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The power and significance of artwork in shaping human cognition is self-evident. The starting point for our empirical investigations is the view that the task of neuroscience is to integrate itself with other forms of knowledge, rather than to seek to supplant them. In our recent work, we examined a particular aspect of the appreciation of artwork using present-day functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our results emphasised the continuity between viewing artwork and other human cognitive activities. We also showed that appreciation of a particular aspect of artwork, namely authenticity, depends upon the co-ordinated activity between the brain regions involved in multiple decision making and those responsible for processing visual information. The findings about brain function probably have no specific consequences for understanding how people respond to the art of Rembrandt in comparison with their response to other artworks. However, the use of images of Rembrandt’s portraits, his most intimate and personal works, clearly had a significant impact upon our viewers, even though they have been spatially confined to the interior of an MRI scanner at the time of viewing. Neuroscientific studies of humans viewing artwork have the capacity to reveal the diversity of human cognitive responses that may be induced by external advice or context as people view artwork in a variety of frameworks and settings.

Although the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) has made progress towards appraising and measuring the performance of smart and sustainable transport projects, it still has important issues that need to be addressed such as the problem associated with incomparable quantities, the inherent subjective qualitative assessment, the complexity of identifying impacts to be included and its measurement method, and the corresponding weights. The issue of trading-off different sustainability criteria is the main unresolved matter. This problem may lead to lack of accuracy in the decision making process. This paper presents a new methodology to set the weights of the sustainability criteria used in the MCDA in order to reduce subjectivity and imprecision. We suggest eliciting criteria weights based on both expert preferences and the importance that the sustainability criteria have in the geographical and social context where the project is developed. This novel methodology is applied to a real case study to quantify sustainable practices associated with the design and construction of a new roadway in Spain. The outcome demonstrates that the approach to the weighting problem has significance and general application in a multi-criteria evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Translations of summary This paper focuses on the offer by the art writer Adrian Stokes to commission and pay for a portrait of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein by the artist William Coldstream. It details some of the precursors of this offer in Stokes's preceding involvement first with Klein and then with Coldstream; her response to this offer; and its outcome and aftermath in Stokes's subsequent writing about Klein and Coldstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the paradoxes inherent in Rembrandt's treatment of angels in his etched works where his choice of subject and medium directly addresses the fraught relation between the material and the spiritual, between reason and imagination, issues at the heart of Rembrandt's artistic enterprise and central as well to the long reformation. Rembrandt's etchings with angels draw particular attention to his craft, especially the distinction between the etching (on the plate) and the print (on paper) whereby the paper (as opposed to the plate) provides an unstable and fragile surface particularly suited to convey unsteadiness of all earthly things. Rembrandt's attention to surface and to tonal effects beyond the etching needle becomes more pronounced after 1647 when he discovered Japanese paper. Two prints - Abraham and the Angels Eating (1656) and the so-called Dr. Faustus (1653) - exemplify what this increasingly experimental attitude and play of imagination meant for the artist's understanding of Creation in general and angels in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maxime Du Camp became well known in the 19th century French literature not only as Gustave Flaubert's close friend but also as a traveller-writer, author of many travalogues and important photographer. This article aims to illustrate the author's vast artistic knowledge, which he acquired through the so called 'artistic instruction journey', an elite pedagogical and social institution which started in the 17th century, of which he became a genuine representative two centuries later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can critical or material hermeneutics be applied to works that are not textual, but pictorial? This is what we try to anayse here for a painting of Rembrandt ("Aristotle"), showing both the methodological limitations of traditional hermeneutics and of the common phenomenology. The first fails to a sufficient "reduction" of the pictorial structure itself, the second neglects the historical datas of the debate in which the work takes his options.

Medicine in the Middle Ages was, and ever since remained, one of the main preoccupations of the professionally restricted Jews. One of the medical dynasties on the Iberian Peninsula was the Bueno (Bonus) family. Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and their spread in Europe, these Iberian physicians became successful everywhere—just as the Buenos were in the Netherlands.

