The Contribution of the Cerebello-thalamo-cortical Circuit to the Pathology of Non-dopaminergic Responsive Parkinson\u27s Disease Symptoms

It has been well established that motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD) are primarily associated with dopaminergic degeneration in the basal ganglia. However, symptoms which respond poorly to dopaminergic replacement, such as tremor, gait, and balance deficits, point to an alternative pathology to dysfunction of the basal ganglia. Over-activity of the cerebellum has been demonstrated in PD, however it is not entirely clear how the cerebellum might be affecting motor symptoms. A lack of consensus exists regarding how cerebellar over-activity might be influencing PD tremor, and whether resting and postural tremor are differentially influenced by cerebellar dysfunction. It is also unclear how cerebellar over-activity might be affecting gait and balance deficits in PD, even though the cerebellum is an important subcortical structure for the control of gait and balance. Thus, the aim of the current thesis was to assess how cerebellar over-activity may be influencing symptoms which respond poorly to dopamine replacement in PD by inhibiting cerebellar activity using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Additionally, a direct comparison was made between the effects of stimulation targeted to the medial versus lateral cerebellum with the aim to localize the effect of cerebellar over-activity. Fifty PD participants were randomly assigned to receive stimulation over either the medial cerebellum (n=20), lateral cerebellum (n=20) or sham stimulation (n=10). 900 pulses at 1Hz were delivered at an intensity of 120% resting motor threshold determined from the first dorsal interosseous muscle representation in the primary motor cortex. Tremor was assessed quantitatively using a wireless finger accelerometer to record tremor. Balance was measured with objective, computerized protocols: modified clinical test of sensory integration and balance (m-CTSIB) and postural stability testing (PST). Spatiotemporal gait parameters were measured quantitatively during self-paced walking. All assessments were performed before and after either real or sham stimulation. Resting tremor frequency was reduced in tremor-dominant individuals, regardless of whether stimulation was applied over the medial (p=0.024) or lateral (p=0.033) cerebellum, but not in the sham group. Additionally, inhibition of the cerebellum did not result in modulation of gait and balance outcome measures. Hence, dysfunction of the cerebellum may be a contributing factor to resting tremor, but not gait and balance deficits in PD. Importantly, the improvements in resting tremor occurred without detriment to gait or balance, demonstrating the therapeutic potential of this stimulation protocol. Low frequency rTMS over the medial or lateral cerebellum provides promise of an alternative treatment for resting tremor in PD, a symptom that is poorly responsive to dopaminergic replacement

The Inspiration of Bauhaus Principles on the Modern Housing in Cyprus

Modern architecture developed more than a century ago to find solutions suitable to solve the new concerns of the industrial revolution that changed the social idea of the world in all aspects. Bauhaus school which established by Walter Gropius in 1919 adopted too many principles and ideas that were totally new to the architecture concept and theory at that time; their principles started from Simplicity, Angularity, Abstraction, Consistency, Unity, Organization, Economy, Subtlety, Continuity, Regularity, and Sharpness. Those principles affected the architectural world and found its way through many applications in different parts of the world. The unlimited space or the International space that had a significant influence on the architecture space and form as well as the introduction of the new material, the anti- decorating, and Platonic forms had worked to reconstruct the architecture in the world. Cyprus as an Island close to the sources of the movement got the influence from the modern movement. The study will concentrate on Efruz Housing which designed by Ahmet Vural, who developed the project in the 60th of the last century. The aim of the research is to find the relationship and effects of Bauhaus school in Cyprus through studying and analyzing some of Ahmet vural works. The methodology will depend on a comparison with the traditional housing that preceded Mr. Vural work and how the Modernism changed the main features of the housing on the Island

The Power of Play

Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 19. bis 22. April 2007 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum Thema: ‚Die Realität des Imaginären. Architektur und das digitale Bild

History is returning to design

I looked up “history” in the dictionary. The definition I liked best was, “study of the past.” Now any number of things can be the study of the past. Archaeology is the study of the past; it has more specific definitions than “history” does. How you choose to study history - whether as mainstreams, as isolated events, as typologies, etc. - however you choose to study it, there is no first rate and secondrate history implied by how you choose to study it - Lawrence Speck. When any field is undergoing development, it invents a simplistic framework on which things are hung. Then as the field expands, as it develops, the repertory begins to expand. I think we are moving out of that central spine on which everything was hung. We are moving into the study of social relationships, political relationships, vernacular, etc., and beginning to absorb more. The profession of architectural history is expanding. Many of these problems are resolving themselves - Dora Wiebenson. Whatever you propose to do, you have to make your own slides. Which means you have to have money to travel. I am struck by the fact that I teach courses to hundreds of students each year - mainline, bread-and-butter courses that go on year after year - but if I ask the university for the opportunity to travel, to see the buildings I am supposed to know something about, and to photograph them in ways that are appropriate for use in my lectures, they think all I am after is a summer in Europe - Richard Betts. While I have questions about this characterization of past historical scholarship, I generally agree with the authors’ aims. The danger in their proposed method is that it threatens to pull the researcher away from the object toward an analysis of society, rather than bringing relevant data to the object under investigation - Stephen Tobriner

Characterizing and classifying music genres and subgenres via association analysis

In this thesis, we investigate the problem of automatic music genre classification in the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR). MIR seeks to apply convenient automated solutions to many music-related tasks that are too tedious to perform by hand. These tasks often deal with vast quantities of music data. An effective automatic music genre classification approach may be useful for other tasks in MIR as well. Association analysis is a technique used to explore the inherent relationships among data objects in a problem domain. We present two novel approaches which capture genre characteristics through the use of association analysis on large music datasets. The first approach extracts the characteristic features of genres and uses these features to perform classification. The second approach attempts to improve on the first one by utilizing a pairwise dichotomy-like strategy. We then consider applying the second approach to the problem of automatic subgenre classification

Effective Porosity of Geologic Materials: First Annual Report

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewedOpe

Big Data Needs Big Governance: Best Practices From Brain-CODE, the Ontario-Brain Institute’s Neuroinformatics Platform

The Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) has begun to catalyze scientific discovery in the field of neuroscience through its large-scale informatics platform, known as Brain-CODE. The platform supports the capture, storage, federation, sharing, and analysis of different data types across several brain disorders. Underlying the platform is a robust and scalable data governance structure which allows for the flexibility to advance scientific understanding, while protecting the privacy of research participants. Recognizing the value of an open science approach to enabling discovery, the governance structure was designed not only to support collaborative research programs, but also to support open science by making all data open and accessible in the future. OBI’s rigorous approach to data sharing maintains the accessibility of research data for big discoveries without compromising privacy and security. Taking a Privacy by Design approach to both data sharing and development of the platform has allowed OBI to establish some best practices related to large-scale data sharing within Canada. The aim of this report is to highlight these best practices and develop a key open resource which may be referenced during the development of similar open science initiatives