Oxford University Press's Blog, page 295
December 1, 2017
A composer’s Christmas: Sarah Quartel
We caught up with composer Sarah Quartel to find out what she loves about Christmas, how the season inspires her composing, and how she spends her Christmas day.
What’s your favourite thing about the Christmas season?
I love the little things that pop up to signal the arrival of Christmas…the students’ excitement at school, my neighbours’ candy cane decorations, that pervasive sense of Christmas that lingers in my home and around my community. These familiar sights, sounds, and smells are the first signals of wonderful things to come: treasured family gatherings, brass accompanying carols in a candlelit church, lazy days making recipes you dare not try any other time of the year!
Is there anything about Christmas that particularly inspires your composing?
I am inspired by the relationships people have with the Christmas music they find most meaningful. It’s like a favourite carol or particular descant is a member of the family that comes once a year and gets the prized spot at the dinner table. Knowing that these words and melodies have been sung with such joy over many Christmas seasons inspires me to create music that singers and listeners feel connected to.
What marks the beginning of Christmas for you?
Decorating the house with my husband on 1 December. The Charlie Brown Christmas album goes on and we start to unpack the boxes of relics from the basement….
What’s your favourite Christmas film and why?
My favourite Christmas film is The Muppet Christmas Carol. I know, I know. Folks would be appalled that I didn’t pick the Alastair Sim version, but there’s something about Sir Michael Caine singing and dancing that I can’t resist. Plus, I think the songs in that movie are great.
What’s your favourite Christmas carol and why?
I don’t think I could pick just one. I am absolutely in love with Christmas carols. I find I crave different pieces in different settings. For example, in church I adore the Willcocks arrangement of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful.’ That is the sound of my Christmas. But if I am singing with friends, I love older carols like ‘Gaudete’, ‘In dulci jubilo’, and ‘Angelus ad virginem.’
Which one of your own Christmas works are you most proud of and why?
I actually haven’t written a lot of Christmas pieces which surprises me now that I think about it. For someone who is so in love with the season, I believe it’s time to expand that part of my catalogue! I have found it fascinating to see how different choirs approach ‘Snow Angel.’ I’ve heard it performed in all seasons in a variety of different settings but I once saw it used in a Christmas Eve pageant. They performed the movements of the work in companion with Nativity tableaux and Bible readings. The piece took on a whole new dimension when used in this way.
Sarah Quartel looking at a winter viewAre there any seasonal activities that you particularly enjoy doing?
When I was a child the Quartel family had the tradition of taking a horse-drawn wagon ride through the snowy fields and woods near my uncle’s home out in rural Ontario. There was an outhouse along the way and every year one of the many aunts and uncles would be nominated to leave the warmth of the wagon and trudge through the knee-deep snow to visit said frigid outhouse. I think pretending to be grumpy about it was part of the requirement for participation.
What does a typical Christmas day look like for you?
A typical Christmas day for me always includes family. We begin with a beautiful breakfast consisting of almond kringle, fruit salad, croissants, a lavish meat and cheese tray, as well as champagne and orange juice. The sound of Dad’s nearly 30 year-old ‘Carols from Clare’ CD plays in the background. We give gifts, then cozy up with a warm drink and one of Mum’s peppermint pinwheel cookies. The rest of the day is spent cooking, eating, and laughing.
Why do you think music is so important to people at Christmas time?
One of the reasons music is so important to me at Christmas time is because it connects me to my father who passed away many years ago. At my close family gatherings it used to be Dad who was in charge of selecting the listening material which graced each meal. He was so careful and particular about his choices! As an organist who could play Bach like nobody’s business, you can imagine that his offerings were always superb. I’ve taken over the role of Christmas music programmer with much gusto and smile every time I select an album he would have appreciated.
What is the most memorable Christmas you have ever had?
I do remember, quite vividly, the year I was away from home at Christmas. My husband and I were living in a climate that very rarely got snow. No snow?! At Christmas?! As a woman from an area of Ontario known as The Snow Belt, this was a tough one for me. Fortunately, we lived near the mountains on Vancouver Island and my darling husband offered to drive us up a treacherous highway so we could go “snow hunting.” We managed to locate a skiff of snow and I was ever so happy.
Featured image credit: Charlie Brown ice sculpture by mariamichelle. Public domain via Pixabay .
The post A composer’s Christmas: Sarah Quartel appeared first on OUPblog.
November 30, 2017
Who wrote Gulliver’s Travels?
Originally published anonymously, Jonathan Swift sent the manuscript for the satirical masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels to his publisher under a pseudonym and handled any correspondence and corrections through friends. As such, even though close friends such as Alexander Pope knew about the publication, Swift still kept up the ruse of feigning ignorance about the book in his correspondence with them. The first edition of Gulliver’s Travels appeared on 28 October 1726. In the months afterwards, as detailed in excerpts from his letters below, the fun with his friends began.
“I am just come from answering a Letter of Mrs. Howard’s writ in such mystical terms, that I should never have found out the meaning, if a Book had not been sent me called Gulliver’s Travellers, of which you say so much in yours.”
