The Byzantine Cisterns of Constantinople

The most unusual aspect of Byzantine Constantinople's water system was the large number of cisterns throughout the city. This research integrates the two most recent in-depth studies of the cisterns to determine that there have been at least 211 cisterns attributed to the Byzantine city. The distribution of the cisterns indicates that the size and number of cisterns constructed reduced over time, with more and larger cisterns developed prior to the seventh century. Cisterns are concentrated in the older area of the City and sparser on the periphery, but with later ones more common in the peripheral areas, suggesting that water provision was extended over time, and although the majority of cisterns are small, most storage volume is concentrated in the three largest open-air cisterns. The extended, detailed list produced will allow more in-depth investigations to proceed. Analysis of the distribution of cisterns across the City creates a framework for understanding the development and functioning of Byzantine Constantinople's complex water supply system

Uncovering Elementary Teachers\u27 Notions of Engineering Design Practices using Video-Captured Instruction

This article describes a 3-credit STEM education graduate course that provided knowledge and experiences to elementary school teachers for incorporating engineering design process (EDP) into their instruction. We analyzed teacher\u27s written reflections that gave us insights to the successes and challenges in helping teachers develop their notions and implementation of the EDP

Engineering exploration of the water supply system of Constantinople

Before this research study began, relatively little was understood of the water supply in Constantinople, particularly within the walls of the city. Archaeological work had focused on collecting details of 160 cisterns and a small number of channels and pipes were incidental finds in other excavations. Although no-one had considered the water supply in Constantinople as a whole, the evidence seemed to indicate a sophisticated water management system. With the available data fragmented, and the potential for more evidence limited to serendipitous finds associated with construction work, the only way to move the understanding of the water supply forward is to take a radically different perspective: civil engineers are well placed to envisage the water supply as a working system and make use of their modern design skills and tools to fill in the gaps between the fragmented data. This reimagining of the water supply system was driven by a key piece of knowledge: the water supply worked, and worked for many centuries. That fact, combined with the fragments of physical and literary evidence, the largely unchanged landscape and the fundamental physical laws governing gravity-fed water systems, are enough to start filling in the information to create a complete system. The core work in reimagining the water supply system has been developing an understanding of the physical infrastructure of the distribution system. Although the two most recent and comprehensive studies appeared to agree that there were about 159 cisterns in the city, close examination of the available data showed that there were actually 209 with the possibility of more. An evaluation of the aqueduct routes in previous studies highlighted inconsistencies with newly available evidence: alternative routes were designed that tied together the available evidence, providing a consistently downhill route, shorter and more straightforward to construct. Having established the number and spread of cisterns and the locations of the aqueducts, it was possible to create a network delivering water from the aqueduct channels to the cisterns for collection by the public. Consideration has also been given to what occurs at either end of this physical infrastructure. At the upstream end, quantifying and characterising the water source defines the water available to distribute and helps to indicate the purpose of the cisterns. At the downstream end, developing even a basic model of water consumption has enabled the distribution network to move from a static artefact to a system with a quantifiable purpose. The combination of the physical infrastructure, inflow data and demand assumptions in an agent-based model demonstrate that the decisions and assumption made within each element work together and allow a fourth element, management, to be considered. The agent-based model of the water supply enables consideration of a dynamic system and the exploration of a number of “what if?” scenarios. This exploration concludes that the cistern-based distribution system probably developed because of fluctuations in inflow. It may have been possible for the city to use a merged arrangement on the Aqueduct of Valens inflow, but the burden of pro-active management required to make it successful suggests that a parallel arrangement is more likely. There was likely to be an interconnection between the two main aqueducts, which would have enabled the use of water stored in the largest open-air cisterns

Multicenter Breast Cancer Collaborative Registry

The Breast Cancer Collaborative Registry (BCCR) is a multicenter web-based system that efficiently collects and manages a variety of data on breast cancer (BC) patients and BC survivors. This registry is designed as a multi-tier web application that utilizes Java Servlet/JSP technology and has an Oracle 11g database as a back-end. The BCCR questionnaire has accommodated standards accepted in breast cancer research and healthcare. By harmonizing the controlled vocabulary with the NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) or Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), the BCCR provides a standardized approach to data collection and reporting. The BCCR has been recently certified by the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (NCI CBIIT) as a cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG®) Bronze Compatible product

