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Hereditary deficiency of the protein α-1 antitrypsin (AAT) causes a chronic lung disease in humans that is characterized by excessive mobilization of neutrophils into the lung. However, the reason for the increased neutrophil burden has not been fully elucidated. In this study we have demonstrated using human neutrophils that serum AAT coordinates both CXCR1- and soluble immune complex (sIC) receptor-mediated chemotaxis by divergent pathways. We demonstrated that glycosylated AAT can bind to IL-8 (a ligand for CXCR1) and that AAT-IL-8 complex formation prevented IL-8 interaction with CXCR1. Second, AAT modulated neutrophil chemotaxis in response to sIC by controlling membrane expression of the glycosylphosphatidylinositolanchored (GPI-anchored) Fc receptor FcγRIIIb. This process was mediated through inhibition of ADAM-17 enzymatic activity. Neutrophils isolated from clinically stable AAT-deficient patients were characterized by low membrane expression of FcγRIIIb and increased chemotaxis in response to IL-8 and sIC. Treatment of AATdeficient individuals with AAT augmentation therapy resulted in increased AAT binding to IL-8, increased AAT binding to the neutrophil membrane, decreased FcγRIIIb release from the neutrophil membrane, and normalization of chemotaxis. These results provide new insight into the mechanism underlying the effect of AAT augmentation therapy in the pulmonary disease associated with AAT deficiency., Introduction α-1 Antitrypsin (AAT), a 52-kDa glycosylated protein primarily synthesized in the liver, is the major physiological inhibitor of a range of serine proteases, and within the lung maintains a [...]

Review of: Samuel Beckett and Technology, Galina Kiryushina, Einat Adar and Mark Nixon (Eds) (2021) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 288 pp., ISBN 978-1-47446-328-7, h/bk, £85.00 ISBN 978-1-47446-329-4, p/bk, £24.99 ISBN 978-1-47446-331-7, e-book, £24.99 ISBN 978-1-47446-330-0, e-book, £85.00 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A description on the fusion and structural features of two new titanium guanidinate complexes is presented. In addition, the creation of titanium carbonitride from two titanium guanidinate complexes through low-pressure chemical vapor deposition is also examined.

This article offers a critical assessment of Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory of democracy. It suggests that the main thrust of a discursive account of legitimacy is the attempt to show how the demands of maximal democratic inclusion might be reconciled with a politics of reasoned agreements. While this aim is endorsed, the thrust of the argument is that a critical theory of democracy requires that normative frameworks that bring certain substantive features of democratic life into focus should supplement Habermas's procedural approach. First, the account of maximal inclusion has to be developed in a way that clarifies the egalitarian demands of distributive justice. Secondly, the account of a politics of reasoned agreements has to be connected to a theoretical analysis of the bonds of solidarity that could underpin such a form of political engagement. These developments contribute to a critical theory that gives a more adequate account of the motivational basis of discursive democracy.

This article re-examines Krapp, ou La Dernière bande (1961), an opera adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (1958), which was a collaboration between the playwright and the Romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici. Beckett's changes to the libretto give new insights into the writer's developing concerns around form and his aesthetic of failure. In the programme for the Bielefeld production of the opera in 1961, Beckett supplied a sentence from the German translation of his Texts for Nothing, although inverting its first two clauses. His inclusion of this line in the programme affords us greater insight into Beckett's ever evolving conception of the play. Shane O'Neill's doctoral research on Samuel Beckett's self-translated drama is funded by the Irish Research Council. He teaches at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, and has published essays in Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui and the edited volume Samuel Beckett and Translation (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article is a philosophical critique of certain communitarian conceptions o justice. It focuses on the work of Michael Walzer who argues that justice reflects the shared understandings of particular historical communities. In assessing the implications of this view for a divided society such as Northern Ireland I wish to set limits to this pluralist notion of justice. In the later part of the article I turn to Jurgen Habermas's proceduralist, universalist discourse ethics so as to transcend these limits and to argue that justice in Northern Ireland can only be achieved if the participants involved begin to adopt the critically-reflexive stance towards their identities that real discourse requires.