“When I received your Letter I thought it the most unaccountable one I ever saw in my Life, and was not able to comprehend three words of it together. The Perverseness of your Lines astonished me, which tended downwards to the right on one Page, and upward in the two others. This I thought impossible to be done by any Person who did not squint with both Eyes; an Infirmity I never observed in you. However, one thing I was pleased with, that after you had writ me down, you repented, and writ me up. But I continued four days at a loss for your meaning, till a Bookseller sent me the Travells of one Captn Gulliver, who proved a very good Explainer, although at the same time, I thought it hard to be forced to read a Book of seven hundred Pages in order to understand a Letter of fifty lines…”
Image credit: “Gullivers Travels Arthur Rackham Vintage” by Prawny. CC0 via Pixabay.“My correspondents have informed me that your Ladyship has done me the honor to answer severall objections that ignorance, malice, and party have made to my Travells, and bin so charitable as to justifie the fidelity and veracity of the Author. This Zeal you have shown for Truth calls for my particular thanks, and at the same time encourages me to beg you would continue your goodness to me by reconcileing me to the Maids of Honour whom they say I have most grievously offended.”
“As to Captain Gulliver, I find his book is very much censured in this kingdom which abounds in excellent judges; but in England I hear it hath made a bookseller almost rich enough to be an alderman. In my judgement I should think it hath been mangled in the press, for in some parts it doth not seem of a piece, but I shall hear more when I am in England.”
Featured Image Credit: Knowledge is key by Valentine.CCO Public Domain via Unsplash .
The post Who wrote Gulliver’s Travels? appeared first on OUPblog.
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: North Korea
Today Northeast Asia confronts the world with a volatile mix of geopolitical competition and nuclear threats unseen since the beginning of the Cold War. The imbroglio over a nuclear armed and very dangerous Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) involving the United States, China, Republic of Korea (ROK), and other actors epitomizes this peril. The present crisis, however, is only the latest manifestation of a long-drawn entanglement that can be traced back to the 1950 Korean War, which was fought with the objective to unite the peninsula under a Sino-Soviet alliance. These efforts were thwarted by the United States and its allies under a United Nations (UN) mandate. The war, which ended in 1953 with an armistice that divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, but not a peace treaty – the belligerents are legally still at war – lies at very root of today’s confrontation.
Following the Korean War the two sides, unsurprisingly, had different objectives. These differences have endured, despite the Sino-US rapprochement in 1971-72, and the end of the Cold War; and have prevented a resolution of the nuclear challenges in Northeast Asia.
The US objective in the region was manifold: first, to ensure that the whole Korean peninsula did not become part of the Moscow-led axis, evidenced by the emergence of the Warsaw Pact; second, to provide security to its allies, particularly ROK; and third, simultaneously Washington wanted to ensure that the region in general and the peninsula in particular did not witness nuclear proliferation. Consequently, the United States and ROK signed a Mutual Defense Treaty on 1 October 1953, established the United States Forces Korea sub-command, and permanently deployed US troops and nuclear weapons in ROK. The US nuclear weapons, which numbered as many as 950 in 1967, were unilaterally withdrawn in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. However, the United States continues to provide a “nuclear umbrella” using nuclear bombers and submarines based elsewhere. At the same time the United States also ensured that ROK remained loyal to the non-proliferation pledge.
“Following the Korean War the two sides, unsurprisingly, had different objectives. These differences have endured…and have prevented a resolution of the nuclear challenges in Northeast Asia.”
The objective of the Sino-Soviet bloc, particularly Beijing – following the split with Moscow – was also multifold. First, to rebuff efforts to unite Korea under the US alliance system and make sure that a communist DPRK continued to provide a crucial buffer. Second, this in turn meant that the Sino-Soviet bloc was also willing to accept the hereditary communist setup in DPRK, and to ensure regime survival. Third, the purpose of preventing nuclear proliferation on the peninsula was only to serve the first two objectives; indeed, proliferation was tolerated as it was seen to support the key objectives.
Consequently, DPRK signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation & Mutual Assistance with both the Soviet Union and China in July 1961. Both treaties called for military assistance in case of an attack. Indeed, Article 2 of the treaty with China went as far as to declare “all necessary measures to oppose any country or coalition of countries that might attack either nation”. After China’s nuclear test in 1964, this tacitly included a nuclear security guarantee. After the Cold War, Russia refused to renew this treaty and it lapsed in 1995. However, China and DPRK renewed their treaty in 2001 for another 20 years until 2021.
The 2001 renewal of the Sino-DPRK treaty notwithstanding, Pyongyang had already initiated its nuclear weapons program, declared its intent to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (in 1993), formally withdrew in 2003, and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. Since then DPRK has conducted six tests, the latest one in September 2017, possibly a thermonuclear test. Today, DPRK has all the trappings of a nuclear armed state.
DPRK’s reasons for pursuing a program to develop an independent nuclear deterrent was probably driven by two factors. First was Pyongyang’s perception that in the post-Cold War “uni-polar” era, the United States and its allies were committed to a policy of overthrowing longstanding regimes, especially when these regimes did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or gave up their programs. This notion was strengthened following the so-called 2003 “preventive” war by the United States against Iraq’s alleged WMD programs, and the 2011 UN mandated intervention led by US allies in Libya, which resulted in the toppling of the Muammar Qaddafi regime after it had surrendered its WMD programs.
