Ancient Egypt 1915 Part 1

Part 1 of the 1915 Ancient Egypt books. Contents include birds in ancient Egyptian art, excavations at Saqqara, part of a Coptic sermon, and the metals in Egypt.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/kweeks_coll/1001/thumbnail.jp

Methods for treating bone deficit conditions with benzothiazole

" Compounds containing two aromatic systems covalently linked through a linker containing one or more atoms, or ""linker"" defined as including a covalent bond per se so as to space the aromatic systems at a distance 1.5-15 .ANG., are effective in treating conditions associated with bone deficits. The compounds can be administered to vertebrate subjects alone or in combination with additional agents that promote bone growth or that inhibit bone resorption. They can be screened for activity prior to administration by assessing their ability to effect the transcription of a reporter gene coupled to a promoter associated with a bone morphogenetic protein and/or their ability to stimulate calvarial growth in model animal systems. "Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Psychometric properties of a single-item scale to assess sleep quality among individuals with fibromyalgia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Sleep disturbances are a common and bothersome symptom of fibromyalgia (FM). This study reports psychometric properties of a single-item scale to assess sleep quality among individuals with FM.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Analyses were based on data from two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of pregabalin (studies 1056 and 1077). In a daily diary, patients reported the quality of their sleep on a numeric rating scale ranging from 0 ("best possible sleep") to 10 ("worst possible sleep"). Test re-test reliability of the Sleep Quality Scale was evaluated by computing intraclass correlation coefficients. Pearson correlation coefficients were computed between baseline Sleep Quality scores and baseline pain diary and Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) Sleep scores. Responsiveness to treatment was evaluated by standardized effect sizes computed as the difference between least squares mean changes in Sleep Quality scores in the pregabalin and placebo groups divided by the standard deviation of Sleep Quality scores across all patients at baseline.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Studies 1056 and 1077 included 748 and 745 patients, respectively. Most patients were female (study 1056: 94.4%; study 1077: 94.5%) and white (study 1056: 90.2%; study 1077: 91.0%). Mean ages were 48.8 years (study 1056) and 50.1 years (study 1077). Test re-test reliability coefficients of the Sleep Quality Scale were 0.91 and 0.90 in the 1056 and 1077 studies, respectively. Pearson correlation coefficients between baseline Sleep Quality scores and baseline pain diary scores were 0.64 (p < 0.001) and 0.58 (p < 0.001) in the 1056 and 1077 studies, respectively. Correlations between the Sleep Quality Scale and the MOS Sleep subscales were statistically significant (p < 0.01), except for the MOS Snoring subscale. Across both studies, standardized effect sizes were generally moderate (0.46 to 0.52) for the 300 mg group and moderate (0.59) or moderate-to-large (0.70) for the 450 mg group. In study 1056, the effect size for the 600 mg group was moderate-to-large (0.73). In study 1077, the effect size for the 600 mg group was large (0.82).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results provide evidence of the reproducibility, convergent validity, and responsiveness to treatment of the Sleep Quality Scale and provide a foundation for its further use and evaluation in FM patients.</p

Structured Estimation of Heterogeneous Time Series

How best to model structurally heterogeneous processes is a foundational question in the social, health and behavioral sciences. Recently, Fisher et al., (2022) introduced the multi-VAR approach for simultaneously estimating multiple-subject multivariate time series characterized by common and individualizing features using penalized estimation. This approach differs from many popular modeling approaches for multiple-subject time series in that qualitative and quantitative differences in a large number of individual dynamics are well-accommodated. The current work extends the multi-VAR framework to include new adaptive weighting schemes that greatly improve estimation performance. In a small set of simulation studies we compare adaptive multi-VAR with these new penalty weights to common alternative estimators in terms of path recovery and bias. Furthermore, we provide toy examples and code demonstrating the utility of multi-VAR under different heterogeneity regimes using the multivar package for R (Fisher, 2022)

