Tahitala's Revenge: Monumental Architecture and the Great Canoe,Lomipeau

In discussing ways that monumental architecture symbolises political power, I suggest that vehicles are a unique category of monument construction. Their ability to travel, and to be used for politically momentous tasks, increases the prestige of the rulers who make use of them. The Lomipeau, a large double‐hulled canoe used by Tongan rulers in the sixteenth century, exemplifies the concept of a monumental vehicle. To demonstrate the concept, I examine the origins of the canoe, the archaeology of sites associated with its exploits, and its use in ceremonial voyages of national importance. Identifying vehicles as a distinctive class of monumental architecture in future studies will help us to comprehend the complex variety of ways leaders express power across cultures.     

Early Modern Experimentation on Live Animals

Starting from the works by Aselli (De lactibus sive lacteis venis, 1627) on the milky veins and Harvey (1628, translated in 1993) on the motion of the heart and the circulation of the blood, the practice of vivisection witnessed a resurgence in the early modern period. I discuss some of the most notable cases in the century spanning from Aselli’s work to the investigations of fluid pressure in plants and animals by Stephen Hales (Vegetable Staticks, 1727). Key figures in my study include Johannes Walaeus, Jean Pecquet, Marcello Malpighi, Reinier de Graaf, Richard Lower, Anton Nuck, and Anton de Heide. Although vivisection dates from antiquity, early modern experimenters expanded the range of practices and epistemic motivations associated with it, displaying considerable technical skills and methodological awareness about the problems associated with the animals being alive and the issue of generalizing results to humans. Many practitioners expressed great discomfort at the suffering of the animals; however, many remained convinced that their investigations were not only indispensable from an epistemic standpoint but also had potential medical applications. Early modern vivisection experiments were both extensive and sophisticated and cannot be ignored in the literature of early modern experimentation or of experimentation on living organisms across time.     

Amoralist Rationalism? A Response to Joel Marks

In a recent article, Joel Marks presents the amoralist argument against vivisection, or animal laboratory experimentation. He argues that ethical theories that seek to uncover some universal morality are in fact useless and unnecessary for ethical deliberations meant to determine what constitutes an appropriate action in a specific circumstance. I agree with Marks’ conclusion. I too believe that vivisection is indefensible, both from a scientific and philosophical perspective. I also believe that we should become vegan (unfortunately, like the two philosophers mentioned by Marks, I too am still struggling to reduce my meat and dairy consumption). However, I am in the dark as to Marks’ vision of normative deliberations in the spirit of amoralism and desirism.     

A minor source on the discovery of America

The sixteenth century poemDe navigatione Christophori Columbi by L. Gambara (1496–1586?) is here compared with the contemporary sources on C. Columbus's discoveries in order to verify whether C. Columbus through Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle (1486–1550) and his son, the Cardinal Antoine (1571–1584), was the source of the poem, as stated on thededicatio. It seems that L. Gambara drew the historical events mainly from P.M. d'Anghiera and F. Columbus. However he added some new elements and an interesting early sixteenth century map of Columbus' discoveries (1st to 3rd voyages), probably all collected by Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle. HenceDe navigatione (…) may be considered a minor source on Christopher Columbus discoveries.     

Prolegomenon to a history of paleoanthropology: The study of human origins as a scientific enterprise. Part 2. Eighteenth to the twentieth century

Modern scientific theories of human origins can be traced directly back to the discoveries, arguments, and theories of the seventeenth century. But as we have seen in the first part of this paper, a great many critical steps had been taken, ideas proposed, and discoveries made long before this. The scientific advances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed much to ancient science, while still retaining many aspects of the medieval Christian world view. Yet both science and Christianity changed significantly as a result of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the voyages of exploration, and the changes wrought on European society as a result of industrialization. The question of human origins was directly affected by the archeological study of prehistoric ruins, new geological theories, the study of fossils, the discovery of “savage” peoples living in the New World, and the comparison of prehistoric stone implements from Europe with those collected in the New World. This proliferation of new discoveries, new theories, and the emergence of completely new scientific disciplines in the seventeenth century laid the foundation for the dramatic new discoveries and theories that came over the next three centuries.     

I. P. Pavlov on animal experiments]

The paper is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of academician I.P. Pavlov's birthday. Pavlov's points of view on vivisection are analyzed and are compared with the modern conception of ethics of carrying out experiments on animals. It is discovered that Pavlov's points of view are in accordance with the key positions of modern requirements to ethics of experimenting on animals which are adopted in the world practice.     

