Phylogenetic study of complete cytochrome b genes in musk deer (genus Moschus) using museum samples

As an endangered animal group, musk deer (genus Moschus) are not only a great concern of wildlife conservation, but also of special interest to evolutionary studies due to long-standing arguments on the taxonomic and phylogenetic associations in this group. Using museum samples, we sequenced complete mitochondrial cytochrome b genes (1140 bp) of all suggested species of musk deer in order to reconstruct their phylogenetic history through molecular information. Our results showed that the cytochrome b gene tree is rather robust and concurred for all the algorithms employed (parsimony, maximum likelihood, and distance methods). Further, the relative rate test indicated a constant sequence substitution rate among all the species, permitting the dating of divergence events by molecular clock. According to the molecular topology, M. moschiferus branched off the earliest from a common ancestor of musk deer (about 700,000 years ago); then followed the bifurcation forming the M. berezouskii lineage and the lineage clustering M. fuscus, M. chrysogaster, and M. leucogaster (around 370,000 years before present), interestingly the most recent speciation event in musk deer happened rather recently (140,000 years ago), which might have resulted from the diversified habitats and geographic barriers in southwest China caused by gigantic movements of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in history. Combining the data of current distributions, fossil records, and molecular data of this study, we suggest that the historical dispersion of musk deer might be from north to south in China. Additionally, in our further analyses involving other pecora species, musk deer was strongly supported as a monophyletic group and a valid family in Artiodactyla, closely related to Cervidae. (C) 1999 Academic Press.

Expo 58 :katalysator en vitrine voor het Belgische bouwbedrijf. Expo 58 :catalyseur et vitrine du secteur de la construction en Belgique

L’impact des expositions universelles sur le secteur de la construction du pays d’accueil est triple :elles sont l’occasion de faire la démonstration de la qualité des produits et projets de l’industrie locale ;elles stimulent les investissements dans l’infrastructure nouvelle et les bâtiments autour du site de l’exposition ;et elles représentent un défi prestigieux à relever, celui d’édifier en peu de temps des pavillons d’exception et de les montrer à un public international. L’Expo 58 a attiré 41,5 millions de visiteurs avec ses quelque 250 nouveaux bâtiments. Seuls sept entrepreneurs non belges ont participé aux travaux. Pour le monde belge de la construction, cette première exposition universelle après la Deuxième Guerre mondiale a marqué un moment charnière :elle a dressé un état des lieux de la période de reconstruction et a inauguré une phase de grands travaux de modernisation de l’infrastructure du pays. Mais elle peut aussi être vue comme un franchissement du creux économique de courte durée entre le Miracle belge (1947) et les golden sixties. Les premières initiatives remontent en effet à 1946, époque caractérisée par une réalité économique et politique bien différente de celle de la fin des années cinquante. En 1957-8, le secteur belge de la construction arrivait à peine à faire face à la demande, en particulier en raison de risques de pénurie dans la sidérurgie et d’un manque de main-d’œuvre qualifiée. Les pouvoirs publics ont ainsi échelonné la construction de logements sociaux de manière à la répartir avec les efforts consentis pour l’exposition universelle.

[Conference report] Magic and mathematics: The life and work of John Dee. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 13-14 June 2003

Tony Mann provides a report of a two-day meeting "Magic and mathematics: The life and work of John Dee" held from 13-14 June 2003 at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

Computer Museum, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich

Computer equipment, once viewed as leading edge, is quickly condemned as obsolete and banished to basement store rooms or rubbish bins. The magpie instincts of some of the academics and technicians at the University of Greenwich, London, preserved some such relics in cluttered offices and garages to the dismay of colleagues and partners. When the University moved into its new campus in the historic buildings of the Old Royal Naval College in the center of Greenwich, corridor space in King William Court provided an opportunity to display some of this equipment so that students could see these objects and gain a more vivid appreciation of their subject's history.

New Ways of Looking at the State Apparatus and the State Archive in Nineteenth Century Ireland: Curiosities from that Phonetic Museum - Royal Irish Constabulary Reports and their Political Uses, 1879-91

This essay seeks to contextualise the intelligence work of the Royal Irish Constabulary, particularly in the 1880s, in terms of the wider British and imperial practice and, as a corollary, to reflect upon aspects of the structure of the state apparatus and the state archive in Ireland since the Union. The author contrasts Irish and British police and bureaucratic work and suggests parallels between Ireland and other imperial locations, especially India. This paper also defines the narrowly political, indeed partisan, uses to which this intelligence was put, particularly during the Special Commission of 1888 on 'Parnellism and crime', when governmentheld police records were made available to counsel for The Times. By reflecting on the structure of the state apparatus and its use in this instance, the author aims to further the debate on the governance of nineteenth-century Ireland and to explore issues of colonial identity and practice. The line of argument proposed in this essay is prefigured in Margaret O'Callaghan, British high politics and a nationalist Ireland: criminality, land and the law under Forster and Balfour (Cork, 199