There are saints in Orthodox Christian culture who overturn the conventional concept of sainthood: their conduct is morally dubious. Such saints are called ‘holy fools’. They existed in Byzantium for ...about 1,000 years, but nearly vanished in modern Greece. In Russia, however, they are deeply worshipped by the believers up till this day. In this book holy foolery is treated as a cultural phenomenon: as a spontaneous response of the religious consciousness to the secularization of the church. The author has repudiated the traditional ‘Orthodox’ paradigm; he discovered a great number of Byzantine and Old Russian sources dealing with holy fools. By adopting a diachronic approach, this book identifies the prerequisites for this phenomenon, traces the way it was shaped in the religious mind. A holy fool comes into existence as an instinctive protest against the insipid, mundane existence of Christians who lost the scope for the blinding light of the Celestial. Holy foolery is a reaction to the diminution of the Absolute. The book tracks down holy foolery from its origins in Egyptian monasteries through its evolution in the cities of Byzantium, describes its prime and decline, followed by a new flourish and a gradual fading on Greek soil. It then proceeds to analyze Russian holy foolery, which borrowed some elements from the Byzantine model, but also reinterpreted it quite a bit. The book also considers other phenomena similar to holy foolery, in the Western medieval world, as well as the Islamic one.
Strain-hardening (the increase of flow stress with plastic strain) is the most important phenomenon in the mechanical behaviour of engineering alloys because it ensures that flow is delocalized, ...enhances tensile ductility and inhibits catastrophic mechanical failure
. Metallic glasses (MGs) lack the crystallinity of conventional engineering alloys, and some of their properties-such as higher yield stress and elastic strain limit
-are greatly improved relative to their crystalline counterparts. MGs can have high fracture toughness and have the highest known 'damage tolerance' (defined as the product of yield stress and fracture toughness)
among all structural materials. However, the use of MGs in structural applications is largely limited by the fact that they show strain-softening instead of strain-hardening; this leads to extreme localization of plastic flow in shear bands, and is associated with early catastrophic failure in tension. Although rejuvenation of an MG (raising its energy to values that are typical of glass formation at a higher cooling rate) lowers its yield stress, which might enable strain-hardening
, it is unclear whether sufficient rejuvenation can be achieved in bulk samples while retaining their glassy structure. Here we show that plastic deformation under triaxial compression at room temperature can rejuvenate bulk MG samples sufficiently to enable strain-hardening through a mechanism that has not been previously observed in the metallic state. This transformed behaviour suppresses shear-banding in bulk samples in normal uniaxial (tensile or compressive) tests, prevents catastrophic failure and leads to higher ultimate flow stress. The rejuvenated MGs are stable at room temperature and show exceptionally efficient strain-hardening, greatly increasing their potential use in structural applications.
We study, within QCD collinear factorization and including BFKL resummation at the next-to-leading order, the production of Mueller–Navelet jets at LHC with center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The ...adopted jet vertices are calculated in the approximation of a small aperture of the jet cone in the pseudorapidity-azimuthal angle plane. We consider several representations of the dijet cross section, differing only beyond the next-to-leading order, to calculate a few observables related with this process. We use various methods of optimization to fix the energy scales entering the perturbative calculation and compare our results with the experimental data from the CMS collaboration.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Virally induced liver cancer usually evolves over long periods of time in the context of a strongly oxidative microenvironment, characterized by chronic liver inflammation and regeneration processes. ...They ultimately lead to oncogenic mutations in many cellular signaling cascades that drive cell growth and proliferation. Oxidative stress, induced by hepatitis viruses, therefore is one of the factors that drives the neoplastic transformation process in the liver. This review summarizes current knowledge on oxidative stress and oxidative stress responses induced by human hepatitis B and C viruses. It focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which these viruses activate cellular enzymes/systems that generate or scavenge reactive oxygen species (ROS) and control cellular redox homeostasis. The impact of an altered cellular redox homeostasis on the initiation and establishment of chronic viral infection, as well as on the course and outcome of liver fibrosis and hepatocarcinogenesis will be discussed The review neither discusses reactive nitrogen species, although their metabolism is interferes with that of ROS, nor antioxidants as potential therapeutic remedies against viral infections, both subjects meriting an independent review.
•We review and classify the major features of models proposed in supply chain resilience.•The analysis is rooted in original concept of resilience capacity.•It introduces a structured analysis based ...on different levels of capacity resilience.•The gaps and limitations of existing supply chain resilience literature are identified and future research opportunities are suggested.
Supply chain resilience (SCR) manifests when the network is capable to withstand, adapt, and recover from disruptions to meet customer demand and ensure performance. This paper conceptualizes and comprehensively presents a systematic review of the recent literature on quantitative modeling the SCR while distinctively pertaining it to the original concept of resilience capacity. Decision-makers and researchers can benefit from our survey since it introduces a structured analysis and recommendations as to which quantitative methods can be used at different levels of capacity resilience. Finally, the gaps and limitations of existing SCR literature are identified and future research opportunities are suggested.
