Le serpent léontocéphale Chnoubis et la magie de l’époque romaine impériale

Le serpent à tête de lion radiée, désigné par le nom Chnoubis ou Chnoumis, est l'une des figures familières des gemmes magiques de l'époque romaine impériale. Différentes traditions - médicales, astrologiques, lapidaires - attribuent à cette créature diverses compétences thérapeutiques (contre les maux d'estomac, pour la protection de la matrice...). Cet article dresse un bilan de l'iconographie de Chnoubis/Chnoumis qui apparaît sur différentes sortes de pierre, souvent de forme arrondie, et examine la signification et la fonction du « signe de Chnoubis » une haste barrée de trois S, qui lui est associé. Nous ferons aussi le point des différentes hypothèses concernant l'origine du personnage, notamment sur ses rapports avec Knem, le premier décan du lion, le dieu primordial Kematef (Kmeph), le dieu bélier Khnoum et les divinités solaires, ainsi qu'avec d'autres serpents comme l'Agathodaimon. Cette enquête nous permettra d'expliquer comment une entité décanique est devenue une puissante divinité solaire à part entière, associée au Dieu d'Israël, dont la popularité survit à l'Antiquité.The lion-headed snake Chnoubis and Roman imperial magic The radiated and lion- headed snake, designated by the name Chnoubis or Chnoumis, is one of the familiar figures of magical gems dating to the Roman imperial period. Different traditions - medical, astrological, relating to the quality of stones - attribute to this creature various therapeutic competences (against stomach troubles, for the protection of the uterus). This paper reviews the iconography of Chnoubis/Chnoumis which appears on different types of stones, often of a round shape, and examines the meaning and function of the so-called “Chnoubis sign”, a triple S with a horizontal stroke in the middle, often associated wirth the snake. We also review the different hypotheses relating to the origin of the figure, especially its relationship with Knem, the first decan of the lion, the primordial god Kematef (Kmeph), the ram-god Khnum and solar deities, as well as with other snakes like the Agathodaimon. This survey allows us to suggest how a decanic entity became a powerful solar deity, associated with the God of Israel, whose popularity survived Antiquity

Archäometrische und archäologische Studien an antiken Skulpturen im Museum der Bildenden Künste, Budapest

Die über mehrere Jahre durchgeführten archäometrischen Untersuchungen der antiken Steindenkmäler in der Antikensammlung des Budapester Museums der Bildenden Künste, die im Zusammenhang einer neuen archäologischen Erforschung der Denkmäler stattfanden, werden hier bekannt gemacht. Dabei hat sich gezeigt, daß die echte Kooperation der beiden Forschungszweige mittels intensiver Diskussion und Schärfung der Methoden und Argumente zu neuen Erkenntnissen führen kann. Die Beachtung archäometrischer Informationen durch die Archäologie bringt einerseits Bestätigung kunsthistorischer Einordnungen; sie wirft andererseits aber auch neue Fragen auf, die bisweilen zu innovativen Interpretationen führen oder auch unerwartet zu derzeit nicht lösbaren Problemen, die daher zu einer wissenschaftlichen Debatte anregen. In mehreren Abschnitten werden für diese Potentiale und Schwierigkeiten charakteristische Beispiele antiker Skulpturen der Sammlung aufgezeigt.This article the long-term archaeometric research on the ancient marble sculptures in the Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, conducted in relation to new archaeological research on those Greek and Roman works of art. The cooperation of these two disciplines applied to ancient sculptures by discussing and re-examining the methods and arguments resulted in new findings. Consideration of archaeometric information in archaeological research may support art-historical classification on the one hand; on the other it often raises new questions leading to innovative interpretations or unexpected and in some cases even currently unsolvable problems, thus stimulating scientific debate. Several sections of this article discussing characteristic examples try to show the potential and difficulties of combined archaeological and archaeometrical research related to ancient sculptures in the Budapest collection

The effect of tear supplementation with 0.15% preservative-free zinc-hyaluronate on ocular surface sensations in patients with dry eye

