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Introduction to special Issue on Space and Place in medieval Ashkenaz preprint

AbstractBackgroundImmune protection following either vaccination or infection with SARS-CoV-2 decreases over time.ObjectiveTo determine the kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies following administration of two doses of BNT162b2 vaccine, or SARS-CoV-2 infection in unvaccinated individuals.MethodsAntibody titers were measured between January 31, 2021, and July 31, 2021 in two mutually exclusive groups: i) vaccinated individuals who received two doses of BNT162b2 vaccine and had no history of previous infection with COVID-19 and ii) SARS-CoV-2 convalescents who had not received the vaccine.ResultsA total of 2,653 individuals fully vaccinated by two doses of vaccine during the study period and 4,361 convalescent patients were included. Higher SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody titers were observed in vaccinated individuals (median 1581 AU/mL IQR [533.8-5644.6]) after the second vaccination, than in convalescent individuals (median 355.3 AU/mL IQR [141.2-998.7]; p<0.001). In vaccinated subjects, antibody titers decreased by up to 40% each subsequent month while in convalescents they decreased by less than 5% per month. Six months after BNT162b2 vaccination 16.1% subjects had antibody levels below the seropositivity threshold of <50 AU/mL, while only 10.8% of convalescent patients were below <50 AU/mL threshold after 9 months from SARS-CoV-2 infection.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates individuals who received the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine have different kinetics of antibody levels compared to patients who had been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with higher initial levels but a much faster exponential decrease in the first group.FundingThis research was internally funded by Leumit Health Services (LHS) and was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Center for Cancer Research.The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.Impact statementLarge scale study display the kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies present in individuals vaccinated with two doses of mRNA vaccine vs. unvaccinated patients who had recovered from the disease: initial levels of antibody are much higher in vaccinated patients, but decrease faster.

Predicting athlete injury risk has been a holy grail in sports medicine with little progress to date due to a variety of factors such as small sample sizes, significantly imbalanced data, and inadequate statistical approaches. Data modeling which does not account for multiple interactions across factors can be misleading. We address the small sample size by collecting longitudinal data of NBA player injuries using publicly available data sources and develop a state of the art deep learning model, METIC, to predict future injuries based on past injuries, game activity, and player statistics. We evaluate model performance using metrics appropriate for imbalanced data and find that METIC performs significantly better than other traditional machine learning approaches. METIC uses feature learning to create interactive features which become meaningful in combination with each other. METIC can be used by practitioners and front offices to improve athlete management and reduce injury incidence, potentially saving sports teams millions in revenue due to reduced athlete injuries.

The article reviews the latest available statistical information on gender inequalities in labor markets and in access to financial institutions, social services, and education. After a general review of agricultural development, household food security and rural poverty, population structure, and labor outmigration in Central Asia, the article examines the women’s role in the labor market, including both formal and informal female employment, the feminization of agriculture in the region, gender gaps in education and wages, and constraints on women’s access to extension services and land ownership. It is observed that women’s asset ownership rights and their access to supply and product markets are constrained by social norms. The article concludes with some conclusions and policy recommendations. This reassessment is designed to strengthen the qualitative approaches of the gender literature with some quantitative approaches from agricultural and development economics.

A main characteristic of dyslexia is poor use of sound categories. We now studied within-session learning of new sound categories in dyslexia, behaviorally and neurally, using fMRI. Human participants (males and females) with and without dyslexia were asked to discriminate which of two serially-presented tones had a higher pitch. The task was administered in two protocols, with and without a repeated reference frequency. The reference condition introduces regularity, and enhances frequency sensitivity in typically developing (TD) individuals. Enhanced sensitivity facilitates the formation of “high” and “low” pitch categories above and below this reference, respectively. We found that in TDs, learning was paralleled by a gradual decrease in activation of the primary auditory cortex (PAC), and reduced activation of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and left posterior parietal cortex (PPC), which are important for using sensory history. No such sensitivity was found among individuals with dyslexia (IDDs). Rather, IDDs showed reduced behavioral learning of stimulus regularities and no regularity-associated adaptation in the auditory cortex or in higher-level regions. We propose that IDDs' reduced cortical adaptation, associated with reduced behavioral learning of sound regularities, underlies their impoverished use of stimulus history, and consequently impedes their formation of rich sound categories. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Reading difficulties in dyslexia are often attributed to poor use of phonological categories. To test whether poor category use could result from poor learning of new sound categories in general, we administered an auditory discrimination task that examined the learning of new pitch categories above and below a repeated reference sound. Individuals with dyslexia (IDDs) learned categories slower than typically developing (TD) individuals. TD individuals showed adaptation to the repeated sounds that paralleled the category learning in their primary auditory cortex (PAC) and other higher-level regions. In dyslexia, no brain region showed such adaptation. We suggest that poor learning of sound statistics in sensory regions may underlie the poor representations of both speech and nonspeech categories in dyslexia.