Moreover, Beijing shared the regime preservation concerns of the second and now third generation of Pyongyang’s hereditary leadership as serving China’s crucial geopolitical goals in Northeast Asia. To this end, China appears to have supported DPRK’s nuclear quest through acts of commission and omission. For instance, an Institute for Science and International Security report alleged that China had allowed the export of material (in violation of UN sanctions) to DPRK, which would enable Pyongyang to build hydrogen bombs. Similarly, a Washington Post report claimed that DPRK’s rockets are still being built with some crucial Chinese components. Other reports suggest that DPRK’s proliferation “activities involve Chinese facilitators or have a nexus in China”. This pattern is not dissimilar to the support that China also provided another crucial ally and neighbor – Pakistan.
Indeed, China’s tacit support to DPRK’s nuclear weapon program might be considered a form of extended deterrence – not unlike that offered by the United States to ROK – but with graver consequences both for the non-proliferation regime as well as nuclear stability in Northeast Asia. For instance, with DPRK’s growing indigenous capabilities and an unruly leader at the helm, Beijing’s ability to manage its truculent neighbor and rowdy ally is being severely tested. In fact, on several occasions – such as during the 9th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Xiamen when DPRK conducted its sixth and, possibly, first hydrogen bomb – Pyongyang is denting China’s efforts towards building a new world order. Similarly, Pyongyang’s antics have provided the rationale for Washington to deploy missile defense systems, which – much to Beijing’s chagrin – also have the ability to potentially counter China’s deterrence capabilities.
Unsurprisingly then, every effort to stop DPRK’s determined march towards building its nuclear capability has failed, including the 1994 Framework Agreement (which collapsed in 2003), the Six Party Talks (which were discontinued in 2009), the plethora of UN Security Council sanctions, and the Trump administration’s convoluted policy ranging from “fire and fury” to negotiations.
None of the present options to address the DPRK proliferation imbroglio in isolation – use of force, sanctions, or diplomacy – are likely to work. The only way to deal with the proliferation challenge posed by the DPRK is to also try and resolve the geopolitical contestation that lingers on from the unfinished war of 1950. This would require the United States, China and, perhaps, Russia along with DPRK and ROK to formalize the status quo with a formal peace treaty. That might still not be enough for DPRK to give up its nuclear arsenal but it might just prevent an unacceptable nuclear exchange.
Featured image credit: “Flag of North Korean leaders” by Jgaray, Nicor, Coronades03, P388388, Oppashi. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Place of the Year nominee spotlight: North Korea appeared first on OUPblog.
One’s “own” voice?
Sometimes personal and professional lives get tangled in unexpected ways. As I was writing an article on the nineteenth-century celebrity soprano Jenny Lind (1820-1887), a colleague who’d been asked to send comments on an early draft alerted me to a problem: I wasn’t writing, or so they thought, with my “own voice.” Their comment got me thinking—first of all, about the basis for their claim. Admittedly, it wasn’t the easiest of criticisms to take. But it also got me thinking on another level. My whole article was, after all, an attempt to address a set of fundamental questions: do we truly have (or own) a voice? One single, inner, personal voice? Are voices nothing more nor less than some kind of essences proceeding from individual subjects? Should we long to retrieve them? What about teasing them out as more motley relational complexes?
That’s precisely what happened in the mid-nineteenth century with Lind. Born into a humble family in 1820 Stockholm, she gave her first performances in the opera house in Sweden in the 1830s. Later, she moved to Paris to recover from the injuries that overexertion had caused to her vocal organs. Her consultant and voice trainer there was the celebrated pedagogue Manuel García fils (the author of an important vocal treatise, the “Traité complet de l’art du chant.” “Hard work, indefatigable practice, unwearying study”: here lay the secret, by near-unanimous agreement of Lind’s nineteenth-century biographers, of her recovery and rise to universal success. Universal indeed. For by the time of her first London appearance at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1847 she was on the verge of becoming a global celebrity—a status sanctioned by her US tour in 1850-52.
The London cultural industry was quick to promote Lind’s debut on the British stage. The periodical press brought out countless accounts of her life, appearance, and personality. A halo of piety and sincerity distanced her from the more disparaging prima donna stereotypes (which ranged from moodiness to greediness and prostitution). Her singing—she excelled in brilliant coloratura roles such as Amina in Bellini’s La sonnambula—was praised for its silvery tones, agility, and breathtaking soft high notes. Her daring embellishments lent her something of a brave, fearless character. Most notable of all, however, was the way that Lind’s performances came to evoke the empowering force of “unmediated” sensory experiences. As a journalist recalled nostalgically in later years, “The one question of the day was, ‘Have you heard her?’”
The extent to which the public craved to see and hear the performer directly has to do, I’d suggest, with the unparalleled media activity that marked the historical moment. A real Lind fever—or Lind mania, as it was then called—took over the whole of London society. A stock of more or less extravagant flooded the market: from engravings to daguerreotypes; from porcelain statuettes to bonnets and gloves; from “Jenny Lind” ballads to albums of melodies marketed “as sung by” her. What drove this production of disparate commodities was the provision (or rather promise) of “authentic” Lind experiences. The more faithful the reproductions, the more likely they were to attract and satisfy the appetite of consumers. What’s more, these multiple texts and objects created an intermedia realm of experience: one could sit on their sofa looking at a portrait, and be expected to “invest Jenny Lind’s form and features with the harmonies which they have drunk from her voice” in the theatre.
