Nonhuman

The taranta-the central symbol of the mythical-ritual complex of tarantism, in Apulia, Southern Italy-had the power to motivate and influence local representations of suffering, healing practices, the imaginary, social life and the relationship of the peasants to their land. Through an analysis of the behaviour of the two spiders that occupy a prominent role in tarantism, the relationship of the peasants with the land they inhabited and a re-reading of ethnographical accounts about some aspects of the mythical-ritual complex of tarantism, I propose that the power of taranta resides in its ambiguity, in its ability to establish connections between the natural, human and spiritual worlds and the physiological, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of the human being. Crossing ethnographical data with an analysis of the behaviour of the two spiders in tarantism, I also propose an explanation for the prominence of Lycosa Tarantula over the Latrodectus Tredecim Guttatus in tarantism, although the second spider has a much more poisonous sting which produces many of the symptoms attributed to the taranta.

This essay studies the source code of an artwork from a software studies perspective. By examining code that come close to the approach of critical code studies (Marino, 2006), I trace the network artwork, Pupufu (Lin, 2009) to understand various real-time approaches to social media platforms (MSN, Twitter and Facebook). The focus is not to investigate the functionalities and efficiencies of the code, but to study and interpret the program level of code in order to trace the use of various technological methods such as third-party libraries and platforms’ interfaces. These are important to understand the socio-technical side of a changing network environment. Through the study of code, including but not limited to source code, technical specifications and other materials in relation to the artwork production, I would like to explore the materiality of code that goes beyond technical implementation, and to consider the things that have been inscribed in the level of code socially. I argue that examining code is a way to understand socio-technical relations.

Keywords: Code; software; socio-technical; non-human

Zoological consultants in Western Australia survey northern quolls (a small, cat-like marsupial) for environmental impact assessment. Confronted by habitat destruction and on the verge of extinction, northern quolls are protected as a conservation significant species, yet their precarious ecological position is made visible only through zoological work. This article explores how consultative zoologists negotiate relationships between themselves and northern quolls in order to both craft detailed population studies and mobilise the species’ power to reframe human development. Traversing environmental legislation, zoologists nurture (rather than take for granted) quoll relations, manifesting an attentiveness that entangles the animal in fact-making and modes of environmental protection. Drawing from a growing compendium of multispecies scholarship, this article questions how attentiveness can bring new entanglements into being, and how these entanglements can be managed in order to both make sense of the world and level the playing field for those nonhumans who inhabit it.

I interrogate whether a historically located violence on the body of the gendered subaltern can be made ethically legible (specifically, I read a moment of sudden textual transgression, as a certain archival mark that can be called ‘non-human’ overflows the disciplinary contours of a feminist historiography of the ‘sati debate’), where no normative or institutional frame can provide any clear or unbiased account. I justapose this reading with certain 'insecting' moments in the work of Jacques Derrida.

Nimesulide is a poorly soluble drug, the rate of its oral absorption is often controlled by the dissolution rate in the gastrointestinal tract. There are several techniques to enhance the dissolution of poorly soluble drugs. Among them the technique of liquisolid compacts which is a promising one. The liquisolid compacts were prepared using 20 mg nimesulide, Avicel PH102 as a carrier, and Aerosil 200 as a coating material in a ratio of 20:1, as well as AC-DI-SOL as a disintegrant in a concentration of 5% from the total weight of the compact. The liquids used include PEG400, PG, and a mixture of these solvents with Tween 80. From the results obtained it is concluded that the suitable loading factor (L f) is 0.2 which gave good flowability and compressibility. Friability, hardness, disintegration time and the dissolution rate were carried out. All the liquisolid compacts showed higher dissolution rate than the conventional tablets. The liquisolid compacts containing the PEG400 showed the highest dissolution rate than the other preparations. The effect of different concentrations of drug on the dissolution rate was studied, and it was observed that 20% of drug gave the maximum dissolution rate, and no significant increase of the dissolution rate with increasing the drug concentration. Conventional tablets and liquisolid compacts containing PG and PEG400 were tested for their anti-inflammatory effects using paw oedema test. liquisolid compacts exhibited a pronounced inhibition of swelling than that of conventional tablets. In conclusion liquisolid compact of nimesulide can be used as a technique to improve the dissolution rate and the antiinflammatory effect of nimesulide.

http://repository.ksu.edu.sa/jspui/handle/123456789/18694

Urease (EC 3.5.1.5) was covalently attached through glutaraldehyde to partially hydrolysed nylon 6/6 tubes. The highest activity of immobilized enzyme was obtained at 65°C and pH 6.5, while the optimum temperature for free urease was found to be 25°C. Immobilized urease showed an improved thermal stability in comparison to free urease. It retained 76% of the original activity after 60 days when stored at 4°C and 78% of the activity after 5 repeated uses.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004490050381