[Purpose]: To evaluate the effect of tear supplementation with preservative free 0.15% zinc-hyaluronate on ocular surface sensations and corneal sensitivity in dry eye patients.[Methods]: Ocular surface sensations were assessed using the ocular surface disease index (OSDI) questionnaire and by recording ocular sensations during forced blinking in parallel with noninvasive tear film breakup time measurement in 20 eyes of 20 dry eye patients. Corneal sensitivity thresholds to selective stimulation of corneal mechano-, thermal- and chemical receptors were measured using the Belmonte gas esthesiometer. All baseline measurements were repeated after 1 month of treatment with 0.15% zinc-hyaluronate.[Results]: After 1 month, a significant decrease in mean OSDI score (from 35.66 ± 12.36 to 15.03 ± 11.22; P 0.05).[Conclusion]: Prolonged use of 0.15% zinc-hyaluronate results in an improvement of tear film stability and a decrease of dry eye complaints. The decrease in corneal mechano-and polymodal receptor excitability suggests that zinc-hyaluronate helps to recover normal corneal sensitivity, and thus might have a beneficial additional effect on reducing ocular surface complaints in dry eye patients.Peer reviewe

Searches for continuous gravitational waves from nine young supernova remnants

science data run. The targets were nine young supernova remnants not associated with pulsars; eight of the remnants are associated with non-pulsing suspected neutron stars. One target’s parameters are uncertain enough to warrant two searches, for a total of ten. Each search covered a broad band of frequencies and first and second frequency derivatives for a fixed sky direction. The searches coherently integrated data from the two LIGO interferometers over time spans from 5.3–25.3 days using the matched-filtering F-statistic. We found no credible gravitational-wave signals. We set 95% confidence upper limits as strong (low) as 4 × 10−25 on intrinsic strain, 2 × 10−7 on fiducial ellipticity, and 4 × 10−5 on r-mode amplitude. These beat the indirect limits from energy conservation and are within the range of theoretical predictions for neutron-star ellipticities and r-mode amplitudes.Fil: Dominguez, Alfredo Eduardo. Ministerio de Defensa. Fuerza Aerea Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Ortega Larcher, Walter Emanuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estrategico Para la Defensa. Subsede Instituto Universitario Aeronautico | Ministerio de Defensa. Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo Estrategico Para la Defensa. Subsede Instituto Universitario Aeronautico; ArgentinaFil: Aasi, J.. California Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Abbott, B. P.. California Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Abbott, R.. California Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Abbott, T.. State University of Louisiana; Estados UnidosFil: Abernathy, M. R.. California Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Acernese, F.. Universita di Salerno; Italia. Istituto Nazionale Di Fisica Nucleare; ItaliaFil: Ackley, K.. University of Florida; Estados UnidosFil: Adams, C.. Livingston Observatory; Estados UnidosFil: Adams, T.. Cardiff University; Reino Unido. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia. Université de Savoie; FranciaFil: Adams, T.. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia. Université de Savoie; FranciaFil: Addesso, P.. University of Sannio at Benevento; Italia. Istituto Nazionale Di Fisica Nucleare; ItaliaFil: Adhikari, R. X.. California Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Adya, V.. Max Planck Institut für Gravitationsphysik; AlemaniaFil: Affeldt, C.. Max Planck Institut für Gravitationsphysik; AlemaniaFil: Agathos, M.. Nikhef; Países BajosFil: Agatsuma, K.. Nikhef; Países BajosFil: Aggarwal, N.. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Aguiar, O. D.. Centro de Previsao de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos. Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais; BrasilFil: Ain, A.. Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics; IndiaFil: Ajith, P.. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research; IndiaFil: Alemic, A.. Syracuse University; Estados UnidosFil: Allen, B.. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Estados Unidos. Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik; AlemaniaFil: Allocca, A.. Università degli Studi di Siena; Italia. Istituto Nazionale Di Fisica Nucleare; ItaliaFil: Amariutei, D.. University of Florida; Estados UnidosFil: Anderson, S. B.. California Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Anderson, W. G.. University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Estados UnidosFil: Arai, K.. California Institute of Technology; Estados UnidosFil: Araya, M. C.. California Institute of Technology; Estados Unido