The article offers information related to the evolution and physiology of perivascular adipose tissue. Topics include the benefits provided by artist Leonardo da Vinci and physician Vesalius among surgeons who were studying human anatomy, the impact of anatomy tables on practical surgery featured in the works of da Vinci and Vesalius, and a study about the body of criminal Adriaen Adriaenszoon.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a grade IV glioma with a median survival of 15 months. Recently, bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling has been shown to promote survival in xenograft murine models. To gain a better understanding of the role of BMP signaling in human GBMs, we examined the genomic alterations of 90 genes associated with BMP signaling in GBM patient samples. We completed this analysis using publically available datasets compiled through The Cancer Genome Atlas and the Glioma Molecular Diagnostic Initiative. Here we show how mRNA expression is altered in GBM samples and how that is associated with patient survival, highlighting both known and novel associations between BMP signaling and GBM biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This review summarizes the cellular bases of the effects of NaCHOleate (2-hydroxyoleic acid; 2OHOA; Minerval) against glioma and other types of tumors. NaCHOleate, activates sphingomyelin synthase (SGMS) increasing the levels of cell membrane sphingomyelin (SM) and diacylglycerol (DAG) together with reductions of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phosphatidylcholine (PC). The increases in the membrane levels of NaCHOleate itself and of DAG induce a translocation and overexpression of protein kinase C (PKC) and subsequent reductions of Cyclin D, cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDKs 4 and 6), hypophosphorylation of the retinoblastoma protein, inhibition of E2F1 and knockdown of dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) impairing DNA synthesis. In addition in some cancer cells, the increases in SM are associated with Fas receptor (FasR) capping and ligand-free induction of apoptosis. In glioma cell lines, the increases in SM are associated with the inhibition of the Ras/MAPK and PI3K/Akt pathways, in association with p27Kip1 overexpression. Finally, an analysis of the Repository of Molecular Brain Neoplasia Data (REMBRANDT) database for glioma patient survival shows that the weight of SM-related metabolism gene expression in glioma patients' survival is similar to glioma-related genes. Due to its low toxicity and anti-tumoral effect in cell and animal models its status as an orphan drug for glioma treatment by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) was recently acknowledged and a phase 1/2A open label, non-randomized study was started in patients with advanced solid tumors including malignant glioma. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Membrane Structure and Function: Relevance in the Cell's Physiology, Pathology and Therapy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The power and significance of artwork in shaping human cognition is self-evident. The starting point for our empirical investigations is the view that the task of neuroscience is to integrate itself with other forms of knowledge, rather than to seek to supplant them. In our recent work, we examined a particular aspect of the appreciation of artwork using present-day functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our results emphasized the continuity between viewing artwork and other human cognitive activities. We also showed that appreciation of a particular aspect of artwork, namely authenticity, depends upon the co-ordinated activity between the brain regions involved in multiple decision making and those responsible for processing visual information. The findings about brain function probably have no specific consequences for understanding how people respond to the art of Rembrandt in comparison with their response to other artworks. However, the use of images of Rembrandt’s portraits, his most intimate and personal works, clearly had a significant impact upon our viewers, even though they have been spatially confined to the interior of an MRI scanner at the time of viewing. Neuroscientific studies of humans viewing artwork have the capacity to reveal the diversity of human cognitive responses that may be induced by external advice or context as people view artwork in a variety of frameworks and settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expertise of others is a major social influence on our everyday decisions and actions. Many viewers of art, whether expert or naïve, are convinced that the full aesthetic appreciation of an artwork depends upon the assurance that the work is genuine rather than fake. Rembrandt portraits provide an interesting image set for testing this idea, as there is a large number of them and recent scholarship has determined that quite a few fakes and copies exist. Use of this image set allowed us to separate the brain's response to images of genuine and fake pictures from the brain's response to external advice about the authenticity of the paintings. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, viewing of artworks assigned as ‘copy’, rather than ‘authentic’, evoked stronger responses in frontopolar cortex (FPC) and right precuneus, regardless of whether the portrait was actually genuine. Advice about authenticity had no direct effect on the cortical visual areas responsive to the paintings, but there was a significant psychophysiological interaction between the FPC and the lateral occipital area, which suggests that these visual areas may be modulated by FPC. We propose that the activation of brain networks rather than a single cortical area in this paradigm supports the art-scholars’ view that aesthetic judgments are multi-faceted and multi-dimensional in nature.

