Remote Past Research Articles

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As a field, the historical study of material culture is no longer new. It has its own journal (the Journal of Material Culture), its own e-mail list (H-Material Culture), its own circuit of conferences, centers devoted to the subject at several universities and museums, degree and certificate programs, and, of course, a full range of courses for students. It is also one of the most interdisciplinary ways of investigating the past, with historians comfortably in dialogue and collaboration with archaeologists, sociologists, folklorists, and anthropologists, as well as museum curators and antiquarians, among others. While some might still associate its subject matter with objects found in museums or things from the remote past, it is in fact a field that takes an interest in all conceivable objects and every historical period. Indeed, its subject matter, and especially its concern for everyday life and the material circumstances of ordinary people, place it in close proximity to social and cultural history. Many historians are students of material culture manque.

Parasitic Infections in Solid Organ Transplant Recipients

Parasitic Infections in Solid Organ Transplant Recipients

Freedom's Empire: Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity, 1640-1940 (review)

Reviewed by: Freedom's Empire: Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity, 1640-1940 Marisa Huerta Laura Doyle . Freedom's Empire: Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity, 1640-1940. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. 592 pp. $99.95 cloth/$27.95 paper. Freedom's Empire is a valuable, wide-ranging interdisciplinary study that foregrounds the centrality of race in both Atlantic and African modernities and argues for the need to read the interconnections in these often separate traditions of modernism. By forging provocative connections between the "radical unhinging" of violent political revolution as a "race plot" in historical and literary narratives, and the experience of personal trauma in the English-language novel, Freedom's Empire offers a unique perspective on Atlantic modernity. Building on Margaret Doody's work on the influence of the classical tradition of captivity, rape, and escape on the genre of the novel, and Ed White's work on the novel's role as a genre ideally suited for the heteroglossia of the colonial context, Doyle explores how a "uniquely Saxonist" legacy of personal freedom familiar from Whig narrative of the seventeenth century was racialized as Anglo-Saxon, and then encoded in what she calls the liberty plots of novels from Aphra Behn's Oroonoko through Nella Larsen's Quicksand. Doyle concludes with a consideration of how African Atlantic writers such as Pauline Hopkins and Nella Larsen reclaim the freedom plot and construct meta-narratives of modernism that expose their own framing by the Anglo-Atlantic tradition. In part one, "Race and Liberty in the Atlantic Economy," Doyle draws a link between seventeenth-century political pamphleteers' myth of an unravished and unconquered Saxon England and the story of "ravishment" that becomes a race plot for the novel in English. In part two, "Founding Fictions of Liberty," Doyle brings together paradigmatic transatlantic literary texts by Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, Susanna Rowson, William Hill Brown, Harriet Wilson, Olaudah Equiano, and Herman Melville. Her analysis highlights the trope of "the swoon" that, according to Doyle, shows the "undoing" effects of crossing the Atlantic and entering the allegedly "free" spaces of "Atlantic modernity." Building on criticism of the gothic by Teresa Goddu, Cannon Schmitt, and Peter Garrett, Doyle establishes a link between bodily and psychic violations in the gothic's imagined ancient, remote past and contemporary historical violations in part three, "Atlantic Gothic." Here, Doyle contends that the political violence of Atlanticism appears in traces in the "Anglo-Atlantic gothic" fiction by Horace Walpole and Matthew Lewis but implodes in the Anglo-Saxonist world imagined, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland. This part concludes with a discussion of the "African-Atlantic gothic" by Harriet Jacobs and Pauline Hopkins that, Doyle argues, turns Anglo-Atlantic gothic "inside out" by employing the voice and vocabulary of the gothic to speak to the trauma of African slavery. In part four, "Liberty as Race Epic," Doyle analyzes the key role of "epic narrators" that "stand aside and create continuity across the ruptures and violence of the Anglo-Atlantic legacy" (277) in fiction by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, and Pauline Hopkins. Lastly, in part five, "Liberty's Ruin in Atlantic Modernism," Doyle examines the "metafictions of Atlantic modernity" by Nella Larsen and Virginia Woolf, contending that these works collapse the novel's—and the nation's—freedom narrative by queering/questioning the racial and sexual matrix of modernity/coloniality. Freedom's Empire is perhaps understandably stronger in its readings of modernist texts than in its treatment of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century texts. The near-omission of Milton's work, in a study of liberty rhetoric that developed in the seventeenth century, is surprising. Other genealogies of the English novel, such as Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse's The Imaginary Puritan, foregrounded [End Page 512] Milton's work in its study of "personal life," captivity and seduction narratives, and the New World origins of the English novel. The longest discussion of Milton in Freedom's Empire enters via Doyle's discussion of a secondary reading of Paradise Lost by William Spengemann. Furthermore, despite calling out historians...

