Search Results (54)

Introduction: Endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) is highly effective for ischemic stroke patients with a large vessel occlusion. EVT is typically only offered at urban hospitals; therefore, patients are transferred for EVT from hospitals that solely offer thrombolysis. There is uncertainly around patient selection for transfer, which results in a large number of futile transfers. Machine learning (ML) may be able to provide a model that better predicts patients to transfer for EVT. Objective: The objective of the study is to determine if ML can provide decision support to more accurately select patients to transfer for EVT. Methods: This is a retrospective study. Data from Nova Scotia, Canada from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2022 was used. Four supervised binary classification ML algorithms were applied, as follows: logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, and support vector machine. We also applied an ensemble method using the results of these four classification algorithms. The data was split into 80% training and 20% testing, and five-fold cross-validation was employed. Missing data was accounted for by the k-nearest neighbour’s algorithm. Model performance was assessed using accuracy, the futile transfer rate, and the false negative rate. Results: A total of 5156 ischemic stroke patients were identified during the time period. After exclusions, a final dataset of 93 patients was obtained. The accuracy of logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, support vector machine, and ensemble models was 68%, 79%, 74%, 63%, and 68%, respectively. The futile transfer rate with random forest and decision tree was 0% and 18.9%, respectively, and the false negative rate was 5.37 and 4.3%, respectively Conclusions: ML models can potentially reduce futile transfer rates, but future studies with larger datasets are needed to validate this finding and generalize it to other systems. Full article

Compositional analysis conducted on pottery and other ceramic items can shed light on their place of production and in certain cases, on technological aspects of the production sequence. The methods used, petrography and chemical analysis, can also be employed on cultic terracotta such as figurines, cult stands, models, or other clay objects. Several studies of such analyses of items from various periods in the Southern Levant have been published, mostly from temple contexts. This paper focuses particularly on two groups of items: clay models from the favissa at Yavneh and pillar figurines and other (mostly horse) figurines from Jerusalem and Tell en-Nasbeh in Iron Age Judah. These two groups are both roughly dated to the time span between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE. While the former group is of objects representing a temple context in Philistia, the latter is likely related to a domestic cult in Judah. The analysis of these objects is also examined against the background of a robust compositional analysis of regular pottery from the sites. The compositional analysis can indicate whether these objects were locally produced or imported from various regions (thus possibly brought by pilgrims), as well as whether they were “mass-produced” in a single workshop. The results can shed light on aspects of religious and cultic conducts in these occasions as well as compare domestic and temple-related cultic behaviors. Full article

The present study looks at how gentilics, usually attested in traditional biblical topoi from the Pentateuch, are re-contextualized in Ezekiel to provide a mental map of the peoples of the known Earth during the Exilic period. The basic constituents of Ezekiel’s mental map of foreign peoples recall some of the configurations known from the Babylonian mental map tradition. One known iteration of the latter is the Babylonian World Map (BM 92687). The document presents several interesting features as to how mental maps are formed in the Babylonian context. Its composition may date back to the late eighth century BCE. It is an iteration of the Babylonian mental map with a unique unmarked epicentre. Furthermore, it was probably impressed on clay on the occasion of a military campaign or itinerant work concerning specific toponyms in southern Babylonia. Finally, it was copied for scribal purposes in the Neo-Babylonian period. The present study proposes that these dynamics of the Babylonian mental map help understand Ezekiel’s mental map of foreign peoples. Aspects of Ezekiel’s mental map owe to an older Hebrew tradition partly known from the Pentateuch, although it is a unique iteration for Ezekiel’s oracles against the nations with historical references to the Exilic period. Jerusalem is the epicentre. Two main rings of foreign peoples encircle Jerusalem. The first circle comprises Judah’s neighbours from the east, south, west, and northwest. The second circle picks up from the northwest going up the coast, then south to Egypt, and finally east and northeast with Gog of Magog. Ezekiel concludes with the Temple Vision confirming Jerusalem’s central position. This case study implies that Ezekiel encountered and independently adapted aspects of the Mesopotamian mental map. Comparisons such as the one attempted here can illustrate the potential of ancient Near Eastern intertextuality and cultural hybridity. Full article

