Suprafamilial relationships among Rodentia and the phylogenetic effect of removing fast-evolving nucleotides in mitochondrial, exon and intron fragments

The number of rodent clades identified above the family level is contentious, and to date, no consensus has been reached on the basal evolutionary relationships among all rodent families. Rodent suprafamilial phylogenetic relationships are investigated in the present study using approximately 7600 nucleotide characters derived from two mitochondrial genes (Cytochrome b and 12S rRNA), two nuclear exons (IRBP and vWF) and four nuclear introns (MGF, PRKC, SPTBN, THY). Because increasing the number of nucleotides does not necessarily increase phylogenetic signal (especially if the data is saturated), we assess the potential impact of saturation for each dataset by removing the fastest-evolving positions that have been recognized as sources of inconsistencies in phylogenetics

The Clear Sight of an Architectural Historian: An Interview with Adrian Forty

Objects, desires, words, buildings, materials, culture: In his lifelong trajectory, Adrian Forty has added whatever it takes in the mix of architectural historiography to help us see our profession as clearly as we can. Almost synonymous with the Architectural History & Theory programmes at The Bartlett School of Architecture, his research and teaching trajectories have left his unmistakeable mark on the discipline at large. Recently retired after more than four decades of intense academic activity, Forty agreed to be interviewed by LOBBY on the occasion of the publication of the aptly titled Forty Ways to Think about Architecture anthology, compiled and edited by some of his many distinguished colleagues, friends and students over the years

Analysis and correction of the magnetic field effects in the Hybrid Photo-Detectors of the RICH2 Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector of LHCb

The Ring Imaging Cherenkov detectors of the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are equipped with Hybrid Photo-Detectors. These vacuum photo-detectors are affected by the stray magnetic field of the LHCb magnet, which degrades their imaging properties. This effect increases the error on the Cherenkov angle measurement and would reduce the particle identification capabilities of LHCb. A system has been developed for the RICH2 Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector to perform a detailed characterisation of the magnetic distortion effects. It is described, along with the methods implemented to correct for these effects, restoring the optimal resolution.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure

Adverse Childhood Life Events and Postpartum Mood Episodes in Bipolar Disorder

Background: The early postpartum has been established as a period of increased vulnerability for psychiatric mood illness. Women with bipolar disorder (BD) in particular are at elevated risk of postnatal depression (PND) and of postpartum psychosis (PP). Though adverse childhood life events (ACLEs) have been implicated in the aetiology of PND, this has rarely been studied in relation to PP. Furthermore, despite being at high risk of relapse following childbirth, little research has assessed the relationship between ACLEs and postnatal mood episodes (PNEs) exclusively in women with BD. Therefore, our aim was to explore associations between ACLEs and occurrence of both PND and PP in a large sample of women with BD. Methods: Participants were 665 parous women with BD who had been recruited into the Bipolar Disorder Research Network study. Diagnoses and lifetime psychopathology were obtained via a semi-structured interview (SCAN). Postnatal psychiatric history and experience of 7 ACLEs were also assessed. Where available, all information obtained at interview was confirmed from psychiatric case notes. Women were classified into three groups according to postnatal psychiatric history: 1) those who had experienced no postnatal mood episode (no PNE, n=224), 2) women with a history of PND (n=223) and 3) women who had experienced PP (n=208). A Pearson’s chi-square test was used to compare the prevalence of each type of ACLE between women in the no PNE group and those with a history of PND or PP. Results: Women with PND were significantly more likely to have experienced emotional, sexual or physical abuse in childhood compared with women who had no history of a PNE (p<0.05). In particular, childhood sexual abuse was reported significantly more in the PND than the no PNE group (P<0.05). In contrast, there were no significant differences in the frequency of reporting of any ACLEs between women who had no PNE and those with PP. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that childhood abuse, sexual abuse in particular, is associated with PND among women with BD. In contrast, we found no evidence for an association between any ACLE and PP, suggesting that biological factors are likely to play a more important role in the aetiology of psychosis in the early postpartum