Improving Weight Loss in Cardiac Rehabilitation

In the current issue of Circulation , Philip Ades and his associates at the University of Vermont College of Medicine have provided us with an innovative and important article demonstrating the feasibility and benefits of an enhanced exercise option in cardiac rehabilitation.1 In this study, 74 patients were randomized to a standard cardiac rehabilitation exercise program versus a high-calorie-expenditure exercise program. All patients were provided with 16 hours of group dietary counseling and given a dietary target deficit of 500 calories per day. One group was given a standard exercise program typically used in cardiac rehabilitation (25 to 40 minutes, 3 times per week) and the other an enhanced program targeting 45 to 60 minutes, 5 to 7 times per week, or a total caloric expenditure of 3000 to 3500 kcal/week. The length of the intervention was 5 months, though 1-year data collection was also performed. Patients were of course followed up closely to promote compliance. Article see p 2671 The primary outcome of the study was weight loss. Subjects in the high-calorie-expenditure exercise program lost more than twice as much total body weight (8.2±4 versus 3.7±5 kg) and fat mass (5.9±4 versus 2.8±3 kg). Waist circumference also decreased by a greater amount (7±5 versus 5±5 cm). The enhanced exercise program was also associated with a greater benefit on a number of coronary risk factors including insulin resistance, total/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio, and metabolic syndrome. Most of the weight loss and the difference between the groups were retained at 1-year, though some weight regain occurred (1.3 kg for the enhanced exercise group and 0.9 kg for the standard exercise group). Guidelines for the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease2 and for management of specific coronary risk factors3–4 emphasize the importance of lifestyle change, including weight loss, but …

Gene diversity and biochemical markers among some Muslim Populations of Uttar Pradesh

A sample of 312 individuals belonging to Sheikh (80), Pathan (54), Ansari (82), Syed (33), Saifi (33) and Hindu Bania (30) populations were surveyed for four protein and three enzyme loci comprising 12 alleles. The markers used were protein (transferrin, haptoglobin, haemoglobin) and enzyme (lactate dehydrogenase, phosphogluconate dehydrogenase, adenylate kinase). Except caeruloplasmin, variants were found among all loci, though no rare variant appears. The populations show genetic equilibrium for all of the loci. Our gene frequencies show some difference from earlier studies for Muslims in general, there being no biradari wise study among Sunni Muslims earlier done anywhere in India or abroad. Heterozygosity ranged from 0.0123 to 0.1994 (Sheikh), 0.0182 to 0.2046 (Pathan), 0.0239 to 0.1844 (Ansari), 0.0587 to 0.3966 (Syed), 0 to 0.3909 (Bania); the average DST and GST values for the seven marker loci were 0.001032 and 0.00879, respectively. The results are discussed. The gene frequency study shows closer relationship of Ansaris and Saifis with native Hindu Banias, and may reflect on their probable conversion in the not remote past.

