4,191 research outputs found
A Medallion of Two Roman Emperors
"A rare bimetallic medallion in the possession of the University of Missouri commemorates the advmtus, or arrival, presumably in Rome, of the emperors C. Vibius Annius Trebonianus Gallus and Volusian, Gallus' son. ThIs medallion has a dark bronze center handsomely offset by a rim of much lighter colored metal. The materials in the rim and the center have not been analyzed, but two qualities of bronze appear to have been used. Striking a medallion on a disk made of two types of bronze (or sometimes of copper and bronze) was a device intended, perhaps, to enhance the beauty of the medallion. Such a large piece is clearIy differentiated from regular currency by its size larger and thicker than even the sestertius, the largest of the ordinary bronze coins -- and by its structure, which adds the rim to frame the central design struck in very high relief. To judge from the rarity of medallions and from their unsuitability for use as currency, it appears that medallions were struck to serve as gifts to special individuals, but we have few specific details to shed light on their use. In the case of the Missouri medallion, we can associate it with an adventus of Gallus and Volusian, but we do not know to whom the medallion was presented or why."--First paragraph.Includes bibliographical reference
Interactional positioning and narrative self-construction in the first session of psychodynamic-interpersonal psychotherapy
The purpose of this study is to identify possible session one indicators of end of treatment psychotherapy outcome using the framework of three types of interactional positioning; clientâs self-positioning, clientâs positioning between narrated self and different partners, and the positioning between client and therapist. Three successful cases of 8-session psychodynamic-interpersonal (PI) therapy were selected on the basis of client Beck Depression Inventory scores. One unsuccessful case was also selected against which identified patterns could be tested. The successful clients were more descriptive about their problems and demonstrated active rapport-building, while the therapist used positionings expressed by the client in order to explore the positionings developed between them during therapy. The unsuccessful case was characterized by lack of positive self-comment, minimization of agentic self-capacity, and empathy-disrupting narrative confusions. We conclude that the theory of interactional positioning has been useful in identifying patterns worth exploring as early indicators of success in PI therapy
Examining a Peak-Luminosity/Decline-Rate Relationship for Tidal Disruption Events
We compare the luminosity, radius, and temperature evolution of the
UV/optical blackbodies for 21 well-observed tidal disruption events (TDEs), 8
of which were discovered by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. We
find that the blackbody radii generally increase prior to peak and slowly
decline at late times. The blackbody temperature evolution is generally flat,
with a few objects showing small-scale variations. The bolometric UV/optical
luminosities generally evolve smoothly and flatten out at late times. Finally,
we find an apparent correlation between the peak luminosity and the decline
rate of TDEs. This relationship is strongest when comparing the peak luminosity
to its decline over 40 days. A linear fit yields in cgs, where
.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. Updated to reflect changes made in the published
ApJL version. Six new objects added to sample. Updated video description can
be found at https://youtu.be/TtZU22eyHv
Identification of Functional and Druggable Sites in Aspergillus fumigatus Essential Phosphatases by Virtual Screening
Fungal diseases are a serious health burden worldwide with drug resistance compromising efficacy of the limited arsenal of antifungals available. New drugs with novel mechanisms of action are desperately needed to overcome current challenges. The screening of the Aspergillus fumigatus genome identified 35 phosphatases, four of which were previously reported as essential for viability. In addition, we validated another three essential phosphatases. Phosphatases control critical events in fungi from cell wall integrity to cell cycle, thus they are attractive targets for drug development. We used VSpipe v1.0, a virtual screening pipeline, to evaluate the druggability of the seven essential phosphatases and identify starting points for drug discovery. Targeted virtual screening and evaluation of the ligand efficiency plots created by VSpipe, enabled us to define the most favourable chemical space for drug development and suggested different modes of inhibition for each phosphatase. Interestingly, the identified ligand binding sites match with functional sites (active site and protein interaction sites) reported for other yeast and human homologues. Thus, the VSpipe virtual screening approach identified both druggable and functional sites in these essential phosphatases for further experimental validation and antifungal drug development
Towards MoE Deployment: Mitigating Inefficiencies in Mixture-of-Expert (MoE) Inference
Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models have gained popularity in achieving
state-of-the-art performance in a wide range of tasks in computer vision and
natural language processing. They effectively expand the model capacity while
incurring a minimal increase in computation cost during training. However,
deploying such models for inference is difficult due to their large size and
complex communication pattern. In this work, we provide a characterization of
two MoE workloads, namely Language Modeling (LM) and Machine Translation (MT)
and identify their sources of inefficiencies at deployment. We propose three
optimization techniques to mitigate sources of inefficiencies, namely (1)
Dynamic gating, (2) Expert Buffering, and (3) Expert load balancing. We show
that dynamic gating improves maximum throughput by 6.21-11.23 for LM,
5.75-10.98 for MT Encoder and 2.58-5.71 for MT Decoder. It also
reduces memory usage by up to 1.36 for LM and up to 1.1 for MT.
