Xiaofan Amy Li

This article examines the trope of the dark sun across key works by Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, and Okamoto Tarō, tracing comparative connections between French and Japanese Surrealisms. Rejecting stereotypical symbolisms of the sun as illumination, rationality, and life affirmation, Artaud, Bataille, and Okamoto focus instead on the sun’s negativity and violence. This is due, I argue, to their attempts to re-understand the position of humanity in relation to the sun’s explosive energy and its implications for planetary relations. Explicitly positing their works in an ecocritical framework and tracing their historical and conceptual affinities, I discuss Artaud’s articulations of the inhuman sun, Bataille’s theory of solar economy, and Okamoto’s visualisation of the sun in the post-atomic age. Their works affirm a global ecocritical Surrealism circulating in interwar Europe and postwar Japan, and posit how humans respond to solar energy as the foremost question for ecological thought and action.

This article examines the trope of the dark sun across key works by Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, and Okamoto Tarō, tracing comparative connections between French and Japanese Surrealisms. Rejecting stereotypical symbolisms of the sun as illumination, rationality, and life affirmation, Artaud, Bataille, and Okamoto focus instead on the sun’s negativity and violence. This is due, I argue, to their attempts to re-understand the position of humanity in relation to the sun’s explosive energy and its implications for planetary relations. Explicitly positing their works in an ecocritical framework and tracing their historical and conceptual affinities, I discuss Artaud’s articulations of the inhuman sun, Bataille’s theory of solar economy, and Okamoto’s visualisation of the sun in the post-atomic age. Their works affirm a global ecocritical Surrealism circulating in interwar Europe and postwar Japan, and posit how humans respond to solar energy as the foremost question for ecological thought and action.

Posttranslational modification of proteins and peptides is important for diverse biological processes in plants and animals. The paucity of heterologous expression systems for PTMs and the technical challenges associated with chemical synthesis of these modified proteins has limited detailed molecular characterization and therapeutic applications. Here we describe an optimized system for expression of tyrosine-sulfated proteins in Escherichia coli and its application in a bio-based crop protection strategy in rice.

We describe an approach that combines clinical ultrasound and photon migration techniques to enhance the sensitivity and information content of diffuse optical tomography. Measurements were performed on a postmenopausal woman with a single 1.8×0.9 cm malignant ductal carcinoma in situ approximately 7.4 mm beneath the skin surface. The ultrasound-derived information about tumor geometry enabled us to segment the breast tissue into tumor and background regions. Optical data was obtained with a multifrequency, multiwavelength hand-held frequency-domain photon migration backscattering probe. The optical properties of the tumor and background were then computed using the ultrasound-derived geometrical constraints. An iterative perturbative approach, using parallel processing, provided quantitative information about scattering and absorption simultaneously with the ability to incorporate and resolve complex boundary conditions and geometries. A three to four fold increase in the tumor absorption coefficient and nearly 50% reduction in scattering coefficient relative to background was observed. Calculations of the mean physiological parameters reveal fourfold greater tumor total hemoglobin concentration [Hbtot] than normal breast and tumor hemoglobin oxygen saturation values of 63%. Comparison of semi-infinite to heterogeneous models shows superior tumor/background contrast for the latter in both absorption and scattering. Sensitivity studies assessing the impact of tumor size and refractive index assumptions, as well as scan direction, demonstrate modest effects on recovered properties.