Digital Commons Network^™

Pparα Is A Key Regulator Of Hepatic Fgf21, Thomas Lundasen, Mary Hunt, Lisa-Marie Nilsson, Sabysashi Sanyal, Bo Angelin, Stefan Alexson, Mats Rudling

Articles

The metabolic regulator fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) has antidiabetic properties in animal models of diabetes and obesity. Using quantitative RT-PCR, we here show that the hepatic gene expression of FGF21 is regulated by the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARalpha). Fasting or treatment of mice with the PPARalpha agonist Wy-14,643 induced FGF21 mRNA by 10-fold and 8-fold, respectively. In contrast, FGF21 mRNA was low in PPARalpha deficient mice, and fasting or treatment with Wy-14,643 did not induce FGF21. Obese ob/ob mice, known to have increased PPARalpha levels, displayed 12-fold increased hepatic FGF21 mRNA levels. The potential importance of PPARalpha for …

Impact Of Astrophysical Processes On The Gamma-Ray Background From Dark Matter Annihilations, Eun-Joo Ahn, Gianfranco Bertone, David Merritt, Pengjie Zhang

Articles

We study the impact of astrophysical processes on the gamma-ray background produced by the annihilation of dark matter particles in cosmological halos, with particular attention to the consequences of the formation of supermassive black holes. In scenarios where these objects form adiabatically from the accretion of matter on small seeds, dark matter is first compressed into very dense “spikes”, then its density progressively decreases due to annihilations and scattering off of stellar cusps. With respect to previous analyses, based on non-evolving halos, the predicted annihilation signal is higher and significantly distorted at low energies, reflecting the large contribution to the …

Induction Of Systemic Acquired Resistance In Cotton Foliage Does Not Adversely Affect The Performance Of An Entomopathogen, Ruth C. Plymale, Gary W. Felton, Kelli Hoover

Articles

Baculoviral efficacy against lepidopteran larvae is substantially impacted by the host plant. Here, we characterized how baculoviral pathogenicity to cotton-fed Heliothis virescens larvae is affected by induction of systemic acquired resistance (SAR). Numerous studies have shown that SAR induced by the plant elicitor benzo-(1,2,3)-thiadiazole-7- carbothioic acid S-methyl ester (BTH) can protect against plant pathogens, but reports on the impacts of SAR on chewing herbivores or on natural enemies of herbivores are few. We found that BTH application significantly increased foliar peroxidase activity, condensed tannin levels, and total phenolic levels but did not alter dihydroxyphenolic levels. Consumption of BTH-treated foliage did …

I'M A New Librarian! ... Now What?, Elizabeth J. Cox

Articles

A brief, annotated bibliography geared towards new librarians, covering general resources, professional development, documentation, resume/C.V., research, and leadership.

Open Angle Glaucoma Effects On Preattentive Visual Search (Pavs) Efficiency For Flicker, Motion Displacement And Orientation Pop-Out Tasks, James Loughman, Peter Davison, Ian Flitchcroft

Articles

Background/aim: Preattentive visual search (PAVS) describes rapid and efficient retinal and neural processing capable of immediate target detection in the visual field. Damage to the nerve fibre layer or visual pathway might reduce the efficiency with which the visual system performs such analysis. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that patients with glaucoma are impaired on parallel search tasks, and that this would serve to distinguish glaucoma in early cases. Methods: Three groups of observers (glaucoma patients, suspect and normal individuals) were examined, using computer-generated flicker, orientation, and vertical motion displacement targets to assess PAVS efficiency. …

Performance Analysis Of Direct N-Body Algorithms On Special-Purpose Supercomputers, Stefan Harfst, Alessia Gualandris, David Merritt, Rainer Spurzem, Simon Portegies Zwart, Peter Berczik

Articles

Direct-summation N-body algorithms compute the gravitational interaction between stars in an exact way and have a computational complexity of O(N^2). Performance can be greatly enhanced via the use of special-purpose accelerator boards like the GRAPE-6A. However the memory of the GRAPE boards is limited. Here, we present a performance analysis of direct N-body codes on two parallel supercomputers that incorporate special-purpose boards, allowing as many as four million particles to be integrated. Both computers employ high-speed, Infiniband interconnects to minimize communication overhead, which can otherwise become significant due to the small number of "active" particles at each time step. We …

