Telling stories: that sounds innocuous enough. But for the first chronicle in the Japanese vernacular, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), there was more to worry about than a good yarn. ...The health of the community was at stake. Flowering Tales is the first extensive literary study of this historical tale, which covers about 150 years of births, deaths, and happenings in late Heian society, a golden age of court literature in women’s hands. Takeshi Watanabe contends that the blossoming of tales, marked by The Tale of Genji, inspired Eiga’s new affective history: an exorcism of embittered spirits whose stories needed to be retold to ensure peace. Tracing the narrative arcs of politically marginalized figures, Watanabe shows how Eiga’s female authors adapted the discourse and strategies of The Tale of Genji to rechannel wayward ghosts into the community through genealogies that relied not on blood but on literary resonances. These reverberations, highlighted through comparisons to contemporaneous accounts in courtiers’ journals, echo through shared details of funerary practices, political life, and characterization. Flowering Tales reanimates these eleventh-century voices to trouble conceptions of history: how it ought to be recounted, who got to record it, and why remembering mattered.
Abstract
The linear stability of double rows of equidistant point vortices for an inviscid generalized two-dimensional (2D) fluid system is studied. This system is characterized by the relation
q
= ...−(Δ)
α
/2
ψ
between the active scalar
q
and the stream function
ψ
. Here,
α
is a positive real number not exceeding 3, and
q
is referred to as the generalized vorticity. The stability of double rows of equidistant point vortices for a 2D Euler system (
α
= 2) is a well-known classical problem and was originally investigated by Kármán approximately 100 years ago. Two types of vortex rows, i.e., symmetrical and staggered arrangements of vortex rows, are considered in this study. Special attention is paid to the effect of the parameter
α
on the stability of vortex rows. As is well-known, the symmetrical vortex rows for the Euler system are unstable, whereas the staggered vortex rows are neutrally stable only when the transverse-to-longitudinal spacing ratio
k
is
k
=
π
−
1
cosh
−
1
2
. Irrespective of
α
, the symmetrical vortex rows for the generalized 2D fluid system are unstable, whereas the staggered vortex rows are neutrally stable. The stable spacing ratio of the staggered vortex rows is a decreasing function of
α
for 0.63 ≲
α
and approaches zero as
α
→ 3. In contrast, a finite stable region of the spacing ratio is found when
α
≲ 0.63. It turns out that the deformation and usual vorticity induced by the point vortices and their coupling play important roles on the stability of the staggered vortex rows.
We previously generated artificial lymph node-like tertiary lymphoid organs (artTLOs) in mice using lymphotoxin α-expressing stromal cells. Here, we show the construction of transplantable and ...functional artTLOs by applying soluble factors trapped in slow-releasing gels in the absence of lymphoid tissue organizer stromal cells. The resultant artTLOs were easily removable, transplantable, and were capable of attracting memory B and T cells. Importantly, artTLOs induced a powerful antigen-specific secondary immune response, which was particularly pronounced in immune-compromised hosts. Synthesis of functionally stable immune tissues/organs like those described here may be a first step to eventually develop immune system-based therapeutics. Although much needs to be learned from the precise mechanisms of action, they may offer ways in the future to reestablish immune functions to overcome hitherto untreatable diseases, including severe infection, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and various forms of immune deficiencies, including immune-senescence during aging.
A novel co-reactant-free electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) system is developed where Ru(bpy)32+ emission is obtained on boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrodes. The method exploits the unique ...ability of BDD to operate at very high oxidation potential in aqueous solutions and to promote the conversion of inert SO42- into the reactive co-reactant S2O82-. This novel procedure is rather straightforward, not requiring any particular electrode geometry, and since the co-reactant is only generated in situ, the interference with biological samples is minimized. The underlying mechanism is similar to that of the Ru(bpy)32+/S2O82- system; however, the intensity of the emitted signal increases linearly with SO42- up to ∼0.6 M, with possible implications for analytical uses of the proposed procedure.
The mammalian spleen is a peripheral lymphoid organ that plays a central role in host defense. Consequently, the lack of spleen is often associated with immunodeficiency and increased risk of ...overwhelming infections. Growing evidence suggests that non-hematopoietic stromal cells are central players in spleen development, organization, and immune functions. In addition to its immunological role, the spleen also provides a site for extramedullary hematopoiesis (EMH) in response to injuries. A deeper understanding of the biology of stromal cells is therefore essential to fully comprehend how these cells modulate the immune system during normal and pathological conditions. Here, we review the specificities of the different mouse spleen stromal cell subsets and complement the murine studies with human data when available.
Embryonic mesenchymal progenitors within the splenic primordium (the clustering of cells from which the spleen develops) are the precursors of virtually all spleen stromal cell subsets, including follicular dendritic cells (FDCs), marginal reticular cells (MRCs), and fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs).
Spleen stromal cell subsets appear as central regulators of organ development and tissue regeneration, although the precise cellular and molecular determinants involved in these processes remain largely unknown.
Distinct stromal cell subsets provide support for lymphocyte migration and locomotion and have unique functions involved in regulating adaptive immune responses.
