A double first from Scotland

Hughes, E.J., Camus: Le Premier Homme and La Peste (Glasgow, 1995), 90pp., ISBN 0 85261 447 0

France, P., ed., The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French (Oxford University Press, 1995), 865pp., £30, ISBN 0 19 866125 8     

Chronicle for 2015

The information supplied by National Representatives has been supplemented from other sources. Readers are urged to send information, press releases, exhibition catalogues, etc., directly to the Chronicle Editor, Imago Mundi, 76 Ockendon Road, London N1 3NW, UK (tony@tonycampbell.info), so that the next Chronicle can be as complete as possible. Chronicle considers all information that is current or historical at its closing date. No forthcoming events are included.     

A review of the taxonomy and systematics of the echinoid genus Monostychia Laube, 1869

Sadler, T., Kroh, A. &; Gallagher, S.J., March 2016. A review of the taxonomy and systematics of the echinoid genus Monostychia Laube, 1869 Laube, G.C., 1869. Über einige fossile Echiniden von den Murray Cliffs in Süd-Australien. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien, mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Classe. Abtheilung I 59, 183–198. [Google Scholar]. Alcheringa 40, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

A review of Monostychia, a stratigraphically important clypeasteroid echinoid genus in southern Australian Oligocene/Miocene strata, reveals uncertainty in relation to morphological features used in taxonomy. The result is that the exact systematic position of the genus remains unresolved at subfamily level. Monostychia and its type species, M. australis, are redescribed. Monostychia australis is restricted to the lower to middle Miocene Glenforslan Formation of the Murray Basin. Three other species currently within Monostychia, M. etheridgei, M. loveni and M. elongata, are discussed. Although it is concluded that M. etheridgei belongs in the genus and is a distinct species, the taxonomic position of M. loveni is questioned, and the validity of M. elongata as a separate species from M. australis remains uncertain. This work lays the foundation for further revisions of Monostychia with an expectation that such work will provide the basis for character determination that may be useful across other echinoid taxa.

Tony Sadler [t.sadler@uq.edu.au] and Stephen J. Gallagher [sjgall@unimelb.edu.au], School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia; Andreas Kroh [andreas.kroh@nhm-wien.ac.at], Natural History Museum Vienna, Department of Geology and Palaeontology, Burging 7, 1010, Vienna, Austria.     

World Class Aspirations,Urban Informality,and Poverty Politics: A North–South Comparison

Under the influence of the discourses and practices of global neoliberal urbanism, municipal administrations worldwide aspire to make their cities world class spaces, where informality is an anachronism and poverty can be made history. In this essay, drawing on fieldwork conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia, San Francisco (California), and Seattle (Washington), we address the question of how a geographic relational poverty approach can help us understand, or at least expand ways of thinking about these processes by attending to urban informality and the politics of poverty. Informality, a pervasive feature of the global South and North, functions as a survival strategy whereby the monetarily poor can compensate for their lack of income through commoning. Market-driven, state underwritten urban development initiatives for housing those with wealth is limiting the conditions of possibility for the monetarily poor, and informality. This is compounded by emergent political discourses rendering informality as inappropriate, and the monetarily poor as undeserving of a right to the city. Yet long-standing more-than-capitalist and communal informal practices pursued by the urban poor remain effective and necessary survival strategies, supporting residents whose presence is necessary to the city and whose practices challenge capitalist norms.     

Changes in the distribution of osteoarthritis over historical time

A total of 2635 skeletons recovered from different sites in England was examined for the presence of osteoarthritis (OA); 206 were from pre-medieval sites, 1453 from medieval sites and 976 from post-medieval sites. Where OA was considered to be present in a joint, the site was noted and for each time period the total number of anatomical sites with the condition was determined and the number of major sites with OA (10 in number) was expressed as a proportion of this total. There were no differences in the distribution of osteoarthritis between the pre-medieval and medieval periods but there were between the medieval and post-medieval periods. In the post-medieval period the proportion of osteoarthritis of the knee increased whereas that of the hip decreased; the proportion of osteoarthritis of the hands also increased whereas that of the wrist decreased. Other data presented indicate that patellofemoral disease is about twice as common as tibio-femoral disease in both medieval and post-medieval periods and that lateral compartment disease is almost as common as medial compartment disease.     

Osteoarthritis in a Black Death cemetery in London

Age-specific prevalence rates were determined in a group of skeletons recovered from a Black Death plague pit in London. The disease showed the expected increase in prevalence with age but these rates were lower than those in the contemporary population and the disease was more frequent in men than in women. In the majority of cases the disease affected one joint only and there were no cases of generalized osteoarthritis. The sites most commonly affected were the facet joints of the spine, the acromioclavicular joint and the hands; there were relatively few cases in which the large joints were affected but the knee was slightly more frequently affected than the hip.     

Unilateral spondylolysis

Of 54 vertebrae with spondylolysis, five were found with a unilateral lesion. The unilateral lesion was sometimes associated with hypoplasia of the ipsilateral lamina or by differences in the size and position of the facet joints and by posterior wedging on the affected side. Radiologically there may be sclerosis in the pedicle on the normal side. In one case a healed fracture was noted on the apparently normal side indicating that the lesion originally had been bilateral.