Haima in Hebrews

Problem. The focus of the dissertation is the significance of the term αἷμα (“blood”) in the Epistle to the Hebrews and how the author of Hebrews uses the term to formulate the argument and message of the Epistle. The dissertation traces the scholarly blood debate involving blood as life or death which began in the last decade of the nineteenth century and eventually fizzled out in the mid-1950s. Recognition of the ambivalence of blood, symbolizing both life and death, is necessary to understand the message of Hebrews. Method. The dissertation provides a discussion of the concept of blood in the OT and ANE environments, demonstrating that in the OT the role of blood in the context of the cult as a means of atonement is unique. Results. References to blood are also classified and assessed from the works of both Philo and Josephus, Rabbinic literature, the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, the Qumran community, and the NT. The final chapter of the dissertation deals with the meaning of blood in the Epistle itself, where the author of Hebrews uses his rhetorical skill to present blood as a most powerful medium of approach to God. Conclusions. According to the Epistle, blood sanctifies, purifies/cleanses, consecrates/inaugurates, effects perfection, seals covenants, and brings about decisive purgation. When it is despised, it destroys by death. Blood, when used with the term σάρζ (“flesh”), confirms the true humanity of Christ. Blood constitutes a Leitmotif in the Epistle to encompass the atoning work of Christ, who as High Priest shed His blood vicariously to eradicate sin, cleanse the conscience, and save humankind

Exploiting the synergy between carboplatin and ABT-737 in the treatment of ovarian carcinomas

Platinum drug-resistance in ovarian cancers is a major factor contributing to chemotherapeutic resistance of recurrent disease. Members of the Bcl-2 family such as the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-XL have been shown to play a role in this resistance. Consequently, concurrent inhibition of Bcl-XL in combination with standard chemotherapy may improve treatment outcomes for ovarian cancer patients. Here, we develop a mathematical model to investigate the potential of combination therapy with ABT-737, a small molecule inhibitor of Bcl-XL, and carboplatin, a platinum-based drug, on a simulated tumor xenograft. The model is calibrated against in vivo\ud experimental data, wherein tumor xenografts were established in mice and treated with ABT-737 and carboplatin on a fixed periodic schedule, alone or in combination, and tumor sizes recorded regularly. We show that the validated model can be used to predict the minimum drug load that will achieve a predetermined level of tumor growth inhibition, thereby maximizing the synergy between the two drugs. Our simulations suggest that the time of infusion of each carboplatin dose is a critical parameter, with an 8-hour infusion of carboplatin administered each week combined with a daily bolus dose of ABT-737 predicted to minimize residual disease. We also investigate the potential of ABT-737 co-therapy with carboplatin to prevent or delay the onset of carboplatin-resistance under two scenarios. When resistance is acquired as a result of aberrant DNA-damage repair in cells treated with carboplatin, the model is used to identify drug delivery schedules that induce tumor remission with even low doses of combination therapy. When resistance is intrinsic, due to a pre-existing cohort of resistant cells, tumor remission is no longer feasible, but our model can be used to identify dosing strategies that extend disease-free survival periods. These results underscore the potential of our model to accelerate the development of novel therapeutics such as ABT-737, by predicting optimal treatment strategies when these drugs are given in combination with currently approved cancer medications

Effect of disorder on the thermal transport and elastic properties in thermoelectric Zn4Sb3

Zn4Sb3 undergoes a phase transition from alpha to beta phase at T1[approximate]250 K. The high temperature beta-Zn4Sb3 phase has been widely investigated as a potential state-of-the-art thermoelectric (TE) material, due to its remarkably low thermal conductivity. We have performed electronic and thermal transport measurements exploring the structural phase transition at 250 K. The alpha to beta phase transition manifests itself by anomalies in the resistivity, thermopower, and specific heat at 250 K as well as by a reduction in the thermal conductivity as Zn4Sb3 changes phase from the ordered alpha to the disordered beta-phase. Moreover, measurements of the elastic constants using resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS) reveal a dramatic softening at the order-disorder transition upon warming. These measurements provide further evidence that the remarkable thermoelectric properties of beta-Zn4Sb3 are tied to the disorder in the crystal structure

Coherent and Incoherent Vortex Flow States in Crossed Channels

We examine vortex flow states in periodic square pinning arrays with one row and one column of pinning sites removed to create an easy flow crossed channel geometry. When a drive is simultaneously applied along both major symmetry axes of the pinning array such that vortices move in both channels, a series of coherent flow states develop in the channel intersection at rational ratios of the drive components in each symmetry direction when the vortices can cross the intersection without local collisions. The coherent flow states are correlated with a series of anomalies in the velocity force curves, and in some cases can produce negative differential conductivity. The same general behavior could also be realized in other systems including colloids, particle traffic in microfluidic devices, or Wigner crystals in crossed one-dimensional channels.Comment: 5 pages, 4 postscript figure

Optical signature of the pressure-induced dimerization in the honeycomb iridate α\alpha-Li2_2IrO3_3

