bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Histaminergic ligands injected into the nucleus basalis magnocellularis differentially affect fear conditioning consolidation
Authors: Benetti Fernando , Baldi Elisabetta , Bucherelli Corrado , Blandina Patrizio , Passani Maria Beatrice 
Published: March 2012

Abstract
The role of the nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) in fear conditioning encoding is well established. In the present report, we investigate the involvement of the NBM histaminergic system in consolidating fear memories. The NBM was injected bilaterally with ligands of histaminergic receptors immediately after contextual fear conditioning. Histaminergic compounds, either alone or in combination, were stereotaxically administered to different groups of adult male Wistar rats and memory was assessed as conditioned freezing duration 72 h after administration. This protocol prevents interference with NBM function during either acquisition or retrieval phases, hence restricting the effect of pharmacological manipulations to fear memory consolidation. The results presented here demonstrate that post-training H3 receptors (H3R) blockade with the antagonist/inverse agonist thioperamide or activation with immepip in the NBM potentiates or decreases, respectively, freezing response at retrieval. Thioperamide induced memory enhancement seems to depend on H2R, but not H1R activation, as the H2R antagonist zolantidine blocked the effect of thioperamide, whereas the H1R antagonist pyrilamine was ineffective. Furthermore, the H2R agonist ampthamine improved fear memory expression independently of the H3R agonist effect. Our results indicate that activation of post-synaptic H2R within the NBM by endogenous histamine is responsible for the potentiated expression of fear responses. The results are discussed in terms of activation of H3 auto- and heteroreceptors within the NBM and the differential effect of H3R ligands on fear memory consolidation in distinct brain regions.
Economic capital for defined benefit pension schemes: An application to the UK Universities Superannuation Scheme
Authors: PORTEOUS BRUCE T , TAPADAR PRADIP , YANG WEI 
Published: March 2012

AbstractThis article considers the amount of economic capital that defined benefit (DB) pension schemes potentially need to cover the risks they are running. A real open scheme, the Universities Superannuation Scheme, is modelled and used to illustrate our results and, as expected, economic capital requirements are large. We discuss the appropriateness of these results and what they mean for the DB pension scheme industry and their sponsors. The article is particularly pertinent following the recent European Commission Green Paper on the future of European pensions systems, its call for advice on reviewing the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision Directive and the introduction of the Basel 2 and Solvency 2 risk-based regulatory regimes for banking and insurance, respectively.
The origin of magmatic layering in the High Tatra granite, Central Western Carpathians – implications for the formation of granitoid plutons
Authors: Gawęda Aleksandra , Szopa Krzysztof 
Published: March 2012

ABSTRACTThe High Tatra granite intrusion is an example of a Variscan syn-tectonic, tongue-shaped intrusion. In some portions of the intrusion, structures occur which appear to be of sedimentary origin. These include structures similar to graded bedding, cross-bedding, troughs and flame structures, K-feldspar-rich cumulates and magmatic breccias. Formation of these structures might be related to changing magma properties, including crystal fraction, development of a crystal mush and a decrease in magma viscosity, stimulated by influx of mafic magma and high volatile content. The suggested processes in operation are: gravity-controlled separation, magma flow segregation, deposition on the magma-chamber floor, filter pressing and density currents stimulated by tectonic activity.%The formation of the sedimentary structures was also aided by the presence of large numbers of xenoliths that acted as a heat sink and influenced the thermal field in the intrusion, stimulating rapid cooling and crystal nucleation. Sinking xenoliths deformed the layering and, to some extent, protected the unconsolidated crystal mush from erosion by magma flowing past.%Areas with well-developed sedimentary magmatic structures can be viewed as having involved magma rich in crystals locally forming closely-packed networks from which residual melt was extracted by filter pressing, and preserved in leucocratic pods and dykes. Interleaved, non-layered granite may be interpreted to have formed from the magma with initially low crystal fractions.%It is suggested that the intrusion was formed from numerous magma injections representing different stages in the mixing and mingling of felsic and mafic sources. It solidified by gravitation-driven crystal accumulation and flow sorting on the magma chamber floor and on the surfaces of large numbers of xenoliths. Shear stress acting during intrusion might have influenced the formation of magmatic structures.
Phytoplankton production from melting ponds on Arctic sea ice
Authors: Lee Sang H. , Stockwell Dean A. , Joo Hyoung‐Min , Son Young Baek , Kang Chang‐Keun , Whitledge Terry E. 
Published: March 2012

