Black Ribbon Research Articles

Development of thin-layer chromatographic method for determination of caffeine in black, green, and white tea

Caffeine is naturally present in tea and coffee giving the pleasant and stimulant effect. Several different types of teas, black, green, and white teas bought in market were analysis for caffeine content. The boiled sample tea was filtered through filter paper. Lead(II) acetate was used to separate tannins from caffeine followed by filtration through filter paper with a black ribbon. The liquid-liquid extraction was carried out using dichloromethane (3×5 mL) and sodium sulfate as a drying agent. The TLC method was performed on Merck precoated silica gel plates 5×10 cm (60F254, 200 μm) using either methanol or dichloromethane as solvents and the mobile phases were glacial acetic acid and ethyl acetate (95:5, v/v), while the second one was consisted of ethyl acetate and ethanol (80:20, v/v), respectfully. The Rf values were 0.36 and 0.86 for the first and the second mobile phase, respectively, in comparison to the standard caffeine. The values for pH of boiled sample teas were in the range from 4.85 to 5.80. The most abundant tea sample for caffeine was determined in green tea bought in the grocery store for health nutrition (2.04 %). The yield for tea samples from green market, white tea and two tea black samples were 0.06, 0.71, 0.07, and 0.05%, respectively. The developed TLC method can be used for determination of caffeine content in tea samples.

Działalność wydawnicza Kanadyjsko – Polskiego Instytutu Badawczego w Toronto (1956-2016)

The Canadian-Polish Research Institute was founded in 1956 by Wiktor Turek, who was also its first president. The following presidents of the Institute were: Tadeusz Krychowski (1963-1972), Rudolf K. Kogler (1972-1995), Edward Sołtys (1995-2011), and Joanna Lustański (from 2011). During the sixty years of its existence, the Institute published about 50 books. There are several dominant thematic profiles among them: 1. bibliographic books (Polonica Canadiana, The Polish Language Press in Canada); 2. registers of Polish scientists and a list of Polish artists, writers and musicians; 3. memories; 4. monographs on the history of Polish settlement in Canada, as well as Polish institutions and organizations; 5. other publications: an English translation of Melchior Wańkowicz's Three Generations, a volume of poetry and prose by Danuta Bieńkowska – Beetwen the Shores, a monograph on the sciences of law by prof. Tadeusz Grygier Sprawiedliwość, czyli istota moralności, zdrowia i prawa, and the book of Edward Sołtys Black Ribbon Day. The publishing achievements of the Canadian-Polish Research Institute are of paramount importance for promoting the contribution of Poles living in Canada. This participation includes the activity of Polish engineers, scientists, artists, clerics, veterans, social and political activists. Their presentation in the form of studies issued by the Institute is an important element of the Polish public and historical diplomacy.

Physical and Virtual Performance: From The Black Ribbon, The Women in Black, to the Film Industry

This article aims to compare the physical and virtual performance embodied in the anti-war campaign Black Ribbon and Women in Black performances, and Hollywood actresses’ gowns at the prestigious award event, supporting the #MeToo campaign, as well as to prove that, except for the black color permeating them all, significant difference in the success of these performances is caused not only by technological advancement, but also by the circumstances and the context they take place in. The idea is to analyze in chronological review, using literature and archival material, the symbolism of the color black in performances connecting antiwar activists, citizens, the non-governmental sector and the film industry.
 The article will deal with the motives behind the narratives of the mentioned actions, as well as the scope of these performances, from stopping a war, punishment of war criminals, to prosecution for years of sexual harassment of women. It will stress the importance of the constant fight against the culture of impunity in different areas, and the importance of the contribution of technological development during the past 30 years, for moving the above-mentioned ‘black color’ performances, from the real to the virtual world. Here, this shift will be symbolized by space-restricted performances ranging from mass street protest marches to #MeToo.
 
 Article received: December 30, 2018; Article accepted: January 31, 2019; Published online: April 15, 2019; Review article
 How to cite this article: Mirković, Saša. "Physical and Virtual Performance: From The Black Ribbon, The Women in Black, to the Film Industry." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 18 (2019): 129−140. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i18.292

Is the Hypointensity in Motor Cortex the Hallmark of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis?