Memory palaces within the space of architectural production

A model of the space of architectural production is proposed here where the building is imagined as a Memory Palace. In this model, building work is understood to be foreshadowed by an imaginary architecture which both predicts the future physical construction to come and is also made superfluous by this construction work as it is comes to be. It is argued here that these Memory Palaces of production remain lodged in the minds of the constructors and designers who planned and executed the detail of a construction. After construction, a building’s details act as a physical route through which individual actors might access their personal Memory Palaces in the space of production

Two body decays of the bb-quark: Applications to direct CP violation, searches for electro-weak penguins and new physics

A systematic experimental search for two-body hadronic decays of the b-quark of the type b to quark + meson is proposed. These reactions have a well defined experimental signature and they should be theoretically cleaner compared to exclusive decays. Many modes have appreciable branching ratios and partial rate asymmetries may also be quite large (about 8-50%) in several of them. In a few cases electroweak penguins appear to be dominant and may be measurable. CP violating triple correlation asymmetries provide a clean test of the Standard Model.Comment: 12 pages 1 figure 1 tabl

Stratification of the Risk of Bipolar Disorder Recurrences in Pregnancy and Postpartum

Background Pregnancy and childbirth are a period of high risk for women with bipolar disorder and involve difficult decisions particularly about continuing or stopping medications. Aims To explore what clinical predictors may help to individualise the risk of perinatal recurrence in women with bipolar disorder. Method Information was gathered retrospectively by semi-structured interview, questionnaires and case-note review from 887 women with bipolar disorder who have had children. Clinical predictors were selected using backwards stepwise logistic regression, conditional permutation random forests and reinforcement learning trees. Results Previous perinatal history of affective psychosis or depression was the most significant predictor of a perinatal recurrence (odds ratio (OR) = 8.5, 95% CI 5.04–14.82 and OR = 3.6, 95% CI 2.55–5.07 respectively) but even parous women with bipolar disorder without a previous perinatal mood episode were at risk following a subsequent pregnancy, with 7% developing postpartum psychosis. Conclusions Previous perinatal history of affective psychosis or depression is the most important predictor of perinatal recurrence in women with bipola

Deep Learning Architect: Classification for Architectural Design through the Eye of Artificial Intelligence

This paper applies state-of-the-art techniques in deep learning and computer vision to measure visual similarities between architectural designs by different architects. Using a dataset consisting of web scraped images and an original collection of images of architectural works, we first train a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) model capable of achieving 73% accuracy in classifying works belonging to 34 different architects. Through examining the weights in the trained DCNN model, we are able to quantitatively measure the visual similarities between architects that are implicitly learned by our model. Using this measure, we cluster architects that are identified to be similar and compare our findings to conventional classification made by architectural historians and theorists. Our clustering of architectural designs remarkably corroborates conventional views in architectural history, and the learned architectural features also coheres with the traditional understanding of architectural designs.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, 4 table

Posterior lung herniation after a coughing spell: a case report

Lung hernias are rare, occurring most commonly after trauma or surgery. Spontaneous lung hernias are even rarer and have only been reported as occurring anteriorly. We present a 72-year-old male who developed a spontaneous posterior lung hernia after a severe coughing episode. We describe the evaluation and surgical management of this unusual condition and provide a brief review of the literature

Monochromatic Propagation-Based Phase-Contrast Microscale Computed-Tomography System with a Rotating-Anode Source

We present an experimental setup for monochromatic propagation-based x-ray phase-contrast imaging based on a conventional rotating-copper-anode source, capable of an integrated flux up to 108 photons/s at 8 keV. In our study, the system is characterized in terms of spatial coherence, resolution, contrast sensitivity, and stability. Its quantitativeness is demonstrated by comparing theoretical predictions with experimental data on simple wire phantoms both in planar and computerized-tomography-scan geometries. Application to two biological samples of medical interest shows the potential for bioimaging on the millimeter scale with spatial resolution of the order of 10 \u3bcm and contrast resolution below 1%. All the scans are performed within laboratory-compatible exposure times, from 10 min to a few hours, and trade-offs between scan time and image quality are discussed