Neuropathology and behavioral impairments after three types of global ischemia surgery in Meriones unguiculatus: Evidence in motor cortex, hippocampal CA1 region and the neostriatum

The effects of three types of global ischemia by occlusion of carotid artery on motor and exploratory behaviors of Gerbils were evaluated by the Activity Cage and Rota rod tests. Animals were divided based on two surgical criteria: unilateral (UNI) or bilateral (BIL) carotid occlusion, with (REP) or without (OCL) reperfusion; and their behavior was evaluated on the fourth (4) or sixth (6) day. There was reduction of cell number in striatum, motor cortex M1 area, and hippocampal CA1 area in all groups in comparison to control animals. For M1 area and striatum, the largest reduction was observed in UNI6, UNI4, and BIL4 groups. Neuronal loss was also observed in CA1 area of BIL4 rodents. There was a decrease in crossings and rearings in all groups in activity cage test, compared to control. Reperfusion, unilateral and bilateral occlusion groups showed decrease in crossings. Only the BIL4 showed a decrease of rearing. In the Rota rod test, except the UNIOCL6, the groups showed a decrease in the balance in comparison to control. Both groups with REP4 showed a major decrease in balance. These findings suggest that both unilateral and bilateral carotid occlusions with reperfusion produce impairments of motor and exploratory behavior. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Combinatorial-topological framework for the analysis of global dynamics

We discuss an algorithmic framework based on efficient graph algorithms and algebraic-topological computational tools. The framework is aimed at automatic computation of a database of global dynamics of a given m-parameter semidynamical system with discrete time on a bounded subset of the n-dimensional phase space. We introduce the mathematical background, which is based upon Conley's topological approach to dynamics, describe the algorithms for the analysis of the dynamics using rectangular grids both in phase space and parameter space, and show two sample applications. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4767672]

Pilot Studies for Development of an HIV Subtype Panel for Surveillance of Global Diversity

The continued global spread and evolution of HIV diversity pose significant challenges to diagnostics and vaccine strategies. NIAID partnered with the FDA, WRAIR, academia, and industry to form a Viral Panel Working Group to design and prepare a panel of well-characterized current and diverse HIV isolates. Plasma samples that had screened positive for HIV infection and had evidence of recently acquired infection were donated by blood centers in North and South America, Europe, and Africa. A total of 80 plasma samples were tested by quantitative nucleic acid tests, p24 antigen, EIA, and Western blot to assign a Fiebig stage indicative of approximate time from initial infection. Evaluation of viral load using FDA-cleared assays showed excellent concordance when subtype B virus was tested, but lower correlations for subtype C. Plasma samples were cocultivated with phytohemagglutinin (PHA)-stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from normal donors to generate 30 viral isolates (50-80% success rate for samples with viral load >10,000 copies/ml), which were then expanded to 10(7)-10(9) virus copies per ml. Analysis of env sequences showed that sequences derived from cultured PBMCs were not distinguishable from those obtained from the original plasma. The pilot collection includes 30 isolates representing subtypes B, C, B/F, CRF04_cpx, and CRF02_AG. These studies will serve as a basis for the development of a comprehensive panel of highly characterized viral isolates that reflects the current dynamic and complex HIV epidemic, and will be made available through the External Quality Assurance Program Oversight Laboratory (EQAPOL).

Land Use, Freshwater Flows and Ecosystem Services in an Era of Global Change

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse interactions between freshwater flows, terrestrial ecosystems and human well-being. Freshwater management and policy has mainly focused on the liquid water part (surface and ground water run off) of the hydrological cycle including aquatic ecosystems. Although of great significance, this thesis shows that such a focus will not be sufficient for coping with freshwater related social-ecological vulnerability. The thesis illustrates that the terrestrial component of the hydrological cycle, reflected in vapour flows (or evapotranspiration), serves multiple functions in the human life-support system. A broader understanding of the interactions between terrestrial systems and freshwater flows is particularly important in light of present widespread land cover change in terrestrial ecosystems. The water vapour flows from continental ecosystems were quantified at a global scale in Paper I of the thesis. It was estimated that in order to sustain the majority of global terrestrial ecosystem services on which humanity depends, an annual water vapour flow of 63 000 km3/yr is needed, including 6800 km3/yr for crop production. In comparison, the annual human withdrawal of liquid water amounts to roughly 4000 km3/yr. A potential conflict between freshwater for future food production and for terrestrial ecosystem services was identified. Human redistribution of water vapour flows as a consequence of long-term land cover change was addressed at both continental (Australia) (Paper II) and global scales (Paper III). It was estimated that the annual vapour flow had decreased by 10% in Australia during the last 200 years. This is due to a decrease in woody vegetation for agricultural production. The reduction in vapour flows has caused severe problems with salinity of soils and rivers. The human-induced alteration of vapour flows was estimated at more than 15 times the volume of human-induced change in liquid water (Paper II).

