In Kenya, the return to the multiparty democracy of the 1990s and the initiation of the Constitutional Review of the early 2000s were two critical junctures that catalysed reform momentum and the development of transnational reform networks. Transnational relations were developed between Kenyan professionals (lawyers and academics among others), their international counterparts, and the local activists representing rural constituencies, so as to influence policymaking during constitutional and land policy reforms. These transnational networks influenced content and shape of land policy narratives by vernacularising the international norms that promote formal recognition of customary land rights. These international norms were not straightforwardly imported into Kenyan policies and statues: intense negotiations amongst actors in policy arenas resulted in their vernacularisation. Kenyan translocal actors appropriated the community land narrative, hybridised and reinterpreted it. This paper documents and analyses how the notion of community land was enshrined in Kenyan policy and constitutional documents through transnational relations. I argue that this notion of community land was shaped to the Kenyan historical and political context, at times defeating the original goal of promoting a property rights model alternative to land privatisation, and at times echoing the colonial category of tribal land, and exclusive territorial control.

Nemavermes mackeei Schram, 1973, found in the Mazon Creek fossil site and the Bear Gulch Limestone, was described initially as a free-living marine nematode. Here we investigate 13 specimens of N. mackeei from the Mazon Creek to reassess its morphology and identity, and also two specimens originally identified as Gilpichthys greenei Bardack and Richardson, 1977. Based on the extensive morphological variation among these specimens, N. mackeei encompasses multiple species that are only distantly related. The holotype of N. mackeei is a proboscis of Tullimonstrum gregarium Richardson, 1966, making N. mackeei a junior synonym of T. gregarium. However, the other specimens that we investigated could not be attributed to T. gregarium. We name a new species from these specimens: Squirmarius testai new genus new species, a cyclostome. One specimen is likely a juvenile G. greenei. Other specimens were not identified during this study but represent a variety of vermiform bilaterians.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/d8c63f6a-0ef4-4a34-8dbd-c1d9099589cc

This article explores historical and legal approaches to past society, asking what each has to offer the other. Using early modern midwives’ oaths as a case study, it examines the extent to which the law shapes everyday life and society, and vice versa allowing us to situate early modern midwives at the intersection of a number of important and competing seventeenth-century institutions including state, church, society, and profession. We argue that a historico-legal approach to the practices of seventeenth-century midwives demands a reconsideration of the historiography of medical ethics and of the professions more broadly. It situates midwives as holders of formal office, and agents of the emergent early modern state and encourages reflection on the nature of ethical practice, and professional regulation within their social, cultural, and political context.

Vitruvius is a full-figured text. Bodies proliferate endlessly—as touchstones of measurement, as images of ideal proportions, as analogies for building, empire, discipline, or text—and they dance just as deftly around the scholarship. If we had to pick a metaphor by which Vitruvius lived in writing, we could do no better than corpus. He is perhaps antiquity's greatest embodiment of body. But what I would like to argue in this article is that the Vitruvian body is not uniform; not alone; not ideal; and as an instrument of scientific discovery, it is not enough. It is lacking—and it needs to lack.

During the last decade, our understanding of stellar physics and evolution has undergone a tremendous revolution thanks to asteroseismology. Space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, K2, and TESS have already been observing millions of stars providing high-precision photometric data. With these data, it is possible to study the convection of stars through the convective background in the power spectrum density of the light curves. The properties of the convective background or granulation has been shown to be correlated to the surface gravity of the stars. In addition, when we have enough resolution (so long enough observations) and a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the individual modes can be characterized in particular to study the internal rotational splittings and magnetic field of stars. Finally, the surface magnetic activity also impacts the amplitude and hence detection of the acoustic modes. This effect can be seen as a double-edged sword. Indeed, modes can be studied to look for magnetic activity changes. However, this also means that for stars too magnetically active, modes can be suppressed, preventing us from detecting them.

In this talk, I will present some highlights on what asteroseismology has allowed us to better understand the convection, rotation, and magnetism of solar-like stars while opening doors to many more questions.

