The genomic structure of extant cattle populations can contribute to the reconstruction of the history of particular breeds or their subpopulations. Genome-wide population resequencing of extant populations of Czech Red Pied (CRP) cattle, its conserved nucleus herd, and Czech Red (CR) cattle detected a T106C polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA shared by the conserved CRP herd with a geographical belt of Anatolian, Illyrian and Eastern Alpine breeds. On the other hand, this SNP is practically absent in the historical cattle breeds associated with Northern Germany, including German Black Pied cattle, Holstein-Friesian and German Red Mountain cattle (GRM). Correspondingly, this indicator SNP was absent in CR cattle, which, like the GRM, belongs to the group of mountain red cattle breeds. It seems that the precursory cattle population in Central Europe was influenced by the germplasm from the Balkans-related group of breeds, thanks to the political and commercial influence of the Northern Italian, Austrian and Hungarian regions. In addition, the presence of this polymorphism in some European aurochs (Bos primigenius) bone remains suggests possible introgression from local aurochs populations. Alternatively, the T106C presence in yaks and in neighbouring cattle breeds in Northern India, China and Korea raises the possibility of origin of this polymorphism from yak populations. The spread of the T106C mutation in alpine regions is consistent with the known role of this mtDNA region in adaptation to the reduced oxygen pressure.
Raluca Maria Vlad, Carmen Vasile, Alexandra Mirică
Lyme disease (LD), caused by the spirochete <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i>, is the most prevalent tick-borne disease in Europe, including Romania, where endemic areas are well documented. It has a wide range of clinical manifestations and severity, including rare neurological complications. Persistent hyponatremia is an atypical presentation of Lyme neuroborreliosis and can be associated with the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH). SIADH is characterized by unregulated antidiuretic hormone release, leading to impaired water excretion, dilutional hyponatremia, and low serum osmolality. We report the case of a 16-year-old female with clinically well-tolerated, but severe, refractory hyponatremia, who was poorly responsive to intravenous sodium supplementation and fluid management. Complex investigations ruled out multiple causes of hyponatremia; neuroborreliosis was confirmed via positive <i>Borrelia</i> serologies, despite the absence of a suggestive history of exposure. SIADH likely symptomatology resulted from central nervous system inflammation induced by <i>Borrelia</i>, a mechanism rarely documented in the medical literature. Treatment with antibiotics and fluid restriction led to a gradual improvement in fluid balance and sodium homeostasis. This case emphasizes the importance of considering rare infectious causes, such as LD, in patients with unexplained SIADH, especially in endemic areas. It highlights the importance of a multidisciplinary approach in intricate, complex cases.
This article presents the successful grassroots initiative of Slovenian peasants in Juršinci in socialist Slovenia in the 1960s and sheds light on the broader economic and political background. In Slovenia in the 1960s, the rise of a younger, more liberal faction within the Communist Party led to political and economic liberalization. The agricultural cooperatives, which were supposed to attract private peasants to voluntarily collaborate in the social sector by providing services such as mechanization, seed supply, chemical agents, and expertise, failed in this respect and increasingly alienated the peasants. This led to a decline in peasant membership in the cooperatives. Under these circumstances, peasants began to organize themselves, form their own communities, and make their demands to the authorities, which the liberal government finally met in the early 1970s.
Archaeology, Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology
We review the expected science performance of the New Gravitational-Wave Observatory (NGO, a.k.a. eLISA), a mission under study by the European Space Agency for launch in the early 2020s. eLISA will survey the low-frequency gravitational-wave sky (from 0.1 mHz to 1 Hz), detecting and characterizing a broad variety of systems and events throughout the Universe, including the coalescences of massive black holes brought together by galaxy mergers; the inspirals of stellar-mass black holes and compact stars into central galactic black holes; several millions of ultra-compact binaries, both detached and mass transferring, in the Galaxy; and possibly unforeseen sources such as the relic gravitational-wave radiation from the early Universe. eLISA’s high signal-to-noise measurements will provide new insight into the structure and history of the Universe, and they will test general relativity in its strong-field dynamical regime.
