546 research outputs found
Heterogeneous and tissue-specific regulation of effector T cell responses by IFN-gamma during Plasmodium berghei ANKA infection.
No full textIFN-γ and T cells are both required for the development of experimental cerebral malaria during Plasmodium berghei ANKA infection. Surprisingly, however, the role of IFN-γ in shaping the effector CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cell response during this infection has not been examined in detail. To address this, we have compared the effector T cell responses in wild-type and IFN-γ(-/-) mice during P. berghei ANKA infection. The expansion of splenic CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells during P. berghei ANKA infection was unaffected by the absence of IFN-γ, but the contraction phase of the T cell response was significantly attenuated. Splenic T cell activation and effector function were essentially normal in IFN-γ(-/-) mice; however, the migration to, and accumulation of, effector CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells in the lung, liver, and brain was altered in IFN-γ(-/-) mice. Interestingly, activation and accumulation of T cells in various nonlymphoid organs was differently affected by lack of IFN-γ, suggesting that IFN-γ influences T cell effector function to varying levels in different anatomical locations. Importantly, control of splenic T cell numbers during P. berghei ANKA infection depended on active IFN-γ-dependent environmental signals--leading to T cell apoptosis--rather than upon intrinsic alterations in T cell programming. To our knowledge, this is the first study to fully investigate the role of IFN-γ in modulating T cell function during P. berghei ANKA infection and reveals that IFN-γ is required for efficient contraction of the pool of activated T cells
So What's Wrong with "Buxom"? Samuel Johnson, Poetical Language, and Semantics
No full textThis paper seeks to examine Samuel Johnson's notions of poetical language as related to his work as a lexicographer. It argues that Johnson's ideas about, and ideals of, the language appropriate to poetry derive largely from his work on his Dictionary. It attempts to restore the connection between the two spheres of Johnson's activities. It also examines the unusually stringent semantically-based criticism of poetry in Johnson's critical work, especially The Lives of the Poets. As a showcase, the author examines Johnson's negative critical comments on Thomas Gray's poetry. The attention lies on expressions used by Grey that Johnson found particularly objectionable, including the word "buxom" ("Ode on Spring"); these criticisms are examined in detail. The paper compares Wordsworth's opinion of Gray's diction with Johnson's, and finds them surprisingly similar. It concludes that Johnson may have regretted poets' (and other users') deviation from logical etymological derivation of the meanings of words, and believed that the poets wrote bad poetry as a result; yet he also accepted to some extent the inevitable "encroachment" of metaphorical meanings
Psychological Science: To Conserve Or Create?
No full textResponds to commentaries from W. W. Tryon, D. J. Kruger, B. D. Haig, E. A. Locke, T. Teo and A. R. Febbraro, T. L. Holdstock, J. I. Krueger, S. G. Hofmann, and H. Friedman (see records 2002-13736-017, -018, -019, -020, -021, -022, -023, -024, and -025, respectively) on the author\u27s article (see record 2001-18772-003) that discussed the merits and criticisms of postmodernism in psychology. The author focuses on three issues of substantive significance--the culture of psychological science, nihilism or enrichment, and the uses of history--in responding to the commentaries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved
Latin Loans in Old English and Finnish Loans in Modern English: Can We Distinguish Statistics from Myth?
