Elevated circulating Ang II activates neurons in the forebrain cardiovascular regulatory areas to cause sympatho-excitation and hypertension. We hypothesized that circulating Ang II causes neuronal activation in the SFO and thereby activates efferent pathways to the PVN, and chronically causes activation of aldosterone production in magnocellular neurons in PVN and SON, which amplifies neuronal activation in the PVN and central sympatho-excitatory pathways. The aim of the present study was to determine the pattern of neuronal activation in forebrain nuclei by circulating Ang II and to elucidate where in the hypothalamus Ang II may stimulate aldosterone biosynthesis. Dose related effects of circulating Ang II on BP were first assessed. Wistar rats instrumented with telemetry probes were infused subcutaneously with Ang II 150 and 500 ng/kg/min for 14 days. The subcutaneous infusion of Ang II at 150 ng/kg/min increased blood pressure gradually up to 20 mmHg and at 500 ng/kg/min up to 60 mmHg. Ang II at 500 ng/kg/min increased plasma Ang II by 4-fold. To assess effects of circulating Ang II on CNS pathways, Wistar rats were implanted subcutaneously with minipumps infusing 150 and 500 ng/kg/min Ang II for 1, 4 and 14 days. Three patterns of neuronal activation were observed by sc infusion of Ang II. The SFO was activated during the first day and remained activated for 4 days, but at 14 days showed diminished activation. MnPO did not show significant activation during the first day but, after several days the activation was high and then less by 14 days. Parvocellular PVN (pPVN), magnocellular PVN (mPVN) and SON showed an initial activation that increased over time. Chronic intracerebroventricular infusion of an aldosterone synthase inhibitor or a mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) blocker attenuated the increase in Fra expression in PVN but not SON, and prevented the decrease in SFO after 14 days infusion of Ang II. A significant increase in mRNA expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR), a rate limiting enzyme in aldosterone production was found in glia cells of PVN and SFO assessed by rt-PCR after 3 days subcutaneous infusion of Ang II at 500 ng/kg/min. Total expression of aldosterone synthase (CYP11B2) mRNA was increased in SFO, MnPO, SON and PVN after 3 days of infusion of Ang II. After 14 days no significant changes were observed in the expression of StAR or CYP11B2 mRNA. In comparison, in adrenal StAR mRNA expression increased after 3 days but no longer after 14 days. In contrast, CYP11B2 mRNA expression in adrenal increased after both 3 and 14 days of infusion. These findings may support our hypothesis that chronic elevation of circulating Ang II increases neuronal activity in CVOs, presumably leading to activation of the PVN and SON to induce an increase in aldosterone production in magnocelular PVN and SON. In the second phase activation of CVOs appears to diminish, but an aldosterone-dependent amplifying mechanisms, causes sustained activation of the PVN and thereby hypertension.

No description available.

In this research water emission is modeled from intermediate mass star formations regions placed at 1 kpc. Nine models are created to describe these regions of varying source luminosity ($L=100,500,$ and $1000L_{\odot}$) and protostellar envelope mass ($M=10,100,$ and $500M_{\odot}$). For each model, an intermediate mass class 0 protostar is centrally embedded in a spherically symmetry static protostellar envelope. Radiation transfered through these regions is calculated using the program RATRAN that applies an accelerated Monte Carlo method to obtain level population profiles of water. The level populations are used to determine the emission distribution of water from the regions by using a ray tracing method. Strong correlations between line ratios, integrated intensities and source luminosity are found. Larger envelope masses resulted in more mass going in the outer envelope where the water is frozen and does not contribute to the water emission and absorption. Line strengths, ratios, and integrated intensities for all the spectral lines of water within Herschel's observation range are tabulated.

In this research water emission is modeled from intermediate mass star formations regions placed at 1 kpc. Nine models are created to describe these regions of varying source luminosity ($L=100,500,$ and $1000L_{\odot}$) and protostellar envelope mass ($M=10,100,$ and $500M_{\odot}$). For each model, an intermediate mass class 0 protostar is centrally embedded in a spherically symmetry static protostellar envelope. Radiation transfered through these regions is calculated using the program RATRAN that applies an accelerated Monte Carlo method to obtain level population profiles of water. The level populations are used to determine the emission distribution of water from the regions by using a ray tracing method. Strong correlations between line ratios, integrated intensities and source luminosity are found. Larger envelope masses resulted in more mass going in the outer envelope where the water is frozen and does not contribute to the water emission and absorption. Line strengths, ratios, and integrated intensities for all the spectral lines of water within Herschel's observation range are tabulated.