We studied the effect of external pressure on the electrodynamic properties of $\alpha$-Li$_2$IrO$_3$ single crystals in the frequency range of the phonon modes and the Ir $d$-$d$ transitions. The abrupt hardening of several phonon modes under pressure supports the onset of the dimerized phase at the critical pressure $P_c$=3.8 GPa. With increasing pressure an overall decrease in spectral weight of the Ir $d$-$d$ transitions is found up to $P_c$. Above $P_c$, the local (on-site) $d$-$d$ excitations gain spectral weight with increasing pressure, which hints at a pressure-induced increase in the octahedral distortions. The non-local (intersite) Ir $d$-$d$ transitions show a monotonic blue-shift and decrease in spectral weight. The changes observed for the non-local excitations are most prominent well above $P_c$, namely for pressures $\geq$12 GPa, and only small changes occur for pressures close to $P_c$. The profile of the optical conductivity at high pressures ($\sim$20 GPa) appears to be indicative for the dimerized state in iridates.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Electron tunneling into a quantum wire in the Fabry-Perot regime

We study a gated quantum wire contacted to source and drain electrodes in the Fabry-Perot regime. The wire is also coupled to a third terminal (tip), and we allow for an asymmetry of the tip tunneling amplitudes of right and left moving electrons. We analyze configurations where the tip acts as an electron injector or as a voltage-probe, and show that the transport properties of this three-terminal set-up exhibit very rich physical behavior. For a non-interacting wire we find that a tip in the voltage-probe configuration affects the source-drain transport in different ways, namely by suppressing the conductance, by modulating the Fabry-Perot oscillations, and by reducing their visibility. The combined effect of electron electron interaction and finite length of the wire, accounted for by the inhomogeneous Luttinger liquid model, leads to significantly modified predictions as compared to models based on infinite wires. We show that when the tip injects electrons asymmetrically the charge fractionalization induced by interaction cannot be inferred from the asymmetry of the currents flowing in source and drain. Nevertheless interaction effects are visible as oscillations in the non-linear tip-source and tip-drain conductances. Important differences with respect to a two-terminal set-up emerge, suggesting new strategies for the experimental investigation of Luttinger liquid behavior.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

Inflammatory bowel disease-specific autoantibodies in HLA-B27-associated spondyloarthropathies: Increased prevalence of ASCA and pANCA

Aims: An association between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and spondyloarthropathies (SpA) has repeatedly been reported. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether serologic markers of IBD, e. g. antibodies against Saccharomyces cerevisiae (ASCA), antibodies against exocrine pancreas (PAB) and perinuclear antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (pANCA) are present in HLA-B27-associated SpA. Methods: 87 patients with HLA-B27-positive SpA and 145 controls were tested for ASCA, PAB and pANCA employing ELISA or indirect immunofluorescence, respectively. Antibody-positive patients were interviewed regarding IBD-related symptoms using a standardized questionnaire. Results/Conclusion: When compared to the controls, ASCA IgA but not ASCA IgG levels were significantly increased in patients with SpA, in particular in ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and undifferentiated SpA (uSpA). pANCA were found in increased frequency in patients with SpA whereas PAB were not detected. The existence of autoantibodies was not associated with gastrointestinal symptoms but sustains the presence of a pathophysiological link between bowel inflammation and SpA. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

A deterministic filter for estimation of parameters describing inelastic heterogeneous media

We present a new, fully deterministic method to compute the updates for parameter estimates of quasi-static plasticity with combined kinematic and isotropic hardening from noisy measurements. The materials describing the elastic (reversible) and/or inelastic (irreversible) behaviour have an uncertain structure which further influences the uncertainty in the parameters such as bulk and shear modulus, hardening characteristics, etc. Due to this we formulate the problem as one of stochastic plasticity and try to identify parameters with the help of measurement data. However, in this setup the inverse problem is regarded as ill-posed and one has to apply some of regularisation techniques in order to ensure the existence, uniqueness and stability of the solution. Providing the apriori information next to the measurement data, we regularize the problem in a Bayesian setting which further allow us to identify the unknown parameters in a pure deterministic, algebraic manner via minimum variance estimator. The new approach has shown to be effective and reliable in comparison to most methods which take the form of integrals over the posterior and compute them by sampling, e.g. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)

Plasticity described by uncertain parameters - a variational inequality approach -

In this paper we consider the mixed variational formulation of the quasi-static stochastic plasticity with combined isotropic and kinematic hardening. By applying standard results in convex analysis we show that criteria for the existence, uniqueness, and convergence can be easily derived. In addition, we demonstrate the mathematical similarity with the corresponding deterministic formulation which further may be extended to a stochastic variational inequality of the first kind. The aim of this work is to consider the numerical approximation of variational inequalities by a “white noise analysis”. By introducing the random fields/processes used to model the displacements, stress and plastic strain and by approximating them by a combination of Karhunen-Lo`eve and polynomial chaos expansion, we are able to establish stochastic Galerkin and collocation methods. In the first approach, this is followed by a stochastic closest point projection algorithm in order to numerically solve the problem, giving an intrusive method relying on the introduction of the polynomial chaos algebra. As it does not rely on sampling, the method is shown to be very robust and accurate. However, the same procedure may be applied in another way, i.e. by calculating the residuum via high-dimensional integration methods (the second approach) giving a non-intrusive Galerkin techniques based on random sampling—Monte Carlo and related techniques—or deterministic sampling such as collocation methods. The third approach we present is in pure stochastic collocation manner. By highlighting the dependence of the random solution on the uncertain parameters, we try to investigate the influence of individual uncertain characteristics on the structure response by testing several numerical problems in plain strain or plane stress conditions