El viaje a Camelot de Bartolomé de las Casas (Estudios)

La autora lee la Brevísima, de Bartolomé de las Casas, en el contexto del auge del imaginario caballeresco en el siglo XVI español, propiciado por las empresas de la Conquista y la Colonia, y que alcanzó igualmente a las gestas religiosas. Estudia este reflejo caballeresco –ensombrecido tal vez por el dramatismo y la violencia de lo narrado, entre otras razones–, empezando por la promesa lascasiana de ennoblecer a campesinos pacíficos a cambio de que colonizaran con justicia, resalta el carácter cortés y pacífico de los indios, así como de sus valores de tinte caballeresco («lo mismo los varones que las mujeres, muertas antes que entregar su honra o faltar a sus esposos», destaca su respeto a la jerarquía, natural o adquirida, y a las responsabilidades de cada cual, incluidas las del buen rey, que protege a sus vasallos y defiende los límites de su territorio), incluso distingue su delicadeza corporal como signo de nobleza. El patrón narrativo de la Brevísima es similar al de muchas obras de la tradición caballeresca. Utiliza todos estos elementos en un retrato civilizado de los indios, presentados viviendo en sociedad y según las virtudes cristianas antes de la llegada de los españoles, en un equilibrio que sería amenazado por los afanes desmedidos de los conquistadores.

Why an ESM programme could be a kiss of death: Recovery values and subordination. CEPS Commentary, 27 June 2012

Spain, needing a bailout for its banks, was granted a vague promise by EZ leaders for up to €100 billion. The details remain obscure, yet they matter enormously. This column argues that the so-called ‘subordination effect’ of fresh official lending could put Spain on the slippery road to ruin. It argues that if sovereign bonds must be bought, this should be done in the secondary market which, would be on an equal footing with private investors and thus avoid the subordination trap.

A traitor's death? The identity of a drawn, hanged and quartered man from Hulton Abbey, Staffordshire

Analysis of a set of bones redeposited in a medieval abbey graveyard showed that the individual had been beheaded and chopped up, and this in turn suggested one of England's more gruesome I execution practices. Since quartering was generally reserved for the infamous, the author attempts to track down the victim and proposes him to be Hugh Despenser, the lover of King Edward II.

Modelling seasonally varying data: A case study for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

Many time series are measured monthly, either as averages or totals, and such data often exhibit seasonal variability-the values of the series are consistently larger for some months of the year than for others. A typical series of this type is the number of deaths each month attributed to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Seasonality can be modelled in a number of ways. This paper describes and discusses various methods for modelling seasonality in SIDS data, though much of the discussion is relevant to other seasonally varying data. There are two main approaches, either fitting a circular probability distribution to the data, or using regression-based techniques to model the mean seasonal behaviour. Both are discussed in this paper.

Life and death in a civitas capital: metabolic disease and trauma in the children from late Roman Dorchester, Dorset

The impact that “Romanization” and the development of urban centers had on the health of the Romano-British population is little understood. A re-examination of the skeletal remains of 364 nonadults from the civitas capital at Roman Dorchester (Durnovaria) in Dorset was carried out to measure the health of the children living in this small urban area. The cemetery population was divided into two groups; the first buried their dead organized within an east–west alignment with possible Christian-style graves, and the second with more varied “pagan” graves, aligned north–south. A higher prevalence of malnutrition and trauma was evident in the children from Dorchester than in any other published Romano-British group, with levels similar to those seen in postmedieval industrial communities. Cribra orbitalia was present in 38.5% of the children, with rickets and/or scurvy at 11.2%. Twelve children displayed fractures of the ribs, with 50% of cases associated with rickets and/or scurvy, suggesting that rib fractures should be considered during the diagnosis of these conditions. The high prevalence of anemia, rickets, and scurvy in the Poundbury children, and especially the infants, indicates that this community may have adopted child-rearing practices that involved fasting the newborn, a poor quality weaning diet, and swaddling, leading to general malnutrition and inadequate exposure to sunlight. The Pagan group showed no evidence of scurvy or rib fractures, indicating difference in religious and child-rearing practices but that both burial groups were equally susceptible to rickets and anemia suggests a shared poor standard of living in this urban environment.