Bitter taste stimuli induce differential neural codes in mouse brain.

A growing literature suggests taste stimuli commonly classified as "bitter" induce heterogeneous neural and perceptual responses. Here, the central processing of bitter stimuli was studied in mice with genetically controlled bitter taste profiles. Using these mice removed genetic heterogeneity as a factor influencing gustatory neural codes for bitter stimuli. Electrophysiological activity (spikes) was recorded from single neurons in the nucleus tractus solitarius during oral delivery of taste solutions (26 total), including concentration series of the bitter tastants quinine, denatonium benzoate, cycloheximide, and sucrose octaacetate (SOA), presented to the whole mouth for 5 s. Seventy-nine neurons were sampled; in many cases multiple cells (2 to 5) were recorded from a mouse. Results showed bitter stimuli induced variable gustatory activity. For example, although some neurons responded robustly to quinine and cycloheximide, others displayed concentration-dependent activity (p<0.05) to quinine but not cycloheximide. Differential activity to bitter stimuli was observed across multiple neurons recorded from one animal in several mice. Across all cells, quinine and denatonium induced correlated spatial responses that differed (p<0.05) from those to cycloheximide and SOA. Modeling spatiotemporal neural ensemble activity revealed responses to quinine/denatonium and cycloheximide/SOA diverged during only an early, at least 1 s wide period of the taste response. Our findings highlight how temporal features of sensory processing contribute differences among bitter taste codes and build on data suggesting heterogeneity among "bitter" stimuli, data that challenge a strict monoguesia model for the bitter quality

Child Welfare Partnership for Research and Training: A Title IV-E University/Community Collaborative Research Model

University-community partnerships are increasingly recognized as valuable in educating students for professional practice and bridging the gap between research and practice. This manuscript describes the evolution and design of a university-community partnership between a School of Social Work in one urban university and local child welfare agencies: the Child Welfare Partnership for Research and Training (CW-PART). This local partnership illustrates types of opportunities and outcomes that emerge when state and local entities leverage greater results from federal funding through partnerships with local universities. The manuscript describes 1), the community-engaged framework used to inform the overall approach and partner roles; 2) evolution of the model from early partnered research successes; 3) core elements of the CWPART university-community partnered research model, and 4) preliminary lessons learned from the pilot phase of model

Automatic annotation of context and speech acts for dialogue corpora

Richly annotated dialogue corpora are essential for new research directions in statistical learning approaches to dialogue management, context-sensitive interpretation, and context-sensitive speech recognition. In particular, large dialogue corpora annotated with contextual information and speech acts are urgently required. We explore how existing dialogue corpora (usually consisting of utterance transcriptions) can be automatically processed to yield new corpora where dialogue context and speech acts are accurately represented. We present a conceptual and computational framework for generating such corpora. As an example, we present and evaluate an automatic annotation system which builds ‘Information State Update' (ISU) representations of dialogue context for the Communicator (2000 and 2001) corpora of human-machine dialogues (2,331 dialogues). The purposes of this annotation are to generate corpora for reinforcement learning of dialogue policies, for building user simulations, for evaluating different dialogue strategies against a baseline, and for training models for context-dependent interpretation and speech recognition. The automatic annotation system parses system and user utterances into speech acts and builds up sequences of dialogue context representations using an ISU dialogue manager. We present the architecture of the automatic annotation system and a detailed example to illustrate how the system components interact to produce the annotations. We also evaluate the annotations, with respect to the task completion metrics of the original corpus and in comparison to hand-annotated data and annotations produced by a baseline automatic system. The automatic annotations perform well and largely outperform the baseline automatic annotations in all measures. The resulting annotated corpus has been used to train high-quality user simulations and to learn successful dialogue strategies. The final corpus will be made publicly availabl

Mathematical modelling of tissue-engineering angiogenesis

We present a mathematical model for the vascularisation of a porous scaffold following implantation in vivo. The model is given as a set of coupled non-linear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) which describe the evolution in time of the amounts of the different tissue constituents inside the scaffold. Bifurcation analyses reveal how the extent of scaffold vascularisation changes as a function of the parameter values. For example, it is shown how the loss of seeded cells arising from slow infiltration of vascular tissue can be overcome using a prevascularisation strategy consisting of seeding the scaffold with vascular cells. Using certain assumptions it is shown how the system can be simplified to one which is partially tractable and for which some analysis is given. Limited comparison is also given of the model solutions with experimental data from the chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay

The local universe as seen by the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue

In this thesis we construct a B-band catalogue of the local universe which we call the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC). The MGC is photometrically and astrometrically accurate to +/-0.03 mags and +/-0.08" respectively and covers an area of~ 36 sq deg in the NGP. Colour and redshift information are available from overlapping regions of the two-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release (SDSS-EDR). With an exposure time of 750s and an isophotal surface brightness limit of 26 mags/sq arcsecs, the MGC is the largest and deepest photometric survey of the local universe to-date. As well as containing photometric information, by making use of a newly developed software package-Galaxy Image 2D (GIM2D), and assuming a standard de Vaucouleurs and exponential galaxy profile, the MGC also contains structural parameters (half light radius and (B/T) etc) to all galaxies in the magnitude range 16 < BMGC < 20. By making use of the information in the MGC we are able to classify our galaxies into three morphological types (E/SO, Sabc and Sd/Irr) using (B/T) cuts. In doing this we find that 30.52% of the galaxies form a "new" galaxy population identified by having a (B/T) of exactly 0. After visual inspection this population is found to be a mixture of early and late type star-forming Spirals and Irregular galaxies, all of which have a disk component that is flatter than an exponential. After visually redistributing these galaxies we find that the local galaxy population consists of 28.1% E/SO, 39.64% Sabc and 31.37% Sd/Irr. From the redshift information contained within the MGC we are able to look at the galaxy distribution in terms of physical parameters. We find that the galaxies are distributed in absolute magnitude, surface brightness and half light radii in a manner that is consistent with the hierarchical formation scenario. We derive total and morphological galaxy number counts and, after combining them via a step wise maximum likelihood (SWML) technique, we arrive at morphological LFs. From examining the galaxy counts we find that there is no steep rise in the bright end, eradicating the need for strong local evolution. Also one does not need to renormalise the morphological or total galaxy counts in order for them to be consistent with faitner counts. The Sabc and Sd/Irr LFs are surprisingly similar with both showing a mild faint end slope. We look at the properties of bulges and disks of galaxies. We find that as galaxies become more diskey there bulges move away from the Kormendy law for Elliptical galaxies. Due to the similarity of the Spiral and Irregular population LFs, as well as apparent and intrinsic parameter distributions, we are forced to conclude that one can only reliably distinguish between the Ellipticals and the general galaxy population, and that investigating the bulge and disk components of a galaxy may be more useful than Hubble types

Narratives that nudge: Raising theoretical questions about reflective practice

The narratives of pre-service teachers in this paper tell a story which interrupts the notion that reflective practice necessarily produces a transformative self. Although this argument is not new, the extent to which the utility of reflective practice is taken for granted in the current context of teacher education (beginning and continuing) remains greater than ever. We show how this normative construction of reflective practice and the understandings of self that it produces in the narratives of pre-service teachers are undermined in the context of schooling. We suggest that further research is needed in this area. Through this effort we raise questions about the spaces in which reflective practice is assumed to operate and the ways in which the reflective self it assumes has been disconnected from society and relations of power. We situate ourselves as teachers, teacher educators and researchers who desire theoretically informed positions from which we can begin to critically address, extend or displace our current understandings of these issues. This paper raises questions about reflective practice and its relationship to pedagogy within the current context of schooling

The AMTEX Partnership

The American Textile Partnership, as its name implies, is a collaborative effort between the DOE national labs and industry-related R&D/educational institutions. The purpose of AMTEX is to promote R&D that enhance the competitiveness of the integrated textile industry (i.e., fibers, textiles, sewn/fabricated products). The industry-related organizations bring a vital perspective of industry needs in addition to their own R&D capabilities. The DOE labs bring broad R&D capabilities and perspectives from other areas of research application. The strong synergy between industry and DOE will enable this collaboration to significantly impact industry competitiveness while focusing and strengthening, the labs` capabilities consistent with DOE`s mission. There are three main components in AMTEX: DOE/ER oversight; the Operating Committee, which is composed a Laboratory Board and an Industry Board; and five Technology Area Coordination Teams (TACTs)