Anthony C H Durham - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Anthony C H Durham
Journal of Molecular Biology, Dec 1, 1972
ABSTRACT
Journal of Molecular Biology, Dec 1, 1972
ABSTRACT
Protoplasma, Jun 1, 1977
There is no significant change in Ca++ efflux rate from plasmodia during chemotactic responses to... more There is no significant change in Ca++ efflux rate from plasmodia during chemotactic responses to several sugars, whereas substantially increased Ca++ efflux caused by EDTA does not signifcantly affect movement. Evidently the Ca++ fluxes controlling movement take place inside the organism, and chemotaxis probably involves a second messenger.
Archaeologia Cantiana, 2023
At least seven possible etymologies are serious candidates to explain the earliest name of Canter... more At least seven possible etymologies are serious candidates to explain the earliest name of Canterbury, with the one usually quoted among the weakest. Most likely, Roman troops picked Duroavernum (containing an A) to describe the geographical essence of a transport hub from which eight roads radiate, at the bend in a river accessible from the sea. After Roman times, historians have followed Bede in failing to realize that an element Cant- was not unique to Kent but could apply in many areas where the landscape contained an angular corner. Confusion over names has contributed to the bad idea that Jutes landed in Kent and the Isle of Wight.
East Yorkshire Historian, 2022
Geographical names mentioned by early historians in connection with the Adventus Saxonum have bee... more Geographical names mentioned by early historians in connection with the Adventus Saxonum have been misunderstood. They make much better sense in east Yorkshire than in Kent. Hengist and Horsa probably landed near Bridlington, not in Thanet. Several battle sites mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Historia Brittonum can now be identified. Bede (and all who followed him) had almost no hard information from the “Dark Ages” before the arrival of Augustine, and wrongly assumed that the Jutish Cantuarii lived in Kent and Victuarii in the Isle of Wight.
Saint Jerome's AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resemble... more Saint Jerome's AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resembled the language of the Treveri (around modern Trier) has been misinterpreted. The "Celts", "Gauls" or "Galatians" mentioned by classical authors, including those who invaded Greece and Anatolia around 277 BC, were not Celtic in the modern sense of speaking a Celtic language related to Welsh and Irish, but tall, pale-skinned, hairy, warrior peoples from the north. The 150 or so words and proper names currently known from Galatian speech show little affinity with Celtic but more with Germanic.
Philology, 2019
This is available online, where it was originally published. The fundamental meaning of wic an... more This is available online, where it was originally published.
The fundamental meaning of wic and vicus is 'exchange place', which makes them closely related to the prefix vice-. Although they have often evolved to mean little more than 'village', they link to outlying activities (trading, fighting, religion) and places, and more deeply to motion (way and via). This insight makes sense of many otherwise puzzling proper names, from Viking to Wight.
Academia Letters, 2021
As will become clear, the common geographical feature associated with Vindo-and Venta in many anc... more As will become clear, the common geographical feature associated with Vindo-and Venta in many ancient place names is some relatively flat land liable to seasonal flooding, typically produced by a meandering river. All rivers tend, in their middle to lower regions, to wind around and erode a sinuous course into soft ground, but every so often they overflow badly and jump to new courses. The end result is a floodplain or, on a long enough timescale, a set of river terraces. The resulting landform, whether one calls it a floodplain, meander belt, water meadows, valley floor (German Talebene), or river terrace, was a biologically productive environment, in which people could grow crops, raise animals, or develop an entire civilization. The earliest clear explanation of this idea that I know is by Blanca Prosper (1998), who looked at Vindupalis, a Ligurian (non-Celtic) name for a river in the upper Polcevera valley above Genoa, mentioned in a legal decision from 117 BC. She concluded that 'European river names from *widub/p-, *wind-ub/p-roughly meant curved river, crooked watercourse'. Her text was in German, but a crude translation of its key part is in a data file that supports this article. A key insight came from Reiner Lipp (2020), who explained, together with Luke Gorton (2017), that words for wine, with all