Publications

The Chilean writer Miguel Serrano (1917–2009) is one of the most important figures of the contemporary right-wing counterculture, standing next to figures such as Julius Evola and Savitri Devi. Accordingly, in the last two decades his antisemitic books have been published in places as disparate as Idaho, Rome, Bogota, Melbourne, and London. Likewise, diverse musicians have paid tribute to him, revealing that his influence goes beyond conventional far-right circles. This paper shows the impact of Serrano’s antisemitism on the twenty-first-century countercultural rightists, emphasizing both the local aspects –Latin American, Chilean– of his “Esoteric Hitlerism” and the global dimension of such an impact. This study argues that Serrano was essentially a Chilean right-wing intellectual who, by means of a noteworthy narrative and an irreducible activism, created an antisemitic oeuvre able to attract from Latin America a heterogeneous set of actors. In other words, Serrano shaped a local antisemitic appeal whose effects can be traced on a global scale today. This challenges some notions on Latin America as a mere receptacle of foreign anti-Jewish trends.

Nabokov’s fictional retrospective first-person narratives rely on the “perfect-memory” convention, which is, however, sometimes laid bare or even subverted. This convention makes no inroads in Nabokov’s factorgraphic narratives, such as Speak, Memory and “Abram Gannibal.” This paper discusses the narrative techniques that replace the “perfect-memory” convention in the “childhood-adolescence-youth” part of Speak, Memory, and the way these techniques relate to Nabokov’s view of the workings of memory, in the context of some his literary and philosophical precursors.                                   

The term amyloid defines a group of proteins that aggregate into plaques or fibers. Amyloid fibers gained their fame mostly due to their relation with neurodegenerative diseases in humans. However, secreted by lower organisms, such as bacteria and fungi, amyloid fibers play a functional role: for example, when they serve as cement in the extracellular matrix of biofilms. Originating either in humans or in microorganisms, the sequence of amyloid proteins is decorated with hexapeptides with high propensity to form fibers, known as steric zippers. We have found that steric zippers form globular structures on route to making fibers and exhibit a characteristic force–distance (F-D) fingerprint when pulled with an atomic force microscope (AFM) tip. Particularly, the F-D pulling curves showed force plateau steps, suggesting that the globular structures were composed of chains that were unwound like a yarn ball. Force plateau analysis showed that the F-D characteristic parameters were sequence sensitive, representing differences in the packing of the hexapeptides within the globules. These unprecedented findings show that steric zippers exhibit a characteristic nanomechanical signature in solution in addition to previously observed characteristic crystallographic structure. Getting to the fundamental interactions that govern the unzipping of full-length amyloid fibers may initiate the development of antiamyloid methods that target the physical in addition to the structural properties of steric zippers.

Recent evidence has shown that convergence of print and speech processing across a network of primarily left-hemisphere regions of the brain is a predictor of future reading skills in children, and a marker of fluent reading ability in adults. The present study extends these findings into the domain of second-language (L2) literacy, through brain imaging data of English and Hebrew L2 learners. Participants received an fMRI brain scan, while performing a semantic judgement task on spoken and written words and pseudowords in both their L1 and L2, alongside a battery of L1 and L2 behavioural measures. Imaging results show, overall, show a similar network of activation for reading across the two languages, alongside significant convergence of print and speech processing across a network of lefthemisphere regions in both L1 and L2 and in both cohorts. Importantly, convergence is greater for L1 in occipito-temporal regions tied to automatic skilled reading processes including the visual word-form area, but greater for L2 in frontal regions of the reading network, tied to more effortful, active processing. The main groupwise brain effects tell a similar story, with greater L2 than L1 activation across frontal, temporal and parietal regions, but greater L1 than L2 activation in parieto-occipital regions tied to automatic mapping processes in skilled reading. These results provide evidence for the shifting of the reading networks towards more automatic processing as reading proficiency rises and the mappings and statistics of the new orthography are learned and incorporated into the reading system. 

