32151 research outputs found
Sort by
The lambent presence : the shining face of God in the Old Testament
No full textIncluded among the lines of the Priestly Blessing is the prayer that ‘the Lord [would] cause his face to shine upon you’ (Numbers 6:25), at least as it is often translated. This prayer has a small number of echoes in the rest of the Hebrew Bible with sufficient similarity to suggest something like a formulaic usage, and enough difference to raise questions about the meaning of the saying in each of its contexts. Beyond this, how should this anthropomorphism be understood? What does it mean for God’s ‘face’ to ‘shine’: is this a simple, transparent metaphor? Or does its elucidation require some deeper investigation? This exploration of the ‘shining face’ of the Deity further attempts to make a contribution to a (Christian) theology of ‘divine light’, for which previous accounts have tended to ignore this potentially illuminating set of texts.Peer reviewe
Synthesis of heteroleptic calcium amide complexes via manipulation of the Schlenk equilibrium
No full textFunding: The authors would like to thank the Centre for Doctoral Training in Critical Resource Catalysis (CRITICAT, EP/L016419/1) for financial support.Heteroleptic calcium β-diketiminate (BDI) complexes have been recognised as potent (pre)catalysts for a variety of transformations and have demonstrated valuable stoichiometric reactivity. Bulky ligands such as BDIs have been utilised to prevent unwanted dismutation and decomposition reactions of active heteroleptic species to their homoleptic congeners. Homoleptic bis-ligated alkaline earth metal (Ae) species of the type “L2Ae” have hitherto been often considered kinetic sinks and less valuable by-products. This work shows that through the use of the sterically demanding proligand HC(iPrCNDip)2H, Dip = 2,6-iPr2C6H3 (iPrDipBDIH), the homoleptic calcium complex [(iPrDipBDI)2Ca] can be destabilised to the degree that when treated with calcium bis(hexamethyldisilazide) (Ca(HMDS)2), a thermal dismutation of the ligands takes place to afford the heteroleptic complex [(iPrDipBDI)Ca(HMDS)]. DFT calculations support that this reaction is enthalpically unfavourable, an effect that is reduced by the destabilising influence of the bulk in [(iPrDipBDI)2Ca], but entropically made possible. This synthesis has been extended to a convenient one-pot regime from [(iPrDipBDI)K], CaI2 and Ca(HMDS)2, and the resultant calcium amide complex has been utilised as a precursor to prepare a thermally stable, donor-solvent-free molecular calcium hydride complex [{(iPrDipBDI)CaH}2].Peer reviewe
Revealing “unequal natures”—the paradox of water vulnerability for people on the periphery of Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Mexico
No full textFunding: Author G.C-M. was supported by a fellowship from the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation (SECIHTI), fellowship number CVU 737963 (PhD. Scholarship).The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, in southeastern Mexico, is a major conservation area known for its tropical forests, emblematic wildlife species, and long history of Maya occupation. Established in 1989 as a federal Natural Protected Area, it was incorporated into UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Program in 1993 and designated a mixed World Heritage Site in 2014. Its socioecological trajectory is distinctive: conservation efforts advanced alongside the contemporary rural settlement resulting from agrarian reform and subsequent development and welfare policies. This article examines the persistent imbalance between ecological conservation and socioeconomic development surrounding the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, focusing on water vulnerability in adjacent communities. The study integrates environmental history with household-level survey data on water access and vulnerability among 200 households in eight communities in the Biosphere Reserve’s transition zone, complemented by interviews with key water-management stakeholders. We document the consolidation of conservation through management plans, advisory councils, payments for ecosystem services, scientific research, and expanding voluntary conservation areas. Yet these advances contrast sharply with everyday socioeconomic realities: 68% of households face prolonged water scarcity, with an average of more than 30 days annually without water. Calakmul’s case highlights structural mismatch between conservation and local human well-being in Natural Protected Areas contexts.Peer reviewe
Range-wide genomic analysis reveals regional and meta-population dynamics of decline and recovery in the grey seal
