The mythology of the Ara Pacis Augustae: Iconography and symbolism of the western side

The guiding idea of my article is to see the mythical and political ideology conveyed by the western side of the Ara Pacis Augustae in a (hopefully) new light. The Augustan ideology of power is in the modest opinion of the author intimately intertwined with the myths and legends concerning the Primordia Romae. Augustus strove very hard to be seen by his contemporaries as the Novus Romulus and as the providential leader (fatalis dux, an expression loved by Augustan poetry) under the protection of the traditional Roman gods and especially of Apollo, the Greek god who has been early on adopted (and adapted) by Roman mythology and religion

Reading Plutarch of Chaeronea: A Cinematic Portrait of the Youth of Alexander the Great as Envisaged by Robert Rossen and Oliver Stone

Reading Plutarch of Chaeronea: A Cinematic Portrait of the Youth of Alexander the Great as Envisaged by Robert Rossen and Oliver StoneThis article is a study of the dynamics of interaction between historiography and “historiophoty” i.e. between a historical source – Plutarch’s Life of Alexander – and two epic films: R. Rossen’s Alexander Th e Great (1956) and O. Stone’s Alexander (2004). The authors of this study were interested in the cinematographic treatment of the legends, and so-called “historical truths” surrounding the birth, childhood, and early youth (boyhood or teenage years) of Alexander

Patch Autocorrelation Features: A translation and rotation invariant approach for image classification.

The autocorrelation is often used in signal processing as a tool for finding repeating patterns in a signal. In image processing, there are various image analysis techniques that use the autocorrelation of an image in a broad range of applications from texture analysis to grain density estimation. This paper provides an extensive review of two recently introduced and related frameworks for image representation based on autocorrelation, namely Patch Autocorrelation Features (PAF) and Translation and Rotation Invariant Patch Autocorrelation Features (TRIPAF). The PAF approach stores a set of features obtained by comparing pairs of patches from an image. More precisely, each feature is the euclidean distance between a particular pair of patches. The proposed approach is successfully evaluated in a series of handwritten digit recognition experiments on the popular MNIST data set. However, the PAF approach has limited applications, because it is not invariant to affine transformations. More recently, the PAF approach was extended to become invariant to image transformations, including (but not limited to) translation and rotation changes. In the TRIPAF framework, several features are extracted from each image patch. Based on these features, a vector of similarity values is computed between each pair of patches. Then, the similarity vectors are clustered together such that the spatial offset between the patches of each pair is roughly the same. Finally, the mean and the standard deviation of each similarity value are computed for each group of similarity vectors. These statistics are concatenated to obtain the TRIPAF feature vector. The TRIPAF vector essentially records information about the repeating patterns within an image at various spatial offsets. After presenting the two approaches, several optical character recognition and texture classification experiments are conducted to evaluate the two approaches. Results are reported on the MNIST (98.93%), the Brodatz (96.51%), and the UIUCTex (98.31%) data sets. Both PAF and TRIPAF are fast to compute and produce compact representations in practice, while reaching accuracy levels similar to other state-of-the-art methods

Amiculum Iunonis: Juno and the feast of the Lupercalia

This article focuses on the possible connections which can be established between the Roman goddess Juno as the protector deity of marriages and married women and the rites and rituals associated with the sacred feast of the Lupercalia. The role of other Italic gods associated with these sacred ceremonies is also analyzed, such as the rustic god Faunus, as well as Jupiter, Mars, and Romulus-Quirinus (albeit in secondary roles; for example, the name Luperci given to the young Roman men involved in the ritual flogging of the Roman women of fertile age is linked with lupus, the Latin name of the wolf, animal sacred to the god Mars and forever bound to the Twins Romulus and Remus, the mythical and heroic founders of Rome). The amiculum Iunonis or the garment of Juno is in fact the name given to the ritual objects used by the Luperci in the act of symbolic fecundation of the Roman young women, namely the leather thongs carved out of the skin of a sacrificed goat. The he-goat (Latin hircus) is also connected with the ancient Roman and Latin god Faunus (the Italic divine counterpart of the ancient Greek Πᾶν). As a final acknowledgment, I hereby thank Professor Attilio Mastrocinque who had the idea of this study and whose book revealed to me the hidden links between Juno, Bona Dea, and the feast of the Lupercalia, normally associated with the god of wild nature, Faunus-Pan. I owe also a debt of gratitude to the patience and unremitting help of Professor Patricia Johnston, whose observations greatly improved my conclusions

Serum testosterone and short-term mortality in men with acute myocardial infarction

Background: A significant and independent association between testosterone levels and coronary events in men and women has not been confirmed in large prospective studies, although some reports have shown that endogenous testosterone concentrations in men are inversely related to cardiovascular and general mortality. Methods: We aimed to assess the relationship between serum testosterone level and short-time (30-day) mortality in men with acute myocardial infarction. Results: We included 126 consecutive male patients admitted with acute myocardial infarction. The mean age was 62 ± 13 years. We determined, at admission, serum free testosterone (T) level (using a chemoluminiscence assay), high sensitivity C-reactive protein, N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide, and glycated hemoglobin level. We analyzed the 30-day mortality. Conclusions: The mean level of serum T was 4.1 ± 2.9 ng/mL. All non-survivors had T level ≤ 3 ng/mL. A low level of T was independently related to total short-term mortality. (Cardiol J 2010; 17, 3: 249-253

