Points of Resistance to Lectio Divina: An Anthropological Perspective

What is distinctive about lectio divina as a practice? What does it require of us, and for what purpose? This ethnographic response considers the relational character of lectio divina and examines the social context of reading as listening. As a way of bringing its characteristics into relief, I describe two ways in which we might find ourselves resisting this slow, prayerful reading. Firstly, the resistance of the body, as it struggles with the physiological challenge of slowing down the pace and recasting reading as an auditory process. Secondly, the resistance of the self, uncomfortable with having to cede control. Lectio divina sits in awkward tension with a world dependent on speed and grounded in individualism.

Immunosuppression in Gliomas via PD-1/PD-L1 Axis and Adenosine Pathway

Glioblastoma is the most malignant and lethal subtype of glioma. Despite progress in therapeutic approaches, issues with the tumor immune landscape persist. Multiple immunosuppression pathways coexist in the tumor microenvironment, which can determine tumor progression and therapy outcomes. Research in immune checkpoints, such as the PD-1/PD-L1 axis, has renewed the interest in immune-based cancer therapies due to their ability to prevent immunosuppression against tumors. However, PD-1/PD-L1 blockage is not completely effective, as some patients remain unresponsive to such treatment. The production of adenosine is a major obstacle for the efficacy of immune therapies and is a key source of innate or adaptive resistance. In general, adenosine promotes the pro-tumor immune response, dictates the profile of suppressive immune cells, modulates the release of anti-inflammatory cytokines, and induces the expression of alternative immune checkpoint molecules, such as PD-1, thus maintaining a loop of immunosuppression. In this context, this review aims to depict the complexity of the immunosuppression in glioma microenvironment. We primarily consider the PD-1/PD-L1 axis and adenosine pathway, which may be critical points of resistance and potential targets for tumor treatment strategies.

Process Improvement Through Visual Management

Departments in enterprises can benefit from visual management (VM) methods. This involves observing a framework of planning activities on a desktop. The information should be clearly visible and easy to understand to all involved. The VM framework used in this case really proved to be a great option in terms of clarity, motivation, process review, real knowledge of results, and correction procedures. The implementation of VM methods will bring to companies a cultural change. There will be some points of resistance to be worked; however, through the income statement, these will be overcame. Then, if we use an insight management (IM) platform, it is possible to cross all those data in diverse ways to produce several scenarios, which can be considered as visual analytics. This is relevant for the case in study, especially in order to explore new strategies based on the indexes envisioned to replicate the positive results throughout the entire restaurant group.

An Archaeology of Native American Placemaking in the Southern Appalachians

Archaeology contributes material perspectives and temporal dimensions to the study of placemaking. This chapter explores relationships between people and place in Native American town areas of the southern Appalachians. How did these towns situate themselves within the southern Appalachian landscape during the period just before and after European contact? How did practices of placemaking shape Native American responses to encounters and entanglements with Spanish conquistadors and English traders and military expeditions? As evident from archaeology, oral tradition, and place names, many places within the landscape of the southern Appalachians were sources of resilience and stability and points of resistance to change.

Selection of Stopover Stations by Homeward-bound Railway Users

This study discusses the behavior of railway users who commute to work or school as they choose a station on the way home for eating or shopping. A quantitative grasp of the tendencies in this selection based on personal attributes and time points was obtained by creating models that accounted for the geographical relationships between individuals’ residences and their workplaces or schools, and for the environments surrounding stopover stations. It was found that the increased time required for a stopover, or the number of transfers between trains were points of resistance and that the fact that a station on the route home was a transfer station, and the extent of commercial space near that station, affected the attractiveness of that station. The results of a simulation applying the stopover station selection model, indicated that an increase in the commercial establishments near a station and the availability of interconnected railway companies affected the attractiveness of a stopover station.

French Pupils’ Lexical and Grammatical Spelling from Sixth to Ninth Grade: A Longitudinal Study

This paper presents the results of a longitudinal spelling study conducted among 496 school children, from sixth grade (the first year of middle school in France) to ninth grade (the fourth and final year of middle school in France). Its first objective is to examine the evolution of both lexical and grammatical spelling skills in a deep orthography and to present new findings on the advanced mastery of spelling skills. Its second aim is to provide insight into pupils’ orthographic knowledge and remaining difficulties at the end of French compulsory schooling. Pupils were assessed using the same text dictation when they were sixth graders and when they were ninth graders. The data show that both lexical and grammatical performance increased from the sixth to ninth grade and that these interact with each other. The qualitative analysis of errors allows points of resistance in the acquisition of French orthography to be highlighted.

Biopower, juridical power and the afterlife of rights: Medical assistance in dying and the Supreme Court of Canada

This article considers how different modalities of power emerge in medical assistance in dying (MAID) cases, particularly with respect to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada (A.G.) [2015]. While juridical rationalities cast the issue of MAID in terms of individual rights, Carter and subsequent legislation distinguishes MAID from assisted suicide through the creation of a regulatory scheme, so that individuals seeking MAID continue to be governed by medical power. This may seem to confirm arguments that the image of subjectivity evoked by juridical discourses simply results in the reinforcement of existing power relations. However, this article argues that it is the very regulatory scheme governing MAID that provides points of resistance, giving the individual opportunities to challenge medical power in ways that may destabilize power relations.

Wojsko w zmaganiach z naturą w świetle kronik Anonima tzw. Galla i Mistrza Wincentego zwanego Kadłubkiem

The components of natural environment were suitable for defending the points of resistance or surprising the enemy. However, it is important to say that without a well prepared defense they were useless. For instance the role of forests wastwofold taking into account leading the great campaigns or even smaller skirmishes. The main issue of this article is to follow the army’s struggle with nature during marching and warfare (the aggression against Bohemia, Prussia and battles in the country) including its impact on both successes and defeats according to the chronicles of Anonym called Gall and Master Wincenty called Kadłubek.

Interactive Commodity Loop

The commodity is recognized as an essential element of our world. If our relationship with commodity as the structuring form of capitalist society is an ongoing process of subjective work and the exchange of meanings, then the question of historical ontology becomes inevitable. Historical ontology means that “we constitute ourselves at a place and time, using materials that have a distinctive and historically formed organization” (I. Hacking). This paper is an attempt to interpret commodity through the extension of two concepts developed by Ian Hacking (the looping effect, the making up people), and their connection with the philosophical approach to economy. The looping effects of commodity create a special ambience, special forms of connection and separation, equality and hierarchy, community and singularity, freedom and affirmation. The article gives a short historical account of the emergence of the commodity loop (from the 1850s to 2001), and singles out the importance of the structural determinations of capitalism (the ideology of free market, property, state mechanisms, a specific type of culture, etc.). The “making up people” inside the commodity loop presumes the people who count, take part in the marketising, imagine the market in every situation, interiorize the market-conforming sense of guilt and responsibility, and, paradoxically, will be ready to be self-entrepreneurs, to participate in own making up. It is shown that contemporary doxa becomes evident from the perspective of the commodity loop, although it creates a context of harmony and reduces complexity. As the analysis goes deeper, we are discovering interactive nodes at steadily increasing levels of intensity but also two possible productive points of resistance (inequality, immigration). The commodity loop is an ontological fabric in which all threads are woven together, from political and economic to social and personal relationships. At the end of the article, we try to connect Agamben’s ideal of profanation with Hacking’s looping effect. This leads to the conclusion that commodity’s phantom-like objectivity should be profaned, which means to return it to free human use.