Analoghi vituperî: le bibliografia del romanzo dei misteri in Italia

The article furnishes a bibliography of the 19th-century Italian misteri, novels of urban mysteries in the style of Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris, 1842-43. The first translation of this appeared in Italy in 1843-44 and was widely read, with a spate of Italian mysteries subsequently being published all over the peninsula – the mysteries of Naples (the first), Trieste, Milan, Turin, and Rome, for example. Having identified almost eighty titles (previous studies refer to only about half this number), we introduce the bibliography with a discussion of the Italian version, looking at how the Sue model was adapted to deal with themes that were relevant to the Italian situation and the Italian reading public. Few Italian cities of the time could be classed as a metropolis, so it was natural that the Italian mysteries had different starting points, such as the revolutionary events of 1848 or the unification process of 1870-71. Some misteri were written for the bourgeois reading public, while others were directed at the working classes. One of the main themes to emerge is anticlericalism: most revealingly, almost a quarter of our titles deal with either papal misgovernment or clerical immorality. Other targets were communism and anarchy, while many writers simply ‘jumped on the misteri bandwagon’, taking advantage of the commercial potential of the title

Cross species transmission of Ovine Johne's Disease - Phase 2 cattle.

One thousand seven hundred and seventy four cattle from 12 properties were sampled by ELISA and faecal culture to detect Johne’s Disease. All properties had a known significant history of Johne’s disease in sheep. They were mostly selected from participants in NOJDP Trial 1.1 (a study to examine the effectiveness of an eradication strategy) and had cattle known to be susceptible to JD at the time that their properties were infected with OJD. All gave negative results on serology; only one animal from a herd of 349 gave a single positive faecal culture result, with all follow-up investigations being negative, suggesting passive transfer of the organism. Due to the small size of some of the herds tested, and the fact that no confirmed infected animals or herds were detected, it is not possible to give maximum estimate of the prevalence of OJD in exposed susceptible cattle. However, using information derived from previous investigations and some additional results in the addendum to this project report, it is known that there are at least 6 cattle herds infected with “S” strain, in NSW, at the present time

Neurogenin 3-expressing progenitor cells in the gastrointestinal tract differentiate into both endocrine and non-endocrine cell types

AbstractMice deficient for the transcription factor neurogenin 3 (ngn3) fail to develop endocrine cells in the intestine and pancreas and show partial endocrine differentiation in the stomach. We expressed Cre recombinase under control of a ngn3 BAC to achieve high fidelity cell lineage tracing in vivo to determine whether endocrine cells in these organs differentiate from NGN3+ precursor cells. Our results indicate that all small intestinal enteroendocrine cells arise from ngn3-expressing cells and confirm that NGN3+ cells give rise to all pancreatic endocrine cells as noted previously. By examining mice at a developmental stage when all of the cell types in the stomach have differentiated, we have delineated region-associated differences in endocrine differentiation. A much smaller fraction of endocrine cells populating the acid-producing region of the stomach is derived from NGN3+ precursor in contrast to the antral–pyloric region. Unexpectedly, ngn3 is expressed in cells that adopt non-endocrine cell fates including significant fractions of goblet and Paneth cells in the intestine and a small number of duct and acinar cells in the pancreas. Rarely, ngn3 was expressed in pluripotent cells in intestinal crypts with resultant labeling of an entire crypt–villus unit. Thus, ngn3 expression occurs in mixed populations of immature cells that are not irreversibly committed to endocrine differentiation

Solar cycle variation of the statistical distribution of the solar wind ε parameter and its constituent variables

We use 20 years of Wind solar wind observations to investigate the solar cycle variation of the solar wind driving of the magnetosphere. For the first time, we use generalized quantile-quantile plots to compare the statistical distribution of four commonly used solar wind coupling parameters, Poynting flux, B 2, the ε parameter, and vB ,between the maxima and minima of solar cycles 23 and 24. We find the distribution is multicomponent and has the same functional form at all solar cycle phases; the change in distribution is captured by a simple transformation of variables for each component. The ε parameter is less sensitive than its constituent variables to changes in the distribution of extreme values between successive solar maxima. The quiet minimum of cycle 23 manifests only in lower extreme values, while cycle 24 was less active across the full distribution range

Magnetic dipole moments in single and coupled split-ring resonators

We examine the role of magnetic dipoles in single and coupled pairs of metallic split-ring resonators by numerically computing their magnitude and examining their relative contributions to the scattering cross section. We demonstrate that magnetic dipoles can strongly influence the scattering cross section along particular directions. It is also found that the magnetic dipole parallel to the incident magnetic field and/or high-order multipoles may play a significant role in the linear response of coupled split-ring resonators.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Renormalization group theory for finite-size scaling in extreme statistics

We present a renormalization group (RG) approach to explain universal features of extreme statistics, applied here to independent, identically distributed variables. The outlines of the theory have been described in a previous Letter, the main result being that finite-size shape corrections to the limit distribution can be obtained from a linearization of the RG transformation near a fixed point, leading to the computation of stable perturbations as eigenfunctions. Here we show details of the RG theory which exhibit remarkable similarities to the RG known in statistical physics. Besides the fixed points explaining universality, and the least stable eigendirections accounting for convergence rates and shape corrections, the similarities include marginally stable perturbations which turn out to be generic for the Fisher-Tippett-Gumbel class. Distribution functions containing unstable perturbations are also considered. We find that, after a transitory divergence, they return to the universal fixed line at the same or at a different point depending on the type of perturbation.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Extreme value statistics and return intervals in long-range correlated uniform deviates

We study extremal statistics and return intervals in stationary long-range correlated sequences for which the underlying probability density function is bounded and uniform. The extremal statistics we consider e.g., maximum relative to minimum are such that the reference point from which the maximum is measured is itself a random quantity. We analytically calculate the limiting distributions for independent and identically distributed random variables, and use these as a reference point for correlated cases. The distributions are different from that of the maximum itself i.e., a Weibull distribution, reflecting the fact that the distribution of the reference point either dominates over or convolves with the distribution of the maximum. The functional form of the limiting distributions is unaffected by correlations, although the convergence is slower. We show that our findings can be directly generalized to a wide class of stochastic processes. We also analyze return interval distributions, and compare them to recent conjectures of their functional form