Seeing Oneself Seeing Oneself: White Nihilism in Ethnography and Theory

This essay dwells on the intersection of three historical contemporaries: (1) American anthropology's ‘reflexive turn’; (2) the rise of Michel Foucault's motif of ‘the gaze’ within anthropology; and (3) the spread of the aesthetics of ‘white nihilism.’ The intersection materializes in the visual trope of self-reflexivity. White nihilism, according to one account, is a self-loathing kind of reflexive gaze, preemptive of criticism and desirous of self-possession. The paper argues that Foucault's idea of the panoptic gaze had a similar effect on anthropological self-reflexivity. The essay contrasts the American reception of Foucault with the case of Francophone anthropology – including ‘the Other Foucault’ – in which self-reflexivity involves self-loss or self-division.     

Seeing objects in motion

This paper reports estimates of the conjoint spatiotemporal tuning functions of the neural mechanisms of the human vision system which detect image motion. The functions were derived from measurements of the minimum contrast necessary to detect the direction of drift of a sinusoidal grating, in the presence of phase-reversed masking gratings of various spatial and temporal frequencies. A mask of similar spatial and temporal frequencies to the test grating reduces sensitivity considerably, whereas one differing greatly in spatial or temporal frequency has little or no effect. The results show that for test gratings drifting at 8 Hz, the tuning function is bandpass in both space and time, peaked at the temporal and spatial frequency (SF) of the test (SFs were 0.1, 1 or 5 c deg-1; c represents cycles throughout). For a grating of 5 c deg-1 drifting at 0.3 Hz, the function is bandpass in space but lowpass in time. Fourier transform of the frequency results yields a function in space-time which we term the 'spatiotemporal receptive field'. For movement detectors (bandpass in space and time) the fields comprise alternating ridges of opposing polarity, elongated in space-time along the preferred velocity axis of the detector. We suggest that this organization explains how detectors analyse form and motion concurrently and accounts, at least in part, for a variety of perceptual phenomena, including summation, reduction of motion smear, metacontrast, stroboscopic motion and spatiotemporal interpolation.     

Seeing science in color

Around 7%-10% of men have some form of what is commonly called red-green color blindness. New style specifications at Nature Structural & Molecular Biology aim to enable all readers to see the full spectrum of data in images.     

Seeing and not seeing

Recent studies revealed that although subterranean mammals inhabit a dark underground environment, they can still perceive light stimuli and use this to entrain their circadian activity rhythm. Regarding spatial orientation, olfactory and tactile cues are employed for short-distance; whereas for long-distance, subterranean mammals employ the earth's magnetic field and self-generated (vestibular and kinestatic) cues. We suggest that seismic signals, utilized for long-distance communication, might also be used as an echolocation mechanism to determine digging depth and presence of obstacles ahead. Taken together, these mechanisms provide an equally efficient means of overall orientation and communication as those found in sighted mammals.     

Seeing rainbows

Mammals generally have colour vision inferior to that of other vertebrates. This is partially redressed in primates, but the underlying mechanisms differ in Old World and New World primate groups. How has this occurred and what were the key events in the molecular evolution of primate colour vision?     

Seeing Touches Early in Life

The sense of touch provides fundamental information about the surrounding world, and feedback about our own actions. Although touch is very important during the earliest stages of life, to date no study has investigated infants’ abilities to process visual stimuli implying touch. This study explores the developmental origins of the ability to visually recognize touching gestures involving others. Looking times and orienting responses were measured in a visual preference task, in which participants were simultaneously presented with two videos depicting a touching and a no-touching gesture involving human body parts (face, hand) and/or an object (spoon). In Experiment 1, 2-day-old newborns and 3-month-old infants viewed two videos: in one video a moving hand touched a static face, in the other the moving hand stopped before touching it. Results showed that only 3-month-olds, but not newborns, differentiated the touching from the no-touching gesture, displaying a preference for the former over the latter. To test whether newborns could manifest a preferential visual response when the touched body part is different from the face, in Experiment 2 newborns were presented with touching/no-touching gestures in which a hand or an inanimate object—i.e., a spoon- moved towards a static hand. Newborns were able to discriminate a hand-to-hand touching gesture, but they did not manifest any preference for the object-to-hand touch. The present findings speak in favour of an early ability to visually recognize touching gestures involving the interaction between human body parts.     

Seeing is believing

Ischemic injury to the kidneys is a prevalent clinical problem, contributing importantly to chronic kidney disease. Yet, underlying molecular mechanisms are elusive. To address the possible role of autophagy, we engineered a novel strain of mice harboring a ubiquitously expressed CAG-RFP-EGFP-LC3 transgene. Using this tool, we examined the post-ischemic kidney and detailed the dynamics of renal tubular epithelial autophagy. In addition, we defined the role of MTOR in the resolution of autophagy during epithelial survival and kidney repair.