How did the Romans build and maintain one of the most powerful and
stable empires in the history of the world? This illuminating book
draws on the literature, especially the historiography, composed ...by
the members of the elite who conducted Roman foreign affairs. From
this evidence, Susan P. Mattern reevaluates the roots, motivations,
and goals of Roman imperial foreign policy especially as that
policy related to warfare. In a major reinterpretation of the
sources, Rome and the Enemy shows that concepts of
national honor, fierce competition for status, and revenge drove
Roman foreign policy, and though different from the highly
rationalizing strategies often attributed to the Romans, dictated
patterns of response that remained consistent over centuries.
Mattern reconstructs the world view of the Roman decision-makers,
the emperors, and the elite from which they drew their advisers.
She discusses Roman conceptions of geography, strategy, economics,
and the influence of traditional Roman values on the conduct of
military campaigns. She shows that these leaders were more strongly
influenced by a traditional, stereotyped perception of the enemy
and a drive to avenge insults to their national honor than by
concepts of defensible borders. In fact, the desire to enforce an
image of Roman power was a major policy goal behind many of their
most brutal and aggressive campaigns. Rome and the Enemy
provides a fascinating look into the Roman mind in addition to a
compelling reexamination of Roman conceptions of warfare and
national honor. The resulting picture creates a new understanding
of Rome's long mastery of the Mediterranean world.
Abstract Purpose To examine the relationship between children's and adolescents' experiences with cyberbullying and traditional bullying and psychological health, physical health, and academic ...performance. Methods Nine hundred thirty-one students in grades 6 through 12 completed an anonymous survey examining their experiences with cyberbullying and traditional bullying. Also included were measures of anxiety, depression, self-esteem, physical well-being, school attendance, and academic performance. Results Participants were categorized as belonging to one of four groups: cyber victims, cyberbullies, cyber bully/victims, and those not involved in cyberbullying. A similar categorization was done with traditional bullying. Those in the bully/victim groups (and particularly the cyber bully/victim group) had the most negative scores on most measures of psychological health, physical, health, and academic performance. Conclusions There appears to be a substantial, although not perfect, overlap between involvement in traditional bullying and cyberbullying. Additionally, the physical, psychological, and academic correlates of the two types of bullying resembled one another.
Recent advances have made it possible to analyze high-throughput marker-gene sequencing data without resorting to the customary construction of molecular operational taxonomic units (OTUs): clusters ...of sequencing reads that differ by less than a fixed dissimilarity threshold. New methods control errors sufficiently such that amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) can be resolved exactly, down to the level of single-nucleotide differences over the sequenced gene region. The benefits of finer resolution are immediately apparent, and arguments for ASV methods have focused on their improved resolution. Less obvious, but we believe more important, are the broad benefits that derive from the status of ASVs as consistent labels with intrinsic biological meaning identified independently from a reference database. Here we discuss how these features grant ASVs the combined advantages of closed-reference OTUs-including computational costs that scale linearly with study size, simple merging between independently processed data sets, and forward prediction-and of de novo OTUs-including accurate measurement of diversity and applicability to communities lacking deep coverage in reference databases. We argue that the improvements in reusability, reproducibility and comprehensiveness are sufficiently great that ASVs should replace OTUs as the standard unit of marker-gene analysis and reporting.
Microplastics, degraded and weathered polymer-based particles, and manufactured products ranging between 50 and 5000 μm in size, are found within marine, freshwater, and estuarine environments. While ...numerous peer-reviewed papers have quantified the ingestion of microplastics by marine vertebrates, relatively few studies have focused on microplastic ingestion by freshwater organisms. This study documents microplastic and manufactured fiber ingestion by bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) and longear (Lepomis megalotis) sunfish (Centrarchidae) from the Brazos River Basin, between Lake Whitney and Marlin, Texas, USA. Fourteen sample sites were studied and categorized into urban, downstream, and upstream areas. A total of 436 sunfish were collected, and 196 (45%) stomachs contained microplastics. Four percent (4%) of items sampled were debris on the macro size scale (i.e. >5 mm) and consisted of masses of plastic, metal, Styrofoam, or fishing material, while 96% of items sampled were in the form of microplastic threads. Fish length was statistically correlated to the number of microplastics detected (p = 0.019). Fish collected from urban sites displayed the highest mean number of microplastics ingested, followed by downstream and upstream sites. Microplastics were associated with the ingestion of other debris items (e.g. sand and wood) and correlated to the ingestion of fish eggs, earthworms, and mollusks, suggesting that sunfish incidentally ingest microplastics during their normal feeding methods. The high frequency of microplastic ingestion suggest that further research is needed to determine the residence time of microplastics within the stomach and gut, potential for food web transfer, and adverse effects on wildlife and ecosystemic health.
•Sunfish ingest microplastics and manufactured materials at significant levels.•Local urbanization influences microplastic ingestion.•Sunfish incidentally ingest microplastics during their normal feeding habits.
