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Studies on environmental animations have explored the politics of world-making and the interdependence of humans and animals. Taking as a case study the short Hungarian animation A Légy (Ferenc Rófusz, 1980), this article explores ways that animation can foster an ecological disposition in the viewer by presenting the worldview of a housefly from a first-person perspective. A Légy focuses on altersubjectivity, a term that Vinciane Despret ('Ethology between empathy, standpoint and perspectivism', 2010) uses to describe Jakob von Uexküll's practice of adopting the animals' perspectives. Because each species is attuned to its particular dwelling-world, Von Uexküll (A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with a Theory of Meaning, 2010) suggests, we must study animals by examining the features available to them by erecting 'a bubble' around them. A Légy gestures toward this idea by facilitating a becoming-animal that highlights perceptual similarities and differences between the viewer and the animated insect. The animation machine enables a 'cross-species perception', a form of perception that extends the spectator's perceptual awareness of the nonhuman worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay expands concerns of rhetorical narrative theory and econarratology by attending to rhetorical agencies of nonhuman beings within emergent conditions of landscape. Through analysis of two site-specific art pieces--Alan Sonfist's Time Landscape and Agnes Denes's Wheatfield: A Confrontation--it considers ways that interactions between humans, animals, plants, and other living beings produce situated networks of rhetorical engagement. In both sites, artists tell specific stories through affordances of landscape. These human narratives take advantage of and exist alongside various nonhuman rhetorical agencies, which are also shaped by affordances of landscape, though directed to different audiences for different purposes. From this ecological perspective, humans and nonhumans exist within rhetorical, multispecies communities that are shaped by and shape the affordances of topographic form. Rhetoricity and topographic form emerge simultaneously and cooperatively through interactive conditions of interspecies being. This understanding of landscape rhetoricity remains sensitive to radical openness in the rhetorical occasion, noting ways that ecological conditions shape and are shaped by rhetorical interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rag Doll Plagues, by Mexican American writer Alejandro Morales, underlines the racial dimension of the environmental crisis while also demonstrating the material interdependence between human and more-than-human worlds through the lens of trans-corporeality. By exploring the material connection between the poisoned body and the environment; the interaction between the marginalized body and nonhuman as subject; and the mutant body’s agency as a “habitat” and “thing,” this paper highlights the evolving and dynamic relationship between the porous human body and various forms of living and non-living entities within and beyond its borders. Morales's plague reminds humanity to break away from narrow, teleological thinking in the face of disaster and to adopt a mode of thought that is interconnected with the world as well as attentive to, and appreciative of, the vitality of non-living entities, thus fostering a nonlinear, open “material ethics”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the plight of nonhumans and the form of the coming community through the status quo of border-crossing bodies in selected works by Olga Tokarczuk in light of biopolitics. It highlights the link between dehumanization and biopolitics and argues that the nonhuman becomes a foundation of modern sovereignty. The nonhuman is produced by an inclusive exclusion, where the violence enters in and maintains the sovereign, and this anthropocentric mechanism becomes the fundamental political paradigm. To resist this anthropocentrism, Tokarczuk proposes a new form of community, the ‘airport-republic’ with fluid trans-borders, for opening up a new subject construction model and human organization form for post-Holocaust humanity. However, it is easy for these people who are invisible or becoming nonhuman to fall into the indistinguishable zone between humans and animals, between bios (politically qualified life) and zoē (bare life). They cannot be guaranteed by the sovereignty power, thereby falling back again into the logic of the Holocaust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although biblical scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the question of God's body, few clarify how precisely this "body" complicates the long-held claim that God is immaterial. The present article addresses this oversight by attending to the ways in which biblical accounts of God's body intersect with wider tradents of thought on materiality and immateriality, including, above all, the recent cross-disciplinary "turn" known as new materialism. The article begins by discussing what biblical scholars mean when they say "God's body" and how biblical theophanies in particular complicate the belief that God is immaterial. It then discusses new materialism and how key emphases in this scholarly shift similarly complicate the belief in God's immateriality. Third and finally, the article returns to biblical theophanies by reading these accounts through a new materialist lens, focusing in particular on God's manifestations in material, nonhuman forms. In the end, I suggest not only that biblical theophanies problematize traditional ways of conceiving