bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Neuroprotection against Traumatic Brain Injury by Xenon, but Not Argon, Is Mediated by Inhibition at the N-Methyl-d-Aspartate Receptor Glycine Site
Authors: Harris Katie , Armstrong Scott P. , Campos-Pires Rita , Kiru Louise , Franks Nicholas P. , Dickinson Robert 
Published: July 2013

Abstract

Background:
Xenon, the inert anesthetic gas, is neuroprotective in models of brain injury. The authors investigate the neuroprotective mechanisms of the inert gases such as xenon, argon, krypton, neon, and helium in an in vitro model of traumatic brain injury.

Methods:
The authors use an in vitro model using mouse organotypic hippocampal brain slices, subjected to a focal mechanical trauma, with injury quantified by propidium iodide fluorescence. Patch clamp electrophysiology is used to investigate the effect of the inert gases on N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors and TREK-1 channels, two molecular targets likely to play a role in neuroprotection.

Results:
Xenon (50%) and, to a lesser extent, argon (50%) are neuroprotective against traumatic injury when applied after injury (xenon 43 ± 1% protection at 72 h after injury [N = 104]; argon 30 ± 6% protection [N = 44]; mean ± SEM). Helium, neon, and krypton are devoid of neuroprotective effect. Xenon (50%) prevents development of secondary injury up to 48 h after trauma. Argon (50%) attenuates secondary injury, but is less effective than xenon (xenon 50 ± 5% reduction in secondary injury at 72 h after injury [N = 104]; argon 34 ± 8% reduction [N = 44]; mean ± SEM). Glycine reverses the neuroprotective effect of xenon, but not argon, consistent with competitive inhibition at the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor glycine site mediating xenon neuroprotection against traumatic brain injury. Xenon inhibits N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors and activates TREK-1 channels, whereas argon, krypton, neon, and helium have no effect on these ion channels.

Conclusions:
Xenon neuroprotection against traumatic brain injury can be reversed by increasing the glycine concentration, consistent with inhibition at the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor glycine site playing a significant role in xenon neuroprotection. Argon and xenon do not act via the same mechanism.
Enlarging Cells Initiating Apomixis inHieracium praealtumTransition to an Embryo Sac Program prior to Entering Mitosis
Authors: Okada Takashi , Hu Yingkao , Tucker Matthew R. , Taylor Jennifer M. , Johnson Susan D. , Spriggs Andrew , Tsuchiya Tohru , Oelkers Karsten , Rodrigues Julio C.M. , Koltunow Anna M.G. 
Published: July 2013

AbstractHieracium praealtum forms seeds asexually by apomixis. During ovule development, sexual reproduction initiates with megaspore mother cell entry into meiosis and formation of a tetrad of haploid megaspores. The sexual pathway ceases when a diploid aposporous initial (AI) cell differentiates, enlarges, and undergoes mitosis, forming an aposporous embryo sac that displaces sexual structures. Embryo and endosperm development in aposporous embryo sacs is fertilization independent. Transcriptional data relating to apomixis initiation in Hieracium spp. ovules is scarce and the functional identity of the AI cell relative to other ovule cell types is unclear. Enlarging AI cells with undivided nuclei, early aposporous embryo sacs containing two to four nuclei, and random groups of sporophytic ovule cells not undergoing these events were collected by laser capture microdissection. Isolated amplified messenger RNA samples were sequenced using the 454 pyrosequencing platform and comparatively analyzed to establish indicative roles of the captured cell types. Transcriptome and protein motif analyses showed that approximately one-half of the assembled contigs identified homologous sequences in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), of which the vast majority were expressed during early Arabidopsis ovule development. The sporophytic ovule cells were enriched in signaling functions. Gene expression indicative of meiosis was notably absent in enlarging AI cells, consistent with subsequent aposporous embryo sac formation without meiosis. The AI cell transcriptome was most similar to the early aposporous embryo sac transcriptome when comparing known functional annotations and both shared expressed genes involved in gametophyte development, suggesting that the enlarging AI cell is already transitioning to an embryo sac program prior to mitotic division.
Solid Lipid Dispersions: Potential Delivery System for Functional Ingredients in Foods
Authors: Asumadu‐Mensah Aboagyewa , Smith Kevin W. , Ribeiro Henelyta S. 
Published: July 2013

