The Clay Figurines of Acambaro, Guanajuato, Mexico

1953 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 388-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Di Peso

For the past eight years, stories have appeared concerning a vast collection of animal and human figurines of great antiquity, gathered in the vicinity of Acambaro in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. Senor Waldemar Julsrud possesses some 32,000 of these artifacts in his private collection. These ceramic figures consist of such forms as Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Stegosaurus, Trachodon, Dimetrodon and other Mesozoic reptilian life-forms. Also included in the collection are a number of modern life-forms such as cow, horse, hippopotamus, elephant, rabbit, and dog. Even more fabulous is the number of miniature Egyptian sarcophagi found in the collection.

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-218
Author(s):  
Wensdy Tindaon

The tide of the existence identity of local religion in Indonesia is becoming an ongoing reality in Indonesian society. This situation is inseparable from social construction that misunderstand the faith practiced by local religion in Indonesia. In the understanding of Indonesian society, there is still a presumption that local religion are group of animist, primitive, conservative and godless. In this research, local religion give other perspective about local religion in modernity life. Local religion reconstructs their identity through a new identity that is more easily accepted by the state and society. The existence of local religion is also inseparable from a state that is still not able to provide equal are as citizens. This research focuses on identity of Ugamo Malim that have variety of dinamics and limitations such as others local religion in Indonesia. The experience of the loss and difficulty of maintaining a local religious identity in the past has provided awareness of state recognition. The state becomes a place as well as a guarantee for them in maintaining the continuity of their identity. The various negative stigma attached to local religion disappear as we see in the social life and religiousity of Ugamo Malim.Ugamo Malim who reconstructs their identity in modern life so that it has many similarities with the majority religion. The reconstruction of local religious identities is renewed to be relevant to modern life but without reducing the meaning of their identity. Pasang surut eksistensi identitas agama lokal di Indonesia menjadi realitas yang masih berlangsung di masyarakat Indonesia. situasi ini tidak dapat dilepaskan dari konstruksi sosial atas kesalahpahaman tentang praktik kepercayaan dari agama lokal di Indonesia. Dalam pemahaman masyarakat Indonesia masih ada anggapan bahwa agama lokal sebagai kelompok animisme, primitif, konservatif dan tak bertuhan. Dalam penelitian ini, agama lokal memberikan suatu perspektif baru tentang agama lokal di kehidupan moderen. Agama lokal merekonstruksi identitasnya melalui identitas baru yang lebih mudah ditereeima oleh negara dan masyarakat mayoritas. Eksistensi agama lokal juga tidak terlepas dari negara yang masih belum mampu memberikan hak yang sama sebagai warga negara. Penelitian ini fokus pada Ugamo Malim yang memiliki beragam dinamika dan hambatan di masyarakat Indonesia. Pengalaman atas kehilangan identitas dan sulitnya mempertahankan identitas Ugamo Malim menyadarkan mereka untuk mendapatkan pengakuan dari negara. Negara menjadi jaminan bagi mereka untuk dapat mempertahankan identitasnya. Beragam stigma negatif yang melekat pada Ugamo Malim di hilangkan saat melihat keseharian mereka dan praktik religiusnya di masyarakat. Identitas baru yang di bangun Ugamo memiliki persamaan dengan agama mayoritas di Indonesia. Rekonstruksi identitas religius dibarukan dan menjadi relevan dengan kehidupan moderen tanpa mengurangi makna identitasnya.


Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.


Author(s):  
Walter Lowrie ◽  
Alastair Hannay

A small, insignificant-looking intellectual with absurdly long legs, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a veritable Hans Christian Andersen caricature of a man. A strange combination of witty cosmopolite and melancholy introvert, he spent years writing under a series of fantastical pseudonyms, lavishing all the splendor of his mind on a seldom-appreciative world. He had a tragic love affair with a young girl, was dominated by an unforgettable Old Testament father, fought a sensational literary duel with a popular satiric magazine, and died in the midst of a violent quarrel with the state church for which he had once studied theology. Yet this iconoclast produced a number of brilliant books that have profoundly influenced modern thought. This classic biography presents a charming and warmly appreciative introduction to the life and work of the great Danish writer. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's emotionally turbulent life with a keen sense of drama and an acute understanding of how his life shaped his thought. The result is a wonderfully informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most important thinkers of the past two centuries.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Pérez-Villa ◽  
Thomas Georgelin ◽  
Jean-François Lambert ◽  
Marie-Christine Maurel ◽  
François Guyot ◽  
...  