Background: In the UK, breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women, accounting for 31% of cancers and 15% of cancer-related deaths in women. In 2023, London’s breast screening coverage was 56%, falling below the NHS target of 70%. This survey assesses psychological and behavioural factors impacting screening attendance. Methods: Using the Theoretical Domains Framework, an online survey including 15 behavioural factors was distributed through a market research company to women eligible for breast screening (aged 47–73) across London and Southeast and West England. Logistic regression was used to predict the impact of behavioural variables on history of attendance and intention to attend future screening opportunities. Results: Of the 922 respondents who returned the full survey, 88.6% intended to attend future screenings, and 88.1% reported previously attending screenings regularly. ‘Behavioural regulation’ had the strongest influence on past attendance (OR = 1.92, p < 0.001) and future intent (OR = 1.56, p = 0.003). Not intending to attend was linked to emotional consequences (OR = 0.68, p = 0.003) and environmental barriers (OR = 0.66, p < 0.001), where OR—Odds Ratio. Conclusions: This survey identifies behavioural factors influencing breast screening participation and screening intention, providing insights that may help design interventions to increase attendance rates. Full article

Various scholars have noted Mesopotamian impact on various aspects of Israelite religious beliefs and practices and extrapolated from these on the broader nature of the relations between the regions. Indeed, no society is an island, and influences are inevitable, especially when a small, peripheral society is in contact with a powerful center. Still, insufficient attention has been paid to the social and cultural contexts of the interaction, and studies have often extrapolated from examples that are exceptional. A systematic examination of the cultural and social reactions in Judah to the intensifying interaction with Assyria reveals that avoidance, subversion, and resistance were far more prevalent than emulation. The large-scale death and deportations that accompanied the destruction of sites and regions by the Assyrian armies in the last third of the 8th century (mostly outside Judah) resulted in an understanding that nothing was secure anymore, that complete kinship groups could be annihilated overnight, and that long-held traditions could simply vanish. This gave rise to a mentality of “life in the shadow of the bomb”, which explains many subsequent developments in Judah, providing the context for various religious changes. Full article

The narrative of 2 Kings 18:17–19:9a, 36–37 (“Source B₁”) recounts pre-exilic religious collective trauma surrounding Sennacherib’s military advance against Judah in 710 BCE and its aftermath. In this narrative, the Rabshakeh uses the keywords “בטח” and “נצל” to assert that Yhwh has turned against Judah. However, his claims were subverted by the withdrawal of the Assyrian army and the later death of Sennacherib, facilitated by the divine intervention of Yhwh following Hezekiah’s supplication. Despite its significance, only a few studies have examined this narrative as that of trauma. Drawing on Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of the social process of cultural or collective trauma, this study argues that the function of this narrative is that of religious trauma narrative. It reconstructs the collective trauma of Sennacherib’s campaign to theologically defend the Davidic kingship and Yhwh and ultimately suggests a revised identity for the Judaean community to foster solidarity, even under the ongoing influence of Assyria following the military campaign. Full article

This article identifies and analyzes four passages in the ancient Chinese Christian manuscript Yishen Lun (YSL) that exhibit distinct Jewish characteristics. The phrase “yizhong zuo shenghua” (lines 356–358) mirrors the Book of Acts’ theme of “sanctification of the Gentiles,” rooted in the Jewish dichotomous worldview, placing Jews, or Shihu Ren, at the center. The author’s use of this phrase distinguishes him from yizhong ren (Gentiles) and aligns him with Shihu Ren. In lines 256–263, YSL directly attributes messianic declarations to Jesus, a central issue in Jewish accusations of false Messiahship. In contrast, the Gospel accounts avoid making such direct accusations, as Jesus did not openly declare himself the Messiah. This distinction highlights YSL’s closer alignment with Jewish polemical traditions and legal concerns. Additionally, the use of “City of Judah” in lines 345–347 as an archaic designation for Jerusalem, predominantly found in Jewish traditions, contrasts with the more common “City of David” in other biblical texts. A philological analysis of lines 279–281 reveals imagery analogous to the synagogue parochet covering the Ark of the Scrolls. These four Jewish elements complement the one analyzed in the author’s earlier 2024 article, “The Parable of Wise and Foolish Builders in Yishen Lun and Rabbinic Literature.” That study concludes that the parable of wise and foolish builders in lines 146–156 of YSL aligns more closely with Jewish rabbinic traditions than the Gospel version. These new hermeneutical insights should provide interesting and fresh data for ongoing research into YSL. Full article

The Module-0 Demonstrator is a single-phase 600 kg liquid argon time projection chamber operated as a prototype for the DUNE liquid argon near detector. Based on the ArgonCube design concept, Module-0 features a novel 80k-channel pixelated charge readout and advanced high-coverage photon detection system. In this paper, we present an analysis of an eight-day data set consisting of 25 million cosmic ray events collected in the spring of 2021. We use this sample to demonstrate the imaging performance of the charge and light readout systems as well as the signal correlations between the two. We also report argon purity and detector uniformity measurements and provide comparisons to detector simulations. Full article

