Lignin conveys several important and useful characteristics to starch films depending on the lignin MW, extraction procedure, and lignin botanical source. In this study, lignin was obtained from durum wheat straw through the organosolv process, followed by fractionation according to solubility in alcohol. The alcohol-soluble lignin (ASL) was then used to prepare starch-ASL films. The mechanical properties, thermal stability, water solubility, color, and antioxidant activity of the resulting films were evaluated, and the starch-ASL films were also analyzed by means of SEM and attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy (ATR-IR). A procedure, to incorporate ASL, was developed and used to produce homogenous surfaces in starch-ASL films; agglomerations or undissolved particles of lignin were not observed in the starch matrix at microscopic level. ASL promoted significant decrease of the tensile strength (TS) and elastic modulus (EM), but an increase of elongation at break (EB) in films. Thermal analysis of the starch-ASL films showed high resistance to thermal degradation, due to the incorporation of ASL. In addition, the starch-ASL films exhibited antioxidant activity (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl [DPPH]), which increased with increasing ASL content.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are an extracellular communication system. Recently, they have more studied for their function as intercelular communication vehicles and their participation in physiological processes and specific health conditions. However, little is know about the influence of excess weight on their morphometric characteristics. The aim was to characterize populations of extracellular vesicles in adults with obesity and normal weight. Study design was cross‐sectional and subjects were assigned to: group A (n=10) which included participants with obesity (Body Mass Index (BMI)>30 kg/m2), and group B (n=10) included subjects with normal weight (BMI 18 – <25 kg/m2). Subjects were free of co‐morbidities. Weight, height, electrical bioimpedance, and serum lipids were evaluated. EVs were isolated from blood plasma using Invitrogen total exosome isolation reagent. Isolation was later corroborated by detecting the expression of the marker ALIX, an EV‐associated protein by Western blot (WB), and the particle size was assessed using Zetasizer Nano ZS. The isolated EVs were also analyzed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). We identified two sizes of EVs, that were later classified as exosomes and microvesicles. The characterization of EVs was confirmed with the expression of ALIX and the images of TEM. In subjects from group A, EVs size (65.9 ± 16.1nm) was larger than in those subjects without obesity (42.3 ± 10.7nm), but this was not statistically significant. Body weight and tryglycerides concentration were positively associated (p<0.05) with EVs’ size. The variability in the size of EVs between groups could reflect different composition or maturation level of EVs. The size of EVs is related with state of obesity, also its content could reflect higher risk of developing comorbidities associated with excess weight and nutritional status. Support or Funding Information The project was funded by CIAD and MAH received a scholarship from CONACYT.

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This chapter details Goethe’s influence on the development of early German Romantic philosophy. It explores some of the reasons why Goethe became a leading literary influence on early German Romantic philosophy. The unique literary style of the early German Romantics is presented; in particular, their fusion of literary and philosophical approaches to central philosophical issues is explored. The modern spirit that unified Goethe and Schlegel is presented as the motivation for Schlegel’s turn to Goethe’s work. Finally, Schlegel’s analysis of Wilhelm Meister is presented as a Romantic ideal of art.

Goethe and Friedrich Schiller stand together immortalised in Ernst Rietschel's statue at the centre of Weimar. In their lifetime, Goethe and Schiller shaped the culture of German-speaking lands, not only through their poetry, plays, and novels, but also in their role as editors of journals that helped to set the intellectual tone of the period. Schiller's journal Die Horen (1795-1797) and Goethe's Propyläen (1798-1800), although short-lived, were important literary vehicles of the period and provided a forum that brought scientists, historians, philosophers, and poets into conversation with one another. The late 1700s and early 1800s were years of intense intellectual development in Germanspeaking lands; the arts flourished and aesthetics developed as a serious branch of philosophy.During the ‘Age of Goethe and Schiller’, philosophy was dominated by Kant's philosophy and its post-Kantian variations. A problem with traditional philosophical histories of this period is the overwhelmingly Hegelian reading of it, a reading that subsumes all of the so-called minor figures under the shadows of the great system builder, Hegel. Richard Kroner's influential Von Kant bis Hegel of 1921 set the tone for this reading. Silenced by such narratives are the voices of the early German Romantics, a group of thinkers whose impudence created problems for them, and whose work posed hermeneutical challenges that continue to plague a proper understanding of the movement and the worth of its contributions. As we shall see, Hegel himself began to prepare the ground for a history of philosophy that would dismiss the contributions of the early German Romantics, a dismissal that is unfair and unfortunate: unfair because it is based on false characterisations of the movement, and unfortunate because such misreadings lead us to overlook the wealth of insights offered by the early German Romantics.