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating disease that targets motor neurons. Upper motor neurons degeneration is pathologically characterized by brain iron accumulation. Signal attenuation in the shape of a ribbon at the posterior border of the precentral gyrus can be observed on conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences including T2-weighted sequence. With the aim to know the qualities of this potential marker of ALS, we conducted a prospective study. Patients with definite ALS in the age range of 40-70 years and healthy controls underwent 3T brain MRI using a standardized sequence. A second MRI was performed 18 months later under the same conditions in the patients with ALS. Most of the patients with ALS (91.66%) exhibited a "black ribbon" (BR) with an average area of 79.98 mm3. Signal attenuation discriminated ALS with a mean value of 63.97 arbitrary units (AU) on the left BR (95% CI: 60.67-67.27), a mean value of 59.15 AU (95% CI: 54.78-63.53) on the right BR, and a significant difference with control subjects presenting a mean value of 107.85 AU (p < 0.001). The optimal cut-off point for differentiating patients with ALS from controls (sensitivity, 0.92; specificity, 0.93) was 83 AU. Forced vital capacity and muscle strength in the contralateral upper extremity were significantly correlated with the ribbon intensity in ALS. Patients who underwent a second study exhibited significant changes in the BR related to the rapid evolution of the disease. This marker represents a valuable tool for the selection of candidates and their follow-up in clinical trials.

All-black front surfaces for building-integrated photovoltaics

Widespread implementation of building integrating photovoltaics requires aesthetically pleasant panels. Black surfaces are often visually appealing and, if based on a black photoabsorber, may lead to increased panel efficiency. Here, we demonstrate a combination of black silicon and black ribbons (or bus-bars), both fabricated with methods that are compatible with production lines of screen-printed, front contacted solar panels. Maskless, non-cryogenic reactive ion etch of silicon and subsequent coating with aluminum oxide for passivation purposes results in average reflectance of less than 1% in the UV–vis part of the solar spectrum, and in minority carrier lifetimes similar to those obtained on polished reference samples thanks to minimized surface damage, as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. Inorganic blackening of bus-bars by a combination of electroplating and chemical etching results in reflectance values lower than 3.5% in the UV–vis, with no modifications to standard stringing equipment required.

The “black ribbon” sign in magnetic resonance images is a sensitive and specific marker of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

The “black ribbon” sign in magnetic resonance images is a sensitive and specific marker of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Marie Ponsot’s Ever-Fixéd Mark

Marie Ponsot’s Ever-Fixéd Mark David Yezzi (bio) Every poet has her tutelary gods—those guardians, daimons, or genii of place that guide her and watch over her. Often, though not always, these are fellow writers—colleagues or eminent predecessors conjured by a Lararium of photos tucked on bookshelves or tacked above the writing desk. Their familiar faces keep watch, radiating encouragement and occasional censure, but always with an offering of fellowship, founded on a shared experience of craft and cunning. Such kindred spirits offer proof that many have spent and others will spend their lives in the pursuit of the peculiar activity of writing poems. They, too, overcame fallow periods and the loss of faith, in order to fashion something striking out of words, something life-filled and, perhaps, even lasting. Such household deities offer courage. Many such guiding spirits peer out from the poems of Marie Ponsot who, now in her tenth decade, has been recording their voices and lives in a half-dozen books of poetry, beginning with True Minds in 1956 and up through her most recent volume, Easy from 2009. (Her gods have also seen her through dozens of books translated from the French, including her brilliant versions of the Fables of La Fontaine.) Ponsot’s women—for her poem-portraits are almost always women—lead by their example. These mothers, daughters, teachers, lovers, bohemians, adventurers, scholars, and poets act out of a fierce resolve to face down successive challenges, both the ordinary and extraordinary. Let the fearless Eunice B. Winkless, photographed midair on horseback in 1904, serve as an example of the extraordinary. Winkless’s daring speaks to anyone—parent, traveler, artist, teacher—who is called upon repeatedly to take a leap of faith. Imagine the scene: it is the Fourth of July in Pueblo Colorado. Eunice Winkless rides past a crowd of eager spectators atop a tall white mare, her Gibson-girl hair swept up high on her head and tied with a black ribbon. Ponsot’s poem fixes her there: Regal as Iphigenia taking the upward course in a drift of white eyelet muslin she rides the animal horse. Merrily fife & drum pace their climb. Women think prayers, set to not-look, just in case. Men do not snigger, forget [End Page 506] their faces/ladies/bets, and stare once she reaches the platform. The crowd—women preparing to look away, men staring unflinchingly—has come to see a woman ride a flying horse (Pegasus being, as Ponsot knows, the symbol of poetry) out into thin air. What runs through her mind as stories below her, “[t]he pool glints like a tame star on the ground”? Before she has time to ruminate, the decisive moment arrives: Out & groundless horse & girl drop flying clear of equilibrium Her body jockeying air touches only bridle & with one knee, horse, as nothing to spare they head for the hope they head in dread in dread for the pool. Then follows a stanza break, like a caught breath, after which Winkless’s relief mingles with rue: To herself she says among her wet hair, “Did it again. Damn fool.” A photo of the horse and rider, caught halfway between the platform and the pool, hangs in the Smithsonian, but Ponsot’s act of ekphrasis does more than exhibit the scene or breathe life into the airborne heroine. An italic passage, which ends the poem, brings Ponsot herself into the frame: I need her dreadful ease, its immense self-reference. I watch to catch her hand-span skill addressthe radius of her practice then guess, self-tested, at its circumference. Such immense skill may only be guessed at: here is as powerful a figure for the artist as the bell-casting scene in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev or the life-or-death fabulations of Scheherazade. The trick rider and the poet belong to the same guild; both know that in order to get the job done you have to leap. The story has a telling footnote, one which could not have been lost on Ponsot: According to a squib in Time magazine, Winkless “accepted being a part of a horse dive as a dare...

