The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet I. Flower
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Public Leadership ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Interpretation

The most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organized by elites. Throughout the Roman world featured small shrines to the beloved lares, a pair of cheerful little dancing gods. These shrines were maintained primarily by ordinary Romans, and often by slaves and freedmen, for whom the lares cult provided a unique public leadership role. This book offers an original account of these gods and a new way of understanding the lived experience of everyday Roman religion. Weaving together a wide range of evidence, the book sets forth a new interpretation of the much-disputed nature of the lares. The book makes the case that they are not spirits of the dead, as many have argued, but rather benevolent protectors. The book examines the rituals honoring the lares, their cult sites, and their iconography, as well as the meaning of the snakes often depicted alongside lares in paintings of gardens. It also looks at Compitalia, a popular midwinter neighborhood festival in honor of the lares, and describes how its politics played a key role in Rome's increasing violence in the 60s and 50s BC, as well as in the efforts of Augustus to reach out to ordinary people living in the city's local neighborhoods. A reconsideration of seemingly humble gods that were central to the religious world of the Romans, this is also the first major account of the full range of lares worship in the homes, neighborhoods, and temples of ancient Rome.

The Roman World of Early Christianity

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
D. H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Universe

Drawing on conventional terminology and concepts, this chapter describes the religious world in which Christianity emerged. It is impossible to offer an accurate count of the number of gods, divinized beings, daimonions, and numina that were thought to populate the universe and have direct influence on the lives of people. It was quite literally “a world full of gods.” Cultural divisions and a wide range of religious practices also existed across the spectrum of what is typically called popular piety, and the more philosophical appropriation of ideas of the divine. According to a scheme that would prove to be foundational, there were three general categories of Roman religion: the gods of poets or what Varro called the “mythical”; the natural (that is, physical) gods of philosophers; and the gods of cultic or civil theology (that is, of the state).

The Major Transitions in Evolution

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Maynard Smith ◽  
Eors Szathmary
Keyword(s):  
Full Range ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Major Transitions ◽  
Insect Societies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Major Transition ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
History Of ◽  
Emergence Of Cooperation ◽  
Multicellular Organisms

Over the history of life there have been several major changes in the way genetic information is organized and transmitted from one generation to the next. These transitions include the origin of life itself, the first eukaryotic cells, reproduction by sexual means, the appearance of multicellular plants and animals, the emergence of cooperation and of animal societies, and the unique language ability of humans. This ambitious book provides the first unified discussion of the full range of these transitions. The authors highlight the similarities between different transitions--between the union of replicating molecules to form chromosomes and of cells to form multicellular organisms, for example--and show how understanding one transition sheds light on others. They trace a common theme throughout the history of evolution: after a major transition some entities lose the ability to replicate independently, becoming able to reproduce only as part of a larger whole. The authors investigate this pattern and why selection between entities at a lower level does not disrupt selection at more complex levels. Their explanation encompasses a compelling theory of the evolution of cooperation at all levels of complexity. Engagingly written and filled with numerous illustrations, this book can be read with enjoyment by anyone with an undergraduate training in biology. It is ideal for advanced discussion groups on evolution and includes accessible discussions of a wide range of topics, from molecular biology and linguistics to insect societies.

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy Volume 7

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Extended Review

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy annually collects the best current work in the field of medieval philosophy. The various volumes print original essays, reviews, critical discussions, and editions of texts. The aim is to contribute to an understanding of the full range of themes and problems in all aspects of the field, from late antiquity into the Renaissance, and extending over the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian traditions. Volume 6 includes work on a wide range of topics, including Davlat Dadikhuda on Avicenna, Christopher Martin on Abelard’s ontology, Jeremy Skrzypek and Gloria Frost on Aquinas’s ontology, Jean‐Luc Solère on instrumental causality, Peter John Hartman on Durand of St.‐Pourçain, and Kamil Majcherek on Chatton’s rejection of final causality. The volume also includes an extended review of Thomas Williams of a new book on Aquinas’s ethics by Colleen McCluskey.

Women in the Roman World

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Letizia Caldelli
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman Women ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
Women’S Views

Inscriptions help us reconstruct some elements of the lived experience of women in the Roman world. This chapter analyzes the epigraphic evidence for women’s role in economic, cultural, religious, and civic life, acknowledging the inevitable biases inherent in such texts. We do not usually have access to women’s views of themselves or of each other, since men were responsible for the majority of the relevant inscriptions. Nevertheless, we can study how men looked upon women, how they reacted to them, and what their expectations of Roman women were .