No full textFunding: The work was supported by the Velux Foundations to M.T.O. (grant 123012), the BONUS BaltHealth project awarded to A.G., R.D. and M.T.O.funded jointly by the EU (Art. 185), the Innovation Fund Denmark (grant 6180- 00001B and 6180- 00002B), the Academy of Finland (grant 311966), theSwedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA), the American Scandinavian Foundation, and NIH/NIAID Centers of Excellence forInfluenza Research and Surveillance (HHSN272201400008C), and UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/R015007/1). M.L.M. was supported bya Marie Skłodowska- Curie Actions TALENT programme fellowship (grant 801199), as well as a Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens Accelerate fellowshipto M.T.O. (grant CF21- 0425).Wildlife populations globally have experienced widespread historical declines due to anthropogenic and environmental impacts, yet for some species, contemporary management and conservation programmes have enabled recent recovery. The impacts of decline and recovery on genomic diversity and, vice versa, the genetic factors that contribute to conservation success or failure are rich areas for inquiry, with implications for shaping how we manage species into the future. To comprehensively characterise these processes in natural systems requires range-wide sampling and international collaboration, particularly for species with wide dispersal capabilities, broad geographic distributions, and complex regional metapopulation dynamics. Here, we present the first range- and genome-wide population genomic analysis of grey seals based on 3812 nuclear SNPs genotyped in 188 samples from 17 localities. Our analyses support the existence of three main grey seal populations centred in the NW Atlantic, NE Atlantic and Baltic Sea, and point to the existence of previously unrecognised substructure within the NE Atlantic. We detected remarkably low levels of genetic diversity in the NW Atlantic population, and demographic analyses revealed a turbulent history of NE Atlantic and Baltic Sea grey seals, with bottlenecks in the Middle Ages and the 20th century due to hunting and habitat alterations. We found some localities deviated from isolation by distance patterns, likely reflecting wide-scale metapopulation dynamics associated with recolonisation and recovery in regions where they were historically extirpated. We identify at least six grey seal genetic populations and reveal marked genetic effects of past declines and recent recovery across the species' range.Peer reviewe
British settler colonialism and the South African National Gallery
No full textThe South African National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa, was founded and functioned as a British colonial institution, designed to encourage cultural imperialism within the Cape Colony. It was forced to shift this founding focus as British influence in South Africa waned and the nation defined its own identity. This dissertation examines SANG’s proximity to the British settler colonial project and investigates how this proximity reveals the limitations of the latter in South Africa, from 1871 to 1961. It relies on records from SANG’s colonial archive, the National Library of South Africa and the Iziko Art Collections Library in Cape Town, as well as from the Tate Gallery, City of Westminster Archives and the National Archives, Kew in London. In reading archival sources through the framework of Anne Stoler’s “reading along and against the grain,” what is shown is how the gallery’s reliance on British visual culture and British arts institutions created tensions which mirror those in British settler colonialism. This
dissertation is situated within the intersection of colonial museology, South African-British colonial history, and South African art history. It analyzes SANG’s founding and its imbrication with colonial land dispossession. It investigates the materiality and impact of gifts made by British industrialists including Alfred Beit and Alfred de Pass. It reveals the gallery’s shifting relationship with the Empire Art Loan Collections Society and the Tate Gallery. It examines SANG’s engagement with indigenous African art and its constructions of the “primitive,” supported by John Paris and Irma Stern. The artifice, fragility and hypocrisy of the British settler
colonial project reverberating through South African constructions of white supremacy and nation-building is revealed. This dissertation reframes museums including SANG and their colonial archives as institutions which reveal the particulars of the construction and vulnerabilities of systems of colonization and white supremacy
Investigating the role of structural variant interaction in accelerating adaptation : a test in field crickets
No full textUnderstanding how genomic architecture shapes rapid adaptive evolution is a central challenge in modern evolutionary biology. This thesis integrates comparative and population-genomic approaches in crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) to address this question across both macro- and micro-evolutionary scales. First, I generated high-quality de novo genome assemblies for several cricket species—including Teleogryllus oceanicus, T. commodus, Gryllodes sigillatus, and Lebinthus luae—thereby greatly expanding genomic resources for singing insects. Comparative analyses using these and other Orthopteran genomes reveal striking dynamism in genome size and structural evolution. Transposable-element activity and extensive chromosomal rearrangements emerge as major drivers of genome diversification, producing highly dynamic autosomes, whereas the X chromosome is remarkably conserved. These findings provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying insect genome evolution and position crickets as an emerging model for functional and evolutionary genomics. Second, this thesis investigates the rapid spread of the adaptive “flatwing” phenotype in the Hawaiian species T. oceanicus, which recently evolved under strong selection from a lethal parasitoid fly. Integrating a pangenome framework with population-scale whole-genome resequencing, I