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Physiological systems vary in a day-night manner anticipating increased demand at a particular time. Heart is no exception. Cardiac output is primarily determined by heart rate and unsurprisingly this varies in a day-night manner and is higher during the day in the human (anticipating increased day-time demand). Although this is attributed to a day-night rhythm in post-translational ion channel regulation in the heart’s pacemaker, the sinus node, by the autonomic nervous system, we investigated whether there is a day-night rhythm in transcription. RNAseq revealed that ~ 44% of the sinus node transcriptome (7134 of 16,387 transcripts) has a significant day-night rhythm. The data revealed the oscillating components of an intrinsic circadian clock. Presumably this clock (or perhaps the master circadian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus) is responsible for the rhythm observed in the transcriptional machinery, which in turn is responsible for the rhythm observed in the transcriptome. For example, there is a rhythm in transcripts responsible for the two principal pacemaker mechanisms (membrane and Ca2+ clocks), transcripts responsible for receptors and signalling pathways known to control pacemaking, transcripts from genes identified by GWAS as determinants of resting heart rate, and transcripts from genes responsible for familial and acquired sick sinus syndrome.

Background: Heart rate follows a diurnal variation, and slow heart rhythms occur primarily at night. Objective: The lower heart rate during sleep is assumed to be neural in origin, but here we tested whether a day-night difference in intrinsic pacemaking is involved. Methods: In vivo and in vitro electrocardiographic recordings, vagotomy, transgenics, quantitative polymerase chain reaction, Western blotting, immunohistochemistry, patch clamp, reporter bioluminescence recordings, and chromatin immunoprecipitation were used. Results: The day-night difference in the average heart rate of mice was independent of fluctuations in average locomotor activity and persisted under pharmacological, surgical, and transgenic interruption of autonomic input to the heart. Spontaneous beating rate of isolated (ie, denervated) sinus node (SN) preparations exhibited a day-night rhythm concomitant with rhythmic messenger RNA expression of ion channels including hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated potassium channel 4 (HCN4). In vitro studies demonstrated 24-hour rhythms in the human HCN4 promoter and the corresponding funny current. The day-night heart rate difference in mice was abolished by HCN block, both in vivo and in the isolated SN. Rhythmic expression of canonical circadian clock transcription factors, for example, Brain and muscle ARNT-Like 1 (BMAL1) and Cryptochrome (CRY) was identified in the SN and disruption of the local clock (by cardiomyocyte-specific knockout of Bmal1) abolished the day-night difference in Hcn4 and intrinsic heart rate. Chromatin immunoprecipitation revealed specific BMAL1 binding sites on Hcn4, linking the local clock with intrinsic rate control. Conclusion: The circadian variation in heart rate involves SN local clock–dependent Hcn4 rhythmicity. Data reveal a novel regulator of heart rate and mechanistic insight into bradycardia during sleep.

Bradyarrhythmias are an important cause of mortality in heart failure and previous studies indicate a mechanistic role for electrical remodelling of the key pacemaking ion channel HCN4 in this process. Here we show that, in a mouse model of heart failure in which there is sinus bradycardia, there is upregulation of a microRNA (miR-370-3p), downregulation of the pacemaker ion channel, HCN4, and downregulation of the corresponding ionic current, If, in the sinus node. In vitro, exogenous miR-370-3p inhibits HCN4 mRNA and causes downregulation of HCN4 protein, downregulation of If, and bradycardia in the isolated sinus node. In vivo, intraperitoneal injection of an antimiR to miR-370-3p into heart failure mice silences miR-370-3p and restores HCN4 mRNA and protein and If in the sinus node and blunts the sinus bradycardia. In addition, it partially restores ventricular function and reduces mortality. This represents a novel approach to heart failure treatment.

