Today is an official holiday. It is Thursday the 11th of Ordibehesht or the 1st of May and it is a public holiday here. But this isn't because it's International Worker's Day, but because of the anniversary of the death of the prophet Mohammed. But for those of us who are second-class citizens (or to use the term that Mesbah Yazdi has coined for us merely 'ambulant pieces of flesh attached to legs', for those of us who are of no (...) use to the 'Islamic regime' -- which should in truth be referred to as 'the greatest human tragedy in the memory of recent human civilization') it makes no difference what day it is. I was up all night glued to the computer screen 'to earn my daily bread'. (Here I use the hackneyed expression 'to earn my bread' to mean precisely that and nothing more). At about 6:30 or 7:00am I fell sleep and managed briefly to flee the weight of my troubles, the totality of which I am now used to, knowing all the while that they will one day spell my end: exhaustion, back aches, eye strain, headaches, heart palpitations, and the thousand other terrible things. I was shattered. What do Mullahs know about such things? (shrink)

En un artículo anterior expusimos el marco cristológico donde trata la Escolástica la ciencia humana de Jesucristo. Al asumir el Verbo la naturaleza humana de Jesús para llevar a cabo la redención, implica la consideración de la constitución ontológica del Hijo de Dios. Esto se analiza en la cuestión de la unión hipostática. La postura de la Escuela Franciscana arranca de Alejandro de Hales ante las tres opiniones que Pedro Lombardo transmite en las Sentencias. Por otra parte, esta cuestión conduce (...) al análisis de la esencia y propiedades de dicha naturaleza asumida. Con esto se contemplan, no sólo las cualidades naturales, por lo general situadas en el alma de Cristo, sino también los defectos aducidos en el estudio sobre la pasión y muerte de Cristo, centro de la aislada soteriología medieval. (shrink)

Telomeres, the ends of chromosomes, shorten with each cell division. To expand their replicative potential, various cell types use the ribonucleoprotein telomerase, which lengthens telomeres by its reverse transcriptase activity. Because of its ability to immortalize cancer cells, telomerase also plays a significant role in tumor growth. However, in recent years, a wide variety of non‐canonical effects of telomerase that are independent of telomere lengthening have been discovered, and even the notion that telomerase is restricted to very few cell types (...) has been questioned. These effects also seem to be important in carcinogenesis and might explain the tumor‐promoting effects of telomerase independently of telomere elongation. Here, the current understanding of the extratelomeric roles of telomerase and their physiological and pathological significance is reviewed. BioEssays 30:728–732, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

RésuméL'auteur montre que si l'argumentation d'Einstein paraǐt classique sur presque tous les points, elle ne l'est pas sur un point fondamental, qui est l'égalité de la vitesse de la lumière dans toutes les directions. Si l'on laisse tomber ce postulat, on retombe sur la simultanéité absolue. D'autre part, ce « classicisme » est légitime et apparaǐt au contraire comme une habileté didactique. Enfin, il montre que le point qui déroute M. Evans, c'est la relativité de la vitesse relative, qui n'existe (...) pas en physique classique.The author shows that although Einstein's argument seems classical in almost all points, it fails to be in one very important point: the equality of the velocity of light for all observers. When setting aside this postulate, one returns to the absolute simultaneity. On the other hand, this almost classical argument is perfectly valid from the relativistic point of view and appears as a didactic cleverness. The author shows finally that the point deceiving Mr. Evans is the relativity of the relative velocity, that does not exist in classical physics. (shrink)

Blockhead or or Baldhead? Petron. Sat. 39. 12: ‘in Aquario copones et cucurbitae’. Apul.Met. I. 15: ‘nos cucurbitae caput non habemus ut pro te moriamur’. Cucurbita in its literal use is the name of many varieties of the numerous family of Cucurbitaceae, as one may learn, e.g. from Plin. Nat. Hist. xix. It is also the name of the cupping instrument called by Juvenal, xiv. 58, uentosa cucurbita, for which see Mayor's note ad loc. For other metaphorical uses of the (...) name, Forcellini and the Thes. Ling. Lat. cite only the two passages quoted above; of these two, Lewis and Short cite only the former. Lexicographers and editors,1 comparing the one passage with the other, concur in the view that the cucurbita is the symbol of stupidity, and that a stupid man may be called a cucurbita, as in Petronius, or be said cucurbitae caput habere, as in Apuleius. At first sight their interpretation of the Apuleian phrase is plausible, for it makes tolerable sense in the context and appears to be supported by such modern expressions as ‘pumpkin-head’ and Kürbiskopf and κεχλι κολοκνθνιον, all of which liken the head of a stupid man to a pumpkin or other gourd which, though bearing some resemblance to a human head, encloses not a brain but an insensate mass of pulp and seeds. But ‘to have a pumpkin-head’ and ‘to be a pumpkin’ are prima facie very different, for the latter equates the man himself with the cucurbita, whereas it is only qua substitute for a head that the cucurbita can typify stupidity; and when it is further observed that in the Petronian passage cucurbitae so interpreted accords ill with the context, it becomes clear that some other explanation must be sought. (shrink)