A Discordant Voice from the Trenches: Juan José de Soiza Reilly's War Chronicles

The First World War represented a deep crisis of the European civilization that called into question the values and certitudes of the Belle Époque society. Trenches became the symbol of the dehumanization produced by a conflict that marked a watershed in modern history. As a global conflict, its impact was felt beyond the confines of Europe, involving even neutral countries, puzzled by that unexpected spectacle of violence. In this new scenery, war correspondents were first-hand witnesses of the horrors of the battlefields, transmitted through their journalistic contributions to a public opinion profoundly shaken by this new kind of warfare. Non-European war correspondents were exceptional cultural mediators between the experiences of the theater of war and distant regions like Latin America, contributing to disseminate different understandings of the wartime crisis. This article aims to explore the response of the Argentine war correspondent Juan José de Soiza Reilly (1879-1959) to the challenge of making the nature of the Great War intelligible to his readers. He embodied the new figure of the professional journalist-writer who contributed to establishing commercial mass press as the fulcrum of Argentine cultural life and as the field of convergence of literature and journalism at the beginning of the twentieth century. The primary sources of this study are Soiza Reilly’s war chronicles, published by two large circulation periodicals, the newspaper La Nación and the illustrated magazine Fray Mocho, from October 1914 to October 1916. Those contributions were the result of his more than two years’ experience in the Western and Eastern fronts. Soiza Reilly’s perspectives on the First World War were clearly unconventional for his national framework, where most of the intellectuals and the press took sides early in favor of the Allies, due to the deep-rooted Francophilia prevailing in Argentine cultural field. As a result, they devoted themselves to arguing over the question of the war responsibilities and the belligerents’ attributes. Unlike them, Soiza Reilly denounced the absurdity of the war, which he strongly condemned, and made a pacifist profession of faith. In addition, far from the Argentine social consensus, he was often critical of the Allies and sympathetic to the German Empire. However, since Italy’s entry into the war in May 1915, Soiza Reilly adopted a belligerent attitude in favor of the Allies, expressing an intense admiration for Italy and a virulent anti-Austrian sentiment. These two last features were very unusual in the Argentine context, where the devotion for France was hegemonic as well as the vehement anti-German stance. Through the analysis of Soiza Reilly’s war chronicles and reportages, this article intends to shed light on the reception of the war in a neutral country, the general climate of public opinion, and its dissensions around the significance of the Great War.Fil: Tato, María Inés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani"; Argentin

Overexpression of Nictaba-like lectin genes from glycine max confers tolerance towards Pseudomonas syringae infection, aphid infestation and salt stress in transgenic Arabidopsis plants

Plants have evolved a sophisticated immune system that allows them to recognize invading pathogens by specialized receptors. Carbohydrate-binding proteins or lectins are part of this immune system and especially the lectins that reside in the nucleocytoplasmic compartment are known to be implicated in biotic and abiotic stress responses. The class of Nictaba-like lectins (NLL) groups all proteins with homology to the tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) lectin, known as a stress-inducible lectin. Here we focus on two Nictaba homologs from soybean (Glycine max), referred to as GmNLL1 and GmNLL2. Confocal laser scanning microscopy of fusion constructs with the green fluorescent protein either transiently expressed in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves or stably transformed in tobacco BY-2 suspension cells revealed a nucleocytoplasmic localization for the GmNLLs under study. RT-qPCR analysis of the transcript levels for the Nictaba-like lectins in soybean demonstrated that the genes are expressed in several tissues throughout the development of the plant. Furthermore, it was shown that salt treatment, Phytophthora sojae infection and Aphis glycines infestation trigger the expression of particular NLL genes. Stress experiments with Arabidopsis lines overexpressing the NLLs from soybean yielded an enhanced tolerance of the plant towards bacterial infection (Pseudomonas syringae), insect infestation (Myzus persicae) and salinity. Our data showed a better performance of the transgenic lines compared to wild type plants, indicating that the NLLs from soybean are implicated in the stress response. These data can help to further elucidate the physiological importance of the Nictaba-like lectins from soybean, which can ultimately lead to the design of crop plants with a better tolerance to changing environmental conditions