We further propose Expert Buffering, a new caching mechanism that only keeps
hot, active experts in GPU memory while buffering the rest in CPU memory. This
reduces static memory allocation by up to 1.47. We finally propose a
load balancing methodology that provides additional scalability to the
workload
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Effects Of The ACAâs Health Insurance Marketplaces On The Previously Uninsured: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis
Descriptive studies have suggested that the Affordable Care Actâs (ACA) health insurance Marketplaces improved access to care. However, no quasi-experimental evidence is currently available to support these findings. We use longitudinal survey data to compare previously- uninsured adults to adults who had employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) prior to the ACA, in the income range eligible for subsidized Marketplace coverage (138-400% of poverty). Among the previously-uninsured group, the ACA led to a significant decline in the uninsurance rate (-10.8 percentage points), decreased barriers to medical care, increased use of outpatient services and prescriptions drugs, and increased identification of high blood pressure, compared to a control group with stable ESI. Changes were largest among those with incomes between 138-250% of poverty, who were eligible for the ACAâs cost-sharing reductions. Our quasi-experimental approach provides rigorous new evidence that the ACAâs Marketplaces led to improvements in several important health care outcomes, particularly among lower-income adults
Reversal of endothelial dysfunction reduces white matter vulnerability in cerebral small vessel disease in rats
Dementia is a major social and economic problem for our aging population. One of the most common of dementia in the elderly is cerebral small vessel disease (SVD). Magnetic resonance scans of SVD patients typically show white matter abnormalities, but we do not understand the mechanistic pathological link between blood vessels and white matter myelin damage. Hypertension is suggested as the cause of sporadic SVD, but a recent alternative hypothesis invokes dysfunction of the blood-brain barrier as the primary cause. In a rat model of SVD, we show that endothelial cell (EC) dysfunction is the first change in development of the disease. Dysfunctional ECs secrete heat shock protein 90α, which blocks oligodendroglial differentiation, contributing to impaired myelination. Treatment with EC-stabilizing drugs reversed these EC and oligodendroglial pathologies in the rat model. EC and oligodendroglial dysfunction were also observed in humans with early, asymptomatic SVD pathology. We identified a loss-of-function mutation in ATPase11B, which caused the EC dysfunction in the rat SVD model, and a single-nucleotide polymorphism in ATPase11B that was associated with white matter abnormalities in humans with SVD. We show that EC dysfunction is a cause of SVD white matter vulnerability and provide a therapeutic strategy to treat and reverse SVD in the rat model, which may also be of relevance to human SVD
Revealing AGNs Through TESS Variability
We used Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data to identify 29
candidate active galactic nuclei (AGNs) through their optical variability. The
high-cadence, high-precision TESS light curves present a unique opportunity for
the identification of AGNs, including those not selected through other methods.
Of the candidates, we found that 18 have either previously been identified as
AGNs in the literature or could have been selected based on emission-line
diagnostics, mid-IR colors, or X-ray luminosity. AGNs in low-mass galaxies
offer a window into supermassive black hole (SMBH) and galaxy co-evolution and
8 of the 29 candidates have estimated black hole masses . The low-mass galaxies NGC 4395 and NGC 4449 are two of our
five "high-confidence" candidates. By applying our methodology to the entire
TESS main and extended mission datasets, we expect to identify 45 more
AGN candidates, of which 26 will be new and 8 will be in low-mass
galaxies.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, 6 tables. Will be submitted to AAS journals.
Comments welcom
Cast versus functional brace in the rehabilitation of patients treated non-operatively for a rupture of the Achilles tendon: protocol for the UK study of tendo achilles rehabilitation (UK STAR) multi-centre randomised trial
INTRODUCTION
Achilles tendon rupture affects over 11 000 people yearly in the UK, and the incidence is increasing. Controversy remains with regard to the best rehabilitation strategy for these patients. In operatively treated patients, functional bracing provides better outcomes compared with plaster casts. However, the role of functional bracing in non-operatively managed patients is unclear. This is the protocol for a multicentre randomised trial of plaster cast immobilisation versus functional bracing for patients with a non-operatively managed Achilles tendon rupture.
METHODS AND ANALYSIS
All adults presenting with a primary rupture of the Achilles tendon will be screened. Non-operatively treated patients will be eligible to take part in the trial. Broad eligibility criteria will ensure that the results of the study can be generalised to the wider patient population. Randomisation will be on a 1:1 basis. Both rehabilitation strategies are widely used within the National Health Service. Standardised protocols will be followed, and details of plaster material and brace will be as per the site's usual practice.A minimum of 330 patients will be randomised to obtain 90% power to detect a difference of 8 points in Achilles Tendon Total Rupture Score at 9 months. Quality of life and resource use will be collected at 3, 6 and 9 months. The differences between treatment groups will be assessed on an intention-to-treat basis. The results of the trial-based economic evaluation will be expressed in terms of incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year gained.
ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION
The National Research Ethic Committee approved this study on 18 March 2016 (16/SC/0109).The National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment monograph and a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal will be submitted on completion of the trial (summer 2019). The results of this trial will substantially inform clinical practice on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the treatment of this injury. This study has been registered on the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number registry with reference no ISRCTN62639639
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