The Backovo ossuary frescoes of 1074-83

The scarcity of dated fresco cycles from the second half of the eleventh century gives the Backovo murals a place of outstanding significance in the history of Byzantine monumental decorations. Also the Backovo frescoes, as decorations for a monastic ossuary, preserve a very rare type of painting, with such scenes as the "Vision of Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones" encountered for the first time in Byzantine painting on a monumental scale. Through a close study of the literary sources and inscriptions, a dating of 1074-1083 is established for the first and principle layer of frescoes on both levels of the ossuary. A detailed iconographic analysis of the decorations confirms this dating in the final third of the eleventh century. Likewise certain stylistic parallels, such as with the Psalter and New Testament, Dumbarton Oaks Ms. 3 (olim Pantocrator Cod.49) dated 1084, the fresco cycles of Ag. Chrysostom in Koutsovendi, some of the frescoes at Hosios Lukas, frescoes at Sakl1 Kilise in Cappadocia and at Ateni in Georgia, all point to this late eleventh century dating for Backovo. In the light of this redating of the Backovo frescoes, certain major assumptions concerning the nature of the development of Byzantine iconography have to be re-examined. This includes a re-evaluation of the evidence for the emergence of the Melismos composition. There are also some peculiarities of the Backovo iconographic programme which reflect the interests of the Armenian Chalcedonite and Georgian Churches. Apart from the 1074-83 frescoes, there are also three other relatively minor layers of frescoes from the twelfth to the fourteenth century

Simultaneous Monitoring of Intracranial Pressure and Cerebral Blood Flow in Patients with Severe Brain Injury

37 patients with severe brain injury (admission Glasgow Coma Score 8 or below) were simultaneously monitored for intracranialand cerebral perfusion pressure and cerebral blood flow using transcranial Doppler ultrasonography. Pearson correlation coefficientswere calculated to analyze relationships between quantitative variables. It was established that the increase of intracranial pressureleads to formation of Doppler ultrasonographic pattern of reduced perfusion, which involves relative decrease of mean linearblood flow velocity (primarily due to decrease of end-diastolic blood flow velocity) and increase of peripheral resistivity indices (pulsatility and resistivity indices)

Electrophilically Activated Nitroalkanes in Synthesis of 3,4-Dihydroquinozalines

Nitroalkanes activated with polyphosphoric acid serve as efficient electrophiles in reactions with various nucleophilic amines. Strategically placed second functionality allows for the design of annulation reactions enabling preparation of various heterocycles. This strategy was employed to develop an innovative synthetic approach towards 3,4-dihydroquinazolines from readily available 2-(aminomethyl)anilines

Ball on a beam: stabilization under saturated input control with large basin of attraction

This article is devoted to the stabilization of two underactuated planar systems, the well-known straight beam-and-ball system and an original circular beam-and-ball system. The feedback control for each system is designed, using the Jordan form of its model, linearized near the unstable equilibrium. The limits on the voltage, fed to the motor, are taken into account explicitly. The straight beam-and-ball system has one unstable mode in the motion near the equilibrium point. The proposed control law ensures that the basin of attraction coincides with the controllability domain. The circular beam-and-ball system has two unstable modes near the equilibrium point. Therefore, this device, never considered in the past, is much more difficult to control than the straight beam-and-ball system. The main contribution is to propose a simple new control law, which ensures by adjusting its gain parameters that the basin of attraction arbitrarily can approach the controllability domain for the linear case. For both nonlinear systems, simulation results are presented to illustrate the efficiency of the designed nonlinear control laws and to determine the basin of attraction

Early-life gut microbiome composition and milk allergy resolution

Gut microbiota may play a role in the natural history of cow’s milk allerg