Shaaban Robert in the Russian language

Marehemu Shaaban Robert is well-known in Russia not only among specialists, but also in the circles of the reading public at large. It was in Russian (the only European language) in which Shaaban Robert´s prose writings were translated for the first time for the general reader. The creative work of Shaaban Robert occupies a special place in the scientific research of Russian scholars. They regard him as a philosopher, a distinguished public figure, a founder of modern literature in Kiswahili who connects centuries-old traditions of Swahili oral and written literature with the demands of modern times. Affirming new social ideals and expressing views of the new intellectual elite, Shaaban Robert, through his literary works, directly participated in the development of the political and philosophical ideas of his country

Some remarks on one old Swahili manuscript

As is well-known, there are presently several archives of old Swahili manuscripts: in Dar es Salaam, Halle and Hamburg, London etc. These collections and separate manuscripts are being studied from various points of view by both European and African scholars. Beside the vast collection of old Swahili manuscripts kept in SOAS, there is another collection of Swahili works at the British Library in London, which has been considerably expanded recently by acquisitions from Jan Knappert. There, one of the most interesting manuscripts which I have ever seen is kept. I am talking about the manuscripts (OR 4534) received in 1884 by a well-known expert of the Swahili language and literature: W.E. Taylor, who was a missionary in East Africa. In 1891 they have been acquired by the British Museum. It is a roll that is 200 cm long and 16-17 cm wide. Seven sheets, glued together, of a thick paper of special quality (2-3 sheets put together) which even resembles a kind of skin, it is skillfully written on in stable ink

AUTO DA BARCA DO INFERNO, DE GIL VICENTE, PELO PONTO DA VISTA DAS IDEIAS DE CARNAVALIZAÇÃO DE MIKHAIL BAKHTIN

O objetivo deste artigo é estudar o sistema artístico dos Autos das Barcas, de Gil Vicente, a partir das ideias de carnavalização de Mikhail Bakhtin. Assim, são analisadas as personagens que aparecem no primeiro auto do autor, Auto da Barca do Inferno, com especial atenção à figura do Parvo, personagem vicentina que faz com que mundo do auto vire ao avesso. Há, portanto, neste auto, um índice de quebra do sistema de valores e de ideologias tipicamente medievais, podendo-se dizer, com isso, que o teatro vicentino permanece medieval, mas já apresentando, contudo, traços da época do Renascimento

Impact of protein-ligand solvation and desolvation on transition state thermodynamic properties of adenosine A2Aligand binding kinetics

Ligand-protein binding kinetic rates are growing in importance as parameters to consider in drug discovery and lead optimization. In this study we analysed using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) the transition state (TS) properties of a set of six adenosine A2Areceptor inhibitors, belonging to both the xanthine and the triazolo-triazine scaffolds. SPR highlighted interesting differences among the ligands in the enthalpic and entropic components of the TS energy barriers for the binding and unbinding events. To better understand at a molecular level these differences, we developed suMetaD, a novel molecular dynamics (MD)-based approach combining supervised MD and metadynamics. This method allows simulation of the ligand unbinding and binding events. It also provides the system conformation corresponding to the highest energy barrier the ligand is required to overcome to reach the final state. For the six ligands evaluated in this study their TS thermodynamic properties were linked in particular to the role of water molecules in solvating/desolvating the pocket and the small molecules. suMetaD identified kinetic bottleneck conformations near the bound state position or in the vestibule area. In the first case the barrier is mainly enthalpic, requiring the breaking of strong interactions with the protein. In the vestibule TS location the kinetic bottleneck is instead mainly of entropic nature, linked to the solvent behaviour

Multi-stage reconnection powering a solar coronal jet

Coronal jets are short-lived eruptive features commonly observed in polar coronal holes and are thought to play a key role in the transfer of mass and energy into the solar corona. We describe unique contemporaneous observations of a coronal blowout jet seen by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager onboard the Solar Orbiter spacecraft (SO/EUI) and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO/AIA). The coronal jet erupted from the south polar coronal hole, and was observed with high spatial and temporal resolution by both instruments. This enabled identification of the different stages of a breakout reconnection process producing the observed jet. We find bulk plasma flow kinematics of ~100-200 km/s across the lifetime of its observed propagation, with a distinct kink in the jet where it impacted and was subsequently guided by a nearby polar plume. We also identify a faint faster feature ahead of the bulk plasma motion propagating with a velocity of ~715 km/s which we attribute to untwisting of newly reconnected field lines during the eruption. A Differential Emission Measure (DEM) analysis using the SDO/AIA observations revealed a very weak jet signal, indicating that the erupting material was likely much cooler than the coronal passbands used to derive the DEM. This is consistent with the very bright appearance of the jet in the Lyman-$\alpha$ passband observed by SO/EUI. The DEM was used to estimate the radiative thermal energy of the source region of the coronal jet, finding a value of $\sim2\times10^{24}$ ergs, comparable to the energy of a nanoflare.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa