The Power of Instability - Medieval Reception and Appropriation of Man'Yoshu as Examined in Poetic Criticism (Karon) and Poetry (Waka) by Fujiwara Kiyosuke and Fujiwara Shunzei.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Automated rendering of multi-stranded DNA complexes with pseudoknots

We present a general method for rendering representations of multi-stranded DNA complexes from textual descriptions into 2D diagrams. The complexes can be arbitrarily pseudoknotted, and if a planar rendering is possible, the method will determine one in time which is essentially linear in the size of the textual description. (That is, except for a final stochastic fine-tuning step.) If a planar rendering is not possible, the method will compute a visually pleasing approximate rendering in quadratic time. Examples of diagrams produced by the method are presented in the paper.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Temporally Graded Activation of Neocortical Regions in Response to Memories of Different Ages

The temporally graded memory impairment seen in many neurobehavioral disorders implies different neuroanatomical pathways and/or cognitive mechanisms involved in storage and retrieval of memories of different ages. A dynamic interaction between medial-temporal and neocortical brain regions has been proposed to account for memory\u27s greater permanence with time. Despite considerable debate concerning its time-dependent role in memory retrieval, medial-temporal lobe activity has been well studied. However, the relative participation of neocortical regions in recent and remote memory retrieval has received much less attention. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrate robust, temporally graded signal differences in posterior cingulate, right middle frontal, right fusiform, and left middle temporal regions in healthy older adults during famous name identification from two disparate time epochs. Importantly, no neocortical regions demonstrated greater response to older than to recent stimuli. Our results suggest a possible role of these neocortical regions in temporally dating items in memory and in establishing and maintaining memory traces throughout the lifespan. Theoretical implications of these findings for the two dominant models of remote memory functioning (Consolidation Theory and Multiple Trace Theory) are discussed

Modifying the Schwarz Bayesian information criterion to locate multiple interacting quantitative trait loci

The problem of locating multiple interacting quantitative trait loci (QTL) can be addressed as a multiple regression problem, with marker genotypes being the regressor variables. An important and difficult part in fitting such a regression model is the estimation of the QTL number and respective interactions. Among the many model selection criteria that can be used to estimate the number of regressor variables, none are used to estimate the number of interactions. Our simulations demonstrate that epistatic terms appearing in a model without the related main effects cause the standard model selection criteria to have a strong tendency to overestimate the number of interactions, and so the QTL number. With this as our motivation we investigate the behavior of the Schwarz Bayesian information criterion (BIC) by explaining the phenomenon of the overestimation and proposing a novel modification of BIC that allows the detection of main effects and pairwise interactions in a backcross population. Results of an extensive simulation study demonstrate that our modified version of BIC performs very well in practice. Our methodology can be extended to general populations and higher-order interactions

Age-Related Functional Recruitment for Famous Name Recognition: An Event-Related fMRI Study

Recent neuroimaging research shows that older adults exhibit recruitment, or increased activation on various cognitive tasks. The current study evaluated whether a similar pattern also occurs in semantic memory by evaluating age-related differences during recognition of Recent (since the 1990s) and Enduring (1950s to present) famous names. Fifteen healthy older and 15 healthy younger adults performed the name recognition task with a high and comparable degree of accuracy, although older adults had slower reaction time in response to Recent famous names. Event-related functional MRI showed extensive networks of activation in the two groups including posterior cingulate, right hippocampus, temporal lobe and left prefrontal regions. The Recent condition produced more extensive activation than the Enduring condition. Older adults had more extensive and greater magnitude of activation in 15 of 20 regions, particularly for the Recent condition (15 of 15; 7 of 15 also differed for Enduring); young adults did not show greater activation magnitude in any region. There were no group differences for non-famous names, indicating that age differences are task-specific. The results support and extend the existing literature to semantic memory tasks, indicating that older adult brains use functional recruitment to support task performance, even when task performance accuracy is high

Thiol-Methylsulfone Based Hydrogels: Enhanced Control on Gelation Kinetics for 3D Cell Encapsulation

Hydrogels are useful temporal matrices for cell culture technologies. The successful mixing and encapsulation of cells within the gel requires the selection of efficient and cytocompatible gelation reactions occurring in the minute timescale under physiological conditions. The thiol-methylsulfonyl (MS) chemical reaction is introduced here as a novel chemistry to encapsulate cells in polymeric matrices. Thiol-MS crosslinking does not require a light activation step and can occur within the seconds-to-minutes timescale by adjusting the pH in the physiological range 8.0-6.6. This reaction is cytocompatible and the reaction product is hydrolytically stable in cell culture media up to 4 weeks. Cell encapsulation protocols enabling comfortable handling and yielding homogenous distribution of the embedded cells are described. All these features are relevant for the application of this crosslinking reaction to biomedical scenarios. Finally, this manuscript also compares the performance of thiol-MS hydrogels with the established thiol-maleimide and thiol-vinylsulfone hydrogels. The benefit of thiol-MS crosslinking in terms of control over hydrogelation kinetics is demonstrated