Most accounts of contemporary Irish culture tend to be largely affirmative, evenWhiggish, in cast. The contemporary cultural moment is recurrently described as one characterized by renaissance, experiment, and iconoclasm, a moment vitalized by the emergence of radical new voices, styles, media, forms, and energies. This upbeat view is clearly underpinned by a broader sociohistorical narrative, ...

Schizophrenia is a worldwide, prevalent disorder with a multifactorial but highly genetic aetiology. A constant prevalence rate in the face of reduced fecundity has caused some to argue that an evolutionary advantage exists in unaffected relatives. Here, I critique this adaptationist approach, and review--and find wanting--Crow's "speciation" hypothesis. In keeping with available biological and...

receipts", for instance, appear in the same form in learned treatises, manuscript collections of recipes, and in oral tradition. The book ends with a case study in the popular medicine of the time, by looking at women's work as medical practitioners. Nagy illustrates very clearly how women, especially charitable gentlewomen, were not mere nurses but undertook the treatment of the most difficult...

The chronology of the southeast Italian Neolithic may appear a rather over-worked subject, since there are several relatively recent treatments of various aspects (Alexander 2005; Skeates 2000; 2003), as well as a range of earlier articles (Pluciennik 1994; 1997; Sargent 1985; Skeates 1994; Whitehouse 1994: 86–90). It therefore may seem not to need additional attention now. Nonetheless, ‘rethin...