Bard in the Gondola, Barred in the Ghetto: Operatic Adaptations of Shakespearean Text and Italian Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century

This thesis, Bard in the Gondola, Barred in the Ghetto: Operatic Adaptations of Shakespearean Text and Italian Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century, is based on the comparison between two texts. The first is William Shakespeare’s first quarto edition of The Merchant of Venice. The second is the 1873 vocal score and libretto of Ciro Pinsuti and G.T. Cimino’s opera, Il Mercante di Venezia: un melodramma in quattro atti. The contrast between the two works is made within the context of Italian unification, nationalism and identity juxtaposed with the literary and philosophical trends of the nineteenth century that impacted the way in which the opera was created and received by Italians. Central to the work is the theme of identity. After its final unification in 1871, Italy was nominally one country, a nation strong and cohesive. However, there were several cultures within the society that had to form a new national spirit by either rejecting their old, local traditions and beliefs and molding an entirely new identity or shaping together bits and pieces from each Italian experience that reflected the division of powers present in the peninsula for centuries. Religion, gender and ethnicity all factor into an individual’s Italian-ness and are all examined in the Pinsuti opera. The use of theatre as a means of shaping this discussion continued into the twentieth century of Italy, as the nation still struggles to unite a divided culture of north and south, of progress and tradition

Small Cages with Insect Couples Provide a Simple Method for a Preliminary Assessment of Mating Disruption

Mating disruption by sex pheromones is a sustainable, effective and widely used pest management scheme. A drawback of this technique is its challenging assessment of effectiveness in the field (e.g., spatial scale, pest density). The aim of this work was to facilitate the evaluation of field-deployed pheromone dispensers. We tested the suitability of small insect field cages for a pre-evaluation of the impact of sex pheromones on mating using the grape moths Eupoecilia ambiguella and Lobesia botrana, two major pests in vineyards. Cages consisted of a cubic metal frame of 35 cm sides, which was covered with a mosquito net of 1500 μm mesh size. Cages were installed in the centre of pheromone-treated and untreated vineyards. In several trials, 1 to 20 couples of grape moths per cage were released for one to three nights. The proportion of mated females was between 15 to 70% lower in pheromone-treated compared to untreated vineyards. Overall, the exposure of eight couples for one night was adequate for comparing different control schemes. Small cages may therefore provide a fast and cheap method to compare the effectiveness of pheromone dispensers under standardised semi-field conditions and may help predict the value of setting-up large-scale field trials

Altered expression of α3-containing GABAA receptors in the neocortex of patients with focal epilepsy

Impaired transmission in GABAergic circuits is thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of epilepsy. Although it is well established that major reorganization of GABAA receptor subtypes occurs in the hippocampus of patients with medically refractory temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), it is unclear whether this disorder is also associated with alterations in GABAA receptor subtypes in the neocortex. Here we have investigated immunohistochemically the subunit composition and neocortical distribution of three major GABAA receptor subtypes using antibodies specifically recognizing the subunits α1, α2, α3, β2/3 and γ2. Cortical tissue was obtained at surgery from patients with TLE and hippocampal sclerosis (HS; n = 9), TLE associated with neocortical lesions (non-HS; n = 12) and frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE; n = 5), with post-mortem samples serving as controls (n = 4). A distinct laminar and neuronal expression pattern of the α-subunit variants was found across the neocortical regions examined in the temporal and frontal lobes in both control and patient tissue samples. In the five patients with FLE, GABAA receptor subunit staining was unchanged as compared to controls. In patients with TLE we observed a marked decrease in α3-subunit staining in the superficial neocortical layers (I-III), but no change in the deep layers (V and VI) or in the expression pattern of the α1 and α2-subunits. Reduced expression in α3-containing GABAA receptors was detected in six out of nine patients of the HS group and four out of twelve patients of the non-HS group. Histopathological changes were present in eight out of the ten patients with decreased α3-subunit staining. The selective reduction in α3-containing GABAA receptors was confirmed using semiquantitative measurements of optical density (OD). The specific changes unique to α3-subunit expression in the superficial neocortical layers of patients with TLE suggest that this subtype is of particular significance in the reorganization of cortical GABAergic systems in focal epileps

In-Depth Global Analysis of Transcript Abundance Levels in Porcine Alveolar Macrophages Following Infection with Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is a major pathogen of swine worldwide and causes considerable economic loss. Identifying specific cell signaling or activation pathways that associate with variation in PRRSV replication and macrophage function may lead to identification of novel gene targets for the control of PRRSV infection. Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) was used to create and survey the transcriptome of in vitro mock-infected and PRRSV strain VR-2332-infected porcine alveolar macrophages (PAM) at 0, 6, 12, 16, and 24 hours after infection. The transcriptome data indicated changes in transcript abundance occurring in PRRSV-infected PAMs over time after infection with more than 590 unique tags with significantly altered transcript abundance levels identified (P < .01). Strikingly, innate immune genes (whose transcript abundances are typically altered in response to other pathogens or insults including IL-8, CCL4, and IL-1β) showed no or very little change at any time point following infection

Measurement of the solenoid magnetic field

We describe the machine used to map the solenoid field and the data sets that were collected. The bulk of the note describes the analysis of this data. A series of small corrections are made; some taken from surveys and some derived from the data itself. Two fitting methods are defined and applied to all data sets. The final result is that the field map at normal operating current can be fitted to a function that obeys Maxwell with an r.m.s. residual of less than 5 Gauss. Systematic errors on the measurement of track sagitta due to the field uncertainty are estimated to be in the range 2.3E-4 to 12E-4, depending on the track rapidity. Finally, the representation of the map in Athena is briefly described

Measurement of the ATLAS solenoid magnetic field

ATLAS is a general purpose detector designed to explore a wide range of physics at the Large Hadron Collider. At the centre of ATLAS is a tracking detector in a 2 T solenoidal magnetic field. This paper describes the machine built to map the field, the data analysis methods, the final results, and their estimated uncertainties. The remotely controlled mapping machine used pneumatic motors with feedback from optical encoders to scan an array of Hall probes over the field volume and log data at more than 20 000 points in a few hours. The data were analysed, making full use of the physical constraints on the field and of our knowledge of the solenoid coil geometry. After a series of small corrections derived from the data itself, the resulting maps were fitted with a function obeying Maxwell's equations. The fit residuals had an r.m.s. less than 0.5 mT and the systematic error on the measurement of track sagitta due to the field uncertainty was estimated to be in the range 0.02 % to 0.12 % depending on the track rapidity

Absence of 2009 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza A Virus in Fresh Pork

The emergence of the pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza A virus in humans and subsequent discovery that it was of swine influenza virus lineages raised concern over the safety of pork. Pigs experimentally infected with pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza A virus developed respiratory disease; however, there was no evidence for systemic disease to suggest that pork from pigs infected with H1N1 influenza would contain infectious virus. These findings support the WHO recommendation that pork harvested from pandemic influenza A H1N1 infected swine is safe to consume when following standard meat hygiene practices