Blazoning Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene is a significant figure in the Christian world, largely due to her unique relationship with Christ. As a woman and a reformed prostitute, the Magdalene is an unlikely friend to the son of God. However, despite her low social status and sinful past, Mary is featured in all four Gospels and is present at several crucial moments in Christ’s life and death: she anoints his feet as a sign of humbleness, witnesses his crucifixion and is the first to see his resurrection, after which she leaves society to lead a contemplative life in the desert. As patron saint of repentant sinners and the contemplative life, Mary Magdalene was an aspirational figure in late medieval piety, and the subject of many religious paintings and statues. There were Magdalene cults in Europe from as early as the sixth century, with interest at its peak in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries (Jansen, 18-48). Consequently, accounts of Mary’s life took on an almost mythical quality, with apocryphal texts such as Jacobus de Voraigne’s influential The Golden Legend drawing together the stories of several biblical women. This is evident in the Digby manuscript Magdalene play written around 1490-1530, which conflates Mary as the apostle of the Apostles, with Mary sister of Martha and the woman who has devils exorcised from her by Christ. As well as using scriptural references, the Digby Magdalene also draws heavily on Jacobus to create a narrative of the Magdalene’s entire life

Blazoning Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene is a significant figure in the Christian world, largely due to her unique relationship with Christ. As a woman and a reformed prostitute, the Magdalene is an unlikely friend to the son of God. However, despite her low social status and sinful past, Mary is featured in all four Gospels and is present at several crucial moments in Christ’s life and death: she anoints his feet as a sign of humbleness, witnesses his crucifixion and is the first to see his resurrection, after which she leaves society to lead a contemplative life in the desert. As patron saint of repentant sinners and the contemplative life, Mary Magdalene was an aspirational figure in late medieval piety, and the subject of many religious paintings and statues. There were Magdalene cults in Europe from as early as the sixth century, with interest at its peak in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries (Jansen, 18-48). Consequently, accounts of Mary’s life took on an almost mythical quality, with apocryphal texts such as Jacobus de Voraigne’s influential The Golden Legend drawing together the stories of several biblical women. This is evident in the Digby manuscript Magdalene play written around 1490-1530, which conflates Mary as the apostle of the Apostles, with Mary sister of Martha and the woman who has devils exorcised from her by Christ. As well as using scriptural references, the Digby Magdalene also draws heavily on Jacobus to create a narrative of the Magdalene’s entire life

Conjurer laureates: reading early modern magicians with Derrida

This thesis uses the philosophy of Jacques Derrida to propose a performative method of close reading, which it uses to explore the relationship between language and identity in early modern literary representations of magicians. It addresses the common assumptions we make about the authority and stability of language by exploring the tensions that arise as the magicians attempt to use performative language to realise impossible ambitions of absolute power, knowledge and self presence. The texts studied are a combination of prose and drama from 1512 to 1607. They are read in light of Derrida’s engagement with speech act theory in ‘Signature Event Context’ and ‘Limited Inc a b c . . .’ , and also other related work of his on the performative foundations of literature and the law, including ‘Before the Law’, ‘The Law of Genre’, and ‘Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundations’ of Authority’. The final chapter also takes in Aporias. The magicians’ trajectories are followed in three chapters. The first is on the founding violences of their authoritative identities. Working with Derrida’s accounts of the law, it begins by describing how the foundation of authority is self-authorizing and therefore performative. It then explores how performative pacts, deals and contracts with the devil are used to establish and authorize the magicians and their supernatural worlds. This metatextual authority is reflected in the magician’s own ambitions for the certainty and stability of absolute power and knowledge. Using the early modern sense of ‘perform’ as to complete, carry out or make something, the second chapter focuses upon materiality and embodiment as attempts to stabilise or fix performative utterances. Fake suicide notes and contracts written in blood are analysed to demonstrate the slip and drift equally at work in the structures of writing and signatures. In addition, Friar Bacon’s enormous brass head with its promise of ‘sound aphorisms’ is discussed as an alternative example of the misinformed urge to embody certainty. The final chapter addresses why almost all the stories of magicians, good and bad, end with their deaths. Following Derrida’s Aporias, death is represented as the ultimate opening limit, which undermines all attempts at certainty and self-presence. This leads to discussion of the other’s role in identity and, it follows, death. The magicians’ ends are compared, with particular focus on the sense of a coming event in the final scene of Doctor Faustus. The use of Derrida’s work to engage with early modern texts responds to a significant gap in the field. It offers original, contemporary insight into traditional themes of power, language and identity that are usually approached from a historicist perspective. The critical-creative close reading describes and carries out by the thesis suggests an exciting way to performatively respond to literature of the past, bearing witness to it but also transforming it into something new

Maternal fructose and/or salt intake and reproductive outcome in the rat: effects on growth, fertility, sex ratio, and birth order

Maternal diet can significantly skew the secondary sex ratio away from the expected value of 0.5 (proportion males), but the details of how diet may do this are unclear. Here, we altered dietary levels of salt (4% salt in the feed) and/or fructose (10% in the drinking water) of pregnant rats to model potential effects that consumption of a "Western diet" might have on maternofetal growth, development, and sex ratio. We demonstrate that excess fructose consumption before and during pregnancy lead to a marked skew in the secondary sex ratio (proportion of males, 0.60; P < 0.006). The effect was not mediated by selective developmental arrest of female embryos or influenced by fetal position in the uterine horn or sex-specific effects on sperm motility, suggesting a direct effect of glycolyzable monosaccharide on the maternal ovary and/or ovulated oocyte. Furthermore, combined excess maternal consumption of salt and fructose-sweetened beverage significantly reduced fertility, reflected as a 50% reduction in preimplantation and term litter size. In addition, we also noted birth order effects in the rat, with sequential implantation sites tending to be occupied by the same sex

