Factors affecting the oligomeric structure of yeast external invertase

It has been assumed that yeast external invertase is a dimer, with each subunit composed of a 60-kDa polypeptide chain. We now present evidence that at its optimal pH of 5.0, the predominant form of external invertase is an octamer with an average size of 8 X 10(5) Da. During ultracentrifugation the octamer dissociated to lower molecular weight forms, including a hexamer, tetramer, and dimer. All forms of the enzyme were shown to possess identical specific activities and to contain a similar carbohydrate to protein ratio. Although the monomer subunits (1 X 10(5) Da) were heterogenous in carbohydrate content, each subunit possessed nine oligosaccharide chains. When stained for protein and enzyme activity following sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, only the oligomeric form of the enzyme appeared to be active. Thus, on partially inactivating invertase with 4 M guanidine hydrochloride both octamer and monomer were evident on the gels but only the former was active. Similarly, incubating at pH 2.5 in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate yielded only inactive monomer. The monomer, unlike the active oligomeric aggregate, was unable to hydrolyze sucrose after sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Consistent with the in vitro studies, freshly prepared yeast lysate was shown to contain the octameric species of external invertase as the major active form of this enzyme. From these studies and others which employed deglycosylated invertase, it is concluded that the carbohydrate component of external invertase contributes not only to stabilizing enzyme activity, but also to maintaining its oligomeric structure.     

The plant landscape as inferred from a basket of the Roman town of Privernum (Latium,central Italy)

Abstract

Privernum was a rich Roman colony located 70 km southwest of Rome (southern Latium, central Italy). The archaeobotanical investigations focused on the garden and related structures of the luxury domus della Soglia nilotica. They are archaeologically and radiocarbon dated to the second half of the 1st century AD. The remains of a charred basket were found in the filling of the euripus, an ornamental water basin of the garden. The weaving was made with twisted strands of the leaves of Ampelodesmos mauritanicus (Poir.) T. Durand and Schinz; for the bottom and the handle/s of the basket, wood of evergreen oaks and ash and/or elm, respectively were probably used. The basket contained Pinus pinea seeds and cone scales, and Prunus persica endocarps, which were probably burnt in summer. The sediment in the drainage system and in the kitchen was processed for macro- and microremains. The results indicate the presence of spontaneous ruderal and weed flora elements, typical of human settlement areas, and crops.     

The mobilization of the ethnic vote: A thesis with some Scottish and Welsh evidence*

This article provides a historical and comparative analysis of post‐imperial migrations of ethnic unmixing. It examines the post‐Soviet migration of ethnic Russians to Russia in the light of the migrations of other once‐dominant ‘new minorities’ engendered by transitions from multinational empire to incipient nation‐states: Balkan Muslims during and after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Hungarians after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, and Germans after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the German Kaiserreich.     

Unheard voices: state-making and popular participation in post-Ottoman Iraq

I explore the nature of the particular nation state form that came into being in Iraq during the British Mandate, and in particular its impact on minorities. The Mandate government, and the broader international legal framework, structured state–minority relations in post-Ottoman Iraq in ways that continue to shape Iraqi politics. While sociocultural differences in Iraqi society were given constitutional recognition, this did not lead to the effective protection of minority rights, primarily because the principle of popular participation was not respected. The Mandate legacy in Iraq has been long-lasting, as the mistakes of the past have been reproduced by postcolonial regimes, and thus the state–minority relationship has been locked in a loop of exclusionary politics and securitization.     

The importance of guano birds to the Inca Empire and the first conservation measures implemented by humans

The Inca Empire was the largest ancient civilization in South America, extending across almost 4000 km of distinct environments from the Pacific coast to the Andes, and throughout most of the arid desert between. The present study highlights the importance of guano birds (Guanay Cormorant Leucocarbo bougainvillii, Peruvian Pelican Pelecanus thagus and Peruvian Booby Sula variegata) for the expansion and prosperity of the Inca Empire. The use of guano as a fertilizer was fundamental to sustain the agricultural development of the empire and, it has been argued, was the basis for its rapid growth. The access to guano on coastal islands and its subsequent transportation to highlands provided food security for a population of more than 8 million. The importance of guano birds to the Inca Empire led to the development of management plans based on a penal code aiming to preserve these species and their natural habitats. These protective actions may represent the first conservation measures ever implemented by humans based on the importance of species protection for human activities and livelihoods.     

‘A civilizing mission’? Austrian medicine and the reform of medical structures in the Ottoman Empire, 1838–1850

During the 1840s, physicians from the Habsburg Empire played a decisive role in the reform of medical structures in the Ottoman Empire. This paper discusses different aspects of this scientific and cultural encounter. It emphasizes the importance of Austrian health care structures as a model for the work of these physicians in the Ottoman Empire and studies the role of the medical school ran by the Austrians as a means of representing, on the one hand, the reformatory efforts of the Ottoman Empire and, on the other hand, the motivations of the Habsburg monarchy for an involvement in Ottoman health care affairs, strongly bound up with its own quarantine politics towards the Ottoman Empire.     

Surgery and national identity in late nineteenth-century Vienna

For historians of medicine, the professor Theodor Billroth of the University of Vienna was the leading European surgeon of the late nineteenth century and the personification of intervention by organ or body part removal. For social and political historians, he was a German nationalist whose book on medical education heralded the rise of anti-Semitism in the Austrian public sphere. This article brings together and critically reassesses these two hitherto separate accounts to show how, in a period of dramatic social and political change, Viennese surgery split into two camps. One, headed by Billroth, was characterized by an alliance with the German educational model, German nationalism leading to racial anti-Semitism and an experimental approach to the construction of surgical procedure, which heavily relied on the methods of pathological physiology. The other, which followed a long Austrian tradition, stood for a clinically oriented and strictly organized medical education that catered to an ethnically and socially diverse population and, simultaneously, for an anatomically oriented surgery, largely of the locomotor apparatus. This study shows how, in a major centre of medical education and capital of a multiethnic empire, surgical and national identities were forged together.     

Psychiatric institutions, their architecture, and the politics of regional autonomy in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy

This paper examines the planning process and architecture of two public psychiatric institutions built around 1900 in Trieste and Lower Austria. From 1864, the building of new asylums was the responsibility of Crown land governments, which by the end of the nineteenth century had emerged as sites of power and self-presentation by minority groups and new political parties. At the same time, the area of asylum planning was establishing itself as a branch of asylum psychiatry and promoting the idea of the asylum as model settlement, contributing to social reform. I analyse the interaction of psychiatrists, architects and government officials involved in planning the two institutions in the context of Crown land governments' self-positioning within the empire and internationally (especially in relation to Italy and Germany). The Trieste asylum planners were working for a government controlled by Italian nationalists, but their desire for a 'modern' asylum turned them towards German models. The Christian Social government in Lower Austria sought to supplant Germany as the leader in this branch of science. The spatial arrangement and visual articulation of the two asylums is interpreted in the context of the interaction of psychiatry and the politics of regional autonomy.     

The Magyar moustache: the faces of Hungarian state formation, 1867-1918

This paper outlines the history of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology and their role in the construction of the nation and Hungarian liberalism in the Dualist period (1867-1918). Affected by the specific socio-political conditions of this ethnically most diverse country of contemporary Europe, the disciplinary trajectories of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology diverge considerably from the models offered by the historiography in the British, French and German contexts. The paper argues that the pluralistic, cultural and strongly integrative ethnographic tradition that prevailed in Hungary in the last decades of the nineteenth century did not notably wane and shift towards a biological, hierarchical and racialist thinking by the end of the First World War. Furthermore, Hungarian liberalism did not simply provide the milieu for these disciplines to flourish, but was itself partly the result of these disciplines' attempts to formulate the very concepts of ethnicity and race.     

Health and wealth in the Roman Empire

Ancient Rome was the largest and most populous empire of its time, and the largest pre-industrial state in European history. Recent though not universally accepted research suggests that at least for the most populous central periods of its history standard of living was also rather higher than before or after. To trace whether this is also reflected in Roman biological standard of living, we present the first large and more or less comprehensive dataset, based on skeletal data for some 10,000 individuals, covering all periods of Roman history, and all regions (even if inevitably unequally). We discuss both the methodologies that we developed and the historical results. Instead of reconstructing heights from the long bones assuming fixed body proportions or from one individual long bone, we apply exploratory factor analysis and calculate factor scores for 50-year periods. Our measure of the biological standard of living declined during the last two centuries B.C. and started to improve again, slowly at first, from the second century A.D. It correlated negatively with population, but also with other aspects of standard of living such as wages or diets.