A history of noma,the "Face of Poverty"

Noma (necrotizing ulcerative stomatitis, stomatitis gangrenosa, or cancrum oris) is a devastating orofacial gangrene that occurs mainly among children. The disease has a global yearly incidence of 140,000 cases and a mortality rate of approximately 90 percent. Patients who survive noma generally suffer from its sequelae, including serious facial disfigurement, trismus, oral incontinence, and speech problems. The medical history of noma indicates that the disease was already known in classical and medieval civilizations in Europe. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch chirurgeons clearly described noma as a clinical entity and realized that the popular name "water canker" was not sufficient, because this quickly spreading ulceration in the faces of children was different from "cancer." In the eighteenth century, awareness that noma is related to poverty, malnutrition, and preceding diseases such as measles increased in northwestern Europe. In the first half of the nineteenth century, extensive surgical procedures were described for the treatment of the sequelae of noma. At the end of that century, noma gradually disappeared in the Western world because of economic progress, which gave the poorest in society the opportunity to feed their children sufficiently. Only in the twentieth century were effective drugs (sulfonamides and penicillin) against noma developed, as well as adequate surgical treatment for the sequelae of noma. These modes of treatment remain inaccessible for the many present-day victims of noma because of their extreme poverty. The only truly effective approach to the problem of noma throughout the world is prevention, namely, combating the extreme poverty with measures that lead to economic progress. In the meantime, medical doctors in the Western world should not forget their own history and ignore this global health problem; rather, they should face "the face of poverty" with the eyes of mercy and concern suited to their profession.     

Teste Albumasare cum Sibylla: astrology and the Sibyls in medieval Europe

In the 1480s Dominican humanist Filippo de’ Barbieri published an illustration of a supposedly ancient female seer called the ‘Sybilla Chimica’, whose prophetic text repeated the words of the ninth-century astrologer Abu Ma‘shar. In tracing the origins of Barbieri’s astrological Sibyl, this article examines three sometimes interlocking traditions: the attribution of an ante-diluvian history to the science of the stars, the assertion of astrology’s origins in divine revelation, and the belief in the ancient Sibyls’ predictions of the birth of Christ and other Christian truths. Medieval authors from the twelfth century on began to cite these traditions together, thereby simultaneously authorizing the use of astrology to predict religious changes and blurring the categories of natural and supernatural as applied to human understanding. This blending of astrology and prophecy appears notably in works by such authors as John of Paris, John of Legnano, Johannes Lichtenberger, and Marsilio Ficino. Ultimately the trajectory that produced Barbieri’s astrological Sibyl would lead to a wave of astrological apocalyptic predictions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as to the harnessing of astrology for the defense of the faith in the form of an astrological natural theology, sacralizing science as well as nature.     

PCR-based molecular characterization and insilico analysis of food-borne trematode parasites Paragonimus westermani, Fasciolopsis buski and Fasciola gigantica from Northeast India using ITS2 rDNA

In early 2009, new swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus emerged in Mexico and the United States. The emerging influenza virus had made global influenza pandemic for nearly one year. To every emerging pathogen, exploring the origin sources is vital for viral control and clearance. Influenza virus is different from other virus in that it has 8 segments, making the segment reassortment a main drive in virus evolution. In exploring reassortment evolution origins of a newly emerging influenza virus, integrated comparing of the origin sources of all the segments is necessary. If some segments have high homologous with one parental strain, lower homologous with another parental strain, while other segments are reverse, can we proposed that this emerging influenza virus may re-assort from the two parental strains. Here we try to explore the multilevel reassortment evolution origins of 2009 H1N1 influenza virus using this method. By further validating the fidelity of this strategy, this method might be useful in judging the reassortment origins of newly emerging influenza virus.     

In Situ Natural Product Discovery via an Artificial Marine Sponge

There is continuing international interest in exploring and developing the therapeutic potential of marine–derived small molecules. Balancing the strategies for ocean based sampling of source organisms versus the potential to endanger fragile ecosystems poses a substantial challenge. In order to mitigate such environmental impacts, we have developed a deployable artificial sponge. This report provides details on its design followed by evidence that it faithfully recapitulates traditional natural product collection protocols. Retrieving this artificial sponge from a tropical ecosystem after deployment for 320 hours afforded three actin–targeting jasplakinolide depsipeptides that had been discovered two decades earlier using traditional sponge specimen collection and isolation procedures. The successful outcome achieved here could reinvigorate marine natural products research, by producing new environmentally innocuous sources of natural products and providing a means to probe the true biosynthetic origins of complex marine–derived scaffolds.     

Using parasitoids to infer a native range for the obscure mealybug, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pseudococcus viburni</Emphasis>, in South America

The co-evolutionary relationships between mealybug hosts (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) and Encyrtidae (Hymenoptera) appear to be particularly strong, and many successful classical biological control programmes against mealybugs have been carried out using these parasitoids. It is a puzzle, then, that the obscure mealybug, Pseudococcus viburni (Signoret) (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), is considered to be an American species but is not attacked by native parasitoids in the USA, whereas it is controlled in Europe by Acerophagus maculipennis (Mercet) (Encyrtidae) which was described from the Canary Islands (as Pseudophycus maculipennis). An examination of the biogeographical origins of both the Pseudococcus maritimus complex (to which P. viburni clearly belongs) and the genus Acerophagus Smith, coupled with historical trade records, supports the hypothesis that P. viburni and A. maculipennis are co-evolved Neotropical species, and that both were transported from S. America (probably Chile) to Europe via the Canary Islands on host plants such as potato, possibly as early as the sixteenth century. Invasion of P. viburni into the USA (and elsewhere around the world) occurred later, but without A. maculipennis (or other natural enemies). This explains why P. viburni in the USA is not attacked by native North American parasitoids and why A. maculipennis is not known to attack any mealybugs of Palaearctic origin. The hypothesis adds confidence that well conducted classical biocontrol programmes involving these taxa pose a low environmental risk to native, non-target fauna.     

