Abundance Of Details Research Articles

Jerusalem: Nabel der Welt: Uberlieferung und Funktionen von Heiligtumstraditionen im antiken Judentun

Jerusalem-Nabel der Welt: Uberlieferung und Funktionen von Heuigtumstraditionen im antiken Judentum, by Michael Tilly. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002. Pp. 307. euro35. The phrase navel of the world, the title of this work, occurs at times in today's parlance too. This figure of speech derives from an important mythical idea from the viewpoint of the history of religion that one can regard rightly as a universal (religion-sgeschichtliches Universale, p. 251). Michael Tilly's study approaches this phenomenon from the perspective of ancient judaism and the Jewish conceptions of a sanctuary. Tilly succeeds in presenting an impressive overview of a long-standing tradition that stretched from biblical times up to the era of the Amoraim in late antiquity. He presents a plausible history of development of the following religious-mythical ideas: Jerusalem as the navel of the world, as the center of the world, and as the foundation stone from which the world came into being. Tilly's study presents an abundance of details as well as a comprehensive knowledge of early Jewish and rabbinic literature, both of which function to persuade thoroughly. Most of all, however, the meticulous hermeneutic basis of the methodological procedure should not go unmentioned. The analysis of the traditions, aided by the ancient versions and other witnesses from the literature of late antiquity, does not aim at discovering the intention of the original author of the biblical text. As Tilly rightly stresses repeatedly, one needs to focus on the individuality of every single biblical and postbiblieal text. Every text has a right of its own and is a testament to a creative and rereading of the tradition that comes before. All texts are products of authors who first read many earlier texts; this process of reading is a creative achievement that readers today need to acknowledge. Moreover, these processes of productive and rewriting the tradition happen independently from the intention of the original author (see, e.g., pp. 9-13). Thus ancient versions like Septuagint and Peshitta are by no means only adequate reproductions of the Hebrew Vorlage, but rather are always the work of scribes veiy well acquainted with Scripture. Hence, translations are products of scribal efforts to open the text for a valid understanding in their time and to make the text accessible for a changing religious conscience. After the hermeneutic introduction, Tilly presents a helpful survey of the history of the city of Jerusalem, the second Temple, and the Temple Mount from the Babylonian Conquest (586 B.C.E.) up to the rise of Islam. An overview over the status quaestionis and former scholarship shows that it is necessary to approach the sources anew. Tilly rightly opts against a tendency to harmonize the texts, motifs, and terms, because to speak of a single, coherent, and systematic worldview at the time of the Old Testament or Ancient Judaism is not a historical construction. …

Structure-function relationship in P-type ATPases--a biophysical approach.

P-type ATPases are a large family of membrane proteins that perform active ion transport across biological membranes. In these proteins the energy-providing ATP hydrolysis is coupled to ion-transport that builds up or maintains the electrochemical potential gradients of one or two ion species across the membrane. P-type ATPases are found in virtually all eukaryotic cells and also in bacteria, and they are transporters of a broad variety of ions. So far, a crystal structure with atomic resolution is available only for one species, the SR Ca-ATPase. However, biochemical and biophysical studies provide an abundance of details on the function of this class of ion pumps. The aim of this review is to summarize the results of preferentially biophysical investigations of the three best-studied ion pumps, the Na,K-ATPase, the gastric H,K-ATPase, and the SR Ca-ATPase, and to compare functional properties to recent structural insights with the aim of contributing to the understanding of their structure-function relationship.

Optimizing glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibition: lessons from recent randomized controlled trials.

Recent randomized clinical trials with intravenous glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibition have provided unanticipated results, thereby questioning their role as empirical medical management for acute coronary syndromes. The lack of benefit with abciximab observed in Global Utilization of Strategies to Open Occluded Coronary Arteries IV is somewhat inconsistent with the benefits seen with this agent in coronary intervention, and the benefits of an early invasive approach incorporating tirofiban seen within Treat Angina with Aggrastat and determine Cost of Therapy with an Invasive or Conservative Strategy Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infraction 18. Additionally, a direct 'head-to-head' comparative study of abciximab and tirofiban within the setting of percutaneous coronary intervention demonstrates clinically relevant superiority with abciximab with respect to 30-day outcomes. in the setting of coronary instability and mechanical plaque disruption is more complex than initially perceived. Hence, although an abundance of evidence details the efficacy of these agents, their optimal clinical application remains somewhat challenging in light of these recent data. However, within the context of previous trial experience, the current evidence highlights several key aspects of glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor therapy that may be associated with improved patient outcomes. In particular, these trials indicate: (i) the importance of selecting high-risk patients in whom substantial clinical benefit is evident, (ii) the incorporation of these agents into an early invasive strategy, thereby matching the timing of vascular injury with maximal platelet inhibition and (iii) optimal dosing to achieve the high levels of platelet inhibition that appear to be required for efficacy with these agents.

