Retelling the Future: Don Juan Manuel's "Exenplo XI" and the Power of Fiction

In this paper I look at how “Exenplo XI” is both product and reflection of the various traditions and cultures of medieval Iberia and how Juan Manuel forges a new version of this story from these inherited traditions in order to showcase problems of concern to his fourteenth-century audience, namely, the tension between ecclesiastical and Andalusi systems of thought and their representatives and how the author’s manipulation of the frame and the power of fiction itself echoes Don Yllán’s manipulation of magic to test the dean’s mettle. Then I turn to the lessons of “Exenplo XI” regarding the transmission of knowledge and who controls it, as well as the function of speculative fiction and its ability to explore alternative realities and potential futures for both fictional audience (Conde Lucanor) and contemporary twenty-first-century readers

The level of provision of specialist palliative care services in Scotland: an international benchmarking study

Objectives: Comparative benchmarking of specialist palliative care (SPC) services across jurisdictions can be used to assess the adequacy of provision. Published in 2016, the Scottish Atlas of Palliative Care unlocks the possibility of benchmarking Scotland’s provision against other European Union (EU) countries. Our objectives were to describe the provision of SPC services in Scotland and compare this with other EU countries, assessing coverage against European norms. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of data collected as part for the Scottish Atlas by structured telephone (n=33) or online (n=3) survey with informants from 14 territorial health boards and 15 hospices who provided information about SPC services in their locality. National-level Scottish data were compared with data from other EU countries allowing ranking for each service type and service coverage as calculated against European Association for Palliative Care norms. Results: Scotland had a total of 23 SPC inpatient units containing 349 beds, 27 SPC hospital support teams and 38 SPC home care teams. Relative to other EU countries, Scotland ranked seventh for provision of SPC inpatient units and hospital support teams, and fifth for home care teams. Coverage for these services was 85%, 100% and 72%, respectively. Conclusion: Scotland is positioned among the top 10 EU countries for the level of provision of SPC services. National policy in Scotland has focused on the delivery of palliative care at home or in a homely setting. These data support a focus on developing services in community settings to meet Scotland’s policy ambitions

The Sephardic Past in the Digital Future

This study imagines a Sephardic archive not as a physical site that houses the artifacts, texts, and history of a nation-state or Empire, but one that allows us to access those objects (or exposes their absence) and to bring artifacts from different official archives into dialogue in a different, virtual space, thus creating an additional, but not exclusionary, epistemic home, namely that of Sephardic studies. In it the author explores the potential advantages and practical limitations, as well as existing models of transnational resources—such as the Friedberg Genizah Project and the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, as well as del Barco and Vegas Montaner’s project of cataloguing the Hebrew manuscripts in Spanish libraries—that could be considered when thinking of what form a Sephardic archive could take. This study also explores how issues of language and identity fare when translated into the metadata used to make digitized information available

Joseph ben Samuel Sarfati's «Tratado de Melibea y Calisto»: A Sephardic Jew's Reading of the Celestina in Light of the Medieval Judeo-Spanish Go-between Tradition

The introductory poem that the sixteenth-century Italian Jew, Samuel Ṣarfati, included with his now lost Hebrew translation of Fernando de Rojas' Spanish masterpiece La Celestina, mentions several elements foreign to Rojas work as we know it today. These include the image of the war of lovers, the description of women as the Angels of Death and as the Devil (Azazel), and the identification of sexual desire and religious assimilation. In my opinion these elements show that Ṣarfati had in mind two earlier works from the Judeo-Spanish go-between tradition, Minḥat Yehuda by Judah Ibn Šabbatay and the «Maqāma of Marriage» by Judah al- Harīzī. In both of these Hebrew works we find images similar to those used by Ṣarfati, as well as some strikingly similar formal and linguistic characteristics, all of which suggests that these two works were part of the historical-literary background of Ṣarfati (and, perhaps, Rojas himself).El poema que, en el siglo XVI, escribió el judío italiano Samuel Ṣarfati para introducir su traducción al hebreo de La Celestina, de Fernando de Rojas, hace referencia a unos elementos que no corresponden a los de la obra de F. de Rojas. Éstos incluyen la imagen de la batalla amorosa, la identificación de la mujer con el Ángel de la muerte y con el Diablo (Azazel) y la identificación de la asimilación religiosa con el deseo sexual, caracterizado por Ṣarfati como «el deseo gentil». En mi opinión, estos elementos encajan mejor con dos relatos de la tradición judeo-española de los siglos XIII-XIV, cuyo protagonista es una alcahueta, el Minḥat Yehuda de Judah Ibn Šabbatay y la «Maqāma del matrimonio» de Judah al-Harīzī. En ambas obras hebreas se encuentran semejanzas con el poema de Ṣarfati en términos de contenido y de forma. Estas semejanzas sugieren que estas obras eran parte del trasfondo histórico-literario en el que se situaba Ṣarfati (y quizás el mismo F. de Rojas)

