Fresh Perspective (fresh + perspective)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Early medieval port customs, tolls and controls on foreign trade

EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 4 2005
Neil Middleton
The objective of this paper is to offer a fresh perspective on the nature and organization of international trade in early medieval ports from the evidence of documentary sources on tolls and customs, trading practices and controls on foreign merchants. In particular, the paper considers the evidence for continuities and borrowings from the Roman and Byzantine worlds and the extent to which they influenced trading practices in the west and especially in Anglo-Saxon England. [source]


GENOMICS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTIONARY TRANSITIONS

EVOLUTION, Issue 6 2010
Pierre M. Durand
Molecular biology has entrenched the gene as the basic hereditary unit and genomes are often considered little more than collections of genes. However, new concepts and genomic data have emerged, which suggest that the genome has a unique place in the hierarchy of life. Despite this, a framework for the genome as a major evolutionary transition has not been fully developed. Instead, genome origin and evolution are frequently considered as a series of neutral or nonadaptive events. In this article, we argue for a Darwinian multilevel selection interpretation for the origin of the genome. We base our arguments on the multilevel selection theory of hypercycles of cooperative interacting genes and predictions that gene-level trade-offs in viability and reproduction can help drive evolutionary transitions. We consider genomic data involving mobile genetic elements as a test case of our view. A new concept of the genome as a discrete evolutionary unit emerges and the gene,genome juncture is positioned as a major evolutionary transition in individuality. This framework offers a fresh perspective on the origin of macromolecular life and sets the scene for a new, emerging line of inquiry,the evolutionary ecology of the genome. [source]


Brecht and Sinn und Form: The Creation of Cold War Legends

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 4 2007
Stephen Parker
ABSTRACT Brecht and Peter Huchel's Sinn und Form are among the few examples of early GDR cultural life with a genuine capacity to accumulate cultural capital on the international stage. The analysis of Brecht's collaboration with Sinn und Form in the Deutsche Akademie der Künste offers a fresh perspective upon their attainment of a legendary pre-eminence in German cultural life during the Cold War. Brecht's espousal of Marxism-Leninism and of a relative artistic autonomy, informed by political constraints, ensured some common ground with the SED leadership. However, the Party's enforcement of a binary opposition between Socialist Realism and Formalism became a crucial field of conflict, spawning major illusions and antagonisms between the artistic and political elites. In key contributions to Sinn und Form, Brecht foregrounded aesthetic considerations and historical responsibility, yet the SED's nationalistic discourse colouring Socialist Realism was motivated by the geopolitical imperative of justifying the GDR's status among the people's democracies of the Eastern Bloc. This, in turn, justified the SED's subordination of cultural to political capital, dismissing the claims of elite culture in a series of staged events. The position of Brecht and his supporters was relentlessly eroded until, quite improbably, the crisis of 17 June 1953 allowed them to turn the tables. While popular opposition was suppressed, Brecht simultaneously re-affirmed his loyalty to the weakened SED leadership, whose revolutionary achievements he continued to praise, and re-asserted the relative autonomy of the elite Akademie and its journal. Brecht and Sinn und Form capitalised upon their enhanced reputations, securing the legendary status that later repression did nothing to diminish. [source]


Products of the Imagination: Mining, Luxury, and the Romantic Artist in Heinrich von Ofterdingen

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 1 2007
Matt Erlin
ABSTRACT Scholars have long been interested in the relationship between capitalism and early romantic aesthetics. The following investigation offers a fresh perspective on this topic through a reconsideration of the figure of the miner and the representation of mining in Friedrich von Hardenberg's Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Rather than elucidating this representation on the basis of general concepts like alienation and instrumental rationality, as has often been the case, the essay situates mining within the context of the wide-ranging late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century debates about luxury. When contextualised along these lines, it becomes clear that Hardenberg's representation of mining is best understood as part of an effort to defend the legitimacy of literature, especially the still fragile legitimacy of the novel. Re-framing the representation of mining in the work in this way also necessitates a re-evaluation of other key aspects of the novel, most significantly, its negotiation with processes of economic modernisation and especially its stance toward an incipient consumer culture in which reading and literature play a paradigmatic role. [source]


