3,438 research outputs found
The Book of Daniel and manticism: a critical assessment of the view that the Book of Daniel derives from a mantic tradition
No full textThis dissertation examines the consensus view that is based on Hans-Peter
Müller's 1969 and 1972 articles: Daniel was a mantic wise man in the Mesopotamian
ASA
court, and this was the self-understanding or aspiration of the maskilim of Dan 11:33, 35,
12:3, 10, who wrote the book. Chapter 1 reviews the arguments that make the mantic connection and Chapter 2 concludes that a direct connection with the Danes of Aqht, Ezek, and Jub, and with the angel in 1 Enoch should be rejected. There is evidence that the
tradition of a priest in Ezra 8: 2 and Neh 10: 7, and found also in the superscription to
the Old Greek of Bel, and 4 Ezra 12:10-11, and suggested the name.
Chapter 3 concludes that the portrayal of the court diviners in Dan 1-6 is wholly
negative and includes both the diviners, and the essence of the professions, i. e., the
ability to interpret a divine revelation. The critique is conveyed through the story line,
explicit criticisms, irony, and humour. Chapter 4 concludes that Daniel, the interpreter
of dreams and the writing on the wall, is distinguished from every other character and role. In the final form of Dan, Daniel as the divinely assisted each time he interprets, just as when he receives help from an interpreting angel in Dan 7-12.
Chapter 5 demonstrates that the portrayal of Daniel as the divinely assisted
interpreter makes sense of the reinterpretation of old prophecies against the Assyrians
as prophecies against Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Hab 2:2-4 and Isa 52-53 were also
understood as predictions about the maskilim themselves. Comparisons are then made
with the Teacher of Righteousness, the writers of the Hodayot, and with three Essenes
portrayed by Josephus. These too were portrayed as divinely assisted interpreters
Meiofauna in einem chemoautotrophen Grundwasser-Ökosystem: die Movile-Höhle, Rumänien
No full textMuschiol D. Meiofauna in a chemosynthetic groundwater ecosystem: Movile Cave, Romania. Bielefeld (Germany): Bielefeld University; 2009.Die 1986 entdeckte Movile-Höhle stellt ein Grundwasserökosystem dar, das eine artenreiche Gemeinschaft von Wirbellosen beherbergt. Jedoch erreicht keinerlei photoautotroph produzierte Nahrung die Höhle, die seit mindestens der letzten Eiszeit vollständig von der Erdoberfläche isoliert ist. Stattdessen beruht alles Leben in der Höhle allein auf chemoautotropher Produktion. Auf einem thermomineralem, methan- und sulfidhaltigem See schwimmen chemoautotrophe mikrobielle Matten, die von dichten, teilweise endemischen Meiofaunapopulationen besiedelt sind. Diese Gemeinschaft umfasst jedoch nur etwa 20 Arten, so dass das Nahrungsnetz der Matten außergewöhnlich einfach aufgebaut ist. Aufgrund der Besonderheiten dieses Ökosystems (extreme Isolation, alleinige Abhängigkeit von chemoautotropher Produktion, konstante abiotische Parameter) bietet die Movile-Höhle die Gelegenheit, ein vollständiges Ökosystem umfassend zu charakterisieren. Das Hauptanliegen der Studie war, einen Einblick in das Nahrungsnetz dieses Ökosystems zu erlangen.
Die einzigartigen physikalisch-chemischen Bedingungen der Höhle wurden experimentell simuliert, so dass schwimmende mikrobielle Matten im Labor kultiviert werden konnten. Diese kultivierten Matten wurden schnell von den hochadaptierten Höhlenorganismen kolonisiert. Gemessen an Individuenzahl und Biomasse wurden sowohl kultivierte als auch natürliche Matten deutlich von fünf Arten bakterienfressender Nematoden sowie einem räuberischen Copepoden dominiert. Die Entwicklung der Nematodengemeinschaft wurde über ein Jahr verfolgt, wobei sich zeigte, dass die relative Zusammensetzung auf Artniveau starken Fluktuationen unterlag. Ähnliche Fluktuationen wurden auch in natürlich gewachsenen Matten beobachtet und könnten eine sukzessive Abnahme bakterieller Nahrung in den Matten widerspiegeln. Frühere Berichte, dass die Nematoden auch unter vollständiger Anoxie gedeihen, konnten nicht bestätigt werden.
