Birds

Posthumanism, now in the mainstream of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, poses a challenge to ethnomusicology, a discipline inherently focused on the human and social aspects of music. Drawing from a survey of birds in the ethnomusicological scholarship and the author's research on music and birds in Brazil, this article proposes an approach to ethnomusicology that emphasizes nonhuman factors and their own properties and effects as a method for better understanding music as a meaningful human phenomenon.

Das Buch ist die erste monografische Abhandlung zu Vogelbildern als Untergattung der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts. Es nähert sich dem Thema interdisziplinär mit einem ungewohnten methodischen Ansatz, der die erzählerische Struktur der Bilder behandelt. So wird erstmals in einer umfassenden Form deutlich, wie viele Geschichten und Geschichtchen in den Gemälden zu finden sind, die deutlich mehr als nur dekorative Aspekte zu bieten haben. In einigen Bildern können mithilfe der narrativen Analyse Fabeln als literarischer Bezug benannt werden. Nebenbei wird ein geschichtlicher Überblick der Vogelmalerei einschließlich Ursprüngen, Entwicklungsverläufen und Nachwirkungen geboten, in welchem beinahe alle Künstler dieser Gattung vertreten sind. Die Arbeit schöpft aus einem reichen Fundus von Gemäl­den, der aus Privatsammlungen, dem Kunsthandel und natürlich Museen zusammengetragen wurde.

Birds featured in many aspects of medieval people's lives, not least in their poetry. But despite their familiar presence in literary culture, it is still often assumed that these representations have little to do with the real natural world. By attending to the ways in which birds were actually observed and experienced, this book aims to offer new perspectives on how and why they were meaningful in five major poems -- The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles, The Owl and the Nightingale, The Parliament of Fowls and Confessio Amantis. In a consideration of sources from Isidore of Seville and Anglo-Saxon place-names to animal-sound word lists and Bartholomew the Englishman, the author shows how ornithological truth and knowledge are integral to our understandings of his chosen poems. Birds, he argues, are relevant to the medieval mind because their unique properties align them with important religious and secular themes: seabirds that inspire the forlorn Anglo-Saxon pilgrim; unnamed species that confound riddling taxonomies; a belligerent owl who speaks out against unflattering literary portraits. In these poems, human actions and perceptions are deeply affected by the remarkable flights and voices of birds.

In his Wars (De Bellis), Procopius shares an extraordinary tale about Emperor Honorius, who allegedly heard about the plunder of Rome from his poultry keeper. First, Honorius misunderstood the report because he also had a huge rooster that bore the same name as that of the city. Therefore, the central element of the tale is the misunderstanding between the emperor and his eunuch about the name "Rome." However, the structural features of Procopius' work-the rooster and its keeper together-form a narrative in which a fowl and Rome were not two entities but one. The possibility of being a monarch ruling over the Eastern and the Western sides of the empire, his aim guarded by the keeper, could have worried Honorius. This paper aims to reveal the historical event behind Procopius' tale and its circumstances, that is, a meeting in mid-January 409 when Rome's first siege was reported to Honorius by Terentius, who had taken an active part in securing the emperor's prospective reign. It was in vain because Honorius was blinded by the possibility of becoming a monarch from the moment when he received the report of Arcadius' death.

Background Infections of wild birds with highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) subtype H5N1 virus were reported for the first time in the European Union in 2006. ... Objectives To capture epidemiological information on H5N1 HPAI in wild bird populations through large-scale ...

Introduction: Guidelines recommend storing tuberculin purified protein derivative (PPD) refrigerated. However, especially in developing countries, maintaining the product refrigerated under field conditions can be difficult, limiting its use. Here we determine the effect of prolonged exposure to high temperatures on the potency of human, bovine and avian tuberculin PPD. Methodology: Human, bovine and avian tuberculin PPD were stored for several weeks exposed to temperatures ranging from 37º to 100ºC. The potency was evaluated in vivo, in sensitized or naturally infected animals. Results: Most test situations didn't affect the biological activity of the tuberculin PPDs and only very long and extreme incubations (several days at 100°C) compromised the potency. Conclusions: Tuberculin PPD is very stable and can be stored or transported for long periods without refrigeration. 