Enhancing Part-time Teaching in Higher Education: a Challenge for Institutional Policy and Practice

HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2007
Peter Knight
Higher education in the UK has seen a steady increase in the numbers of part-time teachers, yet the way in which they are inducted into teaching and the utilisation of their expertise are under-researched. This qualitative study of 33 part-time teachers from several universities suggests that their involvement in higher education should be considered from a fresh perspective, which differs from approaches to the enhancement of university teaching that rely upon simply educating individual teachers to do better by requiring their attendance at formally provided courses and events. While these approaches have their place, modern research on professional learning is increasingly pointing to the view that professional formation is an ecological process that is insufficiently served by the formal provision of learning opportunities. The ecological perspective, which emphasises the part played by the everyday workplace in professional formation, provides a challenge to leaders and managers regarding the development and implementation of institutional policy and practice. [source]


Evolution of the innate immune system: the worm perspective

IMMUNOLOGICAL REVIEWS, Issue 1 2004
Hinrich Schulenburg
Summary:, Simple model organisms that are amenable to comprehensive experimental analysis can be used to elucidate the molecular genetic architecture of complex traits. They can thereby enhance our understanding of these traits in other organisms, including humans. Here, we describe the use of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a tractable model system to study innate immunity. We detail our current understanding of the worm's immune system, which seems to be characterized by four main signaling cascades: a p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase, a transforming growth factor-,-like, a programed cell death, and an insulin-like receptor pathway. Many details, especially regarding pathogen recognition and immune effectors, are only poorly characterized and clearly warrant further investigation. We additionally speculate on the evolution of the C. elegans immune system, taking into special consideration the relationship between immunity, stress responses and digestion, the diversification of the different parts of the immune system in response to multiple and/or coevolving pathogens, and the trade-off between immunity and host life history traits. Using C. elegans to address these different facets of host,pathogen interactions provides a fresh perspective on our understanding of the structure and complexity of innate immune systems in animals and plants. [source]


Effort/gains dynamics in heterogeneous networks

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, Issue 4 2008
L. Mamatas
Abstract We investigate the behaviour of TCP(,, ,) protocols in the presence of wireless networks. We seek an answer to strategic issues of maximizing energy and bandwidth exploitation, without damaging the dynamics of multiple-flow equilibrium. We take a fresh perspective on protocol design: What is the return of the effort that a protocol expends? Can we achieve more gains with less effort? We study first the design assumptions of TCP(,, ,) protocols and discuss the impact of equation-based modulation of , and , on protocol efficiency. We introduce two new measures to capture protocol behaviour: the ,Extra Energy Expenditure' and the ,Unexploited Available Resource Index'. We confirm experimentally that, in general, smoothness and responsiveness constitute a tradeoff; however, we show that this tradeoff does not graft its dynamics into a conservative/aggressive behaviour, as it is traditionally believed. We uncover patterns of unjustified tactics; our results suggest that an adaptive congestion control algorithm is needed to integrate the dynamics of heterogeneous networks into protocol behaviour. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Heat reversal of activity-based anorexia: Implications for the treatment of anorexia nervosa