Ingestion of microplastic by freshwater sunfish is influenced by local urbanization.
The human ATP-binding cassette transporter multidrug resistance protein 1 (MRP1), encoded by ABCC1, was initially identified because of its ability to confer multidrug resistance in lung cancer ...cells. It is now established that MRP1 plays a role in protecting certain tissues from xenobiotic insults and that it mediates the cellular efflux of the proinflammatory cysteinyl leukotriene C4 as well as a vast array of other endo- and xenobiotic organic anions. Many of these are glutathione (GSH) or glucuronide conjugates, the products of Phase II drug metabolism. MRP1 also plays a role in the cellular efflux of the reduced and oxidized forms of GSH and thus contributes to the many physiological and pathophysiological processes influenced by these small peptides, including oxidative stress. In this review, the pharmacological and physiological aspects of MRP1 are considered in the context of the current status and future prospects of pharmacological and genetic modulation of MRP1 activity.
Chagas disease causes the highest burden of any parasitic disease in the Western hemisphere. By applying published seroprevalence figures to immigrant populations, we estimate that 300,167 ...individuals with Trypanosoma cruzi infection live in the United States, with 30,000–45,000 cardiomyopathy cases and 63–315 congenital infections annually. T. cruzi causes a substantial disease burden in the United States.
Summary Idiopathic intracranial hypertension is a disorder characterised by raised intracranial pressure that predominantly affects young, obese women. Pathogenesis has not been fully elucidated, but ...several causal factors have been proposed. Symptoms can include headaches, visual loss, pulsatile tinnitus, and back and neck pain, but the clinical presentation is highly variable. Although few studies have been done to support evidence-based management, several recent advances have the potential to enhance understanding of the causes of the disease and to guide treatment decisions. Investigators of the Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Treatment Trial (IIHTT) reported beneficial effects of acetazolamide in patients with mild visual loss. Studies have also established weight loss as an effective disease-modifying treatment, and further clinical trials to investigate new treatments are underway. The incidence of idiopathic intracranial hypertension is expected to increase as rates of obesity increase; efforts to reduce diagnostic delays and identify new, effective approaches to treatment will be key to meeting the needs of a growing number of patients.
Global and national initiatives focused on health systems strengthening, universal health coverage, health security, and resilience suffer when these terms are not well understood or believed to be ...different ways of saying the same thing. Conceptual clarity is essential for a systematic approach to policy-making. Confusion and inefficiency arise when health system strengthening is defined as an objective and also when universal health coverage, health security or resilience are described as separate programmes to be implemented. So here is a simple guide: health system strengthening is what they do; universal health coverage, health security and resilience are what they want.
Maternal and child malnutrition in low-income and middle-income countries encompasses both undernutrition and a growing problem with overweight and obesity. Low body-mass index, indicative of ...maternal undernutrition, has declined somewhat in the past two decades but continues to be prevalent in Asia and Africa. Prevalence of maternal overweight has had a steady increase since 1980 and exceeds that of underweight in all regions. Prevalence of stunting of linear growth of children younger than 5 years has decreased during the past two decades, but is higher in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere and globally affected at least 165 million children in 2011; wasting affected at least 52 million children. Deficiencies of vitamin A and zinc result in deaths; deficiencies of iodine and iron, together with stunting, can contribute to children not reaching their developmental potential. Maternal undernutrition contributes to fetal growth restriction, which increases the risk of neonatal deaths and, for survivors, of stunting by 2 years of age. Suboptimum breastfeeding results in an increased risk for mortality in the first 2 years of life. We estimate that undernutrition in the aggregate—including fetal growth restriction, stunting, wasting, and deficiencies of vitamin A and zinc along with suboptimum breastfeeding—is a cause of 3·1 million child deaths annually or 45% of all child deaths in 2011. Maternal overweight and obesity result in increased maternal morbidity and infant mortality. Childhood overweight is becoming an increasingly important contributor to adult obesity, diabetes, and non-communicable diseases. The high present and future disease burden caused by malnutrition in women of reproductive age, pregnancy, and children in the first 2 years of life should lead to interventions focused on these groups.
Inequality between and within populations has origins in adverse early experiences. Developmental neuroscience shows how early biological and psychosocial experiences affect brain development. We ...previously identified inadequate cognitive stimulation, stunting, iodine deficiency, and iron-deficiency anaemia as key risks that prevent millions of young children from attaining their developmental potential. Recent research emphasises the importance of these risks, strengthens the evidence for other risk factors including intrauterine growth restriction, malaria, lead exposure, HIV infection, maternal depression, institutionalisation, and exposure to societal violence, and identifies protective factors such as breastfeeding and maternal education. Evidence on risks resulting from prenatal maternal nutrition, maternal stress, and families affected with HIV is emerging. Interventions are urgently needed to reduce children's risk exposure and to promote development in affected children. Our goal is to provide information to help the setting of priorities for early child development programmes and policies to benefit the world's poorest children and reduce persistent inequalities.
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