Seeking after Empire: Bioarchaeologists and American Indians in the New Millennium

New and amended cultural resource laws are changing the academic and scientific landscape of North American bioarchaeology and archaeology. The passage of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990 was an important watershed event in the history of the discipline of biological anthropology, and the increasingly successful utilization of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act by federally recognized sovereign tribes is resulting in unanticipated legal restrictions on the scientific collection of bioarchaeological data from American Indian skeletal remains and mortuary site settings. The evolving relationships between bioarchaeologists and American Indians is examined in the context of understanding these implemented changes to both the discipline of biological and anthropology and the culture of modern American Indians, vis à vis the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. This study provides a historical perspective of this relationship, and challenges bioarchaeologists to adapt their approach to understanding these cultures by using new scientific paradigms drawing upon collaborative efforts with tribal communities

Oral pathology at Averbuch (40DV60) : implications for health status

An examination of the permanent dentition of 304 individuals from the Averbuch (40DV60) skeletal series from Tennessee was undertaken to establish a profile of oral pathology in this Mississippian period population. The variables chosen for study include caries, enamel hypoplasia, alveolar resorption, and periapical and periodontal abscesses. These markers were chosen as a measure of adaptive efficiency because they are indicative of overall levels of health and disease. The results of the study revealed caries rates at Averbuch at high percentages, showing 77% of the individuals from this skeletal sample had one or more carious lesions, surpassing the 17% average frequency rate for Mississippian groups. Results of the analysis of hypoplasias in the permanent adult dentition of the Averbuch sample also reveal high frequencies for this defect, with a total of 87% of the individuals possessing one or more hypoplasias. Alveolar resorption is in evidence in 39% of the individuals, while periapical and periodontal abscesses are present in 19% of the sample. These results show that the population from Averbuch was adaptively disadvantaged, and the heavy biological stress loads are recorded on the dental and oral hard tissues

Twitter Talk for National Council on Public History 2020

A talk created for a Twitter-based presentation at the National Council on Public History 2020

Jack Be Nimble and Jack Be Quick: Increasing Movement Competence in Early Childhood Settings

Increasingly, child caregivers have been tasked with assuring that young children are academically prepared for school. As a result, many childcare settings are focusing exclusively on academic content. The narrow curricular focus has resulted in the exclusion of offering physical activity and structured motor skill lessons. Consequently, many children do not receive adequate physical activity to maintain a healthy weight and lack movement competence to actively engage in physical activity with peers or thrive in academic settings. Providing young children with structured movement opportunities, including body management concepts and movement, fundamental motor skill instruction, and directed opportunities to learn fine motor skills, is critical to movement competence. Finally, it is important for early childhood researchers, caregivers, educators, and policy makers to understand the relationship of movement competence in early childhood to later movement and academic success

The relationship between plasmid presence, antibiotic resistance and surface structures in Bacteroides

One hundred and fifty -one Bacteroides isolates were collected from a variety of clinical samples (wound, swabs, vaginal swabs and blood cultures) and from the cervix of women attending a colposcopy clinic.A method for the isolation of plasmid DNA from Bacteroides species was developed and provided a simple and reproducible technique for the analysis of the plasmid content of the isolates. The strains were divided into three groups, the B. fragilis group, the melaninogenicus /oralis group and the asaccharolytic group. The incidence of plasmids in each group was determined.Forty per cent of the strains were found to have plasmids but there was great variation in the plasmid distribution within each group. Sixy -one percent of the B. fragilis strains had plasmids as opposed to 23% of the asaccharolytic Bacteroides, and 10% of the melaninogenicus /oralis strains. Plasmids ranging in size from 1.1 to 108 MegaDaltons (MDa) were detected but most of the plasmids were less than 10 MDa. Seventy -nine percent of the plasmid- containing strains had more than one plasmid.The susceptibility of the isolates to chloramphenicol, clindamycin, metronidazole, erythromycin, imipenem, moxalactam, cefoxitin, cefotetan, cefotaxime, cefuroxime, penicillin and nalidixic acid was investigated. Chloramphenicol was the most active non -beta -lactam antibiotic. Six percent of the strains were resistant to clindamycin and metronidazole resistance, though rare, was observed in 2% of the strains. Among the beta -lactam antibiotics, imipenem, though not in use in the United Kingdom was found to have excellent activity against the Bacteroides. Moxalactam and cefoxitin were also very active with less than 1% of the strains displaying resistance. Various levels of resistance, ranging from 4 to 50% were found amongst the three Bacteroides groups. There was evidence of species variation in antimicrobial susceptibility.Attempts were made to correlate plasmid presence with observed antibiotic resistance and capsule variation within the strains. Transferable macrolide -lincosamide -streptogramin (MLS) resistance determinants were not identified and observed MLS resistance could not be cured. However, a possible correlation was found between plasmid content and resistance to cefoxitin but plasmid content was not found to alter the resistance pattern of strains to nalidixic acid. Capsule variation was found to depend on altered gene expression and not on the presence or absence of plasmids