(Un)Doing Constitutionalism: The Cases of Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong

Based on the cases of Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong, this article reviews the Court judgments and discussions about the criminal charges of “inciting subversion of state power” and “disrupting public order” used against Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong respectively. Through a review of the discourses of Chinese legal scholars surrounding the two cases, we focus on the conflicting arguments regarding the Chinese Constitution and the Constitutional right to freedom of expression. This article concludes with an analysis of the political meaning of the two cases by revisiting the debate about the implementation of a Constitutional review and by reflecting upon the political contention between the government’s recent re-ideologisation of the Constitution and the growing calls of Chinese citizens who advocate Constitutionalism as a proxy for political reform.     

Die Burušaski-Lehnwörter in der Zigeunersprache

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Microelectrode Investigations of the Visual System at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology,Freiburg i.Br.: A Historical Account of the First 10 Years, 1951–1960

The history of the first ten years of neurophysiological science (1951–1960) at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology in Freiburg i.Br. (Germany) is described by some of the participants. We describe the concepts of Richard Jung for the development of an experimental neurophysiology, the technical conditions which helped to realize these ideas, and the integration of the newly emerging German neurophysiological science into the international community, through the large number of foreign visitors. A short account is given of the young scientists working at the Freiburg laboratory during this period, their main lines of research, as well as the results of their studies.     

Nicotine in the hair of mummies from San Pedro de Atacama (Northern Chile)

The consumption of plant-derived hallucinogenic substances through smoking and snuffing is a long-standing tradition in the south-central Andes. Chemical and archaeobotanical evidence point to the consumption of nicotine and tryptamine alkaloids in Northwestern Argentina and of tryptamine alkaloids in San Pedro de Atacama (SPA), in prehispanic times. In this paper, results are reported of gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analyses aimed at identifying nicotine and tryptamine alkaloids in the hair of mummies from different cultural periods of SPA. Fifty-six samples were examined. While tryptamines were not found in any of the samples, nicotine was found in 35 samples, assigned to the Late Formative (1 of 1 sample from this period), Late Formative or Middle (1 of 2 samples from either of these periods), Middle (4 of 6 samples from this period) and Late Intermediate periods (8 of 12 samples from this period), or without assignment to period due to lack of contextual information (21 of 35 samples unassigned to a period). These results show a continuous consumption of nicotine from the Late Formative to the Late Intermediate periods of SPA (ca. 100 B.C.–1450 A.D.). No associations were found between presence of nicotine in the hair of mummies and presence of snuffing trays or of other snuffing paraphernalia in the corresponding tomb; furthermore, neither the diversity of the funerary context, measured in terms of the number of types of objects, nor the presence of gemstone necklaces differed between tombs with mummies with or without nicotine in their hair. Overall, these results suggest that consumption of nicotine was performed by members of the society at large, irrespective of their social and wealth status.