In the context of the Catholic Reformation serious concerns were expressed about the affective potency of naturalistic depictions of beautiful, sensuous figures in religious art. In theological discourse similar anxieties had long been articulated about potential contiguities between elevating, licit desire for an extraordinarily beautiful divinity and base, illicit feeling. In the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, in the decades preceding the Council of Trent, a handful of writers, thinkers and artists asserted a positive connection between spirituality and sexuality. Leonardo da Vinci, and a group of painters working under his aegis in Lombardy, were keenly aware of painting’s capacity to evoke feeling in a viewer. Pictures they produced for domestic devotion featured knowingly sensuous and unusually epicene beauties. This article suggests that this iconography daringly advocated the value of pleasurable sensation to religiosity. Its popularity allows us to envisage beholders who were neither mired in sin, nor seeking to divorce themselves from the physical realm, but engaging afresh with age-old dialectics of body and soul, sexuality and spirituality. Full article

Studies since 2005 have raised doubts about the Assyrian King List’s (AKL) intention and ability to measure absolute time. If telescoping of time occurred, it would be difficult to detect during periods when royal annals were scant. The best way to detect discontinuity in the AKL is by comparison with contemporary king lists, such as one constructed from 1–2 Kings regnal formulas. If the AKL conflates time, an assessment of the plausibility of historical scenarios resulting from different timeframes allows for discrimination between one timeline or another. Israel and Judah’s interlocking chronological systems make a comparison with the Neo-Assyrian timeline possible but contain 44 more years than the timeline implied by the AKL and Assyrian Eponym Canon. By narrowing the window of time within which a deficit in the Neo-Assyrian canons may have occurred, possible reasons for missing years in the consensus chronology present themselves. This investigation concludes that Assyria sought to maintain the legitimacy of the institution of kingship during a protracted period of unacceptable or anomalous authority. Concerns surrounding the continuity of kingship would have dictated the final form of the Assyrian King List/Assyrian Eponym Canon. Using Divided Kingdom regnal data, a revision of the historical timeline is proposed that aligns archaeological, radiocarbon, biblical, and Assyrian data. Full article

In communities where people lack on-demand, safely managed drinking water, stored household water often becomes contaminated by fecal bacteria, regardless of the source-water quality. The objectives of this paper are to assess and control bacterial contamination in stored household water in Toamasina, a rapidly urbanizing city in eastern coastal Madagascar. We collected samples of source water and stored household water from 10 representative households that use different water sources and different storage strategies, and we analyzed the samples for several fecal indicator bacteria. We also tested three methods that residents of Toamasina could realistically employ for cleaning their household water storage vessels, assessing the effect of the cleaning methods on measured bacterial levels in the water. Consistent with the previous literature, we found that concentrations of total coliforms in stored household water were significantly higher than in the corresponding source water (p < 0.05). In 100% of households that stored their water in 20 L polyethylene jerrycans (n = 4), biofilms on the walls of the jerrycan harbored total coliforms and Enterococcus. The use of a closed storage container was, on its own, not found to provide a meaningful protective effect against bacterial regrowth; to be protective, closed storage containers must be combined with high-quality source water and/or with adequate cleaning to prevent biofilm formation. A dilute solution of sodium hypochlorite, known locally as Sûr’Eau or Manadio Rano, was both the most effective and the least expensive method for cleaning household water storage containers. We conclude that regular and effective cleaning of storage containers is an essential component of safe water storage. Because household storage of collected water is common in many low- and middle-income countries, these results are important towards the worldwide achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6. Full article

In this study, I explore the way in which a German émigré rose to the status of a cultural hero in Castile, Spain, and how his work of law became one of the three “pillars” of Jewish law. A survey of the Jewish legal landscape in medieval Spain during the fourteenth century reveals a shift in the status of one of the centers of Talmudic and legal (halakha) studies there as compared with the previous century. The fortune of the center in Toledo changed dramatically, and this change is traceable to the impact of one German émigré, Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel. Many scholars have examined Asher’s life and work. However, none have seriously analyzed the change he brought to the legal culture in Castile or examined the mechanism of how this occurred. This study describes Asher’s impact and attempts to expose the processes that brought about this transformation. Full article

Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt have been read together in several studies in previous years. They make an intriguing pair because Arendt appears to share a good deal of Schmitt’s diagnosis concerning the modern crisis of legitimacy, while also departing radically from his political conclusions. This article frames the Arendt–Schmitt encounter, real or imagined, in terms of the role of analogy in the discourse of political theology. Schmitt’s political theology relies on what he calls a “systematic analogy”. Arendt, meanwhile, levies a devastating critique of all conceptual analogies between theology and politics. The article shows that this difference between Schmitt and Arendt is undergirded by a fundamental theological dispute. Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty depends on the possibility that human beings can become God. Arendt’s contrasting account of freedom is structured by a fundamental disanalogy between humans and God. The article gestures to the idea that this dispute may be something of a basic difference between Christianity and Judaism. Full article

This paper presents a unique case of the application of remote sensing methods in archaeological survey devoted to ancient pre-Roman Imperial roads in the Southern Levant. The results of our preparatory remote sensing research and subsequent fieldwork in Jordan and Israel between 22 February and 23 March 2023, within the framework of the research project entitled “Travel and Mobility in Hellenistic and Early Roman Palestine”, are reported and discussed. Part of this project is a large-scale, systematic research attempt to discover additional ancient pre-Roman roads and to suggest a working methodology for future research. The methodology is supposed to combine remote sensing research and archaeological survey. The project’s first fieldwork achieved several goals. First, the modern methods enabled us to provide a high-resolution capture of the detected features and artifacts, including the courses of ancient roads and the locations of road-related archaeological sites. Altogether, 105 road remains, 62 archaeological sites, and 14 pottery findings were identified; what is more, 11 GPS (Global Positioning System) tracks of ancient roads were registered. Second, we suggested necessary revisions to the previous state of research and reported new findings. For instance, newly discovered rock art evidence found along Glueck’s Road confirms the continuity of the use of this road long into late antiquity and early Islam. Third, some methodological conclusions were reached. For example, a multi-source approach to identifying ancient roads including the use of archival cartographic sources, archival and modern satellite and aerial imagery, and the databases of archaeological sites is still necessary. However, there can be no doubt that spatial analyses and remote sensing studies must be accompanied by archaeological fieldwork, which is absolutely necessary for determining the dating of the roads (by dating the settlement and pottery) and a detailed identification of the road courses (particularly through the discovery of road-related infrastructure). Full article

Within the modern era, corporates are compelled to own an appealing and effective website to survive and thrive within the competitive global digital marketplace. Whilst there are several web metrics to focus on, a key focus area of web analytics is the level of drop-offs. The drop-off rate represents the proportion of visitors that prematurely drop-off a website. Whilst the exact reason behind the drop-off may only be assumed (could be due to the loss of Internet connectivity or dis-interest), this study attempted to identify the triggers behind website drop-offs through a survival problem. Each person entering the website, at a given instance, can view any number of web pages (such as home, contact us, about us, etc.). However, on the studied website, roughly one in five visitors have prematurely dropped-off. The study was conducted on an engineering corporate website with the data collected via the Google Analytics tracking tool. The aim was to determine the key hazards that contributed to the observed drop-off rate through the use of a cox proportional hazard model and a survival random forest model. On the studied website, based on empirical evidence, the online visitors were censored so that those who viewed three or more webpages within the visit were labelled as ‘survived’. Visitors who viewed two or less webpages before leaving the website were labelled as ‘did not survive’. Thereby, the ‘did not survive’ observations represented the visits that prematurely dropped off the website. Using the visitor’s physical and behavioral characteristics, as tracked by Google Analytics, the cox-proportional hazard and survival random forest models were employed to determine the hazards that influence survival. Visitor’s physical characteristics include the device used to access the website, geolocation at the time of the visit, number of previous visits, etc., whilst the behavioral characteristics include the landing page on website, level of engagement, whether entry into the website originated through an organic search or not. Whilst both models have identified similar features as being key hazards, the survival random forest model has been shown to out-perform on the non-linear features relative to the cox proportional hazard model and obtained a higher classification accuracy. During the validation process, the survival random forest model (63%) outperformed the cox model (58%) on classification accuracy. The features that were identified as hazardous indicated that some webpages needed further attention, the visitor’s level of engagement with the website (the degree of scrolling and clicks), the distance between a visitor’s location and the studied corporate’s location, the historic frequency of visiting the website, and if the website entry point was through an organic search. Whilst the study of drop-offs has been a commonly researched problem, this study details the investigation of key hazards through the use of survival models and compares the outcomes of a regression-based model to a machine learning survival model. Full article