Requirements Specification for DSIC: Distribution System for Information and Collaboration

There seems to exist an invisible barrier between people that should be connected but for whatever reasons (don\u27t hang out in the same circles, don\u27t go to the same meetings, or are geographically separated) haven\u27t met each other yet. Normally these people will only meet when others bring them together or they are thrown together on a project. DSIC aims to preempt the person discovery process by allowing a way for people to post ideas, events, and other collaborations in a single place that can then be searched by other users. The system utilizes postings, user profiles, and a tagging system to connect users together. The purpose of the system is not to replace other collaboration and information systems completely, but to help reduce the noise that they create and give users more control over their content consumption. The scope of this project seems wide and the number of users is vast. The system is purposefully generalized in order to try and better connect people and solve several problems at once; DSIC is believed to be able to address several issues the users have with current systems

On the nature of the FBS blue stellar objects and the completeness of the Bright Quasar Survey. II

In Paper I (Mickaelian et al. 1999), we compared the surface density of QSOs in the Bright Quasar Survey (BQS) and in the First Byurakan Survey (FBS) and concluded that the completeness of the BQS is of the order of 70% rather than 30-50% as suggested by several authors. A number of new observations recently became available, allowing a re-evaluation of this completeness. We now obtain a surface density of QSOs brighter than B = 16.16 in a subarea of the FBS covering ~2250 deg^2, equal to 0.012 deg^-2 (26 QSOs), implying a completeness of 53+/-10%.Comment: LaTeX 2e, 11 pages, 3 tables and 3 figures (included in text). To appear in Astrophysics. Uses a modified aaspp4.sty (my_aaspp4.sty), included in packag

Tamanyan’s Yerevan Between Constructivism and Stalin Era Architecture

Aleksander Tamanian (1878-1936) planned to raise a core cultural building, the People’s House, in the center of Yerevan. He wanted to create it in the form of a temple, which would mark the spot where in ancient times allegedly stood a pagan temple of song. The project and construction of the People’s House faced many attacks from the proletarian architects who followed constructivist architectural ideas and were presenting, using V. Paperny’s terminology, the revolutionary and egalitarian Culture One. In early 1930s, a new style of Stalin era architecture, representing Culture Two, replaced Culture One. In the 1934 project version, Tamanian’s People’s House was influenced by this hierarchical and vertical worldview. However, after the death of the architect in 1936, his son continued his father’s grand construction, depriving it of Stalin era architecture characteristics. His further edition of father’s project gave the city the core building of the Opera and Ballet Theater, the most telling sample of Tamanian’s Culture Two, which differs and actually precedes the Stalin era Culture Two.   Keywords: Aleksander Tamanian, People’s House, Culture One, Culture Two, Stalin era architectur

Lengua materna, culto a la traducción y nacionalismo lingüístico en Armenia.

Sin resume

Open billiards : cantor sets, invariant and conditionally invariant probabilities

A b stract - Billiards are the simplest models fur nudcrstanding statistical properties of thc dynamics of a gas in a closed compartment. vVc analyze the dynamics of a class of billiards (the open billiard on the plane) in terms of iuva.riant and conditionally inva.riant proba.bilities. The dynamical system has a horse-shoe structure. The stable and unstable manifolds are analytically described. The natural probability J.L is invariant and has support in a Cantor set. This probability is the conditiona.l limit of a conditiona.l probability J.LF that has a Holder continuous density with respcct to the Lebesgue measure. A formula relating entropy, Liapunov exponent and Hausdorff dimcnsion of a natural probability J.L for the system is presented. The natural probability fl is a Gibbs state of a potcntial 'lj; ( cohomologous to the potential associated to the positive Liapunov exponent, see formula (0.1 )), and we show that for a dense set of such billiards the potential 'lj; is not lattice. As the system has a horse-shoe structure one can compute the asymptotic growth rate of n(1·), the number of closed trajectories with the largest eigcuvalue of the derivative smaller tKru1 .r

Diabetes mellitus and co-morbid depression: treatment with milnacipran results in significant improvement of both diseases (results from the Austrian MDDM study group)

Co-morbid depression is common in patients with diabetes mellitus and has a negative impact on diabetes self-care, adherence to treatment and the development of complications. Effective treatment of depression has been associated with improvement in metabolic parameters. We evaluated the feasibility of a two question screen for co-morbid depression in diabetic patients and studied the effect of the serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor antidepressant, milnacipran, on metabolic and psychological parameters in 64 type 2 diabetic patients with co-morbid depression. The severity of depression was evaluated using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Patients received milnacipran, and diabetes was treated according to the guidelines of the Austrian Diabetes Association in a 6-month open label study. Metabolic parameters and BDI were measured at baseline and after 1, 3 and 6 months. 46 patients satisfied the criteria for an antidepressant response (reduction of baseline BDI score of at least 50%). Hemoglobin A1c, fasting blood glucose, body mass index, total and LDL-cholesterol and serum triglyceride levels were all significantly decreased in these patients at the end of the study whereas in antidepressant non-responders these parameters were not significantly changed. Diagnosis and treatment of depression is an important factor for the improvement of metabolic control in patients with type 2 diabetes and co-morbid depression

TRPML Cation Channels in Inflammation and Immunity

Background: In 1883, Ilya Mechnikov discovered phagocytes and established the concept of phagocytosis by macrophages. In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for his findings, which laid the foundations for today's understanding of the innate immune response. Only in the 1960s, Max Cooper and Robert Good significantly advanced our understanding of the immune system by demonstrating that B- and T-cells cooperate to regulate the adaptive immune response. Both, innate and adaptive immune response are essential to effectively protect the individual against infectious agents, such as viruses, bacterial or insect toxins, or allergens. Innate immune responses occur rapidly upon exposure to noxious or infectious agents or organisms, in contrast to the adaptive immune system that needs days rather than hours to develop and acts primarily on the basis of antigen-specific receptors expressed on the surface of B- and T-lymphocytes. In recent years, it has become evident that endosomes and lysosomes are involved in many aspects of immune cell function, such as phagocytosis, antigen presentation and processing by antigen-presenting cells, release of proinflammatory mediators, e.g., by mast cells, or secretion of the pore-forming protein perforin by cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Several lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs) have been associated with defects in immune system function or immune system hyperactivity, such as Gaucher, Fabry, or Niemann-Pick type C1 disease, mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS), gangliosidosis, or juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (JNCL). Beside accumulating evidence on the importance of endolysosomes in immune cell function, recent results suggest direct roles of endolysosomal ion channels, such as the TRPML channels (mucolipins), which are members of the transient receptor potential (TRP) superfamily of non-selective cation channels, for different aspects of immune cell function. The aim of this review is to discuss the current knowledge about the roles of TRPML channels in inflammation and immunity, and to assess their potential as drug targets to influence immune cell functions. Advances: Examples of recently established roles of TRPML channels in immune system function and immune response include the TRPML1-mediated modulation of secretory lysosomes, granzyme B content, and tuning of effector function in NK cells, TRPML1-dependent directional dendritic cell (DC) migration and DC chemotaxis, and the role of TRPML2 in chemokine release from LPS-stimulated macrophages. Outlook: Although our understanding of the functional roles of TRPML channels in inflammation and immunity is still in its infancy, a few interesting findings have been made in the past years, encouraging further and more detailed work on the role of TRPMLs, e.g., in intracellular trafficking and release of chemokines, cytokines, or granzyme B, or in phagocytosis and bacterial toxin and virus trafficking through the endolysosomal machinery