Bourbon Regalism and the Importation of Gallicanism: The Political Path for a State Religion in Eighteenth-Century Spain.

El siglo XVIII experimentó un marcado cambio en la cultura institucional española bajo el régimen de la dinastía borbónica. Burócratas profesionales –llamados a veces regalistas– estudiaron cuidadosamente las últimas tendencias en el arte imperial de gobernar y en la retórica política. Envolvieron sus resultados en una terminología ilustrada de «progreso» para justificar sus propuestas políticas, poniendo el acento en las promesas de eficacia y prosperidad económica de tales reformas. En la primera mitad del siglo, el regalismo llevó a la acogida de la Ilustración católica y a una política pro-jesuita que incrementó la autoridad política de la Corona sobre la Iglesia católica. Pero fue en el reinado de Carlos iii –coincidiendo con lo que se consideraba la cumbre de la Ilustración española– cuando se consolidaron los anteriores logros políticos, dando lugar a una Iglesia Regia, independiente de Roma. Esto no sólo favoreció la expulsión de los jesuitas en 1767, sino que esta «Iglesia Regia» necesitó importar el galicanismo con el fin de convertir a los clérigos españoles en cuasi-agentes estatales. A finales del siglo, la política eclesiástica de la Corona se «galicanizó » hasta tal punto que se podía considerar afín a la rama católica del jansenismo. Después de los graves acontecimientos europeos de finales de los años ochenta, cuando existía la impresión general de ataque a la Iglesia católica y la autoridad papal, la Corona española fue demasiado lejos en su política jansenista, provocando desacuerdo incluso en sus propias instituciones gubernamentales, de modo que se vio obligada a dejar de dirigir la práctica religiosa en España. Este estudio ilustra los esfuerzos de la monarquía por nacionalizar la Iglesia católica en España, la resistencia que encontró en este proceso en diversos frentes, y las consecuencias que tales esfuerzos tendrían para el escenario político y religioso del imperio español a las puertas del siglo XIX

Molecular characterization of mesophilic and thermophilic sulfate reducing microbial communities in expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactors

The microbial communities established in mesophilic and thermophilic expanded granular sludge bed reactors operated with sulfate as the electron acceptor were analyzed using 16S rRNA targeted molecular methods, including denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, cloning, and phylogenetic analysis. Bacterial and archaeal communities were examined over 450 days of operation treating ethanol (thermophilic reactor) or ethanol and later a simulated semiconductor manufacturing wastewater containing citrate, isopropanol, and polyethylene glycol 300 (mesophilic reactor), with and without the addition of copper(II). Analysis, of PCR-amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis revealed a defined shift in microbial diversity in both reactors following a change in substrate composition (mesophilic reactor) and in temperature of operation from 30 degrees C to 55 degrees C (thermophilic reactor). The addition of copper(II) to the influent of both reactors did not noticeably affect the composition of the bacterial or archaeal communities, which is in agreement with the very low soluble copper concentrations (3-310 microg l(-1)) present in the reactor contents as a consequence of extensive precipitation of copper with biogenic sulfides. Furthermore, clone library analysis confirmed the phylogenetic diversity of sulfate-reducing consortia in mesophilic and thermophilic sulfidogenic reactors operated with simple substrate

Divergent roles of CprK paralogues from Desulfitobacterium hafniense in activating gene expression

Gene duplication and horizontal gene transfer play an important role in the evolution of prokaryotic genomes. We have investigated the role of three CprK paralogues from the cAMP receptor protein-fumarate and nitrate reduction regulator (CRP-FNR) family of transcriptional regulators that are encoded in the genome of Desulfitobacterium hafniense DCB-2 and possibly regulate expression of genes involved in the energy-conserving terminal reduction of organohalides (halorespiration). The results from in vivo and in vitro promoter probe assays show that two regulators (CprK1 and CprK2) have an at least partially overlapping effector specificity, with preference for ortho-chlorophenols, while meta-chlorophenols proved to be effectors for CprK4. The presence of a potential transposase-encoding gene in the vicinity of the cprK genes indicates that their redundancy is probably caused by mobile genetic elements. The CprK paralogues activated transcription from promoters containing a 14 bp inverted repeat (dehalobox) that closely resembles the FNR-box. We found a strong negative correlation between the rate of transcriptional activation and the number of nuclecitide changes from the optimal dehalobox sequence (TTAAT-N-4-ATTAA). Transcription was initiated by CprK4 from a promoter that is situated upstream of a gene encoding a methyl-accepting chemotaxis protein. This might be the first indication of taxis of an anaerobic bacterium to halogenated aromatic compounds

New approaches to probing Minkowski functionals

We generalize the concept of the ordinary skew-spectrum to probe the effect of non-Gaussianity on the morphology of cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps in several domains: in real space (where they are commonly known as cumulant-correlators), and in harmonic and needlet bases. The essential aim is to retain more information than normally contained in these statistics, in order to assist in determining the source of any measured non-Gaussianity, in the same spirit as Munshi & Heavens skew-spectra were used to identify foreground contaminants to the CMB bispectrum in Planck data. Using a perturbative series to construct the Minkowski functionals (MFs), we provide a pseudo-C based approach in both harmonic and needlet representations to estimate these spectra in the presence of a mask and inhomogeneous noise. Assuming homogeneous noise, we present approximate expressions for error covariance for the purpose of joint estimation of these spectra. We present specific results for four different models of primordial non-Gaussianity local, equilateral, orthogonal and enfolded models, as well as non-Gaussianity caused by unsubtracted point sources. Closed form results of nextorder corrections to MFs too are obtained in terms of a quadruplet of kurt-spectra. We also use the method of modal decomposition of the bispectrum and trispectrum to reconstruct the MFs as an alternative method of reconstruction of morphological properties of CMB maps. Finally, we introduce the odd-parity skew-spectra to probe the odd-parity bispectrum and its impact on the morphology of the CMB sky. Although developed for the CMB, the generic results obtained here can be useful in other areas of cosmology