This article deals with three Carolingian manuscripts from an area of central Italy corresponding to the southernmost tip of the Carolingian Empire, Chieti and its district, which has been poorly investigated from a palaeographic point of view, so far. The earliest manuscript is Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. CCXXIX, originating from a monastery identified with S. Stefano in Lucana, in the south of present-day Chieti province; the other two, Reg. lat. 1997 and Vat. lat. 7701 respectively, were written in the cathedral of Chieti. The history of the codices, their palaeographic and codicological characteristics, as well as their textual and even decorative features, all concur in pointing to a hitherto unnoticed cultural liveliness in this area, fuelled by strong relations with leading cultural centres in Carolingian Europe, such as the abbey of Reichenau and the episcopate of Metz
Bibliography. Library science. Information resources, Language and Literature
Most Indian groups descend from a mixture of two genetically divergent populations: Ancestral North Indians (ANI) related to Central Asians, Middle Easterners, Caucasians, and Europeans; and Ancestral South Indians (ASI) not closely related to groups outside the subcontinent. The date of mixture is unknown but has implications for understanding Indian history. We report genome-wide data from 73 groups from the Indian subcontinent and analyze linkage disequilibrium to estimate ANI-ASI mixture dates ranging from about 1,900 to 4,200 years ago. In a subset of groups, 100% of the mixture is consistent with having occurred during this period. These results show that India experienced a demographic transformation several thousand years ago, from a region in which major population mixture was common to one in which mixture even between closely related groups became rare because of a shift to endogamy.
In France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, male medical doctors and surgeons were turning to midwifery earlier than their German counterparts. Equally, in France and in England, maternity wards and hospitals emerged earlier than in Germany. Nevertheless, the lying-in hospital of Göttingen, founded in 1751, played a pioneering role: it was the first university institution in the world. Its main purpose was to give practical, hands-on education in obstetrics to medical students.
The first professor of obstetrics and director of Göttingen University lying-in hospital, Johann Georg Roederer (1726–1763), was willing to transform the traditional female craft of midwifery into a branch of medical science. Through educating the next generation of obstetricians and his scholarly publications, he had a major impact in Germany and beyond.
For the period around 1800, an exceptionally rich collection of printed and archival sources allows deep insight into the practices of Göttingen University’s lying-in hospital. The roles of the director, the midwife, the students, and the patients can be studied in detail, and compared to lying-in hospitals in other countries. Special attention is given to the practice of practical education.
Finally, the success of the maternity hospital can be assessed, both in terms of the directors’ reputation, and the survival chances of mothers and children.
Archaeology, Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology
Borders are particular (in-between) spaces: they have this side and the other side, which involve several real and imaginary spaces at the same time. For minorities, “beyond the borders” is also a specific space of language use. This paper discusses the correlations between minority bilingualism and social structure characteristics based on sociological surveys, taking as approach the sociology of space and John Ogbu’s ecological cultural model of schooling. It aims to offer an overview of my research carried out on this topic and tries to provide some references for rethinking the sociological implications of minority education considering the experiences of three decades since the fall of communism in Romania. The main results of this research – in concordance with other findings of similar inquiries – show that a mother-tongue education for ethnic Hungarian children in Romania is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reducing the structural gap that Hungarians in Transylvania have inherited from the 20th century. This study is centred on the aspects of interrelation between the language of education and labour market, more specifically on those linked to the attitudes and patterns of behaviour towards the official language, with particular focus on the role that languages play in the society and, in a narrower sense, in self-positioning on the labour market.
History of Central Europe, Language and Literature
ALEXANDER ANIEVAS and KEREM NICANCIOGLU, How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (London: Pluto Press, 2015). Pp. 386. $40.00 paper.How to write a global history without privileging a single, universalizing perspective which suppresses and denies those subjects, narratives, and positions that defy its imperatives and exceed its horizons? More specifically, how to theorize the origins and trajectory of capitalism without succumbing to the pitfall of Eurocentrism which results in a concomitant erasure of the geographically and historically dispersed non-European causes of and contributions to capitalist modernity? For decades, these questions have framed and fueled debates within critical Marxist historiography, from Eric Hobsbawm's historicization of triumphant narratives of modern Europe's ascendancy to Immanuel Wallerstein's World Systems Theory and the diverse menagerie of postcolonial critique. Such questions are equally the animating force behind How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism, an impressive new theoretical history of capitalist modernity by Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nicancioglu. While their arguments are tangential to the central foci of Ottoman historiography-a partial account of the Ottoman Empire's "tributary" mode of production and its effects on broader European political developments during the "Long" sixteenth