Extending And Measuring The Quality Of Fresh-Cut Fruit And Vegetables: A Review, Catherine Barry-Ryan, Ana Belen Martin-Diana, Daniel Rico, J. Barat

Articles

The market sales of ready-to-use fresh vegetables have grown rapidly in recent decades as a result of changes in consumer attitudes, especially consumption of fresh-cut lettuce and carrot due to their use in prepared salads. Chlorine solutions have been widely used to sanitise fruit and vegetables in the fresh-cut industry. However, the association of chlorine with the possible formation of carcinogenic chlorinated compounds in water has called into question the use of chlorine in food processing. There is a real need to find alternatives for preservation of fresh-cut fruit and vegetables in order to improve the efficacy of washing treatments. …

The Cash Nexus, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Courts and legislatures have labored for decades to protect patients' choice of medical treatments, even though patients seize that gift less eagerly than lawmakers expect. Yet while courts have rushed to build the whited sepulchre of informed consent, they have fled from a related problem that patients actually yearn to solve and that actually can be ameliorated the plight of patients who perforce agree to a treatment before they know its costs and who receive a bill both unrelated to the treatment's value and several times what an insured patient would pay. Increasingly, patients must be consumers in the medical …

How Special Are Brightest Cluster Galaxies? The Impact Of Near-Infrared Luminosities On Scaling Relations For Bcgs, Dan Batcheldor, Alessandro Marconi, David Merritt

Articles

Using the extended J, H and K magnitudes provided by the 2MASS data archive, we consider the position of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in the observed relations between inferred supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass and the host galaxy properties, as well as their position in the stellar velocity dispersion and luminosity ( ∗ − L) relation, compared to E and S0 galaxies. We find that SMBH masses (M•) derived from near-infrared (NIR) magnitudes do not exceed 3×109M⊙ and that these masses agree well with the predictions made from ∗. In the NIR, there is no evidence that BCGs leave the …

On The Nature Of Optical Nuclei In Fr I Radio-Galaxies From Acs/Hst Imaging Polarimetry, Alessandro Capetti, David J. Axon, Marco Chiaberge, W. B. Sparks, F. Duccio Macchetto, M. Carcraft, A. Celotti

Articles

We obtained optical imaging polarimetry with the ACS/HRC aboard the HST of the 9 closest radiogalaxies in the 3C catalogue with an FR I morphology. The nuclear sources seen in direct HST images in these galaxies are found to be highly polarized with levels in the range 2 - 11 % with a median value of 7 %.We discuss the different mechanisms that produce polarized emission and conclude that the only viable interpretation is a synchrotron origin for the optical nuclei. This idea is strengthened by the analogy with the polarization properties of BL Lac objects, providing also further support …

Maximum Gravitational Recoil, Manuela Campanelli, Carlos O. Lousto, Yosef Zlochower, David Merritt

Articles

Recent calculations of gravitational radiation recoil generated during black-hole binary mergers have reopened the possibility that a merged binary can be ejected even from the nucleus of a massive host galaxy. Here we report the first systematic study of gravitational recoil of equal-mass binaries with equal, but counter-aligned, spins parallel to the orbital plane. Such an orientation of the spins is expected to maximize the recoil. We find that recoil velocity (which is perpendicular to the orbital plane) varies sinusoidally with the angle that the initial spin directions make with the initial linear momenta of each hole and scales up …

Key Skills Framework: Enhancing Employability Within A Lifelong Learning Paradigm, Aidan Kenny, Ray English, Dave Kilmartin

Articles

Employability has become an area of interest among the general public and policy makers alike, with an increasing number of reports in the general media regarding the need for workers in certain sectors to up-skill due to the possible threat of job ‘displacement’. In addition, there has been an increase in education and training policy documents emphasising that citizens should pursue Lifelong Learning /Life Wide Learning to address the increased job-related uncertainty attributed to the globalisation process and the concomitant competitive threats. Academics such as Barnett (2005) claim that we are living in an era of ‘super complexity' and rapid …

Secure Communications With An Asymptotic Secrecy Model, Bo Yuan

Articles

As knowledge based systems become more sophisticated, communications between systems or among their subsystems often conducted over public channels such as the Internet, wireless medium, etc. To secure communications over public channels, the most often used method is Diffie and Hellman’s public key infrastructure approach. This method requires a trusted third party to verify identifies, which does not play well with independent knowledge based systems, especially in the case of autonomous agents. In this paper, we proposes an asymptotic secrecy model to secure communications between and within knowledge based systems over public channels. The new model assumes that adversaries are …