An introductory textbook on Tamil grammar is presented. Tamil is spoken by the majority of the people who live in the State of Tamil Nadu in India. The 35 lessons cover the following: the Tamil alphabet, pronouns, morphophonemic rules, the plural, the imperative, the infinitive and negative imperative, oblique forms and uses, the dative and accusative, the sociative and instrumental, the locative and ablative, postpositions, impersonal verbs, adverbs, the potential, the prohibitive, the permissive, the present tense, the ordinary negative, the future and past tenses, numbers, the converbial, the negative converbial, the conditional and negative conditional, compound verbs, the participle, the verbal noun, the participial noun, the adjectival noun, the causative, the passive, interrogatives plus suffixes, the comparative and superlative, indirect discourse, and concessive of fact and supposition. Appendices contain other grammatical forms and a summary of verb forms, a grammatical index, a Tamil-English dictionary, an English-Tamil glossary, and spoken Tamil rules are included. Exercises and vocabulary sections are included. (SW)

Introduction. Obesity is increasingly common and is associated with an increased prevalence of cardiac arrhythmias. The aim of this study was to see whether in obesity there is proarrhythmic gene expression of ventricular ion channels and related molecules. Methods and Results. Rats were fed on a high-fat diet and compared to control rats on a normal diet (). After 8 weeks, rats on the high-fat diet showed significantly greater weight gain and higher adiposity. Left ventricle samples were removed at 8 weeks and mRNA expression of ion channels and other molecules was measured using qPCR. Obese rats had significant upregulation of , HCN4, , RYR2, NCX1, SERCA2a, and RYR2 mRNA and downregulation of ERG mRNA. In the case of HCN4, it was confirmed that there was a significant increase in protein expression. The potential effects of the mRNA changes on the ventricular action potential and intracellular Ca2+ transient were predicted using computer modelling. Modelling predicted prolongation of the ventricular action potential and an increase in the intracellular Ca2+ transient, both of which would be expected to be arrhythmogenic. Conclusion. High-fat diet causing obesity results in arrhythmogenic cardiac gene expression of ion channels and related molecules.

The core mission of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) is to efficiently support the armed services requirements. To fulfill this mission, it must maintain inventories of items for which demand is highly variable even when relatively stable, could increase or decrease dramatically on short notice, or may never even materialize. While commercial firms might consider stocking such items unprofitable and would be unlikely to do so without a purchase guarantee, DLA does not have this option if it is to effectively support the warfighter. Thus, the high level of customer support that DLA has achieved has come at high inventory cost, manifested in inventory excess that leads to disposals. From 2005 to 2013, DLA disposed of an average of more than $1 billion per year. This represents prior spending for items that were ultimately not needed. In the Department of Defense (DoD), this cost of doing business is charged by DLA to its customers through its cost recovery rate or surcharge that it is mandated to add to material costs when charging its customers for goods in order to cover its operating costs.

Heart failure is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the western world. One of the effects of heart failure is the structural remodelling of cardiac tissue, including tissue dilation and development of fibrosis. It is therefore important to study these changes and their effect on cardiac activity, in order to gain a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms in arrhythmogenesis, which will hopefully enable us to develop better treatments for heart failure. In this study we developed biophysically detailed models of the rabbit atria for normal and heart failure conditions. These models were used to study the effects of structural remodelling of heart failure on cardiac excitation wave conduction. Anatomical reconstructions of the control and heart failure hearts were based on contrast enhanced micro-CT imaging. Fibre orientation was extracted from the control and heart failure datasets. Effects of heart failure geometry on the activation pattern of atrial excitation waves were analyzed. It was found that atrial activation time increased from the control to the heart failure case in both isotropic and anisotropic conditions, which is attributed primarily to the dilation of tissue caused by heart failure.

We show how to compute the smallest rectangle that can enclose any polygon, from a given set of polygons, in nearly linear time; we also present a PTAS for the problem, as well as a linear-time algorithm for the case when the polygons are rectangles themselves. We prove that finding a smallest convex polygon that encloses any of the given polygons is NP-hard, and give a PTAS for minimizing the perimeter of the convex enclosure. We also give efficient algorithms to find the smallest rectangle simultaneously enclosing a given pair of convex polygons.