An isolate, designated SPSPC-11, with an optimum growth temperature of about 50 °C and an optimum pH for growth between 7.5 and 8.0, was recovered from a hot spring in central Portugal. Based on phylogenetic analysis of its 16S rRNA sequence, the new organism is most closely related to the species of the genus Thermonema but with a pairwise sequence similarity of <85 %. The isolate was orange-pigmented, formed non-motile long filaments and rod-shaped cells that stain Gram-negative. The organism was strictly aerobic, oxidase-positive and catalase-positive. The major fatty acids were iso-C15:0, iso-C15 : 0 2-OH and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH. The major polar lipids were one aminophospholipid, two aminolipids and three unidentified lipids. Menaquinone 7 was the major respiratory quinone. The DNA G+C content of strain SPSPC-11 was 37.6 mol% (draft genome sequence). The high quality draft genome sequence corroborated many of the phenotypic characteristics of strain SPSPC-11. Based on genotypic,...

One of the most crucial features of new materialism is its critical stance towards the philosophies of linguistic or poststructuralist turn. It argues that too much emphasis on language has pushed the question of matter and materiality into oblivion, and by ascribing agential role to language it has foreclosed any possibility of approaching matter’s autopoietic capabilities. Since language has historically been thought to be the privileged domain of anthropos, new materialist thought is by right non-anthropocentric. But despite their claims to the contrary, it often appears that a significant section of new materialist scholarship finds itself mired into the humanist paradigm. This article is divided into two segments. The first segment explores how the nonhumanism that new materialist theses espouses functions through an additive approach that subscribes to metaphysical notions of human and nonhuman, leaving the constitution of these categories intact. The second part takes up the ...

An isolate, designated SPSPC-11, with an optimum growth temperature of about 50 °C and an optimum pH for growth between 7.5 and 8.0, was recovered from a hot spring in central Portugal. Based on phylogenetic analysis of its 16S rRNA sequence, the new organism is most closely related to the species of the genus Thermonema but with a pairwise sequence similarity of <85 %. The isolate was orange-pigmented, formed non-motile long filaments and rod-shaped cells that stain Gram-negative. The organism was strictly aerobic, oxidase-positive and catalase-positive. The major fatty acids were iso-C15:0, iso-C15 : 0 2-OH and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH. The major polar lipids were one aminophospholipid, two aminolipids and three unidentified lipids. Menaquinone 7 was the major respiratory quinone. The DNA G+C content of strain SPSPC-11 was 37.6 mol% (draft genome sequence). The high quality draft genome sequence corroborated many of the phenotypic characteristics of strain SPSPC-11. Based on genotypic,...

The present study aims to evaluate the serum level of copper (Cu) in lambs suffering from subclinical forms of white muscle disease (WMD) and its relationship with cardiac troponin I (cTn-I) as a novel biomarker of cardiovascular disorders. Ten milliliters of jugular blood were taken from 200 lambs less than one year old to measure serum concentrations of Cu, selenium (Se), and cTn-I. The subjects were divided into 2 groups, namely, the deficient group which included 36 lambs, and the control group which included 164 lambs according to the reference serum Se concentration (50 ng/mL). Serum Se levels in the deficient group were lower than 50 ng/mL. By contrast, the control group showed Se levels higher than 50 ng/mL. Differences among the serum Cu and cTn-I levels were determined in both groups. The mean ±SD and median of serum Cu and cTn-I levels in the deficient group were lower and higher than those in the control group, respectively. A significant positive correlation was observed between serum Cu and Se levels, and also serum Cu and Se levels showed a negative correlation with serum cTn-I concentrations. Stepwise linear regression analysis showed that serum Cu levels were correlated positively with serum Se levels (p<0.05). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis indicated that the area under curve (AUC) of Cu was significantly higher than that of cTn-I based on the reference diagonal line. It is important to keep in mind that the value of AUC for the ROC curve is between 0.5 and 1.00, in which the lowest accuracy is related to the reference diagonal line with AUC of 0.5. A cut-off was determined to indicate which Cu level can discriminate between affected and healthy lambs. The cut-off level, sensitivity, and specificity of Cu in this study were 144.5 ng/mL, 74%, and 61%, respectively. © 2013 Ataollahi et al.

http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0056163&representation=PDF 
dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0056163.g002

