Studies concerning nonlinear political dynamics, such as regime change, focus on macro-level structural factors and political agency. Tipping points are pitched mainly at these levels, and scholars therefore devote less attention to meso-level factors. To bridge this gap, this article develops a verbal model focusing on the collapse of mechanisms that sustain mythical state institutions as drivers of such dynamics. A mythical institution enjoys a reputation for power and influence among the public based on widespread and persistent stereotypical beliefs that embody a collectivity’s sense of origin and tradition, high performance and stability, and/or vision and mission. The argument advanced here is that nonlinear political dynamics may occur when the collapse of such mechanisms reflects on the unquestioned legitimacy that the mythical state institution enjoys, creating massive embarrassment for the regime because its mythical institution’s status requires government intervention to prevent believers from “fleeing” and/or revolting. This, in turn, undermines or debunks this institution’s myth, thereby generating high levels of anxiety, fear, anger, or other (mixes of) emotions. Which emotional process dominates depends on which reaction is stronger at the moment in question. When the level reaches an affective tipping point, citizens begin to update their evaluations and consider new information. This leads to behavioral convergence (e.g., mass protest, mass emigration, violence), which is in turn accelerated when the regime’s counter-response is publicly perceived as ineffective, thus highlighting the irreversibility of this process. This argument is illustrated herein by examining the 1989 collapse of East Germany’s emigration restrictions system.
The canonical view of how general anesthetics induce loss-of-consciousness (LOC) permitting pain-free surgery posits that anesthetic molecules, distributed throughout the CNS, suppress neural activity globally to levels at which the cerebral cortex can no longer sustain conscious experience. We support an alternative view that LOC, in the context of GABAergic anesthesia at least, results from anesthetic exposure of a small number of neurons in a focal brainstem nucleus, the mesopontine tegmental anesthesia area (MPTA). The various sub-components of anesthesia, in turn, are effected in distant locations, driven by dedicated axonal pathways. This proposal is based on the observations that microinjection of infinitesimal amounts of GABAergic agents into the MPTA, and only there, rapidly induces LOC, and that lesioning the MPTA renders animals relatively insensitive to these agents delivered systemically. Recently, using chemogenetics, we identified a subpopulation of MPTA "effector-neurons" which, when excited (not inhibited), induce anesthesia. These neurons contribute to well-defined ascending and descending axonal pathways each of which accesses a target region associated with a key anesthetic endpoint: atonia, anti-nociception, amnesia and LOC (by electroencephalographic criteria). Interestingly, the effector-neurons do not themselves express GABA-receptors. Rather, the target receptors reside on a separate sub-population of presumed inhibitory interneurons. These are thought to excite the effectors by disinhibition, thus triggering anesthetic LOC.
In his book, The War of the Jews, Flavius Josephus describes the Roman conquest of Masada. He reports that the Roman soldiers breached the site’s western wall with a battering ram installed on a siege tower and positioned at the top of a siege ramp. In this paper, I challenge this narrative and argue that the Romans entered Masada from the south through the Southern Gate.
The most prevalent materials used in the Additive Manufacturing era are polymers and plastics. Unfortunately, these materials are recognized for their negative environmental impact as they are primarily nonrecyclable, resulting in environmental pollution. In recent years, a new sustainable alternative to these materials has been emerging: Reversible Covalent Bond-Containing Polymers (RCBPs). These materials can be recycled, reprocessed, and reused multiple times without losing their properties. Nonetheless, they have two significant drawbacks when used in 3D printing. First, some require adding new materials every reprinting cycle, and second, others require high temperatures for (re)printing, limiting recyclability, and increasing energy consumption. This study, thus, introduces fully recyclable RCBPs as a sustainable approach for radiation-based printing technologies. This approach enables multiple (re)printing cycles at low temperatures (50 °C lower than the lowest reported) without adding new materials. It involves purposefully synthesized polymers that undergo reversible photopolymerization, composed of a tin-based catalyst. An everyday microwave oven quickly depolymerized these polymers, obtaining complete reversibility.
Noa Bezalel-Hazony, Zer, Hagit , Nathanson, Shiri , Shevtsov-Tal, Sofia , Ostersetzer-Biran, Oren , ו Keren, Nir . 2023.