Solar Magnetic Field Signatures in Helioseismic Splitting Coefficients

Normal modes of oscillation of the Sun are useful probes of the solar interior. In this work, we use the even-order splitting coefficients to study the evolution of magnetic fields in the convection zone over solar cycle 23, assuming that the frequency splitting is only due to rotation and a large scale magnetic field. We find that the data are best fit by a combination of a poloidal field and a double-peaked near-surface toroidal field. The toroidal fields are centered at r=0.999R_solar and r=0.996R_solar and are confined to the near-surface layers. The poloidal field is a dipole field. The peak strength of the poloidal field is 124 +/- 17G. The toroidal field peaks at 380 +/- 30G and 1.4 +/- 0.2kG for the shallower and deeper fields respectively. The field strengths are highly correlated with surface activity. The toroidal field strength shows a hysteresis-like effect when compared to the global 10.7 cm radio flux. The poloidal field strength shows evidence of saturation at high activity.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in Ap

Haemodynamic, endocrine and renal actions of adrenomedullin 5 in an ovine model of heart failure

AM5 (adrenomedullin 5), a newly described member of the CGRP (calcitonin gene-related peptide) family, is reported to play a role in normal cardiovascular physiology. The effects of AM5 in HF (heart failure), however, have not been investigated. In the present study, we intravenously infused two incremental doses of AM5 (10 and 100 ng/min per kg of body weight each for 90 min) into eight sheep with pacing-induced HF. Compared with time-matched vehicle control infusions, AM5 produced progressive and dose-dependent increases in left ventricular dP/dt(max) [LD (low dose), +56 mmHg/s and HD (high dose), +152 mmHg/s] and cardiac output (+0.83 l/min and +1.81 l/min), together with decrements in calculated total peripheral resistance (−9.4 mmHg/min per litre and −14.7 mmHg/min per litre), mean arterial pressure (−2.8 mmHg and −8.4 mmHg) and LAP (left atrial pressure; −2.6 mmHg and −5.6 mmHg) (all P<0.001). HD AM5 significantly raised PRA (plasma renin activity) (3.5-fold increment, P<0.001), whereas plasma aldosterone levels were unchanged over the intra-infusion period and actually fell in the post-infusion period (70% decrement, P<0.01), resulting in a marked decrease in the aldosterone/PRA ratio (P<0.01). Despite falls in LAP, plasma atrial natriuretic peptide and B-type natriuretic peptide concentrations were maintained relative to controls. AM5 infusion also induced significant increases in urine volume (HD 2-fold increment, P<0.05) and urine sodium (2.7-fold increment, P<0.01), potassium (1.7-fold increment, P<0.05) and creatinine (1.4-fold increment, P<0.05) excretion and creatinine clearance (60% increment, P<0.05). In conclusion, AM5 has significant haemodynamic, endocrine and renal actions in experimental HF likely to be protective and compensatory in this setting. These results suggest that AM5 may have potential as a therapeutic agent in human HF

Compositions and methods for treating bone deficit conditions

Compounds containing two aromatic systems covalently linked through a linker containing one or more atoms, or &#8220;linker&#8221; defined as including a covalent bond per se so as to space the aromatic systems at a distance 1.5-15 &aring;, are effective in treating conditions associated with bone deficits. The compounds can be administered to vertebrate subjects alone or in combination with additional agents that promote bone growth or that inhibit bone resorption. They can be screened for activity prior to administration by assessing their ability to effect the transcription of a reporter gene coupled to a promoter associated with a bone morphogenetic protein and/or their ability to stimulate calvarial growth in model animal systems.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

'It's a film' : medium specificity as textual gesture in Red road and The unloved