The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman (review)

familiar territory with this new collection . Set in Sri Lanka and the Far East, the poems are ornamented (at times too ostentatiously) with parasols and palanquins, monsoons and dagobas. Figurative language supplements the exotic effect, presenting the reader with roots "like fingers of a blind monk." So, too, does the abundance of sensory details. When Ondaatje describes "the mid-rib of a coconut palm" or "the brush of sandalwood along the collarbone," he displays a natural strength his admirers will recognize. Several of the poems though, particularly the four longer ones, rely too heavily on these "safari" details. The resulting stylish glitter fails to hide their lack of form. Reading these poems, while by no means unpleasant, is not exactly engaging either. Ondaatje succeeds most in certain isolated moments and intriguing anecdotes. "A man washing a trumpet/at a roadside tap" creates a sense of place more powerfully than any number of passages reminiscent of armchair travel. The middle sequence, "The Nine Sentiments ," based on Sanskrit and Tamil love poetry, is ambitious in its bridging of ancient and modem lyrical modes, but nevertheless there is a curious coldness to it. The same is true of "Last Ink," the concluding piece and closest thing to a title poem. The memorable poems are paradoxically those that attempt the least. "The Medieval Coast" chisels out village life on a coastUne as skillfully as the stone-cutters it features chisel stone. The six lines of "The First Rule of Sinhalese Architecture" form a parable like jewel of a poem, and "Flight" possesses the solid, seamless assurance of a memorable Imagist work: "In the half-dark cabin of Air Lanka Flight 5/the seventy-year-old lady next to me begins to comb/her long white hair, then braids it in the faint light." (BF) The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson Overlook Press, 1999, 278 pp., $24.95 The precocious child alone in a world of indifferent, cruel or absent adults is a convention of literature: Cinderella, Alice, Pip and Maurice Sendak's Max come to mind. In Thomas Penman we have a new child for the pantheon, the cruelty ofwhose upbringing rivals Cinderella's, whose company is as odd as Alice's and whose mischievous nature gives Max a run for his money. It's 1959, and Thomas Penman is a lonely, asthmatic fourteen-year-old living a Gothic nightmare on the English coast. His parents' decaying Victorian house reeks of boiling meat and shelters an assortment of cruel adults and incontinent dogs. (Thomas is rather incontinent himself, so the dogs' messes are blamed on the boy.) Thomas' only friend in the house is his grandfather, Walter, who lost the top of his skull during the First World War and passes the days augmenting his vast collection ofVictorian pornography . Thomas, in turn, spends much of his free time plotting how to break into Grandfather's collection. In trying to unlock those secrets, Thomas stumbles onto less titillating and more tragic secrets about himself , his strange family and how they got that way. As Walter tells Thomas The Missouri Review · 195 when he catches the boy trying to jimmy a pom vault, "When you're out hunting secrets, Tom, make sure you're after d\e right one." Superficially, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman is pretty standard fare—sensitive boy with indifferent parents and excessive libido comes of age. But Bruce Robinson's prose crackles with filthy energy, and we recognize ourselves in the hopelessly muddled Thomas and our families in Robinson's deft descriptions of dysfunction like this one of Thomas' house at Christmas: "full of relatives and poison, undercurrents camouflaged with cosmetic mirth." The picture is rarely pretty, but it is often tragically funny; you find yourself trying not to laugh, but then you do. In the end, young Penman shows us something of the resilience of the human spirit. If a boy as depraved and abused as Thomas turns out okay, maybe there's hope for the rest of us. (WJ) Blindness by Jose Saramago translated by Giovanni Ponteiro Harcourt Brace, 1997, 304 pp., $22 In the world created by Jose Saramago in Blindness, the ultimate horror is...

Juden im Aufbruch: Zur Sozialgeschichte einer Minderheit im Saar-Mosel-Raum um 1800 (review)

