			Home About us Contact

Past Generation (past + generation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	50%
Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

The temptations of cult: Roman martyr piety in the age of Gregory the Great

EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 3 2000
Conrad Leyser
Pope Gregory the Great (590,604) was arguably the most important Roman writer and civic leader of the early middle ages; the Roman martyrs were certainly the most important cult figures of the city. However modern scholarship on the relationship between Gregory and the Roman martyrs remains curiously underdeveloped, and has been principally devoted to comparison of the gesta martyrum with the stories of Italian holy men and women (in particular St Benedict) told by Gregory in his Dialogues; in the past generation the Dialogues have come to be understood as a polemic against the model of sanctity proposed by the Roman martyr narratives. This paper explores Gregory's role in the development of Roman martyr cult in the context of the immediate social world of Roman clerical politics of the sixth and seventh centuries. Gregory's authority as bishop of Rome was extremely precarious: the Roman clerical hierarchy with its well-developed protocols did not take kindly to the appearance of Gregory and his ascetic companions. In the conflict between Gregory and his followers, and their opponents, both sides used patronage of martyr cult to advance their cause. In spite of the political necessity of engaging in such ,competitive generosity', Gregory was also concerned to channel martyr devotion, urging contemplation on the moral achievements of the martyrs , which could be imitated in the present , as opposed to an aggressive and unrestrained piety focused on their death. Gregory's complex attitude to martyr cult needs to be differentiated from that which was developed over a century later, north of the Alps, by Carolingian readers and copyists of gesta martyrum and pilgrim guides, whose approach to the Roman martyrs was informed by Gregory's own posthumous reputation. [source]

Sorption of benzidine and 3,3,-dichlorobenzidine to lake sediments.

ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY & CHEMISTRY, Issue 5 2005
1. conceptualization, development of a multiparameter model
Abstract Aromatic amines, such as benzidine and 3,3,-dichlorobenzidine (DCB), are part of the dyes and pigments manufacturing process. The prolonged use of these carcinogenic chemicals in the past generation has introduced a significant amount of contamination to the environment. Their persistency in several mediums has sparked a number of studies in an attempt to develop predictive tools of their fate and transport in the environment. In this study, benzidine and DCB batch isotherms were developed and evaluated. The sediment samples were variable in composition, ranging from sandy to silty-clay sediment samples. The batch isotherms were then analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography. Subsequently, a multiparameter model (MPM) that accounted for partitioning, covalent bonding, and cation exchange was developed and tested in an effort to understand the various mechanisms. Results proved the proposed model to be effective in predicting sorption of aromatic amines to lake sediments. The findings suggest that the MPM can provide a better understanding of the sorption process of aromatic amines than more conventional models. [source]

Governmentality and the Family: Neoliberal Choices and Emergent Kin Relations in Southern Ethiopia

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 1 2009
JAMES ELLISON
ABSTRACT, Rather than strictly local expressions of relatedness, kinship in southern Ethiopia has long been entangled with broad political and economic forces as people negotiate relations with each other, past generations, and the state. Accompanying government reforms in the 1990s, idioms of individualism and choice have circulated in transnational and national neoliberal discourses of development, rights, and economics. People in southern Ethiopia who use ideologies of ascribed social statuses to define local social hierarchies have employed these discourses in reshaping relatedness through an expansive trade association, which is referred to as a family and works through kinship principles of descent and generation. Drawing from recent scholarship on kinship and new reproductive technologies, I argue that, through mobile knowledges in neoliberal contexts, people choose this family and its lineage founder, transforming descent relations and land-based ideologies. These choices represent the workings of neoliberal governmentality in altering cultural relations of power and inequality. [Keywords:,kinship, neoliberalism, governmentality, hereditary status groups, Ethiopia] [source]

Linkage disequilibrium in the North American Holstein population

ANIMAL GENETICS, Issue 3 2009
E.-S. Kim
Summary Linkage disequilibrium was estimated using 7119 single nucleotide polymorphism markers across the genome and 200 animals from the North American Holstein cattle population. The analysis of maternally inherited haplotypes revealed strong linkage disequilibrium (r2 > 0.8) in genomic regions of ,50 kb or less. While linkage disequilibrium decays as a function of genomic distance, genomic regions within genes showed greater linkage disequilibrium and greater variation in linkage disequilibrium compared with intergenic regions. Identification of haplotype blocks could characterize the most common haplotypes. Although maximum haplotype block size was over 1 Mb, mean block size was 26,113 kb by various definitions, which was larger than that observed in humans (,10 kb). Effective population size of the dairy cattle population was estimated from linkage disequilibrium between single nucleotide polymorphism marker pairs in various haplotype ranges. Rapid reduction of effective population size of dairy cattle was inferred from linkage disequilibrium in recent generations. This result implies a loss of genetic diversity because of the high rate of inbreeding and high selection intensity in dairy cattle. The pattern observed in this study indicated linkage disequilibrium in the current dairy cattle population could be exploited to refine mapping resolution. Changes in effective population size during past generations imply a necessity of plans to maintain polymorphism in the Holstein population. [source]