Directed search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 with initial LIGO data

We present results of a search for continuously emitted gravitational radiation, directed at the brightest low-mass x-ray binary, Scorpius X-1. Our semicoherent analysis covers 10 days of LIGO S5 data ranging from 50-550 Hz, and performs an incoherent sum of coherent F-statistic power distributed amongst frequency-modulated orbital sidebands. All candidates not removed at the veto stage were found to be consistent with noise at a 1% false alarm rate. We present Bayesian 95% confidence upper limits on gravitational-wave strain amplitude using two different prior distributions: a standard one, with no a priori assumptions about the orientation of Scorpius X-1; and an angle-restricted one, using a prior derived from electromagnetic observations. Median strain upper limits of 1.3×10-24 and 8×10-25 are reported at 150 Hz for the standard and angle-restricted searches respectively. This proof-of-principle analysis was limited to a short observation time by unknown effects of accretion on the intrinsic spin frequency of the neutron star, but improves upon previous upper limits by factors of ∼1.4 for the standard, and 2.3 for the angle-restricted search at the sensitive region of the detector

Narrow-band search of continuous gravitational-wave signals from Crab and Vela pulsars in Virgo VSR4 data

In this paper we present the results of a coherent narrow-band search for continuous gravitational-wave signals from the Crab and Vela pulsars conducted on Virgo VSR4 data. In order to take into account a possible small mismatch between the gravitational-wave frequency and two times the star rotation frequency, inferred from measurement of the electromagnetic pulse rate, a range of 0.02 Hz around two times the star rotational frequency has been searched for both the pulsars. No evidence for a signal has been found and 95% confidence level upper limits have been computed assuming both that polarization parameters are completely unknown and that they are known with some uncertainty, as derived from x-ray observations of the pulsar wind torii. For Vela the upper limits are comparable to the spin-down limit, computed assuming that all the observed spin-down is due to the emission of gravitational waves. For Crab the upper limits are about a factor of 2 below the spin-down limit, and represent a significant improvement with respect to past analysis. This is the first time the spin-down limit is significantly overcome in a narrow-band search

Lessons on fruiting body morphogenesis from genomes and transcriptomes of Agaricomycetes

Fruiting bodies (sporocarps, sporophores or basidiomata) of mushroom-forming fungi (Agaricomycetes) are among the most complex structures produced by fungi. Unlike vegetative hyphae, fruiting bodies grow determinately and follow a genetically encoded developmental program that orchestrates their growth, tissue differentiation and sexual sporulation. In spite of more than a century of research, our understanding of the molecular details of fruiting body morphogenesis is still limited and a general synthesis on the genetics of this complex process is lacking. In this paper, we aim at a comprehensive identification of conserved genes related to fruiting body morphogenesis and distil novel functional hypotheses for functionally poorly characterised ones. As a result of this analysis, we report 921 conserved developmentally expressed gene families, only a few dozens of which have previously been reported to be involved in fruiting body development. Based on literature data, conserved expression patterns and functional annotations, we provide hypotheses on the potential role of these gene families in fruiting body development, yielding the most complete description of molecular processes in fruiting body morphogenesis to date. We discuss genes related to the initiation of fruiting, differentiation, growth, cell surface and cell wall, defence, transcriptional regulation as well as signal transduction. Based on these data we derive a general model of fruiting body development, which includes an early, proliferative phase that is mostly concerned with laying out the mushroom body plan (via cell division and differentiation), and a second phase of growth via cell expansion as well as meiotic events and sporulation. Altogether, our discussions cover 1 480 genes of Coprinopsis cinerea, and their orthologs in Agaricus bisporus, chrysosporium, Pleurotus ostreatus, and Schizophyllum commune, providing functional hypotheses for similar to 10 % of genes in the genomes of these species. Although experimental evidence for the role of these genes will need to be established in the future, our data provide a roadmap for guiding functional analyses of fruiting related genes in the Agaricomycetes. We anticipate that the gene compendium presented here, combined with developments in functional genomics approaches will contribute to uncovering the genetic bases of one of the most spectacular multicellular developmental processes in fungi