In the wake of Indian Independence, the short story emerged as the most active genre in both Hindi and Tamil literature, establishing new representations of selfhood and citizenship that would shape popular expression across India for decades to come. This genre thus provides an important window into the cultural production of enduring paradigms of Indian modernity and citizenship in the context of national efforts to create an all-Indian identity after decolonization. My dissertation is motivated by an interest in explaining how post-Independence Hindi and Tamil short stories mobilized and constructed representations of the "Indian citizen," locating them within a regionally specific cultural context, as well as the broader imaginings of a modern India. I ask: what was literature's role in establishing universal understandings of the Indian citizen in the postcolonial moment? I address this question through an analysis of tropes of the feminine ideal in the state, public, and literary spheres in North and South India to illustrate the relationship between these tropes and popular understandings of the Indian citizen-subject. Focusing on the short stories and critical writing by six canonical post-Independence Hindi and Tamil authors, I juxtapose the tropes of the feminine ideal they invoke with those generated by state discourses on law and the public debates surrounding them. Through this juxtaposition, I show that the same tropes - such as the widow, the virgin, the concubine, and the good wife - carry saliency in all three spheres (state, public, and literary). In this way, tropes of the feminine ideal provide the platform for a cohesive articulation of modern Indian citizenship across these discursive arenas. Despite their similarity in form, however, the manner in which Hindi and Tamil short stories supply these tropes with meaning reveals fundamentally distinct regional articulations between gender, caste, and religious structures, as well as divergent points

This dissertation contributes to the nascent study of the Tamil Cankam corpus, a collection of poetic anthologies produced in the first three centuries CE. The Cankam poems are constructed around the two complementary themes of the "inner world" relating to emotions, romance and family life, and the "outer world" relating to kingship, warfare and public life. This dissertation argues that the thematic division within the corpus is gendered, as the "inner world" is associated with the feminine while the "outer world" is associated with the masculine. Each chapter explores the way that the poets establish the boundaries of femininity and masculinity through both the form and content of their verses. This dissertation focuses closely on the moments of rupture in the poets' system of gender construction, for these moments suggest that the poets acknowledged that gender is more fluid and complex than it initially appears. To better understand the workings of gender and sexuality in these poems, this study juxtaposes recent theoretical frameworks with these poems from the distant past. Methodologically, this dissertation collapses traditional historical time, bringing the ancient Cankam anthologies into conversation with ideas that are circulating now. In doing so, it seeks to elucidate both the poems and the theory, while also opening up new questions in both fields.

This dissertation looks at debates over the Tamil literary tradition in treatises and commentaries on poetics composed in South India between the eighth and the seventeenth centuries. Central to these discussions of what constitutes the literary was the relationship of new literary developments to the language and conventions of an ancient poetic system established in the earliest stratum of Tamil literature, known as "Sangam literature" or "literature of the assembly." The chapters that follow look at these competing attitudes towards the classical tradition, beginning with the debates over defining the Tamil tradition found in Peraciriyar's thirteenth-century commentary on the section of poetics discussed by the ancient grammar Tolkappiyam, and the Virutti commentary on the metrical treatise Yapparunkalam, dated between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The different interpretations of the Tamil past adopted by these commentaries reveal the capacity of the Sangam tradition to serve both as the foundation of an authoritative canon worthy of preservation as well as fertile material for experiments with new theories of literature and language, including those derived from Sanskrit. If the first two chapters explore the central role played by the Sangam conventions in Tamil literary theory, albeit mobilized for different interpretive projects, the next two chapters focus on the competing poetic system of the pattiyals, which theorize the capacity of Tamil language and literature to praise a royal patron, and explore the implications of this new understanding of the function of literary language. Finally, the dissertation ends with a seventeenth-century text, the Ilakkana Vilakkam, which attempts an integrated theory of Tamil literature, in which the most influential "new" developments in Tamil aesthetics, including the praise poetics of the pattiyals, are rendered compatible with the Sangam tradition. By providing a comparative look at approaches to interpreting the

