Central projections of Drosophila sensory neurons in the transition from embryo to larva

Sensory axons of different sensory modalities project into typical domains within insect ganglia. Tactile and gustatory axons project into a ventral layer of neuropil and proprioceptive afferents, including chordotonal axone, into an intermediate or dorsal layer. Here, we describe the central projections of sensory neurons in the first instar Drosophila larva, relating them to the projection of the same sensory afferents in the embryo and to sensory afferents of similar type in other insects. Several neurons show marked morphologic changes in their axon terminals in the transition between the embryo and larva. During a short morphogenetic period late in embryogenesis, the axon terminals of the dorsal bipolar dendrite stretch receptor change their shape and their distribution within the neuromere. In the larva, external sense organ neurons (es) project their axons into a ventral layer of neuropil. Chordotonal sensory neurons (ch) project into a slightly more dorsal region that is comparable to their projection in adults. The multiple dendrite (md) neurons show two distinctive classes of projection. One group of md neurons projects into the ventral-most neuropil region, the same region into which es neurons project. Members of this group are related by lineage to es neurons or share a requirement for expression of the same proneural gene during development. Other md neurons project into a more dorsal region. Sensory receptors projecting into dorsal neuropil possibly provide proprioceptive feedback from the periphery to central motorneurons and are candidates for future genetic and cellular analysis of simple neural circuitry. J. Comp. Neurol. 425:34-44, 2000. (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Separating politics and scientific research on heroin prescription - In reply [Letter]

No Abstract

The Tausk controversy on the foundations of quantum mechanics: Physics, philosophy, and politics

In 1966 the Brazilian physicist Klaus Tausk (b. 1927) circulated a preprint from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, criticizing Adriana Daneri, Angelo Loinger, and Giovanni Maria Prosperi`s theory of 1962 on the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. A heated controversy ensued between two opposing camps within the orthodox interpretation of quantum theory, represented by Leon Rosenfeld and Eugene P. Wigner. The controversy went well beyond the strictly scientific issues, however, reflecting philosophical and political commitments within the context of the Cold War, the relationship between science in developed and Third World countries, the importance of social skills, and personal idiosyncrasies.

Destiny and will, religion and politics: Jesus Society and Enlightenment in the posthumous Malabar Rites controversy

The first presentation of Antoine-Marin Le Mierre`s tragedy Malabar Widow, or the Empire of Customs, took place in 1770. It was based on the famous controversy over the Malabar (south west India) Rites. The object of the controversy was the Jesuit project in India, which started in the beginning of XVII century and was stopped by the Pope Benedict XIV, with the Apostolic Constitution Omnium Sollicitudinum. The papal condemnation of the rites closed a long process which shows the progressive loss of power of the Jesuit Company in the Age of Enlightenment, which will be definitive in 1773, with the suppression of the Company. In Le Mierre`s tragedy, we find the judgment of Malabar rites according to the rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment, with some typical topoi of the philosophes`s cultural perspective. At the same time, the enlightened disputation reproduces the Jesuit internal debate about India itself. Starting from a religious universal perspective of the different strategies of Christianization in India, or in the entire East, the missionary controversy had been about the religious or political interpretation of local signs. Briefly, this polemic would turn into the controversy on the rites. The criticism to the Jesuitical strategy of mission, in XVII and XVIII centuries, would start from here. The enormous number of documents on this issue became a powerful instrument in the battle against the Jesuits, in the XVIII century. On the base of the missionary disputation, the Enlightenment constructs the proposal of a new political and humanistic universal perspective. According to this, eventuality, the religion becomes just a privileged instrument to realize this operation.

Language, discourse and politics

After discussing the meaning of the word politics, this paper shows that there are four possible approaches to the issue of the relationships between language, discourse and politics: a) the intrinsic political nature of language; b) the relations of power between discourses and their political dimension; c) the relations of power between languages and the political dimension of their usage and; d) linguistic policies. This paper addresses only the first two of these items. Languages have an intrinsically political nature because they subject their speakers to their order. The acts of silencing operationalized in discourse manifest a relation of power. The spread of discourses in the social space is also subject to the order of power. The use of language may be the space of pertinence, but is also that of exclusion, separation and even the elimination of the other. Therefore, language is not a neutral communication tool, but it is permeated by politics, by power. Because of the dislocations that it produces, literature is a form of swindling language, unveiling the powers that are imprinted on it.