Roman Hegemony and Non-State Violence: A Fresh Look at Pompey's Campaign against the Pirates

Ancient history and modern thought interact in multifarious ways. While modern concepts can help us to understand, or serve to obscure, ancient reality, the remote past can also be used as a point of reference for contemporary debates about political issues and strategies. In fact, pundits and politicians alike are used to invoking the lessons of (ancient) history in order to justify their recommendations and decisions. This is often done in a most arbitrary and selective way, without regard for the fact that the interpretation of history is too complex a task to yield uncontroversial and straightforward answers to contemporary problems. Nevertheless, it would be rash to dismiss this kind of analysis as unsuitable for academic research; for it should not be overlooked that it can help to broaden the understanding of structural patterns and give a sense of the variety of options available to decision-makers.

Presentation Formulas in South Slavic Epic Song

Ever since the pathfinding fieldwork of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, South Slavic oral epic song has supplied one of the principal points de repere for scholars interested in the study of oral, especially epic, traditions. 1 Parry traveled to the Balkans in the 1930s in search of a “living laboratory” in which to test his ideas about the oral and traditional nature of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. He found among the Slavic-speaking inhabitants of then-Yugoslavia a tradition that was remarkably similar to Homeric poetry in terms of both form and content. The Muslim communities concentrated in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Sandžak region of Serbia and Montenegro had developed a particularly rich repertoire of songs describing battles and raids along the Ottoman frontier of the recent or remote past. Parry, however, was interested less in the content of the songs than in their formal features and the techniques of their production. He embarked on an ambitious project of collecting audio recordings and written records intended to document as fully as possible these formal and technical aspects of the tradition. Lord, Parry’s student and assistant in the field from 1934-35, continued this project with subsequent fieldwork in the 1950s and ’60s. Their recordings and texts—which number in the thousands and are today conserved in the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard University—allowed these two scholars to identify and describe phenomena that have been recognized as characterizing numerous oral traditions worldwide, principally the phenomenon of “compositionin-performance,” by which is meant the technique of performing narrative through manipulation of traditional themes as expressed in traditional verbal formulas, without reference to a fixed text. The phenomenon I intend to examine in this essay is likewise common to very many oral traditions, and for that reason it may at first glance appear to be unremarkable. Like performers in diverse other traditions, the singers of South Slavic epic frequently have occasion to address their audiences directly in the course of performance. It is not readily apparent whether these appeals to the listener—which are accomplished, as we shall see, by means of very short, relatively inconspicuous expressions—have any function beyond simply inviting the audience to experience a sense of participation in the performance. I will argue, however, that patterns of

Rock art as a source of the history of prehistory (An account to promote the understanding of prehistoric rock art)

Abstract Some may believe that the history of mankind begins with the appearance of writing only a few several thousands of years ago (cf. 4000-3000 BCE). Our history, however, extends beyond that date millions of years. The history of mankind, indeed, is deeply rooted in the remote past which is called 'prehistory'. With the lacking of any form of writing, this 'prehistoric' period can be examined directly solely by recourse to the study of archaeological remains. The purpose of this account is to introduce rock art to the readers and show the significant role of this sort of archaeological material in studying the history of mankind before the appearance of written records. The current work, therefore, is divided into three main sections: the first deals with definition of rock art and its nature; the second section is devoted to showing the significance of this aspect of material culture in exploring a long and mysterious period of the early history of man characterized by the complete absence of written records or historical documents; the third and last section, which is a vital and integral part of this work, comprises an explanatory pictorial record to promote the understanding of prehistoric rock art as a source of information needed for writing the history of prehistory.

Looking into the past: Cultural differences in perception and representation of past information.

The authors investigated cultural differences in the way people perceive and represent temporal information. It was hypothesized that Chinese would attend to the past information more than would Canadians. In Studies 1 and 2, Canadian and Chinese participants read a description of a theft along with a list of behaviors that occurred in the past or present. Chinese participants rated behaviors that had taken place in the remote and recent past as more relevant to solving the case than did Canadians. Study 3 showed that Chinese participants recalled greater detail about past events than did Canadians. Studies 4A and 4B showed that Chinese perceived past events as being closer to the present than did Canadians, suggesting that Chinese had a greater awareness of the past. Overall, Chinese attended to a greater range of past information than did Canadians, which has significant theoretical and practical implications.

