Second harmonic generating (SHG) nanoprobes have recently emerged as versatile and durable labels suitable for in vivo imaging, circumventing many of the inherent drawbacks encountered with classical fluorescent probes. Since their nanocrystalline structure lacks a central point of symmetry, they are capable of generating second harmonic signal under intense illumination – converting two photons into one photon of half the incident wavelength – and can be detected by conventional two‐photon microscopy. Because the optical signal of SHG nanoprobes is based on (...) scattering, rather than absorption as in the case of fluorescent probes, they neither bleach nor blink, and the signal does not saturate with increasing illumination intensity. When SHG nanoprobes are used to image live tissue, the SHG signal can be detected with little background signal, and they are physiologically inert, showing excellent long‐term photostability. Because of their photophysical properties, SHG nanoprobes provide unique advantages for molecular imaging of living cells and tissues with unmatched sensitivity and temporal resolution. (shrink)

As bearers of the divine image, all of us are storytellers and artists. However, few people today believe in truth that is not empirically knowable or verifiable, the sort of truth often trafficked through direct forms of communication. Drawing on the works of Soren Kierkegaard, Benson P. Fraser challenges this penchant for direct forms of knowledge by introducing the indirect approach, which he argues conveys more than mere knowledge, but the capability to live out what one takes to be (...) true. Dr. Fraser suggests that stories aimed at the heart are powerful instruments for personal and social change because they are not focused directly on the individual listener; rather, they give the individual room or distance to reconsider old meanings or ways of understanding. Indirect communication fosters human transformation by awaking an individual to attend to images or words that carry deep symbolic force and that modify or replace one's present ways of knowing, and ultimately make one capable of embodying what he or she believes. Through an examination of the indirect approach in Kierkegaard, Jesus, C. S. Lewis, and Flannery O'Connor, Fraser makes a strong case for the recovery of indirect strategies for communicating truth in our time"--Back cover. (shrink)

The papers in this volume reflect much of the current unease of a world that perceives itself once more at the edge of chaos. The authors present different vistas of that experience and their inherent dialectic, expressed in numerous and ceaseless conflicts between ordering and disordering processes. They can be read as comments on the ongoing processes that lead toward greater complexity.

The author discusses an inscription of the late fourth or early third century BC carved on a bronze plaque found in the first excavations at Dodona, on which a Zakynthian, by name Agathon, records a link of proxeny between himself and his family and the Epirote koinon of the Molossians, through Kassandra, the Trojan prophetess. The plaque is decorated by a prominent phallus with testicles, which the author interprets as referring to the continuity, past and future, of the "geneá" of (...) Agathon. Other explanations of the whole piece have been proposed, and the present essay is intended only to explore the possibility of this interpretation. (shrink)