Obesity and Asthma: Adiponectin Receptor 1 (Adipo R1) and Adiponectin Receptor 2 (Adipo R2) are expressed by normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells at air-liquid interface (ALI) and expression changes with IL-13 stimulation

Obesity is recognized as an important risk factor for the development of many chronic diseases such as hypertension, Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) cardiovascular disease, cancer, renal disease, neurologic dysfunction, metabolic syndrome and asthma (3, 4). Circulating serum adiponectin levels in obese asthmatics have been reported to be low. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the role of adiponectin in a mucus hypersecretion model and hypothesized that adiponectin would decrease IL-13 induced MUC5AC expression from differentiated NHBE cells and that increasing concentrations of IL-13 would cause a decrease in Adipo R1 and Adipo R2 expression. MUC5AC expression with exposure to adiponectin was not significant. However, mRNA expression of Adipo R1 and Adipo R2 was significantly decreased by stimulation of IL-13 for acute (24 hours) and chronic (14 days) exposure. Therefore, the obese state and specifically IL-13 concentration could play a role in Adipo R1 and Adipo R2 expression within NHBE cells

Foreign Sovereign Immunity, Individual Officials, and Human Rights Litigation

For thirty years, international human rights litigation in U.S. courts has developed with little attention to a lurking doctrinal objection to the entire enterprise. The paradigm international human rights case involves a suit against a foreign government official for alleged abuses committed abroad under color of state law. A potentially dispositive objection to this litigation is foreign sovereign immunity. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) creates presumptive immunity for foreign states and has no exception that would cover human rights cases. Many courts have assumed that the FSIA has no relevance to human rights suits as long as they are directed against state officials rather than the state itself. Recently, however, courts have begun to reject this assumption, and the issue is now before the Supreme Court in Yousuf v. Samantar. This essay makes two contributions to the debate over whether the FSIA applies to suits against individual foreign officials. First, it shows that, contrary to what some courts have assumed, suits against individual officials fall naturally within the plain language of the FSIA’s immunity provisions. Second, it shows that the international law of state immunity, which is relevant to the proper interpretation of the FSIA in several ways, supports this construction. Combining these and other points, the essay concludes that the FSIA confers presumptive immunity in suits against state officials, including former state officials, for their official acts committed while in office, and that this immunity applies even in human rights cases. This conclusion, if accepted, would narrow the scope of human rights litigation in U.S. courts, but it would not affect other legitimate mechanisms of human rights accountability

Foreign Sovereign Immunity and Domestic Officer Suits

Under international law, official-capacity suits brought against a foreign state’s officers are treated as suits against the state itself and thus as subject to the state’s immunity, even in suits alleging human rights abuses. This immunity regime differs from the immunity regime that applies in the United States in suits brought against state and federal officials for violations of federal law. Despite the federal government’s sovereign immunity and the immunity of state governments under Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence, courts often allow suits against federal and state officers for their official actions. This essay attempts to explain why the immunity rules differ between the two regimes. We begin by showing that the differential treatment of foreign and domestic officer suits has deep roots in British and American common law. We then show that Congress has not acted to alter this common law backdrop, and we explain the significance of this fact. Finally, we discuss functional reasons for the long-time differential treatment of suits against domestic and foreign officials

Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism

This Article presents a framework for interpreting Congress\u27s September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the central statutory enactment related to the war on terrorism. Although both constitutional theory and constitutional practice suggest that the validity of presidential wartime actions depends to a significant degree on their relationship to congressional authorization, the meaning and implications of the AUMF have received little attention in the academic debates over the war on terrorism. The framework presented in this Article builds on the analysis in the Supreme Court\u27s plurality opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which devoted significant attention to the AUME Under that framework, the meaning of the AUMF is determined in the first instance by its text, as informed by a comparison with authorizations of force in prior wars, including declared wars. In ascertaining the scope of the necessary and appropriate force that Congress authorized in the AUMF, courts should look to two additional interpretive factors: Executive Branch practice during prior wars, and the international laws of war. Although nondelegation concerns should not play a significant role in interpreting the AUMF, a clear statement requirement is appropriate when the President takes actions under the AUMF that restrict the liberty of non-combatants in the United States. The authors apply this framework to three specific issues in the war on terrorism: the identification of the enemy, the detention of persons captured in the United States, and the validity of using military commissions to try alleged terrorists