John McGreevy's Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis hinges on seismic events that shook the foundations of the Catholic Church: the French Revolution, its aftershocks in many European nations, and the devastating effects of the Napoleonic Wars that followed. The episcopalism of Catholicism that arose from the ashes of the revolution seemed to reject the pillar of its globalism, namely the papacy. Pius IX paid for this with his life. Eternal Rome suddenly became mortal, overtaken by the revolutionaries. Catholic schools were nationalized. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy enacted an agenda for the secularization of society, the church itself, and its institutions. Notre Dame became a “Temple of Reason,” and the chalices and ciboria of Saint-Sulpice were melted down to make cash. The damage done to the church by this revolution was paralleled only by the communist revolutions of the twentieth century.

Germplasm characterization and evaluation are essential for the genetic improvement of crops. In this study, a collection of 204 groundnut accessions including 13 checks held by Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute, Ghana were evaluated under optimal conditions for 2 years. The objectives were to characterize the groundnut collection using 18 qualitative and 14 quantitative traits and to determine the relationships between the traits. Combined analysis of variance based on augmented design revealed significant differences (P < 0.05) among the accessions for majority of the traits. Results of principal component analysis showed that all the quantitative traits were relevant in discriminating the accessions. Primary seed colour was the most diverse qualitative trait based on Shannon diversity index (n = 0.77). Frequency distribution analysis showed predominance of decumbent growth habit and pale tan seeds. Cluster analysis using qualitative traits identified five major groups of accessions and three each based on quantitative traits and joint analysis of quantitative and qualitative traits. Number of main branches (NMB) and pod width (PW) appeared the most important traits with positive contribution to yield based on correlation and path coefficient analysis. Ten promising trait-specific accessions were identified for earliness along with desirable pod and seed traits. GH 9672 and GH 9665 were identified as promising for higher grain and fodder yield. Five accessions (GH 9833, GH 9829, GH 9830, GH 9835 and GH 9750) produced ~5–30% more grain yield than the best check. This study underscored ample phenotypic variation that would ultimately be exploited for genetic improvement of groundnut.

This paper deals with a case of Virgilian ambiguity, namely the famous hemistich at Aen. 4.298 omnia tuta timens. By highlighting a plausible reading with a causal force (‘fearing everything too calm’, ‘because of the excessive calmness’), it seeks to demonstrate that this hemistich is an ambiguous passage. This view is confirmed through the imitation by Valerius Flaccus, who, in alluding to the Virgilian passage (Argonautica 8.408–12), highlights its ambiguity by including both of the most plausible readings.

This article suggests a new reading for Oribasius’ Libri ad Eunapium 3.13.4. Based on evidence from both Greek and Syriac sources, it argues that the variant contained in Oribasius’ Synopsis ad Eustathium should be adopted as the correct reading of the original.

The formation of highly structured, spatially localized complex structures during solar flux emergence facilitates adaptation of topological methods, extending the research of emerging macroscopic MHD fluxes into knots, links and braids. Combining mathematical considerations, remote images and in situ satellite observations at solar vicinity, we construct new characteristics of those braided/knotted magnetic structures, applying Braid and Knot Theory to physical configurations, deducing their topological invariants, constraining the evolution and stability while delineating the relaxation path to magnetized equilibria.

The fast rotating solar analogs show a decrease of the dynamo period with an increase of the rotation rate for the moderate stellar rotation periods in the range between 10 and 25 days. Simultaneously, observations indicate two branches: the “in-active” branch stars shows short dynamo cycles and the active branch stars show the relatively long magnetic cycles. We suggest that this phenomenon can be produced by effect of the doubling frequency of the dynamo waves, which is due to excitation of the second harmonic. It is generated because of the nonlinear B2 effects in the large-scale dynamo.

Central to this article are the minutes of nine codification meetings held in 1865 at various locations in West Sumatra. During these meetings the draft regulations for a new colonial legal system were discussed and negotiated by West Sumatran elites and Dutch officials. This episode and its unique archives serve as a microhistory of lawmaking, legal translation, and erasure. The article argues that the process of making colonialism procedural, as well as the genealogical workings of colonial knowledge production, are crucial to understanding the making and unmaking of law in the context of legal pluralities. It shows that finding similarities in interests and worldview, moments of ‘erasure through translation’, the symbolic language of fluidity of adat and legal hybridity, as well as the archival power of the material and the spatial elements of both the meetings and the minutes, were vehicles through which codification in West Sumatra was attempted and contested.