The rete testis in the domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus), Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica), guinea-fowl (Numida meleagris galeata) and drake (Anas platyrhynchos) was studied histologically and with both the scanning and transmission electron microscopes. All the birds have rete epithelial cells varying between squamous and high cuboidal. A cilium-like structure projects from the luminal portion of most cells into the rete lumen, and the outline of the cells varies from polygonal to elongate. Sparse, stubby microvilli were concentrated on the cell borders. Ultrastructural features suggest only moderate secretory and absorptive activities in the cells. The rete testis of birds is amply supplied with blood as well as lymphatic vessels and nerves. Intraepithelial lymphocytes form part of the rete epithelium, and macrophages are present in large numbers in the rete lumen of the domestic fowl and drake and, to a lesser degree, also in the rete epithelium of the drake.

Using gross dissections and computed tomography we studied the lungs of juvenile American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). Our findings indicate that both the external and internal morphology of the lungs is strikingly similar to the embryonic avian respiratory system (lungs + air sacs). We identified bronchi that we propose are homologous to the avian ventrobronchi (entobronchi), laterobronchi, dorsobronchi (ectobronchi), as well as regions of the lung hypothesized to be homologous to the cervical, interclavicular, anterior thoracic, posterior thoracic, and abdominal air sacs. Furthermore, we suggest that many of the features that alligators and birds share are homologous and that some of these features are important to the aerodynamic valve mechanism and are likely plesiomorphic for Archosauria.

La migration comme condition humaine Marseille et Gênes sont des villes de migration, d'émigration et d'immigration, de véritables carrefours de la Méditerranée. Ce sont des ports par lesquels sont passés des millions de gens et qui ont dû leur développement au « phénomène » migratoire lui-même. Un port n'est pas une frontière ; la limite de l'eau impose une disjonction tout à fait particulière qui est à la fois visuelle, physique, symbolique. Les images de la ligne gardée, de la stabilité dans le temps, de l'appropriation, du « ici c'est chez moi », de l'enracinement, sont mises en défaut par l'élément liquide qui, potentiellement, engloutit les gens ou au contraire les soutient, selon des logiques dans lesquelles la question de la maîtrise du territoire n'a plus guère de pertinence. Les ports sont des sortes de portes, franchies dans toutes les directions, qui assouplissent les frontières, relient dedans et dehors, figurent des seuils et des lieux de passage. Les considérer ainsi apporte un nouvel éclairage sur les migrations et constitue un poste d'observation qui met en cause un certain nombre de préconceptions problématiques. Parmi ces préconceptions, l'idée que la migration est un phénomène nécessairement négatif est prédominante. Souvent, les migrants sont perçus comme des êtres qui mettent dangereusement en cause les logiques traditionnelles de l'état territorial et bafouent ses prétentions de souveraineté absolue sur son espace politique. Sous cet angle, les migrants apparaissent tantôt comme des parasites, tantôt comme des envahisseurs ou des perturbateurs des équilibres locaux. À l'opposé, mais de façon tout aussi négative, les migrants deviennent des victimes impuissantes dont les

Levels of parasitism and the dynamics of helminth systems is subject to the impact of environmental conditions such that we may expect long term increases in temperature will increase the force of infection and the parasite's basic reproduction number, R0. We postulate that an increase in the force of infection will only lead to an increase in mean intensity of adults when adult parasite mortality is not determined by acquired immunity. Preliminary examination of long term trends of parasites of rabbits and grouse confirm these predictions. Parasite development rate increases with temperature and while laboratory studies indicate this is linear some recent studies indicate that this may be non-linear and would have an important impact on R0. Warming would also reduce the selective pressure for the development of arrestment and this would increase R0 so that in systems like the grouse and Trichostrongylus tenuis this would increase the instability and lead to larger disease outbr...

Monitoring illegal wildlife trade and how the modus operandi of traders changes over time is of vital importance to mitigate the negative effects this trade can have on wild populations. We focused on the trade of birds of prey in Indonesia (2016–2021) in bird markets (12 markets, 194 visits), on Instagram (19 seller profiles) and on Facebook (11 open groups). We link species prevalence and asking prices to body size, abundance and geographic range. Smaller species were more traded in bird markets and less so online. Abundance in trade is in part linked to their abundance in the wild. Asking prices (mean of USD 87) are positively correlated with size and negatively with their abundance in the wild. Authorities seize birds of prey according to their observed abundance in trade, but only 10% of seizures lead to successful prosecutions. The trade is in violation of national laws and the terms and conditions of the online platforms; the low prosecution rate with minimal fines shows a la...