In pursuit of an expressive vocabulary for preserved new media art

The status of the new media, interactive and performance art context appears to complicate our ability to follow conventional preservation approaches. Documentation of digital art materials has been determined to be an appropriate means of resolving associated difficulties, but this demands high levels of expressiveness to support the encapsulation of the myriad elements and qualities of content and context that may influence value and reproducibility. We discuss a proposed Vocabulary for Preserved New Media Works, a means of encapsulating the various information and material dimensions implicit within a work and required to ensure its ongoing availability

Reflections on preserving the state of new media art

As part of its work to explore emerging issues associated with characterisation of digital materials, Planets has explored vocabularies and information structures for expressing the properties integral to the value of digital art. Value encompasses those qualities that must be understood and captured in order to ensure that art works’ sensory, emotional, mental and spiritual resonance remain. Facets of interactivity, modularity and temporality associated with digital art present some critical questions that the preservation community must increasingly be equipped to answer. Because digital art materials exhibit fundamental multidimensionality, validating the successful preservation of creative experience demands the explication of more than just file characteristics. Understanding relationships between objects also implies an understanding of their respective functional qualities. This paper presents a Planets’ vocabulary for encapsulating contextual and implicit characteristics of digital art, optimised for preservation planning and validation

Status of the blue crab fishery in Chesapeake Bay : a report to the Virginia Advisory Legislative Council

Also part of series: Virginia Fisheries Laboratory special scientific report ; no. 13

Combination treatment with ionising radiation and gefitinib ('Iressa', ZD1839), an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor, significantly inhibits bladder cancer cell growth in vitro and in vivo

Purpose: External beam radiotherapy (EBRT) is the principal bladder-preserving monotherapy for muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Seventy percent of muscle-invasive bladder cancers express epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which is associated with poor prognosis. Ionising radiation (IR) stimulates EGFR causing activation of cytoprotective signalling cascades and thus may be an underlying cause of radioresistance in bladder tumours. Materials and methods: We assessed the ability of IR to activate EGFR in bladder cancer cells and the effect of the anti-EGFR therapy, gefitinib on potential radiation-induced activation. Subsequently we assessed the effect of IR on signalling pathways downstream of EGFR. Finally we assessed the activity of gefitinib as a monotherapy, and in combination with IR, using clonogenic assay in vitro, and a murine model in vivo. Results: IR activated EGFR and gefitinib partially inhibited this activation. Radiation-induced activation of EGFR activated the MAPK and Akt pathways. Gefitinib partially inhibited activation of the MAPK pathway but not the Akt pathway. Treatment with combined gefitinib and IR significantly inhibited bladder cancer cell colony formation more than treatment with gefitinib alone (p = 0.001-0.03). J82 xenograft tumours treated with combined gefitinib and IR showed significantly greater growth inhibition than tumours treated with IR alone (p = 0.04). Conclusions: Combining gefitinib and IR results in significantly greater inhibition of invasive bladder cancer cell colony formation in vitro and significantly greater tumour growth inhibition in vivo. Given the high frequency of EGFR expression by bladder tumours and the low toxicity of gefitinib there is justification to translate this work into a clinical trial.Peer-reviewedPublisher Version1721

Spatial working memory for locations specified by vision and audition: Testing the amodality hypothesis

Spatial working memory can maintain representations from vision, hearing, and touch, representations referred to here as spatial images. The present experiment addressed whether spatial images from vision and hearing that are simultaneously present within working memory retain modality-specific tags or are amodal. Observers were presented with short sequences of targets varying in angular direction, with the targets in a given sequence being all auditory, all visual, or a sequential mixture of the two. On two thirds of the trials, one of the locations was repeated, and observers had to respond as quickly as possible when detecting this repetition. Ancillary detection and localization tasks confirmed that the visual and auditory targets were perceptually comparable. Response latencies in the working memory task showed small but reliable costs in performance on trials involving a sequential mixture of auditory and visual targets, as compared with trials of pure vision or pure audition. These deficits were statistically reliable only for trials on which the modalities of the matching location switched from the penultimate to the final target in the sequence, indicating a switching cost. The switching cost for the pair in immediate succession means that the spatial images representing the target locations retain features of the visual or auditory representations from which they were derived. However, there was no reliable evidence of a performance cost for mixed modalities in the matching pair when the second of the two did not immediately follow the first, suggesting that more enduring spatial images in working memory may be amodal

