Shtetl

Shtetl looks at the Jewish community as a whole by focusing on the individuals within it. Jews are an incredibly diverse people. They come from all walks of life and racial backgrounds. Contrary to popular belief, there is no stereotypical Jewish person. Not all Jews are rich, nor do they all have curly dark hair and big noses. By being forced to look at the individuals within the community together, it becomes clear that while all of these individuals are Jewish, and therefore bound to each other because of it, they are all different and break this stereotypical mold

Amoebiasis of the anterior abdominal wall

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Chinese Porcelain and the Material Taxonomies of Medieval Rabbinic Law: Encounters with Disruptive Substances in Twelfth-Century Yemen

This article focuses on a set of legal questions about ṣīnī vessels (literally, “Chinese” vessels) sent from the Jewish community in Aden to Fustat (Old Cairo) in the mid-1130s CE and now preserved among the Cairo Geniza holdings in Cambridge University Library. This is the earliest dated and localized query about the status of ṣīnī vessels with respect to the Jewish law of vessels used for food consumption. Our analysis of these queries suggests that their phrasing and timing can be linked to the contemporaneous appearance in the Yemen of a new type of Chinese ceramic ware, qingbai, which confounded and destabilized the material taxonomies underpinning rabbinic Judaism. Marshalling evidence from contemporary Jewish legal compendia and other writings produced in this milieu, our discussion substantially advances interpretive angles first suggested by S. D. Goitein and Mordechai A. Friedman to examine the efforts of Adeni Jews to place this Chinese ceramic fabric among already legislated substances, notably the “neighboring” substances of glass and earthenware, in order to derive clear rules for the proper use and purification of vessels manufactured from it

Non-adiabatic pumping in an oscillating-piston model

We consider the prototypical "piston pump" operating on a ring, where a circulating current is induced by means of an AC driving. This can be regarded as a generalized Fermi-Ulam model, incorporating a finite-height moving wall (piston) and non trivial topology (ring). The amount of particles transported per cycle is determined by a layered structure of phase-space. Each layer is characterized by a different drift velocity. We discuss the differences compared with the adiabatic and Boltzmann pictures, and highlight the significance of the "diabatic" contribution that might lead to a counter-stirring effect.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, improved versio

Oseledets' Splitting of Standard-like Maps

For the class of differentiable maps of the plane and, in particular, for standard-like maps (McMillan form), a simple relation is shown between the directions of the local invariant manifolds of a generic point and its contribution to the finite-time Lyapunov exponents (FTLE) of the associated orbit. By computing also the point-wise curvature of the manifolds, we produce a comparative study between local Lyapunov exponent, manifold's curvature and splitting angle between stable/unstable manifolds. Interestingly, the analysis of the Chirikov-Taylor standard map suggests that the positive contributions to the FTLE average mostly come from points of the orbit where the structure of the manifolds is locally hyperbolic: where the manifolds are flat and transversal, the one-step exponent is predominantly positive and large; this behaviour is intended in a purely statistical sense, since it exhibits large deviations. Such phenomenon can be understood by analytic arguments which, as a by-product, also suggest an explicit way to point-wise approximate the splitting.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure

Preliminary Evidence That CD38 Moderates the Association of Neuroticism on Amygdala-Subgenual Cingulate Connectivity.

CD38 genetic variation has been associated with autism spectrum disorders and social anxiety disorder, which may result from CD38's regulation of oxytocin secretion. Converging evidence has found that the rs3796863 A-allele contributes to increased social sensitivity compared to the CC genotype. The current study examined the moderating role of CD38 genetic variants (rs3796863 and rs6449182) that have been associated with enhanced (or reduced) social sensitivity on neural activation related to neuroticism, which is commonly elevated in individuals with social anxiety and depression. Adults (n = 72) with varying levels of social anxiety and depression provided biological samples for DNA extraction, completed a measure of neuroticism, and participated in a standardized emotion processing task (affect matching) while undergoing fMRI. A significant interaction effect was found for rs3796863 x neuroticism that predicted right amygdala-subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) functional connectivity. Simple slopes analyses showed a positive association between neuroticism and right amygdala-sgACC connectivity among rs3796863 A-allele carriers. Findings suggest that the more socially sensitive rs3796863 A-allele may partially explain the relationship between a known risk factor (i.e. neuroticism) and promising biomarker (i.e. amygdala-sgACC connectivity) in the development and maintenance of social anxiety and depression