In this dissertation, I discuss some representations of place in early ( ca. 100 CE - 300 CE) Tamil poetry collectively called cankam literature. While previous research has emphasized the importance of place as landscape imagery in these poems, it has seldom gone beyond treating landscape / place as symbolic of human emotionality. I argue that this approach does not address the variety in the representation of place seen in this literature. To address this theoretical deficiency, I study place in cankam poetry as having definite ontological value and something which is immediately cognized by the senses of human perception. Drawing from a range of texts, I will argue that in these poems, the experience of place emerges in a dialogic between the human self and place - a dialogic which brings together sensory experience, perception, memory, and various socio-cultural patterns; place, in these poems, is not as much an objective geographical entity as it is the process of perception itself.

The Āmuktamālyada of the sixteenth century Vijayanagara monarch Kṛṣṇadevarāya is a poetic masterpiece of the highest order. It stands out as a landmark in Telugu literary history, not only for its poetic beauty, but also because of the unique religious and political themes embedded within its central narrative. Unlike most contemporaneous Telugu poets who based their works on Sanskrit purāṇas or other Indo-Aryan mythological sources, Kṛṣṇadevarāya turned to the southern Tamil tradition for his inspiration. The Āmuktamālyada is in essence a richly poetic hagiography of the Vaiṣṇava poet-saintess Āṇṭāḷ, or Goda as she is referred to throughout the text. And unlike the great kāvyas of Sanskrit (or even most coeval sixteenth century Telugu prabandhas) that often centered around male heroes, Āmuktamālyada tells the story of an adolescent Tamil girl in love with god. The notion of a female protagonist was surely common to Tamil epic literature, as in the famous Cilappatikāram, Maṇimekalai and Cīvakacintāmaṇi. This geo-cultural shift by Kṛṣṇadevarāya evidences a marked reorientation of the Telugu tradition towards the South, not only in terms of literary source materials and bhakti related themes, but also in a very concrete political sense as the power center of the post-Vijayanagara state system moved to the Tamil country. Both the themes of regional vernacularization and bhakti related transformations are framed by the poet-king's lived political life and his ambitious poetic imagination. In many ways Kṛṣṇadevarāya exemplifies the old notion of a kavi-rāja or poet-king; a ruler who could unite both statecraft and literature into a composite expression of kingship. The unique importance of Kṛṣṇadevarāya's work is therefore best understood when the text is placed within the historical context of the king's political agenda and the sweeping changes that he brought about, leading to both the apex and ultimate demise of the Vijayanagara empire. In this sense, Āmuktamālyada i

In Saiva Siddhanta, one of the main religious movements in Tamil Nadu, the Tirumantiram by Tirumular plays an important role. It is considered one of the main texts and though not read as much as some of the other more devotional texts or the more theological and philosophical texts, it nevertheless, stands out iconically as a key text for the movement and its followers. Saiva Siddhanta is seen by many in Tamil Nadu, as a local production which sometimes plays out in the discourse of the local Tamil culture as an indigenous production. However, what is also of interest in this movement is its long relationship to pan-Indian movements and how it participates in these trans-local discourses. Here, I look at the role that the Tirumantiram plays in the production of these pan-Indian discourses, especially as they become localized in Tamil Nadu and how the text helps to bridge these two spheres--the local and global, as it gets co-opted into the local Tamil Saiva Siddhanta;nta movement. I also touch upon how this same text is used by a counter-cultural movement--the Tamil Cittar movement which, in opposition to the orthodox, high-caste Saiva Siddhanta movement, uses this same very text but interprets it according to its own marginal discourse to make those same practices found in the text, available to a larger audience and set of practitioners. I do this by first looking at the Tirumantiram in a historical and social context as has been studied by some scholars. I then, give a brief synopsis of its contents by looking at the different sections and their contents. I follow this with an analyses of the ideas and practices found within the Tirumantiram by looking at them through a mainly Foucaultian enterprise, especially by using some of the ideas and methodologies Foucault developed when looking at ancient Greek and Roman cultures of the self, to look at how technologies of the self were used in order to construct meanings of subjectivity and relationships to truth. I do

