De Chirico, Enigma of a Day (1913) This course is simply a reading of several crucial works on Aesthetic Theory: Kant's Third Critique, Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Hegel's Introduction to the Lectures on Aesthetics, and Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. From time to time a few important interpretive essays will be assigned, but for the most part this will be a course based on careful readings of these texts. Students should endeavour to read all of these over the summer. Much of the course will focus on the relation between aesthetics and politics and between aesthetic theory and culture as an object of study, but there will be room for very many issues, including the relation between aesthetic theory and historical art practices. This is a reading course, and students will be expected to produce a small number of response papers rather than a longer research essay.
Phosphodiesterase 1B (PDE1B) and phosphodiesterase 10A (PDE10A), members of the phosphodiesterase superfamily, are responsible for cyclic nucleotide hydrolysis, thereby regulating key intracellular signaling pathways such as cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) activation and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene transcription. Both enzymes are predominantly expressed in the brain and co-localize with dopamine receptors, positioning them as potential targets for addressing schizophrenia, a disorder characterized by dopamine system dysfunction. PDE1B inhibition enhances D1-receptor signaling, ameliorating negative symptoms and cognitive deficits, while PDE10A inhibition modulates D2-receptor activity, potentially alleviating positive symptoms. Together, these mechanisms suggest that targeting PDE1B and PDE10A could offer an innovative avenue for the comprehensive management of schizophrenia. Recent advancements in structural and synthetic methodologies have significantly facilitated the design of small-molecule PDE1B and PDE10A inhibitors. Among these, ITI-214 (PDE1 inhibitors) and MK-8189 and EVP-6308 (PDE10A inhibitors) have proceeded to clinical trials, demonstrating promising therapeutic agents. Furthermore, dual PDE1B/10A inhibitors remain underexplored, with only compound 2 undergoing limited preclinical evaluation for its pharmacological efficacy and safety. Studies published between 2014 and 2025 were retrieved from the PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases, highlighting advances in PDE1B and PDE10A inhibitors. This review provides a detailed overview of the structural and synthetic strategies employed in developing PDE1B, PDE10A, and dual PDE1/10 inhibitors, with a focus on their binding sites and structure–activity relationships (SARs). By addressing the limitations of current candidates and emphasizing the need for dual inhibitors, this review aims to guide future research efforts toward the discovery of more selective, potent, and clinically viable PDE1B and PDE10A inhibitors for schizophrenia.
Ítalo Dantas de Araújo Maia, Alexandre Augusto Bezerra da Cunha Castro, Edja Bezerra Faria Trigueiro
et al.
O estudo apresentado neste artigo está inserido no campo investigativo da Análise Sintática do Espaço, em particular quanto ao emprego de simulação de mudanças na configuração urbana por meio da investigação de possíveis impactos socioespaciais da construção de uma nova ponte em Natal. O problema de pesquisa centra-se em identificar ganhos e perdas de acessibilidade após realizadas as intervenções e em questionar quem seria o público mais favorecido com tais mudanças. Para tanto, foram modeladas representações (mapas de segmentos) da malha viária da área urbana contínua de Natal, simulando-se um cenário transformado pela introdução da ponte. Valores de acessibilidade origem-destino (NAIN) e de atravessamento (NACH), referentes às situações de antes e depois, foram comparados a dados censitários relativos a padrões de distribuição de renda em Natal. Os resultados apontam para a redistribuição de vetores de alta integração da periferia para o centro geométrico (bairro Potengi) da Região Administrativa Norte de Natal, e para o aumento da acessibilidade em áreas antigas de ocupação (Cidade Alta e Alecrim), potencialmente estendendo-se ao sítio definido como o centro histórico de Natal (Cidade Alta/Ribeira). O atual centro topológico da cidade, na região Leste/Sul, mais rica economicamente, é fortalecido. Como exposto em estudos anteriores, alguns referidos neste artigo, os efeitos de ganho de acessibilidade em centros antigos têm suscitado transformações às vezes radicais do cenário construído, raramente condizentes com a noção de preservação de bens culturais.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
Background: Fixed prosthodontic restorations play a pivotal role in dental rehabilitation, providing essential functions such as mastication, aesthetics, and oral health preservation. This study aims to assess the survival of fixed prosthodontic restorations within the context of a tertiary dental centre in Eastern Nepal.
Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted among 228 patients, involving a comprehensive analysis of patient records from the tertiary dental centre. Data were collected on patient demographics, types of fixed prosthodontic restorations (e.g., crowns, bridges), materials used, adhesive systems, follow-up durations, and any recorded instances of restoration failure. Patient satisfaction scores, including aesthetic outcomes, comfort, and functionality, were also assessed.
Results: The mean age of patients undergoing fixed prosthodontic restorations was 43.1 years, predominantly male (66.7%), with good systematic health (68.4%) and varying levels of oral hygiene. Oral hygiene status, parafunctional habits, restoration type, and subjective experiences such as comfort, functionality, and aesthetic satisfaction were all significantly associated with survival rates (p < 0.001).
Conclusion: The results may have implications for clinical decision-making, informing practitioners about the most effective materials and techniques for enhancing the durability of fixed prostheses in this region. Further research and continuous evaluation are crucial for refining prosthodontic practices and ensuring optimal patient care in the unique healthcare landscape of Eastern Nepal.
Folktales constitute one of the oldest traditional forms of education based on the method of delivery through oral tradition. Among the Yorùbá, folktale is a viable medium for transmission of cultural values, belief, history and philosophy of the community to the younger generation. The fact that African societies’ customs, morals and way of life are ingrained and codified in folktales shows the veracity of the indigenous knowledge system (IKS) embedded therein. This has contributed immensely to appreciating the culture, as well as the African people’s social norms. This study examines the aesthetics and utilitarian essence of African folktales, using four purposively selected Yorùbá folktales as case study. The goal of the paper is to bring the aesthetics and usefulness of African folktales, thus the songs are documented in a staff notation for musical analysis. Data for the study were collected through oral interviews and review of related literature. The selected Yorùbá folktales were examined through a descriptive method. Findings show that the essence of African folktales, as noticed in this present day, is being jettisoned and will soon become extinct by the current realities brought about by globalisation. This has greatly affected the cultural values which African folktales retain, maintain and disseminate. Hence, the need for the revitalization and digitization of African folktales to preserve the indigenous knowledge system deep-rooted in the narratives for future generations. This study concludes that the importance of African folktales would be better understood if properly harnessed, translated and notated from the musicological viewpoint, as it will further popularise the old tradition of storytelling in this modern age.
Should we aspire to aesthetic consistency? Two kinds of aesthetic consistency are considered, following Ted Cohen’s discussion of consistency in personal aesthetics: consistency of aesthetic reasons and coherence of aesthetic personality. Neither of these kinds of consistency seems like something to aspire to, possibly because we cannot do so – if we are not typically reasoning at the level of aesthetic response that is envisaged – or because consistent, coherent responsiveness does not seem like a worthwhile aesthetic goal. A third kind of consistency is defended, at the level of reflection on the desirable functions of art. We can try to be consistent about broadly ethical principles, showing our commitments as to the goods that art should provide in a life or to a society. These very broad principles do not make direct or clear aesthetic contact with individual artworks, so we cannot straightforwardly apply them as evaluative principles. But we can be consistent in trying to link the very specific achievements of works with these reflective values.
Em que medida as alteridades não humanas se inscrevem na literatura brasileira contemporânea? Como alguns escritores brasileiros têm lidado com as relações paradoxais entre humanidade e animalidade, bem como com os problemas (etno)ecológicos do nosso tempo? Este artigo aborda a presença dos seres não humanos em obras de Nicanor Sena, Astrid Cabral, Olga Savary, Sérgio Medeiros e Josely Vianna Baptista, à luz de um referencial teórico transdisciplinar, que inclui pensadores como Ailton Krenak, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Dominique Lestel e Donna Haraway. Outro tópico desenvolvido é o hibridismo cultural e textual que atravessa os trabalhos de alguns dos autores incluídos no repertório literário, de forma a mostrar como eles apresentam um caráter fronteiriço, com um forte viés transnacional, por estarem atravessados por elementos zoológicos e mitológicos, lendas indígenas, referências literárias diversas e diferentes espaços linguístico-geográficos.