Recently, the areal extent of melt ponds within sea ice has rapidly increased during the Arctic Ocean summer. However, the biological impacts of melt ponds on the Arctic marine ecosystem have rarely been studied. Carbon and nitrogen uptake rates of phytoplankton were measured at 26 different melt ponds in 2005 and 2008, using a 13C‐15N dual stable isotope tracer technique. Generally, the open ponds had relatively higher nutrients than closed ponds, but the nutrient concentrations in the open ponds were within a range similar to those in surrounding surface seawaters. Chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentrations in melt ponds ranged from 0.1 to 2.9 mg Chl a m−3 with a mean of 0.6 mg Chl a m−3 (SD = ±0.8 mg Chl a m−3) in the Canada Basin in 2005, whereas the range of the Chl a concentrations was from 0.1 to 0.3 mg Chl a m−3 with a mean of 0.2 mg Chl a m−3 (SD = ±0.1 mg Chl a m−3) in the central Arctic Ocean in 2008. The average annual carbon production in sea ice melt ponds was 0.67 g C m−3 (SD = ±1.03 g C m−3) in the Arctic Ocean. Based on this study, recent annual carbon production of all melt ponds was roughly estimated to be approximately 2.6 Tg C, which is less than 1% of the total production in the Arctic Ocean.
Positive lightning: An overview, new observations, and inferences
Authors: Nag Amitabh , Rakov Vladimir A. 
Published: March 2012

We examine the various conceptual cloud charge configurations and scenarios leading to production of positive lightning with a view toward an explanation of its observed properties. Data for 52 positive cloud‐to‐ground flashes containing 63 strokes recorded in Gainesville, Florida, in 2007–2008 are presented and discussed. The U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) located 51 (96%) of the positive strokes at distances of 7.8 to 157 km from the field‐measuring station. In 42 (81%) of the 52 flashes, the first (or the only) leader‐return stroke sequence was not preceded by in‐cloud discharge activity. The average number of strokes per flash is 1.2. Single‐stroke flashes constitute 81%. In three (38%) of eight two‐stroke flashes, the second stroke likely followed the channel of the first stroke, and in five (62%) flashes it likely created a new termination on ground. Eight (15%) of the 52 positive flashes had detectable preliminary breakdown pulse trains in their electric field records. Electric field waveforms of 14 (27%) first strokes (also of one third stroke) are preceded by pronounced pulses, apparently indicative of leader stepping. NLDN‐reported peak currents for 48 positive strokes in 40 flashes ranged from 20 to 234 kA with a geometric mean value of 75 kA. The median charge transfers in 1, 2, and 40 ms after the beginning of return stroke electric field change for an assumed height of 12 km were estimated to be 13, 18, and 34 C, respectively. Two bipolar lightning discharges are additionally examined.
Genomic evidence of rapid, global-scale gene flow in a Sulfolobus species
Authors: Mao Dominic , Grogan Dennis 
Published: March 2012

Abstract
Local populations of Sulfolobus islandicus diverge genetically with geographical separation, and this has been attributed to restricted transfer of propagules imposed by the unfavorable spatial distribution of acidic geothermal habitat. We tested the generality of genetic divergence with distance in Sulfolobus species by analyzing genomes of Sulfolobus acidocaldarius drawn from three populations separated by more than 8000 km. In sharp contrast to S. islandicus, the geographically diverse S. acidocaldarius genomes proved to be nearly identical. We could not link the difference in genome conservation between the two species to a corresponding difference in genome stability or ecological factors affecting propagule dispersal. The results provide the first evidence that genetic isolation of local populations does not result primarily from properties intrinsic to Sulfolobus and the severe discontinuity of its geothermal habitat, but varies with species, and thus may reflect biotic interactions that act after propagule dispersal.
Mercury chloride increases hepatic alanine aminotransferase and glucose 6‐phosphatase activities in newborn ratsin vivo
Authors: Moraes‐Silva Lucélia , Bueno Tania Maria , Franciscato Carina , de Oliveira Cláudia Sirlene , Peixoto Nilce Coelho , Pereira Maria Ester 
Published: March 2012

AbstractThis work investigated thein vivoandin vitroeffects of HgCl2and ZnCl2on metabolic enzymes from tissues of young rats to verify whether the physiological and biochemical alterations induced by mercury and prevented by zinc are related to hepatic and renal glucose metabolism. Wistar rats received (subcutaneous) saline or ZnCl2(27 mg/kg/day) from 3 to 7 days old and saline or HgCl2(5.0 mg/kg/day) from 8 to 12 days old. Mercury exposure increased the hepatic alanine aminotransferase (∼6‐fold) and glucose 6‐phosphatase (75%) activity; zinc pre‐exposure prevented totally and partially these mercury alterations respectively.In vitro, HgCl2inhibited the serum (22%, 10 μM) and liver (54%, 100 μM) alanine aminotransferase, serum (53%) and liver (64%) lactate dehydrogenase (10 μM), and liver (53%) and kidney (41%) glucose 6‐phosphatase (100 μM) from 10‐ to 13‐day‐old rats. The results show that mercury induces distinct alterations in these enzymes when testedin vivoorin vitroas well as when different sources were used. The increase of both hepatic alanine aminotransferase and glucose 6‐phosphatase activity suggests that the mercury‐exposed rats have increased gluconeogenic activity in the liver. Zinc prevents thein vivoeffects on metabolic changes induced by mercury.
Deconstructing Whiteness: Irish Women in Britain
Authors: Hickman Mary J. , Walter Bronwen 
Published: March 2012

The Irish are largely invisible as an ethnic group in Britain but continue to be racialized as inferior and alien Others. Invisibility has been reinforced by academic treatment Most historians have assumed that a framework of assimilation is appropriate and this outcome is uncritically accepted as desirable. Sociologists on the other hand have excluded the Irish from consideration, providing tacit support for the ‘myth of homogeneity’ of white people in Britain against the supposedly new phenomenon of threatening (Black) ‘immigrants’. Focus on the paradigm of ‘colour’ has limited the range of racist ideologies examined and led to denial of anti-Irish racism. But an analysis of nineteenth-century attitudes shows that the ‘Irish Catholic’ was a significant Other in the construction of the British nationalist myth. Despite contemporary forgetting, hostility towards the Irish continues, over and above immediate reactions to recent IRA campaigns. Verbal abuse and racial harassment are documented in London and elsewhere, but unacknowledged. The masculine imagery of ‘Paddy’ hides the existence of Irish women in Britain, although they have outnumbered men since the 1920s. In America, by contrast, there is a strong stereotype of ‘Bridget’ and her central contribution to Irish upward mobility is recognized. But invisibility does not protect Irish women in Britain from racism. Indeed, they are often more exposed since their productive and reproductive roles connect more firmly to British society. Moreover, women have played a key role in maintaining Catholic adherence, which continues to resonate closely with Irishness and difference.
‘Great Expectations’: Rehabilitating the Recalcitrant War Poets
Authors: Plain Gill 
Published: March 2012

