The Spiritual Leadership of Madame Guyon and Madame de Maintenon under Louis XIV

In chapter 3, history professor Sydney Watts offers an illuminating essay titled The Spiritual Leadership of Madame Guyon and Madame de Maintenon under Louis XIV. Watts focuses on the spiritual leadership of two elite French women, Madame Guyon, and Madame de Maintenon, who dedicated their lives to instill in young women a desire for virtue and pure love-spiritual goals that eclipsed the subordinate place women held under patriarchal authority. During the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth centuries, religious identity among French female elite was often caught between the political and ecclesiastic tensions under royal absolutism and the personal demands put upon women as forms of movalbe property as much as ossified vessels of aristocratic beauty. As the Counter-Reformation brought with it a place for women to engage their intellectual faculties in the salon, many sought new ways to cultivate their spiritual lives by focusing on questions of religious piety and morals

[Introduction to] Meat Matters: Butchers, Politics, and Market Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris

In eighteenth century Paris, municipal authorities, guild officers, merchant butchers, stall workers, and tripe dealers pledged to provide a steady supply of healthful meat to urban elites and the working poor. Meat Matters considers the formation of the butcher guild and family firms, debates over royal policy and regulation, and the burgeoning role of consumerism and public health. The production and consumption of meat becomes a window on important aspects of eighteenth-century culture, society, and politics, on class relations, and on economic change. Watts\u27s examination of eighteenth-century market culture reveals why meat mattered to Parisians, as onetime subjects became citizens. Sydney Watts is Assistant Professor of history at the University of Richmond. She is currently working on the history of Lent and secular society in early modern France.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1060/thumbnail.jp

Electric Field Induced Biomimetic Transmembrane Electron Transport Using Carbon Nanotube Porins

Cells modulate their homeostasis through the control of redox reactions via transmembrane electron transport systems. These are largely mediated via oxidoreductase enzymes. Their use in biology has been linked to a host of systems including reprogramming for energy requirements in cancer. Consequently, our ability to modulate membrane redox systems may give rise to opportunities to modulate underlying biology. The current work aimed to develop a wireless bipolar electrochemical approach to form on-demand electron transfer across biological membranes. To achieve this goal, we show that using membrane inserted carbon nanotube porins that can act as bipolar nanoelectrodes, we could control electron flow with externally applied electric fields across membranes. Before this work, bipolar electrochemistry has been thought to require high applied voltages not compatible with biological systems. We show that bipolar electrochemical reaction via gold reduction at the nanotubes could be modulated at low cell-friendly voltages, providing an opportunity to use bipolar electrodes to control electron flux across membranes. We provide new mechanistic insight into this newly describe phenomena at the nanoscale. The results presented a give rise to a new method using CNTPs to modulate cell behavior via wireless control of membrane electron transfer

TU Tau B: The Peculiar 'Eclipse' of a possible proto-Barium Giant

TU Tau (= HD 38218 = HIP 27135) is a binary system consisting of a C-N carbon star primary and an A-type secondary. We report on new photometry and spectroscopy which tracked the recent disappearance of the A-star secondary. The dimming of the A-star was gradual and irregular, with one or more brief brightenings, implying the presence of nonhomogeneities in the carbon star outflow. We also present evidence that the A-star is actively accreting s-process enriched material from the carbon star and suggest that it will therefore eventually evolve into a Barium giant. This is an important system as well because the A-type star can serve as a probe of the outer atmosphere of the carbon star.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables, a number of amateur observatories made significant contributions to this research. Paper accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Mahatma Gandhi and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Strategic Civil Disobedience and Great Britain’s Great Loss of Empire in India

This paper examines the relationship between statutory monopoly and collective action as a multi-person assurance game culminating in an end to British Empire in India. In a simple theoretical model, it is demonstrated whether or not a collective good enjoys (or is perceived to enjoy) pure jointness of production and why the evolutionary stable strategy of non-violence was supposed to work on the principle that the coordinated reaction of a ethnically differentiated religious crowd to a conflict between two parties (of colonizer and colonized) over confiscatory salt taxation would significantly affect its course. Following Mancur Olson (1965) and Dennis Chong (1991), a model of strategic civil disobedience is created which is used to demonstrate how collective action can be used to produce an all-or-nothing public good to achieve economic and political independence

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Domestic ruptures: French emigrants to the Channel Island of Jersey and the gendering of exile, 1789-1802

This essay focuses on the temporary settlement of refugees on the Channel Island of Jersey during the French Revolution, analyzing this borderland community with a gendered lens. Until recently, French historians have depicted the emigration as a direct response to French and British anti-émigré legislation and rhetoric, each wave contingent upon the political climate in France. This perspective, however, misses much of the complexity of Jersey’s unique place in the emigration as a French speaking island along the Brittany coast with a British military presence. A social analysis of this emigration from western and northern France to the Channel Island of Jersey reveals the complex motives of household migration and the realities of temporary exile in a fractured world. Domestic ruptures among these French emigrants were met with a mixed response from the host country (Britain) and the local authorities who managed these refugees. Viewing their losses evoked a crisis of masculinity and demanded a humanitarian response that highlighted female fragility.Cet article s’intéresse à l’installation temporaire de réfugiés dans l’île de Jersey pendant la Révolution française et analyse cette communauté frontalière au prisme du genre. Jusque récemment, les historiens français présentaient l’émigration comme une réponse aux lois et à la rhétorique anti-émigrés en France et en Grande-Bretagne, chaque nouvelle vague faisant suite aux évolutions du climat politique en France. Cette perspective omet cependant une part importante de la complexité de la position de Jersey, île francophone voisine de la côte normande marquée par la présence militaire britannique. Une analyse sociale de l’émigration depuis l’ouest et le nord de la France vers Jersey révèle la diversité des motifs de la migration familiale et les réalités de l’exil temporaire dans un monde fracturé. Les foyers des émigrants français étaient confrontés à la double réponse du pays hôte (la Grande-Bretagne) et des autorités locales qui les accueillaient. Face à ce qu’ils avaient perdu, les émigrés traversaient une crise de la masculinité, appelant une réponse humanitaire qui mettait en relief la fragilité des femmes

Boucherie et hygiène à Paris au XVIIIe siècle

Au XVIIIe siècle, l\u27essor de la consommation de viande de boucherie rend problématique la présence des bouchers et de leur commerce au centre de Paris. Grâce à ses réseaux d\u27approvisionnement, la capitale est relativement riche en bœuf, veau et mouton frais (les produits premiers du commerce de boucherie), mais la préparation de la viande à l\u27intérieur de la ville pollue l\u27air et l\u27eau1. Des chroniqueurs tels que Louis-Sébastien Mercier évoquent la pol lution provoquée par la présence des tueries qui génèrent des rivières de sang, des odeurs putrides, bref un spectacle et des sons barbares: «Elles ne sont pas hors de la ville, ni dans les extrêmités ; elles sont au milieu. Le sang ruisselle dans les rues, il se caille sous vos pieds. En passant, vous êtes tout à coup frappé de mugissements plaintifs. Un jeune bœuf est terrassé et sa tête armée est liée avec des cordes contre la tête. Une lourde massue lui brise le crâne; un large couteau lui fait au gosier une plaie profonde. Son sang qui fume, coule à gros bouillons avec sa vie... »2