Mit den beiden häufigsten Nematodenarten der Höhle wurden Untersuchungen zum Lebenszyklus durchgeführt. Sowohl Poikilolaimus sp. als auch Panagrolaimus sp. erwiesen sich als vergleichsweise schnell wachsende Arten, die ihre Populationsgrößen alle 4,21 bzw. 2,24 Tage verdoppeln können, wenn Nahrung im Überfluss vorhanden ist. Panagrolaimus produziert zwar während seines Lebens insgesamt weniger Nachkommen als Poikilolaimus, weist aber aufgrund seiner kürzeren Entwicklungszeit ein höheres maximales Populationswachstum auf. Anschließende Studien unter variablen Nahrungsbedingungen sowie die Tatsache, dass in Movile kein kompetitiver Ausschluss von Nematodenarten stattfindet, legen nahe, dass die Nematoden unterschiedliche Ansprüche bezüglich der bevorzugten Nahrungsdichte aufweisen.
Eine verbesserte Methode zur Untersuchung von Parametern des Lebenszyklus von Nematoden wurde entwickelt und anschließend auf Caenorhabditis elegans angewendet; möglicherweise wird sie sich im Vergleich zu traditionellen Kultivierungstechniken als vorteilhaft erweisen.
Studien zum Nahrungsnetz zielten darauf ab, zu untersuchen, ob die Nematoden, die zweifellos einen erheblichen Anteil der chemoautotroph produzierten Biomasse konsumieren, auch höheren trophischen Ebenen als Nahrungsgrundlage dienen. Mit täglichen Konsumptionsraten, die das 2,5-fache seines eigenen Körpergewichtes übersteigen konnten, erwies sich der häufige Copepode Eucyclops subterraneus scythicus als gefräßiger Räuber von Nematoden - ein Ergebnis, dass auch von vorläufigen Untersuchungen zu Stabilen-Isotopen-Verhältnissen (Delta15N) gestützt wird. Berechnungen der Biomassenproduktion durch Nematoden sowie der Fraßraten des Copepoden legen nahe, dass Eucyclops in Movile eine top-down Kontrolle auf die Nematodenpopulationen ausüben könnte. Weitere Räuber-Beute-Experimente mit dem an der Erdoberfläche weitverbreiteten Copepoden Diacyclops bicuspidatus deuten an, dass die beobachtete trophische Verbindung zwischen Nematoden und Copepoden auch in zahlreichen anderen aquatischen Habitaten von Bedeutung ist: Sie könnte eine wichtige benthisch-pelagische Kopplung zwischen mikrobiellem Kohlenstoff, endobenthischen Nematoden, epibenthischen Copepoden und pelagischen Fischen darstellen.
Erste Untersuchungen anhand von Amplified Ribosomal DNA Restriction Analysis (ARDRA) zeigten, dass die bakterielle Diversität der schwimmenden mikrobiellen Matten in Movile möglicherweise höher als erwartet ausfällt.
Zusammenfassend lässt sich festhalten, dass unsere Untersuchungen eine erste Skizze der wichtigsten energetischen Wege im Nahrungsnetz von Movile entwerfen. Das entstehende Bild zeigt ein außergewöhnlich einfach aufgebautes Nahrungsnetz, in dem chemoautotrophe mikrobielle Matten die Nahrungsgrundlage bakterienfressender Nematoden sind, die wiederum stark von Copepoden bejagt werden.Discovered in 1986, Movile Cave is a peculiar groundwater ecosystem sustaining abundant and diverse invertebrate communities. Isolated from the surface since preglacial times, the cave lacks input of allochthonous photoautotrophically based food. Instead, all life in Movile Cave entirely depends on in situ chemoautotrophic production. Chemoautotrophic microbial mats floating on a cave pond of thermomineral, highly sulphidic and methanic water are inhabited by dense populations of partly endemic meiofauna from a wide range of taxonomic groups. Yet, the mats' meiofauna comprises no more than about 20 species, suggesting an extraordinary simple food web in comparison to other habitats. Along with the unique properties of this ecosystem (extreme isolation, in situ chemoautotrophic production alone, constant abiotic factors), Movile Cave thus offers the opportunity to characterize and eventually understand an ecosystem as a whole.