Formulating a definition of ‘good’ poetry is, and should be, impossible. Yet women's poetry of the First World War seems generally to have been condemned as ‘bad’. It inspires an ambiguous response from readers who recognize the value of its historical, social and psychological content, but shudder at the limitations of its form. However, I believe that a much more fruitful reading of these ‘recalcitrant’ texts is possible. It is not my intention to deny either their problematic nature, or the diversity and complexity of male responses to the war, but rather to emphasize that women's experience of the First World War was radically different from that of men, and we should not therefore be constrained by the traditional parameters of 1914–18 criticism when we explore these works. This article examines a selection of this poetry in the light of the psychological processes of grief and bereavement, and in so doing indicates other areas in which constructive readings of these texts might be made. Why do we expect the articulation of a radically new and uniformly consistent poetic voice from what was a large and diverse group of women? The expectations of modernism ironically have created a literary ‘mainstream’ out of a selection of experimental, and largely male, writing. I hope to show that the ‘failure’ of these women to conform to our textual ‘great expectations’ is irrelevant. The single most characteristic feature of these women's experience of war was isolation. Their position had neither the homogeneity of the trenches, nor the intense intellectualism of experimental circles. Predominantly middle class, alienated by absence and bereavement, they attempted to articulate the unprecedented nature of their experience. That their experiments were not wholly successful is perhaps indicative of the near impossibility of the task they undertook.
Island Racism: Gender, Place, and White Power
Authors: Ware Vron 
Published: March 2012

The election of a British National Party councillor in London in September 1993 was greeted by shock and disbelief in the media, particularly because it happened during controversial preparations to celebrate the anniversary of Britain's role in Hitler's defeat in 1945. This essay sets out to examine some of the ways in which the BNP victory was reported in an attempt to understand how intricately gender and class are interwoven in discourses of racism in contemporary British politics. First, it draws attention to the dramatic images of white, working-class (or rather, non-working-class), violent, masculinity that dominated media representation of the event. In particular, the apparent invisibility of women in the photos and headlines seemed questionable, particularly when their anger and frustration about their own living conditions percolated through the lengthier written reports on the inside pages. Looking beyond superficial media coverage of the election, it was clear that gender was also a significant factor in the construction of a local, exclusively white, organic community fostered by political parties responsible for administering social housing and other public resources. While gender can articulate different forms of racism, the reverse can also be true. Ideas about what it means to be white, for example, defined against the racialized ‘other’, are also implicated in the social construction of gender. The violence perpetrated by those attracted to the xenophobic rhetoric of groups like the BNP is able to represent an aspect of masculinity that is both patriarchal and active in defending the ‘racial’ community. The third voice of beleaguered mothers summons up a version of white femininity that is passively concerned with the task of trying to reproduce the racial purity longed for by their menfolk. Finally, the specific characteristics and dynamics of the area in which the election took place also demands attention, not just because it happened in the heart of one of the most contested territories in London, but also because it was a reminder that the spatial aspects of social conflict are inseparable from the social, political and economic.
At the Back of the Class. At the Front of the Class: Experiences as Aboriginal Student and Aboriginal Teacher
Authors: Behrendt Larissa 
Published: March 2012

This is a persona] account of an Aboriginal woman who went through the education system in Australia to obtain finally her law degree. Aboriginal people experience many hurdles in the education system. Many Aboriginal children feel alienated within the legal system which until recently focused on a colonial history of Australia, ignoring the experiences, indeed the presence, of indigenous people in Australia. The Australian government had a policy of not educating Aboriginal people past the age of 14. The author was one of the first generation that could go straight from high school to university. She speaks of the debt she feels towards the generations of her people that fought for her right to access to higher education. The author went on to become the first Aboriginal person to be accepted into Harvard Law School which brought different personal challenges and allowed for reflection on comparisons of the sensitivity towards race in both education systems. When the author returned to Australia, she took a position teaching at the University of New South Wales. She had to come to terms with working within a system that she had felt alienated within as a student. Her position at the front of the class has created a sense of empowerment that she can pass on to her Aboriginal and female students.
Modelling of pulsed RF corona discharges in high-pressure air
Authors: Auzas F , Makarov M , Naidis G V 
Published: March 2012

Abstract
An approach to description of pulsed RF corona discharges in high-pressure air is developed, based on the model of a filamentary discharge sustained by an electromagnetic wave guided along the plasma filament. Results of numerical simulation of spatial-temporal discharge dynamics at the quasi-stationary stage are obtained for various values of gas pressure and wave frequency. Experimental data on the discharge length versus the power absorbed by the discharge are presented. Their comparison with simulation results is given.
Fulcrum: condensing redundant reads from high-throughput sequencing studies
Authors: Burriesci Matthew S. , Lehnert Erik M. , Pringle John R. 
Published: March 2012