God within the history of biblical interpretation but also that new materialism can better enable us to see how these accounts portray the relationship between God and embodied materialities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the series of photographs Silencios (2010-present), Juan Manuel Echavarría portrays the abandoned rural schools in Colombia caused by enforced displacement in the frame of the armed conflict. Unlike the abundant representations of violence in Colombia in which the human body is the protagonist and direct violence prevails (such as mutilated bodies, corpses, and grieving physiognomies), in these images, there is no presence of human bodies. Conversely, the photographer decided to depict the ruins and in four of them, he portrays farm animals in front of the school boards, such as a rooster, a calf, and a donkey. Departing from the title of the series, which alludes to sound, I articulate the way in which, by decentering the human body and centering the animal as a witness of violence, a nonhuman soundscape is configured that challenges the scopophilia and anthropocentrism that dominates the visuality of the armed conflict in Colombia. Even though this article departs from the question of the visual representation of violence in Colombia, it is also intended to contribute to the intersection between sound studies, visual studies, and more than human perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proposes Animal Drag as an activist performance in which a human critically and consciously performs animality to de-centre the human. Dress and adornment are key to its dissidence. Animal Drag's potential is demonstrated through an analysis of Terry Notary's performance of a nonhuman primate within Ruben Östlund's 2017 film The Square. Drawing on posthuman studies, scholarship on subordinated groups and from the field of animal studies, the reading of this performance shows how Animal Drag inherently queers humanist and essentialist notions of classification, particularly the human / animal divide. Paying homage to drag, the essay demonstrates how the material and social semiotics of performance can render transparent the constructions of race, coloniality, ability, and gender, as much as species -- in other words, "doing human". Through theories of dress and prosthesis, highlighting how techne facilitates in-between and "becoming" states, and affect theory, this article argues that humans and nonhumans might share vulnerabilities via Animal Drag. Culture is understood through language and dress, which have been mobilised to construct Otherness. As such, this essay posits that Animal Drag should take place within capitalist Culture industries, as both weapons and targets, to undress powers present and performed. Animal Drag is offered as both practice and theory, content and form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monstrous mermaid sisters of Agnieszka Smoczyńska's musical horror film, The Lure (2015), mysteriously appear along the Polish shoreline and threaten to cannibalize men. Although unusual in the horror genre, Smoczyńska's combination of musical numbers and aquatic gothic monsters strategically appropriates elements of mermaid mythology to create a contemporary story of bodily performativity and sisterhood. Following a critical consideration of the literary and cultural histories associated with the mermaid, this article presents a textual analysis of The Lure and related paratexts (director interviews, industry expert reviews, scholarly criticism). From one analytic reading perspective, The Lure's can be read as a coming of age story that implies that bodily transformations interrupt the solidarity of sisterhood. This reading illuminates differential associations with feminism and women's agency that are particularly poignant in the context of the Polish Solidarity movement. Extending this feminist reading position, I develop a counter-reading that attends to the nonhuman relations between the film's sisters and examines how processes of human exclusion and exploitation are responsible for fracturing the sisterhood. From this perspective, I read the conclusion as a call for a feminist solidarity predicated on nonhuman relations of mutuality, codependency, and symbiosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we expand the scholarly investigation of the representation of nonhuman animals (henceforth, "animals") in historic literature, specifically focusing upon Pu Songling's Liaozhai Zhiyi [Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio]. This is partially a response to other scholars who argue that blurred boundaries between human and nonhuman in this genre challenge anthropocentrism by rendering humans and animals as basically the same. This point is often contextualized with reference to traditional Chinese philosophies including Daoism. Drawing upon various tales within Liaozhai , we explore the forms of ethical reciprocity that are enabled through shapeshifting; however, we trouble the assertion that blurred physical boundaries necessarily de-center the human. We argue that despite the fact that animals can become human and vice versa, Liaozhai depicts a natural world which privileges "becoming-human" and naturalizes "human virtues." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a state of movement in the humanities into nonhuman entanglements. A key term, "resonance," emerges in this movement. Predominating scholarship orients resonance as a flourishing. In this article, accounts of the destructiveness of mechanical resonance signal a telling lacuna in humanities scholarship, one this article works to remove. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines two interconnected human-made nonhuman entities stemming from Shenzhen, China's first special economic zone, that have become dominant figures in mapping the city's - and by extension, China's - future: the robot and the drone. I bring an interdisciplinary, cultural studies approach to the multiple meaning-making practices that engage with these two objects; both participate in enacting the vision for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as an extension of the success of Shenzhen. These practices simultaneously normalise aspirations for a future fuelled by the power of nonhuman technological agents while offering glimpses into the uneven power relations between different humans that underpin such future making. At the same time, they also point to the emergent possibilities of meaningmaking that conjoin the human and the nonhuman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transforming social perceptions of those repressed by the Soviet regime in the late eighties, prompted urgent action to deal with difficult Soviet heritage, especially with landscapes of the dead buried in mass graves. However, human engagement in transforming these traumaspaces revealed that these landscapes had already been transformed by nonhuman actants - plants and trees -- often as witnesses to the crimes themselves. Therefore, in planning their commemorations, human memory activists had to negotiate the landscape with non-human actants and often attribute some human significance to the memory work they performed. This article discusses how Soviet traumaspaces were slowly transformed from non-human commemorations to commemorations meticulously planned by humans. From the very beginning, these human commemorations used both religious and secular languages. However, when the state actively engaged in the commemoration of the victims of Soviet repressions after 2015, a new constellation of power relations between civil society, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the state emerged, which, over time, led to the appearance of post-secular commemorations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging with issues of categorisation, human supremacy, and (the lack of) empathy, in this article I read Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021), André Alexis's Fifteen Dogs (2015), and Alice Hatcher's The Wonder That Was Ours (2018); novels that I argue are connected by their interrogation of biopolitically produced and policed boundaries between human and nonhuman beings, and by their focus on inter-creatural empathy and care. Through the lens of critical posthumanism, Agambenian biopolitics, and care ethics, I explore how these texts interrogate boundaries between animals, humans and techno-creatures, and I contend that they provide nonhuman and marginalised human characters with a (narrative) voice in order to challenge and undermine anthropocentric conceptions of subjectivity, agency and community. Mapping the novels' portrayal of inter-creatural care relationships, I argue that affirming vulnerability potentially leads to the recognition of a "strange kinship" between human and nonhuman characters; and it is my ultimate claim that these texts turn proximity and porosity into productive and often transgressive inter-creatural entanglements, thereby disrupting processes of exclusionary differentiation, and opening the way to an imaginative exploration of new ways of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Swedish fantasy‐horror‐romance film Gräns (Border, dir. Ali Abbasi, 2018) through queer Indigenous thought and the notion of trans aesthetics, exploring how the film may sensitize its viewers to seeing and feeling with gender variance, queer desire, and the trauma of settler colonialism. Drawing on Eve Tuck's call for desire‐based research, the article asks what is at stake in queer, trans, and decolonial readings of films that are not necessarily identifiable as such at the surface level. Border centers on a love story between two gender‐fluid trolls who pass as human and whose kin have been subjected to genocide, dislocation, and mutilation, but the film's reception largely misses the connection to the treatment of Indigenous Sámi people and transgender people within Nordic settler states. The article argues that Border's ecstatic depiction of gender‐fluid desires, bodies, and sex, alongside its examination of the psychic consequences of settler colonial violence, make it a thus far unique film in the Nordic context — even though this examination happens through the distancing effect of trolls as metaphorical Natives. The main characters embody wrongness in the settler nation‐state, in heteronormative society, and ultimately in the delimiting category of the human, but the film imagines rightness in nature as a queer, gender‐fluid space where all creatures can just be. Through employing notions of trans aesthetics, the (non)sovereign erotic, refusal, and haunting, the article proposes desire‐based readings of cinema that envision ways of feeling and existing beyond humancentric, settler, binary notions of gender and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predominant approach of protecting or restoring floral and faunal life after harming, displacing, or destroying them in service of human interests does not hold much promise for nature on Earth in the age of the Anthropocene. Such approaches fail to address the ethical and political-economic cores of what tend to be presented as techno-scientific or ecological problems. If the planet is to remain home to life beyond the human, mainstream human societies need to rethink their place, role, and