Muḥammad ibn Maslama's Role in the Assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf

Muḥammad ibn Maslama was a prominent companion of the Prophet Muḥammad who belonged to the Ḥāritha clan of the Medinan tribe of Aws. He played a key role in the events leading to the defeat of the three Jewish tribes of Medina and participated in the assassination of the Jewish leader Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf. Muḥammad ibn Maslama was connected to the Jews in various ways, as is evident, for example, from accounts claiming that he was Kaʿb's maternal nephew, and that his clan, the Banū Ḥāritha, lived in the predominantly Jewish oasis of Khaybar for nearly a year in the pre-Islamic period. Muḥammad ibn Maslama's role in Kaʿb's assassination has recently been argued to be of dubious historicity. This article offers a reassessment of this conclusion by placing the accounts of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's ties with the Jews, on the one hand, and those that depict him as their enemy, on the other, in the broader context of the change in the attitudes of some of the Anṣār towards the Jews during the Prophet's Medinan period. It argues that this change of attitudes is an attested historical pattern and, accordingly, that the fact of Muḥammad ibn Maslama's participation in the assassination of Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf can be deemed reliable.

Uniting the Nation through Transcending Menstrual Blood: The Period Products Act in Historical Perspective

This article sets the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) (2021) Act in the context of historical imaginations both of menstruation and of the nation. It identifies the following underlying assumptions about menstruation in the parliamentary debates of the Act: (1) that menstruating is a stigma, (2) that menstruators are always the others, and (3) that menstruation particularly affects those in already marginalised groups. Speaking about menstruation (4) creates a privileged, pioneering position for the speakers, and (5) forges bonds between them. The article traces the historical precursors of these assumptions in premodern and early modern humoral medicine, especially Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’ Secreta mulierum, and in modern fiction discussed in the Scottish parliament: the film I, Daniel Blake and Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things. The parliamentary debates also imagine the nation as a collective body which is united by a shared blood and which at the same time transcends blood, in this case menstrual blood. This is part of a historical pattern of similar imaginations of the Scottish nation in relation to blood. The article demonstrates how this conception of menstruation and the nation functions not only in the parliamentary debate, but also in a sample of Scottish writing and thought from the Middle Ages to today.

Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants follow a historical pattern recorded in outgroups infecting non-human hosts

The ability to predict emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 would be of enormous value, as it would enable proactive design of vaccines in advance of such emergence. We estimated diversity of each site on a multiple sequence alignment (MSA) of the Spike (S) proteins from close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 that infected bat and pangolin before the pandemic. Then we compared the locations of high diversity sites in this MSA and those of mutations found in multiple emerging lineages of human-infecting SARS-CoV-2. This comparison revealed a significant correspondence, which suggests that a limited number of sites in this protein are repeatedly substituted in different lineages of this group of viruses. It follows, therefore, that the sites of future emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2 can be predicted by analyzing their relatives (outgroups) that have infected non-human hosts. We discuss a possible evolutionary basis for these substitutions and provide a list of frequently substituted sites that potentially include future emerging variants in SARS-CoV-2.

THE SIMULACRUM NARRATIVE OF HISTORY INTERPRETATION IN POST-TOTALITARIAN CULTURE

The purpose of the article is to highlight the features of contemporary national culture as a special artistic meaning of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which is formed by a reflection of a predominantly historical pattern. The research methodology consists of a set of scientific methods of general and special nature. Methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as historical, cultural and systemic approaches, were used to reveal the essence of virtual reality of super narratives in the information space, which are the impetus for the formation of ethical, aesthetic and artistic consensus. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to study the postmodern paradigm, which gives the rise to the new discourses that replace the narratives of the communist era in the interpretation of the history of the posttotalitarian space. The scientific novelty of the study is that it shows post-Soviet culture as an inertial phase of post-totalitarianism, which has an image simulative tottalogy of reality. Conclusions. The article demonstrated that the artistic meaning of the Gesamtkunstwerk of the post-Soviet space is a desirable reality, but it has stopped at the level of the fairy-tale narrative, which is formed by a reflection of a predominantly historical pattern. The time and space of culture in the dimension of the simulacrum world appear as another kind of aesthetics virtus. It has been noted that the cultural reality of post-totalitarianism is at a stage when it is necessary to realise that the invented reality of the fairy-tale type is not art. So, the hybridity of creative efforts, post-coloniality, hypercriticism as a way of being, vital energy represent a set of motives that adds little to the understanding of the situation of postmodern creativity in Ukraine. Conversely, national slogans indicate the need for a national identity, because time is waiting for the manifestation of creative initiatives of artistic synthesis.

Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants follow a historical pattern recorded in outgroups infecting non-human hosts

The ability to predict emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 would be of enormous value, as it would enable proactive design of vaccines in advance of such emergence. Based on molecular evolutionary analysis of the S protein, we found a significant correspondence in the location of amino acid substitutions between SARS-CoV-2 variants recently emerging and their relatives that infected bat and pangolin before the pandemic. This observation suggests that a limited number of sites in this protein are repeatedly substituted in different lineages of this group of viruses. It follows, therefore, that the sites of future emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2 can be predicted by analyzing their relatives (outgroups) that have infected non-human hosts. We discuss a possible evolutionary mechanism behind these substitutions and provide a list of frequently substituted sites that potentially include future emerging variants in SARS-CoV-2.

Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants follow a historical pattern recorded in outgroups infecting non-human hosts

The ability to predict emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 would be of enormous value, as it would enable proactive design of vaccines in advance of such emergence. Based on molecular evolutionary analysis of the S protein, we found a significant correspondence in the location of amino acid substitutions between SARS-CoV-2 variants recently emerging and their relatives that infected bat and pangolin before the pandemic. This observation suggests that a limited number of sites in this protein are repeatedly substituted in different lineages of this group of viruses. It follows, therefore, that the sites of future emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2 can be predicted by analyzing their relatives (outgroups) that have infected non-human hosts. We discuss a possible evolutionary mechanism behind these substitutions and provide a list of frequently substituted sites that potentially include future emerging variants in SARS-CoV-2.

An ethnography of deletion: Materializing transience in Solomon Islands digital cultures

This article demonstrates the fragility of digital storage through a non-media-centric ethnography of data management practices in the so-called Global South. It shows how in the Lau Lagoon, Malaita Province, Solomon Islands, the capacity to reliably store digital media is curtailed by limited access to means of capital production and civic infrastructures, as well as a comparatively isolated tropical ecology that bedevils the permanence of all things. The object biography of mobile phones, including MicroSD cards, typically short, fits into a broader historical pattern of everyday engagements with materializations of transience in the Lau Lagoon. Three types of visual media are exemplary in this regard: sand, ancestral material cultures and digital visual media (photographs and videos). Ultimately, Lau experiences of transience in their visual media are located in their visual technological history and the choices they make about which materials to maintain or dispose of.

The Natural Gas Addiction and Wood Energy Role in Latvia Today and Future

The paper analyzes strategies for restricting Latvia’s dependence on fossil fuel imports in line with an increasing challenge to follow the leading EU Member States in greening the energy sector. Availability of local biomass resources ensures the necessary framework for building an arranged, environmentally and climate-friendly economy. Primary attention is paid to historical pattern of wood fuel use which shows reduction in wood fuel’s share of primary energy consumption, however energy efficiency improvement is not observed. A hypothesis for development of wood fuel consumption up to 2020 is proposed. Analysis indicates potential of reaching a 43% share of wood fuel in national energy mix by 2020.

Negligible Unforced Historical Pattern Effect on Climate Feedback Strength Found in HadISST-Based AMIP Simulations

Recently it has been suggested that natural variability in sea surface temperature (SST) patterns over the historical period causes a low bias in estimates of climate sensitivity based on instrumental records, in addition to that suggested by time variation of the climate feedback parameter in atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) coupled to dynamic oceans. This excess, unforced, historical “pattern effect” (the effect of evolving surface temperature patterns on climate feedback strength) has been found in simulations performed using GCMs driven by AMIPII SST and sea ice changes (amipPiForcing). Here we show, in both amipPiForcing experiments with one GCM and by using Green’s functions derived from another GCM, that whether such an unforced historical pattern effect is found depends on the underlying SST dataset used. When replacing the usual AMIPII SSTs with those from the HadISST1 dataset in amipPiForcing experiments, with sea ice changes unaltered, the first GCM indicates pattern effects that are indistinguishable from the forced pattern effect of the corresponding coupled GCM. Diagnosis of pattern effects using Green’s functions derived from the second GCM supports this result for five out of six non-AMIPII SST reconstruction datasets. Moreover, internal variability in coupled GCMs is rarely sufficient to account for an unforced historical pattern effect of even one-quarter the strength previously reported. The presented evidence indicates that, if unforced pattern effects have been as small over the historical record as our findings suggest, they are unlikely to significantly bias climate sensitivity estimates that are based on long-term instrumental observations and account for forced pattern effects obtained from GCMs.