Personal reproductions. No copyright applies as the images date from the mid 19th century.But this artefactual complex did more than make Lind somehow visually and aurally ubiquitous. Just as the layers of visual representations would make people only more eager to catch a glimpse of the “real”, “authentic” individual, this same tension between mediated and unmediated experiences heightened some of the perceptual and ideological characteristics associated with Lind’s voice. The “purity” and “clarity” of tone; the extraordinarily “piercing” quality of even the softest of her notes; the almost “ventriloquial” character of sounds that seemed to emanate from nowhere: Lind’s voice was as much the pouring-out of some hidden individual essence as it was the product of a rich tapestry of material and human encounters. Mediation was key to it. Objects and bodies that were interposed between audiences and Lind also crafted her sounding identity. Far more than the single performer was involved into that voice’s making.
With hindsight, my colleague’s advice—that I should try harder to “find my own voice”—has proved useful in all sorts of ways. It made me ponder the vocal challenges and possibilities of a multilingual life (Italian being my native language); or of writing about sometimes very different subjects. Above all, it prodded me to think over how ready I was to subscribe to the very claims I was making. Letting historical voices go, by dissolving them into a thicker relational complex, may be all too easy as a scholarly endeavour. But then doing the same in a more personal dimension is a rather different thing. I do ultimately take pleasure, I think, in the relationships that undoubtedly have shaped the voice speaking in that one Lind article. Perhaps such voices may feel even more “our own” precisely because they bear the marks of lived encounters. So many people and objects and events share in those projections we often claim for ourselves alone.
Featured image credit: London, United Kingdom by Thomas Kelley. Public domain via Unsplash.
The post One’s “own” voice? appeared first on OUPblog.
November 29, 2017
Etymology gleanings for November 2017
Long ago (19 May 2010), I wrote a post on the origin of the mysterious word kibosh, part of the idiom to put the kibosh on “to put an end to something.” The discussion that followed made me return to this subject in 28 July 2010, and again three years later (14 August 2013). Since that time, the word has been at the center of attention of several researchers, and last month a book titled Origin of Kibosh by Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little appeared (Routledge Studies in Etymology. London and New York: Routledge). The preface, signed by Gerald Cohen, states: “The book is prepared with full acknowledgment that primary credit for developing the kibosh < kurbash (lash) etymology [< means “from”] goes back to Stephen Goranson. Matthew Little was first to make that suggestion (in an unpublished manuscript he sent me), but Goranson was first to make the suggestion publicly and in more detail in several messages of the American Dialect Society.” For four decades, Professor Cohen has been the publisher of and the main contributor to the periodical Comments on Etymology, and it was he who prepared the book for publication. “Unconvincing derivations have been suggested from Yiddish to Gaelic and Italian, and thus far consensus among lexicographers has leaned toward referencing the word as ‘origin unknown’” (from the page following the flyleaf and preceding the title page).
Indeed, the etymons from Old French and several other languages can be added to those mentioned above. In my opinion, to make progress in what at one time was called the science of etymology, linguists have to be familiar with everything ever said about the word they tackle. Everything is a frightening word, but, as I keep repeating year in, year out, etymology is a cumulative branch of scholarship. Many good and silly old conjectures made in the past are extremely hard to unearth, and that is why people keep reinventing the wheel: they suggest solutions, unaware of the fact that the same ideas have occurred to investigators in the past (sometimes more than once). Or it may happen that “bits” of promising solutions have appeared in print, and one should only combine them, to reveal the origin of a hard word.
“The ultimate kibosh?” Image credit: “King Peter I of Portugal punishes the Bishop of Oporto”, by Roque Gameiro. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.To break the deadlock, I spent years in amassing “everything” that has been written on the origin of English words. But though my bibliography has been published, it is not easy to find all the articles and reviews mentioned them. Hundreds of them appeared in fugitive journals, footnotes, and asides in Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Russian, and so forth, and it would be naïve to assume that language barriers do not exist for philologists. That is why I believe that monographs like Origin of Kibosh is of great value. Specialists know that similar books, those on ginger, shyster, and hot dog among them, exist. Now kibosh has joined that venerable series. It is more enjoyable and certainly more useful than the thrillers that end up on the bestseller lists and fill the shelves of our libraries. Once you have read the thriller, you may learn who killed the poor man or woman, or many of them and why, while after closing a book on etymology you come away with the knowledge of how a word was born. I should add that this book deals with language, customs, material culture, and history. Cruel overseers, hard-working cobblers, French barons in search of prey, and shadowy cement makers will parade before you.
Do I believe that the riddle has been solved? Have the authors put the kibosh on the old crux, or has the solution they proposed joined the ghosts of the years past? “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,” says Dickens in the preface to David Copperfield. The same holds for the derivation of kibosh from kurbash. I did not raise the immortal ghost in vain. For a long time, the earliest author who used kibosh (spelled kibosk) in print was Dickens. Attacks and counterattacks on the monograph will probably follow. The disagreement won’t diminish its value. Serious scholarship does not die with criticism: it merges with “the history of science.” I can probably add that in the Middle Ages, every story was looked upon as the source of edification and entertainment. Read Origin of Kibosh, and you will indeed be instructed and amused.
