Les tarots Sola-Busca à la Brera

Acquis par l’État italien en 2009 auprès des héritiers Sola et confié à la Pinacoteca di Brera de Milan, où il rejoint le tarot Brambilla (quarante-huit cartes enluminées, attribuées à Bonifacio Bembo et peintes, vers 1445, pour le duc de Milan Filippo Maria Visconti), le tarot Sola-Busca, gravé (au burin) et peint vers 1490, représente le seul ensemble complet antérieur à 1600. De structure classique – soixante-dix-huit cartes, avec cinquante-six cartes en quatre couleurs latines, vingt et u..

Découverte d’une rareté de la carte à jouer du XVIIe siècle français

Charles Henry François Desmartins, par ailleurs commissaire des guerres, invente et commercialise de nombreux jeux dans les années 1670. L’un d’eux, « de l’infanterie de l’Europe » était connu par ses règles mais les cartes censées l’accompagner semblaient perdues. Ces cartes gravées représentent des soldats de divers pays d’Europe. Un jeu a été découvert au minutier central, lié à deux actes qui permettent d’éclairer les affaires de Desmartins et les conditions de publication de ce jeu.Charles Henry François Desmartins, a French war commissioner, designed and commercialised many card games in the 1670s. One of them, ’On European Infantry’, is known through its rules but the cards to play it, engraved with soldiers from different European countries, were seemingly lost. However, a set has been discovered in the Parisian central repository of notarial documents, tied to two acts shedding light on Desmartins’ business and the context of the game publication

High-Precision Radiosurgical Dose Delivery by Interlaced Microbeam Arrays of High-Flux Low-Energy Synchrotron X-Rays

Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT) is a preclinical form of radiosurgery dedicated to brain tumor treatment. It uses micrometer-wide synchrotron-generated X-ray beams on the basis of spatial beam fractionation. Due to the radioresistance of normal brain vasculature to MRT, a continuous blood supply can be maintained which would in part explain the surprising tolerance of normal tissues to very high radiation doses (hundreds of Gy). Based on this well described normal tissue sparing effect of microplanar beams, we developed a new irradiation geometry which allows the delivery of a high uniform dose deposition at a given brain target whereas surrounding normal tissues are irradiated by well tolerated parallel microbeams only. Normal rat brains were exposed to 4 focally interlaced arrays of 10 microplanar beams (52 µm wide, spaced 200 µm on-center, 50 to 350 keV in energy range), targeted from 4 different ports, with a peak entrance dose of 200Gy each, to deliver an homogenous dose to a target volume of 7 mm3 in the caudate nucleus. Magnetic resonance imaging follow-up of rats showed a highly localized increase in blood vessel permeability, starting 1 week after irradiation. Contrast agent diffusion was confined to the target volume and was still observed 1 month after irradiation, along with histopathological changes, including damaged blood vessels. No changes in vessel permeability were detected in the normal brain tissue surrounding the target. The interlacing radiation-induced reduction of spontaneous seizures of epileptic rats illustrated the potential pre-clinical applications of this new irradiation geometry. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations performed on a human-sized head phantom suggested that synchrotron photons can be used for human radiosurgical applications. Our data show that interlaced microbeam irradiation allows a high homogeneous dose deposition in a brain target and leads to a confined tissue necrosis while sparing surrounding tissues. The use of synchrotron-generated X-rays enables delivery of high doses for destruction of small focal regions in human brains, with sharper dose fall-offs than those described in any other conventional radiation therapy

Foundations of Digital Arch{\ae}oludology

Digital Archaeoludology (DAL) is a new field of study involving the analysis and reconstruction of ancient games from incomplete descriptions and archaeological evidence using modern computational techniques. The aim is to provide digital tools and methods to help game historians and other researchers better understand traditional games, their development throughout recorded human history, and their relationship to the development of human culture and mathematical knowledge. This work is being explored in the ERC-funded Digital Ludeme Project. The aim of this inaugural international research meeting on DAL is to gather together leading experts in relevant disciplines - computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computational phylogenetics, mathematics, history, archaeology, anthropology, etc. - to discuss the key themes and establish the foundations for this new field of research, so that it may continue beyond the lifetime of its initiating project.Comment: Report on Dagstuhl Research Meeting. Authored/edited by all participants. Appendices by Thierry Depauli

Specific In Vivo Staining of Astrocytes in the Whole Brain after Intravenous Injection of Sulforhodamine Dyes

Fluorescent staining of astrocytes without damaging or interfering with normal brain functions is essential for intravital microscopy studies. Current methods involved either transgenic mice or local intracerebral injection of sulforhodamine 101. Transgenic rat models rarely exist, and in mice, a backcross with GFAP transgenic mice may be difficult. Local injections of fluorescent dyes are invasive. Here, we propose a non-invasive, specific and ubiquitous method to stain astrocytes in vivo. This method is based on iv injection of sulforhodamine dyes and is applicable on rats and mice from postnatal age to adulthood. The astrocytes staining obtained after iv injection was maintained for nearly half a day and showed no adverse reaction on astrocytic calcium signals or electroencephalographic recordings in vivo. The high contrast of the staining facilitates the image processing and allows to quantify 3D morphological parameters of the astrocytes and to characterize their network. Our method may become a reference for in vivo staining of the whole astrocytes population in animal models of neurological disorders