their diverse spellings across European languages, descend from a word for 'twiner, creeping plant, tendril, grapevine' from PIE *wei-'to turn, twist around'. Evidently that ancient root could also apply to winding rivers. My detailed investigation was sparked by a name Ypwinesfleot (spelling variants Hypwinesfleot or Heopwines fleot) reported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as where Hengest and Horsa landed in AD 449. This refers to the Gypsey Race estuary, at Bridlington, east Yorkshire (not Ebbsfleet in Kent, as commonly claimed). The name element-wines-needed to be explained, but the work of Ekwall (1928) on English river names provided no easy answer. It turned out that W-vowel-(N)-(D) names have also been collected into substantial data sets by investigators looking at other issues. Before examining those data sets, we must address a series of confusions. Modern Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish, Breton, etc) are thought to descend from a proto-Celtic core that was formerly spoken quite widely in Europe, having developed from a more basic common Indo-European. University courses in historical linguistics have taught philologists to believe that a proto-Celtic word (often cited as *u̯ ind-) was the ancestor of Vindo-in ancient names and of words for 'white', such as modern Welsh gwynn, Irish find, Breton gwenn, and Cornish guyn. Long-held dogma is often immune to critical thought, but, for the record, it assigns *u̯ ind-no PIE root better than *weid-'to see', nor definite cognates outside Celtic languages. Those modern Celtic-language words for 'white' are first attested well after AD 900, and no independent evidence links any ancient Vindo-name-bearer with whiteness. Those difficulties are usually rationalized away with a claim that the meaning was 'pure' or divinely sanctioned, as well as 'white'. A bigger problem lies in vindico and vindex, which are among the earliest recorded Latin words. Their core semantic notion seems to be asserting a claim, but by the time Latin became the top language in western Europe, vind-based vocabulary had become prominent in many contexts beyond the law: military prowess (both individual and collective), freeing of slaves, and curse tablets. These notions can explain a large fraction of all Vind-containing personal names. Then there are ordinary Latin words, notably vindemia 'grape harvest', which could lead to personal names based on occupation (Vindemiator) or delightfulness (Vindemia). Germanic swinþaz 'strong'
Virology, 1977
... to titrate near neu Turnip Yellow Mosaic Virus (TYMV) TYMV is a small spherical virus, nota b... more ... to titrate near neu Turnip Yellow Mosaic Virus (TYMV) TYMV is a small spherical virus, nota ble for the strength of its proteinprotein bonds, which leaves an intact capsid when it releases its nucleic acid (KurtzFritsch and Hirth, 1972). ... HAINES, JA, REESE, CB, andToDD, LORD. ...
Virology, 1977
Abstract Hydrogen ion titration curves of tobacco mosaic virus and its protein, alone or in the p... more Abstract Hydrogen ion titration curves of tobacco mosaic virus and its protein, alone or in the presence of various multivalent ions, have been measured. Three groups titrating near neutral pH in the virion have significant metal ion binding, but the tightest of these binding sites, significantly specific for Ca 2+ over Mg 2+ appears to be absent from the RNA-free protein. A low Ca″ concentration appears to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for TMV disassembly.
proto-english.org
Saint Jerome’s AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resemble... more Saint Jerome’s AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resembled the language of the Treveri (around modern Trier) has been misinterpreted. The “Celts”, “Gauls” or “Galatians” mentioned by classical authors, including those who invaded Greece and Anatolia around 277 BC, were not Celtic in the modern sense of speaking a Celtic language related to Welsh and Irish, but tall, pale-skinned, hairy, warrior peoples from the north. The 150 or so words and proper names currently known from Galatian speech show little affinity with Celtic but more with Germanic.
Cell, 1974
A theory is advanced that all nonmuscle movements involving actin and myosin are controlled by Ga... more A theory is advanced that all nonmuscle movements involving actin and myosin are controlled by Gaff flows across membranes as determined by chemical and electrical processes at those membranes. The mechanisms of amoeboid motion, cytoplasmic streaming, and other movements are discussed, and their underlying chemical control reactions are analyzed. Several predictions and experimental tests are suggested. This theory links motility with recent findings on excitable membranes and cyclic AMP.