Century occupies one chapter of the book-their intervention demands attention from all historians and political theorists who remain dissatisfied with hegemonic narratives of capitalism, modernity, and the liberal-democratic nation-state at a time when platitudes about the "end of history" have taken on the dubious status of common sense.How the West Came to Rule forwards a provocative, if simple, thesis: The narrative of the rise of capitalism that focuses solely on developments and transformations internal to Europe is both theoretically impoverished and politically vested. Anievas and Nicancioglu propose to remedy this scandalous situation by relying on the perspectives and methods of their native academic discipline, international relations: "We argue that the origins and history of capitalism can only be properly understood in international or geopolitical terms, and that this very 'internationality' is constitutive of capitalism as a historical mode of production.... existing conceptions of capitalism have hitherto failed to take this internationality seriously" (p. 2). More precisely, such an "international" approach reforms the three conceits that render most theories of capitalism Eurocentric: methodological internalism (a focus on solely intra-European developments); historical priority (the conceit that capitalism "begins" in Europe and only later arrives, fully formed, in other places); and linear developmentalism (the argument that capitalism evolves coherently in a teleological manner from its beginnings in Europe and, especially, England) (p. 5). The first chapter of the book constitutes a review of two competing theoretical histories of capitalism, Wallerstein's World Systems Theory and Political Marxism (associated with scholars Robert Brenner and Ellen Wood), both of which Anievas and Nicancioglu dismiss as fatally Eurocentric; in seeking a palliative to this pervasive Eurocentrism, the authors draw inspiration from postcolonial studies, and Dipesh Chakrabarty's seminal Provincializing Europe, in particular (p. 33).In order to avoid the pitfall of Eurocentrism without abandoning Marxian premises concerning the material bases of sociopolitical relations and historical trajectories, Anievas and Nicancioglu revive a somewhat neglected figure within the Marxist pantheon: Leon Trotsky. In their estimation, Trotsky's theory of "uneven and combined development," which posits that all economic modes of production are simultaneously hybrid and involved in mutually constitutive relations with other societies, characterized by developmentally distinct modes of production, thwarts the linear, primordial, and teleological principles of Eurocentric political economic history. …
The Article deals with the criminalization of homosexuality after the disintegration of AustroHungarian Empire, an important European power unit, in its successor state – the Czechoslovak Republic. It describes the transformation of the legislation of criminalization of homosexuality after the dissolution of the constitutional dualistic monarchy and the creation of a new democratic republic on its territory. It captures the impacts of the newly-formed state on the position of homosexual minority society and its legal forms of persecution. It monitors the European parallels and differences in the disintegration of the state entities and the subsequent access to criminalization of homosexuality in their new state entities and units in the same historical period.
Auxiliary sciences of history, History of Central Europe
The present paper uses two case studies to scrutinize the many different documents emanating from the administrative needs of late medieval mercenaries and their employers. The analyzed documents come from the Moravian towns of Jihlava and Znojmo, both of which Duke Albert of Austria held in pledge during the Hussite War. The corpus consists mostly of receipts issued by the mercenaries confirming received pay, and documents, which pertain to transactions concerning compensations for damages. The sources are first classified and analyzed from the point of view of medieval diplomatics. Secondly, the study tries to reconstruct the overall expenditure for the Austrian garrisons in Jihlava and Znojmo. Thirdly, the paper discusses fruitful areas for further research based on the presented sources.
Auxiliary sciences of history, History of Central Europe
W drugiej połowie XVI w. doszło w diecezji przemyskiej do sporu miejscowej szlachty z kapitułą katedralną na tle zatrzymania przysługującej jej dziesięciny biskupiej, zwanej biskupczyzną. Dziesięcina ta, będąca zryczałtowanym ekwiwalentem dziesięciny snopowej z ról kmiecych, została nadana kapitule przez biskupów na przełomie XIV i XV w. W procesach sądowych, rozpoczętych w 1590 r., szlachta, wykorzystując różne argumenty natury prawnej, historycznej, a także retorykę protestancką, starała się zakwestionować prawa kapituły. Po pięciu latach sporu Trybunał Koronny przyznał ostatecznie rację stronie kościelnej. Był to ostatni na Rusi Czerwonej poważniejszy spór szlachty z Kościołem katolickim o dziesięciny.
In the second half of the 16th century the Przemyśl diocese witnessed a dispute of local nobility with the cathedral chapter concerning the retention of their episcopal tithe, known as the bishop’s share. That tithe, being the lump equivalent of the sheaf tithe from peasants’ fields, was granted to the chapter by bishops at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. During court cases, started in 1590, the nobles, using a variety of legal and historical arguments, as well as Protestant rhetoric, tried to question the chapter’s rights. After five years of the dispute, the Crown Tribunal decided that the church side was right. It was the last serious argument between local nobility and the Catholic Church over tithes in Red Ruthenia.
A fragment of a vessel with a zoomorphic motif from the Břežany II site in central Bohemia is one of the rare representatives of figural images on La Tène pottery. A selection of roughly thirty cases from La Tène Europe of the 5th–1st century BC presents the development of this specific expression of La Tène art from regular decoration to spontaneous graffiti.