Art. X.— Supplement to the Paper on Indian Theistic Reformers, published in the January Number of this Journal

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XMM-Newton Observations Reveal Very High X-ray Luminosity from the Carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet Star WR 48a

We present XMM-Newton observations of the dusty Wolf-Rayet star WR 48a. This is the first detection of this object in X-rays. The XMM-Newton EPIC spectra are heavily absorbed and the presence of numerous strong emission lines indicates a thermal origin of the WR 48a X-ray emission, with dominant temperature components at kT_cool approx. 1 keV and kT_hot approx. 3~keV, the hotter component dominating the observed flux. No significant X-ray variability was detected on time scales < 1 day. Although the distance to WR 48a is uncertain, if it is physically associated with the open clusters Danks 1 and 2 at d ~ 4 kpc, then the resultant X-ray luminosity L_X ~ 10^(35) ergs/s makes it the most X-ray luminous Wolf-Rayet star in the Galaxy detected so far, after the black-hole candidate Cyg X-3. We assume the following scenarios as the most likely explanation for the X-ray properties of WR 48a: (1) colliding stellar winds in a wide WR+O binary system, or in a hierarchical triple system with non-degenerate stellar components; (2) accretion shocks from the WR 48a wind onto a close companion (possibly a neutron star). More specific information about WR48a and its wind properties will be needed to distinguish between the above possibilities.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letter

False friends in the Fanfanyu

In the present article, a remarkable phenomenon is brought to the attention of those interested in early Chinese translations of Buddhist texts: false friends in the Fanfanyu (T54n2130). Baochang's Sanskrit-Chinese lexicon that was compiled as early as 517 AD reveals some curious examples of faux amis. In the present contribution, this case will be illustrated with references from the Shanjian lü piposha (T24n1462), a fifth century Chinese translation of the Samantapāsādikā, Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Pāli Vinaya. The fact that Baochang did not realise that this text was not translated from Sanskrit, inadvertently gave rise to some interesting jeux de mots

Alchemical Gold and the pursuit of the Mercurial Elixir: An analysis of two alchemical treatises from the Tibetan Buddhist Canon

This article focuses on the analysis of two Tibetan treatises on iatrochemistry, The Treatise on the Mercurial Elixir (Dngul chu grub pa’i bstan bcos) and the Compendium on the Transmutation into Gold (Gser ’gyur bstan bcos bsdus pa). These texts belong to the rasaśāstra genre that were translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by Orgyenpa Rinchenpel (O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal, 1229/30–1309) and integrated into the Tibetan Buddhist Canon of the Tengyur (Bstan ’gyur). The treatises deal with the processing of mercury, which is indispensable to convert metals into gold (gser ’gyur) and to accomplish the ‘mercurial elixir’ (dngul chu’i bcud len). The texts start with the description of a ‘pink-coloured’ (dmar skya mdog) compound, which is described as the amalgam of ‘moonlight-exposed tin’ (gsha’ tshe zla ba phyogs), gold, and copper. According to the texts, mercury has to be ‘amalgamated’ (sbyor ba) with ‘minerals that devour its poisons’ (za byed khams) and with ‘eight metals that bind it’ (’ching khams brgyad); at the same time, mercury is cooked with ‘red substances’ (dmar sde tshan) and other herbal extracts, types of urine and salts, and reduced to ashes. Starting with an outline of the earliest Tibetan medical sources on mercury, I analyse the two treatises with regard to their entire materia alchemica and the respective purification methods aimed at ‘obtaining essences’ (snying stobs), which are then to be absorbed by mercury. I argue that the two thirteenth-century treatises were particularly significant in the process of consolidating pharmaceutical practices based on mercury and the merging of alchemical and medical knowledge in Tibet

Assessment of physiological conditions in E. coli fermentations by epifluorescent microscopy and image analysis

The development of monitoring methods for assessing the physiological state of microorganisms during recombinant fermentation processes has been encouraged by the need to evaluate the influence of processing conditions in recombinant protein production. In this work, a technique based on microscopy and image analysis was developed that allows the simultaneous quantification of parameters associated with viability and fluorescent protein production in recombinant Escherichia coli fermentations. Images obtained from light microscopy with phase contrast are used to assess the total number of cells in a given sample and, from epifluorescence microscopy, both protein producing and injured cells are evaluated using two different fluorochromes: propidium iodide and enhanced yellow fluorescent protein. This technique revealed the existence of different cell populations in the recombinant E. coli fermentation broth that were evaluated along four batch fermentations, complementing information obtained with standard techniques to study the effects of the temperature and induction time in recombinant protein production processes.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - POCI/BIO/60139/200

Calcitonin Response to Naturally Occurring Ionized Hypercalcemia in Cats with Chronic Kidney Disease.