Elegy, and Myth

Elegy, and Myth Christopher Bakken (bio) Elegy Your shoes were muddy from the graves, so you left them out by the hitching post. Those mornings before we vanished, like the horse. That day’s rain rinsed pollen from the air and you said you could finally breathe. Lilies were burning up there. You held up three you’d cut for me to see, then left them on the table when you went. In a wooden box by the window, I hid the black ribbon you used to tie your braid. I couldn’t bear to pick it up that day. Something of your body still singed the air. At night, you also burned: dreams of lilies, horses, earth filling around us. A centaur appeared in one, wearing my head. I woke before it had a chance to speak. Then today: a hoof-print outside the door where you’d been walking. Or I had been. It was hard to tell if we lived. Either way, one of us had galloped back after years of not being anywhere. We had wanted so many years to be. This piece of broken rope said that was true. [End Page 68] Myth On the stove, greens she stole from the mountain. She gave an hour to pulling them apart. Steam rose from the pot, pleasing the invisible. He sat with his book by the back window, reading the horizon for lightning: stormy watches bringing the dark ship light. Some ancient sentence broken on the page. Outside, rain punished the earth for its crimes. No, she said, the earth bore none of the guilt. Proving it didn’t care, a crow complained to the cypress tree on behalf of all birds. Three lemons on guard atop their blue plate. Below the house, the sea surged into a cave. No, she said again, the cave opened to the sea. [End Page 69] Christopher Bakken Christopher Bakken’s third book of poetry, Eternity & Oranges, is forthcoming from the Pitt Poetry Series. He is also the author of Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table (University of California Press, 2013), a book of travel writing. Copyright © 2015 Middlebury College Publications

Abrasax: A Magical Gem in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums

Find Place and Preservation The following gem (Fig. 1) – a red jasper with black ribbons, measuring 17 x 13 x 3 mm and weighing 1.26 g – is preserved in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. It was found during a rescue excavation in the Province of Istanbul, district of Eminonu, in the quarter of Cankurtaran, in Akbiyik Hamami Street (map sheet 60, parcel 57). The gem was apparently trimmed in antiquity, so that the anguipede god’s legs may be missing, as well as some letters of the inscripti...

