The influence of correlation on the extreme traffic loading of bridges

Accurate traffic loading models based on measured data are essential for the accurate assessment of existing bridges. There are well-established methods for the Monte Carlo simulation of single lanes of traffic, and this can easily be extended to model the loading on bridges with two independent streams of traffic in opposing directions. However, a typical highway bridge will have multiple lanes in the same direction, and various types of correlation are evident in measured traffic. This paper analyses traffic patterns using multi-lane WIM data collected at two European sites. It describes an approach to the Monte Carlo simulation of this traffic which applies variable bandwidth kernel density estimators to empirical traffic patterns of vehicle weights, gaps and speeds. This method provides a good match with measured data for multi-truck bridge loading events, and it is shown that correlation has a small but significant effect on lifetime maximum load effects

Defining forgiveness: Christian clergy and general population perspectives.

The lack of any consensual definition of forgiveness is a serious weakness in the research literature (McCullough, Pargament &amp; Thoresen, 2000). As forgiveness is at the core of Christianity, this study returns to the Christian source of the concept to explore the meaning of forgiveness for practicing Christian clergy. Comparisons are made with a general population sample and social science definitions of forgiveness to ensure that a shared meaning of forgiveness is articulated. Anglican and Roman Catholic clergy (N = 209) and a general population sample (N = 159) completed a postal questionnaire about forgiveness. There is agreement on the existence of individual differences in forgiveness. Clergy and the general population perceive reconciliation as necessary for forgiveness while there is no consensus within psychology. The clergy suggests that forgiveness is limitless and that repentance is unnecessary while the general population suggests that there are limits and that repentance is necessary. Psychological definitions do not conceptualize repentance as necessary for forgiveness and the question of limits has not been addressed although within therapy the implicit assumption is that forgiveness is limitless.</p

Reciprocal regulation of microRNA and mRNA profiles in neuronal development and synapse formation.

BACKGROUND: Synapse formation and the development of neural networks are known to be controlled by a coordinated program of mRNA synthesis. microRNAs are now recognized to be important regulators of mRNA translation and stability in a wide variety of organisms. While specific microRNAs are known to be involved in neural development, the extent to which global microRNA and mRNA profiles are coordinately regulated in neural development is unknown. RESULTS: We examined mouse primary neuronal cultures, analyzing microRNA and mRNA expression. Three main developmental patterns of microRNA expression were observed: steady-state levels, up-regulated and down-regulated. Co-expressed microRNAs were found to have related target recognition sites and to be encoded in distinct genomic locations. A number of 43 differentially expressed miRNAs were located in five genomic clusters. Their predicted mRNA targets show reciprocal levels of expression. We identified a set of reciprocally expressed microRNAs that target mRNAs encoding postsynaptic density proteins and high-level steady-state microRNAs that target non-neuronal low-level expressed mRNAs. CONCLUSION: We characterized hundreds of miRNAs in neuronal culture development and identified three major modes of miRNA expression. We predict these miRNAs to regulate reciprocally expressed protein coding genes, including many genes involved in synaptogenesis. The identification of miRNAs that target mRNAs during synaptogenesis indicates a new level of regulation of the synapse

Unitary derived functor modules with small spectrum

This article does not have an abstract

High-density P300 enhancers control cell state transitions.

BACKGROUND: Transcriptional enhancers are frequently bound by a set of transcription factors that collaborate to activate lineage-specific gene expression. Recently, it was appreciated that a subset of enhancers comprise extended clusters dubbed stretch- or super-enhancers (SEs). These SEs are located near key cell identity genes, and enriched for non-coding genetic variations associated with disease. Previously, SEs have been defined as having the highest density of Med1, Brd4 or H3K27ac by ChIP-seq. The histone acetyltransferase P300 has been used as a marker of enhancers, but little is known about its binding to SEs. RESULTS: We establish that P300 marks a similar SE repertoire in embryonic stem cells as previously reported using Med1 and H3K27ac. We also exemplify a role for SEs in mouse T helper cell fate decision. Similarly, upon activation of macrophages by bacterial endotoxin, we found that many SE-associated genes encode inflammatory proteins that are strongly up-regulated. These SEs arise from small, low-density enhancers in unstimulated macrophages. We also identified expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) in human monocytes that lie within such SEs. In macrophages and Th17 cells, inflammatory SEs can be perturbed either genetically or pharmacologically thus revealing new avenues to target inflammation. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the notion that P300-marked SEs can help identify key nodes of transcriptional control during cell fate decisions. The SE landscape changes drastically during cell differentiation and cell activation. As these processes are crucial in immune responses, SEs may be useful in revealing novel targets for treating inflammatory diseases