Re-Evaluation of early observations on coconut in the New World

Oviedo’s sixteenth century reports from the New World, relating the characteristics, uses, cultivation and geographical distribution Cocos nucifera, are analyzed in terms of their veracity and implications for the evolution of this highly important economic species. The presence of coconut on the Pacific coasts of Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia is supported by the documentary evidence. The variability reported suggests a gene pool which includes the “wild” and “domesticated” morphotypes in populations similar to those distributed in the South Pacific region. The diffusion to America could have involved a large number of seeds. A close association between coconuts and humans, including a variety of uses and its cultivation is reported in the early sixteenth century literature. Evidence suggests both natural diffusion and diffusion by the intervention of humans. Studies of the genetic diversity in the region will identify valuable genotypes for improvement and conservation.     

Historians and plagues in pre-industrial Italy over the longue durée

This essay deals with plague and plagues in renaissance and early modern Europe over the longue durée, principally from a methodological perspective. I shall combine an historiographical approach with an historical account of developing reactions to plague and in passing compare measures to cope in the early sixteenth century with reactions to the impact of the Great Pox or the Mal de Naples. I shall concentrate on southern Europe and in particular on Italy and my aim is to re-assess the historiography of plague through the lens of some of the more recent Anglo-Saxon literature in this field. In the process I shall outline some of the debates within the field and end with some general methodological observations drawn from early modern Italy.     

Mechanical forces used for cell fractionation can create hybrid membrane vesicles

The ability to understand the inner works of the cell requires methods for separation of intracellular membrane-enclosed compartments. Disruption of the plasma membrane (PM) by mechanical forces to investigate the content of the cell is common practice. Whether vesicles or membranes of different sources can fuse as a result is unclear. If such contamination occurs, conclusions based on these techniques should consider these. Utilizing an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane marker and a PM marker, we were able to detect the source of membranes following the breakup of cells using flow cytometry and immuno Electron Microscopy (immuno EM). Fractionation processes produced a small fraction of new membrane entities from two distinctively different origins generated during the initial disruption steps in a temperature independent manner, stressing that defining organelles or intrinsic fusion events based on such procedures and markers are valid when exceeding the small number of vesicles fused during the fractionation process.     

Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric Approaches

Anthropology has over the last quarter century privileged language, ideation, and meaning as central tropes in the study of culture. Meaning has been construed primarily in terms of linguistic signification, resulting in logocentric approaches to its study. This preoccupation endures despite the embrace of practice theory and renewed attention to object worlds. In this article, I explore the implications of logocentric approaches for the study of what Thomas terms "colonial entanglements. I argue that there are both theoretical and methodological reasons for deprivileging meaning (logocentrically conceived) and for focusing instead on the embodied forms of practical knowledge that framed colonial relations. I explore the value of a taste-centered approach that exploits the strengths of archaeological sources. As a form of embodied practical knowledge, extant practices of taste shaped the reception (and rejection) of exotic goods as well as their recontextualization. By creating what Hebdige terms "cartographies of taste" based on a study of past object worlds, we can explore how existing practices shaped the reception of new objects. By viewing these "cartographies" comparatively in time and space, we can contextually analyze diversions and continuities in the practices of taste through time in relation to the interplay of production and consumption, supply and demand, and thus enrich our understanding of colonial conjunctures. An archaeological case study from the Banda area in Ghana is used to illustrate the value of taste as a conceptual tool that emphasizes the importance of embodied knowledge in social life. [Keywords: logocentrism, embodied knowledge, colonial entanglements, material culture, Ghana]     

Houses and the ritual construction of gendered homes in South Africa

This article examines Griqua women's association with houses in historic, economic, and ritual contexts during the twentieth century. Using archival data, I argue that the connection between women and houses in South Africa stems from a complex interaction between their pre-colonial Khoi origins, Christian missionary activity, and apartheid government housing policy. Ethnographic research demonstrates how, during the second half of the twentieth century, women ritually stressed their association with houses, but were unable to sustain this dominance in everyday life. An examination of ritual, gender, and housing, in relation to material objects and space, provides insights into how a series of rituals performed in Griquatown facilitates both the expression of an unambiguous Griqua identity and daily multi-ethnic interactions.     

An Assessment Of The Radiocarbon Dates For The Helb Site, 39Ca208, South Dakota

Abstract

Eleven radiocarbon dates from the Helb site (39CA208) in north-central South Dakota are presented and interpreted by techniques recently advanced by other authors. The results appear to substantiate two occupations of the site, one in the mid-eleventh century A.D. and anotherin the early or middle portion of the sixteenth century A.D.