Translatio Andalusiae. Constructing Local Jewish Identity in Southern France

This article explores the question of national group cohesion among the Jews of southern France. The numerous political borders and the expulsion of the Jews from Languedoc (1306) afford us the opportunity to examine local – Provençal – Jewish group identity, in contrast to a broader Jewish conception of nationhood. An analysis of some Hebrew documents demonstrates the significance of the expulsion of the Jews as the “destruction of my native land”. This is one enlightening example of a unitary socio-cultural conception of the Provençal region, which did not recognize political borders. wThe primary marker of this Provençal identity was their Andalusian Jewish tradition.Cet article explore la question de la cohésion d’un groupe national parmi les Juifs du sud de la France. Les nombreuses frontières politiques et l’expulsion des Juifs du Languedoc (1306) nous offrent l’opportunité d’examiner localement l’identité de groupe de ces Juifs, par contraste avec une conception plus large de la nation juive. L’analyse de certains documents hébraïques présente l’expulsion des juifs comme la “destruction de mon pays natal”. Il y a là un exemple éclairant d’une conception socio-culturelle unitaire de la Provence qui ne reconnaissait pas les frontières politiques. La tradition juive andalouse constitue le premier marqueur de cette identité provençale

Is the Hebb repetition task a reliable measure of individual differences in sequence learning?

First Published January 1, 2018The Hebb repetition task, an operationalization of long-term sequence learning through repetition, is the focus of renewed interest, as it is taken to provide a laboratory analogue for naturalistic vocabulary acquisition. Indeed, recent studies have consistently related performance in the Hebb repetition task with a range of linguistic (dis)abilities. However, in spite of the growing interest in the Hebb repetition effect as a theoretical construct, no previous research has ever tested whether the task used to assess Hebb learning offers a stable and reliable measure of individual performance in sequence learning. Since reliability is a necessary condition to predictive validity, in the present work we tested whether individual ability in visual verbal Hebb repetition learning displays basic test-retest reliability. In a first experiment Hebrew-English bilinguals performed two verbal Hebb tasks, one with English and one with Hebrew consonant letters. They were retested on the same Hebb tasks after a period of about six months. Overall serial recall performance proved to be a stable and reliable capacity of an individual. By contrast, the test-retest reliability of individual learning performance in our Hebb task was close to zero. A second experiment with French speakers replicated these results and demonstrated that the concurrent learning of two repeated Hebb sequences within the same task minimally improves the reliability scores. Taken together, our results raise concerns regarding the usefulness of at least some current Hebb learning tasks in predicting linguistic (dis)abilities. The theoretical implications are discussed.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 217/14 awarded to Ram Frost), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant RO1-HD 067364 awarded to Ken Pugh and Ram Frost, PO1-HD 01994 awarded to Haskins Laboratories), ERC-2015-AdG-692502 and by the Research Foundation-Flanders/The Fyssen foundation, of which Louisa Bogaerts was a research fellow

Reduced In-Plane, Low Frequency Helicopter Noise of an Active Flap Rotor

Results from a recent joint DARPA/Boeing/NASA/Army wind tunnel test demonstrated the ability to reduce in-plane, low frequency noise of the full-scale Boeing-SMART rotor using active flaps. Test data reported in this paper illustrated that acoustic energy in the first six blade-passing harmonics could be reduced by up to 6 decibels at a moderate airspeed, level flight condition corresponding to advance ratio of 0.30. Reduced noise levels were attributed to selective active flap schedules that modified in-plane blade airloads on the advancing side of the rotor, in a manner, which generated counteracting acoustic pulses that partially offset the negative pressure peaks associated with in-plane, steady thickness noise. These favorable reduced-noise operating states are a strong function of the active flap actuation amplitude, frequency and phase. The associated noise reductions resulted in reduced aural detection distance by up to 18%, but incurred significant vibratory load penalties due to increased hub shear forces. Small reductions in rotor lift-to-drag ratios, of no more than 3%, were also measure