A Neuronal Transcriptome Response Involving Stress Pathways is Buffered by Neuronal microRNAs.

A single microRNA (miRNA) can inhibit a large number of mRNA transcripts. This widespread regulatory function has been experimentally demonstrated for a number of miRNAs. However, even when a multitude of targets is confirmed, function of a miRNA is frequently interpreted through a prism of a handful arbitrarily selected "interesting" targets. In this work we first show that hundreds of transcripts with target sites for two miRNAs expressed endogenously in neurons, miR-124 and miR-434-3p, are coordinately upregulated in a variety of neuronal stresses. This creates a landscape where these two miRNAs can exert their widespread inhibitory potential on stress-induced transcripts. Next, we experimentally demonstrate that overexpression of these two miRNAs indeed significantly inhibits expression of hundreds of stress-induced transcripts, thus confirming that these transcripts are enriched in true targets of examined miRNAs. A number of miRNAs were previously shown to have important roles in the regulation of stress responses, and our results suggest that these roles should be understood in light of a wide spread activation of miRNA targets during stresses. Importantly, a popular cationic lipid transfection reagent triggers such induction of miRNA targets. Therefore, when a transfection paradigm is employed to study miRNA function, the results of such studies should be interpreted with consideration for the inadvertent induction of miRNA targets.This work was supported by the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh, Wellcome Trust and EMBL

Autonomous Light Management in Flexible Photoelectrochromic Films Integrating High Performance Silicon Solar Microcells

Commercial smart window technologies for dynamic light and heat management in building and automotive environments traditionally rely on electrochromic (EC) materials powered by an external source. This design complicates building-scale installation requirements and substantially increases costs for applications in retrofit construction. Self-powered photoelectrochromic (PEC) windows are an intuitive alternative wherein a photovoltaic (PV) material is used to power the electrochromic device, which modulates the transmission of the incident solar flux. The PV component in this application must be sufficiently transparent and produce enough power to efficiently modulate the EC device transmission. Here, we propose Si solar microcells (μ-cells) that are i) small enough to be visually transparent to the eye, and ii) thin enough to enable flexible PEC devices. Visual transparency is achieved when Si μ-cells are arranged in high pitch (i.e. low-integration density) form factors while maintaining the advantages of a single-crystalline PV material (i.e., long lifetime and high performance). Additionally, the thin dimensions of these Si μ-cells enable fabrication on flexible substrates to realize these flexible PEC devices. The current work demonstrates this concept using WO₃ as the EC material and V₂O₅ as the ion storage layer, where each component is fabricated via sol-gel methods that afford improved prospects for scalability and tunability in comparison to thermal evaporation methods. The EC devices display fast switching times, as low as 8 seconds, with a modulation in transmission as high as 33%. Integration with two Si μ-cells in series (affording a 1.12 V output) demonstrates an integrated PEC module design with switching times of less than 3 minutes, and a modulation in transmission of 32% with an unprecedented EC:PV areal ratio

Irreducible Characters of General Linear Superalgebra and Super Duality

We develop a new method to solve the irreducible character problem for a wide class of modules over the general linear superalgebra, including all the finite-dimensional modules, by directly relating the problem to the classical Kazhdan-Lusztig theory. We further verify a parabolic version of a conjecture of Brundan on the irreducible characters in the BGG category \mc{O} of the general linear superalgebra. We also prove the super duality conjecture