Molecular Structure of a 9-MDa Icosahedral Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Subcomplex Containing the E2 and E3 Enzymes Using Cryoelectron Microscopy

The pyruvate dehydrogenase multienzyme complexes are among the largest multifunctional catalytic machines in cells, catalyzing the production of acetyl CoA from pyruvate. We have previously reported the molecular architecture of an 11-MDa subcomplex comprising the 60-mer icosahedral dihydrolipoyl acetyltransferase (E2) decorated with 60 copies of the heterotetrameric (alpha(2)beta(2)) 153-kDa pyruvate decarboxylase (E1) from Bacillus stearothermophilus (Milne, J. L. S., Shi, D., Rosenthal, P. B., Sunshine, J. S., Domingo, G. J., Wu, X., Brooks, B. R., Perham, R. N., Henderson, R., and Subramaniam, S. (2002) EMBO J. 21, 5587-5598). An annular gap of approximately 90 A separates the acetyltransferase catalytic domains of the E2 from an outer shell formed of E1 tetramers. Using cryoelectron microscopy, we present here a three-dimensional reconstruction of the E2 core decorated with 60 copies of the homodimeric 100-kDa dihydrolipoyl dehydrogenase (E3). The E2E3 complex has a similar annular gap of approximately 75 A between the inner icosahedral assembly of acetyltransferase domains and the outer shell of E3 homodimers. Automated fitting of the E3 coordinates into the map suggests excellent correspondence between the density of the outer shell map and the positions of the two best fitting orientations of E3. As in the case of E1 in the E1E2 complex, the central 2-fold axis of the E3 homodimer is roughly oriented along the periphery of the shell, making the active sites of the enzyme accessible from the annular gap between the E2 core and the outer shell. The similarities in architecture of the E1E2 and E2E3 complexes indicate fundamental similarities in the mechanism of active site coupling involved in the two key stages requiring motion of the swinging lipoyl domain across the annular gap, namely the synthesis of acetyl CoA and regeneration of the dithiolane ring of the lipoyl domain.

A new frog of the genus Alsodes (Leptodactylidae) from the Tolhuaca National Park, Andes Range, southern Chile

AbstractA new species, Alsodes igneus, from the temperate Nothofagus forest, western slopes of the Andes Range, southern Chile, is described. This species is characterized by the combination of the following characters: snout short slightly truncated in dorsal view, a black ribbon extending below the canthus rostralis, unbarred legs and arms, heel not reaching the posterior border of the eye when hind leg is bent forward, toes scarcely fringed, webbing absent, dorsal surface granular. Its karyotype has 26 bi-armed chromosomes and it is characterized by presenting the secondary constriction and nucleolus organizer regions in the short arm of pair seven.

Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center (review)

Reviewed by: Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center Moira Smith Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center. By Angus Kress Gillespie. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 263, illustrations, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, index.) September 11 abruptly and dramatically changed our world forever. Quite apart from the tremendous loss of life on that day, the terrorist attacks took away a sense of security, even invulnerability from many Americans, not just those wholive in New York or who lost friends and family members. Those feelings belong in our past. Twin Towers offers a chance to revisit that past. In an accessible style, with citations tucked discretely into the endnotes, Angus Gillespie's book describes the conception, construction, and life of this exceptional building. He relates the political battles that surrounded the project and the engineering problems that were overcome to build the towers. In the course of this account he introduces the bureaucrats, architects, engineers, construction workers, and others who were responsible for this achievement. It is very much a narrative in praise of American accomplishment, exuding a cheerful optimism, a kind of innocence that [End Page 489] had no inkling of what was to come. This innocence is not merely Gillespie's, but in retrospect it seems to characterize all of us. The destruction of the World Trade Center removes any doubts about the structure's symbolic significance, both for Americans and the rest of the world. Whatever its various meanings-hope for a better life; icon of capitalist oppression; sign of an evil infidel empire-the power of this symbol cannot be denied. Gillespie's work reinforces just how much symbols do matter. Additionally, Gillespie contrasts in chapters 4 and 5 the near-universal panning that the building received from architectural critics with its widespread popular acceptance as an icon for New York City. He sees signs of this popular acceptance in the ubiquity of the building in postcards, movies, advertising backdrops, and the like. In a striking aside, he notes that postcards of the building are often found among the meager possessions of illegal immigrants to this country: "There have been persistent reports and rumors of immigration officials who find people, with no official paper, clinging to a postcard of the World Trade Center as a symbol for their hopes for a better world" (p. 138). For me, these words touch on a fascinating topic for further research: Who told these stories? Were the rumors true, or did American citizens project this symbolism onto illegal aliens? Unfortunately, Gillespie does not answer these questions, neither giving a source for these stories, nor attempting to track them to their sources. Reading the final chapter of the book, "A Day in the Life," just a few weeks after September 11 was a haunting experience. Here Gillespie presents a montage of the security guards, stockbrokers, window washers, tourists, bartenders, and others who worked in the World Trade Center. We are introduced to several of them by name and "hear" their voices. One cannot read their words without being struck by the realization that many of these people may be among the dead from the attack. We could not have a starker proof of the good that folklorists do when they describe and record the voices of ordinary people. Disaster is impersonal, but tragedy happens to people you know. By introducing some of the individuals who now might be victims, the book personalizes the disaster for the rest of us. Because it was written before September 11, Gillespie's book depicts these lives without the black ribbon framing all such accounts that have appeared since the attack. In the aftermath, folklorists are collecting stories about what happened, but we can be grateful that a folklorist was present to record the life of the World Trade Center while it was still an ordinary part of daily life, and in so doing, save it from being utterly lost. The last words of the book sum up both the optimism and the tragedy of the twin towers: "At about four in the morning, the delivery trucks start to arrive with fresh food and...