An Investigation Of Introductory Physics Students’ Approaches To Problem Solving, Laura Walsh, Robert Howard, Brian Bowe

Articles

This paper outlines ongoing research investigating students’ approaches to quantitative and qualitative problem solving in physics. This is an empirical study, which was conducted using a phenomenographic approach to analyse and interpret data from individual semi-structured interviews with students from introductory physics courses. The result of the study thus far is a preliminary set of hierarchical categories that describe the students’ problem-solving approaches when faced with various physics problems. The findings from the research presented here indicate that many introductory students in higher education do not approach problem solving in a strategic manner and many do not try to link …

Evaluation Of The Idi-Mrsa Assay On The Smartcycler Real-Time Pcr Platform For Rapid Detection Of Mrsa From Screening Specimens, Celine Herra, A. S. Rossney, M. Fitzgibbon, P. Morgan, B. O’Connell

Articles

Rapid accurate detection is a prerequisite for the successful control of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The IDI-MRSA real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay was designed to provide rapid results from nasal specimens collected in Stuart’s liquid transport medium. This study has evaluated the IDI-MRSA kit for use in a clinical laboratory by investigating the following parameters: (1) limits of detection (LoD), (2) performance with Amies’ gel-based transport medium, (3) ability to detect strains of MRSA in a collection representative of MRSA in Ireland since 1974 (n 113) and (4) performance in a clinical trial with swabs from nose, throat and …

Optimal Tax Compliance And Penalties When The Law Is Uncertain, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

This article examines the optimal level of tax compliance and the optimal penalty for noncompliance in circumstances in which the substance of the tax law is uncertain - that is, when the precise application of the Internal Revenue Code to a particular situation is not clear. In such situations, a number of interesting questions arise. This article will consider two of them. First, as a normative matter, how certain should taxpayers be before they rely on a particular interpretation of a substantively uncertain tax rule? If a particular position is not clearly prohibited but neither is it clearly allowed, what …

Cts Split 2007 The (Audio) Diary In Tourism Research, Deirdre Quinn, Nigel Morgan, Annette Pritchard

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No abstract provided.

Automated Extraction Of Fire Line Parameters From Multispectral Infrared Images, Ambrose Ononye, Anthony Vodacek, Eli Saber

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Remotely sensed infrared images are often used to assess wildland ¯re conditions. Separately, ¯re propagation models are in use to forecast future conditions. In the Dynamic Data Driven Application System (DDDAS) concept, the ¯re propagation model will react to the image data, which should produce more accurate predictions of ¯re propagation. In this study we describe a series of image processing tools that can be used to extract ¯re propagation parameters from multispectral infrared images so that the parameters can be used to drive a ¯re propagation model built upon the DDDAS concept. The method is capable of automatically determining …

Comparisons Of Binary Black Hole Merger Waveforms, John Baker, Manuela Campanelli, Frans Pretorius, Yosef Zlochower

Articles

This a particularly exciting time for gravitational wave physics. Ground-based gravitational wave detectors are now operating at a sensitivity such that gravitational radiation may soon be directly detected, and recently several groups have independently made significant breakthroughs that have finally enabled numerical relativists to solve the Einstein field equations for coalescing black-hole binaries, a key source of gravitational radiation. The numerical relativity community is now in the position to begin providing simulated merger waveforms for use by the data analysis community, and it is therefore very important that we provide ways to validate the results produced by various numerical approaches. …

Probability Thresholds, Jonathan Masur

Articles

Scholars and lower courts have traditionally operated under the belief that cases involving direct tradeoffs between free speech and national security call for the application of straightforward cost-benefit analysis. But the Supreme Court has refused to adhere to this approach, instead deciding difficult liberty-versus-security questions with reference to a "probability threshold"--a doctrinal floor defining how likely a potential threat must be in order to register in the constitutional calculus. This doctrinal innovation has served as a necessary corrective to what would otherwise be the systematic overestimation of speech-based threats driven by the interaction of two factors. First, distinct informational asymmetries …

The Acyl-Coa Thioesterase I (Acot1) Is Regulated By The Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Alpha And Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 4 Alpha Via A Distal Response Element In The Promotor., Bikesh Dongol, Yatrik Shah, Insook Kim, Frank J. Gonzalez, Mary Hunt