Particle creation in asymptotically Minkowskian spacetimes

Exact solutions of Klein–Gordon and Dirac equations are obtained for two classes of Robertson–Walker (RW) spacetimes with asymptotically Minkowskian regions. One class is Minkowskian in the remote past and future. In this class i n and o u t vacua are well defined, because the scale factor reduces to a constant at the asymptotic regions. Another class is asymptotically flat only in the far past. Using the obtained exact solutions we calculate the density of scalar and Dirac particles created through the Bogolubov transformations technique. For Dirac field it is shown that the rates of creation of particles and antiparticles are equal.

How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business by Alena V. Ledeneva (review)

REVIEWS 769 The final section of this collection focuses on recent attempts to reform the Russian criminal justice system.William Butler begins by assessing the increase inHIV associated with higher levels of intravenous drug use in recent years, and analyses some of the problems with state attempts to implement a policy of 'harm reduction' in this area. Daniel Rodeheaver and James Williams focus on exploring high levels of juvenile crime as a result of the post-socialist transition and highlight inadequacies in the existing state response to juvenile crime. Finally, studies by Adrian Beck and Annette Robertson and Roy King and Laura Piacentini assess two components of the Russian justice system that have proven most resistant to change in the post-Communist period: the police and prison system. Beck and Robertson highlight the slow process of police reform inRussia, in its struggle to adapt from the Communist legacy to a more accountable, democratic culture of policing, while King and Piacentini's study concludes that despite continued problems, there is some evidence of change in theRussian penal system. This is a collection with a broad remit, and succeeds in providing a com prehensive and insightfuloverview of changes to law, crime and justice in Russia in recent years, highlighting a number of positive developments whilst stressing that the longer term forecast for Russia remains uncertain. However, the broad thematic structure of the content also makes it accessible for scholars working in specific areas of this remit to 'dip in and out' of studies particularly relevant to their area of interest. School of History Kelly Hignett Keele University Ledeneva, Alena V. How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices thatShaped Post-Soviet Politics andBusiness. Culture and Society after Socialism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2006. xii + 270 pp. Illustra tions. Figures. Tables. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $22.95: ^2.95 (paperback). Alena Ledeneva has written a lively book on informal practices of business, government and politics in contemporary Russia. She shows that most infor mal practices are carry-overs from the Soviet period and, in some cases, such as collective responsibility, date to the remote tsarist past. Her data come from sixty-two in-depth interviews with elites, business practitioners, journalists and those handling technical business matters such as accountants and lawyers. This database is supplemented by press accounts and by a careful reading of the secondary literature. Ledeneva's key propositions are that contemporary Russia is runmore by informal than by formal rules and thatmost informal practices can be traced to the Soviet period or earlier. Insofar as these informal rules are non transparent and change frequently, they can only be understood by insiders. Thus an alternative titleof thisbook could have been 'An Insider's Account ofHow Russia Works'. The author uses sports analogy to describe Russian informal practices as a 'feel for the game, as the practical mastery of the logic or of the immanent necessity of a game ? a mastery acquired by experience 770 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 of the game' (p. 20). It is through her respondents that Ledeneva herself acquires thismastery, which she ispassing on to outsiders in her book. According to the author, informal rules exist because of the weakness of formal rules. The co-existence of formal and informal rules has profound consequences for individual behaviour. In this environment, anybody can be found guilty of violating some formal rules (which everyone at some point must disregard). Because everyone isguilty of something, punishment must be selective. Therefore, avoiding selective punishment in a setting where every one is 'guilty' is a goal ofmastering the game of contemporary Russian busi ness. Moreover, the violation of unwritten rules can lead to punishment for theviolation of formal rules.As we all know, an oligarch who disobeys unwrit ten rules about not challenging the establishment can find himself selectively prosecuted for the violation of tax laws; whereas his peers are left alone. Selective punishment where formal guilt isborne by all was also characteristic of the Soviet regime. The 'plan was the law' and everyone violated some aspect of the plan but only a few could be punished. Indeed, what Ledeneva isdescribing for contemporary Russia was just as trueof Stalin's...

