Baroque around the clock: : Daniello Bartoli SJ (1608-1685) and the uses of global history

Right from its foundation in 1540, the Society of Jesus realised the value and role of visual description (ekphrasis) in the persuasive rhetoric of Jesuit missionary accounts. Over a century later, when Jesuit missions were to be found on all the inhabited continents of the world then known to Europeans, descriptions of these new found lands were to be read for entertainment as well as the edification of their Old World audiences. As author of the first official history of the Society’s missions in the vernacular, the volumes by Daniello Bartoli (1608–85) also played an important role in giving not only their Jesuit readers a sense of the distinctiveness of the order's global mission. Referred to by Giacomo Leopardi (1798– 1837) as the ‘Dante of baroque prose’, Bartoli developed a particularly variegated and intensely visual idiom to meet the challenge of describing parts of the world which the majority of his readers, including himself, would never visit

The Unbelieved and historians, part III : Responses and Elaborations

The first two parts of "The Unbelieved" argued for the possibility of the existence of supernatural beings and for their agency in historical writing. This instalment is a roundtable assessing the problems and potential in the category of the Unbelieved and in its knowability. Space limitations prevented our following the rich avenues of further inquiry our extraordinary peer reviewers suggested, but we remain grateful, especially for their reminders of the complexity of motivations of historians who avoid the Unbelieved and their emphasis on the importance of humility as a historian's tool

Plk1 negatively regulates Cep55 recruitment to the midbody to ensure orderly abscission

Degradation of Plk1 during mitotic exit allows recruitment of the Cep55 abscission factor and timely cytokinesis

A mathematical and computational review of Hartree-Fock SCF methods in Quantum Chemistry

We present here a review of the fundamental topics of Hartree-Fock theory in Quantum Chemistry. From the molecular Hamiltonian, using and discussing the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, we arrive to the Hartree and Hartree-Fock equations for the electronic problem. Special emphasis is placed in the most relevant mathematical aspects of the theoretical derivation of the final equations, as well as in the results regarding the existence and uniqueness of their solutions. All Hartree-Fock versions with different spin restrictions are systematically extracted from the general case, thus providing a unifying framework. Then, the discretization of the one-electron orbitals space is reviewed and the Roothaan-Hall formalism introduced. This leads to a exposition of the basic underlying concepts related to the construction and selection of Gaussian basis sets, focusing in algorithmic efficiency issues. Finally, we close the review with a section in which the most relevant modern developments (specially those related to the design of linear-scaling methods) are commented and linked to the issues discussed. The whole work is intentionally introductory and rather self-contained, so that it may be useful for non experts that aim to use quantum chemical methods in interdisciplinary applications. Moreover, much material that is found scattered in the literature has been put together here to facilitate comprehension and to serve as a handy reference.Comment: 64 pages, 3 figures, tMPH2e.cls style file, doublesp, mathbbol and subeqn package

Functional Seasonality of Free-Living and Particle-Associated Prokaryotic Communities in the Coastal Adriatic Sea

Marine snow is an important habitat for microbes, characterized by chemical and physical properties contrasting those of the ambient water. The higher nutrient concentrations in marine snow lead to compositional differences between the ambient water and the marine snow-associated prokaryotic community. Whether these compositional differences vary due to seasonal environmental changes, however, remains unclear. Thus, we investigated the seasonal patterns of the free-living and marine snow-associated microbial community composition and their functional potential in the northern Adriatic Sea. Our data revealed seasonal patterns in both, the freeliving and marine snow-associated prokaryotes. The two assemblages were more similar to each other in spring and fall than in winter and summer. The taxonomic distinctness resulted in a contrasting functional potential. Motility and adaptations to low temperature in winter and partly anaerobic metabolism in summer characterized the marine snow-associated prokaryotes. Free-living prokaryotes were enriched in genes indicative for functions related to phosphorus limitation in winter and in genes tentatively supplementing heterotrophic growth with proteorhodopsins and CO-oxidation in summer. Taken together, the results suggest a strong influence of environmental parameters on both free-living and marine snow-associated prokaryotic communities in spring and fall leading to higher similarity between the communities, while the marine snow habitat in winter and summer leads to a specific prokaryotic community in marine snow in these two seasons.Postprin

The impact of the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction event on the global sulfur cycle: Evidence from Seymour Island, Antarctica

