Translation and Tradition: the Translator as Mediator between Two Literary Systems

This paper discusses the impact of translation on literary traditions and the sociological elements which contribute to the shift of the canon. The effort of translation to enlarge and enrich a literary system makes it a powerful tool for the introduction of new aesthetics and trends as well as the ideology implied in them. A translation of a literary work is, in fact, a criticism of that work, a point of view on the author and the text. Poggioli's idea that translation is an interpretative art, like music, half way between reproduction or craft and a complete original creation is vital for this approach

Understanding the role of mTORC1 and mTORC2 in embryonic and adult myogenesis

Myogenesis describes the formation of skeletal muscle fibers during embryogenesis and their regeneration of injury in the adult. The formation of myofibers includes the commitment of cell progenitors into the muscle lineage, their amplification and subsequent differentiation and fusion into multi-nucleated myotubes. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) assembles into two distinct complexes, termed complex 1 (mTORC1) and 2 (mTORC2), and controls cellular growth and metabolism, in response to nutrients and extracellular signals. The mTOR signaling pathway is crucial for homeostasis of mature skeletal muscle and mTOR deregulation in muscle results in progressive myopathies. Since myogenesis is determined by a complex regulatory network involving growth factors and external stimuli, I investigated the function of mTOR signaling in embryonic and adult myogenesis. This PhD thesis describes the role of mTORC1 and mTORC2 in embryonic and adult myogenesis using genetically modified mice. Depletion of raptor, an essential protein of mTORC1, in muscle progenitors caused the mice to die perinatally because of severe defects in muscle development. I observed that mTORC1 was highly active in embryonic muscle progenitors and precursors and became downregulated in differentiating and fusing myocytes, suggesting a predominant role in muscle cell commitment and proliferation. Accordingly, raptor-depleted myoblasts showed severe defects in proliferation, most probably caused by reduced rates of protein synthesis. Furthermore, loss of mTORC1 reduced, but did not abolish differentiation of myoblasts. Thus, the myogenic process was still completed, but less efficiently, in the absence of mTORC1. To investigate the role of mTORC1 in adult myogenesis, depletion of raptor was induced in adult muscle stem cells, called satellite cells. mTORC1 depletion did not affect the quiescence of satellite cells but delayed their activation upon external stimuli. Furthermore, I established that satellite cells deficient for raptor proliferated and differentiated less efficiently, resulting in poor regeneration following muscle injury. Mice deficient for mTORC2 signaling in developing muscle were viable and showed no histological and functional alterations of skeletal muscle. Moreover, depletion of rictor in embryonic muscle progenitors did not affect the number of satellite cells and their myogenic function in adult skeletal muscle upon injury. In particular, rictor-depleted satellite cells did not differ from control cells in their proliferation, differentiation and fusion capacity. However, the number of satellite cells decreased following repeated muscle injuries in the absence of mTORC2. Furthermore, the number of quiescent satellite cells declined during physiological aging in mutant mice, causing an impairment in the regenerative capacity at progressed age. In conclusion, I established that mTORC1, but not mTORC2 signaling is required for the formation of skeletal muscle during embryogenesis and for the regeneration of the tissue following severe muscle damage. I found that loss of mTORC1 reduces protein synthesis and thereby limits the proliferation and differentiation capacity of myoblasts during embryonic and adult myogenesis. In contrast, mTORC2 is dispensable for the myogenic function of myoblasts to proliferate, differentiate and fuse, but is required for the maintenance of the muscle stem cell pool during aging and after muscle injury. Overall, these results are of major importance as they extent our knowledge about the distinct roles of mTORC1 and mTORC2 in the myogenic process and the maintenance of the muscle stem cell pool. As mTOR is a central regulatory hub, integrating the metabolic status of a cell and translating those signals into proteostatic processes, my work has established that these mTOR-controlled functions are important in muscle precursors. These results may open new avenues regarding pathological conditions, such as aging or metabolic muscle disorders, which have also been related to mTOR deregulation

AUTONOMOUS CONTROL AND SIGNAL ACQUISITION SYSTEM

Dr. Bunget has an autonomous control and signal acquisition system that he wants to be repaired and improved upon. This requires that we identify the current issues with the system and repair them as well as make innovations to the system to meet customer needs. The position control needs to be autonomous, and the acquisition of the oscilloscope signal and the transducer position needs to be synchronous. The user should be able to control the position, speed, and how often the signals are captured. The waveform of the scan should be appended into a spreadsheet. The system code also needs to be updated to a newer version of Python. Additionally, this system was damaged during transportation and now needs to be repaired. As for upgrading the system, the framework needs to be strengthened for increased rigidity to ensure accuracy of the system. Other improvements focus on replacing some parts to meet our overall goal of making sure the system is stable and accurate so that measurements done in the future can have as little error as possible. We were able to lay the groundwork for all these requirements to be met. We upgraded the system code to Python 3 and changed the microcontroller to an Arduino Mega as well as implementing PyFirmata for control. The electrical circuit was completely redone and now uses a 12 V adapter as the main power source and newer versions of the original drivers. The 20 mm slotted aluminum extrusions were replaced with 40 mm slotted aluminum extrusions. Ball screws were used in place of threaded rods for the x-axis and supported linear slide rails were used in place of unsupported slide rails. The cost for these upgrades totals below $1000 making this an affordable project for student research

Translation and tradition: the translator as mediator between two literary systems

This paper discusses the impact of translation on literary traditions and the sociological elements which contribute to the shift of the canon. The effort of translation to enlarge and enrich a literary system makes it a powerful tool for the introduction of new aesthetics and trends as well as the ideology implied in them. A translation of a literary work is, in fact, a criticism of that work, a point of view on the author and the text. Poggioli’s idea that translation is an interpretative art, like music, half way between reproduction or craft and a complete original creation is vital for this approach

A distributed Quadtree Dictionary approach to multi-resolution visualization of scattered neutron data

Grid computing is described as dependable, seamless, pervasive access to resources and services, whereas mobile computing allows the movement of people from place to place while staying connected to resources at each location. Mobile grid computing is a new computing paradigm, which joins these two technologies by enabling access to the collection of resources within a user\u27s virtual organization while still maintaining the freedom of mobile computing through a service paradigm. A major problem in virtual organization is needs mismatch, in which one resources requests a service from another resources it is unable to fulfill, since virtual organizations are necessarily heterogeneous collections of resources. In this dissertation we propose a solution to the needs mismatch problem in the case of high energy physics data. Specifically, we propose a Quadtree Dictionary (QTD) algorithm to provide lossless, multi-resolution compression of datasets and enable their visualization on devices of all capabilities. As a prototype application, we extend the Integrated Spectral Analysis Workbench (ISAW) developed at the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source Division of the Argonne National Laboratory into a mobile Grid application, Mobile ISAW. In this dissertation we compare our QTD algorithm with several existing compression techniques on ISAW\u27s Single-Crystal Diffractometer (SCD) datasets. We then extend our QTD algorithm to a distributed setting and examine its effectiveness on the next generation of SCD datasets. In both a serial and distributed setting, our QTD algorithm performs no worse than existing techniques such as the square wavelet transform in terms of energy conservation, while providing the worst-case savings of 8:1