Supernatural or Material: Haunted Places in H.P. Lovecraft’s, M.R. James’s, A. Machen’s and A. Blackwood’s Horror Fiction

The horror story writers of the early 20th century presented various views on the surrounding reality. Howard P. Lovecraft and Montague R. James, for their part, rejected the mere possibility of phenomena regarded as supernatural, contrary to other writers, such as Arthur C. Doyle, Arthur Machen or Algernon Blackwood, who were members of theosophical or occultist societies. The writers differed also in the level of their education. Lovecraft was an erudite interested in science, notwithstanding the fact that he did not receive formal education. James was a respected medievalist, a specialist in the history of Christianity. Blackwood, educated abroad (in Germany), explicitly differed in his artistic output from Machen, a Welshman, who left the United Kingdom only to pursue his journalistic career. The aim of the article is to present the haunted places in the literary works of the chosen authors and to juxtapose their narratives with their scholarly achievements and their views on the surrounding reality. Based on the New Historicist approach, the study shows that the roots of horror in the haunted places presented by the authors in their works were more “material” than “supernatural”—what accounted for their choices of haunted places, story characters and haunting horrors were personal attitudes and life experience of each of the writers

Proces kształtowania się nowej tożsamości w sytuacji postmigracyjnej na przykładzie narracji biograficznej Ryszarda Bitowta

The article is based on the narrative of Ryszard Bitowt whose lifetime experience is determined by forced displacement from his homeland after II World War. The aim of the article is to provide anthropological description of individual struggle for integrity of personal identity in the situation of severe trauma. The author focuses on those activities and narrative strategies of his interlocutor which are designed to reach out and reclaim the land and the life lost in the new historical situation

Beyond Royalactin and a master inducer explanation of phenotypic plasticity in honey bees

Distinct female castes produced from one genotype are the trademark of a successful evolutionary invention in eusocial insects known as reproductive division of labour. In honey bees, fertile queens develop from larvae fed a complex diet called royal jelly. Recently, one protein in royal jelly, dubbed Royalactin, was deemed to be the exclusive driver of queen bee determination. However, this notion has not been universally accepted. Here I critically evaluate this line of research and argue that the sheer complexity of creating alternate phenotypes from one genotype cannot be reduced to a single dietary component. An acceptable model of environmentally driven caste differentiation should include the facets of dynamic thinking, such as the concepts of attractor states and genetic hierarchical networks.The author’s work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery grant DP16010305

Cordelia Heß. The Absent Jews: Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia

Cordelia Heß. The Absent Jews: Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia. New York–Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017. 334 pp + 1 map, 1 table. ISBN: 978-1-78533-492-4. [review]Cordelia Heß. The Absent Jews: Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia. New York–Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017. 334 pp + 1 map, 1 table. ISBN: 978-1-78533-492-4. [review

Environment, Colonization, and the Baltic Crusader States. Terra Sacra I, and Ecologies of Crusading, Colonization, and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic. Terra Sacra II

Environment, Colonization, and the Baltic Crusader States. Terra Sacra I, and Ecologies of Crusading, Colonization, and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic. Terra Sacra II. Edited by Aleksander Pluskowski. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers n.v., 2019.Environment, Colonization, and the Baltic Crusader States. Terra Sacra I, and Ecologies of Crusading, Colonization, and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic. Terra Sacra II. Edited by Aleksander Pluskowski. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers n.v., 2019.   Author’s studies funded by the National Science Centre, Poland’s (NCN) PRELUDIUM grant no. 2016/23/N/HS3/00660.Environment, Colonization, and the Baltic Crusader States. Terra Sacra I, and Ecologies of Crusading, Colonization, and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic. Terra Sacra II. Edited by Aleksander Pluskowski. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers n.v., 2019.   Author’s studies funded by the National Science Centre, Poland’s (NCN) PRELUDIUM grant no. 2016/23/N/HS3/00660

The Military Orders. Vol. 6.1, Culture and Conflict in the Mediterranean World, and Vol. 6.2, Culture and Conflict in Western and Northern Europe

The Military Orders. Vol. 6.1, Culture and Conflict in the Mediterranean World, and Vol. 6.2, Culture and Conflict in Western and Northern Europe Edited by Jochen Schenk and Mike Carr. London–New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2017. 228 and 241 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4724-7635-7 and 978-1-4724-7638-8