entitlements on Earth, and relearn to cohabit with human and nonhuman others, even in the face of risk and uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay asks: what is the value of cross-species empathy in a time of ecological crisis and how can contemporary fiction help along new thinking about human relationships with other animals? I make the case that empathy, in the dominant sense, fetishizes closeness. Empathy has become positive and valuable because it is said to narrow the distance between self and others. I develop the idea that the dominant view of empathy gives limited consideration to how degrees and kinds of difference complicate this view, while disregarding the enduring presence of other animals in scientific and philosophical treatments of empathy. In my close reading, I examine a concept routinely connected to empathy in existing scholarship: proximity. I investigate how different kinds of proximities manifest and complicate empathies between humans and other animals in Laura Jean's 2020 novel, The Animals in That Country. My methodology differs from traditional treatments of empathy in Literary Studies in two significant ways. First, I do not define cross-species empathy upfront, but look to McKay's text to produce new ways of thinking about empathy through the different kinds of proximities (spatial, linguistic, geographical, species) that unfold. And second, I do not examine how a reader's empathy for humans or other animals is encouraged or stifled by the text. Rather, I view McKay's text, as an art form and a critical tool, as David Herman instructs, "for reconsidering--for critiquing or reaffirming, dismantling, or reconstructing" what cross-species can be and do in the here and now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence technologies were developed to assist authors in bettering the organization and caliber of their published papers, which are both growing in quantity and sophistication. Even though the usage of artificial intelligence tools in particular ChatGPT's natural language processing systems has been shown to be beneficial in research, there are still concerns about accuracy, responsibility, and transparency when it comes to the norms regarding authorship credit and contributions. Genomic algorithms quickly examine large amounts of genetic data to identify potential disease-causing mutations. By analyzing millions of medications for potential therapeutic benefits, they can quickly and relatively economically find novel approaches to treatment. Researchers from several fields can collaborate on difficult tasks with the assistance of nonhuman writers, promoting interdisciplinary research. Sadly, there are a number of significant disadvantages associated with employing nonhuman authors, including the potential for algorithmic prejudice. Biased data may be reinforced by the algorithm since machine learning algorithms can only be as objective as the data they are trained on. It is overdue that scholars bring forth basic moral concerns in the fight against algorithmic prejudice. Overall, even if the use of nonhuman authors has the potential to significantly improve scientific research, it is crucial for scientists to be aware of these drawbacks and take precautions to avoid bias and limits. To provide accurate and objective results, algorithms must be carefully designed and implemented, and researchers need to be mindful of the larger ethical ramifications of their usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper seeks to lay bare how the grim realities of settler colonialism and petro-capitalism have a tolling effect on the indigenous ways of life. The present era, termed the 'Anthropocene' or 'Capitalocene,' as it is the capitalist concern of some of the privileged anthropos that inflict socio-economic and ecological injustices on earth, heralds the birth of cautionary literature that deconstructs anthropocentric fixation to purge the earth off the catastrophic impacts of rapacious human activities. In order to examine how capitalism and its resultant climate emergency have spurred environmental activists and authors to reflect upon this theme, the paper undertakes a close textual analysis of The Breathing Hole (2020) by Colleen Murphy (b. 1954), a contemporary Quebecois playwright. By employing indigenous ecocriticism and non-human turn in literary studies, the study examines how the playwright jettisons the standardised category of the Anthropos by prioritising the non-human character, Angu'ruaq, an anthropomorphised polar bear. Attempts have been made to highlight how the capitalist motive of the neo-colonial agents leaves a breach in the fabric of the succouring connection between the indigenous Inuit existence and the non-human beings in the Nunavut territory of the Canadian Arctic. The findings of the paper demonstrate how the playwright approaches contemporary eco-crisis using indigenous ecodrama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research's main objective is to explore and encourage modes of architectural practice that can foster multispecies co-living to reduce biodiversity loss and increase the quality of life for both human and nonhuman inhabitants of architecture. This is achieved through conceptual discussions, comprehensive architectural case studies and work-based design explorations that support cross-species co-living in the context of Eastern Norway (Østlandet)—a geographical region of south-eastern Norway consisting of the counties Vestfold, Telemark, Viken, Oslo and Innlandet. A pluralistic method builds on analytical, critical and work-based explorative studies consisting of two parts: (a) historical and contemporary case studies