Confession and compilation : the seven deadly sins in Huntington Library, MS HM 114

This essay examines the unique version of the confessions of the seven deadly sins in Huntington Library, MS HM 114 (Ht). The Ht redactor apparently seeks to compile as many Piers Plowman lines as possible, whilst simultaneously preserving the dramatic and bodily presentation of the confessions that is most characteristic of his B-text base. The text of Piers in the manuscript might thus be described, this essay suggests, as a sort of ‘B+’ rather than an ‘ABC splice’, incorporating C-text materials but in such a way as to enhance and expand rather than alter the distinct literary characteristics of B

EPA+DHA Oral Therapy Reduces High Levels of Circulating Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines in Older Adults with Chronic Wounds

High levels of circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines contribute to inflammaging, the age-related chronic systemic inflammation involved in the pathobiology of numerous chronic conditions common to older adults (e.g., cardiovascular disease (CVD), arthritis, chronic wounds). Low-risk therapies to target the underlying factors linked to inflammaging are critically needed because by 2060 the U. S. population aged 65 years and older is projected to reach 98 million. Some studies have shown that the bioactive elements of fish oil, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), reduce pro-inflammatory cytokine synthesis, but the effects of supplementing diets with EPA+DHA in older adults remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to compare pro-inflammatory cytokine levels over time between older adults receiving EPA+DHA supplementation versus placebo. This randomized, double-blind study evaluated 35 older adults with chronic wounds at a university research center. For 8 weeks, EPA+DHA Group participants (n=16) consumed EPA+DHA supplements (2. 5 g/d) and Placebo Group participants (n=19) consumed a placebo. Fasting blood plasma samples were collected at Weeks 0, 4 and 8 to quantify levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α. Sociodemographic, comorbidity, and body mass index (BMI) data were also collected. On average, participants were 60.6 years (SD=11. 96) with a BMI of 41. 7 (SD=11. 51). The majority were male (60%), Caucasian (74%) and had diagnoses of CVD (77%) and/or arthritis (51%) in addition to chronic wounds. There were no significant differences in age, BMI, or number of comorbidities between the two groups. After adjusting for baseline differences, the EPA+DHA Group had significantly lower levels of IL-6 (p = .008), IL-1β (p < .001), and TNF-α (p < .001) than the Placebo Group at Week 4 and at Week 8 [IL-6 (p =.007), IL-1β (p < .001), and TNF-α (p < .001)]. The findings suggest that low-risk EPA+DHA oral therapy may be effective for reducing the high levels of circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines linked to inflammaging in older adults. Future studies could test EPA+DHA oral therapy in larger, more diverse samples of older adults.No embargoAcademic Major: Nursin

Two annotated Piers Plowman Manuscripts from London and the Early Reception of B and C

London, British Library MS Additional 35287 of the B version and San Marino, Huntington Library MS HM 143 of the C version are two of the most important manuscripts for the study of Piers Plowman's early reception. Each witnesses to the development, among the London scribes involved in the transmission of Langland's and Chaucer's works, of some of the earliest commentary on the two long versions of Langland's poem. The manuscripts, however, adopt different attitudes towards the authority of the apparatus they inherited from earlier exemplars in the London booktrade. Viewed alongside the marginal glosses to the Canterbury Tales produced by the same network of scribes, the annotations in metropolitan copies of both B and C can reveal much about early readers' perceptions of the issues of authorship, authority, and audience raised by the work of the two London poets

Monologic langland : contentiousness and the ‘Z Version’ of Piers Plowman

The copy of Piers Plowman in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 851, the so-called ‘Z text’, has recently attracted renewed attention as a scribal version of considerable intrinsic interest. I here reexamine Z alongside another notorious scribal version, the ABC splice in Huntington Library, MS HM 114 (Ht). The promulgation of Piers Plowman in multiple versions encouraged the scribal redactors of both manuscripts to reimagine the poem in creative ways. While the Ht redactor enhanced the role of Piers Plowman at the expense of the dreamer Will, the Z redactor offered a more sentimentalized version of Piers and often expanded the ‘I’ of the dreamer. By inserting himself into the ‘I’ of the dream vision, the Z redactor authorized his own compositions while simultaneously enhancing those ‘monologic’ moments at which the dreamer offers apparently authoritative interpretation of his visions. Z’s most notable textual omission, which concludes the poem just before the tearing of the pardon, belongs to a consistent pattern in which the redactor eliminates moments of debate and opposition and expands passages of monologic commentary. Rather than an authorial draft as sometimes argued, the Z text represents an intriguing scribal misapprehension of the original poet’s ‘contentious’ compositional style

A scribal edition of Piers Plowman C in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 293

This essay examines the unique form of the final, «C» version of Piers Plowman contained in the fifteenth-century manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 293. The manuscript is one of several listed by the editors of the standard critical edition of Piers Plowman as characterized by serious textual deficiencies, though no other copy contains the same textual gaps found here. The material form and decoration of the manuscript make this a particularly modest presentation of the poem, even by the standards of the generally minimally-decorated manuscripts of Langland’s work. It lacks the higher grades of decoration and the extensive annotation found in some better-known copies of Piers. Despite its humble physical form, however, the manuscript is of significant potential interest for its four major omissions of text. Two of these textual lacunae may be ascribed to commonplace accidents that probably occurred during the production of the present copy. Two are more likely to have occurred in an earlier exemplar, and I argue that they may reflect a deliberate scribal redaction of the poem, a form of the text that eliminates certain aspects of Langland’s work in order to bring others into greater prominence. The (deliberate) gaps in the Corpus text make it an important witness to the various, sometimes eccentric, forms that the poem took in the years following its original composition

Emerging Technology in Healthcare and the Associated Environmental Impacts

Hospitals are continually examining ways in which technology can be used to improve patient care and to stay competitive. For example, robotic surgery has been rapidly adopted at many hospitals throughout the United States to address this need. Some evidence suggests that robotic surgery has better clinical results than open and laparoscopic surgeries, but little data exists to measure the sustainability of robotic surgery technologies. A team of researchers at the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Research at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Arkansas collected and analyzed data to determine the environmental impacts of four modes of hysterectomy surgeries: abdominal, vaginal, laparoscopic, and robotic. Comparatively, the robotic hysterectomy surgery produced a large amount of waste and had a large environmental footprint. By focusing on the parts of the robotic surgery that lead to the large waste and footprint, suggestions are made on how to improve the individual components of the robotic surgery to make the procedure more environmentally sustainable

Langlandian loose leaves and lost histories

In a recent monograph and series of essays, Lawrence Warner argues that early C-text drafts on loose leaves contaminated an original ‘ur-B’ Piers Plowman that lacked, among other key passages, the two final passus. Warner’s argument depends upon the peculiar state of the text in National Library of Wales, MS 733B (N), and he claims that the alternative explanation, that this copy was contaminated by a B-text manuscript, relies on ‘unprecedented’ scribal behaviours. Ample parallels for the hypothesized behaviour of N may be found, however, in the most dramatically conflated of all the Piers Plowman manuscripts, Huntington Library, MS HM 114 (Ht), with which N shares a number of readings. Like John Manly’s theory of multiple authorship, which also depended on a hypothesized ‘lost leaf’, Warner’s arguments against the integrity of Piers Plowman B might ultimately prompt a more intense formal, rather than textual, analysis