Chitosan-Hyaluronate Hybrid Gel Intraarticular Injection Delays Osteoarthritis Progression and Reduces Pain in a Rat Meniscectomy Model as Compared to Saline and Hyaluronate Treatment

Chitosan-Hyaluronate hybrid gel (CHHG) is a self-forming thermo-responsive hydrogel. The current study was undertaken in order to assess the effect of CHHG on rat's surgically induced osteoarthritis. Methods. Thirteen rats were included in the study. In all rats weight-bearing was assessed using a Linton Incapacitance tester. All rats underwent bilateral medial partial meniscectomy. Four rats received a saline injection in the control knee and a 200-microliter injection of CHHG in the experimental knee. Five rats received a high-molecular weight hyaluronate injection to the control knee and a 200-microliter injection of CHHG in the experimental knee. Four rats underwent the same surgical procedure, allowed to recuperate for seven days and then CHHG and hyaluronate were injected. The animals were followed for 6 weeks. Two weeks after injection of a therapeutic substance the amount of weight-bearing on each knee was evaluated using a Linton Incapacitance meter. Results. Two weeks after induction of osteoarthritis there is less pain in the CHHG-treated knee than in the control-treated knee, as determined using a Lintron Incapacitance meter. After six-weeks the histological appearance of the CHHG-treated knee was superior to that of the controls. This is indicated by thicker cartilage remaining on the medial femoral condyle as well as less cyst formation in the CHHG-treated knee. Discussion. CHHG appears to delay progression of osteoarthritis and lessen pain in a rat surgically-induced knee osteoarthritis model. These results support other published results, indicating that there is an ameliorative effect of chitosan on human and rabbit osteoarthritis

System-thinking progress in engineering programs: A case for broadening the roles of students

IntroductionComplex systems are prevalent in many scientific and engineering disciplines, which makes system thinking important for students of these fields. Duchifat 3 is a unique engineering educational extracurricular program, where high school students designed, assembled, and tested a nano-satellite.MethodsThis study applied qualitative methods to explore how the participants’ systems-thinking developed during the program. Participants were interviewed using the repertory grid interview, and a semi structured interview at the beginning and at the end of the project, while various observations were conducted throughout.ResultsWhile the participants were initially assigned narrow roles, each dealing with a single sub-system of the satellite, some chose to be involved with other sub-systems and aspects of the project. Our findings show that the broader the participants’ involvement was, the greater the progress they experienced in their systems-thinking. Participants who stayed focused on a single subsystem did not show progress, while participants who involved themselves with several sub-systems exhibited a more meaningful progress.DiscussionAlthough the program design aimed to assign students to a narrow role to enable them to achieve the educational goals, from the perspective of systems-thinking this was counterproductive. These findings shed light on the design of engineering programs such as the one examined here in terms of systems-thinking development. We discuss the implications of the findings for similar programs and make suggestions for improvement

Sapper: A Language for Hardware- Level Security Policy Enforcement

Privacy and integrity are important security concerns. These concerns are addressed by controlling information flow, i.e., restricting how information can flow through a system. Most proposed systems that restrict information flow make the implicit assumption that the hardware used by the system is fully “correct ” and that the hardware’s instruction set accurately describes its behavior in all circumstances. The truth is more complicated: modern hardware designs defy complete verification; many aspects of the timing and ordering of events are left totally unspecified; and implementation bugs present themselves with surprising frequency. In this work we describe Sapper, a novel hardware description language for designing security-critical hardware components. Sapper seeks to address these problems by using static analysis a

Sensitivity and reproducibility of standardized-competitive RT-PCR for transcript quantification and its comparison with real time RT-PCR