We describe the pattern of fixations of subjects looking at figurative and abstract paintings from different artists (Molina, Mondrian, Rembrandt, della Francesca) and at modified versions in which different aspects of these art pieces were altered with simple digital manipulations. We show that the fixations of the subjects followed some general common principles (e.g. being attracted to saliency regions) but with a large variability for the figurative paintings, according to the subject’s personal appreciation and knowledge. In particular, we found different gazing patterns depending on whether the subject saw the original or the modified version of the painting first. We conclude that the study of gazing patterns obtained by using the eye-tracker technology give a useful approach to quantify how subjects observe art.

This paper examines a decision support system (DSS) for the appraisal of complex decision problems using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The DSS makes use of a structured hierarchical approach featuring the multiplicative AHP also known as the REMBRANDT technique. The paper addresses the influence of the progression factor used when transforming the decision makers' verbal responses from a semantic to a geometric scale in REMBRANDT. Conventionally, the progression factor 2 is used for calculating scores of alternatives and √2 for calculation of criteria weights. Tests are conducted on the magnitude of these progression factors in order to examine the sensitivity towards the final outcome of an analysis. For illustration a case study concerning the appraisal of a large infrastructure project is presented. The results of the sensitivity calculations are compared with the results of a conventional AHP calculation in order to examine what impact the choice of progression factors as well as the choice of technique have on the decision making. Based on this a modified progression factor for the calculation of scores for the alternatives in REMBRANDT is suggested while the progression factor for the criteria weights is suggested to be kept unchanged. Finally, conclusions and perspectives are set out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A painted portrait differs from a photo in that selected regions are often rendered in much sharper detail than other regions. Artists believe these choices guide viewer gaze and influence their appreciation of the portrait, but these claims are difficult to test because increased portrait detail is typically associated with greater meaning, stronger lighting, and a more central location in the composition. In three experiments we monitored viewer gaze and recorded viewer preferences for portraits rendered with a parameterised non-photorealistic technique to mimic the style of Rembrandt (DiPaola, 2009 International Journal of Art and Technology 2 82-93). Results showed that viewer gaze was attracted to and held longer by regions of relatively finer detail (experiment 1), and also by textural highlighting (experiment 2), and that artistic appreciation increased when portraits strongly biased gaze (experiment 3). These findings have implications for understanding both human vision science and visual art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores Bachelard's poetry exercised on Rembrandt's painting. It analyzes the superposition of three gazes: Rembrandt's gaze at the philosopher meditating, Bachelard's gaze at Rembrandt's look expressed in painting, my own gaze at Bachelard's look when he sees Rembrandt observing the philosopher in his reverie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicine in the Middle Ages was, and ever since remained, one of the main preoccupations of the professionally restricted Jews. One of the medical dynasties on the Iberian Peninsula was the Bueno (Bonus) family. Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and their spread in Europe, these Iberian physicians became successful everywhere-just as the Buenos were in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fossil pollen contents found in the charred dottle residue from 20 clay pipe bowls recovered from a cesspit at a house in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (which was owned and used by the artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn), were collected and studied. The clay pipes date from approximately the same period when Rembrandt lived in the house and used the cesspit. We believe that some of the pollen in the dottle residue may have come from the tobacco, some possibly from airborne sources at Rembrandt's house and/or from debris in the cesspit in which the pipes were discarded. The results are compared with a similar study of pipe dottle from Native American clay pipes conducted more than 25 years ago. We also briefly review the origin and spread of domestic tobacco in an effort to determine potential sources of the tobacco imported and used in the Netherlands during the lifetime of Rembrandt and the period when he occupied the house. The pollen content of modern brands of commercial pipe tobacco is studied and the potential for using pollen found in tobacco products as evidence in forensic circumstances is reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gliomas are the most devastating of primary adult malignant brain tumors. These tumors are highly infiltrative and can arise from cells with extensive self-renewal capability and chemoresistance, frequently termed glioma-propagating cells (GPCs). GPCs are thus the plausible culprits of tumor recurrence. Treatment strategies that eradicate GPCs will