The Naming of Food and Drink in the Ladder of John Climacus

The article is devoted to the analysis of the names of food and drink in the Ladder of John Climacus. The material for analysis is the published text of the work (Patrologia Graeca, vol. LXXXVIII) and three unpublished ancient Greek manuscripts of the Ladder. In total, 21 words were found in the work, included in the lexical-semantic group “Food”, and 6 words included in the lexical-semantic group “Drink”. In many cases, lexemes are used in pairs (salt and oil, milk and honey, bread and water, bread and mustard). This use is obviously due to the biblical tradition, on the basis of which the author of the Ladder built his book. For the general designation of food, nouns such as βρῶμα, τροφή, τρυφή, βρῶσις, ἔδεσμα, ἑστίασις, ὄψον, τράπεζα, ἐδώδιμον are used. In a collective sense, the lexemes καρπός and ὀπώρα are used to designate fruits. For the names of vegetables (herbs) in the Ladder, lexemes such as πικρίς and λάχανον are used. Of the specific types of food in the Ladder, there are names of baked goods (ἄρτος ‘bread’ and ἄζυμον ‘unleavened bread’), grapes (βότρυς and ῥάγας), spices (ἔλαιον ‘olive oil’ and ἅλας ‘salt’), honey (μέλι) and cheese (τυρός). To designate drink, in general, in the Ladder there are the lexemes πόμα, νάμα and ποτόν. Specific drinks are called ὕδωρ ‘water’, οἶνος ‘wine’ and γάλα ‘milk’. In the lexical-semantic groups “Food” and “Drink” hyperonyms clearly prevail over hyponyms. The small amount of specific vocabulary is explained by the fact that for a monk, as he moves up the ladder of virtues, it is less and less important what food he consumes. Monks who have reached the highest degrees of spiritual life (ἰσάγγελοι, equal to the angels) no longer feel the taste of food and forget to take it; for them the most important thing is spiritual food. In the lexico-semantic groups “Food” and “Drink” in the Ladder, as in the texts of the Holy Scriptures, direct (physical) and figurative (spiritual) meanings are masterfully connected. Almost all examples of the use of these words can be viewed both in the direct and in the symbolic sense. In the highest metaphorical meaning, all lexemes included in the thematic field “Nutrition” represent a symbol of participation in God’s salvation in Christ

Problems and perspectives of formation of agricultural clusters for increasing food security of developing countries

The authors of the article develop the proprietary methodology of integral approach to formation of the projects and programs of socio-economic development, which allows differentiating the sub-system of previously viewed indicators as to the level of users’ demands. The sense of cluster approach to increasing the competitiveness of agro-industrial complex is analyzed, and the problems and perspectives for formation of agricultural clusters for the growth of food security of developing countries are determined. As a result of the research, the authors came to the conclusion that agricultural clusters are a perspective course of increasing food security of developing countries, as they improve competitiveness of domestic agricultural producers and increase food independence and food self-sufficiency of economic systems. However, implementation of internal cluster cooperation requires reconsidering the existing notions of management, related to the level of methods and control, protection of intellectual property, education, and integration. The created system of relations should allow economic agents to keep balance between self-organizing and manageable behavior, combining innovational diversity and freedom of actions with the necessary level of integration. Intercompany cooperation in this regard should be similar to cooperation of ecosystem elements.peer-reviewe

Treatment of Depression with Vortioxetine and Second Generation Antipsychotics During the Period of Remission Formation in Schizophrenia (Interim Data Analysis)

