The armour of the common soldier in the late middle ages. Harnischrödel as sources for the history of urban martial culture

The designation Harnischrödel (rolls of armour) lumps together different kinds of urban inventories. They list the names of citizens and inhabitants together with the armour they owned, were compelled to acquire within their civic obligations, or were obliged to lend to able-bodied men. This contribution systematically introduces Harnischrödel of the 14th and 15th c. as important sources for the history of urban martial culture. On the basis of lists preserved in the archives of Swiss towns, it concentrates on information pertaining to the type and quality of an average urban soldier’s gear. Although the results of this analysis are only preliminary – at this point, it is not possible to produce methodologically sound statistics –, the value of the lists as sources is readily evident, as only a smattering of the once massive quantity of actual objects has survived down to the present time

A second generation genetic map of the bumblebee Bombus terrestris (Linnaeus, 1758) reveals slow genome and chromosome evolution in the Apidae.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: The bumblebee Bombus terrestris is an ecologically and economically important pollinator and has become an important biological model system. To study fundamental evolutionary questions at the genomic level, a high resolution genetic linkage map is an essential tool for analyses ranging from quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping to genome assembly and comparative genomics. We here present a saturated linkage map and match it with the Apis mellifera genome using homologous markers. This genome-wide comparison allows insights into structural conservations and rearrangements and thus the evolution on a chromosomal level. RESULTS: The high density linkage map covers ~ 93% of the B. terrestris genome on 18 linkage groups (LGs) and has a length of 2'047 cM with an average marker distance of 4.02 cM. Based on a genome size of ~ 430 Mb, the recombination rate estimate is 4.76 cM/Mb. Sequence homologies of 242 homologous markers allowed to match 15 B. terrestris with A. mellifera LGs, five of them as composites. Comparing marker orders between both genomes we detect over 14% of the genome to be organized in synteny and 21% in rearranged blocks on the same homologous LG. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that, despite the very high recombination rates of both A. mellifera and B. terrestris and a long divergence time of about 100 million years, the genomes' genetic architecture is highly conserved. This reflects a slow genome evolution in these bees. We show that data on genome organization and conserved molecular markers can be used as a powerful tool for comparative genomics and evolutionary studies, opening up new avenues of research in the Apidae

The class of algebraically closed p-semilattices is finitely axiomatizable

We prove our title, and thereby establish the base for a positive solution of Albert and Burris' problem on the finite axiomatizability of the model companion of the class of all pseudocomplemented semilattice

Molecular control of endurance training adaptation in male mouse skeletal muscle

Skeletal muscle has an enormous plastic potential to adapt to various external and internal perturbations. Although morphological changes in endurance-trained muscles are well described, the molecular underpinnings of training adaptation are poorly understood. We therefore aimed to elucidate the molecular signature of muscles of trained male mice and unravel the training status-dependent responses to an acute bout of exercise. Our results reveal that, even though at baseline an unexpectedly low number of genes define the trained muscle, training status substantially affects the transcriptional response to an acute challenge, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in part associated with epigenetic modifications. Finally, transiently activated factors such as the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ coactivator 1α are indispensable for normal training adaptation. Together, these results provide a molecular framework of the temporal and training status-dependent exercise response that underpins muscle plasticity in training