The mistaken idea that ancient Britons understood a word like modern Welsh glas to mean ‘blue’ ha... more The mistaken idea that ancient Britons understood a word like modern Welsh glas to mean ‘blue’ has contributed to multiple historical misunderstandings. To begin sorting them out, we delve into the linguistic development of colour words, the history of dyeing with indigo, the use of vitriol (metal sulfates) in tattoo inks, and the occurrence of glass in place-names. It emerges that Caesar’s vitrum and Pliny’s glastum were not woad, while Anglo-Saxon wad and Greek-Latin isatis were probably dye plants more generally. The Indo-European root of glas, glass, and many other words developed an early yellowish colour sense exemplified by Latin glaesum ‘amber’.
Proceedings of the ICA, May 9, 2018
In this paper, we expand application of our mathematical methods for translating ancient coordina... more In this paper, we expand application of our mathematical methods for translating ancient coordinates from the classical Geography by Claudius Ptolemy into modern coordinates from India and Arabia to Britain and Ireland, historically important islands on the periphery of the ancient Roman Empire. The methods include triangulation and flocking with subsequent Bayesian correction. The results of our work can be conveniently visualized in modern GIS tools, such as ArcGIS, QGIS, and Google Earth. The enhancements we have made include a novel technique for handling tentatively identified points. We compare the precision of reconstruction achieved for Ptolemy's Britain and Ireland with the precisions that we had computed earlier for his India before the Ganges and three provinces of Arabia. We also provide improved validation and comparison amongst the methods applied. We compare our results with the prior work, while utilizing knowledge from such important ancient sources as the Antonine Itinerary, Tabula Peutingeriana, and the Ravenna Cosmography. The new digital reconstruction of Claudius Ptolemy's Britain and Ireland presented in this paper, along with the accompanying linguistic analysis of ancient toponyms, contributes to improvement of understanding of our cultural cartographic heritage by making it easier to study the ancient world using the popular and accessible GIS programs.
Journal of Molecular Biology, Dec 1, 1972
ABSTRACT
Journal of Molecular Biology, Dec 1, 1972
ABSTRACT
Protoplasma, Jun 1, 1977
There is no significant change in Ca++ efflux rate from plasmodia during chemotactic responses to... more There is no significant change in Ca++ efflux rate from plasmodia during chemotactic responses to several sugars, whereas substantially increased Ca++ efflux caused by EDTA does not signifcantly affect movement. Evidently the Ca++ fluxes controlling movement take place inside the organism, and chemotaxis probably involves a second messenger.
Archaeologia Cantiana, 2023
At least seven possible etymologies are serious candidates to explain the earliest name of Canter... more At least seven possible etymologies are serious candidates to explain the earliest name of Canterbury, with the one usually quoted among the weakest. Most likely, Roman troops picked Duroavernum (containing an A) to describe the geographical essence of a transport hub from which eight roads radiate, at the bend in a river accessible from the sea. After Roman times, historians have followed Bede in failing to realize that an element Cant- was not unique to Kent but could apply in many areas where the landscape contained an angular corner. Confusion over names has contributed to the bad idea that Jutes landed in Kent and the Isle of Wight.
East Yorkshire Historian, 2022
Geographical names mentioned by early historians in connection with the Adventus Saxonum have bee... more Geographical names mentioned by early historians in connection with the Adventus Saxonum have been misunderstood. They make much better sense in east Yorkshire than in Kent. Hengist and Horsa probably landed near Bridlington, not in Thanet. Several battle sites mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Historia Brittonum can now be identified. Bede (and all who followed him) had almost no hard information from the “Dark Ages” before the arrival of Augustine, and wrongly assumed that the Jutish Cantuarii lived in Kent and Victuarii in the Isle of Wight.
Saint Jerome's AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resemble... more Saint Jerome's AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resembled the language of the Treveri (around modern Trier) has been misinterpreted. The "Celts", "Gauls" or "Galatians" mentioned by classical authors, including those who invaded Greece and Anatolia around 277 BC, were not Celtic in the modern sense of speaking a Celtic language related to Welsh and Irish, but tall, pale-skinned, hairy, warrior peoples from the north. The 150 or so words and proper names currently known from Galatian speech show little affinity with Celtic but more with Germanic.
