The Spirit of the Page: Books and Readers at the Abbey of Fécamp, c. 1000-1200

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The first part connects the devotional reading practice of lectio divina with the design of the material book and argues that Fécamp scribes purposefully tailored many of their books to suit this particular mode of divine reading. The second part addresses the small number of books from the Fécamp collection with characteristics that do not reflect conventional understandings of how lectio divina was practiced – they imply a different mode of devotional reading that required a selective approach to the text. Moreover, the design of these books also bear a striking resemblance to those produced much later (c. 1200-1300) and in a much different context: the urban schools of Western Europe. While this dissertation explores the parallels in book design and reading practices uncovered between Fécamp and the later scholastic environment, I demonstrate that these books (and this second mode of devotional reading) can also be explained in the context of traditional Benedictine devotion.Medieval and Early Modern Studie

Metric trees of generalized roundness one

Every finite metric tree has generalized roundness strictly greater than one. On the other hand, some countable metric trees have generalized roundness precisely one. The purpose of this paper is to identify some large classes of countable metric trees that have generalized roundness precisely one. At the outset we consider spherically symmetric trees endowed with the usual combinatorial metric (SSTs). Using a simple geometric argument we show how to determine decent upper bounds on the generalized roundness of finite SSTs that depend only on the downward degree sequence of the tree in question. By considering limits it follows that if the downward degree sequence $(d_{0}, d_{1}, d_{2}...)$ of a SST $(T,\rho)$ satisfies $|\{j \, | \, d_{j} > 1 \}| = \aleph_{0}$, then $(T,\rho)$ has generalized roundness one. Included among the trees that satisfy this condition are all complete $n$-ary trees of depth $\infty$ ($n \geq 2$), all $k$-regular trees ($k \geq 3$) and inductive limits of Cantor trees. The remainder of the paper deals with two classes of countable metric trees of generalized roundness one whose members are not, in general, spherically symmetric. The first such class of trees are merely required to spread out at a sufficient rate (with a restriction on the number of leaves) and the second such class of trees resemble infinite combs.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, 2 table

On the electromagnetic inverse scattering problem

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46179/1/205_2004_Article_BF00282681.pd

Grain Surface Models and Data for Astrochemistry

AbstractThe cross-disciplinary field of astrochemistry exists to understand the formation, destruction, and survival of molecules in astrophysical environments. Molecules in space are synthesized via a large variety of gas-phase reactions, and reactions on dust-grain surfaces, where the surface acts as a catalyst. A broad consensus has been reached in the astrochemistry community on how to suitably treat gas-phase processes in models, and also on how to present the necessary reaction data in databases; however, no such consensus has yet been reached for grain-surface processes. A team of ∼25 experts covering observational, laboratory and theoretical (astro)chemistry met in summer of 2014 at the Lorentz Center in Leiden with the aim to provide solutions for this problem and to review the current state-of-the-art of grain surface models, both in terms of technical implementation into models as well as the most up-to-date information available from experiments and chemical computations. This review builds on the results of this workshop and gives an outlook for future directions

Conversion to drip irrigated agriculture may offset historic anthropogenic and wildfire contributions to sediment production

This study is an investigation into the roles of wildfire and changing agricultural practices in controlling the inter-decadal scale trends of suspended sediment production from semi-arid mountainous rivers. In the test case, a decreasing trend in suspended sediment concentrations was found in the lower Salinas River, California between 1967 and 2011. Event to decadal scale patterns in sediment production in the Salinas River have been found to be largely controlled by antecedent hydrologic conditions. Decreasing suspended sediment concentrations over the last 15years of the record departed from those expected from climatic/hydrologic forcing. Sediment production from the mountainous headwaters of the central California Coast Ranges is known to be dominated by the interaction of wildfire and large rainfall/runoff events, including the Arroyo Seco, an ~700km(2) subbasin of the Salinas River. However, the decreasing trend in Salinas River suspended sediment concentrations run contrary to increases in the watershed's effective burn area over time. The sediment source area of the Salinas River is an order of magnitude larger than that of the Arroyo Seco, and includes a more complicated mosaic of land cover and land use. The departure from hydrologic forcings on suspended sediment concentration patterns was found to coincide with a rapid conversion of irrigation practices from sprinkler and furrow to subsurface drip irrigation. Changes in agricultural operations appear to have decreased sediment supply to the Salinas River over the late 20th to early 21st centuries, obscuring the influence of wildfire on suspended sediment production

Diabetic patients with acute coronary syndromes in contemporary European registries: characteristics and outcomes

