Functional diversity of chemokines and chemokine receptors in response to viral infection of the central nervous system.

Encounters with neurotropic viruses result in varied outcomes ranging from encephalitis, paralytic poliomyelitis or other serious consequences to relatively benign infection. One of the principal factors that control the outcome of infection is the localized tissue response and subsequent immune response directed against the invading toxic agent. It is the role of the immune system to contain and control the spread of virus infection in the central nervous system (CNS), and paradoxically, this response may also be pathologic. Chemokines are potent proinflammatory molecules whose expression within virally infected tissues is often associated with protection and/or pathology which correlates with migration and accumulation of immune cells. Indeed, studies with a neurotropic murine coronavirus, mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), have provided important insight into the functional roles of chemokines and chemokine receptors in participating in various aspects of host defense as well as disease development within the CNS. This chapter will highlight recent discoveries that have provided insight into the diverse biologic roles of chemokines and their receptors in coordinating immune responses following viral infection of the CNS

Performance of the ATLAS electromagnetic calorimeter end-cap module 0

The construction and beam test results of the ATLAS electromagnetic end-cap calorimeter pre-production module 0 are presented. The stochastic term of the energy resolution is between 10% GeV^1/2 and 12.5% GeV^1/2 over the full pseudorapidity range. Position and angular resolutions are found to be in agreement with simulation. A global constant term of 0.6% is obtained in the pseudorapidity range 2.5 eta 3.2 (inner wheel)

Science and Semantics: A Note on Rough Sets and Vagueness

In the chapter we present rough set theory against the background of recent philosophical discussions about vagueness and empirical sciences. Weiner, in her article about this topic, discusses the supervaluationist semantics of vague predicates and its criticism offered by Fodor and Lepore. She argues that neither the former nor latter approach is consistent with the scientific methodology of dealing with vague concepts such as "obese". In actual fact, it is Frege's philosophical approach that concepts must have sharp boundaries, which is the closest to scientific practice. In this context, rough set theory can be viewed as a modified supervaluationist semantics. To be more precise, rough sets provide a modal version of this semantics, where the super-truth is replaced by a local one. However, there are flies in the ointment: firstly, rough set theory is philosophically weaker than supervaluationism (in consequence, more vulnerable to the criticism of Fodor and Lepore); secondly, Weiner's arguments concerning scientific methods apply to rough sets as well. Yet there is also good news: this philosophical weakness stays actually in full accordance with scientific practice. Thus, rough set theory may be seen as a supervaluationism shifted toward the scientific methodology. In the chapter we shall make a further step into this direction and also present how rough set theory would be like when made fully consistent with the scientific approach to vague predicates. In other words, we also offer a Fregean rough set methodology. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013