Slowing down as an early warning signal for abrupt climate change

In the Earth's history, periods of relatively stable climate have often been interrupted by sharp transitions to a contrasting state. One explanation for such events of abrupt change is that they happened when the earth system reached a critical tipping point. However, this remains hard to prove for events in the remote past, and it is even more difficult to predict if and when we might reach a tipping point for abrupt climate change in the future. Here, we analyze eight ancient abrupt climate shifts and show that they were all preceded by a characteristic slowing down of the fluctuations starting well before the actual shift. Such slowing down, measured as increased autocorrelation, can be mathematically shown to be a hallmark of tipping points. Therefore, our results imply independent empirical evidence for the idea that past abrupt shifts were associated with the passing of critical thresholds. Because the mechanism causing slowing down is fundamentally inherent to tipping points, it follows that our way to detect slowing down might be used as a universal early warning signal for upcoming catastrophic change. Because tipping points in ecosystems and other complex systems are notoriously hard to predict in other ways, this is a promising perspective.

The Case for Percutaneous Endopyeloplasty

in the treatment algorithm for UPJ obstruction. Factors that define the optimal choice of surgical approach in the individual patient include ipsilateral renal function, degree of hydronephrosis, length of stricture, previous surgical intervention on the UPJ, presence of ipsilateral renal calculi, presence of a crossing vessel at the UPJ, and individual surgeon comfort level and experience. Management Relevant facts in the case scenario include a history of open pyeloplasty and presence of a 1.5-cm lower-pole calculus. Additional variables that need to be assessed before deciding the optimal management include length of stricture, anatomy of the UPJ and proximal ureter, and ipsilateral renal function. Therefore, the initial step in management would be to quantify differential renal function via a radionuclear renal scan and obtain anatomic evaluation via excretory urography. Anatomic delineation of the UPJ and proximal ureter is further defined by performing retrograde pyelography. Because the length of stricture and anatomy of the UPJ play a significant role in determining type of therapy, we typically perform the retrograde pyelography as a separate procedure in patients who have undergone pyeloplasty previously, especially if the anatomic delineation is suboptimal on excretory urography. This approach helps plan the appropriate procedure and enables us to counsel patients appropriately. This is an important issue, because many patients in whom an open pyeloplasty has failed may need a complex salvage reconstructive procedure. We assume in this debate that the segment of obstruction is short and there is no significant tortuosity of the proximal ureter. In general, endopyelotomy is a reasonable alternative for patients in whom pyeloplasty has failed, and pyeloplasty is the preferred approach for patients in whom endopyelotomy has failed. Because this patient also has a 1.5 cm calculus, the percutaneous approach would be preferred. We believe endopyeloplasty to be functionally superior to endopyelotomy, and it would therefore be our procedure of choice for this patient. This approach would effectively remove the calculus and simultaneously manage the UPJ obstruction. A crucial factor in this case is that the pyeloplasty was performed 13 years ago. We believe that the periureteral scarring is less dense if the surgical intervention was performed in the remote past as opposed to recently. It therefore would not technically prohibit performance of an endopyeloplasty.

