Maternal Influenza Infection Causes Marked Behavioral and Pharmacological Changes in the Offspring

Maternal viral infection is known to increase the risk for schizophrenia and autism in the offspring. Using this observation in an animal model, we find that respiratory infection of pregnant mice (both BALB/c and C57BL/6 strains) with the human influenza virus yields offspring that display highly abnormal behavioral responses as adults. As in schizophrenia and autism, these offspring display deficits in prepulse inhibition (PPI) in the acoustic startle response. Compared with control mice, the infected mice also display striking responses to the acute administration of antipsychotic (clozapine and chlorpromazine) and psychomimetic (ketamine) drugs. Moreover, these mice are deficient in exploratory behavior in both open-field and novel-object tests, and they are deficient in social interaction. At least some of these behavioral changes likely are attributable to the maternal immune response itself. That is, maternal injection of the synthetic double-stranded RNA polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid causes a PPI deficit in the offspring in the absence of virus. Therefore, maternal viral infection has a profound effect on the behavior of adult offspring, probably via an effect of the maternal immune response on the fetus

Pengaruh Penambahan Tepung Bunga Marigold (Tagetes SP) Sebagai Sumber Karotenoid Untuk Meningkatkan Warna Ikan Komet (Carrasius Auratus Auratus)

Ikan komet merupakan salah satu jenis ikan hias air tawar yang banyak diminatioleh masyarakat. Peningkatan kualitas warna diperlukan untuk ikan ini agar dapat menghasilkan kualitas warna terbaik. Metode yang signifikanuntuk meningkatkan kualitas warna adalah dengan menambahkan tepung bunga Marigold sebagai sumber karotenoid ke dalam pakan buatan agar dapat meningkatkan kecerahan warna pada ikan komet. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mempelajari dosis terbaik dalam penambahan tepung bunga marigold pada intensitas warna yang diukur dengan Toca Colour Finder Modified (M-TCF) dan spektrofotometer. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan merekatkan tepung bunga marigold pada pakan komersil menggunakan minyak ikan. Penelitian menggunakan rancangan acak lengkap (RAL) dengan 4 perlakuan dan 3 ulangan yaitu : 0 % (A atau kontrol), 0,6 % (B), 0,9 % (C), dan 1,2 % (D). Padat tebar adalah 15 ekor/ cm 3 selama 40 hari di akuarium ukuran 60x40x40 cm3 . Tepung bunga Marigold memberikan dampak yang signifikan pada warna ikan komet. Data pertumbuhan mutlak panjang dan berat untuk studi ikan komet tidak memberikan pengaruh signifikan, namun tepung bunga Marigold secara signifikan mempengaruhi tingkat kelangsungan hidup. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa perlakuan terbaik adalah C yang memberikan kecerahan tertinggi

Nitrous oxide fluxes from tropical peat with different disturbance history and management

Peer reviewe

The Deuterium Abundance at z=0.701 towards QSO 1718+4807

We present constraints on the deuterium to hydrogen ratio (D/H) in the metal-poor gas cloud at redshift $z=0.701$ towards QSO 1718+4807. We use new Keck spectra in addition to Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) spectra. We use an improved redshift and a lower \HI column density to model the absorption. The HST spectrum shows an asymmetric Lyman-$\alpha$ (\lya) feature which is produced by either \HI at a second velocity, or a high abundance of D. Three models with a single simple H+D component give $8 \times 10^{-5} < D/H < 57 \times 10^{-5}$ (95%), a much larger range than reported by Webb et al (1997a,b). A more sophisticated velocity distribution, or a second component is necessary for lower D/H. With two components, which could be a part of one absorbing structure, or separate clouds in a galaxy halo, we find $D/H < 50 \times 10^{-5}$. We do not know if this second component is present, but it is reasonable because 40 -- 100% of absorption systems with similar redshifts and \HI column densities have more than one component.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the Astronomical Journal (Jan 1999

Initial Screening of Fast-growing Tree Species Being Tolerant of Dry Tropical Peatlands in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

An investigation of the recruit, survivorship and growth of naturally regenerating tree species on canal bank was conducted to select tree species which are suitable for preceding planting in drained and burnt peat swamp lands in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Top of the canal bank were open, with greater soil moisture deficit and higher soil temperatures than on the next intact forest floor. The abundant trees were asam-asam (Ploiarium alternifolium),garunggang (Cratoxylon arborescens) and tumih (Combretocarpus rotundatus). New regeneration of these trees on the canal bank was confirmed during this investigation and mortality was very low. These results indicated that P. alternifolium,C. arborescens and C. rotundatuswere tolerant of intensive radiation, soil drought and high soil temperatures during germination. The annual height increments were 189-232 cm y-1 (P. alternifolium),118-289 cm y-1 (C. arborescens)and 27-255 cm y-1 (C. rotundatus); thus, these three species could be classified as fast-growing with tolerance to open and dry conditions. Such characteristics were important to avoid competition with herbs, ferns,and/ or climbers. The results·suggest that P.alternifolium,C. arborescens and C. rotundatusare suitable for preceding planting for the rehabilitation of the disturbed peat swamp forests of Central Kalimantan

Canal blocking strategies for hydrological restoration of degraded tropical peatlands in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