The majority of galaxy formation studies which explore beyond local redshifts do not typically probe down to the dwarf galaxy stellar mass range of ∼ 10^9 Msun . Thus trends in the observed evolution or characteristics of galaxy formation at a particular epoch are based upon populations of massive galaxies. However the currently favored Λ-Cold Dark Matter (Λ-CDM) theory is based upon hierarchical clustering and merging of lower mass systems, which proceed to make the higher mass, complex morphology of galaxies we observe. Thus it is clear that within the dwarf galaxy mass regime there should be a significant phase of galaxy formation and evolution. This work aims to uncover the influence of local environment on the formation and evolution of dwarf and massive galaxies beyond local redshift, probing down to a mass range lower than that which has been explored by previous studies. A previously successful study titled the Redshift One LDSS-3 Emission line Survey (ROLES), released results for a redshift of z ∼ 1, which compared the [OII] luminosity and galaxy stellar mass functions ([OII] LF and GSMF respectively), star formation rate density (SFRD), and specific star formation rate (sSFR) relations, with a local SDSS dataset. This led to the expansion of the study to lower redshift (this work) which explored low stellar mass galaxies at a redshift of z ∼ 0.75. This follow-up study referred to as ROLES75 (z ∼ 0.75) targeted the same two deep fields explored by the z ∼ 1 study (GOODS-South, MS1054-03 FIRES), which have extensive public photometry. Low mass targets were selected for study by their K-magnitudes (22.5 < KAB < 24) leading to a dwarf mass range of 8.5 < Log(M∗/Msun) < 9.5, and which were most likely to be within our redshift range (0.62 < z < 0.885). Follow-up multi-object spectroscopy targeted the [OII]λ3727A emission line star formation tracer in these targets allowing us to identify and obtain secure spectroscopic redshifts, SED-fit stellar masses and observed [OII] luminosity calibrated star formation rates down to limits of Log(M∗/Msun) ∼ 8.85 and SFR ∼ 0.1 Msun/yr . Science results presented here are similar to those published by the ROLES z ∼ 1 study, however we also studied the influence of the high versus low density environment in which the galaxy populations reside. This study confirmed that while the [OII] luminosity was higher in earlier times, environment does not influence galaxy formation at z ∼ 0.75. The faint-end slope of the [OII] LF, α ∼ 1.25 measured here, is also observed to become increasingly more steep with increasing redshift. The [OII] luminous GSMF is observed to not have significantly evolved since z ∼ 2.75, confirming the result of the previous ROLES work. However the impact of environment on the GSMF is apparent in the high mass end where the imprint of structure from the CDFS field enhances the stellar mass function above the field population. There is also weak evidence of a bi-modal [OII] luminous GSMF indicated by an ‘upturn’ near ∼ 10^9 Msun in the low density field population. The SFRD at z ∼ 0.75 does not confirm the picture presented by the ROLES z ∼ 1 study where a constant scale factor was applicable to the local SDSS SFRD to obtain the z ∼ 1 SFRD. The SFRD in the high mass end at z ∼ 0.75 is lower than would be expected based upon a constant scale factor, while the low stellar mass end exhibits some consistency with this picture. In the high density environment, this dominant SFRD (over the low density field population) is driven by the high density [OII] luminous GSMF in the high stellar mass end, rather than through an enhancement of the SFR. The normalization of the sSFR − M∗ relation at z ∼ 0.75 is found to lie between those corresponding to z ∼ 1 and present day. There is a subtle ‘upturn’ in the sSFR − M∗ relation confirming this observation which was also present in the ROLES z ∼ 1 study but not present in the local SDSS sSFR − M∗ relation. The sSFR of active galaxies does not depend upon the local density in which they are forming, confirming the same conclusion based upon the [OII] LF. However, there is redshift evolution of the sSFR − M∗ relation with respect to local density. The high density sSFR − M∗ relation for star forming galaxies was dominant over its low density counterpart at early times, with the opposite the case at present day. There is suggestion of the crossover or rollover transition occurring at z ∼ 0.75.

A star graph consists of an arbitrary number of segments that are joined at a point which is called the vertex. In this work it is investigated from a pure theoretical point of view, in the framework of quantum field theory. As a concrete physical application, the electric conductance tensor is obtained. In particular it is shown that this conductance behaves differently according to whether the scattering matrix associated with the vertex of the graph has bound-state poles or not.