The Professionalisation of Science – Claim and Refusal: Discipline Building and Ideals of Scientific Autonomy in the Growth of Prehistoric Archaeology. The Case of Georges Laplace's Group of Typologie Analytique, 1950s–1990s

The majority of analyses investigating the professionalisation of scientific domains tend to assume the linear and general features of this transformation. These studies focus on the shift from a non-professionalised state to a professionalised state. This dual approach, however, crucially lacks some other aspects of the process of professionalisation. This issue is discussed within the context of the growth of prehistoric archaeology in France from the 1940s, by observing scientific societies, national research organisations and their social networks. Looking at the scale of Georges Laplace’s career and that of his research group, which studied the typologie analytique method, this article demonstrates the benefits of a ternary model which also encompasses the modes of refusal of professionalisation

Fault-Tolerant Consensus in Unknown and Anonymous Networks

This paper investigates under which conditions information can be reliably shared and consensus can be solved in unknown and anonymous message-passing networks that suffer from crash-failures. We provide algorithms to emulate registers and solve consensus under different synchrony assumptions. For this, we introduce a novel pseudo leader-election approach which allows a leader-based consensus implementation without breaking symmetry

Algorithms For Extracting Timeliness Graphs

We consider asynchronous message-passing systems in which some links are timely and processes may crash. Each run defines a timeliness graph among correct processes: (p; q) is an edge of the timeliness graph if the link from p to q is timely (that is, there is bound on communication delays from p to q). The main goal of this paper is to approximate this timeliness graph by graphs having some properties (such as being trees, rings, ...). Given a family S of graphs, for runs such that the timeliness graph contains at least one graph in S then using an extraction algorithm, each correct process has to converge to the same graph in S that is, in a precise sense, an approximation of the timeliness graph of the run. For example, if the timeliness graph contains a ring, then using an extraction algorithm, all correct processes eventually converge to the same ring and in this ring all nodes will be correct processes and all links will be timely. We first present a general extraction algorithm and then a more specific extraction algorithm that is communication efficient (i.e., eventually all the messages of the extraction algorithm use only links of the extracted graph)

Nictaba homologs from Arabidopsis thaliana are involved in plant stress responses

Plants are constantly exposed to a wide range of environmental stresses, but evolved complicated adaptive and defense mechanisms which allow them to survive in unfavorable conditions. These mechanisms protect and defend plants by using different immune receptors located either at the cell surface or in the cytoplasmic compartment. Lectins or carbohydrate-binding proteins are widespread in the plant kingdom and constitute an important part of these immune receptors. In the past years, lectin research has focused on the stress-inducible lectins. The Nicotiana tabacum agglutinin, abbreviated as Nictaba, served as a model for one family of stress-related lectins. Here we focus on three non-chimeric Nictaba homologs from Arabidopsis thaliana, referred to as AN3, AN4, and AN5. Confocal microscopy of ArathNictaba enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) fusion constructs transiently expressed in N. benthamiana or stably expressed in A. thaliana yielded fluorescence for AN4 and AN5 in the nucleus and the cytoplasm of the plant cell, while fluorescence for AN3 was only detected in the cytoplasm. RT-qPCR analysis revealed low expression for all three ArathNictabas in different tissues throughout plant development. Stress application altered the expression levels, but all three ArathNictabas showed a different expression pattern. Pseudomonas syringae infection experiments with AN4 and AN5 overexpression lines demonstrated a significantly higher tolerance of several transgenic lines to P. syringae compared to wild type plants. Finally, AN4 was shown to interact with two enzymes involved in plant defense, namely TGG1 and BGLU23. Taken together, our data suggest that the ArathNictabas represent stress-regulated proteins with a possible role in plant stress responses. On the long term this research can contribute to the development of more stress-resistant plants