No full textThis article claims that there are major problems with existing classifications of Latin loanwords into Old English. These deficiencies spring not so much from the paucity of the Old English linguistic record, as a comparison with several much better documented Finnish loans into Modern English shows, but rather from methodological imprecision, which results in many lexical items being too hastily labelled with the umbrella term "lexical loan". Alternative terms are suggested for the twelve Finnish and six Old English words investigated in the article, based on their frequency, integration, the registers that they belong to, and the historical and cultural developments that they document
Measurement of the muon charge asymmetry in inclusive pp →W + X production at s=7 TeV and an improved determination of light parton distribution functions
No full textPublished by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.Measurements of the muon charge asymmetry in inclusive pp → W + X production at root s= 7 TeV are
presented. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 fb−1 recorded with the CMS
detector at the LHC. With a sample of more than 20 million W → μν events, the statistical precision is
greatly improved in comparison to previous measurements. These new results provide additional
constraints on the parton distribution functions of the proton in the range of the Bjorken scaling variable
x from 10−3 to 10−1. These measurements and the recent CMS measurement of associated W þ charm
production are used together with the cross sections for inclusive deep inelastic e p scattering at HERA in
a next-to-leading-order QCD analysis. The determination of the valence quark distributions is improved,
and the strange-quark distribution is probed directly through the leading-order process g þ s → W þ c in
proton-proton collisions at the LHC.the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research and the Austrian Science Fund; the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, and Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek; the Brazilian Funding Agencies (CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, and FAPESP); the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science; CERN; the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology, and National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Colombian Funding Agency (COLCIENCIAS); the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport, and the Croatian Science Foundation; the Research Promotion Foundation, Cyprus; the Ministry of Education and Research, Recurrent financing contract SF0690030s09 and European Regional Development Fund, Estonia; the Academy of Finland, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and Helsinki Institute of Physics; the Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules/CNRS, and Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives/CEA, France; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, Germany; the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Greece; the National Scientific Research Foundation, and National Innovation Office, Hungary; the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, India; the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Iran; the Science Foundation, Ireland; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy; the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the World Class University program of NRF, Republic of Korea; the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; the Mexican Funding Agencies (CINVESTAV, CONACYT, SEP, and UASLP-FAI); the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand; the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission; the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the National Science Centre, Poland; the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal; JINR, Dubna; the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Federal Agency of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation, Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia; the Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Swiss Funding Agencies (ETH Board, ETH Zurich, PSI, SNF, UniZH, Canton Zurich, and SER); the National Science Council, Taipei; the Thailand Center of Excellence in Physics, the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology of Thailand, Special Task Force for Activating Research and the National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand; the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey, and Turkish Atomic Energy Authority; the Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK; the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie programme and the European Research Council and EPLANET (European Union); the Leventis Foundation; the A. P. Sloan Foundation; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office; the Fonds pour la Formation à la Recherche dans l’Industrie et dans l’Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium); the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of Czech Republic; the Council of Science and Industrial Research, India; the Compagnia di San Paolo (Torino); the HOMING PLUS programme of Foundation for Polish Science, cofinanced by EU, Regional Development Fund; and the Thalis and Aristeia programmes cofinanced by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF
Author Correction Large spontaneous exchange bias in a weak ferromagnet Pb 6 Ni 9 (TeO 6 ) 5 (Scientific Reports, (2017), 7, 1, (8300), 10.1038/s41598-017-09056-w)
No full textIn the original version of this Article, Binoy Krishna Hazra and S. Srinath were incorrectly affiliated with ‘Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, TIRUPATI, 517506, India’. The correct affiliation is listed below School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, 500046, India This error has now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article, and in the accompanying Supplementary Information file. © 2019, The Author(s)
Motor learning and neuroplasticity in humans
No full textThe central nervous system is plastic, in that the number and strength of synaptic
connections changes over time. In the adult the most important driver of such changes is
experience, in the form of learning and memory. There are thought to be a number of
rules, operating relatively local to each synapse that govern changes in strength and
organisation. Some of these such as Hebbian plasticity or plasticity following repeated
activation of a connection have been studied in detail in animal preparations. However,
recent work with non-invasive methods of transcranial stimulation in human, such as
transcranial magnetic stimulation, has opened the opportunity to study similar effects in
the conscious human brain.
In this thesis I use these methods to explore some of the presumed changes in synaptic
connectivity in the motor cortex during different forms of motor learning. The
experiments only concern learning in the healthy brain; however it seems likely that the
same processes will be relevant to neurorehabilitation and disease of the nervous system.
This thesis explores the link between neuroplasticity and motor learning in humans using
non-invasive brain stimulation, pharmacological agents and psychomotor testing in 6
related studies.
1) Chapter 3 reports initial pharmacological investigations to confirm the idea that
some of the long term effects of TMS are likely to involve LTP-like mechanisms.
The study shows that NMDA agonism can affect the response to a repetitive form
of TMS known as theta burst stimulation (TBS)
2) Following up on the initial evidence for the role of NMDA receptors in the long
term effects of TBS, Chapter 4 explores the possible modulatory effects of
dopaminergic drugs on TBS.
3) Chapter 5 takes the investigations to normal behaviours by examining how the
NMDA dependent plasticity produced by TBS interacts with learning a simple
motor task of rapid thumb abduction. The unexpected results force a careful
examination of the possible mechanisms of motor learning in this task.
4) Chapter 6 expands on these effects by employing a battery of TMS methods as
well as drug agents to examine the role of different intracortical circuits in
ballistic motor learning.
5) Chapter 7 studies the plasticity of intracortical circuits involved in transcallosal
inhibition.
6) Chapter 8 studies the interaction between synaptic plasticity invoked by TBS and
sequence learning.