Chylous Mesenteric Cyst in Asymptomatic 60 Year-Old Woman

Purpose: 60-year-old female presented for further evaluation of a large mesenteric cyst noted incidentally on routine abdominal CT scanning performed during a preoperative evaluation for elective kidney donation. Clinically, she denied gastrointestinal symptoms. Past medical history was significant for recurrent episodes of diverticulitis, and hyperlipidemia. No prior history of pancreatitis. No significant family history of malignancy. Past surgeries included a transabdominal hysterectomy and three caesarean sections, all greater than twenty years prior to the current presentation. She reported two motor vehicle accidents in the remote past associated with unspecified abdominal trauma, managed conservatively. Labs showed normal hemoglobin, electrolytes, TSH, and liver function tests. Abdominal CT scan showed a 6.7 × 2.6 multilobulated, septated cystic lesion at the mesenteric root, inferior to the third portion of the duodenum, interpreted as a mesenteric cyst or potentially enteric cyst. The patient underwent endoscopic ultrasound guided biopsy of the mesenteric cyst. Cytology from multiple fine-needle aspirates was negative for malignancy, but showed abundant histiocytes and chronic inflammation. No epithelial cells were present. Approximately 10 cc of milky yellow fluid was aspirated from the cyst. CEA and CA 19-9 levels from the cyst fluid were unremarkable, but revealed elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, 256 mg/dL and 1131 mg/dL, respectively, consistent with a mesenteric chylous cyst. Discussion Mesenteric cysts are rare and frequently cause abdominal pain, distension, or intestinal obstruction due to the mass effect. Chylous mesenteric cysts, notably, are exceedingly rare with few case reports in the literature. Constitutional symptoms of malaise, fatigue, fever, and weight loss may develop though are infrequent. Mesenteric cysts are often large in size, cause acute or chronic symptoms, though have a very low malignant potential and associated morbidity. Underlying etiologies include congenital malformations and scarring of the mesenteric lymphatics due to chronic inflammatory states e.g. mesenteric panniculitis. Cysts are generally unilocular though may present with multiple loculations and, most importantly, lack solid components. Surgical excision is the recommended therapy in clinically symptomatic patients. Cyst drainage alone is not recommended, due to the high frequency of recurrence. Given the absence of clinical symptoms in this case, a conservative approach with observation was recommended.

Lottery Premium in the Taiwan Stock Market

This paper adopts the cross-sectional regression approach of Fama and MacBeth to examine the lottery premium phenomenon in Taiwan. With the inclusion of various risk measures, both systematic and unsystematic, a lottery premium, in the form of a significantly negative relationship between stock returns and a range of pre-specified critical values for stock price, is clearly documented. Moreover, the study shows that the lottery premium differs between the up and down markets, with the most noticeable presence in a beaten down market. Thus, investors are more inclined to gamble when they reach a panicked mood in a declining market than in an uprising market. Also, the premium is higher in the recent past than in the remote past. This finding further suggests that investors’ propensity to gamble has intensified over time.

A 19-year-old Black Woman with Psychotic and Depressive Symptoms

<P>The patient is a 19-year-old, single, black, female high-school student who maintains part-time employment and cares for her 1-year-old son. The patient complained of “hearing voices” for 1 to 2 years, which were worsening several weeks prior to presentation. The voices had commanded her to harm herself and her child in the remote past. The patient did not act on these hallucinations, had reasonable insight into them, and strong family support. The patient stated that the voices made her feel as if someone was coming after her. A computerized tomography (CT) scan without contrast was within normal limits. The patient denied history of seizures or traumatic brain injury. </P> <H4>ABOUT THE AUTHORS</H4> <P>Matthew Macaluso, DO, is Chief Resident, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Wichita, Kansas. Ahsan Y. Khan, MD, is Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Kansas School of Medicine.</p> <p>Address correspondence to: Matthew Macaluso, DO, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Kansas School of Medicine, 1010 N. Kansas, Wichita, KS 67214; or e-mail <a href="mailto:mmacaluso@kumc.edu">mmacaluso@kumc.edu</a>.</p> <p>Dr. Macaluso has disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Khan has disclosed the following relevant financial relationships: Pfizer and Wyeth: Member of Speakers Bureau.</P>

ABORTION INDEX AND MORTALITY OF OFFSPRING AMONG WOMEN OF DIFFERENT AGE, CASTE AND POPULATION GROUPS OF NORTH INDIAN MUSLIMS

