Crime and the Quality of Life in Wisconsin Counties

The impact of crime on the local quality of life of a region is examined. Using the methods suggested by Roback (1982) hedonic pricing analysis is used to examine the effects of eight categories of crime on property values and wages. The hedonic results are then used to calculate the implicit prices of the various types of crime. Prices are computed for both urban and rural areas reflecting differences in lifestyle and the corresponding impact of crime. As expected, crime has a measurable negative cost and lowers overall quality of life in a region and the level of impact varies significantly by type of crime.

Risikofaktoren der Alzheimer-Krankheit : was verraten uns die Gene?

Im Jahr 1906 beschrieb Alois Alzheimer (1864 – 1915) erstmals krankhafte Eiweißablagerungen im Gehirn einer Patientin, bei der er einige Jahre zuvor eine Demenz diagnostiziert hatte. Diese Ablagerungen machte er für den geistigen Abbau verantwortlich. Über die zugrunde liegenden biologischen Ursachen der Krankheit (»Ätiologie«) konnte der Frankfurter Arzt jedoch nur Vermutungen anstellen. Inzwischen weiß man, dass die Gene mit darüber entscheiden, ob jemand im Alter an Alzheimer-Demenz (AD) erkrankt. Bei der seltener auftretenden familiären Form der AD sind die verantwortlichen Gene inzwischen bekannt. Doch auch bei der häufigeren sporadischen Form der Krankheit konnten verschiedene Arbeitsgruppen, einschließlich unserer eigenen, inzwischen einige »Risiko-Gene« identifizieren. Eine Erkrankung des Gehirns Aufbauend auf den Befunden von Alois Alzheimer beschäftigten sich in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts immer mehr Forschergruppen mit der Alzheimer-Krankheit. ..

Investigation on constitutive IKK activity in the axon initial segment

Poster presentation: The transcription factor NF-kappaB plays a central role in the development and maintenance of the central nervous system and its constitutive activation in neurons has been repeatedly reported. Previous work from our laboratories (poster presentation: Compartimentalized NF-kappaB activity in the axon initial segment) had revealed an intriguing clustering of activated IKKalpha/beta and other downstream elements of an activated NF-kappaB cascade (phospho-IkappaBalpha, phospho-p65(Ser536)) in the axon initial segment (AIS). Accumulation of certain voltage-gated sodium channels (Na(v)1.2), M-type potassium channels (KCNQ2) as well as cytoskeletal anchoring proteins (AnkyrinG) characterise the AIS. However, it is not yet clear how AIS-localized IKK gets activated and whether this can be connected to the constitutive activation of NF-kappaB. Long-term blockade of sodium channels with tetrodotoxin, potassium-channels with linopirdine or NMDA-receptors with MK-801 did not elicit any change upon the constitutive activation of the pathway. Strikingly, the occurrence of phosphorylated IkappaBalpha was even unaltered by 24 h of incubation with protein synthesis inhibitors. Others have reported that impairment of NF-kappaB inhibits neuritogenesis. In this line we observed that the early initiation of IkappaBalpha phosphorylation was susceptible to inhibition of IKK in DIV1–2 neurons. We therefore aim to identify the interaction partners of the activated IKK complex in the AIS. Proteomic methods such as co-immunoprecipitation analyses and mass-spectrometry will help us to identify the key players in the initiation of constitutive IKK phosphorylation and activation in neurons

Reconciling optical and radio observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1640+2224

Previous optical and radio observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1640+2224 have come to inconsistent conclusions about the identity of its companion, with some observations suggesting the companion is a low-mass helium-core (He-core) white dwarf (WD), while others indicate it is most likely a high-mass carbon-oxygen (CO) WD. Binary evolution models predict PSR J1640+2224 most likely formed in a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) based on the pulsar's short spin period and long-period, low-eccentricity orbit, in which case its companion should be a He-core WD with mass about $0.35 - 0.39 \, M_\odot$, depending on metallicity. If it is instead a CO WD, that would suggest the system has an unusual formation history. In this paper we present the first astrometric parallax measurement for this system from observations made with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), from which we determine the distance to be $1520^{+170}_{-150}\,\mathrm{pc}$. We use this distance and a reanalysis of archival optical observations originally taken in 1995 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in order to measure the WD's mass. We also incorporate improvements in calibration, extinction model, and WD cooling models. We find that the existing observations are not sufficient to tightly constrain the companion mass, but we conclude the WD mass is $>0.4\,M_\odot$ with $>90\%$ confidence. The limiting factor in our analysis is the low signal-to-noise ratio of the original HST observations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Functional and structural properties of dentate granule cells with hilar basal dendrites in mouse entorhino-hippocampal slice cultures

