Second Thessalonians: Two Early Medieval Apocalyptic Commentaries

Apocalyptic speculation, in one form or another, is as persistent at the turn of this millennium as it was at the last. The commentaries of Haimo of Auxerre and Thietland of Einsiedeln offer glimpses of two links in [the] unbroken chain of the apocalyptic tradition.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_teamscs/1011/thumbnail.jp

Dilemmas and solutions- experiences of a national Family Medicine applied knowledge licensing test during a pandemic

ABSTRACT: Background: The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic brought significant challenges to all of medicine, including primary care training and examinations. The MRCGP AKT is high-stakes licensing 200-item MCQ for UK trainee family physicians and is part of an assessment tripos that, up to the onset of the pandemic, included a Clinical Skills Assessment using Simulated Patients and workplace based assessment. The AKT is blueprinted onto a curriculum content specification and computer delivered three times a year at test centres across the UK. It tests the knowledge base underpinning independent general practice within the context of the UK National Health Service. We report on the challenges and dilemmas faced during the pandemic, decisions taken, and lessons learned. Rapid exam changes needed to be made, and communicated effectively to candidates, whilst maintaining standards and fairness to candidates. Summary of Work: Challenges included lockdown travel restrictions, reduced capacity, social distancing and shielding candidates being unable to leave home. The April 2020 AKT was cancelled and prioritisation measures implemented to ensure candidates at the end of their training could enter the (stressed) workforce. We engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, carefully looked at remote testing, made contingency plans prioritised for those unable to sit exams and changed exam regulations to ensure fairness to candidates. In this emergency, we delivered a previously published exam which some candidates were unaware they had sat previously, and assessed how these candidates performed. We compared cohort performance before and during the pandemic. Summary of Results: We summarise why we did not remote test, how we obtained key worker status, and adapted contingency plans. Analysis of candidates who had previously sat the same exam showed they performed less well. Despite wide-ranging changes in training and workplace experience, there was no significant difference in cohort performance overall pre-and peri-pandemic. Discussion and Conclusions: COVID-19 constraints changed trainees clinical exposure, restricted training and supervisor support. However, exam preparedness did not appear adversely affected when measured by overall pass rates. Unexpectedly, candidates who sat an identical exam did not benefit from previous exposure. Take-home Messages: Involving stakeholders in key decisions and regular communications are essential. Test security and standards were not compromised

Information-theoretic significance of the Wigner distribution

A coarse grained Wigner distribution p_{W}(x,u) obeying positivity derives out of information-theoretic considerations. Let p(x,u) be the unknown joint PDF (probability density function) on position- and momentum fluctuations x,u for a pure state particle. Suppose that the phase part Psi(x,z) of its Fourier transform F.T.[p(x,u)]=|Z(x,z)|exp[iPsi(x,z)] is constructed as a hologram. (Such a hologram is often used in heterodyne interferometry.) Consider a particle randomly illuminating this phase hologram. Let its two position coordinates be measured. Require that the measurements contain an extreme amount of Fisher information about true position, through variation of the phase function Psi(x,z). The extremum solution gives an output PDF p(x,u) that is the convolution of the Wigner p_{W}(x,u) with an instrument function defining uncertainty in either position x or momentum u. The convolution arises naturally out of the approach, and is one-dimensional, in comparison with the two-dimensional convolutions usually proposed for coarse graining purposes. The output obeys positivity, as required of a PDF, if the one-dimensional instrument function is sufficiently wide. The result holds for a large class of systems: those whose amplitudes a(x) are the same at their boundaries (Examples: states a(x) with positive parity; with periodic boundary conditions; free particle trapped in a box).Comment: pdf version has 16 pages. No figures. Accepted for publ. in PR

Inhibition of Trophoblast-Induced Spiral Artery Remodeling Reduces Placental Perfusion in Rat Pregnancy.

Rats harboring the human angiotensinogen and human renin genes develop preeclamptic features in pregnancy. The preeclamptic rats exhibit a deeper trophoblast invasion associated with a reduced resistance index by uterine Doppler. Doxycycline inhibits matrix metalloproteinase activity. We tested the hypothesis that matrix metalloproteinase inhibition reduces trophoblast invasion with subsequent changes in placental perfusion. Preeclamptic and pregnant control Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with doxycycline (30 mg/kg of body weight orally) from gestational day 12 until day 18. Placental perfusion was assessed using a micromarker contrast agent. The animals were euthanized on day 18 of pregnancy; biometric data were acquired, and trophoblast invasion was analyzed. Doxycycline resulted in intrauterine growth retardation and lighter placentas in both groups. Maternal body weight was not affected. As shown earlier, preeclamptic rats exhibited a deeper endovascular trophoblast invasion. However, doxycycline treatment reduced trophoblast invasion in the preeclamptic rats. The physiological spiral artery remodeling, as assessed by the deposition of fibrinoid and α-actin in the spiral artery contour, was significantly reduced by doxycycline. The vascularity index, as assessed by perfusion measurement of the placenta, was reduced after doxycycline treatment in preeclamptic rats. Thus, matrix metalloproteinase inhibition with doxycycline leads to reduced trophoblast invasion and associated reduced placental perfusion. These studies are the first to show that reducing trophoblast-induced vascular remodeling decreases subsequent placental perfusion. Our model allows the study of dysregulated trophoblast invasion and vascular remodeling in vivo to gain important insights into preeclampsia-related mechanisms

Effects of Circulating and Local Uteroplacental Angiotensin II in Rat Pregnancy.

