Between Qasbas and Cities: Language Shifts and Literary Continuities in North India in the Long Eighteenth Century

The cultural memory of Awadh is almost exclusively identified with Urdu poetry and courtesan culture, and already in the colonial period it came to stand as the epitome of the “last phase of Oriental culture” (‘Abdul Halim Sharar). But if instead of taking a retrospective, nostalgic view we approach literary culture in Awadh prospectively and multilingually and broaden our lens to consider not just the capitals, Faizabad and Lucknow, but also the qasbas (small towns), the small rural courts, the nearby growing city of Banaras, and the colonial capital of Calcutta, a different set of literary dynamics and shifts comes into view. The prevalent image of Awadh as identified with Urdu and Lucknow is not wrong, of course, but it does obscure the other stories, trajectories, and languages. This essay considers some of them. A multilingual and prospective approach helps us consider the circulation of literary tastes across the colonial divide and recognize the production of forgetfulness and ignorance that accompanied modern narratives of languages and literary histories, both colonial and Indian, and that made a host of texts “homeless” (Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi)

Formation and interactions of cold and ultracold molecules: new challenges for interdisciplinary physics

Progress on researches in the field of molecules at cold and ultracold temperatures is reported in this review. It covers extensively the experimental methods to produce, detect and characterize cold and ultracold molecules including association of ultracold atoms, deceleration by external fields and kinematic cooling. Confinement of molecules in different kinds of traps is also discussed. The basic theoretical issues related to the knowledge of the molecular structure, the atom-molecule and molecule-molecule mutual interactions, and to their possible manipulation and control with external fields, are reviewed. A short discussion on the broad area of applications completes the review.Comment: to appear in Reports on Progress in Physic

Highly conserved elements discovered in vertebrates are present in non-syntenic loci of tunicates, act as enhancers and can be transcribed during development

Co-option of cis-regulatory modules has been suggested as a mechanism for the evolution of expression sites during development. However, the extent and mechanisms involved in mobilization of cisregulatory modules remains elusive. To trace the history of non-coding elements, which may represent candidate ancestral cis-regulatory modules affirmed during chordate evolution, we have searched for conserved elements in tunicate and vertebrate (Olfactores) genomes. We identified, for the first time, 183 non-coding sequences that are highly conserved between the two groups. Our results show that all but one element are conserved in non-syntenic regions between vertebrate and tunicate genomes, while being syntenic among vertebrates. Nevertheless, in all the groups, they are significantly associated with transcription factors showing specific functions fundamental to animal development, such as multicellular organism development and sequence-specific DNA binding. The majority of these regions map onto ultraconserved elements and we demonstrate that they can act as functional enhancers within the organism of origin, as well as in cross-transgenesis experiments, and that they are transcribed in extant species of Olfactores. We refer to the elements as 'Olfactores conserved non-coding elements'. \uc2\ua9 The Author(s) 2013. Published by Oxford University Press

First description of a fossil chamaeleonid from Greece and its relevance for the European biogeographic history of the group

The fossil record of Chamaeleonidae is very scarce and any new specimen is therefore considered important for our understanding of the evolutionary and biogeographic history of the group. New specimens from the early Miocene of Aliveri (Evia Island), Greece constitute the only fossils of these lizards from southeastern Europe. Skull roofing material is tentatively attributed to the Czech species Chamaeleo cf. andrusovi, revealing a range extension for this taxon, whereas tooth-bearing elements are described as indeterminate chamaeleonids. The Aliveri fossils rank well among the oldest known reptiles from Greece, provide evidence for the dispersal routes of chameleons out of Africa towards the European continent and, additionally, imply strong affinities with coeval chamaeleonids from Central Europe

Wheat receptor-kinase-like protein Stb6 controls gene-for-gene resistance to fungal pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici

Deployment of fast-evolving disease-resistance genes is one of the most successful strategies used by plants to fend off pathogens. In gene-for-gene relationships, most cloned disease-resistance genes encode intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich-repeat proteins (NLRs) recognizing pathogensecreted isolate-specific avirulence (Avr) effectors delivered to the host cytoplasm. This process often triggers a localized hypersensitive response, which halts further disease development. Here we report the map-based cloning of the wheat Stb6 gene and demonstrate that it encodes a conserved wallassociated receptor kinase (WAK)-like protein, which detects the presence of a matching apoplastic effector and confers pathogen resistance without a hypersensitive response. This report demonstrates gene-for-gene disease resistance controlled by this class of proteins in plants. Moreover, Stb6 is, to our knowledge, the first cloned gene specifying resistance to Zymoseptoria tritici, an important foliar fungal pathogen affecting wheat and causing economically damaging septoria tritici blotch (STB) disease

Correlational structure of ‘frontal’ tests and intelligence tests indicates two components with asymmetrical neurostructural correlates in old age

AbstractBoth general fluid intelligence (gf) and performance on some ‘frontal tests’ of cognition decline with age. Both types of ability are at least partially dependent on the integrity of the frontal lobes, which also deteriorate with age. Overlap between these two methods of assessing complex cognition in older age remains unclear. Such overlap could be investigated using inter-test correlations alone, as in previous studies, but this would be enhanced by ascertaining whether frontal test performance and gf share neurobiological variance. To this end, we examined relationships between gf and 6 frontal tests (Tower, Self-Ordered Pointing, Simon, Moral Dilemmas, Reversal Learning and Faux Pas tests) in 90 healthy males, aged ~73years. We interpreted their correlational structure using principal component analysis, and in relation to MRI-derived regional frontal lobe volumes (relative to maximal healthy brain size). gf correlated significantly and positively (.24≤r≤.53) with the majority of frontal test scores. Some frontal test scores also exhibited shared variance after controlling for gf. Principal component analysis of test scores identified units of gf-common and gf-independent variance. The former was associated with variance in the left dorsolateral (DL) and anterior cingulate (AC) regions, and the latter with variance in the right DL and AC regions. Thus, we identify two biologically-meaningful components of variance in complex cognitive performance in older age and suggest that age-related changes to DL and AC have the greatest cognitive impact