“Functional Flexibility Of Cyanobacterial Light Harvesting Phycobilisomes Enable Acclimation To The Complex Light Regime Of Mixing Marine Water Columns”. The Febs Journal, 290, n/a, Pp. 400-411. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/febs.16597.
Publisher's Version תקציר The light environment in a mixing water column is arguably the most erratic condition under which photosynthesis functions. Shifts in light intensity, by an order of magnitude, can occur over the time scale of hours. In marine Synechococcus, light is harvested by massive, membrane attached, phycobilisome chromophore-protein complexes (PBS). We examined the ability of a phycobilisome-containing marine Synechococcus strain (WH8102) to acclimate to illumination perturbations on this scale. Although changes in pigment composition occurred gradually over the course of days, we did observe significant and reversible changes in the pigment's fluorescence emission spectra on a time scale of hours. Upon transition to ten-fold higher intensities, we observed a decrease in the energy transferred to Photosystem II. At the same time, the spectral composition of PBS fluorescence emission shifted. Unlike fluorescence quenching mechanisms, this phenomenon resulted in increased fluorescence intensities. These data suggest a mechanism by which marine Synechococcus WH8102 detaches hexamers from the phycobilisome structure. The fluorescence yield of these uncoupled hexamers is high. The detachment process does not require protein synthesis as opposed to reattachment. Hence, the most likely process would be the degradation and resynthesis of labile PBS linker proteins. Experiments with additional species yielded similar results, suggesting that this novel mechanism might be broadly used among PBS-containing organisms.
This study argues that Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, published when the feminist revisionist myth-making movement was influential, is a paradigm-shifting narrative prefiguring the theory of gender as performance, which later gained popularity in the canon of contemporary women’s writing. Like the writer’s other subversive texts, it is a heterodox novel that anticipates the main lines of Judith Butler’s gender theory and provides fictional avatars for subsequent women writers. The key theme in Carter’s fiction is the loss of the sense of the norm regarding known sexual categories and traditional gender boundaries. Accordingly, the paper examines gender identity construction in terms of performativity and gender transitivity in The Passion of New Eve by interrogating the process of Evelyn’s forced sex transformation and Tristessa’s iconic characterization as a Hollywood “beauty queen,” to show how the author questions essentialist conceptions and authenticity of gendered subjectivity through her “self-contradictory” and gender-blurring characters.
December 2022:
Mustafa Kirca is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Çankaya University in Ankara. He holds a PhD in English literature from Middle East Technical University, Turkey. His research focuses on translation and comparative studies, contemporary literature, metafiction and parodic re-writing in contemporary fiction. He recently co-edited Mapping Cultural Identities and Intersections: Imagological Readings (2019).
Sıla Erkılıç has been working in Central Bank of Republic of Turkey at Governor’s Office since 2012. She holds her BA in Translation and Interpretation from Hacettepe University (2010) and her MA in English Literature and Cultural Studies from Çankaya University (2016). Her research interest includes twentieth century women’s writing, contemporary fiction, and translation.
Caroline Weill, Gallant, Akiva , Erdman, Halen Baker, Snineh, Muneer Abu, Linetsky, Eduard , Bergman, Hagai , Israel, Zvi , ו Arkadir, David . 2023.
“The Genetic Etiology Of Parkinson's Disease Does Not Robustly Affect Subthalamic Physiology”. Mov Disord, 38, 3, Pp. 484-489. doi:10.1002/mds.29310.
תקציר BACKGROUND: It is unknown whether Parkinson's disease (PD) genetic heterogeneity, leading to phenotypic and pathological variability, is also associated with variability in the unique PD electrophysiological signature. Such variability might have practical implications for adaptive deep brain stimulation (DBS).
OBJECTIVE: The aim of our work was to study the electrophysiological activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of patients with PD with pathogenic variants in different disease-causing genes.
METHODS: Electrophysiological data from participants with negative genetic tests were compared with those from GBA, LRRK2, and PRKN-PD.
