Hypoxia Disruption of Vertebrate CNS Pathfinding through EphrinB2 Is Rescued by Magnesium

The mechanisms of hypoxic injury to the developing human brain are poorly understood, despite being a major cause of chronic neurodevelopmental impairments. Recent work in the invertebrate Caenorhabditis elegans has shown that hypoxia causes discrete axon pathfinding errors in certain interneurons and motorneurons. However, it is unknown whether developmental hypoxia would have similar effects in a vertebrate nervous system. We have found that developmental hypoxic injury disrupts pathfinding of forebrain neurons in zebrafish (Danio rerio), leading to errors in which commissural axons fail to cross the midline. The pathfinding defects result from activation of the hypoxia-inducible transcription factor (hif1) pathway and are mimicked by chemical inducers of the hif1 pathway or by expression of constitutively active hif1α. Further, we found that blocking transcriptional activation by hif1α helped prevent the guidance defects. We identified ephrinB2a as a target of hif1 pathway activation, showed that knock-down of ephrinB2a rescued the guidance errors, and showed that the receptor ephA4a is expressed in a pattern complementary to the misrouting axons. By targeting a constitutively active form of ephrinB2a to specific neurons, we found that ephrinB2a mediates the pathfinding errors via a reverse-signaling mechanism. Finally, magnesium sulfate, used to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes in preterm births, protects against pathfinding errors by preventing upregulation of ephrinB2a. These results demonstrate that evolutionarily conserved genetic pathways regulate connectivity changes in the CNS in response to hypoxia, and they support a potential neuroprotective role for magnesium

Austria-Ungari okupatsioonivõim Vene-Poolas I maailmasõja ajal (1915–1918) [Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Russian Poland (the Kingdom of Poland) during the First World War (1915–1918)]

The task of the Austro-Hungarian occupation authorities in the Polish lands, which belonged to Russia until World War I, was to carry out the military functions in the rear area as the territory behind the front and not only to reduce the overall military burden but rather that Poland would make an active contribution – a task which required winning over the hearts and minds of the people.(Longer version of the abstract in English is included in the article, starting from p 74.

Appartenances nationales et sentiments de loyauté dans l’armée austro-hongroise de 1868 à 1914

L’empire des Habsbourg se transforma en 1867 en deux États, l’Autriche et la Hongrie, qui n’avaient plus en commun que la politique extérieure, les finances et – ce qui nous intéresse ici – le ministère impérial de la Guerre (Reichskriegsministerium) et l’armée impériale et royale (kaiserlich und königlich). Cette dernière surtout fut considérée comme le symbole de l’unité de la double monarchie. Elle était effectivement la seule institution présente partout dans l’Empire où elle fonctionnait..

Language diversity and loyalty in the Habsburg army, 1868-1918

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den Sprachenregelungen in der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee (1868-1918). Insgesamt wurden rund 12 Sprachen anerkannt und die Soldaten hatten das Recht in ihrer Sprache ihren Wehrdienst abzuleisten. Der erste Teil behandelt die rechtlichen Regelungen für die Umsetzung der Sprachenrechte der Bevölkerung sowie ihren Einschränkungen. Teil 2 behandelt die Auswirkungen auf Offiziere, Unteroffiziere und Soldaten. Teil 3 fragt nach der Debatte und Kritik im öffentlichen Raum, v.a. den Parlamenten und Zeitungen, sowie der Umsetzung der Regelungen in den Garnisonen. Teil 4 widmet sich dem Ersten Weltkrieg

The Ban Jelačić Trust for Disabled Soldiers and Their Families: Habsburg Dynastic Loyalty beyond National Boundaries, 1849–51

It is fitting that a story about charitable donations and their provenance should begin with a gesture of gift giving. In 1849 a group of Habsburg subjects came together with the intention of raising money to purchase a gift for Josip Jelačić, general of the Habsburg army and Ban (Governor) of Civil Croatia. Jelačić was identified as one of the notional “saviors” of the Habsburg Empire, whose actions in the field had helped quell the revolutionary and military perils of the previous months. The proposed gift was a suitable symbol of imperial honor and military prowess: a ceremonial sabre designed especially for the Ban. Jelačić was apparently moved by the gesture but had a more practical idea: better to use the money raised for his gift to help those less fortunate (and less celebrated) than himself, it should be put toward a fund to support soldiers who had served in his units and militias and who had been injured in fighting—and also to the families of those that had been killed. To this end, a committee was already operating, based in Vienna, but collecting funds through the Ban’s Council (Bansko Vijeće) in Zagreb. This would become a mobilization of Habsburg society whose impetus rested on precisely the same values of dynastic loyalty and respect for the Habsburg military as the ceremonial sabre, except that many more people would have a chance to show their devotion and support to the “heroes” of 1848–49

Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire: Foreword from the Editors

The Habsburg Empire often features in scholarship as a historical example of how language diversity and linguistic competence were essential to the functioning of the imperial state. Focusing critically on the urban-rural divide, on the importance of status for multilingual competence, on local governments, schools, the army and the urban public sphere, and on linguistic policies and practices in transition, this collective volume provides further evidence for both the merits of how language diversity was managed in Austria-Hungary and the problems and contradictions that surrounded those practices. The book includes contributions by Pieter M. Judson, Marta Verginella, Rok Stergar, Anamarija Lukić, Carl Bethke, Irina Marin, Ágoston Berecz, Csilla Fedinec, István Csernicskó, Matthäus Wehowski, Jan Fellerer, and Jeroen van Drunen

Soldats d’entre-deux

Originaires d’espaces frontaliers ou membres d’un groupe national sans État, les soldats « d’entre-deux » se trouvent dans un conflit potentiel de loyauté vis-à-vis de leur État souverain, surtout quand celui-ci exige une fidélité exclusive à partir de l’entrée en guerre en 1914. Comment agissent ceux des Empires multinationaux allemand et austro-hongrois au cours de la Première Guerre mondiale ? Leur comportement anticipe-t-il la fondation d’États nationaux en Europe centrale après 1918 ou, au contraire, témoigne-t-il de leur sens du devoir à l’égard de l’autorité légitime ? En étudiant comment s’ordonnent des appartenances multiples dans les ego-documents produits par des soldats de la troupe ou des gradés, cet ouvrage restitue la complexité et l’hétérogénéité des armées centrales, de l’Alsace à la Galicie, en passant par l’Italie. Si la plupart des hommes furent loyaux à leur Empire, cette loyauté reposait sur des conceptions parfois antagonistes, voire des attentes pour l’après-guerre, et leurs témoignages révèlent des expériences particulières de la Grande Guerre – des particularités longtemps tues à l’est de l’Europe et méconnues à l’ouest