Palaeozoic-Early Tertiary Tethyan Evolution of Mélanges, Rift and Passive Margin Units in the Karaburun Peninsula (western Turkey) and Chios Island (Greece)

Abstract Similar Palaeozoic-Lower Tertiary units in the northern Karaburun Peninsula (western Turkey) and the adjacent island of Chios (Greece) provide insights into the tectonic evolution of the Tethyan Ocean near the junction between the Taurides/Anatolides and Hellenides. The northwest Karaburun Peninsula is dominated by a highly sheared mélange ( c. τ 2 km thick) with Silurian-Carboniferous blocks (up to hundreds of metres in size) of neritic and pelagic limestone, black ribbon chert, shale, extrusives and volcanogenic sediments. The blocks are set in a matrix of siliciclastic turbidites, pelagic carbonates and channelized conglomerates. Northern Chios is similarly composed of mélange ( c. 3–4 km thick) with limestone blocks dated as Silurian-Carboniferous, black ribbon chert, shale and volcanics within predominantly siliciclastic sediments, including local conglomerates. Both mélanges are unconformably overlain by Lower Triassic basinal successions (with sheared basal contacts), including terrigenous clastics, pelagic carbonate, radiolarite, lava and volcanogenic sediments, interpreted as rift successions. In both areas, successions shallow upwards into extensive Mesozoic carbonate platform facies, similar to those widely developed in the Taurides and Hellenides. On the Karaburun Peninsula, deposition was punctuated by emergence and localized deltaic siliciclastic deposition in latest Triassic-earliest Jurassic time. The Karaburun carbonate platform later emerged, eroded, then subsided in Campanian-Maastrichtian time; it then collapsed in the Maastrichtian-earliest Tertiary and was overlain by another mélange (Bornova Mélange), with blocks of both local platform-derived and accreted Mesozoic oceanic lithologies, and was finally thrust imbricated during continental collision. On Chios, a Lower Jurassic carbonate platform succession is overthrust by an exotic Carboniferous-Lower Jurassic mixed shallow-water carbonate and siliciclastic unit. Most tectonic hypotheses for the mélange are problematic. They include formation as Palaeozoic basinal ‘olistostromes’, as an ideal Late Palaeozoic subduction-accretion complex basin, as an Early Triassic rift, or as entirely tectonic mélange. The mélange are seen here as the end-product of a combination of Late Palaeozoic southward(?) subduction-accretion (culminating in trench-microcontinent collision?), Early Triassic rifting and latest Cretaceous-Early Tertiary subduction/collision. Regional comparisons suggest that initial mélange formation took place in Late Carboniferous-Early Permian time. Subsequent Early Triassic rifting was associated with siliciclastic, calcareous and radiolarian deposition, and andesitic volcanism. The Triassic rift was overlain by a subsiding passive margin adjacent to a northerly Neotethyan oceanic basin from Middle Triassic-Late Cretaceous. This ocean closed in the Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary, resulting in collapse of the passive margin, subduction-accretion and further mélange formation in a foredeep. Continental collision resulted in further deformation of the Palaeozoic mélange, thrust imbrication of the Mesozoic platform and shearing at its base.