In the 1990s the Government of Indonesia derided to develop one million hectares of peatlands for agriculture in Central Kalimantan on the Island of Borneo. The construction of thousands of kilometres of canals resulted in over-drainage and targets for agricultural production failed. Abandoned, the area has been subject to severe forest and peat fires. Restoration of degraded peatlands normally starts with restoring the water table to rewet the surface in order to control fire and to initiate reforestation. Canal blocking strategies are a potential means for accomplishing this. In a test plot in the Northern part of Block C of the former Mega Rice Project (MRP), a series of dams were constructed and (ground)water tables and subsidence rates were monitored to assess the effects of dam construction on peatland hydrology. The resulting higher water tables did not completely compensate for the negative effects of increased subsidence near the canals. The canals, which are "eating" themselves into the peatland, create depressions in the peatland surface leading to interception of overland- and interflow and increased risk of overtopping of dams during extreme rainfall events. The lessons learned are being used to improve blocking strategies and dam design. The changes in peatland topography caused by drainage, however, need to be better understood in order to further refine strategies for hydrological restoration of degraded peatlands in Indonesia. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Spatio-Temporal Fusion Networks for Action Recognition

The video based CNN works have focused on effective ways to fuse appearance and motion networks, but they typically lack utilizing temporal information over video frames. In this work, we present a novel spatio-temporal fusion network (STFN) that integrates temporal dynamics of appearance and motion information from entire videos. The captured temporal dynamic information is then aggregated for a better video level representation and learned via end-to-end training. The spatio-temporal fusion network consists of two set of Residual Inception blocks that extract temporal dynamics and a fusion connection for appearance and motion features. The benefits of STFN are: (a) it captures local and global temporal dynamics of complementary data to learn video-wide information; and (b) it is applicable to any network for video classification to boost performance. We explore a variety of design choices for STFN and verify how the network performance is varied with the ablation studies. We perform experiments on two challenging human activity datasets, UCF101 and HMDB51, and achieve the state-of-the-art results with the best network

Highly Ionized High Velocity Clouds: Intergalactic Gas in the Local Group or Distant Gas in the Galactic Halo?

We have recently identified several high velocity (V < -100 km/s) clouds in the directions of Mrk 509 and PKS 2155-304 that have unusual ionization properties. The clouds exhibit strong C IV absorption with little or no detectable low ion (C II, Si II) absorption or H I 21cm emission. As the closest known analog to the outer diffuse halos of damped Ly-alpha absorbers and the low H I column density metal line absorption systems seen in the spectra of high redshift quasars, these "C IV-HVCs" present unique opportunities for relating the conditions within the Milky Way halo and nearby intergalactic gas to the properties of galactic halos at higher redshift. The C IV-HVCs have ionization properties consistent with photoionization by extragalactic background radiation, though some contribution by collisional ionization within a hot plasma cannot be ruled out. The clouds are probably low density [n(H) ~ 10^-4 cm^-3], large [greater than several kiloparsecs], and mostly ionized [n(HI)/n(H) ~ 10^-3] regions located well beyond the neutral gas layer of the Galaxy. The presence of weak H I-HVCs detected through 21cm emission near both sight lines indicates that the C IV-HVCs trace the extended, ionized, low density regions of the H I-HVCs. Several lines of evidence, including very low thermal pressures (P/k ~ 2 cm^-3 K), favor a location for the C IV-HVCs in the Local Group or very distant Galactic halo.Comment: AASTEX manuscript and tables, 55 pages, 8 postscript figures. Astrophysical Journal, in pres

Cosmic Concordance and Quintessence

We present a comprehensive study of the observational constraints on spatially flat cosmological models containing a mixture of matter and quintessence --- a time varying, spatially inhomogeneous component of the energy density of the universe with negative pressure. Our study also includes the limiting case of a cosmological constant. Low red shift constraints include the Hubble parameter, baryon fraction, cluster abundance, age of the universe, bulk velocity and shape of the mass power spectrum; intermediate red shift constraints are due to type 1a supernovae, gravitational lensing, the Ly-a forest, and the evolution of large scale structure; high red shift constraints are based on cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy. Mindful of systematic errors, we adopt a conservative approach in applying these constraints. We determine that quintessence models in which the matter density parameter is 0.2 \ls \Omega_m \ls 0.5 and the effective, density-averaged equation of state is -1 \le w \ls -0.2, are consistent with the most reliable, current low red shift and CMB observations at the $2\sigma$ level. Factoring in the constraint due to type 1a SNe, the range for the equation of state is reduced to -1 \le w \ls -0.4, where this range represents models consistent with each observational constraint at the 2$\sigma$ level or better (concordance analysis). A combined maximum likelihood analysis suggests a smaller range, -1 \le w \ls -0.6. We find that the best-fit and best-motivated quintessence models lie near $\Omega_m \approx 0.33$, $h \approx 0.65$, and spectral index $n_s=1$, with an effective equation of state $w \approx -0.65$ for ``tracker'' quintessence and $w=-1$ for ``creeper'' quintessence. (abstract shortened)Comment: revised to match ApJ version; 33 pages; 20 figures, 4 in color; uses emulateapj.st

A Polarization Pursuers' Guide

We calculate the detectability of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as a function of the sky coverage, angular resolution, and instrumental sensitivity for a hypothetical experiment. We consider the gradient component of the polarization from density perturbations (scalar modes) and the curl component from gravitational waves (tensor modes). We show that the amplitude (and thus the detectability) of the polarization from density perturbations is roughly the same in any model as long as the model fits the big-bang-nucleosynthesis (BBN) baryon density and degree-scale anisotropy measurements. The degree-scale polarization is smaller (and accordingly more difficult to detect) if the baryon density is higher. In some cases, the signal-to-noise for polarization (both from scalar and tensor modes) may be improved in a fixed-time experiment with a smaller survey area.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure