DISCUSSIONS OF RELIGION in Hamlet have been disproportionately concerned with two things. The first is the supernatural status of the Ghost, a question perhaps as unanswerable now as the first time Hamlet posed it in triplicate: ‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, / Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, / Be thy intents wicked or charitable … I will speak to thee’.1 The second is the degree and nature of predestinarianism implied by Hamlet's gloss on a short parable from Matthew (10: 29), ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow’ (V. ii. 197-8). Compelling though these questions are in their own right, they have dominated critical enquiry because to answer them is to align the play – and Shakespeare – with one side or the other along a confessional divide: an infernal Ghost and a Calvinist sparrow make Hamlet a Protestant play; a benign Ghost and Stoic sparrow, a Catholic one. However, the impulse to define the play as either broadly Catholic or broadly Protestant flies in the face of its own relentless effort to assert both possibilities in a dramaturgical process that cancels the signifying power of each. Hamlet's Denmark is confessionally schizophrenic, and deliberately so; Calvinist buzzwords like ‘special providence’ come from the mouth of one who also swears by St Patrick yet studied in Wittenberg. Juxtaposed religious allusions like these intensify the play's world of religious paralysis, in which spirits are ‘wicked or charitable’, prayers do not ‘fly up’, and rites are ‘maimed’ (I. iv. 42, III. iii. 97, V. i. 208). Hamlet can be seen as a poignant, and therefore nostalgic and conservative, lament for the loss at the Reformation of a world of ecclesiastical and epistemological certainties. Alternatively, one could argue for a far more sceptical tragedy that scorns any fond religious hopes of such certainties.

We present two cases of invasive breast carcinoma with involvement of the dermis and epidermis of the nipple areolar complex (NAC), which were treated with an immediate breast reconstruction. Oncoplastic techniques were utilised in both cases: Latissimus Dorsi Mini Flap in the first and therapeutic reduction mammaplasty in the second. Both methods were used to fill the defect and also to recreate the NAC. We believe these techniques have an expanding role in the repertoire of surgical options for treating breast carcinoma.

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit Jeanne Shami x+318 (Studies in Renaissance Literature 13). Cambridge D. S. Brewer 2003 £50

The contingent negative variation (CNV) is a long-latency electroencephalography (EEG) surface negative potential with cognitive and motor components, observed during response anticipation. CNV is an index of cortical arousal during orienting and attention, yet its functional neuroanatomical basis is poorly understood. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with simultaneous EEG and recording of galvanic skin response (GSR) to investigate CNV-related central neural activity and its relationship to peripheral autonomic arousal. In a group analysis, blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity during the period of CNV generation was enhanced in thalamus, somatomotor cortex, bilateral midcingulate, supplementary motor, and insular cortices. Enhancement of CNV-related activity in anterior and midcingulate, SMA, and insular cortices was associated with decreases in peripheral sympathetic arousal. In a subset of subjects in whom we acquired simultaneous EEG and fMRI data, we observed activity in bilateral thalamus, anterior cingulate, and supplementary motor cortex that was modulated by trial-by-trial amplitude of CNV. These findings provide a likely functional neuroanatomical substrate for the CNV and demonstrate modulation of components of this neural circuitry by peripheral autonomic arousal. Moreover, these data suggest a mechanistic model whereby thalamocortical interactions regulate CNV amplitude.

The purpose of this study was to provide a better understanding of the static friction behavior of Ni-based superalloys over a wide range of temperatures. The static friction coefficient was investigated using a custom-built high-temperature apparatus in a flat-on-flat contact configuration. Measurements were performed on Inconel 718, using a variety of counterface materials (i.e. Ni-Cr coating, ME16, Ti-6246 and Inconel 718).The static friction coefficient was overall higher for the experiments at elevated temperatures for all counterface materials against Inconel 718. Ex situ analysis by means of FIB/SEM and XPS revealed the formation of metal oxide layers on the surfaces of the different alloys after testing at elevated temperature. In addition, atomistic simulations were performed in order to elucidate the interfacial mechanism leading to the differences in static friction. The observations of the simulations correlated well with the experiments, where the shear strength of the frictional interfaces was evidently higher for the oxide-on-oxide systems compared to the nickel-on-nickel.