Morphological studies of live connective tissue cells are imperative to helping understand cellular responses to mechanical stimuli. However, photobleaching is a constant problem to accurate and reliable live cell fluorescent imaging, and various image thresholding methods have been adopted to account for photobleaching effects. Previous studies showed that dual photon excitation (DPE) techniques are superior over conventional one photon excitation (OPE) confocal techniques in minimizing photobleaching. In this study, we investigated the effects of photobleaching resulting from OPE and DPE on morphology of in situ articular cartilage chondrocytes across repeat laser exposures. Additionally, we compared the effectiveness of three commonly-used image thresholding methods in accounting for photobleaching effects, with and without tissue loading through compression. In general, photobleaching leads to an apparent volume reduction for subsequent image scans. Performing seven consecutive scans of chondrocytes in unloaded cartilage, we found that the apparent cell volume loss caused by DPE microscopy is much smaller than that observed using OPE microscopy. Applying scan-specific image thresholds did not prevent the photobleaching-induced volume loss, and volume reductions were non-uniform over the seven repeat scans. During cartilage loading through compression, cell fluorescence increased and, depending on the thresholding method used, led to different volume changes. Therefore, different conclusions on cell volume changes may be drawn during tissue compression, depending on the image thresholding methods used. In conclusion, our findings confirm that photobleaching directly affects cell morphology measurements, and that DPE causes less photobleaching artifacts than OPE for uncompressed cells. When cells are compressed during tissue loading, a complicated interplay between photobleaching effects and compression-induced fluorescence increase may lead to interpretations in cell responses to mechanical stimuli that depend on the microscopic approach and the thresholding methods used and may result in contradictory interpretations. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23849134
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021929013002716

In the northern coastal and jungle areas of Peru, cocoa beans are dried using artisan methods, such as direct exposure to sunlight. This traditional process is time intensive, leading to a reduction in productivity and, therefore, delays in delivery times. The present study was intended to numerically characterise the thermal behaviour of three configurations of solar air heating collectors in order to determine which demonstrated the best thermal performance under several controlled operating conditions. For this purpose, a computational fluid dynamics model was developed to describe the simultaneous convective and radiative heat transfer phenomena under several operation conditions. The constructed computational fluid dynamics model was firstly validated through comparison with the data measurements of a one-step solar air heating collector. We then simulated two further three-step solar air heating collectors in order to identify which demonstrated the best thermal performance in...

In the northern coastal and jungle areas of Peru, cocoa beans are dried using artisan methods, such as direct exposure to sunlight. This traditional process is time intensive, leading to a reduction in productivity and, therefore, delays in delivery times. The present study was intended to numerically characterise the thermal behaviour of three configurations of solar air heating collectors in order to determine which demonstrated the best thermal performance under several controlled operating conditions. For this purpose, a computational fluid dynamics model was developed to describe the simultaneous convective and radiative heat transfer phenomena under several operation conditions. The constructed computational fluid dynamics model was firstly validated through comparison with the data measurements of a one-step solar air heating collector. We then simulated two further three-step solar air heating collectors in order to identify which demonstrated the best thermal performance in...

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the field of 'art-science' collaborations for their perceived capacity to develop new cultural understandings of technology and science. In this article, and through an engagement with the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, I argue that if art-science represents an important site for the formation of an alternate technical culture today, then it is because of the new technical mentalities that such practices might cultivate. Here, creating a new technical mentality is more than just a representational concern with enhancing 'public awareness' of technology, instead referring to more material transformations in our embodied capacities for perceiving and affectively engaging with technologies. I flesh this potential out through an encounter with work of Art Orienté objet, whose art-science collaborations challenge the anthropocentric and utilitarian mentalities of contemporary bioscience through explorations of the transindividual conditions of human embodiment and its material immersion within nonhuman ecologies.

This paper applies actor–network theory (ANT) to study the non-human agents that participate in the translation and publication process of Monkey, an English translation of the Chinese classic Xi You Ji. The materials used consist mainly of the letters exchanged between the publisher George Allen & Unwin, the translator Arthur Waley, and the jacket and title page designer Duncan Grant. Moreover, the “Preface” of the translation written by the translator himself and the publisher’s autobiography are referenced as additional sources of information. The research reveals two groups of entities which act as what ANT scholars term as “non-human actors”. The first group consists of texts, more specifically, the “Preface” to Monkey and some letters exchanged between Waley as a translator and Unwin as a publisher, which reveals the reasons of re-translating Monkey and the translation strategy used. The second group includes the Second World War and the influenza epidemic in the 1940s that impeded the reprinting of Monkey. The paper concludes that, in addition to human actors, non-human actors that have also actively exerted influences on both the process and the outcome of a major translation project deserve to receive more attention when looking at translation as a social activity.

This chapter starts with observations of monkeys and apes conducted by renowned primatologists. Their emphasis on nonhuman primates' interactional density raises the question of how human beings, by contrast, are present in everyday life situations. I will be emphasizing how the interactions of nonhuman primates differs from the presence-absence that can be constantly observed among humans. In what follows, this point, which may highlight a major difference of humans from nonhuman primates, will trigger a reflection on anthropology. Armed with this element of human specificity, I will then connect anthropology as a science of human beings to a set of principles that make it a specific discipline, different from the social sciences. From this perspective, I will conclude by describing the place that animals occupy in such an anthropological science.