A Timeline of Mind Games, with Some Correlations

International audienc

La contribution de Jean Michel Papillon à l’Encyclopédie

Jean Michel Papillon (1698-1776) passait au xviiie siècle pour le seul graveur en bois savant, dans un art depuis longtemps tenu pour mineur. Auteur, en 1766, d’un important Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois, source de beaucoup d’informations, il a eu l’occasion, dès 1747, de collaborer étroitement avec les éditeurs de l’Encyclopédie, fournissant lettrines, vignettes, fleurons et culs-de-lampe qui ornent le dictionnaire et les volumes de planches. Cette contribution, qui semble avoir été parfois tendue, a rarement été soulignée et étudiée. Pourtant, le graveur livre dans son Traité de nombreuses clés sur sa participation et les choix iconographiques faits pour l’Encyclopédie. En outre, Papillon signe quelques articles, mais pas toujours ceux que l’on attendait de lui : il semble avoir eu avec Diderot des relations difficiles. C’est cet apport graphique et éditorial contrasté que nous tentons d’évaluer ici.Jean Michel Papillon (1698-1776) was considered in the Eighteenth Century to be the only learned wood engraver, an art long considered as minor. He was the author of an important Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois (1766), which was the source of much information, and from 1747 he collaborated closely with the editors of the Encyclopédie, providing the decorative letters, vignettes, fleurons and tailpieces in the dictionary and the volumes of illustrations. This contribution, which sometimes seems to have led to tensions, has rarely been emphasised or studied even though the engraver provides in his Treatise numerous clues about his contribution and choices of illustrations for the Encyclopédie. Papillon also signed some articles, but not only the ones we would expect and his relations with Diderot seem to have been difficult. It is this contrasted graphic and editorial contribution that the present article tries to evaluate

A Timeline of Mind Games, with Some Correlations

International audienc

Dés coptes ? Dés indiens ?

International audienceoptic Dice? Indian Dice?Several European and American public collections store in their departments of Graeco-Roman, Egyptian, Oriental and sometimes also Islamic antiquities, bone or ivory parallelepipeds, inscribed with dots on their four long sides; they are generally held for four-sided dice. The arrangement of dots always follows a 1-6/2-5 pattern. Such dice are popular in India too, still today. The so-called Graeco-Roman dice (sometimes misleadingly called tali) look very much like their modern Indian counterparts: they have the same arrangement of dots, which is puzzling, because this arrangement is anything but obvious. However, in ancient times, India had another rectangular die, of the same shape, but with different numbers, 1-2/3-4. This contribution seeks to explain the enigma of the origin and diffusion of these Mediterranean dice. These dice could well be Coptic, as the corpus presented here shows. They range chronologically between the last centuries BCE and the early Islamic period in Egypt. Two types can be distinguished: one, simple and functional, was certainly used for play (but for which games?), the other, overloaded with clusters of dots, seems to be associated with some magical rituals. In India, a clear change in the arrangement of dots of these parallelepipedic dice can be observed around 1000 AD: the ancient 1-2/3-4 pattern disappears, while dice with the “modern” 1-6/2-5 arrangement are introduced. Could this new pattern come from Egypt? And why this change? We offer here a few hypotheses.Plusieurs collections publiques européennes et américaines possèdent dans leurs départements d’antiquités gréco-romaines, égyptiennes, orientales et parfois même islamiques des objets parallélépipédiques en os ou en ivoire, marqués d’ocelles sur les quatre faces longues et généralement tenus pour des dés à quatre faces. Les faces présentent les points 1-6/2-5. Or l’emploi de tels dés est bien attesté en Inde, y compris aujourd’hui. Les dés "gréco-romains" (parfois dénommés, abusivement, tali) ressemblent étonnamment à leurs homologues indiens modernes : ils ont la même disposition des points, ce qui est troublant car celle-ci n’est pas une évidence. Pourtant l’Inde antique connaissait aussi un dé rectangulaire mais avec une ponctuation différente, 1-2/3-4.Cette contribution cherchera à éclaircir l’énigme de l’origine et de la diffusion de ces dés méditerranéens. Ceux-ci pourraient être de production copte, comme le corpus réuni le montre. Leur chronologie paraît se situer entre les derniers siècles avant l’ère chrétienne et les premiers temps de l’Islam en Égypte. Deux types sont distingués : l’un simple et fonctionnel a sûrement servi à jouer (mais à quoi ?), l’autre, surchargé d’ocelles en grappes, paraît avoir été destiné à des pratiques magiques. Côté Inde, on note un changement net dans la ponctuation des dés parallélépipédiques vers l’an mille : d’un schéma antique 1-2/3-4, on passe à la disposition "moderne", 1-6/2-5. Celle-ci serait-elle venue d’Égypte ? Et pourquoi ce changement ? Quelques hypothèses sont proposées ici