greatly improve disease outcome. Such findings support the use of GPCs as in vitro cellular systems for small-molecule screening. However, the nuances in using GPCs as a cellular screening platform are not trivial. These slow-growing cells are typically cultured as suspension, spheroid structures in serum-free condition supplemented with growth factors. Consequently, replenishment of growth factors throughout the screening period must occur to maintain cells in their undifferentiated state, as the more lineage-committed, differentiated cells are less tumorigenic. We present a case study of a small-molecule screen conducted with GPCs and explain how unique sphere activity assays were implemented to distinguish drug efficacies against the long-term, self-renewing fraction, as opposed to transient-amplifying progenitors, the latter of which are detected in conventional viability assays. We identified Polo-like kinase 1 as a regulator of GPC survival. Finally, we leveraged on public glioma databases to illustrate GPC contribution to disease progression and patient survival outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of an Analytic Hierarchy Approach (AHP) for scoring offers in continuous negotiation problems has been studied. AHP has already proven its usefulness in constructing a ranking of alternatives in discrete decision making problems. In negotiations, however, some issues may have a quantitative character and be defined by feasible ranges, which results in uncountably large sets of feasible offers. This is a problem to which AHP cannot be applied in its original form. Therefore we propose an approach to building a scoring system that operates within AHP and a predefined discrete subset of feasible alternatives, then a method for determining global scores for all the feasible alternatives is proposed. When this subset has been built, the notion of border alternatives is applied. Assuming that these border alternatives have been ranked, single-issue utility functions are constructed using linear interpolation over the set of selected border alternatives. Single-issue utility functions are then aggregated using issue weights in order to form the final utility function. The issue weights are also determined using AHP. Such an approach means that a relatively small number of comparisons are required for a negotiator in AHP process to build a comprehensive scoring system, which makes the process of eliciting the negotiator's preferences simple and rapid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At his arrival (1633) in the unfamiliar city of Amsterdam, Govert Flinck was assured of the support of affluent relatives as well as of the networks of both Rembrandt and the art dealer Uylenburg. The stylistically adaptable Flinck was an active networker and obtained both an honourable position as a friend and success as a painter in the network of eminent magistrates. Ferdinand Bol also chose Rembrandt as master, but lacked support by relatives. Still, through his marriage with Elysabeth Dell (1652) he achieved a solid position in the networks of the admiralty and magistrates, which gained him continued commissions. His second marriage to Anna van Erckel (1669) offered him the opportunity to refrain from painting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The past several generations of scholarship on Rembrandt''s “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp” have suffered from the anxiety of influence exercised by the influential interpretations of William Heckscher and William Schupbach. Schupbach''s interpretation in particular has guided interpretation of the painting in the past generation and has given rise to a fundamental misunderstanding of the painting and its cultural significance. Schupbach and those whom he has influenced have failed to recognize that, from the standpoint of Baroque consciousness, there is an inner compatibility rather than a paradox or tension between the optimistic endorsement of earthly science and the putatively pessimistic resignation to the inevitability of death. Where the figure of Tulp represents the optimism of science and technology, that of the topmost surgeon Van Loenen represents the recognition that the technological project functions within the larger context of a Christian worldview. A reflection on the original form of “Tulp,” in which Van Loenen was depicted wearing a hat, shows how Rembrandt''s painting can still speak to us from a distance of almost four hundred years and pose a challenge to our own secular ambitions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Rembrandt's identification as a 'protestant' painter has led art historians to eschew a 'Catholic' reading of his work while acknowledging at the same time that some of his subjects are 'Catholic' or 'made for a Catholic audience'. One such etching is Rembrandt's Death of the Virgin (1639). Despite the fact that this is a profoundly Catholic subject, any analysis that has been made seeks to interpret this work from a protestant or even a secular perspective. A reading of this work using insights from Catholic theology and Christian legend suggests that Rembrandt transcends the religious categories of his own time and those that our time has attempted to impose on him. An emphasis on a protestant interpretation robs this work of dimension. Rembrandt's Death of the Virgin is at the same time, an acknowledgement of pictorial tradition, a theological document, an examination of his beliefs and a commentary on the religious beliefs of his age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]