BACKGROUND: Depression in patients with schizophrenia worsens the course of the disease by increasing the risk of suicide, by complicating the clinical picture of the disorder, and by reducing the quality of the social functioning; its treatment is difficult, since monotherapy, even when involving modern antipsychotics, does not always prove successful. While the prescription of additional antidepressants (ADs) can improve the likelihood of a better outcome, the effectiveness of such augmentation in many cases is yet to be proven. Therefore, it is still important that one weighs the effectiveness of various combinations between most of the known ADs and some second-generation antipsychotic (SGA) in the treatment of depression that occurs at different stages of schizophrenia. In previous studies, the use of vortioxetine as an adjunct to an antipsychotic yielded a reduction in negative symptoms, a clinically significant improvement in cognitive functions that differed from its antidepressant effect, and good tolerability, which affects how committed to treatment a patient remains. AIM: To study the changes that occur over time in the clinical manifestations of depression, negative and cognitive impairment, as well as the social adequacy of patients receiving a combination therapy with second-generation antipsychotics and vortioxetine, which were prescribed in real clinical practice at doses approved in the Russian Federation. METHODS: We performed a comparative analysis of the changes in depression symptoms and negative symptoms, cognitive impairment, as well as function of 78 patients with severe manifestations of depression at the stage of exacerbation reduction and subsequent remission of paranoid schizophrenia. Combination treatment with SGA and vortioxetine was used in 39 patients, and 39 patients who had similar clinical manifestations received just SGA. During the observation period, the mental disorder severity and depression symptom severity were assessed 3 times (before the start of treatment, after three months, and after six months) using the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale and Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (CDSS), respectively; patients were also assessed using the Negative Symptoms Assessment-5 (NSA-5) scale, Perceived Deficits Questionnaire-20 items (PDQ-20) scale, and Personal and Social Performance (PSP) scale. RESULTS: According to the ANOVA results, by the end of the observation period, patients, regardless of their therapeutic group, showed a statistically significant decrease in the level of depression on the CDSS scale, the severity of negative symptoms on the NSA-5 scale, cognitive symptoms on the PDQ-20 scale, as well as an improvement in personality and society, judging by the increase in the total PSP scores. There were also significant differences between the compared main (SGA + vortioxetine) and control (SGA) groups in terms of the changes in the total score on the CDSS and PSP scales. An interesting aspect of the changes in the clinical scores was a noticeable improvement in the SGA + vortioxetine group after 3 months of treatment, in the absence of a similar improvement in the control group, and the achievement of approximately the same scores in both groups after 6 months. In particular, there were significant differences between the SGA + vortioxetine and SGA groups in terms of the mean CDSS (p 0.001), NSA-5 (p=0.003), PDQ-20 (p 0.001), and PSP (p=0.004) scores after 3 months. Analysis of the time before early withdrawal from the study showed that significantly more patients in the SGA + vortioxetine group completed the study program (n=27, 69.23%) compared with the SGA group (n=13, 33.33%) (2 =14.618, df=1, p 0.001, log-rank test. The mean survival time in the SGA group was significantly (p 0.001) less and amounted to 101.436 days (95% CI: 81.518121.354), and in the SGA + vortioxetine group it amounted to 161.744 days (147.981175.506). The relative risk of full study completion in the vortioxetine + SGA group compared with that in SGA was 3.618 (1.8716.994). CONCLUSION: The addition of vortioxetine to the SGA therapy accelerates the reduction of the depression symptoms that occur at the stage of psychosis regression and early remission, contributes to the accelerated reduction in negative symptoms, positively affects the subjective assessment of cognitive impairment severity, and has a significant positive effect on the level of psychosocial functioning

Genomic and transcriptomic heterogeneity in metaplastic carcinomas of the breast

Metaplastic breast cancer (MBC) is a rare special histologic type of triple-negative breast cancer, characterized by the presence of neoplastic cells showing differentiation towards squamous epithelium and/or mesenchymal elements. Here we sought to define whether histologically distinct subgroups of MBCs would be underpinned by distinct genomic and/or transcriptomic alterations. Microarray-based copy number profiling identified limited but significant differences between the distinct MBC subtypes studied here, despite the limited sample size (; n; = 17). In particular, we found that, compared to MBCs with chondroid or squamous cell metaplasia, MBCs with spindle cell differentiation less frequently harbored gain of 7q11.22-23 encompassing; CLDN3; and; CLDN4; , consistent with their lower expression of claudins and their association with the claudin-low molecular classification. Microarray-based and RNA-sequencing-based gene expression profiling revealed that MBCs with spindle cell differentiation differ from MBCs with chondroid or squamous cell metaplasia on the expression of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition-related genes, including down-regulation of; CDH1; and; EPCAM; . In addition, RNA-sequencing revealed that the histologic patterns observed in MBCs are unlikely to be underpinned by a highly recurrent expressed fusion gene or a pathognomonic expressed mutation in cancer genes. Loss of PTEN expression or mutations affecting; PIK3CA; or; TSC2; observed in 8/17 MBCs support the contention that PI3K pathway activation plays a role in the development of MBCs. Our data demonstrate that despite harboring largely similar patterns of gene copy number alterations, MBCs with spindle cell, chondroid and squamous differentiation are distinct at the transcriptomic level but are unlikely to be defined by specific pathognomonic genetic alterations