β-Glucan is a major growth substrate for human gut bacteria related to Coprococcus eutactus

A clone encoding carboxymethyl cellulase activity was isolated during functional screening of a human gut metagenomic library using Lactococcus lactis MG1363 as heterologous host. The insert carried a glycoside hydrolase family 9 (GH9) catalytic domain with sequence similarity to a gene from Coprococcus eutactus ART55/1. Genome surveys indicated a limited distribution of GH9 domains among dominant human colonic anaerobes. Genomes of C. eutactus-related strains harboured two GH9-encoding and four GH5-encoding genes, but the strains did not appear to degrade cellulose. Instead, they grew well on β-glucans and one of the strains also grew on galactomannan, galactan, glucomannan and starch. Coprococcus comes and Coprococcus catus strains did not harbour GH9 genes and were not able to grow on β-glucans. Gene expression and proteomic analysis of C. eutactus ART55/1 grown on cellobiose, β-glucan and lichenan revealed similar changes in expression in comparison to glucose. On β-glucan and lichenan only, one of the four GH5 genes was strongly upregulated. Growth on glucomannan led to a transcriptional response of many genes, in particular a strong upregulation of glycoside hydrolases involved in mannan degradation. Thus, β-glucans are a major growth substrate for species related to C. eutactus, with glucomannan and galactans alternative substrates for some strains

In human autoimmunity, a substantial component of the B cell repertoire consists of polyclonal, barely mutated IgG+ve B cells

B cells are critical for promoting autoimmunity and the success of B cell depletion therapy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) confirms their importance in driving chronic inflammation. Whilst disease specific autoantibodies are useful diagnostically, our understanding of the pathogenic B cell repertoire remains unclear. Defining it would lead to novel insights and curative treatments. To address this, we have undertaken the largest study to date of over 150 RA patients, utilizing next generation sequencing (NGS) to analyze up to 200,000 BCR sequences per patient. The full-length antigen-binding variable region of the heavy chain (IgGHV) of the IgG B cell receptor (BCR) were sequenced. Surprisingly, RA patients do not express particular clonal expansions of B cells at diagnosis. Rather they express a polyclonal IgG repertoire with a significant increase in BCRs that have barely mutated away from the germline sequence. This pattern remains even after commencing disease modifying therapy. These hypomutated BCRs are expressed by TNF-alpha secreting IgG+veCD27−ve B cells, that are expanded in RA peripheral blood and enriched in the rheumatoid synovium. A similar B cell repertoire is expressed by patients with Sjögren's syndrome. A rate limiting step in the initiation of autoimmunity is the activation of B cells and this data reveals that a sizeable component of the human autoimmune B cell repertoire consists of polyclonal, hypomutated IgG+ve B cells, that may play a critical role in driving chronic inflammation

Motor complications in Parkinson's disease: 13-year follow-up of the CamPaIGN cohort.

BACKGROUND: Long-term population-representative data on motor fluctuations and levodopa-induced dyskinesias in Parkinson's disease is lacking. METHODS: The Cambridgeshire Parkinson's Incidence from GP to Neurologist (CamPaIGN) cohort comprises incident PD cases followed for up to 13 years (n = 141). Cumulative incidence of motor fluctuations and levodopa-induced dyskinesias and risk factors were assessed using Kaplan-Meyer and Cox regression analyses. RESULTS: Cumulative incidence of motor fluctuations and levodopa-induced dyskinesias was 54.3% and 14.5%, respectively, at 5 years and 100% and 55.7%, respectively, at 10 years. Higher baseline UPDRS-total and SNCA rs356219(A) predicted motor fluctuations, whereas higher baseline Mini-mental State Examination and GBA mutations predicted levodopa-induced dyskinesias. Early levodopa use did not predict motor complications. Both early motor fluctuations and levodopa-induced dyskinesias predicted reduced mortality in older patients (age at diagnosis >70 years). CONCLUSIONS: Our data support the hypothesis that motor complications are related to the severity of nigrostriatal pathology rather than early levodopa use and indicate that early motor complications do not necessarily confer a negative prognosis. © 2019 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2013-R1A1A2010499). CWG is supported by a Medical Research Council Clinician Scientist Fellowship. The CamPaIGN study was supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council, the Patrick Berthoud Trust, and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre Dementia and Neurodegeneration Theme (Grant Reference Number 146281). RAB is an NIHR Senior Investigator

Experimental determination of reflectance spectra of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) in the Scotia Sea

Antarctic krill are the dominant metazoan in the Southern Ocean in terms of biomass; however, their wide and patchy distribution means that estimates of their biomass are still uncertain. Most currently employed methods do not sample the upper surface layers, yet historical records indicate that large surface swarms can change the water colour. Ocean colour satellites are able to measure the surface ocean synoptically and should theoretically provide a means for detecting and measuring surface krill swarms. Before we can assess the feasibility of remote detection, more must be known about the reflectance spectra of krill. Here, we measure the reflectance spectral signature of Antarctic krill collected in situ from the Scotia Sea and compare it to that of in situ water. Using a spectroradiometer, we measure a strong absorption feature between 500 and 550 nm, which corresponds to the pigment astaxanthin, and high reflectance in the 600–700 nm range due to the krill's red colouration. We find that the spectra of seawater containing krill is significantly different from seawater only. We conclude that it is tractable to detect high-density swarms of krill remotely using platforms such as optical satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles, and further steps to carry out ground-truthing campaigns are now warranted