Philology, 2019
This is available online, where it was originally published. The fundamental meaning of wic an... more This is available online, where it was originally published.
The fundamental meaning of wic and vicus is 'exchange place', which makes them closely related to the prefix vice-. Although they have often evolved to mean little more than 'village', they link to outlying activities (trading, fighting, religion) and places, and more deeply to motion (way and via). This insight makes sense of many otherwise puzzling proper names, from Viking to Wight.
Academia Letters, 2021
As will become clear, the common geographical feature associated with Vindo-and Venta in many anc... more As will become clear, the common geographical feature associated with Vindo-and Venta in many ancient place names is some relatively flat land liable to seasonal flooding, typically produced by a meandering river. All rivers tend, in their middle to lower regions, to wind around and erode a sinuous course into soft ground, but every so often they overflow badly and jump to new courses. The end result is a floodplain or, on a long enough timescale, a set of river terraces. The resulting landform, whether one calls it a floodplain, meander belt, water meadows, valley floor (German Talebene), or river terrace, was a biologically productive environment, in which people could grow crops, raise animals, or develop an entire civilization. The earliest clear explanation of this idea that I know is by Blanca Prosper (1998), who looked at Vindupalis, a Ligurian (non-Celtic) name for a river in the upper Polcevera valley above Genoa, mentioned in a legal decision from 117 BC. She concluded that 'European river names from *widub/p-, *wind-ub/p-roughly meant curved river, crooked watercourse'. Her text was in German, but a crude translation of its key part is in a data file that supports this article. A key insight came from Reiner Lipp (2020), who explained, together with Luke Gorton (2017), that words for wine, with all their diverse spellings across European languages, descend from a word for 'twiner, creeping plant, tendril, grapevine' from PIE *wei-'to turn, twist around'. Evidently that ancient root could also apply to winding rivers. My detailed investigation was sparked by a name Ypwinesfleot (spelling variants Hypwinesfleot or Heopwines fleot) reported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as where Hengest and Horsa landed in AD 449. This refers to the Gypsey Race estuary, at Bridlington, east Yorkshire (not Ebbsfleet in Kent, as commonly claimed). The name element-wines-needed to be explained, but the work of Ekwall (1928) on English river names provided no easy answer. It turned out that W-vowel-(N)-(D) names have also been collected into substantial data sets by investigators looking at other issues. Before examining those data sets, we must address a series of confusions. Modern Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish, Breton, etc) are thought to descend from a proto-Celtic core that was formerly spoken quite widely in Europe, having developed from a more basic common Indo-European. University courses in historical linguistics have taught philologists to believe that a proto-Celtic word (often cited as *u̯ ind-) was the ancestor of Vindo-in ancient names and of words for 'white', such as modern Welsh gwynn, Irish find, Breton gwenn, and Cornish guyn. Long-held dogma is often immune to critical thought, but, for the record, it assigns *u̯ ind-no PIE root better than *weid-'to see', nor definite cognates outside Celtic languages. Those modern Celtic-language words for 'white' are first attested well after AD 900, and no independent evidence links any ancient Vindo-name-bearer with whiteness. Those difficulties are usually rationalized away with a claim that the meaning was 'pure' or divinely sanctioned, as well as 'white'. A bigger problem lies in vindico and vindex, which are among the earliest recorded Latin words. Their core semantic notion seems to be asserting a claim, but by the time Latin became the top language in western Europe, vind-based vocabulary had become prominent in many contexts beyond the law: military prowess (both individual and collective), freeing of slaves, and curse tablets. These notions can explain a large fraction of all Vind-containing personal names. Then there are ordinary Latin words, notably vindemia 'grape harvest', which could lead to personal names based on occupation (Vindemiator) or delightfulness (Vindemia). Germanic swinþaz 'strong'
Virology, 1977
... to titrate near neu Turnip Yellow Mosaic Virus (TYMV) TYMV is a small spherical virus, nota b... more ... to titrate near neu Turnip Yellow Mosaic Virus (TYMV) TYMV is a small spherical virus, nota ble for the strength of its proteinprotein bonds, which leaves an intact capsid when it releases its nucleic acid (KurtzFritsch and Hirth, 1972). ... HAINES, JA, REESE, CB, andToDD, LORD. ...
