The Phaedrus and the life of Plotinus

A perusal of Plato’s dialogue the Phaedrus sheds much light on Porphyry’s Vita Plotini. The similarities between the two works are impressive, and it can be argued that Porphyry wrote his text with the dialogue in mind. These similarities include their use of medicine, their structural disunity, and their cast of characters, among which must be included the impalpable but pervasive entity the supernatural. Two of the key themes of the Phaedrus—communication and the godlikeness of the pre-fallen soul—also inform the present discussion of the Vita. Plotinus had difficulty with both spoken and written communication, but his godlikeness allowed him to triumph over them

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

The Proto–Hesychasts : origins of mysticism in the Eastern church

Thesis (Ph.D. (Church and Dogma History))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.The Proto–Hesychasts suggests that the thinkers between and including Basil the Great and Symeon the New Theologian were important largely for their role in forming the fourteenth–century Hesychastic movement in the Eastern church. This conclusion is reached in part by viewing the period from an Orthodox rather than a broadly Christian perspective. Chapter Two surveys previous research on Proto–Hesychasm, and Chapter Three sets forth certain Hesychastic trends in the Proto–Hesychasts including monasticism, dark and light mysticism, an emphasis on the heart, the?sis, the humanity of Christ, penthos, and unceasing prayer. The author finds himself in agreement with Alexander Schmemann for whom Hesychasm was not a novel departure but the completion of a basic tendency of the Orthodox Church. The Hesychasts did not teach a new doctrine but continued and perfected the tradition that immediately preceded them. The thesis proper commences in Chapter Four with the fourth–century Cappadocians who established monasticism as the predominant milieu of Proto–Hesychasm and placed much emphasis on both the?sis and dark mysticism. This mysticism, codified by Gregory of Nyssa, would come into conflict with the light mysticism of their contemporary Pseudo– Macarius, but both currents would be passed on to the Hesychasts, though the latter would triumph to a degree. Macarius, affected by little besides the Bible and Syrian theology, was a seminal figure within Proto–Hesychasm, and Chapter Five shows him to be responsible not only for the stress on light mysticism but on heart mysticism in Proto–Hesychasm and Hesychasm. Mark the Monk and Diadochus of Photike were the first to recognize the vitality of his thought, and it was through them that Macarius’ spirit spread to subsequent Proto–Hesychasm, most notably that of Symeon the New Theologian. Fourteenth–century Hesychasm emerged from two main fonts, the philosophical and the ascetic. Dionysius the Pseudo–Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor, discussed in Chapter Six, were the philosophical precursors of Hesychasm, even though the former may have not been a Christian and the latter’s eschatology was characterized by a thoroughgoing Neoplatonic immanentism. The philosophers transmitted to the Hesychasts a virtually unacknowledged Platonism, but, despite their intellectualism, they exhibited typical Proto– Hesychast traits like dark and light mysticism, monasticism, the?sis, unceasing prayer, and, in Maximus, a stress on the humanity of Christ which would contribute to the Hesychasts’ distinctive refusal to disown man’s material nature. Representatives of the ascetic school of Proto–Hesychasm, covered in Chapter Seven, included Isaiah of Scetis, Dorotheus of Gaza, John Climacus, and Isaac of Nineveh. These monks, who were often abbots, concerned themselves mainly with issues like the?sis, penthos, and unceasing prayer but from a solely monastic point of view. In Chapter Eight the abbot Symeon the New Theologian is shown to be their redoubtable successor, but he was somewhat more philosophical than they were. Hesychasm has been called a recapitulation of his thought, and this is only slightly hyperbolic. Essentially the last Proto– Hesychast, Symeon took the theological elements that came before him and bequeathed these to the Hesychasts who tended to not acknowledge his influence due to his controversial career.Doctora

The platonic milieu of dionysius the pseudo-areopagite

The Platonic milieu is the most significant of the possible milieus that can be attributed to the Proto-Hesychast Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. The present article hypothesizes that Dionysius’ master Hierotheus was Isidore of Alexandria, a disciple of the Neoplatonist Proclus, and posits that Dionysius’ locale was Egyptian rather than Syrian. Certain aspects of Proclus’ influence on him are also taken into account, namely his discussion of evil, his imagery of the statues, his system of henads, and his subscription to theurgy. Dionysius’ understanding of theurgy was, however, opposed to that of Proclus’ ultimate mentor Porphyry for whom theurgy and virtue were mutually exclusive paths. His description of the vision of Carpos tends to underscore this.http://reference.sabinet.co.za/document/EJC137652http://reference.sabinet.co.za.nwulib.nwu.ac.za/sa_epublication/patris

126 A CTS team approach to reliable delivery of aerosols to lung cells at the air-liquid interface (ALI), through Dosimetric Aerosol in Vitro Inhalation Device (DAVID)

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: In vitro models that mimic the human respiratory system are needed to assess the toxicity of inhaled contaminants. Therefore, our goal is to establish a Dosimetric Aerosol in-Vitro Inhalation Device (DAVID) that delivers aerosols in different patterns to human lung cells cultured at an air-liquid interface (ALI). METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The collection unit of DAVID was modified in this study to accommodate different deposition patterns (spots, annular ring, rectangle & circle). CuO aerosols of varying concentrations were generated using a 6-jet Collison nebulizer for varying time periods to achieve different doses. To quantify the doses that were delivered to cells, the samples were digested with nitric acid & analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometry. Following the exposure of A549 cells to CuO aerosols, cytotoxicity and mRNA expression (i.e., HMOX1 & IL-8) will be assessed via LDH and RT-qPCR to determine the effect of regional (mass deposited/area of the pattern) and global (mass deposited/area of the cell culture insert) doses in cells. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The deposition areas covered by rectangular, spot, annular ring, and circular patterns are estimated to be 6, 17, 27 and 85% of the insert’s surface area, onto which cells are cultured. Results for the patterns tested (spots and annular ring) show that both the regional and global doses were greater for spots than annular ring. Also, the regional doses were higher than global doses. Irrespective of the patterns, the global doses were the same for nebulizer suspensions of 0.1-1 mg/mL. Statistical analysis by ANOVA revealed there was no significant difference in doses between replicate inserts used in the same trial. We anticipate that regional doses with aerosol deposition to a larger surface area of the cell culture insert will correspond with higher cytotoxicity and mRNA expression of HMOX1 and IL-8 in cells. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: There are limited in vitro exposure systems that can efficiently deliver aerosols to lung cells, while also mimicking inhalation by humans. In addition to addressing this knowledge gap, we will show the role of regional & global doses in studying cellular response & the ability of DAVID to deliver aerosols in different deposition patterns

Development of the metrology and imaging of cellulose nanocrystals

The development of metrology for nanoparticles is a significant challenge. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are one group of nanoparticles that have high potential economic value but present substantial challenges to the development of the measurement science. Even the largest trees owe their strength to this newly appreciated class of nanomaterials. Cellulose is the world\u27s most abundant natural, renewable, biodegradable polymer. Cellulose occurs as whisker-like microfibrils that are biosynthesized and deposited in plant material in a continuous fashion. The nanocrystals are isolated by hydrolyzing away the amorphous segments leaving the acid resistant crystalline fragments. Therefore, the basic raw material for new nanomaterial products already abounds in nature and is available to be utilized in an array of future materials. However, commercialization requires the development of efficient manufacturing processes and nanometrology to monitor quality. This paper discusses some of the instrumentation, metrology and standards issues associated with the ramping up for production and use of CNCs