The Muslims of Aligarh city are predominantly Sunnis, although there are also a considerable number of Shias. Among the Sunnis, approximately a quarter belong to Syed, Sheikh, Moghal and Pathan groups, and three-quarters belong to various lower biradaris. In the present study, 304 women attending the Primary Health Centre of the J. N. Medical College and Hospital, Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, were surveyed and the following recorded among Muslim women of high-rank (Ashraf) and low-rank (Ajlaf) castes: incidence of marriage, age of the mother at the time of marriage, present age of the mother, abortions, still births, pre-reproductive mortality and overall mortality. The Ashraf are comprised of the Sheikh, Syed and Pathan, whereas the Ajlafs have Qureshi, Saifi and Ansari biradaris. Maternal age was scored as above and below 45 years in each biradari. Significant effects of maternal age were seen on mortality of offspring, whereas populations did not show consistent differences, except when Ashrafs and Ajlafs were considered separately. The results show higher mortality and abortions for various groups. This may be due to various biological and socio-cultural factors, including hidden inbreeding in the remote past.

Matter sources for a null big bang

We consider the properties of stress–energy tensors compatible with a null big bang, i.e., cosmological evolution starting from a Killing horizon rather than a singularity. For Kantowski–Sachs cosmologies, it is shown that if matter satisfies the null energy condition, then (i) regular cosmological evolution can only start from a Killing horizon, (ii) matter is absent at the horizon and (iii) matter can only appear in the cosmological region due to interaction with vacuum. The latter is understood phenomenologically as a fluid whose stress tensor is insensitive to boosts in a particular direction. We also argue that matter is absent in a static region beyond the horizon. All this generalizes the observations recently obtained for a mixture of dust and a vacuum fluid. If, however, we admit the existence of phantom matter, its certain special kinds (with the parameter w ⩽ −3) are consistent with a null big bang without interaction with vacuum (or without vacuum fluid at all). Then in the static region there is matter with w ⩾ −1/3. Alternatively, the evolution can begin from a horizon in an infinitely remote past, leading to a scenario combining the features of a null big bang and an emergent universe.

Detailed recollection of remote autobiographical memory after damage to the medial temporal lobe

Previous findings of intact remote autobiographical memory in patients with medial temporal lobe damage have been questioned on the grounds that the narrative recollections were impoverished and fact-like and that the methods were not sufficiently sensitive to detect an impairment. We adopted a newer method, the Autobiographical Interview [Levine B, Svoboda E, Hay JF, Winocur G, Moscovitch M (2002) Psychol Aging 17:677-689], which uses extensive probing to elicit an average of 50 or more details per memory (in contrast to the approximately 20 details per memory elicited with previous methods). We found that autobiographical recollection was impaired in patients with medial temporal lobe damage when memories were drawn from the recent past but fully intact when memories were drawn from the remote past. Impaired remote autobiographical memory, which has sometimes been reported with this and other tests, is likely caused by significant damage outside the medial temporal lobe.

Traces of Old Legends in a Modern Local Tradition: Preliminary considerations on a Greek insular community

A local legend recorded in several variants during a fieldwork re- search on a small East-Aegean island is the crux of the present paper. The legend discusses the habitation of the island by two brothers, Elias and Nicolas, about 200 years ago; the population of the island still includes their descend- ants. The recorded variants of this particular legend are usually considered more or less reliable historical sources; in this sense they touch upon oral his- tory and contribute to the construction of a consistent identity of the island's inhabitants. A closer and more attentive approach to a group of legends connected to the abovementioned one reveals a second semantic level with obvious connotations: the cavern inhabited by the two brothers, the symbolic load of their first names, the fraternal conflict underlined by the opposition of land cultivation and ani- mal husbandry, accompanied by the division of the grounds, etc. The principle questions this paper attempts to answer are how the story corresponds to real events and facts and to which degree does it convey and mute pre-existing mythological elements, which are related either to the sur- rounding Modern Greek mythological tradition or the possible mythological rem- nants of a remote (local) past, the latter partially revealed in archaeological research. In this paper it is argued that the position of this legend draws heavily from the limited local cultural context. Although being an independent narrative describing precise historical facts and personae, it has nevertheless developed in consistent exchange with other narratives, beliefs and representations. It is thus proposed that the story of Nicolas and Elias is part of a whole, though limited, mythological system inside the boundaries of the minute island.