Wind—On a Pictorial Quintessence

The wind only allows itself to be seen indirectly: swaying trees, waving grass, fluttering textile. Yet we can feel the wind. And hear it. Wind brings scents. Wind is a cosmic breath. Wind binds and drives apart. Wind nourishes or destroys. For all these reasons and more, wind embodies a hermeneutics of the association between freedom and attachment, between the unexpected and fate. But is there such a thing as an iconography of this caprice? How are we to understand the representation, evocation and suggestion of wind? How does one contain pictorially this natural phenomenon that envelops and penetrates us? And is wind in the visual arts a motif or rather a formal affect

Wind—On a Pictorial Quintessence

The wind only allows itself to be seen indirectly: swaying trees, waving grass, fluttering textile. Yet we can feel the wind. And hear it. Wind brings scents. Wind is a cosmic breath. Wind binds and drives apart. Wind nourishes or destroys. For all these reasons and more, wind embodies a hermeneutics of the association between freedom and attachment, between the unexpected and fate. But is there such a thing as an iconography of this caprice? How are we to understand the representation, evocation and suggestion of wind? How does one contain pictorially this natural phenomenon that envelops and penetrates us? And is wind in the visual arts a motif or rather a formal affect

The Incipit Miniature of the Morgan Gospel of John

In this paper, I explore the iconographical relationship between the letters and the support on fol. 157r of the Morgan Gospels, written and illuminated in Westphalia, Germany during the mid-tenth century. On the basis of its formal properties and the iconographic meaning it takes, I will give particular attention to the materiality of the Latin text and its cultural and symbolic significance. The folio under study develops a form of  ‘agency’. With this perspective, I hope not only to contribute to the important line of argument Joshua O’Driscoll develops in his iconic article, but also to explore the meaning of Latin as an iconological statement and hence to contribute with new methodological developments in the field of art history

Erucic acid in feed and food

The Panel wishes to thank the members of the Working Group on erucic acid in food and feed: Bruce Cottrill, Eugenia Dogliotti, Juha Laakso, Manfred Metzler, Leonardo Velasco and Christiane Vleminckx for the preparatory work on this scientific output, the hearing expert: Mary Sheppard and EFSA staff members: Katleen Baert, Barbara Dörr, Jose Angel Gomez Ruiz and Enikő Varga for the support provided to this scientific opinion. The Panel acknowledges all European countries and European stakeholder organisations (FEDIOL, SNE and FEFAC) that provided occurrence data on erucic acid in food and feed. The Panel wishes to thank all European countries that supported the collection of consumption data for the Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Exploring aldehyde release in beer by 4-vinylpyridine and the effect of cysteine addition on the beer's pool of bound aldehydes

As a continuation of our previous work, which concerned the binding of aldehydes to bisulfite and cysteine, this article presents more results on the applicability of 4-vinylpyridine addition to beer prior to analysis aiming at release of aldehydes from these preformed bound states, thus making them quantifiable with the headspace solid-phase microextraction method combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. This article also presents the first results on spiking beer samples with cysteine prior to forced-aging, pointing to the important role of cysteine in beer flavor stability. Both the levels in free and bound aldehydes show a relatively large degree of variation among different beers, but also between marker aldehydes. For some aldehydes (e.g., hexanal), the bound amount was shown to increase rather strongly upon forced beer aging, whereas for others (e.g., 2-methylpropanal), large amounts appeared to already be present in a bound state in the fresh samples. Spiking beer samples with cysteine prior to aging significantly lowered the aldehyde levels compared with nonspiked samples. Flavor stability of the cysteine-spiked beers was thereby greatly improved through aldehyde-cysteine adduct formation. It was further hypothesized that, in addition to efficient binding of aldehydes, cysteine also inhibits the formation of furfural during beer aging from Maillard reaction intermediates

Transfection of IL-10 expression vectors into endothelial cultures attenuates α4β7-dependent lymphocyte adhesion mediated by MAdCAM-1

BACKGROUND: Enhanced expression of MAdCAM-1 (mucosal addressin cell adhesion molecule-1) is associated with the onset and progression of inflammatory bowel disease. The clinical significance of elevated MAdCAM-1 expression is supported by studies showing that immunoneutralization of MAdCAM-1, or its ligands reduce inflammation and mucosal damage in models of colitis. Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is an endogenous anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory cytokine that has been shown to prevent inflammation and injury in several animal studies, however clinical IL-10 treatment remains insufficient because of difficulties in the route of IL-10 administration and its biological half-life. Here, we examined the ability of introducing an IL-10 expression vector into endothelial cultures to reduce responses to a proinflammatory cytokine, TNF-α METHODS: A human IL-10 expression vector was transfected into high endothelial venular ('HEV') cells (SVEC4-10); we then examined TNF-α induced lymphocyte adhesion to lymphatic endothelial cells and TNF-α induced expression of MAdCAM-1 and compared these responses to control monolayers. RESULTS: Transfection of the IL-10 vector into endothelial cultures significantly reduced TNF-α induced, MAdCAM-1 dependent lymphocyte adhesion (compared to non-transfected cells). IL-10 transfected endothelial cells expressed less than half (46 ± 6.6%) of the MAdCAM-1 induced by TNF-α (set as 100%) in non-transfected (control) cells. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that gene therapy of the gut microvasculature with IL-10 vectors may be useful in the clinical treatment of IBD

Worldwide diversity of endophytic fungi and insects associated with dormant tree twigs

International trade in plants and climate change are two of the main factors causing damaging tree pests (i.e. fungi and insects) to spread into new areas. To mitigate these risks, a large-scale assessment of tree-associated fungi and insects is needed. We present records of endophytic fungi and insects in twigs of 17 angiosperm and gymnosperm genera, from 51 locations in 32 countries worldwide. Endophytic fungi were characterized by high-throughput sequencing of 352 samples from 145 tree species in 28 countries. Insects were reared from 227 samples of 109 tree species in 18 countries and sorted into taxonomic orders and feeding guilds. Herbivorous insects were grouped into morphospecies and were identified using molecular and morphological approaches. This dataset reveals the diversity of tree-associated taxa, as it contains 12,721 fungal Amplicon Sequence Variants and 208 herbivorous insect morphospecies, sampled across broad geographic and climatic gradients and for many tree species. This dataset will facilitate applied and fundamental studies on the distribution of fungal endophytes and insects in trees