BACKGROUND: Probe based detection assays form the mainstay of transcript quantification. Problems with these assays include varying hybridization efficiencies of the probes used for transcript quantification and the expense involved. We examined the ability of a standardized competitive RT-PCR (StaRT PCR) assay to quantify transcripts of 4 cell cycle associated genes (RB, E2F1, CDKN2A and PCNA) in two cell lines (T24 & LD419) and compared its efficacy with the established Taqman real time quantitative RT-PCR assay. We also assessed the sensitivity, reproducibility and consistency of StaRT PCR. StaRT PCR assay is based on the incorporation of competitive templates (CT) in precisely standardized quantities along with the native template (NT) in a PCR reaction. This enables transcript quantification by comparing the NT and CT band intensities at the end of the PCR amplification. The CT serves as an ideal internal control. The transcript numbers are expressed as copies per million transcripts of a control gene such as β-actin (ACTB). RESULTS: The NT and CT were amplified at remarkably similar rates throughout the StaRT PCR amplification cycles, and the coefficient of variation was least (<3.8%) when the NT/CT ratio was kept as close to 1:1 as possible. The variability between the rates of amplification in different tubes subjected to the same StaRT PCR reaction was very low and within the range of experimental noise. Further, StaRT PCR was sensitive enough to detect variations as low as 10% in endogenous actin transcript quantity (p < 0.01 by the paired student's t-test). StaRT PCR correlated well with Taqman real time RT-PCR assay in terms of transcript quantification efficacy (p < 0.01 for all 4 genes by the Spearman Rank correlation method) and the ability to discriminate between cell types and confluence patterns. CONCLUSION: StaRT PCR is thus a reliable and sensitive technique that can be applied to medium-high throughput quantitative transcript measurement. Further, it correlates well with Taqman real time PCR in terms of quantitative and discriminatory ability. This label-free, inexpensive technique may provide the ability to generate prognostically important molecular signatures unique to individual tumors and may enable identification of novel therapeutic targets

Response of organic aerosol to Delhi's pollution control measures over the period 2011–2018

Some of the world's highest air pollution episodes occur in Delhi, India and studies have shown particulate matter (PM) is the leading air pollutant to cause adverse health effects on Delhi's population. It is therefore vital to chart sources of PM over long time periods to effectively identify trends, particularly as multiple air quality mitigation measures have been implemented in Delhi over the past 10 years but remain unevaluated. An automated offline aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS) method has been developed which has enabled high-throughput analysis of PM filters. This novel offline-AMS method uses an organic solvent mix of acetone and water to deliver high extraction recoveries of organic aerosol (OA) (95.4 ± 8.3%). Positive matrix factorisation (PMF) source apportionment was performed on the OA fraction extracted from PM10 filter samples collected in Delhi in 2011, 2015 and 2018 to provide snapshots of the responses of OA to changes in sources in Delhi. The nine factors of OA resolved by PMF group into four primary source categories: traffic, cooking, coal-combustion and burning-related (solid fuel or open burning). Burning-related OA made the largest contribution during the winter and post-monsoon, when total OA concentrations were at their highest. Annual mean burning-related OA concentrations declined by 47% between 2015 and 2018, likely associated with the 2015 ban on open waste burning and controls and incentives to reduce crop-residue burning. Compositional analysis of OA factors shows municipal waste burning tracers still present in 2018, indicating further scope to reduce burning-related OA. The closure of the two coal power stations, along with initiatives to decrease coal use in industry, businesses, and residential homes, resulted in a significant decrease (87%) in coal-combustion OA. This corresponds to a 17% reduction in total OA, which shows the effectiveness of these measures in reducing PM10. Increases in traffic OA appear to have been offset by the introduction of the Bharat stage emissions standards for vehicles as the increases do not reflect the rapid increase in registered vehicles. However, daytime restrictions on heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) entering the city is linked to large increases in PM10 during the winter and post-monsoon, likely because the large influx of diesel-engine HGVs during the early mornings and evenings is timed with a particularly low planetary boundary layer height that enhances surface concentrations