The main objective of our studies on the floating microbial mats of Movile Cave was to identify their key species and major trophic links, thereby getting a first general idea of the dynamics and functioning of this self-contained ecosystem.
Since chances of quantitative in-situ sampling are negligible in Movile Cave, we experimentally simulated the cave's unique physicochemical conditions in order to develop a model system allowing for laboratory investigation of the mat community. By manipulating the atmosphere in enclosures set atop thermomineral water, we created hypoxic conditions that permitted the development of floating microbial mats. Both in the laboratory and the cave itself, these cultivated mats were quickly colonized by Movile's highly adapted invertebrates. In terms of total abundance and biomass, both native and cultivated mats were clearly dominated by five bacterivorous nematode species and a predacious copepod species. Throughout a year-long investigation period, we monitored meiofaunal community structure and observed strong fluctuations in the relative importance of individual nematode species. These fluctuations also characterized samples of native mat material and may reflect a succession of decreasing bacterial food availability within the mats. However, previous reports on the occurrence of nematodes surviving and reproducing under complete anoxia could not be confirmed.
In order to gather basic, so far missing ecological information, life-cycle studies were conducted with the two most abundant nematode species from Movile. Under excess food conditions, both Poikilolaimus sp. and Panagrolaimus sp. emerged as comparatively fast-growing species, with population doubling times of 4.21 and 2.24 days, respectively. Panagrolaimus produced less progeny than Poikilolaimus during its life but exhibited faster maximum population growth due to its earlier maturation. As indicated by subsequent studies under varying food regimes and the fact that competitive exclusion does not occur in Movile, the nematodes apparently evince different food density preferences.
An improved method for the estimation of life-cycle parameters in nematodes was developed and subsequently applied to Caenorhabditis elegans; it may ultimately prove to be more convenient than traditional cultivation techniques.
Food web studies aimed to investigate if nematodes, which doubtless consume a considerable amount of chemoautotrophically produced biomass in Movile Cave, in turn serve as a food base for higher trophic levels. With daily consumption rates exceeding its own body weight by a factor of 2.5, the abundant copepod Eucyclops subterraneus scythicus emerged as a voracious predator of nematodes, a finding that is also supported by preliminary investigations of nitrogen stable isotope ratios (Delta15N). Calculations of nematode biomass production and copepod feeding rates suggested that Eucyclops might top-down control nematode populations in Movile Cave. As indicated by predator-prey experiments with a common surface-dwelling copepod, Diacyclops bicuspidatus, the revealed trophic linkage between nematodes and copepods might be of considerable importance in many other aquatic habitats, providing an important benthic-pelagic coupling between microbial carbon, endobenthic nematodes, epibenthic copepods, and pelagic fish.
First experiments employing Amplified Ribosomal DNA Restriction Analysis (ARDRA) suggested that the bacterial diversity of Movile's floating microbial mats is probably higher than expected. The investigation of how nematode grazing affects the microbial community of the mats appears a promising field for further investigations.