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EATING DISORDERS, Issue 7 2008
Emilio Gutierrez PhD
Abstract Objective: Activity-based anorexia (ABA) provides an animal model of anorexia nervosa (AN). In this model, rats given restricted access to food but unrestricted access to activity wheels, run excessively while reducing food intake, lose a sizeable percentage of body weight, become hypothermic, and can fail to recover unless removed from these conditions. Method: Once rats had lost 20% of body weight under standard ABA conditions, they were assigned to one of two ambient temperature (AT) conditions. Results: Increased AT reduced running rates and led to weight gain in active rats. The effect of increasing AT on food intake was dependent on whether the rats were sedentary or active. Although warming reduced food intake in the sedentary rats their body weight remained stable, whereas in active rats increased AT did not reduce food intake and weight gain gradually rose. Conclusion: From a translational perspective, these findings offer a fresh perspective to the disorder, and underscore the need for further studies to assess the effects of heat treatment in patients as an innovative adjunctive treatment for anorexia nervosa. © 2008 by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Eat Disord 2008 [source]


Colorful songbirds metabolize carotenoids at the integument

JOURNAL OF AVIAN BIOLOGY, Issue 6 2004
Kevin J. McGraw
For decades, carotenoids have attracted attention for their roles as vitamin-A precursors, antioxidants, and immunostimulants, but we still understand very little about the metabolic processes that accompany these compounds. Animals like birds use carotenoids to color their feathers and bare parts to become sexually attractive. They commonly metabolically derive their body colorants from dietary sources of carotenoids, but the sites of pigment metabolism remain unidentified. Here I test the hypothesis that songbirds manufacture their colorful feather and beak carotenoids directly at these tissues. I offer two lines of evidence to support this idea: (1) in a study of 11 colorful species from three passerine families, metabolically derived feather and beak carotenoids were found neither in the liver (a purported site of carotenoid metabolism), nor in the bloodstream (the means by which metabolites would be transported to colorful tissues from anywhere else in the body) at the time when pigments were being deposited into keratinized tissue, and (2) in a more detailed study of pigmentation in the American goldfinch Carduelis tristis, carotenoids sampled from the lipid fractions of maturing feather follicles yielded a mix of dietary and synthetic carotenoids, suggesting that this is the metabolically active site for feather-pigment production. This fresh perspective on carotenoid metabolism in animals should aid our efforts to characterize the responsible enzymes and to better understand the localized biological functions of these pigments. [source]


Three metaphors and a (mis)quote: thinking about staffing-outcomes research, health policy and the future of nursing

JOURNAL OF NURSING MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2009
FAAN, SEAN P. CLARKE RN
Conducting research on nurse staffing and outcomes is very challenging, and the application of staffing-outcomes research in practice is both fraught with controversy and vitally important for the safety of our patients and the future of the profession. As I stand back and think about being involved in staffing-outcomes research for nearly a decade and sharing many of my thoughts about this rapidly growing literature in reviews and commentaries in print, certain metaphors for trends in this field come to mind. I won't claim originality for the insights that follow or attempt to thoroughly trace the genealogy of the stories and metaphors here, but offer them to provide what I hope is a fresh perspective to material that I and many of my colleagues have visited and revisited on numerous occasions. [source]


The organizational influence of the Chief Technology Officer

R & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2008
John W. Medcof
The proposition that the Chief Technology Officer's (CTO) primary bases for power and influence are in technical expertise and position power is critically analyzed from the perspective of upper echelons research. This fresh perspective suggests that CTOs who aspire to have significant influence in their organizations should also build their power bases on broad knowledge of the firm and its environment, a network of personal relationships inside and outside the firm, ownership position in the firm, and intuitive understanding of the business. The CEO's leadership style can also enhance or curtail the influence of the CTO. Research and managerial implications are drawn. [source]


SENSUAL ATTACHMENT AND INCEST AVOIDANCE IN HUMAN EVOLUTION AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 4 2005
John M. Ingham
The authors take issue with the critique of psychoanalysis and the depiction of human sexuality and incest avoidance in evolutionary psychology. Drawing on human neurobiology and evolutionary anthropology, they show that human beings have an evolved disposition toward pair-bonding and evolved capacities for self-regulation of sexual and aggressive impulses. The realization that these characteristics are not only important but also interrelated leads to a reassessment of the Oedipus complex, a new model of incest avoidance in humans, and a fresh perspective on the relation between reproductive behaviour and environmental conditions. [source]


