The delegation of power

Bureau seals are an innovation of the Assyrian administration to cope with the delegation of power that running a world empire demanded. By placing some bureau seals in their historical context we find indications that these seal types were introduced not at once but at various points in Neo-Assyrian history, reflecting changes in the balance of power

Pricing in Social Networks with Negative Externalities

We study the problems of pricing an indivisible product to consumers who are embedded in a given social network. The goal is to maximize the revenue of the seller. We assume impatient consumers who buy the product as soon as the seller posts a price not greater than their values of the product. The product's value for a consumer is determined by two factors: a fixed consumer-specified intrinsic value and a variable externality that is exerted from the consumer's neighbors in a linear way. We study the scenario of negative externalities, which captures many interesting situations, but is much less understood in comparison with its positive externality counterpart. We assume complete information about the network, consumers' intrinsic values, and the negative externalities. The maximum revenue is in general achieved by iterative pricing, which offers impatient consumers a sequence of prices over time. We prove that it is NP-hard to find an optimal iterative pricing, even for unweighted tree networks with uniform intrinsic values. Complementary to the hardness result, we design a 2-approximation algorithm for finding iterative pricing in general weighted networks with (possibly) nonuniform intrinsic values. We show that, as an approximation to optimal iterative pricing, single pricing can work rather well for many interesting cases, but theoretically it can behave arbitrarily bad

Effect of nocturnal Temperature-controlled Laminar Airflow on the reduction of severe exacerbations in patients with severe allergic asthma: a meta-analysis

Background: Allergen avoidance is important in allergic asthma management. Nocturnal treatment with Temperature-controlled Laminar Airflow (TLA) has been shown to provide a significant reduction in the exposure to allergens in the breathing zone, leading to a long-term reduction in airway inflammation and improvement in Quality of life (QoL). Allergic asthma patients symptomatic on Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) step 4/5 were found to benefit the most as measured by Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ). However, the effect of TLA on severe asthma exacerbations is uncertain and therefore a meta-analysis was performed. Methods: Patients with severe allergic asthma (GINA 4/5) were extracted from two 1-year randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials conducted with TLA. A meta-analysis of the effect on severe exacerbations was performed by negative binomial regression in a sequential manner, defined by baseline markers of asthma control (symptoms and QoL scores). Results: The pooled dataset included 364patients. Patients with more symptoms at baseline (ACT3; N=179), had a significant mean 41% reduction in severe exacerbations (RR=0.59 (0.38-0.90); p=0.015) in favour of TLA. Higher ACQ7 cut-points of 3.5-4.5 resulted in significant reductions of 48-59%.More uncontrolled patients based on AQLQ total and symptom domains ≤3.0 at baseline also showed a significant reduction in severe exacerbations for TLA vs. placebo ((47% (p=0.037) and 53% (p=0.011), respectively). The meta-analysis also confirmed a significant difference in AQLQ-responders ((Minimal Clinically Important Difference)≥0.5; 74% vs. 43%, p=0.04). Conclusion: This meta-analysis of individual patient data shows a beneficial effect on severe exacerbations and quality of life for TLA over placebo in more symptomatic patients with severe allergic asthma. These outcomes support the national management recommendations for patients with symptomatic severe allergic asthma. The actual effect of TLA on severe exacerbations should be confirmed in a prospective study with larger numbers of patients

Museu Militar de Bragança: fundação, práticas museológicas

O objecto de estudo decidido para este trabalho centra-se na reflexão sobre o Museu Militar de Bragança hoje, e as suas potencialidades enquanto gerador de desenvolvimento social. Para fazer esta reflexão consideramos pertinente a pesquisa histórica do museu, desde a sua fundação, atendendo à função e os objectivos propostos inicialmente pela instituição, bem como aos procedimentos museológicos actualmente observados. O museu militar de Bragança surge no primeiro quartel do século XX como um espaço de salvaguarda das memórias dos feitos bélicos das forças militares sedeadas em Bragança. Após a erradicação da última unidade militar de Bragança, em 1958, o museu é temporariamente encerrado e trasladado o acervo para o Museu Militar de Lisboa. Já na década de 80 do século XX o museu volta a ser instalado no local de origem, a torre de menagem do castelo, e impõe-se como espaço \ memória das vivências militares da cidade. No entanto, cremos que, para que o Museu Militar potencie as suas ferramentas enquanto gerador de desenvolvimento social, seria desejável consumar alguns procedimentos museológicos, actualmente já impostos na Lei Quadro dos museus. Neste sentido, na segunda parte do presente trabalho propomo-nos estabelecer um plano geral de práticas museológicas adaptado ao caso concreto do Museu Militar de Bragança. O presente trabalho aspira assim: a caracterizar sucintamente o conceito actual de Museu; a descrever o edifício onde está instalado o Museu Militar de Bragança, que constitui parte integrante da sua valência enquanto gerador de desenvolvimento local; a pesquisar o processo de fundação do museu, os seus objectivos e funções enquanto parte integrante de um maior complexo militar como era o quartel. (...

Transient transfection coupled to baculovirus infection for rapid protein expression screening in insect cells

Baculovirus infected insect cells are widely used for heterologous protein expression. Despite the power of this system, the use of baculovirus techniques for protein expression screening is hampered by the time and resources needed to generate each recombinant baculovirus. Here, we show that a transfection/infection based expression system is suitable for screening of expression constructs in insect cells and represents a valid alternative to other traditional screening methodologies using recombinant baculovirus. The described method is based on gene delivery by transfection coupled to the induction of protein expression by non-recombinant baculovirus infection. Vectors that control expression by a combination of the baculovirus promoters . ie1 and . p10 and the enhancer element . hr5 are among the ones suitable for this method. Infection with non-recombinant baculovirus drastically increases the basal activity of these elements, leading to protein over-expression. Multiple vectors can be simultaneously co-transfected/infected, making transfection/infection amenable for screening of multiple co-expressed proteins and protein complexes. Taken together, our results prove that the transfection/infection protocol is a valid and innovative approach for increasing speed and reducing costs of protein expression screening for structural and functional studies. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.

The confidence cult(ure)

In this paper we explore how confidence has become a technology of self that invites girls and women to work on themselves. The discussion demonstrates the extensiveness of what we call the ‘cult(ure) of confidence’ across different areas of social life, and examines the continuities in the way that exponents of the confidence cult(ure) name, diagnose and propose solutions to archetypal feminist questions about labour, value and the body. Our analysis focuses on two broad areas of social life in which the notion of confidence has taken hold powerfully in the last few years: popular discussions about gender and work, and consumer body culture. Examining the incitements to self-confidence in these realms, we show how an emergent technology of confidence, systematically re-signifies feminist accounts, by turning away from structural inequalities and collectivist critiques of male domination into heightened modes of self-work and self-regulation, and by repudiating the injuries inflicted by the structures of inequality. We conclude by situating the ‘confidence cult(ure)’ in relation to wider debates about feminism, postfeminism and neoliberalism

Universal features in the growth dynamics of complex organizations

We analyze the fluctuations in the gross domestic product (GDP) of 152 countries for the period 1950--1992. We find that (i) the distribution of annual growth rates for countries of a given GDP decays with ``fatter'' tails than for a Gaussian, and (ii) the width of the distribution scales as a power law of GDP with a scaling exponent $\beta \approx 0.15$. Both findings are in surprising agreement with results on firm growth. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the evolution of organizations with complex structure is governed by similar growth mechanisms.Comment: 4 pages, 7 ps figures, using Latex2e with epsf rotate and multicol style files. Submitted to PR