In summary, our investigations provided a first sketch of the main energetic pathways in the food-web of Movile. The emerging picture shows an extraordinary simple food web, with chemosynthetic mats sustaining countless bacterial-feeding nematodes, which are, in turn, heavily predated upon by copepods
Index to Cave Notes/Caves and Karst, June 1973
No full textContent: Indexes to Cave Notes/Caves and Karst -- Author and Title Index -- Subject Index -- Geographic Indexhttps://digitalcommons.usf.edu/caves_and_karst/1078/thumbnail.jp
The transcriptomes of cave and surface populations of Gammarus minus (Crustacea: Amphipoda) provide evidence for positive selection on cave downregulated transcripts
No full textGammarus minus, a freshwater amphipod living in the cave and surface streams in the eastern
USA, is an excellent model for investigating evolutionary adaptation to the subterranean
environment. RNA-Seq was conducted on one pair of morphologically distinct sister populations
inhabiting surface and cave habitats to identify genes that were differentially expressed
in the two populations, as well as to compare levels and patterns of genetic variation within
and between populations. Of the 104,630 transcripts identified in the transcriptome assembly,
57% had higher average levels of expression in the cave population. After Benjamini-
Hochberg correction for multiple tests, 1517 and 551 transcripts were significantly upregulated
or downregulated, respectively, in the cave population, indicating an almost three-fold
enrichment of cave-upregulated genes. The average level of nucleotide diversity across all
transcripts was significantly lower in the cave population. Within the cave population, where
the average nucleotide diversity of cave-downregulated transcripts was 75% that of the
cave-upregulated transcripts, a highly significant difference, whereas within the spring population
the nucleotide diversities of cave-downregulated and cave-upregulated transcripts
was virtually identical. Three lines of evidence suggest that the reduced variation in cave
downregulated transcripts is due to positive selection in the cave population: 1) the average
neutrality index of cave-downregulated genes was < 1, consistent with positive selection,
and significantly less than that of cave-upregulated genes; 2) Tajima's D was positively correlated
with the cave:surface expression ratio, and 3) cave-downregulated transcripts were
significantly more likely to be highly diverged from their surface homologs than cave-upregulated
transcripts. Five transcripts had fixed premature termination codons in the cave population.
The expression patterns and sequence variation in one such transcript, encoding the
DNA repair protein photolyase, were examined in more detail and provide the first evidence
for the relaxation of functional constraint in this light-dependent protein in a subterranean
population
Cave-dwelling gastropods (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of Brazil: state of the art and conservation
No full textABSTRACT An up-to-date list of exclusively cave-dwelling gastropod species recorded in Brazil is presented including updated taxonomy, detailed geographic information, and illustration of types. The list includes 18 cave-exclusive (troglobitic) gastropods encompassing 15 land and three freshwater species, with the status of further species pending additional studies. Their unusual morphology and diversity are discussed, as well as their conservation status and prospects in the current Brazilian environmental and political scenario.</div
Constraining Holocene hydrological changes in the Carpathian–Balkan region using speleothem δ18O and pollen-based temperature reconstructions
No full textHere we present a speleothem isotope record (POM2) from Ascunsă Cave (Romania) that provides new data on past climate changes in the Carpathian–Balkan region from 8.2 ka until the present. This paper describes an approach to constrain the effect of temperature changes on calcite δ18O values in stalagmite POM2 over the course of the middle Holocene (6–4 ka), and across the 8.2 and 3.2 ka rapid climate change events. Independent pollen temperature reconstructions are used to this purpose. The approach combines the temperature-dependent isotope fractionation of rain water during condensation and fractionation resulting from calcite precipitation at the given cave temperature. The only prior assumptions are that pollen-derived average annual temperature reflects average cave temperature, and that pollen-derived coldest and warmest month temperatures reflect the range of condensation temperatures of rain above the cave site. This approach constrains a range of values between which speleothem δ18O changes should be found if controlled only by surface temperature variations at the cave site. Deviations of the change in δ18Ocspel values from the calculated temperature-constrained range of change are interpreted towards large-scale variability of climate–hydrology.
Following this approach, we show that an additional ∼0.6‰ enrichment of δ18Oc in the POM2 stalagmite was caused by changing hydrological patterns in SW Romania across the middle Holocene, most likely comprising local evaporation from the soil and an increase in Mediterranean moisture δ18O. Further, by extending the calculations to other speleothem records from around the entire Mediterranean basin, it appears that all eastern Mediterranean speleothems recorded a similar isotopic enrichment due to changing hydrology, whereas all changes recorded in speleothems from the western Mediterranean are fully explained by temperature variation alone. This highlights a different hydrological evolution between the two sides of the Mediterranean.
