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Introduction: Macroscopic complete resection (MCR) within a multimodality treatment concept offers currently the best survival for malignant pleural mesothelioma patients. The current standardised therapy is within a multimodality approach including (neo-)adjuvant chemotherapy followed by macroscopic complete resection (MCR). However, MCR in form of extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP) or extended pleurectomy/decortication ((E)PD) is correlated with significant morbidity and mortality if not performed in high volume centres as described previously according to the literature. In addition, there exist no standardised anaesthesiological protocol for this surgical approach according to the literature. Methods: At our institution, diagnosed mesothelioma patients up to an International Mesothelioma Interest Group (IMIG) stage III receive induction chemotherapy followed by either EPP or (E)PD and in certain cases additional adjuvant therapy. In the period 1999–end 2019, 362 patients were intended to be treated and 303 underwent induction chemotherapy followed by MCR. MCR can be achieved either by EPP or (E)PD. Both procedures request a good teamwork between the surgeon and the anaesthesiologist. Conclusion: Although, there has been a shift lately from EPP towards lung sparing procedure (E)PD, both surgical approaches are still performed to date and is a challenging procedure for both, the surgeon as well as the anaesthesiologist. Herewith, we present our institutional perioperative standard operating procedures for the surgical and anaesthesiological management of EPP or (E)PD according to international terms of reference.

AbstractScience communication is evolving: Increasingly, it is directed at the public rather than academic peers. Understanding the circumstances under which the public engages with scientific content is therefore crucial to improving science communication. In this article, we investigate the role of affect on audience engagement with a modern form of science communication: TED Talks on the social media platform YouTube. We examined how two aspects of affect, valence and density are associated with public engagement with the talk in terms of popularity (reflecting views and likes) and polarity (reflecting dislikes and comments). We found that the valence of TED Talks was associated with both popularity and polarity: Positive valence was linked to higher talk popularity and lower talk polarity. Density, on the other hand, was only associated with popularity: Higher affective density was linked to higher popularity—even more so than valence—but not polarity. Moreover, the association between affect and engagement was moderated by talk topic, but not by whether the talk included scientific content. Our results establish affect as an important covariate of audience engagement with scientific content on social media, which science communicators may be able to leverage to steer engagement and increase reach.

AbstractIt has been suggested that engraved abstract patterns dating from the Middle and Lower Palaeolithic served as means of representation and communication. Identifying the brain regions involved in visual processing of these engravings can provide insights into their function. In this study, brain activity was measured during perception of the earliest known Palaeolithic engraved patterns and compared to natural patterns mimicking human-made engravings. Participants were asked to categorise marks as being intentionally made by humans or due to natural processes (e.g. erosion, root etching). To simulate the putative familiarity of our ancestors with the marks, the responses of expert archaeologists and control participants were compared, allowing characterisation of the effect of previous knowledge on both behaviour and brain activity in perception of the marks. Besides a set of regions common to both groups and involved in visual analysis and decision-making, the experts exhibited greater activity in the inferior part of the lateral occipital cortex, ventral occipitotemporal cortex, and medial thalamic regions. These results are consistent with those reported in visual expertise studies, and confirm the importance of the integrative visual areas in the perception of the earliest abstract engravings. The attribution of a natural rather than human origin to the marks elicited greater activity in the salience network in both groups, reflecting the uncertainty and ambiguity in the perception of, and decision-making for, natural patterns. The activation of the salience network might also be related to the process at work in the attribution of an intention to the marks. The primary visual area was not specifically involved in the visual processing of engravings, which argued against its central role in the emergence of engraving production.

Clefts are understood as biclausal structures involving the movement of a clefted constituent from a lower clause, where it is generated, to a higher clause, where it is interpreted. Though both grammatical, subject and object clefts show signs of different acceptability in experimental settings. This degradation is ascribed to the fact that the object needs to cross an intervening subject, thus triggering intervention effects. In this paper, we show that intervention effects are also present in grammatical configurations, and give rise to lower-than-expected frequencies. Based on sets of features that play a role in the syntactic computation of locality, we compare the theoretically expected and the actually observed counts of features in a corpus of thirteen syntactically annotated treebanks for three languages (English, French, Italian). We find the quantitative effects predicted by the theory of intervention locality: object clefts are less frequent than expected in intervention configuration, while subject clefts are roughly as frequent as expected. We also find that the size of the effect is proportional to the number of features that give rise to the intervention effect. These results provide a three-fold contribution. First, they extend the empirical evidence in favour of the feature-based intervention theory of locality. Second, they provide theory-driven quantitative evidence, thus extending in a novel way the sources of evidence used to adjudicate theories. Finally, the paper provides a blueprint for future theory-driven quantitative investigations.

