The Buffalo Central Terminal and Economic Development

BCT was completed in 1929 by New York Central Railroad, shortly before the stock market crash leading to the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1933 the railroads’ gross operating and net revenues fell; costs dramatically increased while passenger’s disposable incomes decreased. The railroads were responsible for their own maintenance and capital improvements, while the Federal Government was actively subsidizing auto, bus and air travel. In addition, taxes paid by the railroads to federal, state and municipal governments were being used to pay for their competitors’ infrastructure. The U.S.’s entry into World War II brought an increase in freight and passenger rail traffic because rails were an effective way to move war goods and there were gasoline rations as well as rubber and metal shortages. While the railroads were now increasing income like never before, they were stretched near to capacity in addition to the fact that resources were not available to maintain the trains (materials were being used to manufacture war goods). Once the war ended, the railroads’ freight and passenger traffic once again declined

Strain-dependent differences in corticolimbic processing of aversive or rewarding stimuli

Aberrations in the elaboration of both aversive and rewarding stimuli characterize several psychopathologies including anxiety, depression and addiction. Several studies suggest that different neurotrasmitters, within the corticolimbic system, are critically involved in the processing of positive and negative stimuli. Individual differences in this system, depending on genotype, have been shown to act as a liability factor for different psychopathologies. Inbred mouse strains are commonly used in preclinical studies of normal and pathological behaviors. In particular, C57BL/6J (C57) and DBA/2J (DBA) strains have permitted to disclose the impact of different genetic backgrounds over the corticolimbic system functions. Here, we summarize the main findings collected over the years in our laboratory, showing how the genetic background plays a critical role in modulating amminergic and GABAergic neurotransmission in prefrontal-accumbal-amygdala system response to different rewarding and aversive experiences, as well as to stress response. Finally, we propose a top-down model for the response to rewarding and aversive stimuli in which amminergic transmission in prefrontal cortex (PFC) controls accumbal and amygdala neurotransmitter response

A multi-touch interface for multi-robot path planning and control

In the last few years, research in human-robot interaction has moved beyond the issues concerning the design of the interaction between a person and a single robot. Today many researchers have shifted their focus toward the problem of how humans can control a multi-robot team. The rising of multi-touch devices provides a new range of opportunities in this sense. Our research seeks to discover new insights and guidelines for the design of multi-touch interfaces for the control of biologically inspired multi-robot teams. We have developed an iPad touch interface that lets users exert partial control over a set of autonomous robots. The interface also serves as an experimental platform to study how human operators design multi-robot motion in a pursuit-evasion setting

Contaminazione ambientale. I problemi medici

Il recente incidente nucleare in Giappone ha riportato alla ribalta il pericolo nucleare, in particolare in una città a 150 km da una centrale nucleare posta in un’area sismica. Per incidenti che hanno conseguenze ambientali che possono durare secoli il nostro ecosistema non può reggere eventi anche distanti alcuni anni uno dall’altro, causati da fattori che di volta in volta vengono definiti “improbabili”. Lo stesso stoccaggio delle scorie nucleari trasferisce alle future generazioni un carico insopportabile. Il sottoscritto ha gestito un progetto di ricerca sulle conseguenze mediche dell’incidente di Černobylnel 1990. A quattro anni dall’incidente l’asserito aumento di casi di leucemie si rivelò un falso mirante ad ottenere aiuti dall’estero, mentre sono ormai centinaia i casi di cancro della tiroide

Catholic Church Closings

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo was established on April 23, 1847. It serves the following counties in New York State: Erie, Niagara, Genesee, Orleans, Chautauqua, Wyoming, Cattaraugus and Allegany. The Diocese covers 6,455 square miles and has a Catholic population of 702,884. In June 2005, Bishop Edward U. Kmiec, the bishop of Buffalo, initiated a “parish-based strategic plan and spiritual revitalization initiative” called “Journey in Faith and Grace.” Through this initiative, the Diocese of Buffalo “restructured” churches in the Vicariates of Southeast Buffalo, Northern Erie, and Eastern Erie. The restructuring called for 77 worship sites to be phased out, while 198 worship sites will remain in use

