Recent development in organic scintillators

Discussion on recent developments of organic scintillators includes studies of organic compounds that form glass-like masses which scintillate and are stable at room temperature, correlations between molecular structure of organic scintillators and self-quenching, recently developed fast scintillators, and applications of liquid-scintillation counters

Direct measurement of carbon-14 in carbon dioxide by liquid scintillation counting

Liquid scintillation counting technique is applied to the direct measurement of carbon-14 in carbon dioxide. This method has high counting efficiency and eliminates many of the basic problems encountered with previous techniques. The technique can be used to achieve a percent substitution reaction and is of interest as an analytical technique

Lipid peroxidation is essential for α-synuclein-induced cell death.

Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and its pathogenesis is closely associated with oxidative stress. Deposition of aggregated α-synuclein (α-Syn) occurs in familial and sporadic forms of Parkinson's disease. Here, we studied the effect of oligomeric α-Syn on one of the major markers of oxidative stress, lipid peroxidation, in primary co-cultures of neurons and astrocytes. We found that oligomeric but not monomeric α-Syn significantly increases the rate of production of reactive oxygen species, subsequently inducing lipid peroxidation in both neurons and astrocytes. Pre-incubation of cells with isotope-reinforced polyunsaturated fatty acids (D-PUFAs) completely prevented the effect of oligomeric α-Syn on lipid peroxidation. Inhibition of lipid peroxidation with D-PUFAs further protected cells from cell death induced by oligomeric α-Syn. Thus, lipid peroxidation induced by misfolding of α-Syn may play an important role in the cellular mechanism of neuronal cell loss in Parkinson's disease. We have found that aggregated α-synuclein-induced production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that subsequently stimulates lipid peroxidation and cell death in neurons and astrocytes. Specific inhibition of lipid peroxidation by incubation with reinforced polyunsaturated fatty acids (D-PUFAs) completely prevented the effect of α-synuclein on lipid peroxidation and cell death

Low Rank Vector Bundles on the Grassmannian G(1,4)

Here we define the concept of $L$-regularity for coherent sheaves on the Grassmannian G(1,4) as a generalization of Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity on ${\bf{P}^n}$. In this setting we prove analogs of some classical properties. We use our notion of $L$-regularity in order to prove a splitting criterion for rank 2 vector bundles with only a finite number of vanishing conditions. In the second part we give the classification of rank 2 and rank 3 vector bundles without "inner" cohomology (i.e. H^i_*(E)=H^i(E\otimes\Q)=0 for any $i=2,3,4$) on G(1,4) by studying the associated monads.Comment: 11 pages, no figure

Triaging informative cis-regulatory elements for the combinatorial control of temporal gene expression during Plasmodium falciparum intraerythrocytic development

Background: Over 2700 genes are subject to stage-specific regulation during the intraerythrocytic development of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Bioinformatic analyses have identified a large number of over-represented motifs in the 5′ flanking regions of these genes that may act as cis-acting factors in the promoter-based control of temporal expression. Triaging these lists to provide candidates most likely to play a role in regulating temporal expression is challenging, but important if we are to effectively design in vitro studies to validate this role. Methods: We report here the application of a repeated search of variations of 5′ flanking sequences from P. falciparum using the Finding Informative Regulatory Elements (FIRE) algorithm. Results: Our approach repeatedly found a short-list of high scoring DNA motifs, for which cognate specific transcription factors were available, that appear to be typically associated with upregulation of mRNA accumulation during the first half of intraerythrocytic development. Conclusions: We propose these cis-trans interactions may provide a combinatorial promoter-based control of gene expression to complement more global mechanisms of gene regulation that can account for temporal control during the second half of intraerythrocytic development

Hybrid corn, 1969

Cover title."The bulletin reports on Department of Agronomy Research Project 3100"--P. [2].Includes bibliographical references

Algorithm for Adapting Cases Represented in a Tractable Description Logic

Case-based reasoning (CBR) based on description logics (DLs) has gained a lot of attention lately. Adaptation is a basic task in the CBR inference that can be modeled as the knowledge base revision problem and solved in propositional logic. However, in DLs, it is still a challenge problem since existing revision operators only work well for strictly restricted DLs of the \emph{DL-Lite} family, and it is difficult to design a revision algorithm which is syntax-independent and fine-grained. In this paper, we present a new method for adaptation based on the DL $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$. Following the idea of adaptation as revision, we firstly extend the logical basis for describing cases from propositional logic to the DL $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$, and present a formalism for adaptation based on $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$. Then we present an adaptation algorithm for this formalism and demonstrate that our algorithm is syntax-independent and fine-grained. Our work provides a logical basis for adaptation in CBR systems where cases and domain knowledge are described by the tractable DL $\mathcal{EL_{\bot}}$.Comment: 21 pages. ICCBR 201

Combinatorial Games with a Pass: A dynamical systems approach

By treating combinatorial games as dynamical systems, we are able to address a longstanding open question in combinatorial game theory, namely, how the introduction of a "pass" move into a game affects its behavior. We consider two well known combinatorial games, 3-pile Nim and 3-row Chomp. In the case of Nim, we observe that the introduction of the pass dramatically alters the game's underlying structure, rendering it considerably more complex, while for Chomp, the pass move is found to have relatively minimal impact. We show how these results can be understood by recasting these games as dynamical systems describable by dynamical recursion relations. From these recursion relations we are able to identify underlying structural connections between these "games with passes" and a recently introduced class of "generic (perturbed) games." This connection, together with a (non-rigorous) numerical stability analysis, allows one to understand and predict the effect of a pass on a game.Comment: 39 pages, 13 figures, published versio

Finding Data Should be Easier than Finding Oil

The competitiveness of modern enterprises heavily depends on their ability to make the right business decisions by relying on efficient and timely analysis of the right business critical data. In large and data intensive companies such as Equinor, a Norwegian multinational oil and gas company with more than 20,000 employees, gathering such data is not a trivial task due to the growing size and complexity of corporate information sources. As a result, the data gathering task is often the most time-consuming part of the decision making process, in particular when it comes to the work processes of Equinor's exploration geologists that should find in a timely manner new exploitable accumulations of oil or gas in given areas by analysing data about these areas. In this work we present our experience in addressing this data challenge tast at Equinor. We have developed and deployed at Equinor a semantic data access system that relies on the Ontology Based Data Access (OBDA) approach. Our system is based on our solid theoretical contributions and has been extensively evaluated at Equinor