Nonmonotonic bending-induced changes of fundamental band gaps and quasiparticle energies are observed for realistic nanoscale phosphorene nanosheets. Calculations using stochastic many-body perturbation theory show that even slight curvature causes significant changes in the electronic properties. For small bending radii (\textless4 nm) the band gap changes from direct to indirect. The response of phosphorene to deformation is strongly anisotropic (different for zigzag vs armchair bending) due to an interplay of exchange and correlation effects. Overall, our results show that fundamental band gaps of phosphorene sheets can be manipulated by as much as 0.7 eV depending on the bending direction.

Ultrasound-mediated gene delivery (sonoporation) is a minimally invasive, nonviral and clinically translatable method of gene therapy. This method offers a favorable safety profile over that of viral vectors and is less invasive as compared with other physical gene delivery approaches (e.g., electroporation). We have previously used sonoporation to overexpress transgenes in different skeletal tissues in order to induce tissue regeneration. Here, we provide a protocol that could easily be adapted to address various other targets of tissue regeneration or additional applications, such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. This protocol describes how to prepare, conduct and optimize ultrasound-mediated gene delivery in both a murine and a porcine animal model. The protocol includes the preparation of a microbubble-DNA mix and in vivo sonoporation under ultrasound imaging. Ultrasound-mediated gene delivery can be accomplished within 10 min. After DNA delivery, animals can be followed to monitor gene expression, protein secretion and other transgene-specific outcomes, including tissue regeneration. This procedure can be accomplished by a competent graduate student or technician with prior experience in ultrasound imaging or in performing in vivo procedures.

The aim of the present short communication is to shed a novel light on the auto immune disorder atopic dermatitis by discussing the possible role played by the plethora of toxic agents released by  Staphylococcus aureus which can act in a tight synergism with neutrophils derived cationic polyelectrolytes  as related to the pathogenesis of atopic dermatitis (AD) [1,2]. This disorder results in  inflammation of the  skin characterized by itchiness,  red  skin,  a  rash,  by   the  accumulations  of  large numbers of Staphylococcus  aureus  their toxins [2] and pro- inflammatory agents secreted by migrating neutrophiles [3], are considered the main cause of AD pathogenicity.

The solid-state photo-chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization (photo-CIDNP) effect generates non-equilibrium nuclear spin polarization in frozen electron-transfer proteins upon illumination and radical-pair formation. The effect can be observed in various natural photosynthetic reaction center proteins using magic-angle spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and in a flavin-binding light-oxygen-voltage (LOV) domain of the blue-light receptor phototropin. In the latter system, a functionally instrumental cysteine has been mutated to interrupt the natural cysteine-involving photochemistry allowing for an electron transfer from a more distant tryptophan to the excited flavin mononucleotide chromophore. We explored the solid-state photo-CIDNP effect and its mechanisms in phototropin-LOV1-C57S from the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii by using field-cycling solution NMR. We observed the ¹³C and, to our knowledge, for the first time, ¹⁵N photo-CIDNP signals from phototropin-LOV1-C57S. Additionally, the ¹H photo-CIDNP signals of residual water in the deuterated buffer of the protein were detected. The relative strengths of the photo-CIDNP effect from the three types of nuclei, ¹H, ¹³C and ¹⁵N were measured in dependence of the magnetic field, showing their maximum polarizations at different magnetic fields. Theoretical level crossing analysis demonstrates that anisotropic mechanisms play the dominant role at high magnetic fields.

More than 3000 international investment agreements (IIAs) provide foreign investors with substantive protections in host states and access to binding investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). In recent years, states increasingly have sought to change their treaty commitments through the practices of renegotiation and termination, so far affecting about 300 IIAs. The received wisdom is that this development reflects a “backlash” against the regime and an attempt by governments to reclaim sovereignty, consistent with broader anti-globalization trends. Using new data on the degree to which state regulatory space (SRS) is restricted by IIA provisions, this article provides the first systematic investigation into the effect of ISDS experiences on state decisions to adjust their treaties. The empirical analysis indicates that, indeed, exposure to investment claims leads either to the renegotiation of IIAs in the direction of greater SRS or to their termination. This effect varies, however, with the nature of involvement in ISDS and with respect to different treaty provisions.