Reviving Roman Religion: Sacred Trees in the Roman World by Ailsa Hunt

2017 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-436
Author(s):  
Celia E. Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Religion ◽  
Roman World

Compressor Performance and Operability in Swirl Distortion

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yogi Sheoran ◽  
Bruce Bouldin ◽  
P. Murali Krishnan
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Complex Geometry ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Axial Compressor ◽  
Cfd Model ◽  
Generator System ◽  
Sliding Mesh ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Compressor Performance ◽  
The Impact

Inlet swirl distortion has become a major area of concern in the gas turbine engine community. Gas turbine engines are increasingly installed with more complicated and tortuous inlet systems, like those found on embedded installations on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These inlet systems can produce complex swirl patterns in addition to total pressure distortion. The effect of swirl distortion on engine or compressor performance and operability must be evaluated. The gas turbine community is developing methodologies to measure and characterize swirl distortion. There is a strong need to develop a database containing the impact of a range of swirl distortion patterns on a compressor performance and operability. A recent paper presented by the authors described a versatile swirl distortion generator system that produced a wide range of swirl distortion patterns of a prescribed strength, including bulk swirl, twin swirl and offset swirl. The design of these swirl generators greatly improved the understanding of the formation of swirl. The next step of this process is to understand the effect of swirl on compressor performance. A previously published paper by the authors used parallel compressor analysis to map out different speed lines that resulted from different types of swirl distortion. For the study described in this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is used to couple upstream swirl generator geometry to a single stage of an axial compressor in order to generate a family of compressor speed lines. The complex geometry of the analyzed swirl generators requires that the full 360° compressor be included in the CFD model. A full compressor can be modeled several ways in a CFD analysis, including sliding mesh and frozen rotor techniques. For a single operating condition, a study was conducted using both of these techniques to determine the best method given the large size of the CFD model and the number of data points that needed to be run to generate speed lines. This study compared the CFD results for the undistorted compressor at 100% speed to comparable test data. Results of this study indicated that the frozen rotor approach provided just as accurate results as the sliding mesh but with a greatly reduced cycle time. Once the CFD approach was calibrated, the same techniques were used to determine compressor performance and operability when a full range of swirl distortion patterns were generated by upstream swirl generators. The compressor speed line shift due to co-rotating and counter-rotating bulk swirl resulted in a predictable performance and operability shift. Of particular importance is the compressor performance and operability resulting from an exposure to a set of paired swirl distortions. The CFD generated speed lines follow similar trends to those produced by parallel compressor analysis.

scholarly journals State of the Science in Dried Blood Spots

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 656-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey D Freeman ◽  
Lori M Rosman ◽  
Jeremy D Ratcliff ◽  
Paul T Strickland ◽  
David R Graham ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Dried Blood Spots ◽  
Blood Spots ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Review Of Reviews ◽  
Near Term ◽  
State Of The Science

Abstract BACKGROUND Advancements in the quality and availability of highly sensitive analytical instrumentation and methodologies have led to increased interest in the use of microsamples. Among microsamples, dried blood spots (DBS) are the most well-known. Although there have been a variety of review papers published on DBS, there has been no attempt at describing the full range of analytes measurable in DBS, or any systematic approach published for characterizing the strengths and weaknesses associated with adoption of DBS analyses. CONTENT A scoping review of reviews methodology was used for characterizing the state of the science in DBS. We identified 2018 analytes measured in DBS and found every common analytic method applied to traditional liquid samples had been applied to DBS samples. Analytes covered a broad range of biomarkers that included genes, transcripts, proteins, and metabolites. Strengths of DBS enable its application in most clinical and laboratory settings, and the removal of phlebotomy and the need for refrigeration have expanded biosampling to hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations. Weaknesses may limit adoption in the near term because DBS is a nontraditional sample often requiring conversion of measurements to plasma or serum values. Opportunities presented by novel methodologies may obviate many of the current limitations, but threats around the ethical use of residual samples must be considered by potential adopters. SUMMARY DBS provide a wide range of potential applications that extend beyond the reach of traditional samples. Current limitations are serious but not intractable. Technological advancements will likely continue to minimize constraints around DBS adoption.