Animals and their wool
Several thought-provoking comments have dealt with the posts on wool-gathering. Whatever the origin of the idiom to pull the wool over one’s eyes “to fool someone” (it is usually referred to the wig falling over a person’s eyes), the image is obvious: with wool preventing you from seeing things, you will certainly be hoodwinked. I can detect no connection between that idiom and wool–gathering. Also, the earliest occurrences stressed the process of “gathering,” because the form was invariably to go a-wool-gathering and to go on wool-gathering. But I agree that an expression coined by villagers can be misunderstood and reinterpreted by those who have always lived in towns and have no idea what the image behind the idiom meant. That is why I very cautiously suggested that perhaps initially wool-gathering did not mean what we think it did. Unfortunately, I could not go further. Woolly-headed does refer to blurred vision and somehow shares the semantic space with pull wool over one’s eyes, and to have one’s head in the clouds may be close, though clouds do not always resemble fleece. Perhaps the image suggests being engrossed in things far from our sinful earth.
“There is always enough wool to protect the willing eyes.” Image credits: (Top) “Sheep Wool Woolly Livestock Farm Fleece Curly” by pen_ash. CC0 via Pixabay. (Bottom) The Court by William Hogarth. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.The origin of Engl. nag “old horse” is unknown, and there are several reasons for not connecting it with any ancient word for “sheep.” To turn the reconstructed protoform for “sheep” into Low German/Dutch nak “sheep,” the putative source of nag, one needs that form to have the second laryngeal in the root and later gemination. The details are too technical for this blog (just see the comment: it cites the hypothetical protoform), so that I don’t even highlight the terms. Besides, it often happens that different animals are called the same, and monosyllables are especially prone to be so used. They may be sound-imitative or baby words. Finally, a word of undiscovered etymology can never shed light on any other word. Light does not come from a dark corner. The author of the comment has no great faith in the connection, and I have even less.
The stature of dwarfs
This is in response to a comment following the post on thurse. Unfortunately, I noticed that comment too late. Yes, it is true: the mythological dwarfs were not small. In Scandinavian myths, they compete with giants and function as artisans. All the gods’ treasures were forged by them. In German heroic poetry, it takes Siegfried, the protagonist of The Lay of the Nibelungen, all he can do to overcome Alberich, the dwarf who guards the treasure. From the etymological point of view, dwarf does not mean “small” or “short.” Unlike the gods and the giants, the medieval Scandinavian dwarfs have no “home,” but in folklore, even in early folklore, they are already associated with mountains. The cause of the transition is not quite clear. As great smiths, they must have controlled all kinds of precious stones and ores, and those can be found only in the bowels of the earth. Perhaps that is why dwarfs ended up as mountain dwellers. The next step is even harder to account for. Is space in the mountains so much at a premium that those who live there shrink? Folklore is also full of mountain giants. However, those lived among, rather than in, the mountains. Obviously, some gaps in the history of dwarfs are hard to fill, but it is clear that, if those clever smiths were shown Disney’s movie, based on the Grimms’ tale, they would have taken it for an evil caricature.
“Siegfried fighting the tall and indomitable dwarf.” Image credit: The dwarves quarreling over the body of Fafner by Arthur Rackham. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.Quite a few unanswered questions and comments will be taken care of in the next issue of “gleanings,” in December.
Featured image credit: “Snow White Fairy Tales Awakening Dwarfs Princess” by 455992. CC0 via Pixabay.
The post Etymology gleanings for November 2017 appeared first on OUPblog.
Curcumin: common dietary supplement turned anti-cancer compound?
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most aggressive malignancies in the world. It is currently the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is projected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths as early as 2030. Although recent advancements in cancer treatments have improved the overall outcome of patients with most cancers, those same treatments are often less effective for pancreatic cancer, simply due to the disease’s aggression, late diagnosis, and development of resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs.
Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can produce other cell types, including the generation of even more stem cells. Accumulating evidence indicates that there is a specific population of cancer cells that behave like stem cells, called “cancer stem cells.” Many researchers believe that cancers that contain a higher population of cancer stem cells are more aggressive and contribute to the development of drug resistance. Therefore, if we can develop a better understanding of the molecular events characterizing pancreatic cancer stem cells, we may be able to identify therapeutic strategies to overcome its chemoresistance.
Over the past few decades, curcumin, a common food additive, has been identified as a potential anti-inflmmatory and anti-cancer compound. Curcumin is a phenolic compound extracted from the Curcuma longa plant, and was traditionally used as a spice for improving flavor and color into dishes of various Asian countries. Curcumin’s health benefits are not a new or surprising finding — the brightly colored compound has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for centuries for its potent anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor properties — but the fundamental mechanisms underlying its anti-cancer potential still remain an active area of interrogation. Intriguingly, curcumin has been shown to sensitize multiple cancers to chemotherapy drugs, and several recent studies have reported that curcumin is able to specifically target cancer stem cells. Because of the aggressive nature of PDAC biology, and the correlation between cancer stem cells and chemoresistance, these findings lead us to ask a very important question: could curcumin enhance the effectiveness of gemcitabine – the most common drug used for the treatment of pancreatic cancer? And if so, what could be the potential mechanisms?
