Moisture and fat content in the ambrosia beetle Trypodendron lineatum (Oliv.)

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From Word Play to World Play: Introducing Humor in Human-Computer Interaction

Humor is important in our life, whether it is at home, at work, or in public spaces. Smart technology is increasingly becoming part of our daily life. Can smart technology, sensors and actuators, not only be used to introduce smartness in our environments, but also to introduce amusement? So far understanding of humor has escaped algorithmic approaches. Nevertheless, humor research knowledge is available and is increasing. First philosophers, then psychologists, then linguists and AI researchers made humor topic of their research. The aim of this paper is to introduce humor research to the human-computer interaction community. In particular we look at how our digitally enhanced physical worlds, or smart environments, can facilitate humor creation

Quiver representations and dimension reduction in dynamical systems

Dynamical systems often admit geometric properties that must be taken into account when studying their behavior. We show that many such properties can be encoded by means of quiver representations. These properties include classical symmetry, hidden symmetry, and feedforward structure, as well as subnetwork and quotient relations in network dynamical systems. A quiver equivariant dynamical system consists of a collection of dynamical systems with maps between them that send solutions to solutions. We prove that such quiver structures are preserved under Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction, center manifold reduction, and normal form reduction

Moisture and fat content in the ambrosia beetle Trypodendron lineatum (Oliv.)

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Corticotropin-releasing factor receptors couple to multiple g-proteins to activate diverse intracellular signaling pathways in mouse hippocampus: role in neuronal excitability and associative learning

Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) exerts a key neuroregulatory control on stress responses in various regions of the mammalian brain, including the hippocampus. Using hippocampal slices, extracts, and whole animals, we investigated the effects of human/rat CRF (h/rCRF) on hippocampal neuronal excitability and hippocampus-dependent learning in two mouse inbred strains, BALB/c and C57BL/6N. Intracellular recordings from slices revealed that application of h/rCRF increased the neuronal activity in both mouse inbred strains. Inhibition of protein kinase C (PKC) by bisindolylmaleimide I (BIS-I) prevented the h/rCRF effect only in hippocampal slices from BALB/c mice but not in slices from C57BL/6N mice. Inhibition of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) by H-89 abolished the h/rCRF effect in slices from C57BL/6N mice, with no effect in slices from BALB/c mice. Accordingly, h/rCRF elevated PKA activity in hippocampal slices from C57BL/6N mice but increased only PKC activity in the hippocampus of BALB/c mice. These differences in h/rCRF signal transduction were also observed in hippocampal membrane suspensions from both mouse strains. In BALB/c mice, hippocampal CRF receptors coupled to Gq/11 during stimulation by h/rCRF, whereas they coupled to Gs, Gq/11, and Gi in C57BL/6N mice. As expected on the basis of the slice experiments, h/rCRF improved context-dependent fear conditioning of BALB/c mice in behavioral experiments, and BIS-I prevented this effect. However, although h/rCRF increased neuronal spiking in slices from C57BL/6N mice, it did not enhance conditioned fear. These results indicate that the CRF system activates different intracellular signaling pathways in mouse hippocampus and may have distinct effects on associative learning depending on the mouse strain investigated

Conductance Quantization at zero magnetic field in InSb nanowires

Ballistic electron transport is a key requirement for existence of a topological phase transition in proximitized InSb nanowires. However, measurements of quantized conductance as direct evidence of ballistic transport have so far been obscured due to the increased chance of backscattering in one dimensional nanowires. We show that by improving the nanowire-metal interface as well as the dielectric environment we can consistently achieve conductance quantization at zero magnetic field. Additionally, studying the sub-band evolution in a rotating magnetic field reveals an orbital degeneracy between the second and third sub-bands for perpendicular fields above 1T

An agent-based intelligent tutoring system for nurse education

This report describes the development of a teaching environment that uses agents to support learning. An Intelligent Tutoring System will be described, that guides students during learning. This system is meant for nurse education in the first place, but it is generic in the sense that the core is separated from the exercise modules and user interfaces. This means that the system can also be used for other (non-nursing) exercises. Exercises can be provided to the system in the form of XML data-files. A user interface can be text-based or 2D, but it can also be a 3D virtual reality environment. An application of the teaching environment for nurse training is described

Ketone Ester Treatment Improves Cardiac Function and Reduces Pathologic Remodeling in Preclinical Models of Heart Failure

BACKGROUND: Accumulating evidence suggests that the failing heart reprograms fuel metabolism toward increased utilization of ketone bodies and that increasing cardiac ketone delivery ameliorates cardiac dysfunction. As an initial step toward development of ketone therapies, we investigated the effect of chronic oral ketone ester (KE) supplementation as a prevention or treatment strategy in rodent heart failure models. METHODS: Two independent rodent heart failure models were used for the studies: transverse aortic constriction/myocardial infarction (MI) in mice and post-MI remodeling in rats. Seventy-five mice underwent a prevention treatment strategy with a KE comprised of hexanoyl-hexyl-3-hydroxybutyrate KE (KE-1) diet, and 77 rats were treated in either a prevention or treatment regimen using a commercially available β-hydroxybutyrate-(R)-1,3-butanediol monoester (DeltaG; KE-2) diet. RESULTS: The KE-1 diet in mice elevated β-hydroxybutyrate levels during nocturnal feeding, whereas the KE-2 diet in rats induced ketonemia throughout a 24-hour period. The KE-1 diet preventive strategy attenuated development of left ventricular dysfunction and remodeling post-transverse aortic constriction/MI (left ventricular ejection fraction±SD, 36±8 in vehicle versus 45±11 in KE-1; P=0.016). The KE-2 diet therapeutic approach also attenuated left ventricular dysfunction and remodeling post-MI (left ventricular ejection fraction, 41±11 in MI-vehicle versus 61±7 in MI-KE-2; P<0.001). In addition, ventricular weight, cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area, and the expression of ANP (atrial natriuretic peptide) were significantly attenuated in the KE-2-treated MI group. However, treatment with KE-2 did not influence cardiac fibrosis post-MI. The myocardial expression of the ketone transporter and 2 ketolytic enzymes was significantly increased in rats fed KE-2 diet along with normalization of myocardial ATP levels to sham values. CONCLUSIONS: Chronic oral supplementation with KE was effective in both prevention and treatment of heart failure in 2 preclinical animal models. In addition, our results indicate that treatment with KE reprogrammed the expression of genes involved in ketone body utilization and normalized myocardial ATP production following MI, consistent with provision of an auxiliary fuel. These findings provide rationale for the assessment of KEs as a treatment for patients with heart failure