Megnin re-analysed: the case of the newborn baby girl, Paris, 1878

This paper analyses acarological evidence from a 130-year-old forensic investigation. It was the first case in forensic acarology, i.e., the first case where mites provided substantial information to estimate the post-mortem interval (PMI). In 1878, the mites found in the mummified body of a newborn baby girl in Paris, France, were studied by acarologist and forensic entomologist Jean Pierre M,gnin. M,gnin estimated around 2.4 million mites in the skull and identified them as Tyroglyphus longior (Gervais), a junior synonym of Tyrophagus longior. He suggested that the arrival of these mites at the corpse would have occurred by phoresy on carrier insects, roughly 5 months before the autopsy. There is no doubt about the identification of the mites, M,gnin was a highly respected acarologist. However, two main factors affecting the biology of Tyrophagus mites were not included in the original analysis. First, M,gnin stated that the mites were phoretic. However, he probably did not have access to information about the natural history of the species, because as a rule Tyrophagus mites are non-phoretic. Considering the omnipresence of Tyrophagus mites in soil, most likely the mites will have arrived almost immediately after death. Second, temperature was not taken into account during the estimations of the mite population growth rate. The new analysis is based on current knowledge of Tyrophagus biology and includes temperature, estimated following a handful of weather reports of the years 1877 and 1878. The new projections indicate that non-phoretic mites may have colonised the body just after death and the colony would have built up over 8 months, contrary to the 5 months proposed by M,gnin. This new lapse of time agrees with the PMI proposed by Brouardel: on 15 January 1878 he postulated the death of the newborn to have occurred some 8 months before the autopsy.

William Clark Russell and Chambers's Journal: elopement and the Victorian nautical novel

This essay examines aspects of the serialisation of the novels of William Clark Russell, the greatest late Victorian nautical novelist. Focusing on the treatment of his work by the Edinburgh firm of Messrs Chambers, the article provides an illuminating perspective on market censorship in this period. Drawing on the archives of Chatto & Windus and the literary agent A.P. Watt, it traces the network of relations between author, agent, magazine editor and book publisher, showing how the various components of the serial market operated in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

Emotion and anticipation in an enactive framework for cognition (response to Andy Clark)

Undeniably, anticipation plays a crucial role in cognition. By what means, to what extent, and what it achieves remain open questions. In a recent BBS target article, Clark (in press) depicts an integrative model of the brain that builds on hierarchical Bayesian models of neural processing (Rao and Ballard, 1999; Friston, 2005; Brown et al., 2011), and their most recent formulation using the free-energy principle borrowed from thermodynamics (Feldman and Friston, 2010; Friston, 2010; Friston et al., 2010). Hierarchical generative models of cognition, such as those described by Clark, presuppose the manipulation of representations and internal models of the world, in as much detail as is perceptually available. Perhaps surprisingly, Clark acknowledges the existence of a “virtual version of the sensory data” (p. 4), but with no reference to some of the historical debates that shaped cognitive science, related to the storage, manipulation, and retrieval of representations in a cognitive system (Shanahan, 1997), or accounting for the emergence of intentionality within such a system (Searle, 1980; Preston and Bishop, 2002). Instead of demonstrating how this Bayesian framework responds to these foundational questions, Clark describes the structure and the functional properties of an action-oriented, multi-level system that is meant to combine perception, learning, and experience (Niedenthal, 2007).

The Spanish Guerrilla 1808-1814 as a model for people’s wars and resistance movements

Transforming the meaning of the term 'guerrilla' which had once meant feud or private warfare, and then irregular war conducted by special forces on behalf of a state or government, the Spanish Guerrilla (part of the Peninsular War) against Napoleon became the model to be emulated by insurgency movements across the world. Even though the term itself continued to be used, even in Spanish, for special operations, in henceforth became imbued with an ideological dimension, which is how it would be used especially in the 20th century.