AbstractStructured solid lipid (SL) systems have the advantages of long‐term physical stability, low surfactant concentrations, and may exhibit controlled release of active ingredients. In this research work, the potential use of high‐melting SLs for the production of the above structured SL carrier systems was investigated. Dispersions containing either SL or blend of solid lipid and oil (SL+O) were produced by a hot melt high‐pressure homogenization method. Experiments involved the use of 3 different SLs for the disperse phase: stearic acid, candelilla wax and carnauba wax. Sunflower oil was incorporated in the disperse phase for the production of the dispersions containing lipid and oil. In order to evaluate the practical aspects of structured particles, analytical techniques were used including: static light scattering to measure particle sizes, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for investigating particle morphology and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to investigate the crystallization behavior of lipids in bulk and in dispersions. Results showed different mean particle sizes depending on the type of lipid used in the disperse phase. Particle sizes for the 3 lipids were: stearic acid (SL: 195 ± 2.5 nm; SL+O: 138 ± 6.0 nm); candelilla wax (SL: 178 ± 1.7 nm; SL+O: 144 ± 0.6 nm); carnauba wax (SL: 303 ± 1.5 nm; SL+O: 295 ± 5.0 nm). TEM results gave an insight into the practical morphology, showing plate‐like and needle‐like structures. DSC investigations also revealed that SL dispersions melted and crystallized at lower temperatures than the bulk. This decrease can be explained by the small particle sizes of the dispersion, the high‐specific surface area, and the presence of a surfactant.
Computational Simulation of Alternative Photographic Processes
Authors: Echevarria Jose I. , Wilensky Gregg , Krishnaswamy Aravind , Kim Byungmoon , Gutierrez Diego 
Published: July 2013

AbstractWe present a novel computational framework for physically and chemically‐based simulations of analog alternative photographic processes. In the real world, these processes allow the creation of very personal and unique depictions due to the combination of the chemicals used, the physical interaction with liquid solutions, and the individual craftsmanship of the artist. Our work focuses not only on achieving similar compelling results, but on the manual process as well, introducing a novel exploratory approach for interactive digital image creation and manipulation. With such an emphasis on the user interaction, our simulations are devised to run on tablet devices; thus we propose the combination of a lightweight data‐driven model to simulate the chemical reactions involved, with efficient fluids simulations that modulate them. This combination allows realistic gestures‐based user interaction with constant visual feedback in real‐time. Using the proposed framework, we have built two prototypes with different tradeoffs between realism and flexibility, showing its potential to build novel image editing tools.
Automatic Cinemagraph Portraits
Authors: Bai Jiamin , Agarwala Aseem , Agrawala Maneesh , Ramamoorthi Ravi 
Published: July 2013

AbstractCinemagraphs are a popular new type of visual media that lie in‐between photos and video; some parts of the frame are animated and loop seamlessly, while other parts of the frame remain completely still. Cinemagraphs are especially effective for portraits because they capture the nuances of our dynamic facial expressions. We present a completely automatic algorithm for generating portrait cinemagraphs from a short video captured with a hand‐held camera. Our algorithm uses a combination of face tracking and point tracking to segment face motions into two classes: gross, large‐scale motions that should be removed from the video, and dynamic facial expressions that should be preserved. This segmentation informs a spatially‐varying warp that removes the large‐scale motion, and a graph‐cut segmentation of the frame into dynamic and still regions that preserves the finer‐scale facial expression motions. We demonstrate the success of our method with a variety of results and a comparison to previous work.
Spherical Visibility Sampling
Authors: Eikel Benjamin , Jähn Claudius , Fischer Matthias , auf der Heide Friedhelm Meyer 
Published: July 2013

AbstractMany 3D scenes (e.g. generated from CAD data) are composed of a multitude of objects that are nested in each other. A showroom, for instance, may contain multiple cars and every car has a gearbox with many gearwheels located inside. Because the objects occlude each other, only few are visible from outside. We present a new technique, Spherical Visibility Sampling (SVS), for real‐time 3D rendering of such – possibly highly complex – scenes. SVS exploits the occlusion and annotates hierarchically structured objects with directional visibility information in a preprocessing step. For different directions, the directional visibility encodes which objects of a scene's region are visible from the outside of the regions' enclosing bounding sphere. Since there is no need to store a separate view space subdivision as in most techniques based on preprocessed visibility, a small memory footprint is achieved. Using the directional visibility information for an interactive walkthrough, the potentially visible objects can be retrieved very efficiently without the need for further visibility tests. Our evaluation shows that using SVS allows to preprocess complex 3D scenes fast and to visualize them in real time (e.g. a Power Plant model and five animated Boeing 777 models with billions of triangles). Because SVS does not require hardware support for occlusion culling during rendering, it is even applicable for rendering large scenes on mobile devices.
Exponential Soft Shadow Mapping
Authors: Shen Li , Feng Jieqing , Yang Baoguang 
Published: July 2013