This paper investigates the phenomenon of differential object marking (DOM) currently exhibited in Modern Hebrew. The consensus in the theoretical literature on Hebrew has been that the object marker et is only licensed in the context of definite DPs. We observe, however, that in Modern Hebrew partitive nominals may also be preceded by et. Using a judgment task, we asked 41 native Hebrew-speaking adults to rate sentences with et-marked partitive object DPs on a 5-point acceptability scale.Our results reveal that partitive items received a considerably high acceptance score, with an overall average of 3.6/5. In addition, we found a main effect for object-position and quantifier-type. In particular, acceptability of et-marked partitives increased significantly for preposed DPs and for DPs that contained proportional quantifiers (as opposed to cardinals).The optional acceptability of et-marked partitives ostensibly challenges the generally accepted view, according to which the distribution of et is categorically determined based on the two-way +/–definiteness opposition. We put forth a formal syntactic analysis that reconciles our findings with the definiteness approach.

An emerging challenge for time-to-event data is studying semi-competing risks, namely when two event times are of interest: a non-terminal event time (e.g. age at disease diagnosis), and a terminal event time (e.g. age at death). The non-terminal event is observed only if it precedes the terminal event, which may occur before or after the non-terminal event. Studying treatment or intervention effects on the dual event times is complicated because for some units, the non-terminal event may occur under one treatment value but not under the other. Until recently, existing approaches (e.g., the survivor average causal effect) generally disregarded the time-to-event nature of both outcomes. More recent research focused on principal strata effects within time-varying populations under Bayesian approaches. In this paper, we propose alternative non time-varying estimands, based on a single stratification of the population. We present a novel assumption utilizing the time-to-event nature of the data, which is weaker than the often-invoked monotonicity assumption. We derive results on partial identifiability, suggest a sensitivity analysis approach, and give conditions under which full identification is possible. Finally, we present non-parametric and semi-parametric estimation methods for right-censored data. 35 pages, 3 figure, 3 tables

Myeloid progenitors are intermediates between Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs) and Myeloid effector progeny. In mouse bone marrow, they are part of the Lineage− cKit+ Sca1− (LK) compartment. To date, most researchers used CD34 and FcγR surface markers for the dissection of this compartment into various populations. Surprisingly, however, this approach does not provide distinct separation by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). In this study, we suggest using CD150 instead of FcγR. We re-analyzed published single-cell RNA-Seq data and found that CD34/CD150 provides better sub-populations separation, compared to the “classical” CD34/FcγR-based approach. We confirm our findings by independent FACS analysis. We demonstrate comparable differentiation potential of the newly-obtained LK sub-populations, like previous “classical” ones. Therefore, we suggest the CD34/CD150 gating strategy, utilizing commonly-used surface markers, as a robust and reproducible separation of the LK compartment into distinct sub-populations.

AbstractThis study presents the results of the petrographic and geochemical analyses of the entire pottery assemblage discovered at the sixth-century (AD) cemetery of Szólád, Western Hungary, associated with the Langobard era in the territory of the former Roman province of Pannonia. Szólád is one of the most prominent archaeological sites of this period, where prior studies have shown that the cemetery was used for ca. one or two generations by a migrating group of diverse genetic background. The present work is the first integrated typological and archaeological science pottery analysis from the early migration period (fifth to sixth century) Hungary. We applied polarising light optical microscopy (OM), prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA), and neutron activation analysis (NAA) on all samples and, additionally, scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM–EDS) on one selected sample. One main fabric group with three subgroups were defined by OM, to which the majority of the samples belong. This fabric group was characterised by aplastic inclusions derived from a carbonate-cemented sandstone typical of the environs of Szólád; therefore, the vessels of this fabric group appear to have been produced locally. The remaining four samples display a variety of unique, ungrouped, fabrics (loners) indicative of different recipes and/or the presence of pottery originating from outside of the region. Our study concludes that the community associated with the cemetery favoured burying pots with the deceased that stylistically resembled archaic “Elbe Germanic” traditions, but which were in fact made locally. However, in some cases, relationships with more distant territories and cultural traditions are also represented.