Buildings or Festivals?

Marco Vitale ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter in Alter Geschichte (Epigraphie, Numismatik) in Basel und Zürich. Er wurde 2010 promoviert mit einer Untersuchung zur Verwaltung der hellenistischen und römischen Asia Minor (Eparchie und Koinon). Er veröffentlichte eine weitere Monografie zum antiken Syrien (Koinon Syrias). Seine jüngste Veröffentlichung, die Habilitationsschrift, erschien 2017 (Das Imperium in Wort und Bild)

The provincial imperial cult in the Levant (Syria, Phoenice, Commagene, Judea, Decapolis, Arabia)

The provincial imperial cult represents one of the most relevant expressions of multiform relationship between provincial communities and Roman authorities especially in the East. During the Roman Principate in Syria, we can enumerate seven administrative districts (eparchies) which occur in connection with this political and religious phenomenon. The complicated question of how the province-wide worship of the Imperial family was organised in Roman Levant must be analysed in different terms. Important aspects are the Roman territorial framework of administration, the creation of autonomous city-leagues (koiná) and their cultic functions, the rules of membership within these federal organizations and their self-representation in coinages and inscriptions. On the level of political and financial management, we are dealing with federal officials and the festivities organized by them. Our paper aims to give a detailed overview of the Syrian imperial cult related not only to one specific site, but in the context of a large and culturally complex area

Correlation Clustering with Adaptive Similarity Queries

In correlation clustering, we are given $n$ objects together with a binary similarity score between each pair of them. The goal is to partition the objects into clusters so to minimise the disagreements with the scores. In this work we investigate correlation clustering as an active learning problem: each similarity score can be learned by making a query, and the goal is to minimise both the disagreements and the total number of queries. On the one hand, we describe simple active learning algorithms, which provably achieve an almost optimal trade-off while giving cluster recovery guarantees, and we test them on different datasets. On the other hand, we prove information-theoretical bounds on the number of queries necessary to guarantee a prescribed disagreement bound. These results give a rich characterization of the trade-off between queries and clustering error

The Seiberg-Witten map for non-commutative pure gravity and vacuum Maxwell theory

In this paper the Seiberg-Witten map is first analyzed for non-commutative Yang-Mills theories with the related methods, developed in the literature, for its explicit construction, that hold for any gauge group. These are exploited to write down the second-order Seiberg-Witten map for pure gravity with a constant non-commutativity tensor. In the analysis of pure gravity when the classical space-time solves the vacuum Einstein equations, we find for three distinct vacuum solutions that the corresponding non-commutative field equations do not have solution to first order in non-commutativity, when the Seiberg-Witten map is eventually inserted. In the attempt of understanding whether or not this is a peculiar property of gravity, in the second part of the paper, the Seiberg-Witten map is considered in the simpler case of Maxwell theory in vacuum in the absence of charges and currents. Once more, no obvious solution of the non-commutative field equations is found, unless the electromagnetic potential depends in a very special way on the wave vector.Comment: Misprints corrected. References adde

Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Neurodegenerative Diseases: New Evidence in Clinical Trials

Un approccio nutrizionale potrebbe essere una strategia promettente per prevenire o rallentare la progressione di malattie neurodegenerative come il morbo di Parkinson e il morbo di Alzheimer, poiché finora non esiste l'eectiveterapia per queste malattie. Gli effetti benefici degli acidi grassi omega-3 sono ora ben consolidati da una pletora di studi attraverso il loro coinvolgimento in molteplici funzioni biochimiche, tra cui la sintesi di mediatori antinfiammatori, fluidità della membrana cellulare, segnalazione intracellulare ed espressione genica. Questa revisione sistematica prenderà in considerazione studi epidemiologici e studi clinici che hanno valutato l'impatto dell'integrazione o dell'assunzione dietetica di acidi grassi polinsaturi omega-3 su malattie neurodegenerative come il morbo di Parkinson e l'Alzheimer. In effetti, il trattamento con acidi grassi omega-3, essendo sicuro e ben tollerato, rappresenta uno strumento prezioso e biologicamente plausibile nella gestione delle malattie neurodegenerative nelle loro fasi iniziali.A nutritional approach could be a promising strategy to prevent or slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, since there is no eectivetherapy for these diseases so far. The beneficial effects of omega-3 fatty acids are now well established by a plethora of studies through their involvement in multiple biochemical functions, including synthesis of anti-inflammatory mediators, cell membrane fluidity, intracellular signaling, and gene expression. This systematic review will consider epidemiological studies and clinical trials that assessed the impact of supplementation or dietary intake of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Indeed, treatment with omega-3 fatty acids, being safe and well tolerated, represents a valuable and biologically plausible tool in the management of neurodegenerative diseases in their early stages

Noncommutative gravity with self-dual variables

We build a noncommutative extension of Palatini-Holst theory on a twist-deformed spacetime, generalizing a model that has been previously proposed by Aschieri and Castellani. The twist deformation entails an enlargement of the gauge group, and leads to the introduction of new gravitational degrees of freedom. In particular, the tetrad degrees of freedom must be doubled, thus leading to a bitetrad theory of gravity. The model is shown to exhibit new duality symmetries. The introduction of the Holst term leads to a dramatic simplification of the dynamics, which is achieved when the Barbero-Immirzi parameter takes the value $\beta=-i$, corresponding to a self-dual action. We study in detail the commutative limit of the model, focusing in particular on the role of torsion and non-metricity. The effects of spacetime noncommutativity are taken into account perturbatively, and are computed explicitly in a simple example. Connections with bimetric theories and the role of local conformal invariance in the commutative limit are also explored.Comment: 52 pages; v2: added references, corrected minor typos; matches published versio

Targeting the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt/mechanistic target of rapamycin signaling pathway in B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia: An update

Despite considerable progress in treatment protocols, B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) displays a poor prognosis in about 15–20% of pediatric cases and about 60% of adult patients. In addition, life-long irreversible late effects from chemo- and radiation therapy, including secondary malignancies, are a growing problem for leukemia survivors. Targeted therapy holds promising perspectives for cancer treatment as it may be more effective and have fewer side effects than conventional therapies. The phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate kinase (PI3K)/Akt/mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway is a key regulatory cascade which controls proliferation, survival and drug-resistance of cancer cells, and it is frequently upregulated in the different subtypes of B-ALL, where it plays important roles in the pathophysiology, maintenance and progression of the disease. Moreover, activation of this signaling cascade portends a poorer prognosis in both pediatric and adult B-ALL patients. Promising preclinical data on PI3K/Akt/mTOR inhibitors have documented their anticancer activity in B-ALL and some of these novel drugs have entered clinical trials as they could lead to a longer event-free survival and reduce therapy-associated toxicity for patients with B-ALL. This review highlights the current status of PI3K/Akt/mTOR inhibitors in B-ALL, with an emphasis on emerging evidence of the superior efficacy of synergistic combinations involving the use of traditional chemotherapeutics or other novel, targeted agents