Peter Bürger reflects on the reception of his Theory of the Avant-Garde and crafts a spirited response to his critics, while expanding on and refining his original claims. For Bürger, what continues to distinguish the avant-garde are two interrelated principles: the attack on the institution of art and the revolutionary transformation of everyday life. Underscoring the explicitly theoretical, rather than merely historical, thrust of this definition, he defends this generalizing strategy as a necessary means of achieving clarity about the changing role of art in society. He reiterates his argument about the failure of the historical avant-garde (to overcome the distinction of art and life), while placing a new emphasis on its equal measure of success (in transforming the internal logic of the art institution). The avant-garde’s appropriation of outdated and popular materials, for example, played a key role in challenging the norms of the art world, helping to bring about the leveling of distinctions often associated with postmodernism. On the one hand, the avant-garde failed in its attempt to revolutionize social reality; on the other hand, its impact on the norms and values of the art institution was significant and far-reaching. Contemporary or neo-avant-gardes remain caught on the horns of this contradiction, insofar as their aesthetic experiments—whatever the explicit intentions of the artist—only shore up the walls of the institution rather than breaking them down.

Different immobilization methods were adapted to the 96-well microtiter plate scale using esterases as model enzymes. The methods tested were based on adsorption, coprecipitation, aggregation and covalent bonding. The protein covered microcrystals proved to be the best method in terms of yield and expressed activity for the test reaction, which was the alcoholysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate with 1-propanol under anhydrous conditions.

In the past decade the number of studies investigating temperament in farm animals has increased greatly because temperament has been shown not only to affect handling but also reproduction, health and economically important production traits. However, molecular pathways underlying temperament and molecular pathways linking temperament to production traits, health and reproduction have yet to be studied in full detail. Here we report the results of metabolite profiling of the prefrontal cortex and serum of cattle with distinct temperament types that were performed to further explore their molecular divergence in the response to the slaughter procedure and to identify new targets for further research of cattle temperament. By performing an untargeted comprehensive metabolite profiling, 627 and 1097 metabolite features comprising 235 and 328 metabolites could be detected in the prefrontal cortex and serum, respectively. In total, 54 prefrontal cortex and 51 serum metabolite features were indicated to have a high relevance in the classification of temperament types by a sparse partial least square discriminant analysis. A clear discrimination between fearful/neophobic-alert, interested-stressed, subdued/uninterested-calm and outgoing/neophilic-alert temperament types could be observed based on the abundance of the identified relevant prefrontal cortex and serum metabolites. Metabolites with high relevance in the classification of temperament types revealed that the main differences between temperament types in the response to the slaughter procedure were related to the abundance of glycerophospholipids, fatty acyls and sterol lipids. Differences in the abundance of metabolites related to C21 steroid metabolism and oxidative stress indicated that the differences in the metabolite profiles of the four extreme temperament types could be the result of a temperament type specific regulation of molecular pathways that are known to be involved in the stress and fear response.

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