Adenocarcinoma of Pancreas, FNA by Ed Uthman. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.In order to answer these questions, we first cultured PDAC cells which have a high resistance to gemcitabine. Then, we investigated whether curcumin was able to enhance the sensitivity of gemcitabine on these gemcitabine-resistant cells. As suggested by other groups, not only did we demonstrate that curcumin was able to enhance the sensitivity of gemcitabine in these resistant cells, we found that curcumin was also able to inhibit the growth of cancer stem cells. In our study, we also discovered that curcumin was regulating a class of non-coding RNA called “long non-coding RNAs” (lncRNAs). LncRNA is a relatively newly discovered type of non-coding RNA — RNA which does not make protein — found to be dysregulated in most cancers. We discovered that curcumin inhibits the expression of one of the most well-known lncRNA-based oncogenes, a gene that drives cancer, called PVT1. This lncRNA drives tumor progression through the regulation of another well-recognized oncogene, called EZH2. EZH2 is one of the oncogenes known to be involved in drug resistance and is identified to be a potential drug-able target. Though the generation of specific EZH2 inhibitors remains challenging, the findings from our study indicate that curcumin could be used to inhibit the expression of EZH2, as well as the non-coding RNA that regulates EZH2. Considering that curcumin is a commonly available health supplement, it presents itself as a non-toxic compound and incredibly cost-effective compound for the potential treatment of cancer patients.
Overall, this study identified a potential clinical application for combining curcumin supplements with chemotherapy to overcome chemoresistance in PDAC. The mechanistic investigation of natural compounds like curcumin could result in the development of safer and more potent chemotherapeutic agents, especially as oncologists try to treat chemoresistant tumors in their patients. Considering that more and more people have been consuming curcumin as a regular supplement, it may also act to reduce the tumor formation through the inhibition of tumor-causing oncogenes. Although further investigations, including clinical trials, are needed to confirm the efficacy of this compound as an adjuvant treatment to chemotherapeutic regimens, our study has added even greater evidence for the use of curcumin as a potential anti-tumorigenic compound.
Featured image credit: Spices Jar by Monicore. Public domain via Pixabay.
The post Curcumin: common dietary supplement turned anti-cancer compound? appeared first on OUPblog.
Is “food waste” really wasted food?
In 2012, the Food Network premiered The Big Waste. The show featured world-renowned chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Anne Burrell, and Alex Guarnaschelli competing in pairs to prepare a gourmet banquet meal.
The twist? They could only use food intended for the landfill. The episode drew attention to the issue of food waste. In 2014, the documentary Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story came out. It, too, focused attention on the issue of food waste and received praise from both critics and viewers.
Food waste has become a major cause for concern in the United States. Or at least, that’s what some prominent organizations suggest. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that the United States wastes 103 million tons of food. This number suggests the United States squanders lots of food and concerns about food insecurity continue to rise.
The statistics suggest that food waste is a problem, but how do these organizations calculate them? And what, exactly, is food waste? When organizations attempt to monetize the value of the waste, what price do they use? And once they arrive at an appropriate number, what can be done? These questions greatly affect whether food waste represents a policy priority or not.
To understand the difficulties in calculating the extent and cost of food waste, it is useful to begin with recognizing the steps involved from farm to table.
The final product sold to consumers goes through a number of processing, transformation, transportation, and distribution stages before ending up on someone’s plate. To oversimplify a bit, someone first grows the food which she then sells to processors. Retailers buy from the processors. Finally, consumers purchase the food from retailers.
The estimates from FAO overestimate the extent and cost of food waste. First, the definition used by the FAO identifies food waste as the “discarding or alternative (nonfood) use of food that is safe and nutritious for human consumption along the entire food supply chain.”
The problem with this approach is that recovered food is not necessarily wasted food, yet it is still included in the definition. Recovered food may become fertilizer or animal feed. If this happens, there is no waste. What was once a possible future meal for a human has become an input to another productive process. It may have ended up in the stomach of an animal that ends up on another plate later. Should discarded food that is still used and does not end up in the landfill be defined as “waste”?
FAO’s headquarters in Rome, in Via delle Terme di Caracalla by Scopritore. CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.Second, calculating the cost of waste depends on the price used. Conventional measures rely on retail prices—the price paid at the end of the process. This makes sense for food that ends up for consumption, but not for food at earlier stages of the production process. Retail prices are higher than the prices growers receive. By only using the highest prices, the estimated monetary loss is much greater than if the relevant prices at each stage were used.
This approach has some shortcomings. First, the prices used to measure food waste do not include externalities. Landfill waste emits CO2 and methane, both of which contributes to climate change. Second, they ignore the opportunity cost of using land as a landfill as well as the transportation costs associated with hauling food waste. A fuller measure would include these costs but the major organizations that calculate the value of waste do not account for these costs.
The appropriate policy response depends on the nature of the problem. For example, developed countries have better infrastructure and technology than developing countries. These affect the amount of food waste likely to occur during the early stages of the productive processes. Farmers with better technology and opportunities to move their products along to the next stage are more likely to have less waste. In developing countries, social norms play a larger role in limiting food waste. A culture that values the efficient use of resources given the importance of food as a share of household budgets generates little waste. Similarly, the proximity of the grower and consumer—in developing countries, they are often the same person—provides powerful incentives for minimal waste. Also, as the available opportunities to utilize food for other purposes increases for growers or processors they reduce waste.
