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AbstractThis collection of papers builds on the idea that the bioeconomy provides a framework for potentially effective solutions addressing the grand global challenges by a turn towards an increased use of biological resources, towards renewability and circularity. Consequently, it cannot be perceived as an end in itself. Thus, innovative endeavors within this bioeconomy framework require a serious examination of their normative premises and implications. From different perspectives, the five contributions to the collection demonstrate that for a bioeconomy that is to contribute to the transformation towards sustainability, inquiries into norms, values, and paradigms of innovators and other stakeholders are indispensable. Originating in the spirit of an interdisciplinary workshop on the “The Normative Dimension of Transformations towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy”, the collection at hand provides an attempt to facilitate an increased commitment of social sciences into bioeconomy discourses. We learn: the bioeconomy is on the rise as it is, but whether it will guide us the way towards an equitable, environmentally sound, and future-proof economy, heavily depends on the normative guardrails imposed by science, society, and business.

The article analyses systematically the very detailed information from a large collection of about forty (partly privately owned) farm accounts for the Dutch province of Groningen (the Netherlands) in the period 1762-1862, shedding more light on the development of the agricultural productivity and the standard-of-living in the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. The resulting estimates are compared with official statistics available from 1817 onwards. The article shows that old farm accounts – if available in a substantial amount – can be an excellent source to uncover rural economic developments in the pre-statistical area.According to the analysis of these farm accounts, the rather rapid population growth in the period studied resulted in a stagnating or even falling agricultural production per capita - somewhat in line with Mathusian views - in the capitalistic Groningen clay region, despite all kinds of innovations of farmers to make use of the abundantly available cheap labour from the end of the eighteenth century to about 1860. In the same period, local consumption of agricultural products per capita stagnated or even deteriorated. Improving terms of trade, ensured that from 1825 real regional income per capita was increasing, though this improvement was not spent on an increase in the consumption of foodstuffs, but on imported (luxury) industrial goods. It can be concluded that higher food prices from 1830 were indeed an important incentive to attract more agricultural products to the world market, where they were needed to satisfy the increasing demand in industrializing and urbanizing countries outside the Netherlands from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. The figures based on farm accounts for Groningen, a region characterised by very modern and innovative farmers, suggest that productivity growth in agriculture in this first phase of European industrialisation, urbanisation, modernisation and population growth might indeed seriously have lagged behind compared to the industry and service sectors. Consequently, higher real incomes were often accompanied by falling standards-of-living concerning food-intake, as in other parts of the western world in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although suggested otherwise in the literature, this is not really a paradox but actually the logical consequence of diverging developments in industry (and services) on the one hand, and agriculture on the other, that lead to diverging price developments.

Sonja Plischke’s Die Seleukiden und Iran is an attempt to study Seleucid empire building in Iran. In view of the fact that indigenous written sources from Iran are practically absent, Plischke decided to include Babylonia in this work, since the written cuneiform evidence from that region is fairly abundant. She detects some general tendencies—such as religious policy and the general wish to connect the different parts of the empire—supported by a personal conception of Seleucid kingship, beside more specific treatment of different regions. In my view, the Seleucids probably did not pay sufficient attention to the East, so that their control weakened. I take the opportunity to discuss the Babylonian sources, correct errors in Plischke’s use of them, and adduce some new publications.

Several terms encountered in Mesopotamian sources stand for titles of persons who served either in the palace or in the temple and displayed ambiguous gender qualities. Some of these persons, albeit being males, were characterized by feminine traits and were therefore considered by their society to be effeminate. One of the terms related to these gender-ambiguous persons was kulu’u, whose exact meaning has never been fully determined, mainly because of the scarcity of its textual attestations. On several occasions this term is mentioned in contexts expressing scorn and contempt and was thus used as a pejorative expression. This paper aims at elucidating this phenomenon by clarifying the nature of the vague term kulu’u and subsequently the reasons for its use as a derogatory term.

This article looks at the evidence for a turbulent episode in the life of the Jewish community at Elephantine. In the months leading up to the destruction of the Yaho temple, the summer of 410 BCE, Jews and Egyptians found themselves at loggerheads in a conflict about a precious stone. The stone had been stolen from the Egyptians and then turned up in the hands of Jewish traders. Six letters from the Elephantine archives document the affair. Their analysis leads to the reconstruction of a crucial period in the relations between Persians, Jews, and Egyptians in the late Achaemenid era.

Contains fulltext : 244638.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) 16 p.

Hyperactivation of the complement and coagulation systems is recognized as part of the clinical syndrome of COVID-19. Here we review systemic complement activation and local complement activation in response to the causative virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and their currently known relationships to hyperinflammation and thrombosis. We also provide an update on early clinical findings and emerging clinical trial evidence that suggest potential therapeutic benefit of complement inhibition in severe COVID-19. Hyperactivation of the complement system has been implicated in the pathology of COVID-19. Here the authors bring together the latest information on the role of complement in COVID-19 and progress in targeting complement components for treatment of severe disease.

Abstract This article investigates how the concept of ‘conscience’ emerged as a battleground within the French Catholic Church and as a politicized concept with implications for ideas about human rights. State-sponsored torture during the Algerian War (1954–62) prompted dissident Christians to pioneer the use of ‘individual conscience’ as a tool of resistance. The Christians of the anti-torture movement embraced the theologically informed language of conscience alongside a French, secular tradition of rights drawn from the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The way that Catholic dissidents thought about rights transcended the secular–religious divide; while recognizing a liberal concept of rights coming out of the French Revolution, these Catholics also insisted upon the spiritual function of individual conscience as a check upon the state. Intra-Catholic debates about conscience thus reveal the political and theological diversity within mid-twentieth-century Christianity, long assumed to have been dominated by actors on the political right, as well as the multiplicity of coexisting ways of speaking about and interpreting human rights.