Temporal artery biopsies: a fresh perspective

ANZ JOURNAL OF SURGERY, Issue 7-8 2010
Raj Manjuka MBBS
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


When brains expand: mind and the evolution of cortex

ACTA NEUROPSYCHIATRICA, Issue 3 2007
Matthew T. K. Kirkcaldie
Objective:, To critically examine the relationship between evolutionary and developmental influences on human neocortex and the properties of the conscious mind it creates. Methods:, Using PubMed searches and the bibliographies of several monographs, we selected 50 key works, which offer empirical support for a novel understanding of the organization of the neocortex. Results:, The cognitive gulf between humans and our closest primate relatives has usually been taken as evidence that our brains evolved crucial new mechanisms somehow conferring advanced capacities, particularly in association areas of the neocortex. In this overview of neocortical development and comparative brain morphometry, we propose an alternative view: that an increase in neocortical size, alone, could account for novel and powerful cognitive capabilities. Other than humans' very large brain in relation to the body weight, the morphometric relations between neocortex and all other brain regions show remarkably consistent exponential ratios across the range of primate species, including humans. For an increase in neocortical size to produce new abilities, the developmental mechanisms of neocortex would need to be able to generate an interarchy of functionally diverse cortical domains in the absence of explicit specification, and in this respect, the mammalian neocortex is unique: its relationship to the rest of the nervous system is unusually plastic, allowing great changes in cortical organization to occur in relatively short periods of evolution. The fact that even advanced abilities like self-recognition have arisen in species from different mammalian orders suggests that expansion of the neocortex quite naturally generates new levels of cognitive sophistication. Our cognitive and behavioural sophistication may, therefore, be attributable to these intrinsic mechanisms' ability to generate complex interarchies when the neocortex reaches a sufficient size. Conclusion:, Our analysis offers a parsimonious explanation for key properties of the human mind based on evolutionary influences and developmental processes. This view is perhaps surprising in its simplicity, but offers a fresh perspective on the evolutionary basis of mental complexity. [source]


Infant mental health, child maltreatment, and the law: A jurisprudent therapy analysis,

INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 1 2008
James J. Clark
Scholarly and clinical discussions of the legal issues facing infant mental health professionals typically focus on the seemingly intractable differences in philosophies, goals, and approaches inherent in the law and the mental health professions. We argue that forensically informed approaches to practice with very young children can potentially enhance many mental health and child welfare outcomes. This article describes the relatively new conceptual frameworks known as "therapeutic jurisprudence" and "jurisprudent therapy." Using these conceptual frameworks, we analyze representative problems that are typical in infant mental health practice with maltreated children through case examples drawn from their evaluations of children and families in the child protection and legal systems. Demonstrations of how such dilemmas can be approached with enhanced analytic decision-making and practice approaches are presented. We argue that applying such jurisprudent therapy approaches opens up fresh perspectives for evidence-based practices that facilitate creative, rigorous, and intellectually stimulating clinical work. [source]


Cover Picture , Mol.

MOLECULAR NUTRITION & FOOD RESEARCH (FORMERLY NAHRUNG/FOOD), Issue 7 2008
Nutr.
The concept that foods and botanical agents could enhance or reduce the effects of prescribed medications has gained our attention only gradually. This special issue will stimulate some lively discussions and provide some fresh perspectives, and inspire a new level of thoughtful and responsible discourse for these rapidly evolving fields of therapeutics and of personal health maintenance. [source]


Universal design across the curriculum

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION, Issue 137 2007
Robbin Zeff
The concepts of the applied universal design movement have created fresh perspectives on management tasks and opportunities. [source]


Horizons Conference offers fresh perspectives on biotechnology

AUSTRALIAN VETERINARY JOURNAL, Issue 12 2005
Rob Nethery
No abstract is available for this article. [source]