The role of biomechanics in the assessment of carotid atherosclerosis severity: a numerical approach

Numerical fluid biomechanics has been proved to be an efficient tool for understanding vascular diseases including atherosclerosis. There are many evidences that atherosclerosis plaque formation and rupture are associated with blood flow behavior. In fact, zones of low wall shear stress are vivid areas of proliferation of atherosclerosis, and in particular, in the carotid artery. In this paper a model is presented for investigating how the presence of the plaque influences the distribution of the wall shear stress. In complement to a first approach with rigid walls, an FSI model is developed as well to simulate the coupling between the blood flow and the carotid artery deformation. The results show that the presence of the plaque causes an attenuation of the WSS in the after-plaque region as well as the emergence of recirculation areas

Design for the Museum for the Native American Indian

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 27-28).Museums are becoming increasingly specialized as they carry out their general function to offer the public pathways and insights to various aesthetic and cultural fields. Traditional displays of arts and cultural history are giving away to the development of a new, more focused museum. In Washington two years ago, the Holocaust museum opened. A tribute to the Native American Indian surfaces will soon become a reality in the Nation's capitol. The architecture of and for the Native American Indian expresses significant relationship with the landscape. The building types are about moving outwards towards the landscape. Sites have been primarily rural. Therefore designing a museum for and about the Native American Indian on the mall site is a complicated development. The challenge is to build a normally extroverted building type on a constrained site. The design for a Museum of the Native American Indian involves three cultural and architectural issues. The first consideration is the history of Native Americans as well as a contemporary focus. The Native American Indian plays an essential role in the design backbone for the museum. This role is synthetic, to bring together vastly diverse American tribes and represent them in the museum's design and function. Second, the site; contextual issues of the mall and the oversight of the National Planning Commission add a layer of constraint and conformity which must be acknowledged. Third, the role of the museum should also be given consideration: will it function as a "tribute", or as a memorial, or as a monument and tool of understanding. Usually, a combination of all of these is typical in the success of a museum. However, at the largest scale, the new museum will be a designed environment, a reflective place, comprised of spaces which create an understanding of a culture.by Phoebe R. Millon.M.Arch

Age and sex-selective predation moderate the overall impact of predators

© 2014 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. Acknowledgements: Thanks to J. Reid, S. Redpath, A. Beckerman and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This work was partly funded by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship NE/J500148/1 to SH and a grant NE/F021402/1 to XL and by Natural Research Limited. Forest Research funded all the fieldwork on goshawks, tawny owls and field voles during 1973–1996. We thank B. Little, P. Hotchin, D. Anderson and all field assistants for their help with data collection and Forest Enterprise, T. Dearnley and N. Geddes for allowing and facilitating work in Kielder Forest. In addition, we are grateful to English Nature and the BTO for kindly issuing licences annually visit goshawk nest sites. Data accessibility: All data associated with the study which have not already been given in the text are available from the Dryad Digital Repository: http://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h1289 (Hoy et al. 2014).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Dampening prey cycle overrides the impact of climate change on predator population dynamics : a long-term demographic study on tawny owls

Funded by ERA-Net BiodivERsA NERC. Grant Numbers: NE/E010660/1, NE/F021402/1, NE/G002045/1Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Going organic: Building an experimental bottom-up dictionary of verbs in science

International audienceChoosing what headwords to enter in a dictionary has always been a major question in lexicographical practice. Corpora have greatly helped ease both the choice of words to add, and those to remove, by resorting to frequency counts so as to monitor usage over time. This has been particular valuable in the building of learners dictionaries as, however good earlier word lists may have been, they were built largely in intuition whereas, corpora allow the consultation of large reference corpora for a better picture of current realities. In specialised dictionaries dealing with terminological issues, pure frequency is not a feasible solution for headword extraction. However, linked with extraction patterns and statistical tools, corpora still play a major role in supplying information on terms in use. In this research we aim to tackle a situation that lies in between the needs of an advanced learners dictionary and those of a terminological dictionary in attempting to build a pattern dictionary for verbs used in scientific research papers. In order to select verbs for this dictionary and put them into classes, we propose to use collocational relationships as a tool for both selection and analysis of patterns. The principle here is that a series of high frequency verbs can provide the seeds from which prototypical patterns can be extracted. By moving backwards and forwards from verb to argument and back pattern are revealed that use the statistical selectionning to highlight verbs lower in the frequency list that would otherwise be overlooked. Thus patterns will naturally enlarge the word list by selecting what is statistically significant with a textual environment. These patterns not only illustrate typical usage in a specialised environment, but will also group verbs according to textual functions as authorial positioning and description of processes

