First record of a chiton from the Palaeocene of Denmark (Polyplacophora : Leptochitonidae) and its phylogenetic affinities

Anew species of fossil polyplacophoran from the Danian (Lower Palaeocene) of Denmark is described from over 450 individual disarticulated plates. The polyplacophorans originate from the 'nose-chalk' in the classical Danish locality of Fakse Quarry, an unconsolidated coral limestone in which aragonitic mollusc shells are preserved through transformation into calcite. In plate architecture and sculpture, the new Danish material is similar to Recent Leptochiton spp., but differs in its underdeveloped apophyses and high dorsal elevation (height/width ca. 0.54). Cladistic analysis of 55 original shell characters coded for more than loo Recent and fossil species in the order Lepiclopleurida shows very high resolution of interspecific relationships, but does not consistently recover traditional genera or subgenera. Inter-relationships within the suborder Lepidopleurina are of particular interest as it is often considered the most 'basal' neoloricate lineage. In a local context, the presence of chitons in the faunal assemblage of Fakse contributes evidence of shallow depositional depth for at least some elements of this Palaeocene seabed, a well-studied formation of azooxanthellic coral limestones. This new record for Denmark represents a well-dated and ecologically well-understood fossil chiton with potential value for understanding the radiation of the Neotoricata.

Politics and Literary Prizes:A Case Study of Spanish America and the Premio Cervantes

The Premio Cervantes, one of the most prestigious prizes awarded for literature in the Spanish language, was established in 1976 as Spain negotiated the Transition to democracy in the post-Franco era. This article examines the context in which the prize was created and subsequently used to negotiate inter-continental relations between Spain and Latin America. The article highlights the exchanges of economic, political and symbolic capital which took place between the Spanish State, its representative, the King of Spain, and winning Latin American authors. Significantly, the involvement of the Spanish State is shown to bring political capital into play in a way that commercial prizes do not. In so doing, the Premio Cervantes gives those formerly at the colonial periphery the opportunity to speak out and negotiate the terms of a new kind of relationship with the former colonial center.

Climate change and decadal to centennial-scale periodicities recorded in a late Holocene NE Pacific marine record: Examining the role of solar forcing

We present a decadal-scale late Holocene climate record based on diatoms, biogenic silica, and grain size from a 12-m sediment core (VEC02A04) obtained from Frederick Sound in the Seymour-Belize Inlet Complex of British Columbia, Canada. Sediments are characterized by graded, massive, and laminated intervals. Laminated intervals are most common between c. 2948–2708 cal. yr BP and c. 1992–1727 cal. yr BP. Increased preservation of laminated sediments and diatom assemblage changes at this time suggest that cli- mate became moderately drier and cooler relative to the preceding and succeeding intervals. Spectral and wavelet analyses are used to test for statistically significant periodicities in time series of proxies of primary production (total diatom abundance, biogenic silica) and hydrology (grain size) preserved in the Frederick Sound record. Periodicities of c. 42–53, 60–70, 82–89, 241–243, and 380 yrs are present. Results are com- pared to reconstructed sunspot number data of Solanki et al. (2004) using cross wavelet transform to evalu- ate the role of solar forcing on NE Pacific climate. Significant common power of periodicities between c. 42– 60, 70–89, 241–243, and of 380 yrs occur, suggesting that celestial forcing impacted late Holocene climate at Frederick Sound. Replication of the c. 241–243 yr periodicity in sunspot time series is most pronounced be- tween c. 2900 cal. yr BP and c. 2000 cal. yr BP, broadly correlative to the timing of maximum preservation of laminated sedimentary successions and diatom assemblage changes. High solar activity at the Suess/de Vries band may have been manifested as a prolonged westward shift and/or weakening of the Aleutian Low in the mid-late Holocene, which would have diverted fewer North Pacific storms and resulted in the relatively dry conditions reconstructed for the Seymour-Belize Inlet Complex.

Chaotropic and hydrophobic stress mechanisms of antifungal substances

Growth and metabolism of fungi can be curtailed by chaotropic solutes and hydrophobic substances, both of which can weaken or inhibit non-covalent interactions within and between macromolecular systems. Here we explore the potential to utilize the fungistatic and fungicidal activities of such stressors as the basis for commercial formulations. A method was developed for the quantification of chaotropicity, which can be used for chemically diverse substances, in order elucidate roles of chaotropicity and hydrophobicity in microbial ecology (both of which are sufficiently potent to limit the Earth’s microbial biosphere). A large number of naturally occurring substances act as chaotropic or hydrophobic stressors including aliphatic alcohols, salts such as MgCl2, aromatics such as phenol, and hydrocarbons such as hexane and octene. We suggest that these stress parameters provide the (hitherto unidentified) modes-of-action for some extant antifungal products. The findings are discussed in relation to the development of a new generation of antifungals.

Of no fixed form: The Irish Pavilion at Venice 2014 and beyond

This paper explores the theme of exhibiting architectural research through a particular example, the development of the Irish pavilion for the 14th architectural biennale, Venice 2014. Responding to Rem Koolhaas’s call to investigate the international absorption of modernity, the Irish pavilion became a research project that engaged with the development of the architectures of infrastructure in Ireland in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Central to this proposition was that infrastructure is simultaneously a technological and cultural construct, one that for Ireland occupied a critical position in the building of a new, independent post-colonial nation state, after 1921.