Book Reviews 143 Juden im Autbruch: Zur Sozialgeschichte einer Minderheit im Saar-Mosel-Raum um 1800, by Cilli Kasper-Holtkottes. Hannover: Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996 (Forsehungen zur Gesehiehte der Juden, volume 3, eds. Helmut Castritius, Alfred Haverkamp, Franz Irsigler, and Stefi Jersch-Wenzel) XIV. 494 pp. DM 96. The present philosophical dissertation prompted and directed by Wolfgang Schieder at Cologne enters new academic territory in numerous respects. It occupies itselfon the one hand with the history of the Jews in a geographical region that was exposed to a double political and societal influence because of its physical location between German and French cultural regions. On the other hand, it is concerned with an epoch-ending period that encompassed the Ancien Regime as well as the first decades ofthe Bourgeois Age. The appearances of crisis and upheaval are equally addressed by the topic. The expansive approach allows the author to preserve the normal lines of demarcation between urban and rural Jewry, in order to project better the tapestry of Jewish life within the framework of an environment controlled by Gentiles. This book is about the preconditions, background, side effects, and consequences of Emancipation for the Jews in the area examined, particularly the shifts in mentality as well as the changes in social and economic living conditions. It is known that the Ashkenazic Jews in the Saar-Mosel region, as in most other central European areas, were subject to concrete territorial authority as dependents in a relation ofprotection; despite the initial discussion of the Enlightenment, the Jews were able to secure legal and economic equality in only a few cases. This changed after 1789 with the French Revolution; the Emancipation Decree of the French National Assembly was very soon supported by the revolutionary groups in the western regions of the Old Empire (1801 in the Saar-Mosel region). At least by 1806 (before the Napoleonic Deeret Infame came into effect) a formal legal equality with Christian state citizens was achieved. The author illustrates this development from the outset through a careful and broadly conceived historical method, intensively oriented toward original sources. She provides information about the Enlightenment discussion of the eighteenth century, about the demographic rates and legal conditions ofthe time, about the living conditions ofthe Jews in Kurtrier, in the principality ofNassau-Saarbriicken and in other smaller dominions of the region. Cattle market and commercial business are represented in detail, just as the "Judenpolitik" of the princes and lords is also explained. Through an investigation of exact statistical values-from tax loads to protection money and Leibzollen-the author is able to create a reliable foundation that admits evidence for the altogether depressed situation ofthe rural and urban Jews. An abundance of details is offered, so that the reader who is not dependent on commentary may form his/her own picture; several drawn conclusions, for example, that "the protection money was not highly disproportionate" (p. 98), are not problematic in this regard. 144 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 The new conditions under French authority since 1794 are also described by the author in detail. She discusses the problems oflegal, economic and social restructuring ofthe Jewish population ofthe Saar departements and in particular detail the actual end of the Emancipation of the Jews under Napoleonic rule: in particular, the practice of awarding trade licenses to Jews, the integration in a new consistory constitution, the advancement ofthe idea ofeducating the Jews to be "better" people, and also the hatred of the Jews by the non-Jewish population that was already present before Napoleonic rule, so that the idea of an equal status ofstate citizenship for Jews and Christians could not be carried through. Still, however, the French laws brought about a change of thinking for the Jews. The equality of the French Revolution legislation which lasted only a few years made an indelible impression on the Jews; it recognizably strengthened their self-consciousness and prompted them to self-conscious behavior. Despite this, however, their living condition, in social and economic terms, changed only insignificantly. Legal emancipation mobilized wide and open opposition from a large part ofthe non-Jewish population, so that in the end social integration and the hoped-for equality...

Very low frequency measurements in northern Sweden

As an extension of the experiments, made in 1963–1964, regarding the use of very low frequency (V.L.F.) radio signals for ore prospecting, the Geological Survey of Sweden carried out further field studies of the V.L.F. technics for this purpose in 1965–1966. The measurements included the determination of amplitude and dip of very low frequency signals or the determination of three mutually perpendicular field components over known ores. The observations were based on signals from two specific transmitters: G.B.R. in England ( ƒ= 16 kc/sec ) and N.A.A. in U.S.A. ( ƒ= 17.8 kc/sec ). Investigations have been made on ores having different properties with respect to electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility. Measurements along profiles and over an area have been carried out. The utility of the so called amplitude-phase method was tested. The results obtained show the usefulness of the V.L.F. technique in some arrangements which offer different facilities with regard to simplicity, speed and abundance of details.

MOZART'S SACRAMENTAL LITANIES AND THEIR FORERUNNERS

of the great masters because of the abundance of details one comes upon which point the way to the later development. Here lies completed what was there foreshadowed. Things that were at first cultivated are later rejected. The obstacles to such research are of two kinds: at one time the necessary sources of material for comparison are difficult of access, at another they are so plentiful as to make impossible any even approximately complete treatment. Sometimes both difficulties combine. That is why even the standard biographies of the heroes of musical history have mostly had to confine themselves to the mere sketching of composers' relations with their forerunners, and have been able to trace stylistic connections, particularly, only with the immediate predecessors of their subjects. The easiest possibilities of influence to determine are those of time and place, especially if the musician in question came in contact with various style-currents through travel in his youth-for it is in connection with the youth of composers that such investigations encounter the most plentiful material. It is almost never possible, on the other hand, to establish what works came to the ears of the visitor-whether only those of local and living musicians, or those of earlier and foreign composers as well. A limitation of the works to be examined as far as time is concerned may, it is true, be arrived at, although such a limitation must always be somewhat arbitrary, since the evolution of taste and style makes it likely that the riches of earlier times were probably neglected. But a limitation as to place is much more difficult, and may usually be attempted only-and then with precaution-when special conditions confined the practice of certain branches of music to the works of specific periods and places. Such conditions prevailed in the I7th century in the Sepolcro at the Imperial Court of Vienna and in its vicinity, where local considerations, con-