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In this essay, through a close reading of a little-known painting of the temptation of Saint Anthony, I propose that every convening of images inspired by the viewing of a picture is a unique "event," a transformation that occurs during the act of perception, in which various images can be seen as an assemblage generated by one picture. The analysis of such assemblages provides insight into the making and reception of the image, as well as the potential variance between the artist's making and viewer's reception. Further, such analysis reveals a structure of "thresholds" within the picture, a structure that refers to inherent principles of representation and mimesis. Spring

The first, theoretical part of this study pursues the question of how meaning was generated and how an ambivalent- or polyvalent-object, for example, an allegory, was or can be understood. The interweaving of acts of interpretations involving things, ideas, nature, and-in the specific case of a work of art-the artist, that is to say, the material history of matter and artistic traditions, can be described as allegoresis. As this study demonstrates, the scholar who most vigorously shed light on the medieval exegesis of nature through allegoresis was Friedrich Ohly. The second part of the essay is a case study of an object executed in émail en ronde bosse, combined with an extremely fine relief carved in mother-of-pearl, that unfolds the various layers of the object's meaning through an analysis of the ambivalence of its iconographic motifs, its cultural origin (the courtly practices of gift-giving in French families), and its artistic origin in Paris about 1400, in the workshop of a goldsmith with an extraordinary expertise in only recently developed artistic techniques (rouge cler, émail blanc, painted enamel, and pointillé). The aim of this article is not to provide one interpretation of this object but, rather, to elucidate its ability to oscillate between multiple possible meanings and to reveal how insisting on just one of them would deprive the object of its ability to function in different contexts-secular and sacred.

The calculations of total and binding energies of group IV tetrachlorides MCl4(M = Ti, Zr, Hf, and element 104, Rf) are performed using the four-component fully relativistic density functional method. The calculations show the binding energies to be in good agreement with thermochemical dissociation energies obtained via the Born-Haber. The method demonstrates a predictive power, which is important for further applications in the area of the heavy element compounds.

Ionization potentials have been used for estimating standard reduction potentials for group 6 elements, including seaborgium. No deviation from Mendeleev-type periodicity for group 6 elements has been found.

Calculations of the Dirac-Fock values for the six ionization potentials of seaborgium and other six elements are presented. No experimental ionization potential for seaborgium has been discovered.

Variation on the Y chromosome may permit our understanding the evolution of the human paternal lineage and male gene flow. This study reports upon the distribution and non random association of alleles at four Y-chromosome specific loci in four populations, three Caucasoid (Italian, Greek and Slav) and one Asian. The markers include insertion/deletion (p12f), point mutation (92R7 and pY[Alpha]I), and repeat sequence (p21A1) polymorphisms. Our data confirm that the p12f/TaqI 8 kb allele is a Caucasoid marker and that Asians are monomorphic at three of the loci (p12f, 92R7, and pY[Alpha]I). The alleles at 92R7 and pY[Alpha]I were found to be in complete disequilibrium in Europeans. Y-haplotype diversity was highly significant between Asians and all three European groups (P < 0.001), but the Greeks and Italians were also significantly different with respect to some alleles and haplotypes (P < 0.02). We find strong evidence that the p12f/TaqI 8 kb allele may have arisen only once, as a deletion event, and, additionally, that the present-day frequency distribution of Y chromosomes carrying the p12f/8 kb allele suggests that it may have been spread by colonising sea-faring peoples from the Near East, possibly the Phoenicians, rather than by expansion of Neolithic farmers into continental Europe. The p12f deletion is the key marker of a unique Y chromosome, found only in Caucasians to date, labelled 'Mediterranean' and this further increases the level of Y-chromosome diversity seen among Caucasoids when compared to the other major population groups. KEY WORDS Y chromosome; RFLPs; haplotypes; 92R7; pY[Alpha]I; p12f; p21A1; migration; Italians; Greeks; Slavs; Asians