Imposed identities and limited opportunities: Advocacy agency staff perspectives on the construction of their clients with intellectual disabilities

Intellectual disability is commonly conceptualised as stigmatised identity; however, within the literature, the notion of a damaged identity is contested. The aim of this research was to explore the social construction of intellectual disability from the perspective of staff who work closely with people with intellectual disabilities. Informed by a contextualist perspective, this research was based on interviews with five staff members of an advocacy agency in a regional area of Australia. Causal layered analysis was used to deconstruct the interview data. Analysis of the interactions that emerged across the causal layers revealed a complex dynamic of world views, which served to dehumanise people with intellectual disabilities and blame them for their own fate (victim blaming). For transformative change to occur, understandings of the 'problems' of intellectual disability must be reformulated and those social structures and processes that support the relationship between the powerful and the powerless must be challenged

Prevalence and architecture of de novo mutations in developmental disorders.

The genomes of individuals with severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders are enriched in damaging de novo mutations (DNMs) in developmentally important genes. Here we have sequenced the exomes of 4,293 families containing individuals with developmental disorders, and meta-analysed these data with data from another 3,287 individuals with similar disorders. We show that the most important factors influencing the diagnostic yield of DNMs are the sex of the affected individual, the relatedness of their parents, whether close relatives are affected and the parental ages. We identified 94 genes enriched in damaging DNMs, including 14 that previously lacked compelling evidence of involvement in developmental disorders. We have also characterized the phenotypic diversity among these disorders. We estimate that 42% of our cohort carry pathogenic DNMs in coding sequences; approximately half of these DNMs disrupt gene function and the remainder result in altered protein function. We estimate that developmental disorders caused by DNMs have an average prevalence of 1 in 213 to 1 in 448 births, depending on parental age. Given current global demographics, this equates to almost 400,000 children born per year

Mutations in PIEZO2 Cause Gordon Syndrome, Marden-Walker Syndrome, and Distal Arthrogryposis Type 5

Gordon syndrome (GS), or distal arthrogryposis type 3, is a rare, autosomal-dominant disorder characterized by cleft palate and congenital contractures of the hands and feet. Exome sequencing of five GS-affected families identified mutations in piezo-type mechanosensitive ion channel component 2 (PIEZO2) in each family. Sanger sequencing revealed PIEZO2 mutations in five of seven additional families studied (for a total of 10/12 [83%] individuals), and nine families had an identical c.8057G>A (p.Arg2686His) mutation. The phenotype of GS overlaps with distal arthrogryposis type 5 (DA5) and Marden-Walker syndrome (MWS). Using molecular inversion probes for targeted sequencing to screen PIEZO2, we found mutations in 24/29 (82%) DA5-affected families and one of two MWS-affected families. The presence of cleft palate was significantly associated with c.8057G>A (Fisher’s exact test, adjusted p value < 0.0001). Collectively, although GS, DA5, and MWS have traditionally been considered separate disorders, our findings indicate that they are etiologically related and perhaps represent variable expressivity of the same condition

Genomic Relationships, Novel Loci, and Pleiotropic Mechanisms across Eight Psychiatric Disorders

Genetic influences on psychiatric disorders transcend diagnostic boundaries, suggesting substantial pleiotropy of contributing loci. However, the nature and mechanisms of these pleiotropic effects remain unclear. We performed analyses of 232,964 cases and 494,162 controls from genome-wide studies of anorexia nervosa, attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and Tourette syndrome. Genetic correlation analyses revealed a meaningful structure within the eight disorders, identifying three groups of inter-related disorders. Meta-analysis across these eight disorders detected 109 loci associated with at least two psychiatric disorders, including 23 loci with pleiotropic effects on four or more disorders and 11 loci with antagonistic effects on multiple disorders. The pleiotropic loci are located within genes that show heightened expression in the brain throughout the lifespan, beginning prenatally in the second trimester, and play prominent roles in neurodevelopmental processes. These findings have important implications for psychiatric nosology, drug development, and risk prediction.Peer reviewe