In acute coronary syndromes (ACS), those with diabetes mellitus (DM) are at high risk of recurrent cardiovascular events and premature death. We described patient characteristics, ACS management, and outcomes up to 1 year after hospital admission for an ACS/index-ACS event, in patients with DM in 10 contemporary European registries. In the 10 registries there were 28,899 with and 97,505 without without DM. In the DM population, the proportion of patients with ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) ranged from 22.1% to 100.0% (other patients had non-ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (NSTEMI-ACS) or unstable angina). All-cause mortality in the registries ranged from 1.4% to 9.4% in-hospital; 2.8% to 7.9% at 30 days post-discharge; 5.1% to 10.7% at 180 days post-discharge; and 3.3% to 10.5% at 1 year post-discharge. Major bleeding events were reported in up to 3.8% of patients while in hospital (8 registries); up to 1.3% at 30 days (data from two registries only), and 2.0% at 1 year (one registry only). Registries differed substantially in terms of study setting, site, patient selection, definition and schedule of endpoints, and use of various P2Y12 inhibitors. Pooled risk ratios comparing cohorts with DM vs. no DM were in-hospital significantly higher in DM for all-cause death (1.66; 95% CI 1.42-1.94), for cardiovascular death (2.33; 1.78 - 3.03), and for major bleeding (1.35; 1.21-1.52)

Genetic variation associated with circulating monocyte count in the eMERGE Network

With white blood cell count emerging as an important risk factor for chronic inflammatory diseases, genetic associations of differential leukocyte types, specifically monocyte count, are providing novel candidate genes and pathways to further investigate. Circulating monocytes play a critical role in vascular diseases such as in the formation of atherosclerotic plaque. We performed a joint and ancestry-stratified genome-wide association analyses to identify variants specifically associated with monocyte count in 11 014 subjects in the electronic Medical Records and Genomics Network. In the joint and European ancestry samples, we identified novel associations in the chromosome 16 interferon regulatory factor 8 (IRF8) gene (P-value = 2.78×10(−16), β = −0.22). Other monocyte associations include novel missense variants in the chemokine-binding protein 2 (CCBP2) gene (P-value = 1.88×10(−7), β = 0.30) and a region of replication found in ribophorin I (RPN1) (P-value = 2.63×10(−16), β = −0.23) on chromosome 3. The CCBP2 and RPN1 region is located near GATA binding protein2 gene that has been previously shown to be associated with coronary heart disease. On chromosome 9, we found a novel association in the prostaglandin reductase 1 gene (P-value = 2.29×10(−7), β = 0.16), which is downstream from lysophosphatidic acid receptor 1. This region has previously been shown to be associated with monocyte count. We also replicated monocyte associations of genome-wide significance (P-value = 5.68×10(−17), β = −0.23) at the integrin, alpha 4 gene on chromosome 2. The novel IRF8 results and further replications provide supporting evidence of genetic regions associated with monocyte count

Measurement of the cross section for isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector

The dynamics of isolated-photon production in association with a jet in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are studied with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using a dataset with an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb−1. Photons are required to have transverse energies above 125 GeV. Jets are identified using the anti- algorithm with radius parameter and required to have transverse momenta above 100 GeV. Measurements of isolated-photon plus jet cross sections are presented as functions of the leading-photon transverse energy, the leading-jet transverse momentum, the azimuthal angular separation between the photon and the jet, the photon–jet invariant mass and the scattering angle in the photon–jet centre-of-mass system. Tree-level plus parton-shower predictions from Sherpa and Pythia as well as next-to-leading-order QCD predictions from Jetphox and Sherpa are compared to the measurements

A search for resonances decaying into a Higgs boson and a new particle X in the XH → qqbb final state with the ATLAS detector

A search for heavy resonances decaying into a Higgs boson (H) and a new particle (X) is reported, utilizing 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data at collected during 2015 and 2016 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The particle X is assumed to decay to a pair of light quarks, and the fully hadronic final state is analysed. The search considers the regime of high XH resonance masses, where the X and H bosons are both highly Lorentz-boosted and are each reconstructed using a single jet with large radius parameter. A two-dimensional phase space of XH mass versus X mass is scanned for evidence of a signal, over a range of XH resonance mass values between 1 TeV and 4 TeV, and for X particles with masses from 50 GeV to 1000 GeV. All search results are consistent with the expectations for the background due to Standard Model processes, and 95% CL upper limits are set, as a function of XH and X masses, on the production cross-section of the resonance