Presupposing infrastructure as consisting of both visible and invisible networks, the idea of a matrix become a central conceptual and visual tool in the curatorial and design process for the exhibition and pavilion. To begin with this was a two-dimensional grid used to identify and order what became described as a series of ten ‘infrastructural episodes’. These were determined chronologically across the decades between 1914 and 2014 and their spatial manifestations articulated in terms of scale: micro, meso and macro. At this point ten academics were approached as researchers. Their purpose was twofold, to establish the broader narratives around which the infrastructures developed and to scrutinise relevant archives for compelling visual material. Defining the meso scale as that of the building, the media unearthed was further filtered and edited according to a range of categories – filmic/image, territory, building detail, and model – which sought to communicate the relationship between the pieces of architecture and the larger systems to which they connect. New drawings realised by the design team further iterated these relationships, filling in gaps in the narrative by providing composite, strategic or detailed drawings.

Conceived as an open-ended and extendable matrix, the pavilion was influenced by a series of academic writings, curatorial practices, artworks and other installations including: Frederick Kiesler’s City of Space (1925), Eduardo Persico and Marcello Nizzoli’s Medaglio d’Oro room (1934), Sol Le Witt’s Incomplete Open Cubes (1974) and Rosalind Krauss’s seminal text ‘Grids’ (1979). A modular frame whose structural bays would each hold and present an ‘episode’, the pavilion became both a visual analogue of the unseen networks embodying infrastructural systems and a reflection on the predominance of framed structures within the buildings exhibited. Sharing the aspiration of adaptability of many of these schemes, its white-painted timber components are connected by easily-dismantled steel fixings. These and its modularity allow the structure to be both taken down and re-erected subsequently in different iterations. The pavilion itself is, therefore, imagined as essentially provisional and – as with infrastructure – as having no fixed form. Presenting archives and other material over time, the transparent nature of the space allowed these to overlap visually conveying the nested nature of infrastructural production. Pursuing a means to evoke the qualities of infrastructural space while conveying a historical narrative, the exhibition’s termination in the present is designed to provoke in the visitor, a perceptual extension of the matrix to engage with the future.

“Shall we playe the good girles”: Playing Girls, Performing Girlhood on Early Modern Stages

This essay investigates the extent to which girlhood functions as a queer category in two theatrical representations of schoolgirls in early seventeenth-century England. It focuses on the depictions of schoolgirls in the anonymous The Wit of a Woman (1604), written for the all-male stage of the professional theatre, and in Robert White’s masque, Cupid’s Banishment (1617), performed by the young Ladies of Deptford Hall before Queen Anna of Denmark, to examine the intersections of age, gender, sexuality and education in early modern concepts of girlhood. Situating these plays within wider debates about female education and the history of the contested role of performance in the schooling of early modern girls, it argues that they deploy the category of girlhood to demonstrate the subversive potential of educating girls. Yet, this essay proposes, these plays simultaneously reveal the potential agency of young women who manipulate girlhood to claim their distinct sexual, aged and gendered states as girls. It argues that early modern girlhood is a state that might be performed by young women to disrupt normative expectations of feminine behaviour and desire. Placing dramatic representations of schoolgirls and the experiences of schoolgirls on the early modern stage side by side, this essay demonstrates that the schoolroom and performance are sites in which this transgressive potential is realised.

A Trip from a Tube to a Chip Applied Micro and Nanotechnology in Biotechnology, Veterinary and Life Sciences

More than 200 known diseases are transmitted via foods or food products. In the United States, food-borne diseases are responsible for 76 million cases of illness, 32,500 cases of hospitalisation and 5000 cases of death yearly. The ongoing increase in worldwide trade in livestock, food, and food products in combination with increase in human mobility (business- and leisure travel, emigration etc.) will increase the risk of emergence and spreading of such pathogens. There is therefore an urgent need for development of rapid, efficient and reliable methods for detection and identification of such pathogens.

Microchipfabrication has had a major impact on electronics and is expected to have an equally pronounced effect on life sciences. By combining micro-fluidics with micromechanics, micro-optics, and microelectronics, systems can be realized to perform complete chemical or biochemical analyses. These socalled ’Lab-on-a-Chip’ will completely change the face of laboratories in the future where smaller, fully automated devices will be able to perform assays faster, more accurately, and at a lower cost than equipment of today. A general introduction of food safety and applied micro-nanotechnology in life sciences will be given. In addition, examples of DNA micro arrays, micro fabricated integrated PCR chips and total integrated lab-on-achip systems from different National and EU research projects being carried out at the Laboratory of Applied Micro- Nanotechnology (LAMINATE) group at the National Veterinary Institute (DTU-Vet) Technical University of Denmark and the BioLabchip group at the Department of Micro and Nanotechnology (DTU-Nanotech), Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Ikerlan-IK4 (Spain) and other 16 partners from different European countries will be presented.

Brutus

This article discusses the eponymous legendary founder of Britain, Brutus, a descendent of the Trojan Aeneas and first king of Britain. It tracks the emergence of Brutus in historiography and literature from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries, from the Historia Brittonum, via the Brut tradition and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannia, to the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Caxton’s Chronicles of England, Milton’s The History of Britain and Spenser’s The Fairie Queene.