Our results also demonstrate that during the 8.2 ka event, POM2 stable isotope data essentially fit the temperature-constrained isotopic variability. In the case of the 3.2 ka event, an additional climate-related hydrological factor is more evident. This implies a different rainfall pattern in the Southern Carpathian region during this event at the end of the Bronze Age
Translation technique and textual studies in the Old Greek and Theodotion versions of Daniel.
No full textThis thesis focuses on two separate, but related areas: the analysis of translation technique and the Greek texts of Daniel. Foremost in the research of Translation Technique (TT) in the Septuagint is the need for a model that is appropriate for the analysis of different ancient languages. In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on the features of literalism in a translation, but it is argued in this thesis that the focus on literalism is inadequate as a methodology for the analysis of TT. The contention of this thesis is that the analysis of TT should incorporate insights from modem linguistic research. Therefore, the main purpose of this thesis is to develop and apply such a model to the Old Greek (CG) and Theodotion (Th)versions of Daniel. The existence of two complete Greek versions of the book of Daniel that are closely related to the same Vorlage (at least in chapters 1-3 and 7-12), furnish ideal examples for the application of the methodology. Unfortunately, it is no straightforward matter to employ the OG of Daniel, because the available critical edition can no longer be regarded as reliable. The most important witness to the OG version of Daniel is Papyrus 967, and large portions of this manuscript have been published since the appearance of the critical edition of the OG of Daniel in 1954. Therefore, in order to analyze and compare the two Greek texts of Daniel, it is necessary to evaluate all of the variants of Papyrus 967 in order to establish a preliminary critical text of OG. Once a critical text is established the proposed methodology for translation technique is applied to selected passages in the OG and Th versions of Daniel. An analysis and comparison of TT in OG and Th makes it possible to: 1) characterize the TT employed by OG and Th in detail; 2) determine Th's relationship to OG, i.e. is it a revision or independent translation; 3) demonstrate how the Greek texts can be employed effectively for textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. On the basis of the analysis of Th's text it is also possible to determine Th's relationship to the body of works, which exhibit a close formal correspondence to the Masoretic text, known as Kaige-Theodotion
Melanization in response to wounding is ancestral in arthropods and conserved in albino cave species
No full textPublished in:
Scientific Reports, volume 7, Article number: 17148 (2017), doi:10.1038/s41598-017-17471-2Many species adapted to aphotic subterranean habitats have lost all body pigmentation. Yet, melanization is an important component of wound healing in arthropods. We amputated appendages in a variety of cave-adapted and surface-dwelling arthropods. A dark clot formed at the site of injury in most species tested, including even albino cave-adapted species. The dark coloration of the clots was due to melanin deposition. The speed of wound melanization was uncorrelated with a difference in metabolic rate between surface and cave populations of an amphipod. The chelicerate Limulus polyphemus, all isopod crustaceans tested, and the cave shrimp Troglocaris anophthalmus did not melanize wounds. The loss of wound melanization in T. anophthalmus was an apomorphy associated with adaptation to subterranean habitats, but in isopods it appeared to be a symplesiomorphy unrelated to colonization of subterranean habitats. We conclude that wound melanization i) is an important part of innate immunity because it was present in all major arthropod lineages, ii) is retained in most albino cave species, and iii) has been lost several times during arthropod evolution, indicating melanization is not an indispensable component of wound healing in arthropods
The Art of Object-Oriented Ritual: an interview with Sarah Cave
No full textThe Merits of Tracer Fire is a beautiful paperback book produced by Abridged and designed by Luke Thompson of Guillemot Press. (The contents are also available online: see www.abridged.zone) It contains Polaroids by Dragana Jurisic, poetry by Sarah Cave, and an essay by Susanna Galbraith, which serves as an introduction and framing device for the book, considering the blurring of social and private space and the traces of our lives we leave behind. She writes well about the online world we inhabit, of how the translation of the real into the digital undermines the self, and the social context for all this. I thought I’d ask author Sarah Cave for her take on this project
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