Evaluation of differential gene expression during behavioral development in the honeybee using microarrays and northern blots

BACKGROUND: The honeybee (Apis mellifera) has been used with great success in a variety of behavioral studies. The lack of genomic tools in this species has, however, hampered efforts to provide genome-based explanations for behavioral data. We have combined the power of DNA arrays and the availability of distinct behavioral stages in honeybees to explore the dynamics of gene expression during adult development in this insect. In addition, we used caffeine treatment, a procedure that accelerates learning abilities in honeybees, to examine changes in gene expression underlying drug-induced behavioral modifications. RESULTS: Spotted microarrays containing several thousand cDNAs were interrogated with RNAs extracted from newly emerged worker bees, experienced foragers and caffeine-treated bees. Thirty-six differentially expressed cDNAs were verified by northern blot hybridization and characterized in silico by sequencing and database searches. Experienced foragers overexpressed royal jelly proteins, a putative imaginal disc growth factor, a transcriptional regulator (Stck) and several enzymes, including α-glucosidases, aminopeptidases and glucose dehydrogenase. Naive workers showed increased expression of members of the SPARC and lectin families, heat-shock cognate proteins and several proteins related to RNA translation and mitochondrial function. A number of novel genes overexpressed in both naive and experienced bees, and genes induced by caffeine, have also been identified. CONCLUSIONS: We have shown the usefulness of this transcriptome-based approach for gene discovery, in particular in the context of the efficacy of drug treatment, in a model organism in which routine genetic techniques cannot be applied easily

Ludwig Woltmann i recepcja myśli Arthura de Gobineau (1816–1882) w Niemczech

The Frenchman Arthur Joseph de Gobineau (1816–1882) is generally considered to be the father of racism. The system created by the Frenchman segregated people by origin, class and race, and these values were the same for him. However, his criteria for evaluating particular groups of people (e.g., the high evaluation of European Jews or the low racial evaluation of Saxon citizens) differed so far from later systems of racial qualification that attention was often drawn to the incompatibility of his assumptions with the theses of German Nazis or American epigones of the Nordic race. The question has arisen, however, as to how the relationship between the system developed by the Frenchman and the creators of racist doctrine in other countries evolved.This text focuses on the reception of the French scholar's thought by the German sociologist Ludwig Woltmann, a declared social democrat and fierce nationalist. Woltmann synthesized Gobineau's writings with those of Darwin and Marx (thus radically reinterpreting the Frenchman's writings), in effect charting a new course of racist ideology that broke with the class interpretation of racism. In his view, Germany was the main habitat of the racially valuable White population, and it was the German-born population that formed the racial core of the elites of the neighboring countries.Za swoistego ojca idei rasizmu uważa się powszechnie Francuza Arthura Josepha de Gobineau (1816–1882). Stworzony przez niego system segregował ludzi ze względu na pochodzenie, klasę i rasę, przy czym wartości te były dla niego tożsame. Przyjęte przez de Gobineau kryteria oceny poszczególnych grup ludności (np. wysoka ocena europejskich Żydów czy niska ocena rasowa mieszkańców Saksonii) różniły się jednak w tak daleko idący sposób od późniejszych systemów kwalifikacji rasistowskiej, że niejednokrotnie zwracano uwagę na niekompatybilność jego założeń z tezami niemieckich nazistów czy amerykańskich epigonów rasy nordycznej. Pojawiało się jednak pytanie, jak kształtowała się relacja między systemem opracowanym przez Francuza a twórcami doktryny rasistowskiej w innych krajach.Tekst ten skupia się na recepcji myśli francuskiego badacza dokonanej przez niemieckiego socjologa Ludwiga Woltmanna, zadeklarowanego socjaldemokratę i zajadłego nacjonalistę. Woltmann podjął się syntezy pism de Gobineau z twierdzeniami Darwina i Marksa (czym dokonał radykalnego zwrotu w postrzeganiu pism Francuza), w efekcie wytyczając nowy, zrywający z klasową interpretacją rasizmu kurs ideologii rasistowskiej. Jego zdaniem Niemcy były głównym siedliskiem wartościowej rasowo białej ludności i to pochodząca z Niemiec ludność stanowiła rdzeń rasowy elit krajów ościennych