British cinema has long been intertwined with television. The buzzwords of the transition to digital media, 'convergence' and 'multi-platform delivery', have particular histories in the British context which can be grasped only through an understanding of the cultural, historical and institutional peculiarities of the British film and television industries. Central to this understanding must be two comparisons: first, the relative stability of television in the duopoly period (at its core, the licence-funded BBC) in contrast to the repeated boom and bust of the many different financial/industrial combinations which have comprised the film industry; and second, the cultural and historical connotations of 'film' and 'television'. All readers of this journal will be familiar – possibly over-familiar – with the notion that 'British cinema is alive and well and living on television'. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when 'the end of medium specificity' is much trumpeted, it might be useful to return to the historical imbrication of British film and television, to explore both the possibility that medium specificity may be more nationally specific than much contemporary theorisation suggests, and to consider some of the relationships between film and television manifest at a textual level in two recent films, Red Road (2006) and The Unloved (2009)

High Prevalence of Chronic Pituitary and Target-Organ Hormone Abnormalities after Blast-Related Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Studies of traumatic brain injury from all causes have found evidence of chronic hypopituitarism, defined by deficient production of one or more pituitary hormones at least 1 year after injury, in 25–50% of cases. Most studies found the occurrence of posttraumatic hypopituitarism (PTHP) to be unrelated to injury severity. Growth hormone deficiency (GHD) and hypogonadism were reported most frequently. Hypopituitarism, and in particular adult GHD, is associated with symptoms that resemble those of PTSD, including fatigue, anxiety, depression, irritability, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, cognitive deficiencies, and decreased quality of life. However, the prevalence of PTHP after blast-related mild TBI (mTBI), an extremely common injury in modern military operations, has not been characterized. We measured concentrations of 12 pituitary and target-organ hormones in two groups of male US Veterans of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. One group consisted of participants with blast-related mTBI whose last blast exposure was at least 1 year prior to the study. The other consisted of Veterans with similar military deployment histories but without blast exposure. Eleven of 26, or 42% of participants with blast concussions were found to have abnormal hormone levels in one or more pituitary axes, a prevalence similar to that found in other forms of TBI. Five members of the mTBI group were found with markedly low age-adjusted insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) levels indicative of probable GHD, and three had testosterone and gonadotropin concentrations consistent with hypogonadism. If symptoms characteristic of both PTHP and PTSD can be linked to pituitary dysfunction, they may be amenable to treatment with hormone replacement. Routine screening for chronic hypopituitarism after blast concussion shows promise for appropriately directing diagnostic and therapeutic decisions that otherwise may remain unconsidered and for markedly facilitating recovery and rehabilitation

User, Use & Utility Research - The Digital User as New Design Perspective in Business and Information Systems Engineering

Business and Information Systems Engineer- ing (BISE) is at a turning point. Planning, de- signing, developing and operating IT used to be a management task of a few elites in pub- lic ad-ministrations and corporations. But the continuous digitization of nearly all areas of life changes the IT landscape fundamentally. Success in this new era requires putting the human perspective – the digital user – at the very heart of the new digitized service-led economy. BISE faces not just a temporary trend but a complex socio-technical phenomenon with far-reaching implications. The challenges are manifold and have major consequences for all stakeholders, both in information systems and management research as well as in practice. Corporate processes have to be re-designed from the ground up, starting with the user’s perspective, thus putting usage experience and utility of the individual center stage. The digital service economy leads to highly personalized application systems while orga- nizational functions are being fragmented. Entirely new ways of interacting with infor- mation systems, in particular beyond desk- top IT, are being invented and established. These fundamental challenges require novel approaches with regards to innovation and development methods as well as adequate concepts for enterprise or service system ar- chitectures. Gigantic amounts of data are be- ing generated at an accelerating rate by an in- creasing number of devices – data that need to be managed. In order to tackle these extraordinary chal- lenges we introduce ‘user, use & utility’ as a new field of BISE that focuses primarily on the digital user, his or her usage behavior and the utility associated with system usage in the digitized service-led economy. The research objectives encompass the de- velopment of theories, methods and tools for systematic requirement elicitation, sys- tems design, and business development for successful Business and Information Systems Engineering in a digitized economy – infor- mation systems that digital users enjoy us- ing. This challenge calls for leveraging in- sights from various scientific disciplines such as Design, Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology and Sociology. BISE can provide an integrated perspective, thereby assuming a pivotal role within the digitized service led economy