Based on constraints from Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background, the baryon content of the high-redshift Universe can be precisely determined. However, at low redshift, about ...one-third of the baryons remain unaccounted for, which poses the long-standing missing baryon problem. The missing baryons are believed to reside in large-scale filaments in the form of warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). In this work, we employ a novel stacking approach to explore the hot phases of the WHIM. Specifically, we utilize the 470 ks Chandra LETG data of the luminous quasar, H 1821+643, along with previous measurements of UV absorption line systems and spectroscopic redshift measurements of galaxies toward the quasar's sightline. We repeatedly blueshift and stack the X-ray spectrum of the quasar corresponding to the redshifts of the 17 absorption line systems. Thus, we obtain a stacked spectrum with 8.0 Ms total exposure, which allows us to probe X-ray absorption lines with unparalleled sensitivity. Based on the stacked data, we detect an O vii absorption line that exhibits a Gaussian line profile and is statistically significant at the 3.3 level. Since the redshifts of the UV absorption line systems were known a priori, this is the first definitive detection of an X-ray absorption line originating from the WHIM. The equivalent width of the O vii line is (4.1 1.3) m , which corresponds to an O vii column density of . We constrain the absorbing gas to have a density of for a single WHIM filament. We derive for the cosmological mass density of O vii, assuming that all 17 systems contribute equally.
Intratextual Baudelaire: The Sequential Fabric of the
Fleurs du mal and Spleen de Paris by Randolph Paul Runyon
provides a new and provocative answer to the question that has
intrigued readers for ...years: did the poet arrange the Fleurs du
mal in a meaningful order? Runyon believes so, but not in the
way most have conceived the question. Barbey d'Aurevilly's claim
that there was a "secret architecture" hidden in the
Fleurs has long misled scholars by leading them to look
for some overarching hierarchical organization, when they should
have been looking for how the poems actually fit together, each to
each, in the sequential fabric of the text. This is what Runyon has
done, in a meticulous reading of every poem and its place in the
sequence. Intratextual Baudelaire provides the most
thorough analysis available of the textual changes Baudelaire made
between the first and second editions and shows why he made them:
so that the sequential structure would be preserved despite the
addition of new poems and the deletion of those judged obscene.
Extending his analysis to the Spleen de Paris with the
same attention to detail and awareness of textual changes, Runyon
shows that Baudelaire's prose-poem collection displays the same
rigorous sequential structure. Both collections are revealed as
marvels of self-referential intratextuality. Whether one agrees
with Runyon or not, Intratextual Baudelaire will certainly
generate discussion among French studies scholars.
This paper aims at unpacking the cultural, historical and political significance behind the representations (including pictures, caricatures, journalistic articles, etc.) and self-representations of ...Rachel Félix (1821–1858), the first prominent Jewish performer on the French and British and American stage, as a prism which may afford a broader discussion about the literary formations of the figure the Jewish female artist Félix, renowned for her exquisite beauty and daring sensuality, serves as an excellent paradigm of how Jewish artists used and, at times, manipulated their “biblical"/"oriental"/ “sensual” beauty with the aim of promoting their artistic career. My discussion, adopting a New Historicist outlook, also aims at explaining the correlation between such literary formations and their political implications with regards to the representation of Jewish artists. Since the identity of an actress is so obviously “constructed,” and because of the intricate relationship between the Jewishness, artistic vocation and femininity, the figure of Félix provides a direct engagement with a particular set of cultural and political assumptions about Jewish female artists. Looking at Félix's literary and artistic representations by her contemporaries and at her own self-representation as reflected on the stage and in her letters leads us to a better understanding of the relationship between the cultural, political and artistic constructs of Jewish female artists.
The Spanish Empire is famous for being, at its height, the realm upon which "the sun never set." It stretched from the Philippines to Europe by way of the Americas. And yet we know relatively little ...about how Spain managed to move that crucial currency of governance-paper-over such enormous distances. Moreover, we know even less about how those distances were perceived and understood by people living in the empire. This book takes up these unknowns and proposes that by examining how documents operated in the Spanish empire, we can better understand how the empire was built and, most importantly, how knowledge was created. The author argues that even in such a vast realm, knowledge was built locally by people who existed at the peripheries of empire. Organized along routes and centralized into local nodes, peripheral knowledge accumulated in regional centers before moving on to the heart of the empire in Spain.