Horse flies feed from superficial haematomas and probably rely heavily on the pharmacological properties of their saliva to find blood. Here we describe the first evidence of vasodilators in horse fly Hybomitra bimaculata (Diptera, Tabanidae) salivary gland extract and clone and express one of the active peptides (termed vasotab). Physiological tests using crude salivary gland extracts and reverse-phase HPLC fractions demonstrated positive inotropism in isolated rat hearts, vasodilatation of coronary and peripheral vessels, and Na, K-ATPase inhibition. One of the vasoactive fractions was analysed by N-terminal Edman degradation and a 47-amino-acid sequence obtained. A full-length cDNA encoding the peptide was cloned from a phage library using degenerate primer PCR and the peptide expressed in insect cells. A 20-amino-acid signal sequence precedes the mature 56-amino-acid vasotab peptide, which is a member of the Kazal-type protease inhibitor family. The peptide has a unique 7-amino-acid insertion between the third and fourth cysteine residues. The recombinant peptide prolonged the action potential and caused positive inotropism of isolated rat heart myocytes, and may be an ion channel modulator.

Daniel L. Rogers, director; music by Richard Rodgers; lyrics by Lorenz Hart; book by George Abbot; based on William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1987., MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING., Bibliography: leaves 225-230., by George William Hart., Ph.D.

We present an algorithm to unfold any triangulated 2-manifold (in particular, any simplicial polyhedron) into a non-overlapping, connected planar layout in linear time. The manifold is cut only along its edges. The resulting layout is connected, but it may have a disconnected interior; the triangles are connected at vertices, but not necessarily joined along edges. We extend our algorithm to establish a similar result for simplicial manifolds of arbitrary dimension., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 10 references. Significant improvement of arXive cs.CG/0107023

We present two algorithms for unfolding the surface of any polyhedron, all of whose faces are triangles, to a nonoverlapping, connected planar layout. The surface is cut only along polyhedron edges. The layout is connected, but it may have a disconnected interior: the triangles are connected at vertices, but not necessarily joined along edges., Comment: 10 pages; 7 figures; 8 references

The direct detection 3D imaging laser radar developed by BMDO under the DITP effort and currently being integrated for a demonstration test flight in FY2001 has the capability of significantly improving the P(K) of an interceptor by providing substantially enhanced discrimination. This is especially true for threats of high interest where closely spaced objects defeat the capability of passive sensors to discriminate based on intensity modulation due to coning. The DITP 3D ladar can easily resolve such CSO's it also has an inherent advantage in that the same amount of coning will result in 3 times as much modulation as the passive sensor would observe. The 3D ladar can also observe the actual object orientation once it is angularly resolved. This can cut through confusion the passive sensor could experience where different combinations of aspect and coning angle can yield the same modulation amplitude. The ability of the 3D ladar to deliver such benefits hinges on the accuracy of its intensity measurements. This paper will present analysis backed by experiments which indicates that while speckle is a potential problem the intensity fluctuations it introduces can be mitigated by multi-pulse averaging. Sufficient engagement timeline exists for such an approach when proper trades between pulse energy rep rate and beam profile are made. Such trades will be presented in detail as will the proper method for estimating the extent of speckle expected for an overall target individual range bin or single angle-angle pixel within a range bin.

Direct-detection laser radars can measure the range and the intensity returns from a target, with or without clutter, for each part of the target resolved in angle by the optical system. Because the ladar's angular resolution is in micro-radians, there are generally at least a few angular pixels "on target." In addition, for narrow pulse ladar systems, there may be ten or so sequential intensity measurements in range per pixel as the laser pulse propagates down the target's surface. The output image is, therefore, potentially a truce dimensional "cube" of intensity measurements and quantized in the range axis by the range-bin size or "voxel." This is known as "range resolved angle-angle-intensity" ladar, and one such system is being built by BMDO under the DITP effort.

