Entre histoire et fiction: la représentation du règne d'Arthur dans le manuscrit enluminé du Brut en prose, Londres, Lambeth Palace 6 (c. 1480)

The manuscript London, Lambeth Palace 6, contains the Middle English prose Brut, a text which benefited from a great popularity throughout the fifteenth century. It was copied by an English scribe and richly illuminated by the Master of Edward IV and his assistants at Bruges around 1480. This article studies the representation and integration of the reign of Arthur in the historical framework of the Brut or Chronicles of England, including its fictional aspects: Arthur emerges as a historical character but also as a chivalric and mythical figure. The analysis covers the miniatures ranging from the plot leading to the conception of Arthur to the end of his reign (fols. 36-66). The textual and iconographic choices of the prose Bruts are highlighted by comparisons with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Wace’s Brut, and later prose rewritings in the Lancelot-Grail romance cycle, especially Merlin and its Vulgate Sequel. They show the continuous interest raised by Arthur in the aristocratic and royal circles of late fifteenth century England and the relationship be¬tween continental and insular historiographical, literary and artistic traditions.

A palaeoenvironmental context for terminal upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic activity in the Colne Valley: offsite records contemporary with occupation at three ways Wharf, Uxbridge

Multi-proxy analyses from floodplain deposits in the Colne Valley, southern England, have provided a palaeoenvironmental context for the immediately adjacent Terminal Upper Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic site of Three Ways Wharf. These deposits show the transition from an open cool environment to fully developed heterogeneous floodplain vegetation during the Early Mesolithic. Several distinct phases of burning are shown to have occurred that are chronologically contemporary with the local archaeological record. The floodplain itself is shown to have supported a number of rare Urwaldrelikt insect species implying human manipulation of the floodplain at this time must have been limited or episodic. By the Late Mesolithic a reed-sedge swamp had developed across much of the floodplain, within which repeated burning of the in situ vegetation took place. This indicates deliberate land management practices utilising fire, comparable with findings from other floodplain sequences in southern Britain. With similar sedimentary sequences known to exist across the Colne Valley, often closely associated with contemporary archaeology, the potential for placing the archaeological record within a spatially explicit palaeoenvironmental context is great.

Estimating age of mature adults from the degeneration of the sternal end of the clavicle

The sternal end of the clavicle has been illustrated to be useful in aging young adults, however, no studies have investigated what age-related changes occur to the sternal end post epiphyseal fusion. In this study, three morphological features (i.e., surface topography, porosity, and osteophyte formation) were examined and scored using 564 clavicles of individuals of European ancestry (n = 318 males; n = 246 females), with known ages of 40+ years, from four documented skeletal collections: Hamann-Todd, Pretoria, St. Bride's, and Coimbra. An ordinal scoring method was developed for each of the three traits. Surface topography showed the strongest correlation with age, and composite scores (formed by summing the three separate trait scores) indicated progressive degeneration of the surface with increasing chronological age. Linear regression analyses were performed on the trait scores to produce pooled-sample age estimation equations. Blind tests of the composite score method and regression formulae on 56 individuals, aged 40+ years, from Christ Church Spitalfields, suggest accuracies of 96.4% for both methods. These preliminary results display the first evidence of the utility of the sternal end of the clavicle in aging older adult individuals. However, in the current format, these criteria should only be applied to individuals already identified as over 40 years in order to refine the age ranges used for advanced age. These findings do suggest the sternal end of the clavicle has potential to aid age estimates beyond the traditional "mature adult" age category (i.e., 46+ years), and provides several suggestions for future research.

The Cold War in retrospect : 25 years after its end

This special issue of Cold War History offers a retrospective on the end of the Cold War, 25 years after its peaceful conclusion. This peaceful conclusion is an achievement that cannot be celebrated enough, and we must continue to build international relations in conflict and co-operation on this awareness of our common humanity and our common human fallibility.

Dating the Thera (Santorin) eruption: evidence versus poor scholarship, and the end of the low chronology

The date of the Late Bronze Age Minoan eruption of the Thera volcano has provoked much debate among archaeologists, not least in a recent issue of Antiquity (‘Bronze Age catastrophe and modern controversy: dating the Santorini eruption’, March 2014). Here, the authors respond to those recent contributions, citing evidence that closes the gap between the conclusions offered by previous typological, stratigraphic and radiometric dating techniques. They reject the need to choose between alternative approaches to the problem and make a case for the synchronisation of eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian chronologies with agreement on a ‘high’ date in the late seventeenth century BC for the Thera eruption.