Abstract There are gradually prosperous trades in foreign exchange markets, agents could hedge, speculate and arbitrage in markets. Market efficiency therefore is worthy of investigate in international finance. There are a lot of empirical studies examine whether the long-run relationship would exist between spot exchange rate and forward exchange rate in conventional linear models. However the conclusions were not similar. Sarno and Chowdhury¡]2003¡^mentioned that linear models imply residuals of model adjust to equilibrium by fixed speed. If dynamic adjustment of nonlinear model exists, linear model is hard to capture the dynamic adjustment. Ender¡]1995¡^also mentioned that cointegration has long run linear relationship in variables. Theoretically, nonlinear relationship may exist. Furthermore, some literatures demonstrate how transaction cost and technical analysis induce nonlinear adjustment of the deviation for equilibrium exchange rate. We consider a new approach that Ters&#x00E4;virta and Anderson¡]1992¡^provided the Smooth Transition Autoregressive Model¡]STAR¡^, to re-examine the long-run relationship between spot exchange rate and forward exchange rate. According to the empirical results, we can find that all variables can be modeled by nonlinear models. The results of relationships exist between spot and forward exchange rates in France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Norway, Spain, Australia, Ireland, Italy, .Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece and New Zealand, but it doesn¡¦t exist in the United Kingdom and Finland.

When the number of nodes increases, the chance that nodes or links fail increases. Then a fault-tolerant routing method is important to maintian the performance of the system. In the hypercube, safety levels and safety vectors provide the fault distribution information used to guide routing fault-tolerantly. The safety vectors for the hypercube describes the fault distribution more percisely than the safety level. The concept of safety levels has been applied to the star graph by other researchers. In this thesis, we apply the concept of the safety vectors in the hypercube to the star graph, and define three different safety vectors, including undirected safety vector, directed safety vector, and statistical safety vector. We first show the ability of the undirected safety vector. Then we extend the ideal to the directed safety vector and show it is better in deciding routing paths than the safety level for the star graph. We also show the reason that makes the directed safety vector not able to be used for derouting. In the previous result, a little change can make the directed safety vector usable for derouting in the hypercube. However, for the star graph, we can use only the information of neighbors to perform derouting with a slight modification in the directed safety vector. Then we set levels to the routing ability using the statistical safety vector. Try to make it contain more information of the fault distribution.

As the size of networks increases continuously, dealing with networks with faulty nodes becomes unavoidable. In this dissertation, we introduce a new measure for network fault tolerance, the strong fault tolerance (or strong Menger-connectivity)in multicomputer networks, and study the strong fault tolerance for popular multicomputer network structures. Let G be a network in which all nodes have degree d. We say that G is strongly fault tolerant if it has the following property: Let Gf be a copy of G with at most d - 2 faulty nodes. Then for any pair of non-faulty nodes u and v in Gf , there are min{degf (u), degf (v)} node-disjoint paths in Gf from u to v, where degf (u) and degf (v) are the degrees of the nodes u and v in Gf, respectively. First we study the strong fault tolerance for the popular network structures such as star networks and hypercube networks. We show that the star networks and the hypercube networks are strongly fault tolerant and develop efficient algorithms that construct the maximum number of node-disjoint paths of nearly optimal or optimal length in these networks when they contain faulty nodes. Our algorithms are optimal in terms of their time complexity. In addition to studying the strong fault tolerance, we also investigate a more realistic concept to describe the ability of networks for tolerating faults. The traditional definition of fault tolerance, sustaining at most d - 1faulty nodes for a regular graph G of degree d, reflects a very rare situation. In many cases, there is a chance that a routing path between two given nodes can be constructed though the network may have more faulty nodes than its degree. In this dissertation, we study the fault tolerance of hypercube networks under a probability model. When each node of the n-dimensional hypercube network has an independent failure probability p, we develop algorithms that, with very high probability, can construct a fault-free path when the hypercube network can sustain up to 2np faulty nodes.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between outward FDI and trades across Taiwan Strait during the period 1994Q4 to 2007Q4. We modify the export function, import function and trade function by including outward FDI variable to reflect the effect of bilateral trade between Taiwan and China. Empirical evidences indicate that the coefficient is significantly crucial to the long-run relationship. Due to the failure of a linear error-correction model (ECM) in describing the dynamics of exports and trades, we apply a nonlinear ECM to examine its dynamics and find supporting to the appropriateness of the nonlinear model empirically. Furthermore, outward FDI in percentages of Taiwan GDP was found increasing exports and decreasing imports across Taiwan Strait in percentages of Taiwan GDP. Then, the results also indicate the possibility of a positive effect of the ratio of China GDP to Taiwan GDP on the ratio of import to Taiwan GDP and a negative effect of the ratio of export to Taiwan GDP. It possibly offsets the balance of trade surplus at the same time. Finally, the bilateral trade across Taiwan Strait raises while the FDI ratio is increasing. China becomes the most important trade partner to Taiwan in recent years.