During postnatal development hippocampal dentate granule cells (GCs) often extend dendrites from the basal pole of their cell bodies into the hilar region. These so-called hilar basal dendrites (hBD) usually regress with maturation. However, hBDs may persist in a subset of mature GCs under certain conditions (both physiological and pathological). The functional role of these hBD-GCs remains not well understood. Here, we have studied hBD-GCs in mature (≥18 days in vitro) mouse entorhino-hippocampal slice cultures under control conditions and have compared their basic functional properties (basic intrinsic and synaptic properties) and structural properties (dendritic arborisation and spine densities) to those of neighboring GCs without hBDs in the same set of cultures. Except for the presence of hBDs, we did not detect major differences between the two GC populations. Furthermore, paired recordings of neighboring GCs with and without hBDs did not reveal evidence for a heavy aberrant GC-to-GC connectivity. Taken together, our data suggest that in control cultures the presence of hBDs on GCs is neither sufficient to predict alterations in the basic functional and structural properties of these GCs nor indicative of a heavy GC-to-GC connectivity between neighboring GCs

Universal dynamics of rogue waves in a quenched spinor Bose condensate

Universal scaling dynamics of a many-body system far from equilibrium signals the proximity of the time-evolution to a non-thermal fixed point. We find universal dynamics connected with rogue-wave like events in the mutually coupled magnetic components of a spinor gas which propagate in an effectively random potential. The frequency of these caustics is affected by the time varying spatial correlation length of the potential, giving rise to an additional exponent $\delta_\mathrm{c} \simeq 1/3$ for temporal scaling, which is different by a factor $\sim 4/3$ from the exponent $\beta_V \simeq 1/4$ characterizing the scaling of the correlation length $\ell_V \sim t^{\,\beta_V}$ with time. As a result of the caustics, real-time instanton defects appear in the Larmor phase of the spin-1 system as vortices in space and time. The temporal correlations determining the frequency of instanton events to occur scale in time as $t^{\, \delta_\mathrm{I}}$. This suggests that the universality class of a non-thermal fixed point could be characterized by different, mutually related exponents defining the coarsening evolution in time and space, respectively. Our results have a strong relevance for understanding pattern coarsening from first principles and potential implications for dynamics ranging from the early universe to geophysical dynamics and micro physics

Observation of two non-thermal fixed points for the same microscopic symmetry

Close to equilibrium, the underlying symmetries of a system determine its possible universal behavior. Far from equilibrium, however, different universal phenomena associated with the existence of multiple non-thermal fixed points can be realized for given microscopic symmetries. Here, we study this phenomenon using a quasi-one-dimensional spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. We prepare two different initial conditions and observe two distinct universal scaling dynamics with different exponents. Measurements of the complex-valued order parameter with spatial resolution allow us to characterize the phase-amplitude excitations for the two scenarios. Our study provides new insights into the phenomenon of universal dynamics far from equilibrium and opens a path towards mapping out the associated basins of non-thermal fixed points

Amyloid-Beta Mediates Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity

The physiological role of the amyloid-precursor protein (APP) is insufficiently understood. Recent work has implicated APP in the regulation of synaptic plasticity. Substantial evidence exists for a role of APP and its secreted ectodomain APPsa in Hebbian plasticity. Here, we addressed the relevance of APP in homeostatic synaptic plasticity using organotypic tissue cultures prepared from APP-/-mice of both sexes. In the absence of APP, dentate granule cells failed to strengthen their excitatory synapses homeostatically. Homeostatic plasticity is rescued by amyloid-b and not by APPsa, and it is neither observed in APP+/+ tissue treated with b-or c-secretase inhibitors nor in synaptopodin-deficient cultures lacking the Ca2+-dependent molecular machinery of the spine apparatus. Together, these results suggest a role of APP processing via the amyloidogenic pathway in homeostatic synaptic plasticity, representing a function of relevance for brain physiology as well as for brain states associated with increased amyloid-b levels. Considerable effort has been directed to better understand the pathogenic role of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) and its cleavage products in neurodegeneration, with a major focus on the accumulation and deposition of synaptotoxic amyloid$(A$) peptides, which are produced by sequential cleavage of APP by $ - and y-secretases. Although the amyloidogenic APP processing pathway has recently been targeted in patients with Alzheimer's disease, the physiological role of APP/A