Latent learning in end stage renal disease (ESRD)

Cognitive functions such as attention and memory are known to be impaired in End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD), but the sites of the neural changes underlying these impairments are uncertain. Patients and controls took part in a latent learning task, which had previously shown a dissociation between patients with Parkinson’s disease and those with medial temporal damage. ESRD patients (n=24) and age and education-matched controls (n=24) were randomly assigned to either an exposed or unexposed condition. In Phase 1 of the task, participants learned that a cue (word) on the back of a schematic head predicted that the subsequently seen face would be smiling. For the exposed (but not unexposed) condition, an additional (irrelevant) colour cue was shown during presentation. In Phase 2, a different association, between colour and facial expression, was learned. Instructions were the same for each phase: participants had to predict whether the subsequently viewed face was going to be happy or sad. No difference in error rate between the groups was found in Phase 1, suggesting that patients and controls learned at a similar rate. However, in Phase 2, a significant interaction was found between group and condition, with exposed controls performing significantly worse than unexposed (therefore demonstrating learned irrelevance). In contrast, exposed patients made a similar number of errors to unexposed in Phase 2. The pattern of results in ESRD was different from that previously found in Parkinson’s disease, suggesting a different neural origin.

The nature of impairments of memory in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD)

Possible impairments of memory in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) were investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, in which stimulus words were presented visually, participants were tested on conceptual or perceptual memory tasks, with retrieval being either explicit or implicit. Compared with healthy controls, ESRD patients were impaired when memory required conceptual but not when it required perceptual processing, regardless of whether retrieval was explicit or implicit. An impairment of conceptual implicit memory (priming) in the ESRD group represented a previously unreported deficit compared to healthy aging. There were no significant differences between pre- and immediate post-dialysis memory performance in ESRD patients on any of the tasks. In Experiment 2, in which presentation was auditory, patients again performed worse than controls on an explicit conceptual memory task. We conclude that the type of processing required by the task (conceptual vs. perceptual) is more important than the type of retrieval (explicit vs. implicit) in memory failures in ESRD patients, perhaps because temporal brain regions are more susceptible to the effects of the illness than are posterior regions.

Microphase separation induced in the melt of Pluronic copolymers by blending with a hydrogen bonding urea–urethane end-capped supramolecular polymer

Blending with a hydrogen-bonding supramolecular polymer is shown to be a successful novel strategy to induce microphase-separation in the melt of a Pluronic polyether block copolymer. The supramolecular polymer is a polybutadiene derivative with urea–urethane end caps. Microphase separation is analysed using small-angle X-ray scattering and its influence on the macroscopic rheological properties is analysed. FTIR spectroscopy provides a detailed picture of the inter-molecular interactions between the polymer chains that induces conformational changes leading to microphase separation.

A self-assembling fluorescent dipeptide conjugate for cell labelling

Derivatives of fluorophore FITC (fluorescein isothiocyanate) are widely used in bioassays to label proteins and cells. An N-terminal leucine dipeptide is attached to FITC, and we show that this simple conjugate molecule is cytocompatible and is uptaken by cells (human dermal and corneal fibroblasts) in contrast to FITC itself. Co-localisation shows that FITC-LL segregates in peri-nuclear and intracellular vesicle regions. Above a critical aggregation concentration, the conjugate is shown to self-assemble into beta-sheet nanostructures comprising molecular bilayers.

Self-assembly of telechelic tyrosine end-capped PEO and poly(alanine) polymers in aqueous solution

The self-assembly in aqueous solution of three novel telechelic conjugates comprising a central hydrophilic polymer and short (trimeric or pentameric) tyrosine end-caps has been investigated. Two of the conjugates have a central poly(oxyethylene) (polyethylene oxide, PEO) central block with different molar masses. The other conjugate has a central poly(l-alanine) (PAla) sequence in a purely amino-acid based conjugate. All three conjugates self-assemble into β-sheet based fibrillar structures, although the fibrillar morphology revealed by cryogenic-TEM is distinct for the three polymers—in particular the Tyr5-PEO6k-Tyr5 forms a population of short straight fibrils in contrast to the more diffuse fibril aggregates observed for Tyr5-PEO2k-Tyr5 and Tyr3-PAla-Tyr3. Hydrogel formation was not observed for these samples (in contrast to prior work on related systems) up to quite high concentrations, showing that it is possible to prepare solutions of peptide–polymer-peptide conjugates with hydrophobic end-caps without conformational constraints associated with hydrogelation. The Tyr5-PEO6k-Tyr5 shows significant PEO crystallization upon drying in contrast to the Tyr5-PEO2k-Tyr5 conjugate. Our findings point to the remarkable ability of short hydrophobic peptide end groups to modulate the self-assembly properties of polymers in solution in model peptide-capped “associative polymers”. Retention of fluidity at high conjugate concentration may be valuable in potential future applications of these conjugates as bioresponsive or biocompatible materials, for example exploiting the enzyme-responsiveness of the tyrosine end-groups