Abstract
Motivation: Ultra-high-throughput sequencing produces duplicate and near-duplicate reads, which can consume computational resources in downstream applications. A tool that collapses such reads should reduce storage and assembly complications and costs.
Results: We developed Fulcrum to collapse identical and near-identical Illumina and 454 reads (such as those from PCR clones) into single error-corrected sequences; it can process paired-end as well as single-end reads. Fulcrum is customizable and can be deployed on a single machine, a local network or a commercially available MapReduce cluster, and it has been optimized to maximize ease-of-use, cross-platform compatibility and future scalability. Sequence datasets have been collapsed by up to 71%, and the reduced number and improved quality of the resulting sequences allow assemblers to produce longer contigs while using less memory.
Availability and implementation: Source code and a tutorial are available at http://pringlelab.stanford.edu/protocols.html under a BSD-like license. Fulcrum was written and tested in Python 2.6, and the single-machine and local-network modes depend on a modified version of the Parallel Python library (provided).
Contact: erik.m.lehnert@gmail.com
Supplementary information: Supplementary information is available at Bioinformatics online.
FT011, a new anti‐fibrotic drug, attenuates fibrosis and chronic heart failure in experimental diabetic cardiomyopathy
Authors: Zhang Yuan , Edgley Amanda J. , Cox Alison J. , Powell Andrew K. , Wang Bing , Kompa Andrew R. , Stapleton David I. , Zammit Steven C. , Williams Spencer J. , Krum Henry , Gilbert Richard E. , Kelly Darren J. 
Published: March 2012

AimsCardiac remodelling in diabetes includes pathological accumulation of extracellular matrix and myocyte hypertrophy that contribute to heart dysfunction. Attenuation of remodelling represents a potential therapeutic target. We tested this hypothesis using a new anti‐fibrotic drug, FT011 (Fibrotech Therapeutics Pty Ltd), on diabetic Ren‐2 rats, a model which replicates many of the structural and functional manifestations of diabetic cardiomyopathy in humans.Methods and resultsHomozygous Ren‐2 rats were randomized to receive streptozotocin or vehicle then further randomized to FT011 (200 mg/kg/day) or vehicle treatment for 6 weeks. Prior to tissue collection, cardiac function was assessed via echocardiography and cardiac catheterization. Total collagen deposition and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy were assessed by picrosirius red and haematoxylin and eosin staining, respectively. Macrophage interstitial infiltration and type I and III collagen were quantitated by immunostaining. Without affecting blood pressure or hyperglycaemia, treatment of diabetic rats with FT011 significantly attenuated interstitial fibrosis (total collagen, 5.09 ±1.28 vs, 2.42 ±0.43%/area; type I collagen, 4.09 ±1.16 vs. 1.42 ±0.38%/area; type III collagen, 1.52 ±0.33 vs. 0.71 ±0.14 %/area; P < 0.05), cardiomyocyte hypertrophy (882 ±38 vs. 659 ±28 µm2; P < 0.05), and interstitial macrophage influx (66 ±5.3 vs, 44 ±7.9 number/section; P < 0.05). Cardiac myopathic dilatation was normalized, as evidenced by reduced left ventricular inner diameter at diastole (0.642 ±0.016 vs. 0.577 ±0.024 cm), increased ejection fraction (75 ±1.1 vs. 83 ±1.2%) and preload recruitable stroke work relationship (44 ±6.7 vs. 77 ±6.3 slope‐mmHg; P < 0.05), and reduced end‐diastolic pressure–volume relationship (0.059 ±0.011 vs. 0.02 ±0.003 slope‐mmHg/μL; P < 0.05).ConclusionsA direct anti‐fibrotic agent, FT011, attenuates cardiac remodelling and dysfunction in experimental diabetic cardiomyopathy. This represents a novel therapy for the treatment of diabetic cardiomyopathy associated with cardiac fibrosis and hypertrophy.