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In response to the advance of right-wing populism in many Western democracies, political economists have sought explanations for political disaffection in the socioeconomic dislocations wrought by globalization, deindustrialization, and automation. Distrust of institutions and elites has been identified as a consequence of open markets and neoliberal governance. While affirming the public trust as a cornerstone of liberal democracy, this article directs analysis of the contemporary condition to a broader set of uniquely psychosocial and cultural dynamics. We identify sentiments ranging from disillusion to defiance that are now fueling a runaway politics narrowly defined around race, ethnicity, and national identity. We examine the stakes of eroding public trust in historical and theoretical perspective through an analysis of key works of Karl Polanyi, John Maynard Keynes, and E. H. Carr. Drawing parallels to their assessments of the interwar period, we argue that today's resentment politics is not singularly the product of economic hardship or even institutional failure, but emerges also from a breakdown of the social and cultural ties that underpin liberalism—a "delicate order" built in part on sublimated psychosocial understandings of agency and community. Democracy again hangs in the balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For too long the discipline of political science has ceded research on the dynamics of the national political economy to the field of economics. In this article, we explore the cost of this cession in the context of the public purpose. Following John Kenneth Galbraith, we define the public purpose in terms of its independence from the market economy and the planning system. Political scientists, and especially political theorists, are uniquely qualified to theorize power relations relative to a host of challenges that have emerged in today's rapidly transforming national economies. Galbraith's critique of mainstream economics, coupled with his understanding of power as an inescapable and perpetual dialectical process, provide guidance for theorizations that should attend to rather than deny the contested domain of the public interest and collective good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy and the state are two political notions that have come under considerable duress in late modernity. This paper considers a prominent critic of both, Sheldon Wolin. The paper examines three elements that figure in Wolin's analyses of democracy and the modern state in a central way:: community, memory, and the culture of history. A theorisation of these elements can illuminate what is at stake in the articulation of political conceptions that yield communal forms through the constitution of political space. Wolin's analyses of democracy, the state, and modern power can be of help, first, in elucidating the political valences of the three elements themselves; second, in specifying relationships of mutuality among them; and third, in theorising what is at issue in the transposition of these elements from the domestic sphere to the international. The paper speaks mainly to the first and second concerns. A path is explored for thinking what is at stake in the third, namely, locating in and then transposing from the domestic sphere a ''we'' which does not enjoy a precise ontology, but which is nonetheless capable of giving collaborative efforts in world-political spheres another political ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The natural product (−)-pironetin is a structurally simple small molecule microtubule-perturbing agent whose biological activities appear to be exquisitely dependent on defined stereochemistry and the presence of an eletrophilic α,β-unsaturated lactone moiety. We used alkaloid-catalyzed acyl halide-aldehyde cyclocondensation reactions in asymmetric total syntheses of (−)-pironetin and three synthetic analogs, and evaluated their biological activities by high-content analysis in cell culture and in a zebrafish model. Synthetic (−)-pironetin and 2,3-dihydro-3-hydroxypironetin caused mitotic arrest and programmed cell death in human lung cancer cells but not in normal lung fibroblasts, had nanomolar growth inhibitory activity in multi-drug resistant cells, and inhibited neovascularization in zebrafish embryos. Synthetic (−)-pironetin delayed the onset but increased the extent of tubulin assembly in vitro. The data illustrate the power of acyl halide-aldehyde cyclocondensation to generate biologically active synthetic analogs of stereochemically complex targets and suggest that (−)-pironetin and 2,3-dihydro-3-hydroxypironetin possess unique properties that may bestow them with advantages over existing microtubule-perturbing agents in the context of a whole organism or under conditions of multi-drug resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presently, the zebrafish is the only vertebrate model compatible with contemporary paradigms of drug discovery. Zebrafish embryos are amenable to automation necessary for high-throughput chemical screens, and optical transparency makes them potentially suited for image-based screening. However, the lack of tools for automated analysis of complex images presents an obstacle to using the zebrafish as a high-throughput screening model. We have developed an automated system for imaging and analyzing zebrafish embryos in multi-well plates regardless of embryo orientation and without user intervention. Images of fluorescent embryos were acquired on a high-content reader and analyzed using an artificial intelligence-based image analysis method termed Cognition Network Technology (CNT). CNT reliably detected transgenic fluorescent embryos ( Tg(fli1:EGFP) y1) arrayed in 96-well plates and quantified intersegmental blood vessel development in embryos treated with small molecule inhibitors of anigiogenesis. The results demonstrate it is feasible to adapt image-based high-content screening methodology to measure complex whole organism phenotypes. Developmental Dynamics 238:656-663, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'The political' is much talked about today, but its invocation in international political theory is all but entirely dismissed. Yet, moral-ethical articulations do impact theorizing about international life, albeit in a most peculiar and often concealed fashion. In this paper I investigate the modernity of sovereignty in political and international theory and explain why invocations of the moral-ethical are so forcefully liquidated from international relations theory. I examine the constitutive effects of the sovereignty imperative and explain how modern notions of ethics, politics and community are delimited by the need to effect what can be made to count as the pre-political ground of will-formation. A peculiar modernist strategy delimits the imagination of the politically possible in international life. I argue that critique must attend and not dispense with a fundamental paradoxicality (which is transfigured as modernity's very metaphysical embodiment) that structures a distinctively modern manner of reflecting on ethics and community. The paradoxicality is sovereignty. It is accommodated by a liberal politics that works to conceal a restive anxiety of the modern 'condition'. This anxiety is in turn productive of a politics with which we must grapple as we elaborate governance in global life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]