A pyrotechnic, molten metal jet torch which employs a loose pyrotechnic starter powder such as (1) magnesium powder, or an intimate mixture of (2) Mg and CuO, (3) Mg and Fe2O3, (4) Mg and Co3O4, (5) Al and CuO, or (6) Al and Fe2O3 powders which are capable of being ignited by a conventional military incendiary grenade fuse and which generated enough heat to ignite pyronol pellets which are pressed from an intimate powder mixture of (1) nickel, (2) metal oxide, (3) a component selected from the group consisting of (a) aluminum and (b) a mixture of at least 50 weight percent aluminum and a metal that is magnesium, zirconium, bismuth, beryllium, boron, or mixtures thereof. jg, Supersedes PAT-APPL-118 349-93.

http://name.umdl.umich.edu/IC-UMMU-X-13-03723%5D13_03723, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/api/thumb/ummu/13-03723/13_03723/!250,250, The University of Michigan Library provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes. These materials may be protected by copyright. If you decide to use any of these materials, you are responsible for making your own legal assessment and securing any necessary permission. If you have questions about the collection, please contact the Library Information Technology.; Sandak, https://www.lib.umich.edu/about-us/policies/copyright-policy

Overland monthly and Out West magazine. / Volume 11, Issue 3, Page(s) 254-258, (dlps) volume: ahj1472.1-11.003, (dlps) article: ahj1472.1-11.003:8, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/text/accesspolicy.html

Finished, pen and ink, topographical map showing the movements of British and French fleets and troops during the fighting for St. Lucia in December 1778.; British troops outlined in red and French in blue., William L. Clements Library, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/IC-WCL1IC-X-8415%5DWCL008486, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/api/thumb/wcl1ic/8415/WCL008486/!250,250, The University of Michigan Library provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes. These materials may be under copyright. If you decide to use any of these materials, you are responsible for making your own legal assessment and securing any necessary permission. If you have questions about the collection, please contact the William L. Clements Library: icwcl1ic-umdl-help@umich.edu. If you have concerns about the inclusion of an item in this collection, please contact Library IT: libraryit-info@umich.edu., https://www.lib.umich.edu/about-us/policies/copyright-policy

A rare gas halide excimer laser in which Xenon Bromide is made by an electron-beam. The low lying excited electronic state of the Xe atom generated by the e-beam reacts with Br2 to produce XeBr which undergoes a bound-free transition with a wavelength of 281.8 nm. (Author), Supersedes PAT-APPL-663 408-76.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 25-26), Booklet: IULC :1-26, 1981

Con traducción libre al inglés. Nítido., http://www.sil.org/resources/archives/46834

http://www.sil.org/resources/archives/29810

http://www.sil.org/resources/archives/29705

http://www.sil.org/resources/archives/30102

Incluye los términos de parentesco. Legible., http://www.sil.org/resources/archives/46778

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https://patrimoniodigital.ucm.es/r/thumbnail/559005, https://books.google.com/books/ucm?vid=UCM5314420209&printsec=frontcover&img=1

A growing collection of over 1000 virtual reality polyhedra to explore, complementing Hart's Pavilion of Polyhedreality. Includes instructions for building paper models of polyhedra including modular origami, with ideas for classroom use. Each of the sections contains background information and exercises, a list of virtual reality models, and links to further topics. Platonic Solids (Regular Convex Polyhedra); Kepler-Poinsot Polyhedra (Regular NonConvex Polyhedra); Archimedean Polyhedra (Semi-Regular Convex Polyhedra); Prisms and Anti-Prisms; Archimedean Duals; Quasi-Regular Polyhedra; Johnson Solids (the remaining convex polyhedra with regular faces); Pyramids, Dipyramids, and Trapezohedra; Compound Polyhedra - Introduction; Stellated Polyhedra - Introduction; Compounds of Cubes; Convex Deltahedra; Zonohedra; Uniform Polyhedra; Uniform Compounds of Uniform Polyhedra; Stellations of the Icosahedron; Stellations of the Rhombic Triacontahedron; Other Good Stuff: Alphabetic list of articles, Alphabetic listing of all the polyhedra models, a Glossary, and an Annotated Bibliography. Also background material on polygons and on polyhedron names.