Virology, 1977
Abstract Hydrogen ion titration curves of tobacco mosaic virus and its protein, alone or in the p... more Abstract Hydrogen ion titration curves of tobacco mosaic virus and its protein, alone or in the presence of various multivalent ions, have been measured. Three groups titrating near neutral pH in the virion have significant metal ion binding, but the tightest of these binding sites, significantly specific for Ca 2+ over Mg 2+ appears to be absent from the RNA-free protein. A low Ca″ concentration appears to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for TMV disassembly.
proto-english.org
Saint Jerome’s AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resemble... more Saint Jerome’s AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resembled the language of the Treveri (around modern Trier) has been misinterpreted. The “Celts”, “Gauls” or “Galatians” mentioned by classical authors, including those who invaded Greece and Anatolia around 277 BC, were not Celtic in the modern sense of speaking a Celtic language related to Welsh and Irish, but tall, pale-skinned, hairy, warrior peoples from the north. The 150 or so words and proper names currently known from Galatian speech show little affinity with Celtic but more with Germanic.
Cell, 1974
A theory is advanced that all nonmuscle movements involving actin and myosin are controlled by Ga... more A theory is advanced that all nonmuscle movements involving actin and myosin are controlled by Gaff flows across membranes as determined by chemical and electrical processes at those membranes. The mechanisms of amoeboid motion, cytoplasmic streaming, and other movements are discussed, and their underlying chemical control reactions are analyzed. Several predictions and experimental tests are suggested. This theory links motility with recent findings on excitable membranes and cyclic AMP.
The mistaken idea that ancient Britons understood a word like modern Welsh glas to mean ‘blue’ ha... more The mistaken idea that ancient Britons understood a word like modern Welsh glas to mean ‘blue’ has contributed to multiple historical misunderstandings. To begin sorting them out, we delve into the linguistic development of colour words, the history of dyeing with indigo, the use of vitriol (metal sulfates) in tattoo inks, and the occurrence of glass in place-names. It emerges that Caesar’s vitrum and Pliny’s glastum were not woad, while Anglo-Saxon wad and Greek-Latin isatis were probably dye plants more generally. The Indo-European root of glas, glass, and many other words developed an early yellowish colour sense exemplified by Latin glaesum ‘amber’.
Proceedings of the ICA, May 9, 2018
In this paper, we expand application of our mathematical methods for translating ancient coordina... more In this paper, we expand application of our mathematical methods for translating ancient coordinates from the classical Geography by Claudius Ptolemy into modern coordinates from India and Arabia to Britain and Ireland, historically important islands on the periphery of the ancient Roman Empire. The methods include triangulation and flocking with subsequent Bayesian correction. The results of our work can be conveniently visualized in modern GIS tools, such as ArcGIS, QGIS, and Google Earth. The enhancements we have made include a novel technique for handling tentatively identified points. We compare the precision of reconstruction achieved for Ptolemy's Britain and Ireland with the precisions that we had computed earlier for his India before the Ganges and three provinces of Arabia. We also provide improved validation and comparison amongst the methods applied. We compare our results with the prior work, while utilizing knowledge from such important ancient sources as the Antonine Itinerary, Tabula Peutingeriana, and the Ravenna Cosmography. The new digital reconstruction of Claudius Ptolemy's Britain and Ireland presented in this paper, along with the accompanying linguistic analysis of ancient toponyms, contributes to improvement of understanding of our cultural cartographic heritage by making it easier to study the ancient world using the popular and accessible GIS programs.
Saint Jerome's AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resemble... more Saint Jerome's AD 386 remark that the language of ancient Galatia (around modern Ankara) resembled the language of the Treveri (around modern Trier) has been misinterpreted. The "Celts", "Gauls" or "Galatians" mentioned by classical authors, including those who invaded Greece and Anatolia around 277 BC, were not Celtic in the modern sense of speaking a Celtic language related to Welsh and Irish, but tall, pale-skinned, hairy, warrior peoples from the north. The 150 or so words and proper names currently known from Galatian speech show little affinity with Celtic but more with Germanic.