Articles

The cytosolic acyl-CoA thioesterase I (Acot1) is an enzyme that hydrolyzes longchain acyl-CoAs of C12-C20-CoA in chain-length, to the free fatty acid and coenzyme A. Acot1 was previously shown to be strongly upregulated at mRNA and protein level in rodents by fibrates. In this study, we show that Acot1 mRNA levels were increased 90-fold in liver by treatment with Wy-14,643 and that Acot1 mRNA is also increased 15-fold in the liver of hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 alpha (HNF4a) knockout animals. Our study identified a direct repeat 1 (DR1) located in the Acot1 gene promotor in mouse, which binds the peroxisome …

Using The Technology Of The Confessional As An Analytical Resource: Four Analytical Stances Towards Research Interviews In Discourse Analysis, Brendan O'Rourke, Martyn Pitt

Articles

Among the various approaches that have developed from FOUCAULT's work is an Anglophone discourse analysis that has attempted to combine FOUCAULTian insights with the techniques of Conversation Analysis. An important current methodological issue in this discourse analytical approach is its theoretical preference for "naturally occurring" rather than research interview data. A FOUCAULTian perspective on the interview as a research instrument, questions the idea of "naturally-occurring discourse". The "technology of the confessional" operates, not only within research interviews, but permeates other interactions as well. Drawing on FOUCAULT does not dismiss the problems of the interview as research instrument rather it shows …

Dispatches From The Tort Wars, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, as a political matter, the modern tort reform movement has been very successful. This essay reviews three books that either rebut the tort reform movement's central theses or analyze the strategies that allowed the movement to prevail. I discuss Tom Baker's The Medical Malpractice Myth, Herbert Kritzer's Risks, Reputations, and Rewards: Contingency Fee Legal Practice in the United States, and William Haltom & Michael McCann's Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis. Although each book has a very different focus from the other two, I argue that a common theme …

John Milton: Complete Poems And Major Prose, Richard A. Posner

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No abstract provided.

On Being A New Librarian, Elizabeth J. Cox

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This article includes tips and information from a new librarian as she reflects on her first year. Topics covered include professional development, mentoring, writing a manual, and reading the literature.

Mapping The Literature Of Health Care Management, Mary K. Taylor, Meseret D. Gebremichael, Cassie Wagner

Articles

Objectives: The research provides an overview of the health care management literature and the indexing coverage of core journal literature.

Method: Citations from five source journals for the years 2002 through 2004 were studied using the protocols of the Mapping the Literature of Allied Health Project and Mapping the Literature of Nursing Project. The productivity of cited journals was analyzed by applying Bradford's Law of Scattering.

Results: Journals were the most frequently cited format, followed by books. Only 3.2% of the cited journal titles from all 5 source journals generated two-thirds of the cited titles. When only the health care …

Classic Revisited: Penal Theory In Paradise Lost, Richard A. Posner, Jillisa Brittan

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No abstract provided.

The Internationalization Of Lay Legal Decision-Making: Jury Resurgence And Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

When I first began to study the jury more than thirty years ago, the topic of this Journal issue, jury systems around the world, was unthinkable. The use of juries, especially in civil litigation, had long been in decline, to the point of near extinction in England, the land of their birth, and the live question was whether the jury system would endure in the United States. It seemed clear that juries would not continue in their classic form, as many U.S. states, with the Supreme Court's eventual approval, mandated juries of less than twelve people and allowed verdicts to …

An Analysis Of Economic Cost Minimization And Biological Invasion Damage Control Using The Awq Criterion, Gregory Deangelo, Amitrajeet Batabyal, Seshavadhani Kumar

Articles

DeAngelo et al. (2006) have recently used the AWS criterion in a M/G/1 queuing model to show that there is no necessary tension between economic cost minimization and inspection stringency in non-native species management. In this paper, we use an alternate cost criterion (AWQ criterion) to investigate the generality of this central result in DeAngelo et al. (2006). Our theoretical analysis shows that there is no unambiguous answer to this question. Therefore, we use numerical methods and our numerical analysis leads to two findings. First, for many values of the model parameters that describe the strictness of inspections, there is …

Hepatitis B Virus Resistance To Adefovir In A Nucleotide Naive Patient With Chronic Hepatitis B Virus Infection, B Laoi, Celine M. Herra, S. Norris, B. Crowley

Articles

No abstract provided.