An aspect of the object habit: Pliny the Elder, audience and politics

This paper looks at an aspect of the ‘object habit’ by considering the motivations behind an ancient technical text, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. The text is an ‘encyclopaedia’ of knowledge covering a vast range of subjects and approaches by studying objects including things found in nature and worked by man. For Pliny, these phenomena shared enough to be considered together while presenting an inventory of the resources in the Roman world and thus controlled by the emperor Titus (AD 79–81), to whom the work is addressed. The collection of knowledge for Pliny is a political act. The Natural History’s collapse of distinctions between objects, animate or inanimate, worked by man or in a natural state, as well as its insistence on political motivations for collecting objects and knowledge, serve as starting place for considering the ‘object habit’ and the impact of politics on collecting. Two examples are discussed: a Benin ‘bronze’ at a Cambridge college, and three giraffes gifted to the superpowers of nineteenth-century Europe

Home Rule: An Essay on Pluralism

Home rule can be viewed as a metaphor for the policies of decentralization and diffusion of power. This Essay aims to rediscover some of the deep historical roots of the policy and practice of local self-government. The Essay also explores some of the ways in which local autonomy can be reimagined in contemporary contexts

Book Reviews

CONSTITUTIONAL BRICOLAGE. By Gerald Garvey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. Pp. xi, 160. 7.50. and ANTHROPOLOGY OF LAW. By Leopold Pospisil. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971. Pp. xiii, 385. 12.95

Margaret Libonati Leahy

Dr. Libonati wanted to be a physician from an early age, but she knew that she could not afford to attend college right after high school so she decided to attend nursing school with plans to work her way through college and then medical school. After graduating from St. Joseph’s Nursing School she enrolled as a chemistry major in the Chestnut Hill College Pre-Med program. At the end of her second year she learned that Jefferson Medical College was planning to accept women for the first time. She soon became one of the first women in Jefferson’s Class of 1965. After graduating from Jefferson Dr. Libonati had a rotating internship at Philadelphia General Hospital and then a two year residency in Anesthesia as part of the PGH-Penn program. She then accepted a clinical fellowship in London where she worked at St. Thomas Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital in Pediatrics. After returning to the United States she began a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Colorado. In 1972 Dr. Libonati moved back to Philadelphia to work first at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital as an Assistant Professor and then at Wills Eye Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/oral_histories/1005/thumbnail.jp

Studio del comportamento meccanico dell'osso corticale

Questo lavoro è incentrato sullo studio del comportamento meccanico dell’osso, ed in particolare a frattura, al fine di individuare elementi chiave della struttura ossea da riprodurre in un materiale bio-ispirato ex novo. L’osso è generalmente considerato un composito, caratterizzato da una struttura gerarchica a più livelli, dove ogni componente gioca un ruolo fondamentale nel determinare la risposta meccanica. Pertanto, per poter riprodurre le sue caratteristiche è necessario studiare attentamente la struttura e come questa influenza le performance finali. In questo lavoro sono state eseguite prove sperimentali su provini di osso corticale, prelevati dalla diafisi di un femore bovino. I campioni sono stati adeguatamente conservati in soluzione salina al fine di preservare le caratteristiche del materiale, intrinsecamente legate alla sua igroscopicità. Le prove sono state eseguite in accordo alle normative ASTM per materiali metallici e plastici, seguendo l’approccio più comunemente usato in letteratura. I risultati ottenuti dalle prove trovano riscontro con quanto presente in letteratura. Particolarmente utili ai fini dello studio del legame tra struttura e proprietà sono risultate le osservazioni al microscopio, che hanno consentito di individuare i vari componenti microstrutturali e i meccanismi di danneggiamento del materiale stesso