BACKGROUND: Hypercalcemia is commonly associated with chronic kidney disease (CKD) in cats. OBJECTIVES: To explore the calcitonin response to naturally occurring ionized hypercalcemia in cats with azotemic CKD, and to assess the relationship of plasma calcitonin with ionized calcium, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and urinary calcium excretion. ANIMALS: Thirty-three client-owned cats with azotemic CKD and ionized hypercalcemia from first opinion practice. METHODS: Cohort study. Calcitonin was measured with an immunoradiometric assay in heparinized plasma. Simple correlations were assessed with Kendall's rank correlation, and the within-subject correlations of calcitonin with ionized calcium and other clinicopathological variables were calculated with a bivariate linear mixed effects model. RESULTS: Calcitonin concentrations above the lower limit of detection (>1.2 pg/mL; range, 1.7-87.2 pg/mL) were observed in 11 of 33 hypercalcemic cats (responders). Blood ionized calcium concentration did not differ significantly between responders (median, 1.59 [1.46, 1.66] mmol/L) and nonresponders (median, 1.48 [1.43, 1.65] mmol/L; P = 0.22). No evidence was found for calcitonin and ionized calcium to correlate between cats (τb  = 0.14; P = 0.31; n = 33), but significant positive correlation was evident within individual responders over time (within-subject correlation coefficient [rwithin ], 0.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.63-0.92). Calcitonin correlated negatively over time with plasma ALP (rwithin , -0.55; 95% CI, -0.79 to -0.16). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE: Calcitonin does not appear to have an important role in calcium metabolism in cats with CKD

Gifting cultures and artisanal guilds in sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century London

This article reconsiders the gift within London's sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century livery companies. Previous research into guild gift-giving cultures has focused exclusively upon substantial bequests of money and property by mercantile elites to the ‘great twelve’ livery companies. Through charitable gifts, citizens established godly reputations and legacies, perpetuated through the guild institution. It is argued here that a rich culture of material gift-giving, hitherto overlooked by historians, also thrived within London's craft guilds. Drawing on company gift books, inventories, and material survivals from guild collections, this article examines typologies of donors and gifts, the anticipated ‘returns’ on the gift by the recipient company, and the ideal spatial and temporal contexts for gift-giving. This material approach reveals that master artisans negotiated civic status, authority, and memory through the presentation of a wide range of gifted artefacts for display and ritual use in London's livery halls. Moreover, this culture of gift-giving was so deep-rooted and significant that it survived the Reformation upheavals largely intact. Finally, the embellishment of rituals of gifting, and the synchronization of gifting and feasting rites from the second half of the sixteenth century, are further evidence for the resurgence of English civic culture in this era

Transposing tirtha: Understanding religious reforms and locative piety in early modern Hinduism

The paper deals with a historical and hitherto obscure case of de-commercialisation of sacred geography of India. Sahajanand Swami, an eighteenth century religious leader from Gujarat who became popular as Bhagwan Swaminarayan took an initiative to eliminate corruption in Dwarka, one of the most sacred destination in Hindu imagination. He also attempted to transpose the piety of Dwarka and recreate a parallel religious experience at Vadtal, an important site in Swaminarayan Hinduism. This process of making sacred sites more egalitarian is classified here as a 'religious reform'. The paper assesses this bivalent pursuit as an institutional reform within religion as well as a religious process in the context of piety, authority and orthodoxy. Through the example of Sahajanand Swami, it is argued to calibrate the colonial paradigm of reform that was largely contextual to social issues and western thought and failed to appreciate the religious reforms of that era. By constructing a nuanced typology of 'religious reform' distinct from 'social reforms', the paper eventually calls for a reassessment of religious figures who have significantly contributed in reforming the Hindu tradition in the medieval and modern era

How 'dynasty' became a modern global concept : intellectual histories of sovereignty and property

The modern concept of ‘dynasty’ is a politically-motivated modern intellectual invention. For many advocates of a strong sovereign nation-state across the nineteenth and early twentieth century, in France, Germany, and Japan, the concept helped in visualizing the nation-state as a primordial entity sealed by the continuity of birth and blood, indeed by the perpetuity of sovereignty. Hegel’s references to ‘dynasty’, read with Marx’s critique, further show how ‘dynasty’ encoded the intersection of sovereignty and big property, indeed the coming into self-consciousness of their mutual identification-in-difference in the age of capitalism. Imaginaries about ‘dynasty’ also connected national sovereignty with patriarchal authority. European colonialism helped globalize the concept in the non-European world; British India offers an exemplar of ensuing debates. The globalization of the abstraction of ‘dynasty’ was ultimately bound to the globalization of capitalist-colonial infrastructures of production, circulation, violence, and exploitation. Simultaneously, colonized actors, like Indian peasant/‘tribal’ populations, brought to play alternate precolonial Indian-origin concepts of collective regality, expressed through terms like ‘rajavamshi’ and ‘Kshatriya’. These concepts nourished new forms of democracy in modern India. Global intellectual histories can thus expand political thought today by provincializing and deconstructing Eurocentric political vocabularies and by recuperating subaltern models of collective and polyarchic power.PostprintPeer reviewe

Karma, morality, and evil

The doctrine of karma has been praised as a rational and morally edifying explanatory response to the existence of evil and apparent injustice in the world. Critics have attacked it as a morally misguided dogma that distorts one's vision of reality. This essay, after outlining the traditional doctrine, examines three criticisms that have been central to recent debates: firstly, that the doctrine offers no practical guidance; second, that it faces a dilemma between free will and fatalism; and third, that it involves a morally repugnant form of blaming victims for their own misfortunes. Possible responses are considered, the depth of the disagreement is highlighted, and a morally significant difference between alternative ways of articulating the belief in karma is analyzed