AbstractBritish capitalism was a knowledge economy that lived on reliable numerical information. We argue that human computers and the algorithms they used played a vital intermediation role and supported the growth of the British capital market, because they resolved digital information asymmetries. Given the lack of an archive for ‘Cyberpunk Victoria’, we demonstrate the computers’ role as financial intermediaries by identifying their imprint on the production of data by a prominent numerical factory, theInvestor's Monthly Manual, a companion publication of theEconomist. Our study underscores the import of digital mechanization and the relevance of human cybernetics to the development of financial capitalism.

Ce dossier explore les notions de normes et de transgressions dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine à travers le prisme du jeu en tant qu’opérateur et révélateur d’une société. Six études de cas s’échelonnent de la Grèce classique au Haut-Empire romain. Chacune témoigne de la capacité du jeu à créer un espace de cohésion sociale, comme dans le cadre du symposion ou du sphaeristerium, en fédérant une collectivité par le respect de règles communes dans un cadre civique, mais sans contrainte institutionnelle ou temporelle. Le contrat ludique contribue à l’intégration des individus en marge du corps civique, comme les esclaves et les affranchis. Une dimension transgressive se manifeste de différentes manières. Elle peut constituer une forme de jeu social, comme dans l’inversion des rôles de maîtres et esclaves pendant les Saturnales. Le contrat ludique peut aussi être rompu par l’excès, que ce soit de jeux d’argent ou d’une violence inappropriée exercée sur des animaux. This issue investigates the notions of norms and transgressions in Greco-Roman antiquity through the prism of play and games as fashioning as well as revealing a society. Six case studies range from Classical Greece to the High Roman Empire. Each one testifies to the capacity of games to create a space of social cohesion, as in the symposion or the sphaeristerium, by federating a community through the observance of common rules in a civic framework, but without institutional or temporal constraint. The ludic contract contributes to the assimilation of social norms and to the integration of individuals on the margins of the civic body, such as slaves and freedmen since childhood. A transgressive dimension manifests itself in different ways. It can be a form of social play, as in the reversal of the roles of masters and slaves during the Saturnalia. The ludic contract can also be broken by excess, either of gambling or of an inappropriate violence exercised on animals.

Peu attesté dans les inscriptions, et uniquement durant l’Empire, surtout au IIe siècle apr. J.-C., dans les provinces, à Cyrène, Avenches chez les Helvètes, Centuripe en Sicile et, probablement, à Nîmes en Narbonnaise, le sphaeristerium est mentionné dans les sources littéraires d’époque impériale et dans le Digeste. Toutes ces attestations signalent un lieu plus ou moins aménagé ou construit, dans un contexte sportif ou ludique, thermal ou balnéaire, public ou privé – dans une villa –, où les hommes jouaient à la balle. C’était un lieu de sociabilité : la pratique ludique participait à la construction civique et sociale du uir. Magistrats municipaux et empereurs en ont construit ou restauré et y ont joué. C’est un élément d’identification normée. The sphaeristerium was the place where Roman men played to ball game. The word is documented by three or four inscriptions discovered in Sicily, in Germania Superior, in Cyrenaica, and Gallia Narbonensis. This game room was designated as paganicum by epigraphy in Africa Proconsularis. Pliny the Younger described the sphaeristeria he possessed in his uillae. It is noticed Digest proved these places were located in private gardens. Sphaeristerium was in any case associated with bath and heated rooms. Gamers and ball boys were well known by literary and epigraphic documents: young persons, old men, freedmen, slaves gamed skillfully in order to relax themselves, to try out their ability. The corpus dated from 1st century AD until to 3rd century AD highlights a sociability complied with uirtus and bodily practices coming from palestra.