Measure of Global Specialization and Spatial Clustering for the Identification of "Specialized" Agglomeration

The intensity of regional specialization in specific activities, and conversely, the level of industrial concentration in specific locations, has been used as a complementary evidence for the existence and significance of externalities. Additionally, economists have mainly focused the debate on disentangling the sources of specialization and concentration processes according to three vectors: natural advantages, internal, and external scale economies. The arbitrariness of partitions plays a key role in capturing these effects, while the selection of the partition would have to reflect the actual characteristics of the economy. Thus, the identification of spatial boundaries to measure specialization becomes critical, since most likely the model will be adapted to different scales of distance, and be influenced by different types of externalities or economies of agglomeration, which are based on the mechanisms of interaction with particular requirements of spatial proximity. This work is based on the analysis of the spatial aspect of economic specialization supported by the manufacturing industry case. The main objective is to propose, for discrete and continuous space: i) a measure of global specialization; ii) a local disaggregation of the global measure; and iii) a spatial clustering method for the identification of specialized agglomerations.

Effects of Global Warming on Berry Composition of cv. Sangiovese: Biochemical and Molecular Aspects and Agronomical Adaptation Approaches

Wine grape must deal with serious problems due to the unfavorable climatic conditions resulted from global warming. High temperatures result in oxidative damages to grape vines. The excessive elevated temperatures are critical for grapevine productivity and survival and contribute to degradation of grape and wine quality and yield. Elevated temperature can negatively affect anthocyanin accumulation in red grape. Particularly, cv. Sangiovese was identified to be very sensitive to such condition. The quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that flavonoid biosynthetic genes were slightly repressed by high temperature. Also, the heat stress repressed the expression of the transcription factor “VvMYBA1” that activates the expression of UFGT. Moreover, high temperatures had repressing effects on the activity of the flavonoids biosynthetic enzymes “PAL” and “UFGT”.Anthocyanin accumulation in berry skin is due to the balance between its synthesis and oxidation. In grape cv. Sangiovese, the gene transcription and activity of peroxidases enzyme was elevated by heat stress as a defensive mechanism of ROS-scavenging. Among many isoforms of peroxidases genes, one gene (POD 1) was induced in Sangiovese under thermal stress condition. This gene was isolated and evaluated via the technique of genes transformation from grape to Petunia. Reduction in anthocyanins concentration and higher enzymatic activity of peroxidase was observed in POD 1 transformed Petunia after heat shock compared to untrasformed control. Moreover, in wine producing regions, it is inevitable for the grape growers to adopt some adaptive strategies to alleviate grape damages to abiotic stresses. Therefore, in this thesis, the technique of post veraison trimming was done to improve the coupling of phenolic and sugar ripening in Vitis vinifera L. cultivar Sangiovese. Trimming after veraison showed to be executable to slow down the rate of sugar accumulation in grape (to decrease the alcohol potential in wines) without evolution of the main berry flavonoids compounds.

Recovery and Analysis of Transaction Scope from Scattered Information in Java Enterprise Applications

Java Enterprise Applications (JEAs) are large systems that integrate multiple technologies and programming languages. Transactions in JEAs simplify the development of code that deals with failure recovery and multi-user coordination by guaranteeing atomicity of sets of operations. The heterogeneous nature of JEAs, however, can obfuscate conceptual errors in the application code, and in particular can hide incorrect declarations of transaction scope. In this paper we present a technique to expose and analyze the application transaction scope in JEAs by merging and analyzing information from multiple sources. We also present several novel visualizations that aid in the analysis of transaction scope by highlighting anomalies in the specification of transactions and violations of architectural constraints. We have validated our approach on two versions of a large commercial case study.

Economic Policies to Address the Environmental Consequences of Global Reuse

This paper summarizes a two-country model that solves for optimal tax rates to achieve efficiency in an economy with international trade in used consumer electronics. If only the developed nation can tax the disposal of e-waste, then the global Pareto Optimum can be obtained by either imposing an import tariff on used consumer electronics or subsidizing the return of e-waste for disposal in the developed country. The global Pareto Optimum can also be obtained by reducing the disposal tax in the developed country to a level below the external marginal cost of disposal should no other policy option be available.