Neural Correlates of the False Consensus Effect:Evidence for Motivated Projection and Regulatory Restraint

The false consensus effect (FCE), the tendency to project our attitudes and opinions on to others, is a pervasive bias in social reasoning with a range of ramifications for individuals and society. Research in social psychology has suggested that numerous factors (anchoring and adjustment, accessibility, motivated projection, etc.) may contribute to the FCE. In this study, we examine the neural correlates of the FCE and provide evidence that motivated projection plays a significant role. Activity in reward regions (ventromedial pFC and bilateral nucleus accumbens) during consensus estimation was positively associated with bias, whereas activity in right ventrolateral pFC (implicated in emotion regulation) was inversely associated with bias. Activity in reward and regulatory regions accounted for half of the total variation in consensus bias across participants (R2 = .503). This research complements models of the FCE in social psychology, providing a glimpse into the neural mechanisms underlying this important phenomenon

Legal Pluralism among the Court Records of Medieval Egypt

Abstract: Were the principles of Islamic law recognized by ḏimmī courts? Were the boundaries between Muslim and ḏimmī courts permeable, or did ḏimmī leaders try to solidify their power over their communities by controlling ḏimmī access to Muslim courts? To what extent did the pressures of litigants’ forum-shopping affect the decisions of ḏimmī courts? The Judeo-Arabic documents of the Cairo Geniza are an invaluable source for the study of legal history in medieval Egypt. The Geniza contains a plethora of court records — which occasionally allude to “Arabic documents” admitted into the Jewish court. What role did these documents play in the decisions of the Jewish court? In this paper, I survey the court records of the Geniza in order to explore legal pluralism in the Fāṭimid and Ayyūbid periods, revealing the court to have been a focal point of ḏimmī-Muslim relations in the 10th‑13th centuries. As the long-understood legal pluralism of the Fāṭimid period gave way to Ayyūbid support of Šāfiʿī jurists in the late 12th century, I will show Jewish courts which long recognized documents composed in Muslim courts and which even composed their own documents in a manner that might have allowed them to be read into evidence in Muslim courts to have attempted to limit ḏimmī use of Muslim courts and to arrogate to themselves alone the power to adjudicate matters of interest to the Jewish community. I bring evidence of forum-shopping and legal pluralism between Muslim and ḏimmī courts, and I trace the waxing and waning of this pluralism against the historical trajectory of the medieval period in Egypt, giving particular attention to the court of Abraham Maimonides, which (I will argue) responded to an environment of decreasing legal pluralism by arrogating to itself sole power to deal with certain legal issues. This response is particularly manifest in a resurgence of documents written in Hebrew instead of Judeo-Arabic.Résumé : Les principes du droit islamique étaient-ils reconnus par les ḏimmīs ? Les frontières entre tribunaux musulmans et ḏimmīs étaient-elles perméables, ou les dirigeants non musulmans s’efforçaient-ils de renforcer leur autorité sur leurs communautés en contrôlant l’accès de leurs ouailles aux tribunaux musulmans ? Dans quelle mesure la pression exercée par le forum-shopping des plaideurs affectait-elle les jugements des ḏimmīs ? Les documents judéo-arabes de la Geniza du Caire constituent une source inestimable pour l’étude de l’histoire judiciaire de l’Égypte médiévale. Nombre d’archives judiciaires y font allusion aux “documents arabes” acceptés par le tribunal juif. Quel rôle ces documents jouaient-ils dans les décisions prises par ce dernier ? Dans cet article, j’explore les archives de la Geniza afin de mieux comprendre le fonctionnement du pluralisme judiciaire aux périodes fatimide et ayyoubide – révélant combien les tribunaux se trouvaient au centre névralgique des relations entre ḏimmīs et musulmans entre le xe et le xiiie siècle. Tandis qu’à la fin du xiie siècle, le pluralisme bien connu de la période fatimide s’effaçait devant le soutien des Ayyoubides aux juristes šāfiʿites, les tribunaux juifs qui avaient longtemps accepté les documents composés dans les tribunaux musulmans – et qui avaient même élaboré leurs propres actes de manière à leur permettre d’être lus et reconnus comme preuves par les musulmans – tentèrent de limiter le recours des ḏimmīs aux tribunaux musulmans, et de s’arroger le pouvoir de juger seuls les affaires de la communauté juive. J’explore les usages du forum-shopping et du pluralisme judiciaire entre tribunaux musulmans et ḏimmīs, et j’analyse les fluctuations de ce pluralisme au regard de l’évolution historique de l’Égypte médiévale. Je m’attarde en particulier sur le tribunal d’Abraham Maimonide, qui réagit à un contexte de réduction du pluralisme judiciaire en s’arrogeant le pouvoir de traiter certaines affaires, ce qui se manifeste notamment par la résurgence de documents où l’hébreu remplace le judéo-arabe.الملخص : هل كانت محاكم الذميّين تعترف بمبادئ الفقه الإسلامي ؟ هل كانت الحدود بين المحاكم المسلمة والمحاكم الذمّيّة قابلة للعبور أم حاول مسؤولو الذمّيين تعزيز سلطتهم على مجتمعهم بمنع أفراده اللجوء إلى محاكم المسلمين ؟ إلى أي مدى أثّر اختيار الخصوم محكمة من المحاكم الموجودة على قرارات المحكمة اليهودية ؟ فإن وثائق جنيزة القاهرة تمثل مصدراً نفيسا جدّا للدراسات عن تأريخ الفقه في مصر طوال القرون الوسطى. فتحتوي الجنيزة على الكثير من السجلات التي تذكر « وثائق عربية » قُبلت في محكمة اليهود. كيف اعتبرت محكمة اليهود هذه الوثائق عند اتخاذ قراراتها ؟ في هذه المقالة، أنظر إلى سجلات الجنيزة لكي أدرس التعدديّة القضائيّة في الفترتين الفاطمية والأيوبية، وأشير إلى الدور المهم الذي لعبته المحاكم في العلاقات بين الذمّييّن والمسلميّن من القرن الحادي عشر إلى الفرن الثالث عشر للميلاد. فأبيّن كيف حاولت المحاكم اليهوديّة أن تحدّد استعمال الذميين للمحاكم المسلمة في نهاية القرن الهاني عشر، عندما انتهى النظام الفاطمي التعددي المذاهب وأخذ الأيوبيون يدعمون المذهب الشافعي. أركّز خاصة على محكمة إبراهيم بن ميمون، الذي عاش في بداية الفترة الأيوبية وأشرف على تدوين عدة وثائق قضائية باللغة العبريّة بدلا عن اللغة العربية اليهوديّة

Effect of FK 506 on spontaneous diabetes in BB rats

From days 30-120 after birth, 59 BB rats were treated with water (n = 20) or FK 506 in intragastric doses of 1 mg·kg-1·day-1 (n = 19) or 2 mg·kg-1·day-1 (n = 20). Diabetes developed in 75, 15, and 0% of the 3 groups, respectively. Animals protected from diabetes by FK 506 had normal intraperitoneal glucose tolerance tests, virtual absence histopathologically of autoimmune insulitis, and normal pancreatic insulin content. Forty-five to 75 days after stopping FK 506, ∼75% of the rats that were diabetes free at 120 days remained so