Feudalism: interpretative category or framework of life in the Medieval West?

As a   term of some utility in describing political, social and economic   institutions, 'feudalism' still has considerable currency beyond the field of   the medieval European West.l Nevertheless, its use by historians of the   medieval West suggests widespread disagreement over its essential   implications, and betrays a tendency to concentrate discussion no longer on   the term itself, or on a generalised notion of a 'feudal' society, but upon   the various discrete institutions, social practices and customs that make up   the medieval·· societies historians were once happy enough to call 'feudal'.   The present review of scholarly usage in regard to 'medieval feudalism'   contains two parts. In the first, I illustrate the various often overlapping   and competing meanings that historians since the turn of the century have   ascribed to the terms 'feudal' and 'feudalism', and in the second I offer   some comments on this diversity of opinion

Feudalism Revisited: a Tribute to S. N. Mukherjee

In   this tribute to the stimulus of Soumyen Mukherjee as a teaching colleague, I   am going to beg the reader's indulgence. Although I propose to make some   comments on the continuing utility of the concept of 'feudalism' for the   teacher of history, by way of comments on the reception and 'after-life' of   the volume Soumyen, I and Edmund Leach edited together in 1984-851, and on   the teaching venture in our department that accompanied it, I intend to be   fuller and plainer in my references to an esteemed colleague thanis, perhaps,   usual in a Festschrift. I think all who know Soumyen will realise that this   is the only appropriate way to go on this occasion

Inflation from D3-brane motion in the background of D5-branes

We study inflation arising from the motion of a BPS D3-brane in the background of a stack of k parallel D5-branes. There are two scalar fields in this set up-- (i) the radion field R, a real scalar field, and (ii) a complex tachyonic scalar field chi living on the world volume of the open string stretched between the D3 and D5 branes. We find that inflation is realized by the potential of the radion field, which satisfies observational constraints coming from the Cosmic Microwave Background. After the radion becomes of order the string length scale l_s, the dynamics is governed by the potential of the complex scalar field. Since this field has a standard kinematic term, reheating can be successfully realized by the mechanism of tachyonic preheating with spontaneous symmetry breaking.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. Minor clarifications and references added. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Combined cooling and bio-treatment of beet sugar factory condenser water effluent

Submitted to Office of Water Resources Research, U.S. Department of Interior.Bibliography: pages 76-78.OWRR project no. A-008-COLO under agreement no. 14-31-0001-3006

Phosphorylation regulates human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 Rex function

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is a pathogenic complex deltaretrovirus, which is the causative agent of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) and HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis. In addition to the structural and enzymatic viral gene products, HTLV-1 encodes the positive regulatory proteins Tax and Rex along with viral accessory proteins. Tax and Rex proteins orchestrate the timely expression of viral genes important in viral replication and cellular transformation. Rex is a nucleolar-localizing shuttling protein that acts post-transcriptionally by binding and facilitating the export of the unspliced and incompletely spliced viral mRNAs from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. HTLV-1 Rex (Rex-1) is a phosphoprotein and general protein kinase inhibition correlates with reduced function. Therefore, it has been proposed that Rex-1 function may be regulated through site-specific phosphorylation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We conducted a phosphoryl mapping of Rex-1 over-expressed in transfected 293 T cells using a combination of affinity purification and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. We achieved 100% physical coverage of the Rex-1 polypeptide and identified five novel phosphorylation sites at Thr-22, Ser-36, Thr-37, Ser-97, and Ser-106. We also confirmed evidence of two previously identified residues, Ser-70 and Thr-174, but found no evidence of phosphorylation at Ser-177. The functional significance of these phosphorylation events was evaluated using a Rex reporter assay and site-directed mutational analysis. Our results indicate that phosphorylation at Ser-97 and Thr-174 is critical for Rex-1 function.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have mapped completely the site-specific phosphorylation of Rex-1 identifying a total of seven residues; Thr-22, Ser-36, Thr-37, Ser-70, Ser-97, Ser-106, and Thr-174. Overall, this work is the first to completely map the phosphorylation sites in Rex-1 and provides important insight into the regulation of Rex-1 function.</p

Sequence-Specific β-Peptide Synthesis by a Rotaxane-Based Molecular Machine

We report on the synthesis and operation of a three-barrier, rotaxane-based, artificial molecular machine capable of sequence-specific β-homo (β3) peptide synthesis. The machine utilizes nonproteinogenic β3-amino acids, a class of amino acids not generally accepted by the ribosome, particularly consecutively. Successful operation of the machine via native chemical ligation (NCL) demonstrates that even challenging 15- and 19-membered ligation transition states are suitable for information translation using this artificial molecular machine. The peptide-bond-forming catalyst region can be removed from the transcribed peptide by peptidases, artificial and biomachines working in concert to generate a product that cannot be made by either machine alone