A dopaminergic switch for fear to safety transitions

Overcoming aversive emotional memories requires neural systems that detect when fear responses are no longer appropriate so that they can be extinguished. The midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine system has been implicated in reward and more broadly in signaling when a better-than-expected outcome has occurred. This suggests that it may be important in guiding fear to safety transitions. We report that when an expected aversive outcome does not occur, activity in midbrain dopamine neurons is necessary to extinguish behavioral fear responses and engage molecular signaling events in extinction learning circuits. Furthermore, a specific dopamine projection to the nucleus accumbens medial shell is partially responsible for this effect. In contrast, a separate dopamine projection to the medial prefrontal cortex opposes extinction learning. This demonstrates a novel function for the canonical VTA-dopamine reward system and reveals opposing behavioral roles for different dopamine neuron projections in fear extinction learning

Influence of a montmorency cherry juice blend on indices of exercise-induced stress and upper respiratory tract symptoms following marathon running—a pilot investigation

Background: Prolonged exercise, such as marathon running, has been associated with an increase in respiratory mucosal inflammation. The aim of this pilot study was to examine the effects of Montmorency cherry juice on markers of stress, immunity and inflammation following a Marathon. Methods: Twenty recreational Marathon runners consumed either cherry juice (CJ) or placebo (PL) before and after a Marathon race. Markers of mucosal immunity secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA), immunoglobulin G (IgG), salivary cortisol, inflammation (CRP) and self-reported incidence and severity of upper respiratory tract symptoms (URTS) were measured before and following the race. Results: All variables except secretory IgA and IgG concentrations in saliva showed a significant time effect (P < 0.01). Serum CRP showed a significant interaction and treatment effect (P < 0.01). The CRP increase at 24 and 48 h post-Marathon was lower (P < 0.01) in the CJ group compared to PL group. Mucosal immunity and salivary cortisol showed no interaction effect or treatment effect. The incidence and severity of URTS was significantly greater than baseline at 24 h and 48 h following the race in the PL group and was also greater than the CJ group (P < 0.05). No URTS were reported in the CJ group whereas 50 % of runners in the PL group reported URTS at 24 h and 48 h post-Marathon. Conclusions: This is the first study that provides encouraging evidence of the potential role of Montmorency cherries in reducing the development of URTS post-Marathon possibly caused by exercise-induced hyperventilation trauma, and/or other infectious and non-infectious factors

Tuning Magnetic Avalanches in Mn12-ac

Using micron-sized Hall sensor arrays to obtain time-resolved measurements of the local magnetization, we report a systematic study in the molecular magnet Mn$_{12}$-acetate of magnetic avalanches controllably triggered in different fixed external magnetic fields and for different values of the initial magnetization. The speeds of propagation of the spin-reversal fronts are in good overall agreement with the theory of magnetic deflagration of Garanin and Chudnovsky \cite{Garanin}.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures; discussion expanded and revise

The effect of Si/Al ratio on local and nanoscale water diffusion in H-ZSM-5: A quasielastic neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulation study

The dynamics of water confined in H-ZSM-5 (protonated form of the Zeolite Socony Mobil – 5) has been studied using quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) and classical molecular dynamics simulations (MD). QENS measurements probed water confined in ZSM-5 samples with Si/Al ratios of 15, 40 and 140 at 2.8 wt% loadings. In the lower silica samples, fitting of the elastic incoherent structure factor (EISF) showed that water diffusion was confined to a sphere (with radii ranging from 3.4 to 4.3 \uc5), suggesting the mobile water was located within the MFI (framework type of H-ZSM-5) channel intersections, giving localised diffusion coefficients in the range of ∼0.9–1.8 7 10−9 m2s−1. In the high silica zeolite, the diffusion was observed to be far less confined and more long range in nature, with diffusion coefficients significantly higher than in the lower silica systems (∼1.8–4.8 7 10−9 m2s−1). MD simulations further investigated the effect of the Si/Al ratio on water diffusivity at 2.8 wt% loading (9 molecules/unit cell (UC)) in H-ZSM-5 with Si/Al ratio = 15, 47, 95 and fully siliceous. The Si/Al ratio had a significant effect on the MD calculated nanoscale diffusivity of water, reducing the self-diffusion coefficient by a factor of 2 from a fully siliceous system to that with Si/Al = 15, due to the strong coordination and increased residence time of water molecules at the Br\uf8nsted acid sites which range from ∼5 ps to ∼2 ps in the Si/Al = 15 and Si/Al = 95 systems respectively. QENS observables, both the EISF and quasielastic line broadenings, were reproduced from the MD trajectories upon sampling the experimental timescale giving both qualitative and quantitative agreement with the QENS experiments. Fitting of the MD calculated EISF showed that the experimentally observed diffusion confined to a sphere of radii ranging from 3.5 to 6.8 \uc5 was also present in our simulations, with diffusion coefficients calculated to within a factor of 0.5 of experiment