uncover a multi-layered genomic architecture underlying flatwing evolution. Convergent adaptation is driven in part by small structural variants—primarily non-coding insertions and deletions—affecting key regulatory genes such as doublesex, highlighting the importance of regulatory evolution. In addition, a large polymorphic X-linked inversion, although not directly causal, plays a crucial indirect role. This ancient inversion provides a genomic background that facilitates the spread and persistence of adaptive haploblocks through partial linkage and acts as a regulatory scaffold that reshapes gene expression networks, particularly sex-biased genes, via both cis- and trans-effects. Together, these findings show how direct regulatory mutations, indirect linkage effects, and broader genomic architecture interact to drive rapid phenotypic innovation under natural selection
Causal relations between regional organisations and authoritarian regime stability in 21ˢᵗ-century Eurasia : the cases of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation
No full textAbstract redacte
Dynamic Na/K ATPase and neuromodulation of mammalian spinal motor networks
No full textMammalian spinal motor networks are sensitive to neuromodulatory input which can fine tune and adapt motor output. Neuromodulators often act by targeting, either directly or indirectly, neuronal ion channels to change membrane potentials and thus affect the likelihood or rate of action potential generation. The sodium/potassium pump (Na/K ATPase), has recently been linked to a type of post discharge activity termed the ultra-slow after-hyperpolarisation (usAHP). Recent work has also highlighted a potential role for neuromodulators such as dopamine and acetylcholine in modulating this usAHP. The majority of the prior work studying this within spinal cord networks has focussed on the motoneurons, although rhythm generation and control occurs within the diverse and distributed spinal interneuron networks. My thesis aims to investigate the distribution of the usAHP in anatomically mapped spinal interneurons and interrogate the neuromodulatory mechanisms that target the Na/K ATPase pump activity.
Here it is shown, through a combination of electrophysiological and immunohistochemical techniques, that the α3 isoform of the Na/K ATPase primarily linked to the usAHP is broadly expressed across the spinal cord despite the heterogenous display of the usAHP when recording from interneurons across the network. In contrast to previous findings of the effect of modulators enhancing the usAHP in motoneurons, the presented work demonstrates that dopaminergic and muscarinic modulation can reduce post discharge hyperpolarisations in spinal interneurons. Furthermore, during rhythmic output evoked from the isolated spinal cord, both modulators reduce the variability of the network activity in a manner impeded by genetic reduction of α3 pump function. This suggests that neuromodulatory signalling can act via and specifically target the α3 Na/K ATPase to control activity within the spinal locomotor network, to stabilise rhythmic activity. These results indicate that the α3 Na/K ATPase dependent usAHP activity is a powerful mediator of neuromodulatory signalling within spinal locomotor networks
Active and passive seismic surveys over the grounding zone of Eastwind Glacier, Antarctica
Get PDFFunding: Support from NSF (Grant 1739027) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC: Grants NE/S006788/1 and NE/S00677X/1).The grounding zone of a marine‐terminating glacier, where ice begins to float, is a key control on glacier stability and ice discharge. Seismic deployments are a powerful means of studying both the geometry and processes of grounding zones; however, these regions are frequently inaccessible and dangerous for field work, and as a result are underrepresented in field studies. We report new data sets acquired at Eastwind Glacier, Antarctica, a relatively accessible grounding zone near McMurdo Station and Scott Base, as part of the Eastwind Glacier Geophysical Surveys on Top of an Antarctic Ice Shelf Transition, EGGS on TOAST, project. These data sets comprise a deployment of three‐component seismic nodes and distributed acoustic sensing. The nodal deployment consisted of 330 nodes crossing the grounding zone, with all 330 nodes continuously recording for at least nine days, and 150 nodes recording for 19 days, in the austral summer of 2022/2023. Hammer‐and‐plate sources were recorded, with densely spaced shots along flow through the center of the array and shots located at every node. In 2023/2024, a 2.2 km fiber‐optic cable was deployed for active source imaging by distributed acoustic sensing along and across flow, immediately downstream of the grounding line, for a period of 2 hr. Analysis of active source data recorded by the nodal array locates the point of flotation within the grounding zone and provides ice thickness estimates. We present initial analyses of passive source data, including icequake detection and location, and ambient noise analysis. We expect this data set to be of significant value to provide insight into fundamental grounding zone processes and as an event‐rich cryoseismological data set on which to test novel methods of seismic analysis.Peer reviewe
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage St Andrews Research Repository? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!