AbstractIn this paper we present an image‐based algorithm to render visually plausible anti‐aliased soft shadows in real time. Our technique employs a new shadow pre‐filtering method based on an extended exponential shadow mapping theory. The algorithm achieves faithful contact shadows by adopting an optimal approximation to exponential shadow reconstruction function. Benefiting from a novel overflow free summed area table tile grid data structure, numerical stability is guaranteed and error filtering response is avoided. By integrating an adaptive anisotropic filtering method, the proposed algorithm can produce high quality smooth shadows both in large penumbra areas and in high frequency sharp transitions, meanwhile guarantee cheap memory consumption and high performance.
Interactive Lighting Design with Hierarchical Light Representation
Authors: Lin Wen‐Chieh , Huang Tsung‐Shian , Ho Tan‐Chi , Chen Yueh‐Tse , Chuang Jung‐Hong 
Published: July 2013

AbstractLighting design plays a crucial role in indoor lighting design, computer cinematograph and many other applications. Computer‐assisted lighting design aims to find a lighting configuration that best approximates the illumination effect specified by designers. In this paper, we present an automatic approach for lighting design, in which discrete and continuous optimization of the lighting configuration, including the number, intensity, and position of lights, are achieved. Our lighting design algorithm consists of two major steps. The first step estimates an initial lighting configuration by light sampling and clustering. The initial light clusters are then recursively merged to form a light hierarchy. The second step optimizes the lighting configuration by alternatively selecting a light cut on the light hierarchy to determine the number of representative lights and optimizing the lighting parameters using the simplex method. To speed up the optimization computation, only illumination at scene vertices that are important to rendering are sampled and taken into account in the optimization. Using the proposed approach, we develop a lighting design system that can compute appropriate lighting configurations to generate the illumination effects iteratively painted and modified by a designer interactively.
Precarious delegates: irregular forms of employee interest representation in Germany
Authors: Artus Ingrid 
Published: July 2013

AbstractThe highly unionised dual model of industrial relations no longer represents the reality of employee representation in Germany. This article explores the case of irregular workplace delegates in service sector industries where the unionised dual model of employee representation is weakly entrenched. Identifying different configurations of the difficult employee access to co‐determination in precarious services, it argues for a differentiated view of the increasingly fragmented reality of national systems of employee representation.
The Possibilities of Forgiveness
Authors: Couenhoven Jesse 
Published: July 2013

AbstractPerhaps the best way to challenge anodyne popular conceptions of forgiveness is to highlight the ways in which “forgiveness,” like “justice” and “freedom,” is a rich and deeply contested term that relies for its content on divergent convictions about who we are and who we should seek to be. The essays in this focus issue articulate some of the many possibilities for practicing and thinking about forgiveness.
The Neo‐Barthian Critique of Reinhold Niebuhr
Authors: Santurri Edmund N. 
Published: July 2013

AbstractThe author notes an unclarity in David Novak's defense of Reinhold Niebuhr against Stanley Hauerwas's critique and identifies some issues left unsettled in the exchange between Novak and Hauerwas over Niebuhr's ethics. Specifically, the author proposes that the Barthian‐Hauerwasian communitarian rejection of Niebuhrian natural theology and natural law ignores the historical abuse of biblical theology in the German Christian response to the Nazis, fails to account for the fact of general moral revulsion against Nazism, and flirts itself with a conventionalist form of nihilism.
Response to Edmund N. Santurri
Authors: Novak David 
Published: July 2013

AbstractBarth and Niebuhr seemed to be wary of natural law because each of them thought that the “natural” in natural law means that natural law has to be rooted in natural theology. However, natural law today is more cogently formulated without any natural theology at all. “Natural law” means that law can be derived from the twofold character or nature of human personhood: the capacity for a communal relationship with other humans, and the capacity for a covenantal relationship with God, both of which continually overlap in human life. The natural or external world only provides the backdrop for these human capacities; it does not determine them.
Prolegomena zur Konzeptionalisierung unzuverlässigen Erzählens im Werk Hermann Hesses mit Schwerpunkt auf demSteppenwolf
Authors: Landgren Gustav 
Published: July 2013