The renin-angiotensin (Ang) system is important during placental development. Dysregulation of the renin-Ang system is important in preeclampsia (PE). Female rats transgenic for the human angiotensinogen gene crossed with males transgenic for the human renin gene develop the PE syndrome, whereas those of the opposite cross do not. We used this model to study the role of Ang II in trophoblast invasion, which is shallow in human PE but deeper in this model. We investigated the following groups: PE rats, opposite-cross rats, Ang II–infused rats (1000 ng/kg per day), and control rats. Ang II infusion increased only circulating Ang II levels (267.82 pg/mL), opposite cross influenced only uteroplacental Ang II (13.52 fmol/mg of protein), and PE increased both circulating (251.09 pg/mL) and uteroplacental (19.24 fmol/mg of protein) Ang II. Blood pressure and albuminuria occurred in the models with high circulating Ang II but not in the other models. Trophoblast invasion increased in PE and opposite-cross rats but not in Ang II–infused rats. Correspondingly, uterine artery resistance index increased in Ang II–infused rats but decreased in PE rats. We then studied human trophoblasts and villous explants from first-trimester pregnancies with time-lapse microscopy. Local Ang II dose-dependently increased migration by 75%, invasion by 58%, and motility by 282%. The data suggest that local tissue Ang II stimulates trophoblast invasion in vivo in the rat and in vitro in human cells, a hitherto fore unrecognized function. Conceivably, upregulation of tissue Ang II in the maternal part of the placenta represents an important growth factor for trophoblast invasion and migration

Nonlinear Dynamics of the Perceived Pitch of Complex Sounds

We apply results from nonlinear dynamics to an old problem in acoustical physics: the mechanism of the perception of the pitch of sounds, especially the sounds known as complex tones that are important for music and speech intelligibility

Can we use medical examiners' records for suicide surveillance and prevention research in Nova Scotia?

Introduction: Medical examiners' records can contribute to our understanding of the extent of suicide in a population, as well as associated sociodemographic and other factors

An Arbitrary Curvilinear Coordinate Method for Particle-In-Cell Modeling

A new approach to the kinetic simulation of plasmas in complex geometries, based on the Particle-in- Cell (PIC) simulation method, is explored. In the two dimensional (2d) electrostatic version of our method, called the Arbitrary Curvilinear Coordinate PIC (ACC-PIC) method, all essential PIC operations are carried out in 2d on a uniform grid on the unit square logical domain, and mapped to a nonuniform boundary-fitted grid on the physical domain. As the resulting logical grid equations of motion are not separable, we have developed an extension of the semi-implicit Modified Leapfrog (ML) integration technique to preserve the symplectic nature of the logical grid particle mover. A generalized, curvilinear coordinate formulation of Poisson's equations to solve for the electrostatic fields on the uniform logical grid is also developed. By our formulation, we compute the plasma charge density on the logical grid based on the particles' positions on the logical domain. That is, the plasma particles are weighted to the uniform logical grid and the self-consistent mean electrostatic fields obtained from the solution of the logical grid Poisson equation are interpolated to the particle positions on the logical grid. This process eliminates the complexity associated with the weighting and interpolation processes on the nonuniform physical grid and allows us to run the PIC method on arbitrary boundary-fitted meshes.Comment: Submitted to Computational Science & Discovery December 201

A model of ant route navigation driven by scene familiarity

In this paper we propose a model of visually guided route navigation in ants that captures the known properties of real behaviour whilst retaining mechanistic simplicity and thus biological plausibility. For an ant, the coupling of movement and viewing direction means that a familiar view specifies a familiar direction of movement. Since the views experienced along a habitual route will be more familiar, route navigation can be re-cast as a search for familiar views. This search can be performed with a simple scanning routine, a behaviour that ants have been observed to perform. We test this proposed route navigation strategy in simulation, by learning a series of routes through visually cluttered environments consisting of objects that are only distinguishable as silhouettes against the sky. In the first instance we determine view familiarity by exhaustive comparison with the set of views experienced during training. In further experiments we train an artificial neural network to perform familiarity discrimination using the training views. Our results indicate that, not only is the approach successful, but also that the routes that are learnt show many of the characteristics of the routes of desert ants. As such, we believe the model represents the only detailed and complete model of insect route guidance to date. What is more, the model provides a general demonstration that visually guided routes can be produced with parsimonious mechanisms that do not specify when or what to learn, nor separate routes into sequences of waypoints

Dietary patterns of competitive swimmers with moderate-to-severe cerebral palsy : A 3-year longitudinal evaluation

Aim: To evaluate the longitudinal dietary patterns of three adolescents with moderate-to-severe cerebral palsy (CP) participating in a performance-focused swimming training intervention. Method: Participants were three previously inactive adolescents with CP (15–16 years, GMFCS IV) who had recently (<6 months) enrolled in a swimming training program. Diet quality from diet histories was calculated at 10-time points over 3.25 years using the Dietary Guidelines Index for Children and Adolescents (DGI-CA) and the Healthy Eating Index for Australian Adults (HEIFA-2013). A food group analysis was compared to the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating recommendations. Trends were considered in the context of dietary advice given and the training load. Results: Longitudinal diet quality scores were consistent and ranged from 40 to 76 (DGI-CA) and 33 to 79 (HEIFA-2013). Food group intake remained stable; participants rarely met the recommendations for fruit, vegetables, dairy, grain, and meat but frequently achieved discretionary serves. Conclusions: Participants with moderate-to-severe CP who were enrolled in a performance-focused swimming training intervention and were monitored frequently maintained diet quality throughout a period where it conventionally declined. Scores were higher than the general population and were maintained irrespective of the training load. Participants frequently met food group recommendations for discretionary foods and were comparable to the general population for other food groups