This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain Sidney Saylor Farr Seasons of the Heart We speak of changes in the weather-the cold season, the flu season, the rainy season. And the changing seasons in our lives. For all of my life I have felt the turning seasons in my heart; lately another dimension has been added-I also feel them in my bones. I grew up in the world of nature; sometimes I felt that trees, rocks, creeks, and the earth itself were part of my blood, muscles, and bones. My heart has always been intimate with each season's bounty and has always resisted any hint of a coming change. Sometimes I have felt that I could not bear to see the promise of summer when red and white clover bloomed and green corn uncurled; when butterflies came in clouds of color, and a misty rain settled down. I glory in the fall season, even with the melancholy of things coming to an end, and the haunting look and feel of crisp chilly nights and the smell of Indian summer smoke. I wanted to hold on to these things along with the gold dust of fall evenings. How wonderful it would be if we could hoard the golden days in a treasure chest, and in the dead of winter, take them out to again see a day of sunshine and blue skies. Gray days and cold rain usher November along to December. When snowy days of winter file across the land of summer's dead, I think how they look like gray nuns walking through an orchard counting seasons lost; counting those ahead. In springtime, summer, and fall, I feel that I will live forever. But there's something about the winter season that reminds me of my own mortality. Human life, too, comes in seasons and cycles. We each have our own appointed time to be born, to live, and to die. We try not to dwell on the end of time for us, choosing to look forward to springtime when nature will be fresh and new and, hopefully, we also will be renewed. Personal changes have come in my life during 1998 and 1999. I have shared with you the fact of a small stroke last June. I have been working hard to overcome that episode, but recently there was another small stroke. Because of this deterioration in my health, I have realized that I can no longer edit this magazine. The summer issue will be the last one for me. James Gage, an English professor at Berea, has been named as the new editor. He comes on board in May and will be responsible for the fall issue. It is very heartening to me to know that Appalachian Heritage will live on. Winter days are now upon us, and we must each in our own way experience what life has in store for us. I would not want to live if I did not have the spring season to anticipate. But even in the dead of winter I can find promises of springtime on the horizon. I am looking forward to having personal time for my own writing, lecturing, and teaching, and looking forward to springtime again when the first faint tracings of green appear on bushes and trees. Then in such a short time the season turns to seeds in the ground, growing things, and new promises. Mountaintop Removal ? II III Beyond green ridges gray ones, blue; the starched sky fits snugly defining sunlight, black smoke. Reaching for sky hope, for tonnage, coal trucks kiss front-end loaders, in a tabernacle of dieseled incense. Bulldozers bury the ancient womb, reconstituting, reclaiming mountains, renaming greenness even sky. Behind Caudill's store crumpled asphalt lies like spent rubber spun by swollen tires in search of treasure beneath thick slate. Green ridges, blue fall pliant to bulldozer blades and yield, groaning, their firstborn, stratified tales. Beneath ridge tops trucks swell with coal descend and wind past oaks and pines houses, gardens, indifferent. Black ribbon climbs through greenness inexorably past cabins, trailers, limestone creek beds, a thousand stories. Beyond the trees, what rose descends: ridge tops, coal, trees, over-burden...

The Black Ribbon

The Black Ribbon

Precise determination of anthropometric dimensions by means of image processing methods for estimating human body segment parameter values

A method has been developed for the precise determination of anthropometric dimensions from the video images of four different body configurations. High precisionis achieved by incorporating techniques for finding the location of object boundaries with sub-pixel accuracy, the implementation of calibration algorithms, and by taking into account the varying distances of the body segments from the recording camera. The system allows automatic segment boundary identification from the video image, if the boundaries are marked on the subject by black ribbons. In connection with the mathematical finite-mass-element segment model of Hatze, body segment parameters (volumes, masses, the three principal moments of inertia, the three local coordinates of the segmental mass centers etc.) can be computed by using the anthropometric data determined videometrically as input data. Compared to other, recently published video-based systems for the estimation of the inertial properties of body segments, the present algorithms reduce errors originating from optical distortions, inaccurate edgedetection procedures, and user-specified upper and lower segment boundaries or threshold levels for the edgedetection. The video-based estimation of human body segment parameters is especially useful in situations where ease of application and rapid availability of comparatively precise parameter values are of importance.