RESULTS: We analyzed data from 93 STN trajectories (GBA-PD: 28, LRRK2-PD: 22, PARK-PD: 10, idiopathic PD: 33) of 52 individuals who underwent DBS surgery. Characteristics of β oscillatory activity in the dorsolateral motor part of the STN were similar for patients with negative genetic tests and for patients with different forms of monogenic PD.
CONCLUSIONS: The genetic heterogeneity in PD is not associated with electrophysiological differences. Therefore, similar adaptive DBS algorithms would be applicable to genetically heterogeneous patient populations. © 2023 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.
Anna Alkelai, Greenbaum, Lior , Shohat, Shahar , Povysil, Gundula , Malakar, Ayan , Ren, Zhong , Motelow, Joshua E, Schechter, Tanya , Draiman, Benjamin , Chitrit-Raveh, Eti , Hughes, Daniel , Jobanputra, Vaidehi , Shifman, Sagiv , Goldstein, David B, ו Kohn, Yoav . 2023.
“Genetic Insights Into Childhood-Onset Schizophrenia: The Yield Of Clinical Exome Sequencing”. Schizophr Res, 252, Pp. 138-145. doi:10.1016/j.schres.2022.12.033.
Publisher's Version תקציר Childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) is a rare form of schizophrenia with an onset prior to 13 years of age. Although genetic factors play a role in COS etiology, only a few causal variants have been reported to date. This study presents a diagnostic exome sequencing (ES) in 37 Israeli Jewish families with a proband diagnosed with COS. By implementing a trio/duo ES approach and applying a well-established diagnostic pipeline, we detected clinically significant variants in 7 probands (19 %). These single nucleotide variants and indels were mostly inherited. The implicated genes were ANKRD11, GRIA2, CHD2, CLCN3, CLTC, IGF1R and MICU1. In a secondary analysis that compared COS patients to 4721 healthy controls, we observed that patients had a significant enrichment of rare loss of function (LoF) variants in LoF intolerant genes associated with developmental diseases. Taken together, ES could be considered as a valuable tool in the genetic workup for COS patients.
Arata Hayashi, Ruppo, Shmuel , Heilbrun, Elisheva , Mazzoni, Chiara , Adar, Sheera , Yassour, Moran , Rmaileh, Rmaileh Abu, ו Shaul, Yoav . 2023.
“Geni: A Web Server To Identify Gene Set Enrichments In Tumor Samples”. Biorxiv.
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and other projects provide informative tumor-associated genomic data for the broad research community. Hence, several useful web-based tools have been generated to ease non-expert users with the analysis and characterization of a specific gene behavior in selected tumors. However, none of the existing tools offer the user the means to evaluate the expression profile of a given gene in the context of the whole transcriptome. Currently, such analyses require prior bioinformatic knowledge and expertise. Therefore, we developed GENI (Gene ENrichment Identifier) as a fast, user-friendly tool to analyze the TCGA expression data for gene set enrichments. GENI analyzes large-scale tumor-associated gene expression datasets and evaluates biological relevance, thus offering researchers a simplified means to analyze cancer patient-derived data.
Arata Hayashi, Ruppo, Shmuel , Heilbrun, Elisheva E, Mazzoni, Chiara , Adar, Sheera , Yassour, Moran , Rmaileh, Areej Abu, ו Shaul, Yoav D. 2023.
“Geni: A Web Server To Identify Gene Set Enrichments In Tumor Samples”. Comput Struct Biotechnol J, 21, Pp. 5531-5537. doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2023.10.053.
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and analogous projects have yielded invaluable tumor-associated genomic data. Despite several web-based platforms designed to enhance accessibility, certain analyses require prior bioinformatic expertise. To address this need, we developed Gene ENrichment Identifier (GENI, https://www.shaullab.com/geni), which is designed to promptly compute correlations for genes of interest against the entire transcriptome and rank them against well-established biological gene sets. Additionally, it generates comprehensive tables containing genes of interest and their corresponding correlation coefficients, presented in publication-quality graphs. Furthermore, GENI has the capability to analyze multiple genes simultaneously within a given gene set, elucidating their significance within a specific biological context. Overall, GENI's user-friendly interface simplifies the biological interpretation and analysis of cancer patient-associated data, advancing the understanding of cancer biology and accelerating scientific discoveries.
