638 research outputs found
Interactive Visualization of the Largest Radioastronomy Cubes
3D visualization is an important data analysis and knowledge discovery tool,
however, interactive visualization of large 3D astronomical datasets poses a
challenge for many existing data visualization packages. We present a solution
to interactively visualize larger-than-memory 3D astronomical data cubes by
utilizing a heterogeneous cluster of CPUs and GPUs. The system partitions the
data volume into smaller sub-volumes that are distributed over the rendering
workstations. A GPU-based ray casting volume rendering is performed to generate
images for each sub-volume, which are composited to generate the whole volume
output, and returned to the user. Datasets including the HI Parkes All Sky
Survey (HIPASS - 12 GB) southern sky and the Galactic All Sky Survey (GASS - 26
GB) data cubes were used to demonstrate our framework's performance. The
framework can render the GASS data cube with a maximum render time < 0.3 second
with 1024 x 1024 pixels output resolution using 3 rendering workstations and 8
GPUs. Our framework will scale to visualize larger datasets, even of Terabyte
order, if proper hardware infrastructure is available.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, Accepted New Astronomy July 201
The atypical chemokine receptor Ackr2 constrains NK cell migratory activity and promotes metastasis
Chemokines have been shown to be essential players in a range of cancer contexts. In this study, we demonstrate that mice deficient in the atypical chemokine receptor Ackr2 display impaired development of metastasis in vivo in both cell line and spontaneous models. Further analysis reveals that this relates to increased expression of the chemokine receptor CCR2, specifically by KLRG1+ NK cells from the Ackr2−/− mice. This leads to increased recruitment of KLRG1+ NK cells to CCL2-expressing tumors and enhanced tumor killing. Together, these data indicate that Ackr2 limits the expression of CCR2 on NK cells and restricts their tumoricidal activity. Our data have important implications for our understanding of the roles for chemokines in the metastatic process and highlight Ackr2 and CCR2 as potentially manipulable therapeutic targets in metastasis
How Ottawa Spends, 2018-2019: Next?
How Ottawa Spends is the annual review of the federal government’s spending and public policy by the Carleton University School of Public Policy and Administration
Generalized Farey trees, transfer Operators and phase transitions
We consider a family of Markov maps on the unit interval, interpolating
between the tent map and the Farey map. The latter map is not uniformly
expanding. Each map being composed of two fractional linear transformations,
the family generalizes many particular properties which for the case of the
Farey map have been successfully exploited in number theory. We analyze the
dynamics through the spectral analysis of generalized transfer operators.
Application of the thermodynamic formalism to the family reveals first and
second order phase transitions and unusual properties like positivity of the
interaction function.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figure
Placental chemokine compartmentalisation: a novel mammalian molecular control mechanism
Atypical chemokine receptor 2 (ACKR2) is a chemokine-scavenging receptor. ACKR2–/–embryos display a reduction in size of a novel, to our knowledge, embryonic skin macrophage population referred to as ‘intermediate’ cells. CC chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2)–/–embryos display an identical phenotype, indicating that these cells require CCR2 to enable them to populate embryonic skin. Further analysis revealed that ACKR2–/–embryos have higher circulating concentrations of the CCR2 ligand, CC ligand 2 (CCL2); thus, ACKR2 regulates intraembryonic CCL2 levels. We show that ACKR2 is strongly expressed by trophoblasts and that it blocks movement of inflammatory chemokines, such as CCL2, from the maternal decidua into the embryonic circulation. We propose that trophoblastic ACKR2 is responsible for ensuring chemokine compartmentalisation on the maternal decidua, without which chemokines enter the embryonic circulation, disrupting gradients essential for directed intraembryonic cell migration. Overall, therefore, we describe a novel, to our knowledge, molecular mechanism whereby maternal decidual chemokines can function in a compartmentalised fashion without interfering with intraembryonic leukocyte migration. These data suggest similar functions for other atypical chemokine receptors in the placenta and indicate that defects in such receptors may have unanticipated developmental consequences
Electromagnetic Casimir densities for a wedge with a coaxial cylindrical shell
Vacuum expectation values of the field square and the energy-momentum tensor
for the electromagnetic field are investigated for the geometry of a wedge with
a coaxal cylindrical boundary. All boundaries are assumed to be perfectly
conducting and both regions inside and outside the shell are considered. By
using the generalized Abel-Plana formula, the vacuum expectation values are
presented in the form of the sum of two terms. The first one corresponds to the
geometry of the wedge without the cylindrical shell and the second term is
induced by the presence of the shell. The vacuum energy density induced by the
shell is negative for the interior region and is positive for the exterior
region. The asymptotic behavior of the vacuum expectation values are
investigated in various limiting cases. It is shown that the vacuum forces
acting on the wedge sides due to the presence of the cylindrical boundary are
always attractive.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure
Metropolis simulations of Met-Enkephalin with solvent-accessible area parameterizations
We investigate the solvent-accessible area method by means of Metropolis
simulations of the brain peptide Met-Enkephalin at 300. For the energy
function ECEPP/2 nine atomic solvation parameter (ASP) sets are studied. The
simulations are compared with one another, with simulations with a distance
dependent electrostatic permittivity , and with vacuum
simulations (). Parallel tempering and the biased Metropolis
techniques RM are employed and their performance is evaluated. The measured
observables include energy and dihedral probability densities (pds), integrated
autocorrelation times, and acceptance rates. Two of the ASP sets turn out to be
unsuitable for these simulations. For all other systems selected configurations
are minimized in search of the global energy minima, which are found for the
vacuum and the system, but for none of the ASP models. Other
observables show a remarkable dependence on the ASPs. In particular, we find
three ASP sets for which the autocorrelations at 300K are considerably
smaller than for vacuum simulations.Comment: 10 pages and 8 figure
Exploring disparities in acute myocardial infarction events between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians: roles of age, gender, geography and area-level disadvantage
We investigated disparities in rates of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the 199 Statistical Local Areas (SLAs) in New South Wales, Australia. Using routinely collected and linked hospital and mortality data from 2002 to 2007, we developed multilevel Poisson regression models to estimate the relative rates of first AMI events in the study period accounting for area of residence. Rates of AMI in Aboriginal people were more than two times that in non-Aboriginal people, with the disparity greatest in more disadvantaged and remote areas. AMI rates in Aboriginal people varied significantly by SLA, as did the Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal rate ratio. We identified almost 30 priority areas for universal and targeted preventive interventions that had both high rates of AMI for Aboriginal people and large disparities in rates
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