Cultural property attacks

Insect Predators of Cultural Property. Insect predators can often alter the mechanical properties of a sizable wooden structure or artifact within a short period of time. Like biopredators of the low plant orders, insect predators assimilate nutrition from wood. They may also attack wood to make a nesting site. 

Furniture Beetles. Anobiidae, an insect family important to the conservator, contains six genera that attack wood. Of the six, Anohium punc-tatum and Xestobium rufovillosum are of particular interest, as they commonly attack cultural property. Both beetles excavate randomly, ignoring anatomical variations, within confined regions that generally are defined by higher MC and lower extractives. 

Other Anobiidae are not as important to the degradation of cultural property, if only because they are less abundant as predators. All varieties will attack the decorative arts and have similar lifestyles and habits. 

As regards the first condition, the property must by its function have been made into a military objective. Thus it is the function to which the cultural property is put in the circumstances prevailing at the time, rather than the inherent nature of the property that determines whether it has been made into a military objective. Thus the mere location of cultural property could never turn it into a military objective. Some positive action should be required from the holder of the property before it could become a military objective. The second condition is that there is no feasible alternative available to obtain a similar military advantage to that offered by directing an act of hostility against that military objective. This condition in effect clarifies the requirement of the 1954 Convention that the military necessity has to be imperative , namely, that no other feasible alternative is available. This means that when there is a choice between several military objectives whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralisation, in the circumstances ruling at the time, woirld offer a definite military advantage but one of them is cultural property, the latter must not be attacked. 

That such features of cellulose as the crystal lattice form are significant determinants of cellulase action has only recently been established (19), although a great deal remains to be learned about the enzymatic importance of cellulose fine structure. It is clearly established, however, that each of the three water-stable crystal forms of cellulose is distinct in the rate at which it is hydrolyzed and in its properties as an inducer of cellulase. For example the Trichoderma viride cellulase from culture extracts exhibits a lower activation energy in attacking the crystal lattice form used in culture growth, than in attacking the other lattice forms (Table I). 

The chemistry and immunostimulant properties of the cell walls of mycobacteria and related organisms have been reviewed. Concanavalin A has been shown to react with three antigenic polysaccharides present in culture filtrates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, these polysaccharides were isolated by direct precipitation and affinity chromatography. A mannan esterified with succinic acid has been isolated from extracts of mesosomal and plasma membranes of Micrococcus lysodeikticus The polysaccharide was precipitated by concanavalin A, but it was attacked only slightly by jack-bean a-mannosidase. I.r. spectroscopy indicated the presence of both esterified and free carboxy-groups in the mannan. Mesosomal membranes isolated from M. lysodeikticus, unlike preparations of plasma membranes, were unable to catalyse the incorporation of D-[ C]mannose from GDP-D-[ C]mannose into the mannan it appears that the membrane system is unable to synthesize the carrier lipid undecaprenyl D-mannosyl phosphate. It was suggested that the juxtaposition of the mesosomal vesicles and the enveloping plasma membrane in vivo allows the mannan located on the mesosomal vesicles to accept D-mannosyl units from the carrier lipid located in the plasma membrane. 

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