Précis ofUnified theories of cognition

1992 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Newell
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Syllogistic Reasoning ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Unified Theories

AbstractThe book presents the case that cognitive science should turn its attention to developing theories of human cognition that cover the full range of human perceptual, cognitive, and action phenomena. Cognitive science has now produced a massive number of high-quality regularities with many microtheories that reveal important mechanisms. The need for integration is pressing and will continue to increase. Equally important, cognitive science now has the theoretical concepts and tools to support serious attempts at unified theories. The argument is made entirely by presenting an exemplar unified theory of cognition both to show what a real unified theory would be like and to provide convincing evidence that such theories are feasible. The exemplar is SOAR, a cognitive architecture, which is realized as a software system. After a detailed discussion of the architecture and its properties, with its relation to the constraints on cognition in the real world and to existing ideas in cognitive science, SOAR is used as theory for a wide range of cognitive phenomena: immediate responses (stimulus-response compatibility and the Sternberg phenomena); discrete motor skills (transcription typing); memory and learning (episodic memory and the acquisition of skill through practice); problem solving (cryptarithmetic puzzles and syllogistic reasoning); language (sentence verification and taking instructions); and development (transitions in the balance beam task). The treatments vary in depth and adequacy, but they clearly reveal a single, highly specific, operational theory that works over the entire range of human cognition, SOAR is presented as an exemplar unified theory, not as the sole candidate. Cognitive science is not ready yet for a single theory – there must be multiple attempts. But cognitive science must begin to work toward such unified theories.

scholarly journals Performance Criteria for Testosterone Measurements Based on Biological Variation in Adult Males: Recommendations from the Partnership for the Accurate Testing of Hormones

2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (12) ◽  
pp. 1703-1710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeo-Min Yun ◽  
Julianne Cook Botelho ◽  
Donald W Chandler ◽  
Alex Katayev ◽  
William L Roberts ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Total Error ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Biological Variation ◽  
Analytical Performance ◽  
Performance Criteria ◽  
Performance Goals ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
Large Variability ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Variation Data

BACKGROUND Testosterone measurements that are accurate, reliable, and comparable across methodologies are crucial to improving public health. Current US Food and Drug Administration–cleared testosterone assays have important limitations. We sought to develop assay performance requirements on the basis of biological variation that allow physiologic changes to be distinguished from assay analytical errors. METHODS From literature review, the technical advisory subcommittee of the Partnership for the Accurate Testing of Hormones compiled a database of articles regarding analytical and biological variability of testosterone. These data, mostly from direct immunoassay-based methodologies, were used to specify analytical performance goals derived from within- and between-person variability of testosterone. RESULTS The allowable limits of desirable imprecision and bias on the basis of currently available biological variation data were 5.3% and 6.4%, respectively. The total error goal was 16.7%. From recent College of American Pathologists proficiency survey data, most currently available testosterone assays missed these analytical performance goals by wide margins. Data from the recently established CDC Hormone Standardization program showed that although the overall mean bias of selected certified assays was within 6.4%, individual sample measurements could show large variability in terms of precision, bias, and total error. CONCLUSIONS Because accurate measurement of testosterone across a wide range of concentrations [approximately 2–2000 ng/dL (0.069–69.4 nmol/L)] is important, we recommend using available data on biological variation to calculate performance criteria across the full range of expected values. Additional studies should be conducted to obtain biological variation data on testosterone from women and children, and revisions should be made to the analytical goals for these patient populations.

scholarly journals Microtubules soften due to cross-sectional flattening

eLife ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edvin Memet ◽  
Feodor Hilitski ◽  
Margaret A Morris ◽  
Walter J Schwenger ◽  
Zvonimir Dogic ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Strain ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Elastic Model ◽  
Softening Effect ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Mechanical Compliance ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Elastic Filament ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Effective Mechanical Properties

We use optical trapping to continuously bend an isolated microtubule while simultaneously measuring the applied force and the resulting filament strain, thus allowing us to determine its elastic properties over a wide range of applied strains. We find that, while in the low-strain regime, microtubules may be quantitatively described in terms of the classical Euler-Bernoulli elastic filament, above a critical strain they deviate from this simple elastic model, showing a softening response with increasing deformations. A three-dimensional thin-shell model, in which the increased mechanical compliance is caused by flattening and eventual buckling of the filament cross-section, captures this softening effect in the high strain regime and yields quantitative values of the effective mechanical properties of microtubules. Our results demonstrate that properties of microtubules are highly dependent on the magnitude of the applied strain and offer a new interpretation for the large variety in microtubule mechanical data measured by different methods.

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