Role of the 5-HT1A receptors in the effect of Galanin(1-15) on Fluoxetine-mediated action in the forced swimming test

Galanin N-terminal fragment (1-15) [GAL(1-15)] modulates the antidepressant effects induced by the 5-HT1A receptor (5-HT1AR) agonist in the forced swimming test (FST) and the binding characteristics and mRNA levels of 5-HT1AR in the dorsal hippocampus and dorsal raphe (DR). Recently, we observed that GAL(1-15) enhanced the antidepressant-like effects induced by Fluoxetine (FLX) in the FST. In this work, we have studied whether the effects of GAL(1–15) on FLX action were mediated via 5-HT1AR, analyzing the effect of the 5-HT1AR antagonist WAY100635 in this effect and if the binding characteristics and mRNA levels of 5-HT1AR in the DR and dorsal hippocampus are modified by GAL(1-15)+FLX. Groups of rats (n=6-8) received three injections of sc FLX(10mg/kg) and 15 minutes before the FST a single icv injection of GAL(1-15) (1nmol) and 5HT1AR antagonist WAY100635(6nmol) icv alone or in combination. We also analyzed the effects of GAL(1-15)+FLX in the binding characteristics of the 5-HT1AR agonist [H3]-8-OH-DPAT and 5-HT1A mRNA levels in the DR, CA1 and Dentate Gyrus (DG). WAY100635 significantly blocked the reduction in immobility time (p<0.05), and the increase in swimming time (p<0.01) induced by GAL(1-15)+FLX in the FST. GAL(1-15)+FLX produced a significant increase in the 5HT1AR mRNA levels in CA1 (p<0.05) and DG (p<0.05). This effect was not observed in the DR. Moreover, GAL(1-15)+FLX produced a significant decrease in the Kd value (p<0.01) and in the Bmax value (p<0.05) of [3H]-8-OH-DPAT in the DG. These effects were not observed in the CA1 or in the DR. These results indicate that 5HT1AR participates in the GAL(1-15)/FLX interactions in the FST and the mechanism underlying affected the binding characteristics and the mRNA levels of 5-HT1AR specifically in the dorsal hippocampus. The heteroreceptor 5-HT1AR-GALR1-GALR2 located in the dorsal hippocampus may be the target for GAL(1-15). This work was supported by SAF2016-79008-P; PSI2013-44901-P.SAF2016-79008-P; PSI2013-44901-P. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Identifying effective actions to guide volunteer-based and nationwide conservation efforts for a ground-nesting farmland bird

Modern farming practices threaten wildlife in different ways, and failure to identify the complexity of multiple threats acting in synergy may result in ineffective management. To protect ground-nesting birds in farmland, monitoring and mitigating impacts of mechanical harvesting is crucial. Here, we use 6years of data from a nationwide volunteer-based monitoring scheme of the Montagu's harrier, a ground-nesting raptor, in French farmlands. We assess the effectiveness of alternative nest protection measures and map their potential benefit to the species. We show that unprotected nests in cultivated land are strongly negatively affected by harvesting and thus require active management. Further, we show that protection from harvesting alone (e.g. by leaving a small unharvested buffer around the nest) is impaired by post-harvest predation at nests that become highly conspicuous after harvest. Measures that simultaneously protect from harvesting and predation (by adding a fence around the nest) significantly enhance nest productivity. The map of expected gain from nest protection in relation to available volunteers' workforce pinpoints large areas of high expected gain from nest protection that are not matched by equally high workforce availability. This mismatch suggests that the impact of nest protection can be further improved by increasing volunteer efforts in key areas where they are low relative to the expected gain they could have.Synthesis and applications. This study shows that synergistic interplay of multiple factors (e.g. mechanical harvesting and predation) may completely undermine the success of well-intentioned conservation efforts. However, identifying areas where the greatest expected gains can be achieved relative to effort expended can minimize the risk of wasted volunteer actions. Overall, this study underscores the importance of citizen science for collecting large-scale data useful for producing science and ultimately informs large-scale evidence-based conservation actions within an adaptive management framework. This study shows that synergistic interplay of multiple factors (e.g. mechanical harvesting and predation) may completely undermine the success of well-intentioned conservation efforts. However, identifying areas where the greatest expected gains can be achieved relative to effort expended can minimize the risk of wasted volunteer actions. Overall, this study underscores the importance of citizen science for collecting large-scale data useful for producing science and ultimately informs large-scale evidence-based conservation actions within an adaptive management framework.Peer reviewe