The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning and Power

The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning and Power. Carole M. Counihan. New York: Routledge, 1999.256 pp.     

Narrating Kidney Disease: The Significance Of Sensation And Time In The Emplotment Of Patient Experience

Drawing on research conducted among patients in Ireland, this article examines the narrative constructions of chronic kidney failure and explores the ways in which patient narratives cross-cut and subvert modernist medical constructions of transplantation as a therapeutic outcome, an endgame, a “gift of life.” In experience, patients dismantle this construction structure by emplotting their stories around the painful lack of an ending, ardently brought to bear by the lived realities of immunosuppressant drug therapy, the silent fears of graft rejection, and the isolation of recipiency. They articulate, instead, stories that disclose a multi-directional flow between past and future therapeutic interventions, between the altering nature of the renal body and personal experience. These storied dimensions are phenomenologically embedded in the sensory and temporal aspects of this condition as essential elements of chronic illness and as organizational properties of patient narratives.     

Historical Burden In Systematics And The Interrelationships Of 'Parareptiles'

The interrelationships within the clade comprised of turtles, pareiasaurs, and procolophonid-like taxa are investigated via a cladistic analysis incorporating 56 characters. A single most parsimonious tree was found (80 steps, c. i. = 0·8) in which the successive outgroups to turtles are: pareiasaurs, Sclerosaurus, lanthanosuchids, procolophonoids (=Owenetta, Barasaurus and procolophonids), and nyctiphruretians (= nycteroleterids). Thus, as suggested recently by other workers (Reisz, in Fischman, 1993) turtles are the highly modified survivors of a radiation of poorly-known reptiles commonly called ‘parareptiles’. Pareiasaurs are united with turtles on the basis of twenty unambiguous derived features which are absent in other basal amniotes (=‘primitive reptiles’) and reptiliomorph amphibians: for example, the medially located choana, enlarged foramina palatinum posterius, blunt cultriform process, fully ossified medial wall of the prootic, opisthotic-squamosal suture, lateral flange of exoccipital, loss of ventral cranial fissure, thickened braincase floor, ‘pleurosphenoid’ ossification, reduced presacral count, acromion process, trochanter major, reduced fifth pedal digit, and presence of transverse processes on most caudals. Recent phylogenetic proposals linking turtles with captorhinids, with dicynodonts, and with procolophonoids are evaluated. None of the proposed traits supporting the first two hypotheses is compelling. The procolophonoid hypotheses is supported by only one synapomorphy (the slender stapes). All other synapomorphies proposed in favour of the above groupings either occur in many other primitive amniotes, or are not primitive for turtles, or are not primitive for the proposed chelonian sister-group. Nyctiphruretus and Lanthanosuchids and nycteroleterids, often considered to be seymouriamorph amphibians, are demonstrated unequivocally to be amniotes. The ‘rhipaeosaurs’, currently considered to be pareiasaur relatives, are shown to be a heterogenous assemblage of seymouriamorphs, therapsids and nycteroleterids. The phylogeny proposed here indicates that many of the traits of the earliest known turtle, Proganochelys, previously interpreted as unique specialisations, also occur in pareiasaurs and other near outgroups of turtles, and must instead represent the primitive chelonian condition: for example, the wide parietals and the short quadrate flange of the pterygoid. The sequence of acquisition of chelonian traits is discussed: many features once thought to be diagnostic of turtles actually characterize larger groupings of procolophonomorphs, and must have evolved long before the chelonian shell appeared. These traits include most of the chelonian-pareiasaur synapomorphies listed above, and many others which characterize more inclusive groupings found in this analysis. In putting Proganochelys much closer to the main line of chelonian evolution, in elucidating the sequence of acquisition of chelonian traits, and in reducing greatly the number of differences between turtles and their nearest relatives, this study helps bridge one of the major gaps in the fossil record. The failure of previous cladistic analyses to identify correctly the nearest relatives of turtles is attributed to biased character selection, caused by an over-reliance on cranial characters deemed ‘important’ by earlier workers, and by a tendency to shoehorn ‘parareptile’ taxa into phylogenies derived from analyses restricted to ‘mainstream’ groups such as synapsids, diapsids, turtles, and ‘captorhinomorphs’. Many of the synapomorphies that resolve turtle origins are postcranial, and the three nearest outgroups to turtles are all highly bizarre groups which were dismissed as ‘too specialized’ by early workers and continued to be inadequately assessed even by workers using a cladistic framework.     

Places Of Transformation: Building Monuments From Water And Stone In The Neolithic Of The Irish Sea

Using the Irish Sea area as a case-study, we argue that both sites and landscapes can be understood as containing a series of components procured from the landscape and from human, animal, and object bodies. These components were organized in a way that commented on and related to specific cultural relationships between these different locations and through the substances found within them. This idea is explored by examining Neolithic monuments, material culture, and natural materials in southwest Wales, northwest Wales, the Isle of Man, and southwest Scotland. We trace some metaphorical schemes which were integral to Neolithic activity in this part of the Irish Sea. In particular, we highlight the metaphorical connections between water and stone in places associated with transformation, particularly the repeated transformation of human bodies. We suggest that the series of associations present in the Neolithic were not invested with a uniform meaning but, instead, were polyvalent, subject to conflicting interpretations, contextually specific and variable through both space and time. The relationship between these elements was therefore dependent on the contexts of their association. Nevertheless, the association of water and stone can be found repeatedly throughout the Neolithic world and may have been the medium of a powerful trope within broader conceptions of the world. This article is intended as a preliminary consideration of these issues (particularly the links between stone, mountains, water, quartz, shell, and human remains) and is offered as a thinking-point for ongoing research in this area.     

Feeding Ecology Of The Short-eared Owl In Britain And Ireland

Over 90% of the prey of the Short-eared Owl in Britain and Ireland comprises small mammals, particularly the Short-tailed Vole. Birds, Wood Mice and Brown Rats are of secondary importance and, with Pygmy Shrews, may be the staple foods on islands lacking voles.     

Esterification In Organic Solvents: Selection Of Hydrolases And Effects Of Reaction Conditions

Fifty different hydrolases were screened for retention of high esterification activity in an organic solvent with citronellol as substrate. Although 22 hydrolases were very active as catalysts in the organic solvent, lipase from Candida cylindracea (lipase OF 360) was selected for further examination of the effects of reaction conditions on enzyme activity, with regard to catalyst availability and activity retention after immobilization. When the enzyme was entrapped in hydrophobic polyurethane gels, water-saturated isooctane was found to be the most suitable solvent, whereas polar solvents caused reversible catalyst inactivation. Entrapment significantly enhanced the operational stability of the lipase in the organic solvent.     

DFR和CR联合运用在静脉尿路造影中的应用价值

目的探讨DFR与CR联合运用在静脉尿路造影中的应用价值。资料与方法综合DFR与CR的优点对1007例静脉尿路造影效果分析。结果数字透视与数字摄影相结合的方法在静脉尿路造影中效果明显。结论数字透视与数字摄影联合运用的方法应用于静脉尿路造影具有应用前景。     

Current Problems In The Psychology Of Understanding And The Creation Of "Understanding Systems"

In the Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee entitled "On the journal Kommunist," the creation of "artificial intelligence" is pinpointed as one of the most important sociophilosophical and methodological problems of scientific and technical progress ([Resolution…]. P. 5). The psychological aspects of "artificial intelligence" have been studied fruitfully for a long time in our domestic psychology (see, for example, [Artificial intelligence…]), but the steady refinement of computer technology imposes upon scientists the task of deeper study of the interaction between man and computers.