Strain-dependent variations in stress coping behavior are mediated by a 5-HT/GABA interaction within the prefrontal corticolimbic system

Background: Serotonin and γ- Aminobutyric acid (GABA) transmission is crucial in coping strategies. Methods: Here, using mice from 2 inbred strains widely exploited in behavioral neurochemistry, we investigated whether serotonin transmission in medial prefrontal cortex and GABA in basolateral amygdala determine strain-dependent liability to stress response and differences in coping. Results: C57BL/6J mice displayed greater immobility in the forced swimming test, higher serotonin outflow in medial prefrontal cortex, higher GABA outflow in basolateral amygdala induced by stress, and higher serotonin 1A receptor levels in medial prefrontal cortex accompanied by lower GABAb receptor levels in basolateral amygdala than DBA/2J mice. In assessing whether serotonin in medial prefrontal cortex determines GABA functioning in response to stress and passive coping behavior in C57BL/6J and DBA/2J mice, we observed that selective prefrontal serotonin depletion in C57BL/6J and DBA/2J reduced stress-induced GABA outflow in basolateral amygdala and immobility in the forced swimming test. Conclusions: These results show that strain-dependent prefrontal corticolimbic serotonin/GABA regulation determines the strain differences in stress-coping behavior in the forced swimming test and point to a role of a specific neuronal system in genetic susceptibility to stress that opens up new prospects for innovative therapies for stress disorders

MiRNA-34 and stress response

Psychiatric disorders are known to result from a strong interaction between genetic predisposition and environmental factors, mainly exposure to stressful events. Environmental events can modulate genes expression, possibly via epigenetic mechanisms, and affect onset/expression of a disease [1]. Epigenetic mechanisms include, among others, post-transcriptional regulation by non-coding RNAs such as microRNAs (miRNAs). MiRNAs are small non-coding RNAs predicted to regulate hundreds of targets and to be engaged in every biological process [2]. Thanks to their ability to fine-tune gene expression, miRNAs can control gene expression patterns favoring organism’s adaptation to internal and environmental (external) factors [3], such as stressful events

Charger-mediated energy transfer for quantum batteries: an open system approach

The energy charging of a quantum battery is analyzed in an open quantum setting, where the interaction between the battery element and the external power source is mediated by an ancilla system (the quantum charger) that acts as a controllable switch. Different implementations are analyzed putting emphasis on the interplay between coherent energy pumping mechanisms and thermalization

High-power collective charging of a solid-state quantum battery

Quantum information theorems state that it is possible to exploit collective quantum resources to greatly enhance the charging power of quantum batteries (QBs) made of many identical elementary units. We here present and solve a model of a QB that can be engineered in solid-state architectures. It consists of $N$ two-level systems coupled to a single photonic mode in a cavity. We contrast this collective model ("Dicke QB"), whereby entanglement is genuinely created by the common photonic mode, to the one in which each two-level system is coupled to its own separate cavity mode ("Rabi QB"). By employing exact diagonalization, we demonstrate the emergence of a quantum advantage in the charging power of Dicke QBs, which scales like $\sqrt{N}$ for $N\gg 1$.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Version v2 supersedes version v1 where a technical mistake was done in using the Holstein-Primakoff transformation. The quantum advantage in the maximum charging power discussed in version v1 has been found to be robust. We have also updated the list of author

Quantum non-local theory of topological Fermi arc plasmons in Weyl semimetals

The surface of a Weyl semimetal (WSM) displays Fermi arcs, i.e. disjoint segments of a two-dimensional Fermi contour. We present a quantum-mechanical non-local theory of chiral Fermi arc plasmons in WSMs with broken time-reversal symmetry. These are collective excitations constructed from topological Fermi arc and bulk electron states and arising from electron-electron interactions, which are treated in the realm of the random phase approximation. Our theory includes quantum effects associated with the penetration of the Fermi arc surface states into the bulk and dissipation, which is intrinsically non-local in nature and arises from decay processes mainly involving bulk electron-hole pair excitations.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure