Jacques Presser's Heritage: Egodocuments in the Study of History

A mediados de los años cincuenta del siglo XX el historiador Jacob Presser introdujo una nueva palabra: egodocumento, término que venía a significar las autobiografías, memorias, diarios, cartas personales y otros textos en los cuales el autor escribe, explícitamente acerca de sí mismo, de sus propios asuntos y sus sentimentos. La palabra fue rápidamente al holandés, pero el momento no fue el más oportuno. Los colegas de Presser fueron más reticentes que nunca a utilizar tales textos. Desde los años ochenta, la nueva historia cultural ha vuelto a los egodocumentos. Los egodocumentos siempre han sido populares entre los lectores, lo que explica la paradoja del diario de Ana Frank, ampliamente leído, pero hasta hace poco tiempo, escasamente estudiado

Sexuality, Elites, and Court Life in the Late Seventeenth Century: The Diaries of Constantijn Huygens, Jr.

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the following joke circulated in the Dutch Republic: A very fat nobleman married a lady-in-waiting of the Princess of Orange. Because of his big belly, he was afraid that he would not be able to manage intercourse with her. However, she knew how to remedy this with some cushions and body movements. Surprised, he asked her where she had learned this. She answered, "Ho, ho, don't you know that you can learn anything at court." 1 This joke suggests that the court was regarded as an isolated society with its own rules and norms, and one where sexual liberty reigned. In other countries, royal and princely courts often had the same reputation. One source, in particular, informs us about the sexual practices at the court of the princes of Orange, and, more generally, within the Dutch elite: the diary of Constantijn Huygens, Jr. (1628-97). Not only is this one of the most scandalous Dutch diaries from the late seventeenth century, but it is also one of the most extensive. 2 Between 1649 and 1697 Huygens filled 1,599 pages. 3 Historians long ignored this text, considering it too offensive. It has never been translated out of Dutch, and when it was published in 1876-77, it was expurgated, its seeming heinousness increased by the fact that Huygens' father was a brilliant poet and his brother, Christiaan, a famous scientist. Only recently have Huygens' talents come to be appreciated. He was a good poet of Latin verses, a credible draughts-man, and a connoisseur of the arts; and like his father and grandfather, he was secretary to the princes of Orange. His diary, therefore, is a unique source for the study of daily life at court and among the Dutch and English elites in general. The diary is not, however, a continuous text. There is a travel journal written during his grand tour to France and Italy in 1649-50; from 1673 to 1678 there are diaries from the military campaigns with Prince William, one from 1680 when he was in Cell in Germany during a diplomatic conference, and another one from 1682-83. Most importantly, there is one that is continuous for 1688-97. 4 The diaries, which are in large part filled with anecdotes, provide a [End Page 94] rather disenchanting view of the Dutch elite. Several hundred entries concern one of the most popular subjects for small talk, sexual behavior. Huygens is thus comparable to his English contemporary, Samuel Pepys, but with an important difference: whereas Pepys mainly describes his own sexual habits, Huygens almost exclusively describes those of others. Even though most of Huygens' entries are unfortunately rather short--for instance, when he mentions that he spent an evening engaged in "dirty talk," he does not tell us much more than the fact that he had taken a keen interest in these matters (10 September 1692)--his diaries are a valuable source of information for the history of sexuality. 5 Because of that, and because the diaries are fully available only in manuscript and only to readers of Dutch, this essay will describe their sexual contents for a larger readership and hopes to provoke further use and analysis

Sensibilité et éducation d'un enfant à l'époque batave. Le journal intime d'Otto van Eck (1791-1796)

Les journaux intimes d'enfants ont longtemps été méconnus. Depuis leur découverte, assez récente, on s'aperçoit de leur intérêt pour une meilleure appréhension de l'histoire des émotions. Ils nous enseignent entre autres ce qu'étaient les visions enfantines du monde au XVIIIe siècle, mais témoignent aussi des sensibilités à l'époque batave et de l'influence de la pédagogie des Lumières sur des parents soucieux de contrôler la formation de leurs enfants.Sensibility and Educating a Child during the Batavian Period: the Private Journal of Otto van Eck (1791-1796).The private diaries of children have for long been neglected. Since their relatively recent discovery, they are appreciated as a means of better understanding the history of emotions. They show us inter alia how children visualized their eighteenth-century world, but also bear witness to sensibilities during the Batavian period and the impact of Enlightenment teaching on parents anxious to control the upbringing of their children

Electronic transport in DNA

We study the electronic properties of DNA by way of a tight-binding model applied to four particular DNA sequences. The charge transfer properties are presented in terms of localization lengths (crudely speaking, the length over which electrons travel). Various types of disorder, including random potentials, are employed to account for different real environments. We have performed calculations on poly(dG)-poly(dC), telomeric-DNA, random-ATGC DNA, and l-DNA. We find that random and l-DNA have localization lengths allowing for electron motion among a few dozen basepairs only. A novel enhancement of localization lengths is observed at particular energies for an increasing binary backbone disorder. We comment on the possible biological relevance of sequence-dependent charge transfer in DNA

A World Inscribed – Introduction

In 1900 or thereabouts, Lorina Bulwer, an inmate of the Great Yarmouth workhouse in the east of England, produced a remarkable and extremely long letter. It was embroidered on samples of different kinds of material which she had sewn together to form a scroll of multicoloured cloth, five metres long (Image 1.1). On her sampler scroll, Lorina stitched a rambling autobiography in which she spat out her anger at being confined to the workhouse, and more specifically to its female lunatic ward. She asserted her identity frequently, repeated her name many times and declared that she was free. Lorina Bulwer’s sampler reminds us of the importance of writing at all levels of society, for both intimate and public purposes as well as in the process of identity formation. It also demonstrates that writing is ubiquitous, and often uses unexpected materials and unorthodox technologies. In this book, we examine the importance of writing at different social levels in a range of historical contexts across the world. As in the case of Lorina Bulwer, the discussion will take account of writing’s institutional frameworks, its personal expressions and the range of material support it has adopted in past societies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available

Myosin5a tail associates directly with Rab3A-containing compartments in neurons

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The definitive version was published in Journal of Biological Chemistry, 286 (2011): 14352-14361, doi:10.1074/jbc.M110.187286.Myosin-Va (Myo5a) is a motor protein associated with synaptic vesicles (SVs) but the mechanism by which it interacts has not yet been identified. A potential class of binding partners are Rab GTPases and Rab3A is known to associate with SVs and is involved in SV trafficking. We performed experiments to determine whether Rab3A interacts with Myo5a and whether it is required for transport of neuronal vesicles. In vitro motility assays performed with axoplasm from the squid giant axon showed a requirement for a Rab GTPase in Myo5a-dependent vesicle transport. Furthermore, mouse recombinant Myo5a tail revealed that it associated with Rab3A in rat brain synaptosomal preparations in vitro and the association was confirmed by immunofluorescence imaging of primary neurons isolated from the frontal cortex of mouse brains. Synaptosomal Rab3A was retained on recombinant GST-tagged Myo5a tail affinity columns in a GTP-dependent manner. Finally, the direct interaction of Myo5a and Rab3A was determined by sedimentation v e l o c i t y analytical ultracentrifugation using recombinant mouse Myo5a tail and human Rab3A. When both proteins were incubated in the presence of 1 mM GTPγS, Myo5a tail and Rab3A formed a complex and a direct interaction was observed. Further analysis revealed that GTP-bound Rab3A interacts with both the monomeric and dimeric species of the Myo5a tail. However, the interaction between Myo5a tail and nucleotidefree Rab3A did not occur. Thus, our results show that Myo5a and Rab3A are direct binding partners and interact on SVs and that the Myo5a/Rab3A complex is involved in transport of neuronal vesicles

From Collection Management to Content Management in Art Documentation: The Conservator as an Editor

It has been widely acknowledged that reinstallations and re-executions of contemporary artworks substantially rely on available documentation. Especially for installations and performances it is crucial to record the artist’s intent, past iterations, and tacit knowledge involved in staging the artwork. The growing presence of contemporary artworks in museum collections increases the importance of documentation as a central focus of collection care. However, collections management systems have limitations in adequately presenting these often rich forms of documentation. Consequently, documentation required for presenting a specific complex artwork is often dispersed across multiple systems, drives, and dossiers inside various departments. In recent years, several initiatives responded to these challenges by implementing a digital platform supporting the conservation of contemporary art. Collaborative networked software such as wiki came into focus as a prominent choice for managing the related documentation. The wiki promises to integrate diverse material in one place and accommodate much-needed requirements such as multiple iterations of an artwork, relations between its elements, and multimedia content. This paper takes the case of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)’s experimental use of MediaWiki to determine whether and under what conditions a wiki is capable of supporting collection care sufficiently in terms of documenting time-based media art. The case further illustrates the consequence of adopting a content management system as knowledge base for conservation. While collections management systems are designed primarily to handle objects using forms, wikis are publishing platforms in the first place and provide a different kind of framework for artwork records. They are designed to employ text and media to compose articles. We propose to conceptualise this consequential role of conservator as a manager of content, an editor

Common genetic variants highlight the role of insulin resistance and body fat distribution in type 2 diabetes, independent of obesity.

We aimed to validate genetic variants as instruments for insulin resistance and secretion, to characterize their association with intermediate phenotypes, and to investigate their role in type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk among normal-weight, overweight, and obese individuals. We investigated the association of genetic scores with euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp- and oral glucose tolerance test-based measures of insulin resistance and secretion and a range of metabolic measures in up to 18,565 individuals. We also studied their association with T2D risk among normal-weight, overweight, and obese individuals in up to 8,124 incident T2D cases. The insulin resistance score was associated with lower insulin sensitivity measured by M/I value (β in SDs per allele [95% CI], -0.03 [-0.04, -0.01]; P = 0.004). This score was associated with lower BMI (-0.01 [-0.01, -0.0]; P = 0.02) and gluteofemoral fat mass (-0.03 [-0.05, -0.02; P = 1.4 × 10(-6)) and with higher alanine transaminase (0.02 [0.01, 0.03]; P = 0.002) and γ-glutamyl transferase (0.02 [0.01, 0.03]; P = 0.001). While the secretion score had a stronger association with T2D in leaner individuals (Pinteraction = 0.001), we saw no difference in the association of the insulin resistance score with T2D among BMI or waist strata (Pinteraction > 0.31). While insulin resistance is often considered secondary to obesity, the association of the insulin resistance score with lower BMI and adiposity and with incident T2D even among individuals of normal weight highlights the role of insulin resistance and ectopic fat distribution in T2D, independently of body size.The MRC-Ely Study was funded by the Medical Research Council (MC_U106179471) and Diabetes UK. We are grateful to all the volunteers, and to the staff of St. Mary’s Street Surgery, Ely and the study team. The Fenland Study is funded by the Medical Research Council (MC_U106179471) and Wellcome Trust. We are grateful to all the volunteers for their time and help, and to the General Practitioners and practice staff for assistance with recruitment. We thank the Fenland Study Investigators, Fenland Study Co-ordination team and the Epidemiology Field, Data and Laboratory teams. DBS and RKS are funded by the Wellcome Trust, the U.K. NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and the MRC Centre for Obesity and Related Metabolic Disease. Genotyping in ULSAM was performed by the SNP&SEQ Technology Platform in Uppsala (www.genotyping.se), which is supported by Uppsala University, Uppsala University Hospital, Science for Life Laboratory - Uppsala and the Swedish Research Council (Contracts 80576801 and 70374401). The RISC Study was supported by European Union grant QLG1-CT-2001-01252 and AstraZeneca. The RISC Study Project Management Board: B Balkau, F Bonnet, SW Coppack, JM Dekker, E Ferrannini, A Golay, A Mari, A Natali, J Petrie, M Walker. We thank all EPIC participants and staff for their contribution to the study. We thank the lab team at the MRC Epidemiology Unit for sample management and Nicola Kerrison of the MRC Epidemiology Unit for data management. Funding for the EPIC-InterAct project was provided by the EU FP6 programme (grant number LSHM_CT_2006_037197).In addition, EPIC-InterAct investigators acknowledge funding from the following agencies: PWF: Swedish Research Council, Novo Nordisk, Swedish Diabetes Association, Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation; LCG: Swedish Research Council; NS: Health Research Fund (FIS) of the Spanish Ministry of Health; Murcia Regional Government (Nº 6236); LA: We thank the participants of the Spanish EPIC cohort for their contribution to the study as well as to the team of trained nurses who participated in the recruitment; RK: German Cancer Aid, German Ministry of Research (BMBF); TJK: Cancer Research UK; PMN: Swedish Research Council; KO: Danish Cancer Society; SP: Compagnia di San Paolo; JRQ: Asturias Regional Government; OR: The Västerboten County Council; AMWS and DLvdA: Dutch Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sports (VWS), Netherlands Cancer Registry (NKR), LK Research Funds, Dutch Prevention Funds, Dutch ZON (Zorg Onderzoek Nederland), World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), Statistics Netherlands; RT: AIRE-ONLUS Ragusa, AVIS-Ragusa, Sicilian Regional Government; IS: Verification of diabetes cases was additionally funded by NL Agency grant IGE05012 and an Incentive Grant from the Board of the UMC Utrecht; IB: Wellcome Trust grant 098051 and United Kingdom NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre; MIM: InterAct, Wellcome Trust (083270/Z/07/Z), MRC (G0601261); ER: Imperial College Biomedical Research.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Diabetes Association via http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/db14-031