in Norway that support modes of cross-species co-living and (b) design explorations by the second author investigating the operational potential of kindness in architecture. The notion of kindness in this research is built upon an understanding of the amalgam of concepts: solidarity, kinship and being kind, explained in the article's introduction. The potential for designing with and for nonhumans to reinvigorate modes of co-living and support existing habitats is investigated, focusing on the ways three bird species relate to a specific building in Eastern Norway due to their habitat needs in the region: Cyanistes caeruleus, Eurasian blue tit (blåmeis in Norwegian); Passer montanus, Eurasian tree sparrow (pilfink in Norwegian); and Delichon urbicum, northern or common house martin (taksvale in Norwegian). The research contributes to ongoing discussions within architectural discourse regarding multispecies inhabitation and architecture's role in the current biodiversity crisis and provides insight into both historical and contemporary/ongoing design solutions for multispecies co-living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mugre rosa (2020), by Uruguayan author Fernanda Trías, portrays a dystopian world devastated by a plague linked to environmental toxicity. It is also, I argue, a work of extraordinary vividness that evinces a concern about literary form and language. Trías's style – her intricate use of description, formal and structural innovations, and figurative expression— possesses a vibrancy that works against the desolation enfolding through the diegesis. This essay probes how the novel's concerns intersect with questions explored in fields such as ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. It also delves into the particularities of Trías's style, parsing the implications of her use of language and form, which alternatively expand, nuance, transform, and collide with premises established at a diegetic level. Throughout the discussion, attention is given to the novel's affective resonances and to its engagement with the nonhuman. The essay seeks to illuminate how Mugre rosa intervenes in the debate about the agency of literature in the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loneliness and isolation were two factors introduced as "effective measures" during the COVID-19 crisis. The lockdown exacerbated loneliness among those already suffering from acute illnesses. In this context, a rereading of the film Lars and the Real Girl by Craig Gillespie is particularly relevant as it offers novel perspectives on loneliness. The interplay between Lars's desire to be in a compassionate relationship and the fear of meeting and socializing is comparable to what was witnessed across the coronavirus-afflicted world. This paper explores the potential for understanding delusion caused by traumatic experiences as a form of communication rather than a mental disorder. The film explains how a silicone sex doll functions as a medium between the lonesome Lars and society in resolving the trauma. The paper focuses on the infantile nature of humans and uses infantilism in a conducive manner to understand anthropomorphism for bridging the gap between a lonely/delusional person and society while drawing examples from the film. The introduction of a nonhuman actor—an anatomically correct doll—becomes an opportunity for a traumatized person such as Lars to know himself well and gradually open up to socializing. As he moves from external to threshold en-rolling, followed by internal en-rolling, it indicates his opening up to communication as he moves from language to lalangue and creates his world with the doll. This film presents a therapeutic approach to treating schizoid personality disorder with the assistance of a nonhuman actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain microbleeds are increased in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and their presence increases risk of cognitive decline and stroke. We examined the interaction between CKD and brain microhemorrhages (the neuropathological substrate of microbleeds) in mouse and cell culture models and studied progression of microbleed burden on serial brain imaging from humans. Mouse studies: Two CKD models were investigated: adenine-induced tubulointerstitial nephritis and surgical 5/6 nephrectomy. Cell culture studies: bEnd.3 mouse brain endothelial cells were grown to confluence, and monolayer integrity was measured after exposure to 5-15% human uremic serum or increasing concentrations of urea. Human studies: Progression of brain microbleeds was evaluated on serial MRI from control, pre-dialysis CKD, and dialysis patients. Microhemorrhages were increased 2-2.5-fold in mice with CKD independent of higher blood pressure in the 5/6 nephrectomy model. IgG staining was increased in CKD animals, consistent with increased blood-brain barrier permeability. Incubation of bEnd.3 cells with uremic serum or elevated urea produced a dose-dependent drop in trans-endothelial electrical resistance. Elevated urea induced actin cytoskeleton derangements and decreased claudin-5 expression. In human subjects, prevalence of microbleeds was 50% in both CKD cohorts compared with 10% in age-matched controls. More patients in the dialysis cohort had increased microbleeds on follow-up MRI after 1.5 years. CKD disrupts the blood-brain barrier and increases brain microhemorrhages in mice and microbleeds in humans. Elevated urea alters the actin cytoskeleton and tight junction proteins in cultured endothelial cells, suggesting that these mechanisms explain (at least in part) the microhemorrhages and microbleeds observed in the animal and human studies.

