compares the application of statistical mechanics to the distribution of atoms and to the vastly different problem of distribution of cosmopolitan species. A number of different approaches show that these distributed entities must be in some sense equivalent; the dynamics must be controlled by interaction between species and the global environment rather than between species and many uncorrelated local environments.

A Gramscian Study of Ideology and Hegemony in Amiri Baraka play: The Dutchman

This paper attempts to investigate significations of the tropes of whiteness and blackness in white American culture in Baraka`s play, The Dutchman. . Gramsci is concerned with how one views man in history. His point is that men determine history rather than the reverse and this history is determined by the way in which men produce their means of subsistence. Man therefore is a social and “material” entity since. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. Man’s ability to produce, the means of production, and the product produced, therefore, are central to man’s ability to be self-determined, to be real rather than an abstraction, a concept. It is in man’s reality, a reification brought about by the conscious act of production that he establishes his humanity. Marx’s humanism, therefore, is social in that man produces for more than himself; it is material in the “mode of production.” By material is not meant “psychic motivation” towards material goods. Based on the Gramsci hegemony, the black man has no history, he must create it; more importantly, since, according to Baraka, “Negro Literature” can never emerge from black consciousness unless it separates itself from the pre-established conditions, the literature must create and define itself in the process of becoming.

Territory incognita

Tracing the lineage of territorial theorization, from legal container through dialectical, strategic and rhizomatic interpretations, this paper contends that more-than-human aspects of territory have been routinely circumvented by scholars seeking to avoid its realist, imperialist intellectual past. However, with the crisis of representation in political theory precipitated by the planetary ecological crisis, territory as a material entity has sprung alive again. This paper proposes that a reinvigorated materialist approach, informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s writings on territorial assemblages as machinic, nomadic and affective, can offer a way out of the territorial trap, reclaiming nomos from its conservative, masculine heritage.

O poglądach Profesora Witolda Mańczaka na paradygmaty językoznawstwa

The paper describes Witold Mańczak’s contribution to the development of general and theoretical linguistics in the last fifty years. Against the background of his monistic notion of language as a material entity, this author presents Mańczak’s critical evaluation of the methodological apparatus of paradigms which came after the inductive historical-comparative linguistics. The analysis focuses primarily on Mańczak’s criticism of Ferdinand de Saussure’s notion of language.

Psychological Program

This paper attempts to reveal through case analysis that psychological activities are a set of programs and that the cause of mental illness is error in operation of the programs or the establishment of erroneous programs. By modifying or learning to use these psychological programs correctly, mental illness can be treated precisely and thoroughly. The complete psychotherapy process is represented by the following: psychoanalysis + modification of psychological programs.In order to perform certain tasks, life bodies need to initiate a series of psychological or physiological activities, which is the process of psychological or physiological activities called "psychological program". Psychological program is an abstract concept, and it is not a material entity. The search for psychological activity programs mainly depends on psychological analysis and scientific hypnosis.

Cultural Techniques, Media History, and the Art of Poetry: T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

This article investigates literature from the vantage point of media theory. The text I analyse and use as my example is T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, a highly philosophical and self-reflexive poem which is, however, not explicitly concerned with new media technology or the transmission, storage, and processing of information. Cultural techniques, media theory, and network theory will serve as the theoretical background against which I will flesh out the non-technological and philosophical implications of mediation as discussed and theorised in the poem itself. Thus, the main aim will be to foreground the work’s own aesthetic foundations as media theory or, more precisely, as a theory of mediation depending on a set of cultural techniques. In order to achieve this, the article looks at literature as a medium that reflects on its dependence on a material entity and on its place within a diachronic and synchronic media network.

Levels and building blocks—towards a domain granularity framework for the life sciences

The use of online data repositories and the establishment of new data standards that require data to be computer-parsable so that algorithms can reason over them have become increasingly important with the emergence of high-throughput technologies, Big Data and eScience. As a consequence, there is an increasing need for new approaches for organizing and structuring data from various sources into integrated hierarchies of levels of entities that facilitate algorithm-based approaches for data exploration, data comparison and analysis. In this paper I contrast various accounts of the level idea and resulting hierarchies published by philosophers and natural scientists with the more formal approaches of theories of granularity published by information scientists and ontology researchers. I discuss the shortcomings of the former and argue that the general theory of granularity proposed by Keet circumvents these problems and allows the integration of various different hierarchies into a domain granularity framework. I introduce the concept of general building blocks, which gives rise to a hierarchy of levels that can be formally characterized by Keet's theory. This hierarchy functions as an organizational backbone for integrating various other hierarchies that I briefly discuss, resulting in a general domain granularity framework for the life sciences. I also discuss the implicit consequences of this granularity framework for the structure of top-level categories of 'material entity' of the Basic Formal Ontology. The here suggested domain granularity framework is meant to provide the basis on which a more comprehensive information framework for the life sciences can be developed.

Levels and building blocks—towards a domain granularity framework for the life sciences

The use of online data repositories and the establishment of new data standards that require data to be computer-parsable so that algorithms can reason over them have become increasingly important with the emergence of high-throughput technologies, Big Data and eScience. As a consequence, there is an increasing need for new approaches for organizing and structuring data from various sources into integrated hierarchies of levels of entities that facilitate algorithm-based approaches for data exploration, data comparison and analysis. In this paper I contrast various accounts of the level idea and resulting hierarchies published by philosophers and natural scientists with the more formal approaches of theories of granularity published by information scientists and ontology researchers. I discuss the shortcomings of the former and argue that the general theory of granularity proposed by Keet circumvents these problems and allows the integration of various different hierarchies into a domain granularity framework. I introduce the concept of general building blocks, which gives rise to a hierarchy of levels that can be formally characterized by Keet's theory. This hierarchy functions as an organizational backbone for integrating various other hierarchies that I briefly discuss, resulting in a general domain granularity framework for the life sciences. I also discuss the implicit consequences of this granularity framework for the structure of top-level categories of 'material entity' of the Basic Formal Ontology. The here suggested domain granularity framework is meant to provide the basis on which a more comprehensive information framework for the life sciences can be developed.

Domesticating the road

The flows of remittances and artefacts are centred upon the material entity of the house. New or totally refurbished houses in Albania emerge as the major materialisation of migratory remittances in the country of origin. The Albanian houses under research are perpetually undergoing construction, while their building materials are brought gradually from Greece, most of the time by the migrants themselves and of course, via the major cross-border road - namely the Kakavijë–Gjirokastër road. The material fluidity of these houses shows their integration into the prevalent cosmology of flows while it signifies an ontological link between the house and the roads. None of the two categories has static materiality; both are inflowing from Greece and represent simultaneously a wanted and an unwanted gain of postsocialist globalised experience. Migrants’ houses and roads are two aspects of the same process but with very different perceptions.