Understanding the mechanism of spontaneous formation of ribonucleotides under realistic prebiotic conditions is a key open issue of origins-of-life research. In cells, <i>de novo</i> and salvage nucleotide enzymatic synthesis combines 5-phospho-α -D-ribose-1-diphosphate ( α-PRPP) and nucleobases. Interestingly, these reactants are also known as prebiotically plausible compounds. Combining ab initio simulations with mass spectrometry experiments, we compellingly demonstrate that nucleobases and α -PRPP spontaneously combine, through the same facile mechanism, forming both purine and pyrimidine ribonucleotides, under mild hydrothermal conditions. Surprisingly, this mechanism is very similar to the biological one, and yields ribonucleotides with the same anomeric carbon chirality as in biological systems. These results suggest that natural selection might have optimized – through enzymes – a pre-existing ribonucleotide formation mechanism, carrying it forward to modern life forms.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Pérez-Villa ◽  
Thomas Georgelin ◽  
Jean-François Lambert ◽  
Marie-Christine Maurel ◽  
François Guyot ◽  
...  

Understanding the mechanism of spontaneous formation of ribonucleotides under realistic prebiotic conditions is a key open issue of origins-of-life research. In cells, <i>de novo</i> and salvage nucleotide enzymatic synthesis combines 5-phospho-α -D-ribose-1-diphosphate ( α-PRPP) and nucleobases. Interestingly, these reactants are also known as prebiotically plausible compounds. Combining ab initio simulations with mass spectrometry experiments, we compellingly demonstrate that nucleobases and α -PRPP spontaneously combine, through the same facile mechanism, forming both purine and pyrimidine ribonucleotides, under mild hydrothermal conditions. Surprisingly, this mechanism is very similar to the biological one, and yields ribonucleotides with the same anomeric carbon chirality as in biological systems. These results suggest that natural selection might have optimized – through enzymes – a pre-existing ribonucleotide formation mechanism, carrying it forward to modern life forms.


Author(s):  
Angela Dranishnikova

In the article, the author reflects the existing problems of the fight against corruption in the Russian Federation. He focuses on the opacity of the work of state bodies, leading to an increase in bribery and corruption. The topic we have chosen is socially exciting in our days, since its significance is growing on a large scale at all levels of the investigated aspect of our modern life. Democratic institutions are being jeopardized, the difference in the position of social strata of society in society’s access to material goods is growing, and the state of society is suffering from the moral point of view, citizens are losing confidence in the government, and in the top officials of the state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheetal Uppal ◽  
Mohd. Asim Khan ◽  
Suman Kundu

Aims: The aim of our study is to understand the biophysical traits that govern the stability and folding of Synechocystis hemoglobin, a unique cyanobacterial globin that displays unusual traits not observed in any of the other globins discovered so far. Background: For the past few decades, classical hemoglobins such as vertebrate hemoglobin and myoglobin have been extensively studied to unravel the stability and folding mechanisms of hemoglobins. However, the expanding wealth of hemoglobins identified in all life forms with novel properties, like heme coordination chemistry and globin fold, have added complexity and challenges to the understanding of hemoglobin stability, which has not been adequately addressed. Here, we explored the unique truncated and hexacoordinate hemoglobin from the freshwater cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 known as “Synechocystis hemoglobin (SynHb)”. The “three histidines” linkages to heme are novel to this cyanobacterial hemoglobin. Objective: Mutational studies were employed to decipher the residues within the heme pocket that dictate the stability and folding of SynHb. Methods: Site-directed mutants of SynHb were generated and analyzed using a repertoire of spectroscopic and calorimetric tools. Result: The results revealed that the heme was stably associated to the protein under all denaturing conditions with His117 playing the anchoring role. The studies also highlighted the possibility of existence of a “molten globule” like intermediate at acidic pH in this exceptionally thermostable globin. His117 and other key residues in the heme pocket play an indispensable role in imparting significant polypeptide stability. Conclusion: Synechocystis hemoglobin presents an important model system for investigations of protein folding and stability in general. The heme pocket residues influenced the folding and stability of SynHb in a very subtle and specific manner and may have been optimized to make this Hb the most stable known as of date. Other: The knowledge gained hereby about the influence of heme pocket amino acid side chains on stability and expression is currently being utilized to improve the stability of recombinant human Hbs for efficient use as oxygen delivery vehicles.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garry D. Carnegie

ABSTRACT This response to the recent contribution by Matthews (2019) entitled “The Past, Present, and Future of Accounting History” specifically deals with the issues associated with concentrating on counting publication numbers in examining the state of a scholarly research field at the start of the 2020s. It outlines several pitfalls with the narrowly focused publications count analysis, in selected English language journals only, as provided by Matthews. The commentary is based on three key arguments: (1) accounting history research and publication is far more than a “numbers game”; (2) trends in the quality of the research undertaken and published are paramount; and (3) international publication and accumulated knowledge in accounting history are indeed more than a collection of English language publications. The author seeks to contribute to discussion and debate between accounting historians and other researchers for the benefit and development of the international accounting history community and global society.


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