The stratum corneum (SC), the outermost layer of the skin, provides the body with a physiologically essential barrier to unregulated water loss and the influx of exogenous substances. Furthermore, the 10–20 micron thick SC, composed of overlapping protein-rich corneocytes surrounded by a heterogeneous multilamellar lipid matrix, displays tremendous mechanical cohesion and thermal integrity. To understand the contribution of these components to SC mechanical properties requires building a complete mechanical model of the skin. In this study we focus on modelling the hierarchical microstructure of the lipid phase and its relation to mechanical properties using a combination of atomistic and mesoscale simulations. The modelling approaches are parameterised with experimental data from FT-IR spectroscopy, X-ray scattering and, in the case of the mesoscale simulations, with detailed density profiles derived from atomic models. The atomistic models are used to probe the role of specific lipid species in maintaining the thermal and structural stability of the SC extracellular lipid matrix and to investigate the role of hydrogen bonding networks in SC lipid cohesion. Mesoscale models are used to investigate domain formation and lipid bilayer organisation on length and time scales inaccessible with atomistic models. These coarse grained models display transitions between ordered hexagonal gel phases and fluid phases, reproducing the experimentally observed ordering of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions.

The Greek intellectual Thucydides has been widely identified by scholars of international relations as prefiguring twentieth century Realist thought. This appropriation fails to locate particular aspects of Thucydides' writing within the overall narrative structure of The Peloponnesian War. The narrative structure is in the form of a tragedy. Thucydides was critical of the excessive and unrestrained nature of Athenian and Hellenic conduct during the war. By taking up specific themes including the dominance of reason by the passions, the eclipse of logos by ergon, and the decline of nomos, he expressed this critique in a tragic form. In the end, an unrestrained Athens reached for Sicily and suffered Nemesian retribution in the form of ignominious defeat. To claim Thucydides as a precursor to Realist thought, therefore, is peculiar, and has the character of enlisting a critique of excess and immoderation on behalf of an intellectual discourse altogether lacking in reasoned moderation.

Keedwell has shown that none of the groups of order less than 5 has a weak uniquely completable set. We prove that a weak uniquely completable set exists in a latin square based on a finite group if and only if the group is of order greater than 5.

Con motivo de la visita a la sede del CICR de S. M. la reina Isabel II, la Revista Internacional considera oportuno publicar un resumen de las actividades actuates de la Cruz Roja Británica, redactado por el señor David Bedford, encargado de prensa en la sede central de esa Sociedad nacional.