Analysis of ferruginous bodies in bronchoalveolar lavage from foundry workers.

Classical ferruginous bodies in tissue samples are considered to be markers of past exposure to asbestos. Recent studies have shown that the presence of ferruginous bodies in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid correlates with past exposure to asbestos and offers a more sensitive reference than occupational history. Lavage samples from five subjects who had worked in foundries were evaluated by light microscopy for the presence of ferruginous bodies and by transmission electron microscopy for both characterisation of the uncoated fibre burden and analysis of the cores of the ferruginous bodies. All samples at lower magnification (light microscopy (200 x)) contained ferruginous bodies that were externally consistent with asbestos bodies. At higher magnification (400 x), a separate population from this group could be identified by the presence of a thin black ribbon. Transmission electron microscopy of the core materials of ferruginous bodies and comparable uncoated particulates supported the reliability of higher magnification light microscopy for distinguishing most of those non-asbestos cores; however, a population of transparent non-asbestos cored ferruginous bodies were also shown to exist.

Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism: the National Guard, Philharmonic Corps and Patriotic Juntas in Mexico, 1847–88

In the archive of the now disbanded jefatura política of Tetela de Ocampo is an account of the funeral ceremony of the Puebla State deputy and school teacher, Ciudadano Miguel Méndez, only son of General Juan Nepomuceno Méndez, caudillo máximo of the State of Puebla between 1857 and 1884. The Velada Fúnebre was held in 1888 in the cabecera of Xochiapulco (alias ‘La Villa del Cinco de Mayo’), a municipio of nahuatl speakers on the southern edge of Mexico's Sierra Madre Oriental, adjoining the cereal producing plateaux of San Juan de los Llanos. The ceremony took place in the ‘Netzahualcoyotl’ municipal school room and was organised by the municipality's Society of Teachers. The description of the elaborately decorated room and baroque ceremony fills several pages.1 The teachers had decked the school room (normally adorned by ‘sixty-two great charts of natural history, twenty Industrial diagrams, large maps of Universal Geography, and diverse statistical charts and many engravings related to education’) with military banners and weapons, masonic trophies, candelabra, floral crowns and yards of white and black ribbon. In the centre of the room stood the coffin on an altar, itself raised upon a platform, guarded by four National Guard sentries and attended by the philharmonic corps of Xochiapulco and all the public officials of the cabecera and its dependent barrios. For nine days preceding the ceremony this band had played funeral marches, between six and eight in the evening, on the plaza, in front of the house of the deceased. The service was taken by Mr Byron Hyde, a Methodist minister from the United States. Accompanied by his wife at a piano, Hyde gave renderings (in English) of three Wesleyan hymns.2 There followed three eulogies of Miguel Méndez, extolling his services to the Liberal cause and on behalf of the ‘desgraciada nación azteca’. These speeches were infused with extreme anticlerical and anti-Conservative sentiments, a martial patriotic liberalism, a reverence for the principles of the French Revolution, an admiration for Garibaldi and Hidalgo (in that order), and an obsession with the importance of education as the only means for emancipating the indigenous population from clerical subjection.

Travesty and Transgression: Transvestism in Shakespeare, Brecht, and Churchill

In Marguerite Duras's Lover (1984), the first person narrator recalls her image at fifteen and a half crossing the Mekong on a ferry that takes her to school in Saigon. She is wearing a silk dress that used to belong to her mother, gold lam6 evening shoes, and a flat-brimmed hat, a brownish-pink fedora with a broad black ribbon. The crucial ambiguity of the image, she suggests, lies in the hat. Like the shoes, the hat must have been a discount item:

Electric Charges by Friction

THE following quotations from a book printed nearly one hundred years ago (Murray's “Elements of Chemistry.” Sixth edition, Edinburgh, 1828) bear on the observations of an anomaly in frictional electricity referred to recently in NATURE (June 21, p. 914). “A white silk ribbon rubbed against a black one becomes positively electrified; but if the black ribbon be worn so that the colour is faded, and if the white ribbon be heated, the latter will be found to be negative, and the black positive”.