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction event 66 million years ago led to large changes to the global carbon cycle, primarily via a decrease in primary or export productivity of the oceans. However, the effects of this event and longer-term environmental changes during the Late Cretaceous on the global sulfur cycle are not well understood. We report new carbonate associated sulfate (CAS) sulfur isotope data derived from marine macrofossil shell material from a highly expanded high latitude Maastrichtian to Danian (69–65.5 Ma) succession located on Seymour Island, Antarctica. These data represent the highest resolution seawater sulfate record ever generated for this time interval, and are broadly in agreement with previous low-resolution estimates for the latest Cretaceous and Paleocene. A vigorous assessment of CAS preservation using sulfate oxygen, carbonate carbon and oxygen isotopes and trace element data, suggests factors affecting preservation of primary seawater CAS isotopes in ancient biogenic samples are complex, and not necessarily linked to the preservation of original carbonate mineralogy or chemistry. Primary data indicate a generally stable sulfur cycle in the early-mid Maastrichtian (69 Ma), with some fluctuations that could be related to increased pyrite burial during the ‘mid-Maastrichtian Event’. This is followed by an enigmatic +4‰ increase in δ³⁴SCAS during the late Maastrichtian (68–66 Ma), culminating in a peak in values in the immediate aftermath of the K–Pg extinction which may be related to temporary development of oceanic anoxia in the aftermath of the Chicxulub bolide impact. There is no evidence of the direct influence of Deccan volcanism on the seawater sulfate isotopic record during the late Maastrichtian, nor of a direct influence by the Chicxulub impact itself. During the early Paleocene (magnetochron C29R) a prominent negative excursion in seawater δ³⁴S of 3–4‰ suggests that a global decline in organic carbon burial related to collapse in export productivity, also impacted the sulfur cycle via a significant drop in pyrite burial. Box modelling suggests that to achieve an excursion of this magnitude, pyrite burial must be reduced by >15%, with a possible role for a short term increase in global weathering rates. Recovery of the sulfur cycle to pre-extinction values occurs at the same time (∼320 kyrs) as initial carbon cycle recovery globally. These recoveries are also contemporaneous with an initial increase in local alpha diversity of marine macrofossil faunas, suggesting biosphere-geosphere links during recovery from the mass extinction. Modelling further indicates that concentrations of sulfate in the oceans must have been 2 mM, lower than previous estimates for the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene and an order of magnitude lower than today

Rehabilitation versus surgical reconstruction for non-acute anterior cruciate ligament injury (ACL SNNAP): a pragmatic randomised controlled trial

BackgroundAnterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture is a common debilitating injury that can cause instability of the knee. We aimed to investigate the best management strategy between reconstructive surgery and non-surgical treatment for patients with a non-acute ACL injury and persistent symptoms of instability.MethodsWe did a pragmatic, multicentre, superiority, randomised controlled trial in 29 secondary care National Health Service orthopaedic units in the UK. Patients with symptomatic knee problems (instability) consistent with an ACL injury were eligible. We excluded patients with meniscal pathology with characteristics that indicate immediate surgery. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) by computer to either surgery (reconstruction) or rehabilitation (physiotherapy but with subsequent reconstruction permitted if instability persisted after treatment), stratified by site and baseline Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score—4 domain version (KOOS4). This management design represented normal practice. The primary outcome was KOOS4 at 18 months after randomisation. The principal analyses were intention-to-treat based, with KOOS4 results analysed using linear regression. This trial is registered with ISRCTN, ISRCTN10110685, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02980367.FindingsBetween Feb 1, 2017, and April 12, 2020, we recruited 316 patients. 156 (49%) participants were randomly assigned to the surgical reconstruction group and 160 (51%) to the rehabilitation group. Mean KOOS4 at 18 months was 73·0 (SD 18·3) in the surgical group and 64·6 (21·6) in the rehabilitation group. The adjusted mean difference was 7·9 (95% CI 2·5–13·2; p=0·0053) in favour of surgical management. 65 (41%) of 160 patients allocated to rehabilitation underwent subsequent surgery according to protocol within 18 months. 43 (28%) of 156 patients allocated to surgery did not receive their allocated treatment. We found no differences between groups in the proportion of intervention-related complications.InterpretationSurgical reconstruction as a management strategy for patients with non-acute ACL injury with persistent symptoms of instability was clinically superior and more cost-effective in comparison with rehabilitation management