Esophageal atresia associating gastrointestinal malformations: a study of clinical approach

Digestive tract malformations requiring surgical repair in association with esophageal atresia are rare occurrences. Because of this uncommon presentation of esophageal atresia, its evaluation and management are often difficult, requiring extensive workup and multiple surgical procedures. We present our experience with esophageal atresia associating gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in the last 10 years. Clinical and surgical perspectives were pointed willing to make relevant observations in matters of diagnosis and treatment strategy in these patients. Therefore, 7 cases resembling this pattern were identified – duodenal atresia and anorectal malformation being the most common coexistent malformations. All the cases exhibited technical and procedural staging difficulties that we shaped according to the patient’s general picture in the absence of a standardized approach. Careful preoperative follow-up, multidisciplinary communication, watchful waiting and an individually patient-shaped approach are elementary requirements for good outcomes in complex cases of EA

Inventario de personalidad de Freiburg en la enfermedad inflamatoria intestinal: diagnóstico y necesidades psicoterapéuticas

Despite recent discoveries, patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) still face challenges with attainment of remission. The objectives of the study were to identify the characteristics of patients with the Freiburg Personality Inventory and the intensity of the intestinal disease, comorbidities that could be related to the personality of the subjects. Data were collected in the period 2019–2020 from 46 patients and used nonparametric methods. Compared to the normative sample, the Inhibitedness, Health Concerns, and Emotionality scales had significantly higher raw scores. The Social Orientation, Frankness, and Extraversionscales had significantly lower raw scores. Health status was a medical factor that influenced the Somatic Complaintsscale, patients who had lesions or comorbidities had significantly higher raw scores. Patients who had comorbidities in addition to IBD had considerably higher raw scores on the Excitability scale. Psychotherapeutic change interventions regarding life perception are required to tackle the description of subjective suffering related to physical inconveniences (Somatic Complaintsscale), a strong orientation toward performance (Strainscale), mood swings, anxiety, and pessimism (Emotionality scale). Another intervention is reconsidering values and (re) prioritization, such as family, intimate relationships, friends, health, growth, development, balanced work, all of which can promote a feeling of well-being and balance.A pesar de los descubrimientos recientes, los pacientes con enfermedad inflamatoria intestinal (EII) aún enfrentan desafíos para lograr la remisión. Los objetivos del estudio fueron identificar las características de los pacientes con el Inventario de Personalidad de Freiburg y la intensidad de la enfermedad colónica, comorbilidades que podrían estar relacionadas con la personalidad de los sujetos. Los datos se recopilaron en el período 2019-2020 de 46 pacientes y utilizaron métodos no paramétricos. En comparación con el grupo de control, las escalas de Inhibición, Problemas de salud y Emocionalidad tenían puntuaciones brutas significativamente más altas. Las escalas de Orientación Social, Franqueza y Extraversión tuvieron puntajes brutos significativamente más bajos. El estado de salud fue un factor médico que influyó en la escala de Quejas Somáticas, los pacientes que tenían lesiones o comorbilidades tenían puntuaciones brutas significativa-mente más altas. Los pacientes que tenían comorbilidades además de la EII tenían puntuaciones brutas considerablemente más altas en la escala de Excitabilidad. Se requieren intervenciones psicoterapéuticas de cambio en la percepción de la vida para abordar la descripción del sufrimiento subjetivo relacionado con molestias físicas (escala de quejas somáticas), una fuerte orientación hacia el rendimiento (escala de tensión), cambios de humor, ansiedad y pesimismo (escala de emocionalidad). Otra intervención es la re-consideración y (re)priorización de valores, como la familia, las relaciones íntimas, los amigos, la salud, el crecimiento, el desarrollo, el trabajo equilibrado, todos los cuales pueden promover una sensación de bienestar y equilibrio

Editorial: deep carbon science

SZ was supported by Australian Research Council grant IH130200012, a University of Sydney Robinson Fellowship, and Alfred P. Sloan grants G-2017-9997 and G-2018-11296.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A pedunculated esophageal chondromatous hamartoma in a child

Esophageal tumors are uncommon in pediatric population and most of them are benign. Esophageal hamartomas have been reported extremely rare in children. These can present as intramural tumors of the esophageal wall or as polyps. Dysphagia is the main symptom described in their case, but other specific symptoms are also reported. Such symptoms encountered in clinical practice are represented by obstructive apnea episodes and bradycardia, poor weight gain, epigastric or retrosternal pain, hematemesis or melena, dysphonia or tracheal sounds. Diagnosis can be delayed due to the insidious onset and non-specific symptoms, therefore patient’s compliance to follow-up and broad, careful evaluation are mandatory. Preoperative imagistic assessment is extremely important for a precise definition of the tumor’s anatomical relations, especially when facing large tumors located in the posterior mediastinum. Herein we report a case of a large chondromatous polypoid hamartoma of the esophagus in a 9 years old boy, emphasizing over the diagnosis and surgical challenges we have met, along with comments on illustrative similar cases reported in the literature