Cassiana Koch Scotti, Natália Almeida Bastos, Marília Matar de Amoêdo Campos Velo
et al.
This case report illustrates a conservative technique for reintervention on anterior composite restorations in a young patient with composite veneers. The treatment incorporated the use of photos and digital planning to establish a harmonious smile design. In order to conserve the dental tissues, existing resin composites restorations in maxillary anterior teeth were carefully removed to minimize enamel reduction, followed by a study of color and shade of teeth considering factors such as hue, chroma, luminosity, opacity, translucency and light effects. Eight direct veneers were built up with resin composite taking the optical properties of the material into account and their influence on the thickness of the layers that create specific light effects when superimposed on each other. To obtain excellent results with a predictable working protocol, nanohybrid composite systems facilitate good aesthetics, avoiding more invasive treatment in an economic manner.
Keywords
Dental aesthetic; Optical proprieties; Resin composite.
In this article, I make available the transcription of a letter of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten to Georg Friedrich Meier, which has hitherto remained completely unknown to commentators. After contextualizing the writing, I examine in particular the two most significant elements of the text: the King’s order to Meier to deliver a class on Locke and Baumgarten’s observations on the dispute with Gottsched. As for this aspect, I linger on the war declared to aesthetics, both as a term and as a concept, by Gottsched and his followers, so as to consider Baumgarten’s position in a wider theoretical framework.
The debate on impure images in post-Reformation England, and the different policy adopted by Reynolds and Hogarth in order to redefine the value of art are considered: the former stressing the purity of the old masters, the latter emphasizing formal elements of beauty. The writings of Hazlitt are then examined inasmuch as his comments on fashion and art academies are relevant to the dawning democracy of taste, and describe its features in the wide socio-cultural context. Hazlitt’s remarks on taste are confirmed in the following decades by progress in technology, chemistry especially, which allows replicas of valuable materials and art works to be made: in 1851 the Great Exhibition lays a strong emphasis on the tasteful replicas of art works. Taste is synonymous with the products of industry. Chemistry has now become the leading metaphor adopted by critics who comment on modern taste – Ruskin, Pater, Lee – as it provides the fittest illustration of the mixed features of contemporary art. Not only art criticism but also fiction, suggest the prominent epistemic role of chemistry: in Collins’s The Woman in White and Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the ambiguous pendulum between pure and impure defines not only the chemistry of taste but also the impure quality of modern life.
This paper lays out the lineaments of a post-capitalist grassroots urbanism in response to climate change and resource depletion as an alternative to ‘business as usual’ economic development strategies focused on growth maximisation associated with the ‘entrepreneurial thesis’ of urban management. The paper argues that alternative development strategies that do what radical critics argue is necessary to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change lack legitimacy within political and economic elites. Debates about a city’s economic development policy are channelled into a technocratic process of identifying models of ‘green growth’ that reduces carbon emissions and generates new jobs and business opportunities in ways that some have labelled ‘post-political’. The paper argues that that radical grassroots critics are mounting a challenge to neoliberal conceptions of entrepreneurial urbanism and develops a manifesto for what a more strategic urban response to climate change might look like which draws on ‘diverse economies’ perspectives, and which opens up a contested political space for a progressive urban politics of resource crises and climate change. While these ideas are presently underdeveloped, their existence means that debates about sustainable development cannot be dismissed as uniformly post-political.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
The paper considers three uses of the real in literature that bear witness to what I would call “prevalence” of the real as the ultimate otherness. The first concerns the way in which the real bursts into fiction; the latter does indeed draw from the former details and surprises little accessible to imagination. The second is the way in which sometimes the pretext of fiction is used to mitigate the consequences of its claims; this mode is the strongest evidence of the extent to which fiction is steeped in reality. The third refers to the postmodern world, in which theory itself purported to be literaturised; certain statements (otherwise false or morally serious) are possible in such a theoretical context since the postmodern discourse theorizes the loss of the distinction between reality and fiction, and between philosophy and literature. The thread that unites these three ways to represent the relationship between fiction and reality is that all three of them are represented in the contemporary cultural landscape. The minimalist moral that can be drawn from this is therefore that realism – as well as anti-realism – is said in many ways that are not always transparent.