The spiritual combat: to which is added, The peace of the soul, and the happiness of the heart, which dies to itself, in order to live to God.

Translation of Combattimento spirituale.

A history of English furniture /

Includes indexes.

Men and books and cities,

An indictment or foreword.--I stage my first death scene.--Meredith Nicholson and a camel.--The soul and the trap-drummer.--Why Shakespeare's audience didn't walk out on him.--Booth Tarkington discusses the cosmos.--Riley and a colored barber.--Boyhood of the hero.--Miltonic angels, not Herrick blossoms.--The author goes wool gathering.--The effeminacy of pajamas.--A farewell from William Marion Reedy.--Mrs. Joyce Kilmar at Walnut Hills.--E.V. Lucas fools Chicago.--Maternity and climate.--To San Francisco: a new Walking-stick paper.--A pal of Jack London.--I become a movie "director"

Different routes to pure food allergens: extraction, recombinant techniques and total chemical synthesis for obtaining the plant-food pan-allergen LTP

La richiesta di allergeni puri è in continuo aumento per scopi diagnostici, come standard per metodi di rilevamento e di quantificazione, per l'immunoterapia e per lo studio a livello molecolare dei meccanismi delle reazioni allergiche, al fine di facilitare lo sviluppo di possibili cure. In questa tesi di dottorato sono descritte diverse strategie per l’ottenimento di forme pure di non-specific Lipid Transfer Proteins (nsLTPs), le quali sono state riconosciute essere rilevanti allergeni alimentari in molti frutti e verdure comunemente consumati e sono state definite come modello di veri allergeni alimentari. Una LTP potenzialmente allergenica, non nota in precedenza, è stata isolata dalle mandorle, mentre una LTP dall’allergenicità nota contenuta nelle noci è stata prodotta mediante tecniche di DNA ricombinante. Oltre a questi approcci classici, metodi per la sintesi chimica totale di proteine sono stati applicati per la prima volta alla produzione di un allergene, utilizzando Pru p 3, la LTP prototipica e principale allergene della pesca nell'area mediterranea, come modello. La sintesi chimica totale di proteinepermette di controllarne completamente la sequenza e di studiare la loro funzione a livello atomico. La sua applicazione alla produzione di allergeni costituisce perciò un importante passo avanti nel campo della ricerca sulle allergie alimentari. La proteina Pru p 3 è stata prodotta nella sua intera lunghezza e sono necessari solo due passaggi finali di deprotezione per ottenere il target nella sua forma nativa. Le condizioni sperimentali per tali deprotezioni sono state messe a punto durante la produzione dei peptidi sPru p 3 (1-37) e sPru p 3 (38-91), componenti insieme l'intera proteina. Tecniche avanzate di spettrometria di massa sono state usate per caratterizzare tutti i composti ottenuti, mentre la loro allergenicità è stata studiata attraverso test immunologici o approcci in silico.

Experiments on the generation of activated carbon from biomass

Activated carbon is generated from various waste biomass sources like rice straw, wheat straw, wheat straw pellets, olive stones, pistachios shells, walnut shells, beech wood and hardcoal. After drying the biomass is pyrolysed in the temperature range of 500-600 °C at low heating rates of 10 K/min. The activation of the chars is performed as steam activation at temperatures between 800 °C and 900 °C. Both the pyrolysis and activation experiments were run in lab-scale facilities. It is shown that nut shells provide high active surfaces of 1000-1300 m/g whereas the active surface of straw matters does hardly exceed 800 m/g which might be a result of the high ash content of the straws and the slightly higher carbon content of the nut shells. The active surface is detected by BET method. Besides the testing of a many types of biomass for the suitability as base material in the activated carbon production process, the experiments allow for the determination of production parameters like heating rate and pyrolysis temperature, activation time and temperature as well as steam flux which are necessary for the scale up of the process chain. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Climate variability in the Aegean Sea (marine record M2, Athos basin) during the past 1500 years

We provide new evidence on sea surface temperature (SST) variations and paleoceanographic/paleoenvironmental changes over the past 1500 years for the north Aegean Sea (NE Mediterranean). The reconstructions are based on multiproxy analyses, obtained from the high resolution (decadal to multi-decadal) marine record M2 retrieved from the Athos basin. Reconstructed SSTs show an increase from ca. 850 to 950 AD and from ca. 1100 to 1300 AD. A cooling phase of almost 1.5 °C is observed from ca. 1600 AD to 1700 AD. This seems to have been the starting point of a continuous SST warming trend until the end of the reconstructed period, interrupted by two prominent cooling events at 1832 ± 15 AD and 1995 ± 1 AD. Application of an adaptive Kernel smoothing suggests that the current warming in the reconstructed SSTs of the north Aegean might be unprecedented in the context of the past 1500 years. Internal variability in atmospheric/oceanic circulations systems as well as external forcing as solar radiation and volcanic activity could have affected temperature variations in the north Aegean Sea over the past 1500 years. The marked temperature drop of approximately ~2 °C at 1832 ± 15 yr AD could be related to the 1809 ?D 'unknown' and the 1815 AD Tambora volcanic eruptions. Paleoenvironmental proxy-indices of the M2 record show enhanced riverine/continental inputs in the northern Aegean after ca. 1450 AD. The paleoclimatic evidence derived from the M2 record is combined with a socio-environmental study of the history of the north Aegean region. We show that the cultivation of temperature-sensitive crops, i.e. walnut, vine and olive, co-occurred with stable and warmer temperatures, while its end coincided with a significant episode of cooler temperatures. Periods of agricultural growth in Macedonia coincide with periods of warmer and more stable SSTs, but further exploration is required in order to identify the causal links behind the observed phenomena. The Black Death likely caused major changes in agricultural activity in the north Aegean region, as reflected in the pollen data from land sites of Macedonia and the M2 proxy-reconstructions. Finally, we conclude that the early modern peaks in mountain vegetation in the Rhodope and Macedonia highlands, visible also in the M2 record, were very likely climate-driven.

Antropología de la Conservación en España. Balance y perspectivas

En este artículo presentamos un balance de la Antropología de la Conservación en el Estado español. Durante las últimas décadas, la protección de los espacios naturales ha aumentado de una manera exponencial en todo el mundo. A la vez que se extendía esta patrimonialización de la naturaleza, los trabajos etnográficos sobre las áreas protegidas han ido ganando terreno dentro de la disciplina y, en particular, en el campo de la Antropología Ambiental. La mencionada bibliografía ha puesto de relieve los múltiples aspectos derivados de las nuevas políticas territoriales de regulación, apropiación y mercantilización de la ‘naturaleza’. En este trabajo realizamos una revisión exhaustiva de la producción generada a raíz de este interés por las áreas protegidas en nuestro país subrayando sus principales aportaciones, características y debilidades. De este modo pretendemos reflexionar acerca de su continuidad, con el fin de evitar la mera reiteración y favorecer el avance en sus resultados.

What is this thing called Historical Archaeology?

Historical archaeology, in its narrow temporal sense -as an archaeology of the emergence and subsequent evolution of the Modern world- is steadily taking pace in Spanish academia. This paper aims at provoking a more robust debate through understanding how Spanish historical archaeology is placed in the international scene and some of its more relevant particularities. In so doing, the paper also stresses the strong links that have united historical and prehistorical archaeology since its inception, both in relation to the ontological, epistemological and methodological definition of the first as to the influence of socio-political issues in the latter. Such reflection is partly a situated reflection from prehistory as one of the paper’s authors has been a prehistorian for most of her professional life.

GIS technologies and spatial organization patterns among hunter-gatherers: an archaeological case study from Southern Patagonia (southern South America)

This paper discusses some aspects of hunter-gatherer spatial organization in southern South Patagonia, in later times to 10,000 cal yr BP. Various methods of spatial analysis, elaborated with a Geographic Information System (GIS) were applied to the distributional pattern of archaeological sites with radiocarbon dates. The shift in the distributional pattern of chronological information was assessed in conjunction with other lines of evidence within a biogeographic framework. Accordingly, the varying degrees of occupation and integration of coastal and interior spaces in human spatial organization are explained in association with the adaptive strategies hunter-gatherers have used over time. Both are part of the same human response to changes in risk and uncertainty variability in the region in terms of resource availability and environmental dynamics.

The Neolithic of El Niño cave (Ayna, Albacete) in the Sierra del Segura context

Since its excavation in the summer of 1973, El Niño cave has been considered a key site to understand the process of production economy and pottery technology introduction in South-eastern Iberian Peninsula, and especially to approach how such process could have affected people already settled in the Segura mountains. However, data from El Niño cave was very fragmentary, due to the lack of a broad study of Neolithic occupations of the site. In this paper, we present the analysis of pottery, lithic industry and faunal remains, as well as the existing dates from the site´s Holocene levels. The review of different evidence from the site allows suggesting that El Niño cave would have probably acted as a hunting and shepherding station, being a logistical site of larger places. However, limitations due to the fact that we are dealing with a 40- year-old excavation, prevent specifying how the process of Neolithic introduction in the Segura Mountains occurred.

Estrategias museográficas actuales relacionadas con la museología crítica

Este artículo evita la mera disquisición teórica sobre museología crítica, sugiriendo en lugar de ello algunas pistas para calibrar su influencia en la praxis museal. Ante todo, se propone como emblemático de la museografía crítica el uso de interrogaciones en lugar de discursos asertivos; en segundo lugar, la sustitución de la impersonal autoridad institucional por prácticas participativas e interpretaciones compartidas, para dar idea de una variedad de opiniones, incluyendo las de gentes ajenas al museo; finalmente, es un rasgo distintivo el énfasis en la naturaleza subjetiva de los montajes museísticos, mostrando sus cambios a través de la historia, y señalando la autoría personal de las presentaciones y textos en el museo.

Desde una arqueología inclusiva, por un pasado mejor. Un ensayo epistemológico y axiológico

En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la necesidad de un marco epistemológico inclusivo que aborde la multivocalidad de los procesos históricos objeto de estudio y permita crear relatos históricos más plurales y representativos. Pero el relato sobre el pasado será mejor si, además de ser inclusivo a nivel epistemológico, también contribuye de alguna manera a mejorar la sociedad actual. Por ello se reclama una arqueología que incluya una preocupación axiológica y busque posibles ámbitos de aplicación para los resultados de sus investigaciones. Ejemplificamos esta reivindicación con un caso de estudio sobre cerámica, que subraya que los objetos cotidianos fueron y son utilizados en las estrategias de construcción social de la desigualdad. En este contexto se reclama la toma de consciencia de esta práctica en la actualidad y la renuncia a determinados recursos discursivos. Por ejemplo, se propone retomar el concepto inclusivo, este vez para oponerlo a la significación social del adjetivo exclusivo. Aunque todas estas reflexiones derivan de casos de estudio de arqueología histórica, pueden ser útiles a la arqueología en general, sin sesgo cronológico alguno.