The studies described in the thesis contribute to understanding of how motor learning and
neuroplasticity interact, and possible strategies to enhance these phenomena for clinical
application
Equity Style Returns and Institutional Investor Flows
No full textThis paper explores institutional investor trades in stocks grouped by style and the relationship of these trades with equity market returns. It aggregates transactions drawn from a large universe of approximately $6 trillion of institutional funds. To analyze style behavior, we assign equities to deciles in each of five style dimensions: size, value/growth, cyclical/defensive, sector, and country. We find, first, strong evidence that investors organize and trade stocks across style-driven lines. This appears true for groupings both strongly and weakly related to fundamentals (e.g., industry or country groupings versus size or value/growth deciles). Second, the positive linkage between flows and returns emerges at daily frequencies, yet becomes even more important at lower frequencies. We show that quarterly decile flows and returns are even more strongly positively correlated than are daily flows and returns. However, as the horizon increases beyond a year, we find that the flow/return correlation declines. Third, style flows and returns are important components of individual stock expected returns. We find that nearby style inflows and returns positively forecast future returns while distant style inflows and returns forecast negatively. Fourth, we find strong correlations between style flows and temporary components of return. This suggests that behavioral theories may play a role in explaining the popularity and price impact of flow-related trading.
The evolution of citizenship education in nation-building in Singapore and Hong Kong
No full textCitizenship Education is a highly political agenda for politicians and governments, especially those of the emerging nations studied in transitology. Political circumstances that surround the birth of ล nation are inextricably tied up with the unique economic, social and even globalisation contexts that shape the formation of that particular nation. Citizenship education mirrors the political climate of such circumstances. A ruling government's policies and ideologies are often transmitted to the masses through education in the form of citizenship education in its evolving forms that take after the political orientations of the nation. A historical-comparative study of Singapore and Hong Kong is the focus of the thesis and a combined case in point. This historical-comparative approach presents a chronological and qualitative analysis of Singapore and Hong Kong that links the past to the present, and points to future direction on how citizenship education has transformed in its focus, dimensions, content, message and values. Theories of nationalism, nation-state and national identity provide a basis for the understanding of the political, economic and social factors that impact nation- building and the subsequent evolvement of Civic and Moral Education in Singapore and Hong Kong after independence. In an analysis of the content-domain of citizenship education, Singapore’s curriculum is shown to reflect the ruling party's ideologies infused through National Education, where the Singapore story is sacrosanct and has to be mastered by all students so that the continual survival instinct is preserved at ill times. Hong Kong covers more breadth with a curriculum that includes the history of China that can be taught critically and a Chinese cultural heritage element that is infused into all the Key Learning subjects. The Life Event Approach is also more practical and relevant to the students' appreciation of the more individual-growth values learnt. Singapore is identified as an Objective/Globalised nation-state with a parallel Objective/Globalised National Identity that has a predominantly strong political leadership and economic priority in its nation-building foundation. It recognizes the need to rise up to the global challenges ahead. Hong Kong has a combination of Objective/Subjective/Globalised region-state with a parallel Objective/Subjective/Globalised National Identity with China due to its cultural heritage component inherited from China and also the need to meet global challenges. The thesis demonstrates how education can be used as a channel to serve the ideologies of the politicians who have a direct stake in shaping the focus of the political content in citizenship education in building national identity. It also illustrates how the respective political circumstances, economic reasons, social contexts and globalisation challenges drive the evolvement of the citizenship education in both Singapore and Hong Kong
Silicon photonic waveguides for mid- and long-wave infrared region
No full textSilicon photonics is experiencing a dramatic increase in interest due to emerging application areas and several high profile successes in device and technology development (Liu et al Nature 427:615, 2004; Rong et al Nature 433:725, 2005; Almeida et al Nature 431:1081, 2004). Conventional waveguides in silicon photonics are designed for the telecom wavelengths. However, mid- and long-wave infrared regions are interesting for several application areas including sensing, communications, signal processing, missile detection and imaging (Soref et al J Opt A Pure Appl Opt 8:840, 2006). The most popular waveguide platform in silicon photonics is the Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) structure, in the form of either a strip or a rib waveguide. This material structure, however, is not suitable for longer wavelengths (except in the 2.9-3.6 µm range) due to the absorption spectra of silicon dioxide (Soref et al J Opt A Pure Appl Opt 8:840, 2006). In this paper, we discuss the design and fabrication of two different waveguide structures, the freestanding (Yang et al Appl Phys Lett 90:241109, 2007) and hollow core waveguides (Stankovic et al Proceedings of 51th Conference ETRAN, 2007). The former is suitable for long-wave infrared applications as it has an air cladding, whilst the latter is a candidate for sensing in the mid-wave infrared wavelength region
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