Understanding the mitotic DNA damage response (DDR) is critical to our comprehension of cancer, premature aging and developmental disorders which are marked by DNA repair deficiencies. In this study we use a micro-focused laser to induce DNA damage in selected mitotic chromosomes to study the subsequent repair response. Our findings demonstrate that (1) mitotic cells are capable of DNA repair as evidenced by DNA synthesis at damage sites, (2) Repair is attenuated when DNA-PKcs and ATM are simultaneously compromised, (3) Laser damage may permit the observation of previously undetected DDR proteins when damage is elicited by other methods in mitosis, and (4) Twenty five percent of mitotic DNA-damaged cells undergo a subsequent mitosis. Together these findings suggest that mitotic DDR is more complex than previously thought and may involve factors from multiple repair pathways that are better understood in interphase.

Understanding the mitotic DNA damage response (DDR) is critical to our comprehension of cancer, premature aging and developmental disorders which are marked by DNA repair deficiencies. In this study we use a micro-focused laser to induce DNA damage in selected mitotic chromosomes to study the subsequent repair response. Our findings demonstrate that (1) mitotic cells are capable of DNA repair as evidenced by DNA synthesis at damage sites, (2) Repair is attenuated when DNA-PKcs and ATM are simultaneously compromised, (3) Laser damage may permit the observation of previously undetected DDR proteins when damage is elicited by other methods in mitosis, and (4) Twenty five percent of mitotic DNA-damaged cells undergo a subsequent mitosis. Together these findings suggest that mitotic DDR is more complex than previously thought and may involve factors from multiple repair pathways that are better understood in interphase.

Decentrare l’umano tramite forme narrative. La ‘chiusura impossibile’ del Pasticciaccio di Gadda e della Trilogia dell’Area X di VanderMeer Il presente articolo si pone l’obiettivo di individuare ed esaminare le caratteristiche narrative formali capaci di suggerire una concezione di vita come intricata matassa di incontri e relazioni fra esseri umani e non umani. Partendo dal presupposto che le innovazioni formali moderniste abbiano anticipato le narrative postumane contemporanee, l’articolo offre una comparazione neo-formalista fra Quer pasticciaccio brutto della via Merulana (1957) di Carlo Emilio Gadda e La trilogia dell’Area X (Annientamento, Autorità, Accettazione, 2015) di Jeff VanderMeer. In entrambe le opere sono identificabili due caratteristiche peculiari: la prima consiste in una comune impronta autoriale che segue un principio di accumulamento e complicazione manifestantesi in un accavallarsi di teorie non soddisfacenti e spesso incomplete, ma che comunque cercano di dare una soluzione o spiegazione ai misteri al centro dei rispettivi testi. La seconda corrisponde all’affidamento della narrazione ad una moltitudine di personaggi che si rivelano sempre parziali in quanto inabili a comprendere i fenomeni accaduti nella loro interezza. Infatti, i testi analizzati riescono a ridimensionare l’eccezionalità umana dimostrando che la realtà è sempre più complessa ed intrecciata di quanto sia umanamente comprensibile. Da questo ridimensionamento consegue l’impossibilità ad avere una conclusione che si possa definire finale.

Oral anticoagulants are a critical component of stroke prevention, but carry a risk of brain hemorrhage. These hemorrhagic complications tend to occur in elderly individuals, especially those with predisposing conditions such as cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). Clinical evidence suggests that non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants are safer than traditional oral anticoagulants. We analyzed whether the anticoagulant dabigatran produces cerebral microhemorrhage (the pathological substrate of MRI-demonstrable cerebral microbleeds) or intracerebral hemorrhage in aged mice with and without hemorrhage-predisposing angiopathy. We studied aged (22 months old) Tg2576 (a model of CAA) and wild-type (WT) littermate mice. Mice received either dabigatran etexilate (DE) (Tg N = 7; WT N = 10) or vehicle (Tg N = 9; WT N = 7) by gavage for 4 weeks. Anticoagulation effects of DE were confirmed using thrombin time assay. No mice experienced intracerebral hemorrhage. Cerebral microhemorrhage analysis, performed using Prussian-blue and H&E staining, showed no significant change in either number or size of cerebral microhemorrhage in DE-treated animals. Analysis of biochemical parameters for endothelial activation (ICAM-1), blood-brain barrier disruption (IgG, claudin-5, fibrinogen), microglial activation (Iba-1), or astrocyte activation (GFAP) showed neither exacerbation nor protective effects of DE in either Tg2576 or WT mice. Our study provides histological and biochemical evidence that aged mice, with or without predisposing factors for brain hemorrhage, tolerate anticoagulation with dabigatran. The absence of dabigatran-induced intracerebral hemorrhage or increased frequency of acute microhemorrhage may provide some reassurance for its use in high-risk patient populations.

This paper examines Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ecophilosophy in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by focusing on his various representations of the natural environment and the human relationship to it. It suggests that the story reflects his belief that nature is divinely arranged and that humanity should protect rather than manipulate its systems. From his perspective, the disruption of natural systems would not only cause the extinction of many animal species but also endanger human life and existence on earth. The paper further suggests that Hawthorne promotes a view of nature as a living organism whose entities possess souls and spirits. Their capacity to have feelings and emotions makes them entitled to moral respect and consideration. In its study of the author’s environmental values and ethics, the essay claims that Hawthorne advocates the idea that human beings do not occupy a privileged position in the universe and that they are not superior or more important than nonhumans. In contrast to the Biblical vision of humankind, he portrays humans as weak and flawed creatures that cannot attain divine perfection. For these reasons, the paper asserts that “Rappaccini’s Daughter” exhibits Hawthorne’s deep ecological awareness and underlines his stature as a pioneer of American literary environmentalism.

BACKGROUND:Cerebral microhemorrhages (CMH) are commonly found in the aging brain. CMH are also the neuropathological substrate of cerebral microbleeds (CMB), demonstrated on brain MRI. Recent studies demonstrate the importance of systemic inflammation in CMH development, but the relationships among inflammation, aging, and CMH development are not well-defined. In the current study, we hypothesized that the pathogenesis of inflammation-induced CMH in mice differs by age. METHODS:We studied young (3 months, n = 20) and old (18 months, n = 25) C57BL/6 mice injected with low-dose lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 1 mg/kg, i.p.) or saline at 0, 6, and 24 h. Seven days after the first LPS/saline injection, brains were harvested, sectioned, and stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and Prussian blue (PB) to estimate acute/fresh and sub-acute CMH development, respectively. The relationships between microglial/macrophage activation (ionized calcium-binding adapter molecule-1), astrocyte activation (glial fibrillary acidic protein), blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption (brain immunoglobulin G), aging, and CMH development were examined using immunohistochemistry. RESULTS:Aging alone did not increase spontaneous H&E-positive CMH development but significantly increased the number, size, and total area of LPS-induced H&E-positive CMH in mice. LPS- and saline-treated aged mice had significantly larger PB-positive CMH compared with young mice, but the total area of PB-positive CMH was increased only in LPS-treated aged mice. Aged mice had significantly increased microglial/macrophage activation, which correlated with H&E- and PB-positive CMH development. Aged mice treated with LPS had significantly increased astrocyte activation and BBB disruption compared with young LPS-treated mice. CONCLUSIONS:Aging makes the brain more susceptible to inflammation-induced CMH in mice, and this increase in CMH with aging is associated with microglial/macrophage activation.