Platform nations

This article introduces the concept of platform nations to capture an important recent shift in the way nations and nationalism operate in the public domain. If the rise of the internet initially led to a weakening of state control over public expressions of national belonging, the growing monopoly of platforms enables states to reassert control over national imagination, while also opening doors for other political and corporate actors to interfere in the process. This shift appears to be contributing, at least in some parts of the world, to a disciplining of national imagination online, partially reversing the trend to greater democratisation seen in the early stages of the internet.     

Wine and olive oil permeation in pitched and non-pitched ceramics: relation with results from archaeological amphorae from Sagalassos,Turkey

Pitch compounds are frequently identified inside archaeological ceramic vessels. As their presence might affect the permeation of oil or wine into the ceramic fabric, experiments were conducted in which the diffusion of lipids or polyphenols into pitched and non-pitched modern vessels was followed by chemical analysis. Results show that the polyphenols of wine can intrude into the ceramics even through a pitch layer. Consequently, the absence of polyphenols in archaeological sherds is not due to their inability to reach the ceramic matrix under the pitch layer. By contrast, a pitch layer is quite effective to avoid oil intrusion into the ceramic matrix. Thus, it seems logical that oil amphorae would have been coated with pitch at the inside prior to use. Experiments in which the pitched ceramic was simultaneously exposed to oil and wine, show that the wine makes the pitch more permeable for the lipid compounds. These experimental data are confronted with residue analysis results obtained on amphorae fragments excavated in Sagalassos, Turkey. Pitch and oil were frequently found together. Based on a polyphenol test, indications for wine storage could only be obtained for two vessels. Against this background, the possible uses of the Sagalassos amphorae are discussed, and the traditional association of pine pitch with wine storage in archaeological amphorae is critically assessed.     

Policy Change and Policy Stasis: Comparing Swiss Foreign Policy toward South Africa (1968–94) and Iraq (1990–91)

This article investigates how concepts from the field of public policy, in particular the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) initially introduced by Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith, can be applied to the study of foreign policy analysis. Using a most similar comparative case studies design, we examine Switzerland's foreign policy toward South Africa under apartheid for the period from 1968 to 1994 and compare it with the Swiss position toward Iraq after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when the Swiss government imposed—for the first time—comprehensive economic sanctions against another state. The application of the ACF shows that a dominant advocacy coalition in Swiss foreign policy toward South Africa prevented a major policy change in Swiss–South African relations despite external pressure from the international and national political levels. Actually, quite the opposite could be observed: Swiss foreign policy increased its persistence in not taking economic sanctions against the racist regime in South Africa during the 1980s and early 1990s. The ACF, with its analytical focus on policy subsystems and the role of external shocks as potential triggers for change, provided a useful framework for analyzing the factors for policy change and stasis in Swiss foreign relations toward the selected two countries.     

Black bile and psychomotor retardation: shades of melancholia in Dante's Inferno

The history of melancholy depression is rich with images of movement retardation and mental dysfunction. The recent restoration of psychomotor symptoms to the diagnostic terminology of affective disorder is not novel to the students of medieval melancholia. The move back to the biology of this psychomotor dysfunction with the technical advances in brain imaging in recent years only echoes centuries-old writings on the centrality of movement changes in the depressive condition. The Inferno, the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's Commedia, has a wonderful abundance of allusions to the importance of psychomotor symptoms in describing the depressed individual. Slowed steps, garbled speech, frozen tears, these and many other images keep the physical manifestations of psychomotor suffering in the forefront of the reader's mind. Considering Medieval and Renaissance writings on melancholy suffering, it is fitting that Dante shows a bodily illness reflected in the hellish torments visited on the damned. From the souls of the sullen to those of the violent, the panorama of psychomotor symptoms plays a prominent role in the poem as well as in the medical and literary prose of succeeding centuries.     

Neuroanatomy in Art: Leonardo da Vinci's Senso Comune

Crossed brainstem syndromes consist of ipsilateral impairment of cranial nerves III–XII and contralateral impairment of the pyramidal and sensory tracts. Gasperini's syndrome, described in 1912 Goetz, CG. 2002. Jean-Martin Charcot and the aging brain. Archives of Neurology, 59: 1821–1824.  [Google Scholar] by the Italian internist Ubaldo Gasperini, is one of them. It results from a lesion of the caudal pontine tegmentum and is most frequently defined as ipsilateral impairment of cranial nerves V, VI, VII, and VIII and contralateral sensory loss. Since no autopsy was performed to confirm Gasperini's clinical observations, we analyzed all elements of his syndrome from a current perspective as well as in the light of the anatomical knowledge available to him. This resulted in a historical survey of the development of neuroanatomy over the last 300 years.     

"For God Distinguishes the People of Earth as in Heaven": Hildegard of Bingen's Social Ideas

Despite the massive increase in scholarship dealing with various aspects of the work of Hildegard of Bingen over the last decade, her social ideas have been comparatively neglected. This is not surprising since Hildegard made few direct pronouncements on social relations and when she did, most famously in her letter to Tenxwind of Andernach, she appears to be defending an elitist notion of hereditary privilege against the more egalitarian views of her correspondent.
This paper seeks to identify and describe Hildegard's social ideas by examining her direct and indirect statements on the subject and comparing her notions about the division of society with those of her contemporaries. The idea that Hildegard's social thought was predicated on a strict division between the free and unfree, par-ticularly the free and non-free nobility ( Edelfrei and ministeriales ), a classification peculiar to twelfth-century Germany, is examined in the light of these findings. I argue that Hildegard's views are more complicated than a reading of the Tenxwind letter would suggest and that her understanding allows for a more nuanced view of society than that of her contemporaries. It is also suggested that Hildegard's views reflect a real grasp of the power relations operating in the world around her and that her practice is, in turn, founded upon this understanding.