Vorliegender Beitraguntersucht Voraussetzungen, Formen und Funktionen unzuverlässigen Erzählens im Werk Hermann Hesses mit Schwerpunkt auf demSteppenwolf. Wegen seiner kompliziertenmise en abyme‐Konstruktion – in der Theorienbildung eine bisher stiefmütterlich behandelte Form unzuverlässigen Erzählens – bietet der Roman ein interessantes Beispiel für narrative Unzuverlässigkeit. Unzuverlässiges Erzählen lässt sich imSteppenwolfunter anderem anhand der doppelten Botschaft der Ironie erklären. Diese äußert sich v.a. im „Traktat vom Steppenwolf “ durch die Ironisierung traditioneller Erzählerwartungen: Was der Erzähler in der traditionellen Form des Traktats erwartet, wird durch paratextuelle Signale ironisch verworfen. Schon Hallers wertende Beschreibung des Traktats als ein „dünnes, schlecht, auf schlechtem Papier gedrucktes Jahrmarktsbüchlein“ die sich „nur an Verrückte“ wendet, kündigt Unzuverlässigkeit an. Eine andere prägnante Textstelle im Hinblick auf unzuverlässiges Erzählen ist die „Hochjagd auf Automobile“, an welcher der ehemalige Pazifist Haller teilnimmt. Als eine typisch unzuverlässige Erzählinstanz gilt hier der zwanghafte oder verrückte Monologist („mad monologist“), mit welchem Haller viele Merkmale teilt. Besonders die Ich‐Fixierung des Protagonisten ist ein Kriterium, das auf zahlreiche „mad monologists“ wie auch auf Haller zutrifft.Im Gegensatz zur Neigung der Moderne zum Tendenzlos‐Nützlichen und Technisch‐Ökonomischen arbeitet Hesse imSteppenwolfsowie später in derMorgenlandfahrtmit mimetisch unentscheidbarem Erzählen, mit Widersprüchen hinsichtlich dessen, was in der erzählten Welt als wahr anzunehmen ist. Diese Form unzuverlässigen Erzählens gipfelt im Magischen Theater, in welchem sich die erzählte Welt in einer Serie alternativer Versionen auflöst. Unzuverlässiges Erzählen, laut Tom Kindt eng mit der literarischen Moderne verbunden, erweist sich in vorliegendem Beitrag als ein wichtiges Stilmittel im Spätwerk Hesses.
Multi-Disciplinary Optimization of Mid-Span Shroud Ring Structure: A Multi-Parameter Geometry Study Case
Authors: Wu Yuan-Ting , Le Moine Jerome , Hsu Pei-feng , Funk Christian K. , Subramanian C. , Campbell Christian X. , Miller Sam R. , Marra John J. 
Published: July 2013

In modern industrial high-output, high-efficiency engines, long turbine blades can require the use of a mid-span or partial-span damping ring for damping vibrations. However, the inclusion of a mid-span damping shroud, or “snubber,” can have negative effects on the aerodynamic performance of the gas turbine stage and engine. Therefore, a method of coupling two independent computational fluid dynamics and finite element structure software tools under an optimization environment was applied to minimize the drag force caused by the snubber, while maximizing the structural life of the blade.
Following the earlier two-parameter (the shroud width and taper ratio) shroud geometry study by the authors, this study extends to the five-parameter geometry model to approach a higher performance design with controllable computational time as well. For the optimized turbine blade shroud in this case, 14.5% reduction of the maximum material stress and 22.6% decrease in the drag force from original snubber design has been accomplished.
Experimental Analysis of the Interaction Between Rim Seal and Main Annulus Flow in a Low Pressure Two Stage Axial Turbine
Authors: Schrewe Sebastian , Werschnik Holger , Schiffer Heinz-Peter 
Published: July 2013

The spoiling effects of rim seal flow are studied at the Large Scale Turbine Rig (LSTR) at Technische Universität Darmstadt. Detailed flow field measurements and efficiency measurements were performed for various ingress and egress setups and will be presented in this paper.
Efficiency measurements show an efficiency decrease as the rim seal mass flow is increased. Five hole probe measurements upstream and downstream of the second stator row show that an increasing rim seal mass flow leads to an increased pressure loss across the stator, to altered incidence angles and to an intensification of secondary flow structures within the lower 50 % span. Static pressure taps at the stator profile primarily show alternated aerodynamic loading with increased rim seal air. In addition, the endwall profile pressure was measured at the stator 2 hub. It can be seen that seal air injection causes increased pressure fluctuations on the platform. Temperature measurements with a temperature difference between rim seal and main annulus flow show that rim seal air primarily enters the passage vortex.
Through Flow Flange-to-Flange Turbine and Diffuser Analysis
Authors: Granovskiy Andrei , Kostege Mikhail , Krupa Vladislav , Rudenko Sergey 
Published: July 2013

At the present time an important aspect of power generation in combined cycle power plants is to keep part load performance of heavy duty gas turbines sufficiently high. Therefore it is a matter of importance to ensure the aerodynamic alignment between the turbine and exhaust diffuser, allowing potential increase in both turbine efficiency and diffuser pressure recovery. The benefit of such alignment could be noticed at numerical analysis accuracy of part-load conditions in particular due to the change in gas flow angle downstream of the turbine and resulting in an incidence on the diffuser struts. This incidence, in its turn, often causes local flow separation and an associated loss increase.
This paper presents an integrated approach of the turbine and diffuser aerodynamic design by means of use of a single 3D Navier-Stokes CFD model. This model explores an automatic interface between the turbine and diffuser calculation domains.
Furthermore, whilst gas turbine part load performance has been improved thanks to last stage turbine blade redesign, the above-mentioned integrated turbine & diffuser numerical modelling was used as working instrument to reach the optimal solution in terms of flange-to-flange efficiency in a broad operation range. Following test results, comparison against the numerical prediction fully proved the validity of chosen analytical approach.