Food waste deserves to be a focus of agricultural policy. But determining its relative importance among all things agricultural policy-related depends crucially on accurately measuring its extent and cost.
Featured image credit: Time for lunch by Dan Gold. Public domain via Unsplash.
The post Is “food waste” really wasted food? appeared first on OUPblog.
Citizen scientists can document the natural world
At the start of the 21st century, it may come as a surprise that we still have not catalogued the detailed anatomy or traits of most plants, animals and microbes whether they are living or fossil species. That we lack much of this basic information – how species’ cells are constructed, what their physiology is like, the details of their bones, muscles or leaves – may be remarkable given that the study of comparative “morphology” (sometimes called “phenomics”) has been underway for centuries.
Biologists and paleontologists do generate and publish new observations and analyses of morphology – every day – particularly as spreadsheets of detailed anatomical observations (called “matrices”). In these matrices, scientists compare different species for several morphological characteristics. By identifying similarities and differences among them, species can be placed in the Tree of Life. Nonetheless, with over 10 million living and fossil species to be described, the job is a big one. The newly created data is only beginning to be integrated into public databases like MorphoBank (a web application and database that allows users to build matrices linked to comparative morphological data) supported by the National Science Foundation. In any field, be it law, genetics, astrophysics, or biology and paleontology, having information in databases, is essential if investigators are to ask and answer complex questions. Evolutionary scientists use the Tree of Life, produced by the interpretation of data in matrices, to understand how many species exist and how they are related. This research allows us to understand nature’s history and present state, so that we may make better decisions about conservation.
Screenshot of The Evolution Project indicating the interface for the scoring of characters by citizen scientists. This information is drawn from a different web application, MorphoBank, that is used by scientists. Image provided by Dr. Arce H.Given that there are far more species to be described and studied than there are trained scientists, can we involve non-specialists or citizen scientists to help collect this data? If we show anatomical traits (such as a type of wing or a bump on a skull) to a non-scientist in a labeled picture, can that person then record whether a different species does or does not have the trait? In other words, can we crowdsource the collection of anatomical data for evolutionary research? For the experiment, we built a new piece of software for the public called The Evolution Project, currently hosted at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The images and information were drawn from MorphoBank, and were presented to the public. The public is invited to try this for bats, shrimp, plants, diatoms, catfishes or sea anemones and can do so on the The Evolution Project.
Dr. Arce H. with two children broadcasting the Evolution Project during a member’s night event at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. Image provided by Dr. Arce H.In a controlled experiment, we found that over 80% of the time citizen scientists could reach the same decision as a scientist if shown a labeled picture of the trait and asked a very constrained identification question. This is an extremely encouraging result, particularly as we also show that the success rate goes up if scientists can separate the harder identifications from the easier ones, keeping the former for themselves.
Currently the Evolution Project as sustained by the Academy of Natural Sciences will be used as an educational tool to expose non-scientists to the concepts of evolution through a hands-on interactive experience. The project provides the user with an understanding of what a morphological character is, how to score it and how to build phylogenetic matrices.
Despite these encouraging results, it is currently very time-consuming for scientists to set up the initial bank of images to which new species can be compared. Finding ways to automate this process with robotics or artificial intelligence may open the door to much greater organization of images. Such progress would allow future scientists to move the Evolution Project from its educational role to a role where new scientific data are being generated by non-scientists. Innovation of this kind would help get us to a place where we can say that we know the morphological details of life on Earth.
Featured image by ThomasWolter, CC0 Public domain via Pixabay.
The post Citizen scientists can document the natural world appeared first on OUPblog.
Understanding secularism [except]
What is secularism? In the following extract from Secularism: Politics, Religion, and Freedom, Andrew Copson breaks down 3 different parts of the definition of secularism, its history, and how its meaning has developed over time.
A good provisional modern definition is that adopted by the contemporary French scholar of secularism Jean Baubérot. He sees secularism as made up of three parts:
• Separation of religious institutions from the institutions of the state and no domination of the political sphere by religious institutions
• Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion for all, with everyone free to change their beliefs and manifest their beliefs within the limits of public order and the rights of others
• No state discrimination against anyone on grounds of their religion or non-religious world view, with everyone receiving equal treatment on these grounds
Separation of religious institutions from state institutions
‘Separation of church and state’ first became a constitutional feature of some Western countries in the eighteenth century, but the separation of religious institutions from state ones had also been a feature of societies elsewhere, and at other times in history. In the twentieth century, many states in Asia and Africa also constitutionally declared this separation, following the Western models and their own traditions. Today, separation is seen by many as the modern and democratic ideal. In some states it is formal and official, expressed in constitutions and laws; in others it is not official but is a practical reality in the way that governments operate. Separation is not uncontroversial. It is opposed by those who think that the state should share their own religious identity and have that identity as its foundation. It is also opposed by those who think that making the state non-religious disadvantages religious people in some way and is unfair.
The background to the development of modern separation in Europe was a struggle for power between churches and governments. Far more commonly today, the avowed motive for separation is to give equality of citizenship to all people of all different beliefs and to avoid alienating them by declaring a state religion they don’t share. Outside Europe many states still see religion and religious institutions as their rivals for power and for the loyalty of citizens. These states often regulate and control religious institutions as a result, and this too is a rejection of separation, or at least a denial that separation must entail non-interference.
