Traum - Mantik - Allegorie

The highly metaphorical language that is used in the dream narratives of the Hieroi Logoi written by the Mysian orator Aelius Aristides has hitherto hardly been assessed in a manner adequate to its depth. In her interpretation of this text that turns out to be heavily loaded with religious meaning, the author of the present monograph deploys an allegorical approach that emerges from her analyses of relevant oneirocritical texts and literature

Identification of regulatory variants associated with genetic susceptibility to meningococcal disease.

Non-coding genetic variants play an important role in driving susceptibility to complex diseases but their characterization remains challenging. Here, we employed a novel approach to interrogate the genetic risk of such polymorphisms in a more systematic way by targeting specific regulatory regions relevant for the phenotype studied. We applied this method to meningococcal disease susceptibility, using the DNA binding pattern of RELA - a NF-kB subunit, master regulator of the response to infection - under bacterial stimuli in nasopharyngeal epithelial cells. We designed a custom panel to cover these RELA binding sites and used it for targeted sequencing in cases and controls. Variant calling and association analysis were performed followed by validation of candidate polymorphisms by genotyping in three independent cohorts. We identified two new polymorphisms, rs4823231 and rs11913168, showing signs of association with meningococcal disease susceptibility. In addition, using our genomic data as well as publicly available resources, we found evidences for these SNPs to have potential regulatory effects on ATXN10 and LIF genes respectively. The variants and related candidate genes are relevant for infectious diseases and may have important contribution for meningococcal disease pathology. Finally, we described a novel genetic association approach that could be applied to other phenotypes

Synesius, De insomniis

Synesius' essay De insomniis ('On Dreams') inquires into the meaning and importance of dreams for human beings and treats themes – most of all the relationship of humans to higher spheres –, which for religiously- and philosophically-minded people are still important today