Like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Finnish Kalevala, the Buryat Geser, and the Kirghiz Manas, the Yakut Olonkho (declared In 2005 by UNESCO to be ‘A Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage ...of Humanity’) is in this case an epic dating back to the ninth century – when the ancestors of the present-day Yakut peoples lived on their former homeland and closely communicated with the Turkic and Mongolian peoples of the Altay and Sayan regions. Expert detailed analysis of the epic and its relevance to the wider epos literature is to be found in the introductory pages of this superbly illustrated volume,
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•Only 18 out of 44 medulloblastoma cell-lines have been subtyped.•11/18 are Group 3 and all Group 3 cell-lines have MYC-amplification.•The most cited cell line is DAOY, followed by ...D283, UW228, D341, D425 and D458.•In vitro models of the future: 3D, with the right ECM and including the normal brain.•To progress we need an online database for in vitro tools with a linked cell bank.
The recently-defined four molecular subgroups of medulloblastoma have required updating of our understanding of in vitro models to include molecular classification and risk stratification features from clinical practice. This review seeks to build a more comprehensive picture of the in vitro systems available for modelling medulloblastoma.
The subtype classification and molecular characterisation for over 40 medulloblastoma cell-lines has been compiled, making it possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses in current model systems. Less than half (18/44) of established medulloblastoma cell-lines have been subgrouped. The majority of the subgrouped cell-lines (11/18) are Group 3 with MYC-amplification. SHH cell-lines are the next most common (4/18), half of which exhibit TP53 mutation. WNT and Group 4 subgroups, accounting for 50% of patients, remain underrepresented with 1 and 2 cell-lines respectively.
In vitro modelling relies not only on incorporating appropriate tumour cells, but also on using systems with the relevant tissue architecture and phenotype as well as normal tissues. Novel ways of improving the clinical relevance of in vitro models are reviewed, focusing on 3D cell culture, extracellular matrix, co-cultures with normal cells and organotypic slices. This paper champions the establishment of a collaborative online-database and linked cell-bank to catalyse preclinical medulloblastoma research.
Recently, human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSc) have attracted a great deal of attention as potential therapeutic agents in the treatment of socially significant diseases. Despite substantial advances ...in stem-cell therapy, the biological mechanisms of hMSc action after transplantation remain unclear. The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a non-invasive method for tracking stem cells in the body is very important for analysing their distribution in tissues and organs, as well as for ensuring control of their lifetime after injection. Herein, detailed experimental data are reported on the biocompatibility towards hMSc of heavily gadolinium-doped cerium oxide nanoparticles (Ce
Gd
O
) synthesised using two synthetic protocols. The relaxivity of the nanoparticles was measured in a magnetic field range from 1 mT to 16.4 T. The relaxivity values (
= 11 ± 1.2 mM
s
and
= 7 ± 1.2 mM
s
in magnetic fields typical of 1.5 and 3 T MRI scanners, respectively) are considerably higher than those of the commercial Omniscan MRI contrast agent. The low toxicity of gadolinium-doped ceria nanoparticles to hMSc enables their use as an effective theranostic tool with improved MRI-contrasting properties.
Respiratory viruses cause infections of the upper or lower respiratory tract and they are responsible for the common cold-the most prevalent disease in the world. In many cases the common cold ...results in severe illness due to complications, such as fever or pneumonia. Children, old people, and immunosuppressed patients are at the highest risk and require fast diagnosis and therapeutic intervention. However, the availability and efficiencies of existing therapeutic approaches vary depending on the virus. Investigation of the pathologies that are associated with infection by respiratory viruses will be paramount for diagnosis, treatment modalities, and the development of new therapies. Changes in redox homeostasis in infected cells are one of the key events that is linked to infection with respiratory viruses and linked to inflammation and subsequent tissue damage. Our review summarizes current knowledge on changes to redox homeostasis, as induced by the different respiratory viruses.
Intellectual disability is affecting 3.0-4.0% of the general population. Copy number variants (CNVs) are a significant cause leading to neurodevelopmental disorders such as intellectual disability, ...epilepsy, autism spectrum disorders and developmental delay. The use of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-array and array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) as diagnostic tools has led to the recognition of new microdeletion/microduplication syndromes associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. It is also useful for further characterization of marker chromosomes. Here, we report a girl with mild intellectual disability and mild facial dysmorphisms. Cytogenetic analysis showed a marker chromosome in some percent of the cells and was followed by SNP-array karyotyping that detected, in addition, a 9655 Mb
interstitial deletion at 9q21.1-9q21.2.