Measurement of the top quark mass using charged particles in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

New Testament Names in the Text of the Ladder of John Climacus

The paper explores eleven New Testament names featured in the text of the Ladder by John Climacus, a translated monument of early Slavic writing. These personal names are a special kind of biblical quotations referring to the events of the holy history. The research is based on comparative analysis of the Greek texts of the Ladder published by Jacques Paul Migne (Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 88), four ancient Byzantine codes and five Slavic manuscripts which contain the first Slavic translation of the book made by Preslav scribes in the first half of the 10th century. The article follows research on the collective church memory of medieval scribes which manifests itself in the commonality of topics, images, plots, ideas, and expressions that go back to the text of the Bible. The New Testament characters that are featured in the Greek text of the Ladder and its Slavic traslations are: Jesus Christ, Mary, John the Baptist, John the Apostle, Lazarus, Peter, Paul, Timothy, Herod, Pontius Pilate, Judas. The author identifies the key biblical images in the Greek text of the Ladder (Jesus Christ and the supreme apostles Peter and Paul) and specifies the functions of New Testament names in the text: referential, symbolic, emphatic and indexical. The oldest Russian manuscript showcases spelling inconsistencies in relation to New Testament names as well as multiple errors indicating both the inexperience of the scribe and his poor knowledge of gospel stories. These errors were eliminated from the text of later manuscripts. The analysis identified four words that are absent in the historical dictionaries of the Russian and Old Slavonic languages (bezvrednitsa ‘dispassion’, besslovesne ‘wordlessly’, zluderzhanie ‘rancor’, suprotivpremeneniе ‘transformation’)

Cyrillic Manuscript Heritage: Vol. 32

Biannual newsletter of the Hilandar Research Library (HRL) and the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies (RCMSS), The Ohio State University. Includes: features by guest contributors, which may appear under the column heading of "HRL Journal" – where Cyrillic Manuscript Heritage asks researchers who have used the resources of the HRL in the past year to describe their experience and work; a column, "Director's Desk," by the Director of RCMSS; "RCMSS & HRL News Notes," i.e., reports on recent visitors, research, events, projects, updates, etc.; contributors to both the Hilandar Endowment Fund and Hilandar's Friends of the Library Fund are listed, as are donors of "Gifts in Kind," as well as seasonal announcements regarding the International Hilandar Conference series and the Medieval Slavic Summer Institute."Keynote Speaker Set for 6th International Hilandar Conference," p. 1; "Renewing Ties: A Productive Trip to Serbia and Bulgaria" by Predrag Matejic, pp. 1 and 3; Director's Desk, p. 2; HRL Journal "John Sinaites and 'The Ladder of Divine Ascent'" by Tatiana G. Popova, p. 4; "The Scete Paterikon" by William R. Veder, p. 5; "MSSI Alumni Update: Where Are They Now?" by Bojan Belic, the Very Rev. Zivojin Jakovljevic, Natasha Ermolaev, Monica White, Vessela Valiavitcharska, Georgi Parpulov, Alexander Angelov, Ines Garcia de la Puente, Stella Rock, Yulia Mikhailova, Wojciech Beltkiewicz, and Ariann Stern-Gottschalk, pp. 6-7, 9-10; HRL & RCMSS News Notes, pp. 8 and 10; Announcement of the Medieval Slavic Summer Institute (MSSI) 2013, p. 9; Contributions to the Hilandar funds, Gifts in Kind, Donors, p. 11; Announcement of the 6th International Hilandar Conference (July 19-21, 2013) and MSSI (June 24-July 19, 2013), p. 12