Resistance in a \u27Culture of Permission:\u27 Sociological Readings of the Correspondence with Persian Authorities in Ezra 1-7

The first six chapters of the book of Ezra center around an alleged correspondence between the Persian Emporer\u27s court and the local authorities of Palestine under Persian rule. Without question, these letters were crucial to the editors of Ezra-Nehemiah. But why? What does the reproduction of this alleged official correspondence mean to the final editors of Ezra-Nehemiah

Activity of species-specific antibiotics against Crohnʼs disease–associated adherent-invasive Escherichia coli

Background: Crohn's disease (CD) is associated with bacterial dysbiosis that frequently includes colonization by adherent-invasive Escherichia coli (AIEC). AIEC are adept at forming biofilms and are able to invade host cells and stimulate the production of proinflammatory cytokines. The use of traditional antibiotics for the treatment of CD shows limited efficacy. In this study, we investigate the use of species-specific antibiotics termed colicins for treatment of CD-associated AIEC. Methods: Colicin activity was tested against a range of AIEC isolates growing in the planktonic and biofilm mode of growth. Colicins were also tested against AIEC bacteria associated with T84 intestinal epithelial cells and surviving inside RAW264.7 macrophages using adhesion assays and gentamicin protection assay, respectively. Uptake of colicins into eukaryotic cells was visualized using confocal microscopy. The effect of colicin treatment on the production of proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor alpha by macrophages was assessed by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: Colicins show potent activity against AIEC bacteria growing as biofilms when delivered either as a purified protein or through a colicin-producing bacterial strain. In addition, colicins E1 and E9 are able to kill cell-associated and intracellular AIEC, but do not show toxicity toward macrophage cells or stimulate the production of proinflammatory cytokines. Colicin killing of intracellular bacteria occurs after entry of colicin protein into AIEC-infected macrophage compartments by actin-mediated endocytosis. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate the potential of colicins as highly selective probiotic therapeutics for the eradication of E. coli from the gastrointestinal tract of patients with CD

An improved estimator for non-Gaussianity in cosmic microwave background observations

An improved estimator for the amplitude fnl of local-type non-Gaussianity from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) bispectrum is discussed. The standard estimator is constructed to be optimal in the zero-signal (i.e., Gaussian) limit. When applied to CMB maps which have a detectable level of non-Gaussianity the standard estimator is no longer optimal, possibly limiting the sensitivity of future observations to a non-Gaussian signal. Previous studies have proposed an improved estimator by using a realization-dependent normalization. Under the approximations of a flat sky and a vanishingly thin last-scattering surface, these studies showed that the variance of this improved estimator can be significantly smaller than the variance of the standard estimator when applied to non-Gaussian CMB maps. Here this technique is generalized to the full sky and to include the full radiation transfer function, yielding expressions for the improved estimator that can be directly applied to CMB maps. The ability of this estimator to reduce the variance as compared to the standard estimator in the face of a significant non-Gaussian signal is re-assessed using the full CMB transfer function. As a result of the late time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, the performance of the improved estimator is degraded. If CMB maps are first cleaned of the late-time ISW effect using a tracer of foreground structure, such as a galaxy survey or a measurement of CMB weak lensing, the new estimator does remove a majority of the excess variance, allowing a higher significance detection of fnl.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure

Baryons still trace dark matter: probing CMB lensing maps for hidden isocurvature

Compensated isocurvature perturbations (CIPs) are primordial fluctuations that balance baryon and dark-matter isocurvature to leave the total matter density unperturbed. The effects of CIPs on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies are similar to those produced by weak lensing of the CMB: smoothing of the power spectrum, and generation of non-Gaussian features. Previous work considered the CIP effects on the CMB power-spectrum but neglected to include the CIP effects on estimates of the lensing potential power spectrum (though its contribution to the non-Gaussian, connected, part of the CMB trispectrum). Here, the CIP contribution to the standard estimator for the lensing potential power-spectrum is derived, and along with the CIP contributions to the CMB power-spectrum, Planck data is used to place limits on the root-mean-square CIP fluctuations on CMB scales, $\Delta_{\rm rms}^2(R_{\rm CMB})$. The resulting constraint of $\Delta_{\rm rms}^2(R_{\rm CMB}) < 4.3 \times 10^{-3}$ using this new technique improves on past work by a factor of $\sim 3$. We find that for Planck data our constraints almost reach the sensitivity of the optimal CIP estimator. The method presented here is currently the most sensitive probe of the amplitude of a scale-invariant CIP power spectrum placing an upper limit of $A_{\rm CIP}< 0.017$ at 95% CL. Future measurements of the large-scale CMB lensing potential power spectrum could probe CIP amplitudes as low as $\Delta_{\rm rms}^2(R_{\rm CMB}) = 8 \times 10^{-5}$ ($A_{\rm CIP} = 3.2 \times 10^{-4}$).Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures; comments welcome; v2 references correcte

mSpace Mobile: Exploring Support for Mobile Tasks

In the following paper we compare two Web application interfaces, mSpace Mobile and Google Local in supporting location discovery tasks on mobile devices while stationary and while on the move. While mSpace Mobile performed well in both stationary and mobile conditions, performance in Google Local dropped significantly. We postulate that mSpace Mobile performed so well because it breaks the paradigm of the page for delivering Web content, thereby enabling new and more powerful interfaces to be used to support mobility

mSpace: improving information access to multimedia domains with multimodal exploratory search

Overview of mSpace interaction approach for presenting exploratory search particularly in the audio domain by using slices, preview cues, and user-determined organization of information from high-dimensional space