Spontaneous Breaking of Gauge Groups to Discrete Symmetries

Many models of beyond Standard Model physics connect flavor symmetry with a discrete group. Having this symmetry arise spontaneously from a gauge theory maintains compatibility with quantum gravity and can be used to systematically prevent anomalies. We minimize a number of Higgs potentials that break gauge groups to discrete symmetries of interest, and examine their scalar mass spectra.Comment: 45 page

A New Method to Improve the Sensitivity of Leak Detection in Self-Contained Fluid-filled Cables

A method of real-time detection of leaks for self-contained fluid-filled cables without taking them out of service has been assessed and a novel machine learning technique, i.e. support vector regression (SVR) analysis has been investigated to improve the detection sensitivity of the self-contained fluid-filled (FF) cable leaks. The condition of a 400 kV underground FF cable route within the National Grid transmission network has been monitored by Drallim pressure, temperature and load current measurement system. These three measured variables are used as parameters to describe the condition of the cable system. In the regression analysis the temperature and load current of the cable circuit are used as independent variables and the pressure within cables is the dependent variable to be predicted. As a supervised learning algorithm, the SVR requires data with known attributes as training samples in the learning process and can be used to identify unknown data or predict future trends. The load current is an independent variable to the fluid-filled system itself. The temperature, namely the tank temperature is determined by both the load current and the weather condition i.e. ambient temperature. The pressure is directly relevant to the temperature and therefore also correlated to the load current. The Gaussian-RBF kernel has been used in this investigation as it has a good performance in general application. The SVR algorithm was trained using 4 days data, as shown in Figure 1, and the optimized SVR is used to predict the pressure using the given load current and temperature information

Simplifying the construction of domain-specific automatic programming systems: The NASA automated software development workstation project

An overview is presented of the Automated Software Development Workstation Project, an effort to explore knowledge-based approaches to increasing software productivity. The project focuses on applying the concept of domain specific automatic programming systems (D-SAPSs) to application domains at NASA's Johnson Space Center. A version of a D-SAPS developed in Phase 1 of the project for the domain of space station momentum management is described. How problems encountered during its implementation led researchers to concentrate on simplifying the process of building and extending such systems is discussed. Researchers propose to do this by attacking three observed bottlenecks in the D-SAPS development process through the increased automation of the acquisition of programming knowledge and the use of an object oriented development methodology at all stages of the program design. How these ideas are being implemented in the Bauhaus, a prototype workstation for D-SAPS development is discussed

Identification of ebs1, lsm6 and nup159 as suppressors of spt10 effects at ADH2 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae suggests post-transcriptional defects affect mRNA synthesis

Suppression of the effects of an spt10 mutation on ADH2 expression is a phenotype shared by a small number of genes whose protein products are either components of the CCR4-NOT complex required for mRNA deadenylation and degradation (CCR4, CAF1, NOT4) or have been shown to interact with the complex (DBF2, SRB9, SRB10). In this work, we conducted a screen for additional suppressors of spt10 at ADH2 to identify new factors related to CCR4 function. In addition to reisolating ccr4 and caf1 alleles, three previously unidentified suppressors of spt10 were obtained: ebs1, lsm6, and nup159. These three genes are known or presumed to affect mRNA export or degradation. Mutations in EBS1, LSM6 and NUP159 not only suppressed spt10-induced ADH2 expression but also, like ccr4 and caf1 defects, reduced the ability of ADH2 to derepress. None of these defects affected the expression of CCR4-NOT complex components or the formation of the CCR4-NOT complex. The reduced ADH2 expression was also not the result of increased degradation of ADH2 mRNA, as the lsm6 and nup159 alleles, like that of a ccr4 deletion, actually slowed ADH2 degradation. Our results indicate that alterations in factors that slow mRNA degradation or affect mRNA transport may also interfere with the synthesis of mRNA and suggest an integration of such events in gene expression