The study takes the Kingdom of Guatemala as its departure point and examines the related aspects of documents and distance in three sections: part one looks at document genre, and how the creation of documents was shaped by distance; part two looks at the movement of documents and the workings of the mail system; part three looks at document storage and how archives played an essential part in the flow of paper.
Few people are aware that shortly after 1456, when Athens yielded without fighting to the bitter end, she had become one of the bigger Balkan towns within the Ottoman Empire. The limited area ...confined within the boundaries of the late Roman fortification walls soon developed into a town of thirty-six mahalles. A thorough analysis of the town/country relationship within the Ottoman feudal system of production in general, and as related to Athens in particular, reveals the dynamic conditions of urban development. Athens shared many of the characteristics of prosperity based on specific modes of appropriation of surpluses and patterns of division of labour between town and countryside. Strange though it might seem, it was only after the middle of the 17th century, when land-tenure conditions changed and Athens was heading towards decline, that an ‘Ottoman’ character as such could be detected in its built environment, although Christians still strongly outnumbered Muslim citizens. That being so, the presence at that time in Athens of representatives of the European Enlightenment, hypnotized by the myth of its artistic and cultural treasures, did not affect the general conditions of development. In the 1830s, Athens, by that time a provincial town of secondary importance, was ‘ordered’ to stride from feudalism to capitalism, to transform itself into a modern capital city of a new-born state. The shift from a small town under Ottoman rule to the modern city of the Hellenic Kingdom implied the quick transformation of belonging to a community (understood in terms of sharing common cultural characteristics) to a sense of being a member of a society (understood as an institution, as an externality demanding obedience). The amorphous masses of the medieval quarters that had arranged themselves so that unity within variety was established, where each particular architectural entity retained its meaning in so far as it was experienced as part of the whole urban fabric, had to give way to the early 19th-century planning environment, conceived more or less as a series of autonomous architectural identities understood only within a specific urban complex. It was not easy for Athens to cross the ‘line’ in 1834. The rejection of the first plan should not be naively understood as an urban restructuring triggering the virulent dissent of those Athenian landowners who detected threats to their vested interests. A violent break with the past was necessary so that new compositional stratagems could be implemented. But ever since Athens became a capital city, the pendulum of its history swung dramatically between tradition and modernism, not least because nationalism kept propagating an idealistic vision of an historical continuum that ran from the glorious ancient past down to the euphoria of the modern Greek state. Although Athens did make steady steps towards becoming a ‘modern’, ‘European-like’ city, comprehensive planning and centralized control of public works, as they had been essayed in central and western European cities in the second half of the 19th century, were totally incompatible with the build-as-you-please practice foisted on the capital city of Greece. Architectural and urban analysis of Athens between 1456 and 1920 discloses the metamorphosis of a town to a city, experienced as an invigorating adventure through the meandering routes of history. This is what this book is about.
In this study of Christian Science and the culture in which it
arose, Amy B. Voorhees emphasizes Mary Baker Eddy's foundational
religious text, Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures . ...Assessing the experiences of everyday adherents
after Science and Health 's appearance in 1875, Voorhees
shows how Christian Science developed a dialogue with both
mainstream and alternative Christian theologies. Viewing God's
benevolent allness as able to heal human afflictions
through prayer, Christian Science emerged as an anti-mesmeric,
restorationist form of Christianity that interpreted the Bible and
approached emerging modern medicine on its own terms. Voorhees
traces a surprising story of religious origins, cultural
conversations, and controversies. She contextualizes Christian
Science within a wide swath of cultural and religious movements,
showing how Eddy and her followers interacted regularly with
Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Catholics, Jews, New
Thought adherents, agnostics, and Theosophists. Influences flowed
in both directions, but Voorhees argues that Christian Science was
distinct not only organizationally, as scholars have long viewed
it, but also theologically, a singular expression of Christianity
engaging modernity with an innovative, healing rationale.
The story of an Italian political migrant, Count Alerino Palma, elucidates key elements of the revolutionary 1820s when former Napoleonic officers served various democratic uprisings around the ...Mediterrannean. Palma finally offered his expertise in the case of the first Greek loan and the juridical system of the new‑born Greek state, where he finally established himself. Through his geographic wanderings and new experiences, Palma transformed his democratic political ideas sustaining constitutional monarchy. His case study of the Greek‑Italian “political friendship”, marks a transitional period which fuelled the 1820s transnationalism at the dawn of the nation-state era of many Mediterranean countries.
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