To consider the growth of cloud droplets by condensation in turbulence, the Fokker–Planck equation is derived for the droplet size distribution (droplet spectrum). This is an extension of the ...statistical theory proposed by Chandrakar and coauthors in 2016 for explaining the broadening of the droplet spectrum obtained from the “Π-chamber”, a laboratory cloud chamber. In this Fokker–Planck equation, the diffusion term represents the broadening effect of the supersaturation fluctuation on the droplet spectrum. The aerosol (curvature and solute) effects are introduced into the Fokker–Planck equation as the zero flux boundary condition at R2 = 0, where R is the droplet radius, which is mathematically equivalent to the case of Brownian motion in the presence of a wall. The analytical expression for the droplet spectrum in the steady state is obtained and shown to be proportional to Rexp(−cR2), where c is a constant. We conduct direct numerical simulations of cloud droplets in turbulence and show that the results agree closely with the theoretical predictions and, when the computational domain is large enough to be comparable to the Π-chamber, agree with the results from the Π-chamber as well. We also show that the diffusion coefficient in the Fokker–Planck equation should be expressed in terms of the Lagrangian autocorrelation time of the supersaturation fluctuation in turbulent flow.
The scaling behavior of the moments of two passive scalars that are excited by two different methods and simultaneously convected by the same isotropic steady turbulence at R_{λ}=805 and Sc=0.72 is ...studied by using direct numerical simulation with N=4096^{3} grid points. The passive scalar θ is excited by a random source that is Gaussian and white in time, and the passive scalar q is excited by the mean uniform scalar gradient. In the inertial convective range, the nth-order moments of the scalar increment δθ(r) do not obey a simple power law, but have the local scaling exponents ξ_{n}^{θ}+β_{n}log(r/r_{*}) with β_{n}>0. In contrast, the local scaling exponents of q have well-developed plateaus and saturate with increasing order. The power law of passive scalar moments is not trivial. The universality of passive scalars is found not in the moments, but in the normalized moments.
Modulation of fluid temperature fluctuations by particles due to thermal interaction in homogeneous isotropic turbulence is studied. For simplicity, only thermal coupling between the fluid and ...particles is considered, and momentum coupling is neglected. Application of the statistical theory used in cloud turbulence research leads to the prediction that modulation of the intensity of fluid temperature fluctuations by particles is expressed as a function of the Damköhler number, which is defined as the ratio of the turbulence large-eddy turnover time to the fluid thermal relaxation time. Direct numerical simulations are conducted for two-way thermal coupling between the fluid temperature field and point particles in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The simulation results are shown to agree well with the theoretical predictions.
We study passive scalar fluctuations convected by statistically stationary homogeneous isotropic turbulence under a uniform mean scalar gradient. In order to elucidate the parameter dependence of ...small-scale statistics of scalar fluctuations, we conduct direct numerical simulations of passive scalar turbulence with 59 different combinations of Reynolds number and Schmidt number. For all the cases, we compute time-average statistics of various quantities, which include the scalar derivative skewness and flatness, the ratio of parallel-to-perpendicular scalar-gradient variances, and the anisotropy parameter recently proposed (Hill, Phys. Rev. Fluids, vol. 2, 2017, 094601). Notably, the degree of small-scale anisotropy of passive scalar fluctuation is characterised by a universal function of the Péclet number $Pe_{\unicodeSTIX{x1D706}_{\unicodeSTIX{x1D703}}}=u^{\prime }\unicodeSTIX{x1D706}_{\unicodeSTIX{x1D703}}/\unicodeSTIX{x1D705}$, where $u^{\prime }$ is the root mean square velocity, $\unicodeSTIX{x1D706}_{\unicodeSTIX{x1D703}}$ the Taylor microscale of scalar fluctuation, $\unicodeSTIX{x1D705}$ the mass diffusivity. In the definition of the Péclet number, the use of $\unicodeSTIX{x1D706}_{\unicodeSTIX{x1D703}}$, rather than the Taylor microscale of velocity fluctuation, is key to collapsing the data of different Reynolds and Schmidt numbers. When the Péclet number is low, large-scale anisotropic scalar structures emerge irrespective of the Reynolds number. These structures are elongated along the direction of the uniform mean scalar gradient, and their size is significantly larger than the integral length scale of velocity fluctuation.
Although most metal–organic frameworks (MOFs)highly porous crystalline metal complex networks with structural and functional varietiesare electrically insulating, high electrical conduction has ...been recently demonstrated in MOFs while retaining permanent porosity. Usability of electronically active MOFs effectively emerges when they are created in a thin-film state as required in major potential applications such as chemiresistive sensors, supercapacitors, and electrode catalysts. Thin-film morphology including crystallinity, thickness, density, roughness, and orientation sensitively influences device performance. Fine control of such morphological parameters still remains as a main issue to be addressed. Here, we report a bottom-up procedure of assembling a conductive MOF nanosheet composed of 2,3,6,7,10,11-hexaiminotriphenylene molecules and nickel ions (HITP-Ni-NS). Creation of HITP-Ni-NS is achieved by applying air/liquid (A/L) interfacial bottom-up synthesis. HITP-Ni-NS has a multilayered structure with 14 nm thickness and is endowed with high crystallinity and uniaxial orientation, demonstrated by synchrotron X-ray crystallography. Facile transferability of HITP-Ni-NS assembled at air/liquid interfaces to any desired substrate enables us to measure its electrical conductivity, recorded as 0.6 S cm–1highest among those of triphenylene-based MOF nanosheets with a thickness lower than 100 nm.
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