Today, separation is seen by many as the modern and democratic ideal.
Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion
This freedom has been a feature of a number of societies and legal regimes in history but was first elaborated as a legal right in the modern West. It evolved from the official policies of religious toleration that developed in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe as a way of recognizing an individual’s conscience. It was in the guise of ‘religious freedom’ that it first became a legal right and under that name it is still a cherished part of US political culture in particular. Since the advent of formal universal human rights in the 1940s, it is now recognized as freedom of ‘religion or belief ’, where the word ‘belief’ includes non-religious world views, and as being itself part of a wider freedom of thought and conscience.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1993, the right to this freedom:
is far-reaching and profound; it encompasses freedom of thought on all matters, personal conviction and the commitment to religion or belief, whether manifested individually or in community with others . . . protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief . . . entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one’s current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views, as well as the right to retain one’s religion or belief.
The Human Rights Committee also agrees with Baubérot’s observation, however, that in some limited circumstances, it can be acceptable to restrict this freedom. They say that the right to have a religion or belief is protected ‘unconditionally’ and ‘no one can be compelled to reveal his thoughts or adherence to a religion or belief’, but that the right to act in accordance with your religion or belief may be subject to some limitations if they are ‘prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.’
Equal treatment on grounds of religion or non-religious world view
Beyond simply protecting the freedom of people to hold and manifest their beliefs, the secular state envisaged by Baubérot goes further and guarantees equal treatment to all on grounds of their religion or non-religious world view. This idea was formalized more recently than the first two aspects of secularism. Internationally, it is set out in the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief by the United Nations General Assembly. This said, ‘No one shall be subject to discrimination by any State, institution, group of persons, or person on grounds of religion or other beliefs.’ The Declaration called on all states to ‘take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.’
Featured image credit: The intersection of Church and State by Chris Phan. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr .
The post Understanding secularism [except] appeared first on OUPblog.
November 28, 2017
Historical Commemoration and Denial in Australia
Last month a statue commemorating Captain James Cook in Hyde Park in Sydney, Australia was attacked, the words ‘Change the date’ spray-painted on it. This act continues recent protests by indigenous people and their supporters which have called for the changing of the day upon which Australia celebrates its founding: 26 January 1788.
On that day nearly 230 years ago, the first governor of New South Wales, raised the British flag and confirmed the claim of possession to a vast swathe of the Australian continent that Cook had made in 1770 on the basis of a legal concept that Britain was the first European power to have discovered this land.
Many Cook statues were erected by white settlers in Australia in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and many of them, like the one in Hyde Park, proclaimed that Cook discovered this continent. This was part and parcel of a process by which settlers claimed that they belonged in this place and that it was theirs. In Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History, the memorials they built were not only a means of remembering but a way of forgetting that this place had been and was home to many Aboriginal people and that they or their forebears had dispossessed them.
In my most recent work, I point out that for a long time settler Australians, seeking to re-member Australia’s history in a manner that erased the Aboriginal presence, were able to dominate the ways in which the history of this land was remembered and forgotten. But, as I also emphasise in that article, this has been much less true for some time, as the recent attack on Cook’s statue in Hyde Park, and the media attention it has claimed, reveals. However, many settler Australians still seem to find it very difficult to acknowledge the fact that the foundations of this country rest on the dispossession and displacement of its indigenous people, if not their destruction (the Cook statue in Hyde Park also had the words ‘No pride in genocide’ sprayed on it).
Australians still seem to find it very difficult to acknowledge the fact that the foundations of this country rest on the dispossession and displacement of its indigenous people.
The Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seems to be a case in point. In response to the recent attacks on the Cook statue (as well as statues of Queen Victoria and an early Governor of New South Wales in the same park), he lambasted them in these terms, ‘it is part of a deeply disturbing and totalitarian campaign to not just challenge our history but also deny it and obliterate it’ (my emphasis) before going on to observe that Stalin had also sought to banish people ‘from memory and history itself’. But, I would ask, who is really denying or disavowing the past here?
Responses such as Turnbull’s, which I presume are prompted by both conscious and unconscious forces, calls for analysis. I argue that denial of the past is especially marked in settler societies such as Australia, and that there are intriguing connections between denial in the remembering of a past ― historical denial ― and denial at the time of that past ― contemporary denial. Indeed that the former has been especially marked in this case because of the nature of the latter.
One of the examples I give of this phenomenon concerns the claiming of possession. I argue that contemporary denial was the product of legal, moral and psychological forces that were largely the result of the peculiar terms upon which the British claimed terra Australis, quoting a commentator in the 1850s: ‘We hold it neither by inheritance, by purchase, nor by conquest, but by a sort of gradual eviction’. I suggest that, without the consent of the indigenous people that purchase or a treaty tended and tends to imply, Australia, unlike neighbouring New Zealand, was left without a truly satisfactory and satisfying way of legitimising its claim of possession. Clearly, this contemporary denial played a major role in the historical denial that followed, and which continues to this day ― as the words of its Prime Minister demonstrate.
Featured image credit: Captain Cook statue, Hyde Park by State Archives NSW. CC by 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Historical Commemoration and Denial in Australia appeared first on OUPblog.
Oxford University Press's Blog
- Oxford University Press's profile
- 238 followers
.png){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}