diff --git a/.nupic_modules b/.nupic_modules
index 7cfa24d15b..d1093af9f7 100644
--- a/.nupic_modules
+++ b/.nupic_modules
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 # Default nupic.core dependencies (override in optional .nupic_config)
 NUPIC_CORE_REMOTE = 'git://github.com/numenta/nupic.core.git'
-NUPIC_CORE_COMMITISH = '396141599ae20c39b589b93bc8d110dc59d7fc7d'
\ No newline at end of file
+NUPIC_CORE_COMMITISH = '232dbab2ed72b2127d51d2515b14dbbb4aed3ad5'
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 3ba535cda2..2de8438b47 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,13 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## 0.5.3
+
+* Default DATETIME columns to NULL in ClientJobsDAO for compatibility across mysql versions. As of mysql 5.7.8, values of 0 are not allowed for DATETIME columns, and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is semantically inappropriate for those columns.
+* Suppress this optional dependency on matplotlib without logging, because python logging implicitly adds the StreamHandler to root logger when calling `logging.debug`, etc., which may undermine an application's logging configuration
+* Bugfix: Write the 'actualValues' to the output, don't reassign the output
+* Fixed Username Regex in ClientJobsDAO
+* cleaned up region a bit to make it compliant with numenta's coding guidelines.
+
 ## 0.5.2
 
 * Fixe to GCE to return the right number of scalars when altitude is missing.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 6d0a0338a7..a2a86a2a71 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ The Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing (**NuPIC**) is a machine intellig
 
 For more information, see [numenta.org](http://numenta.org) or the [NuPIC wiki](https://github.com/numenta/nupic/wiki).
 
-## Installing NuPIC 0.5.2
+## Installing NuPIC 0.5.3
 
 NuPIC binaries are available for:
 
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ First, you must install [Xcode command line tools](https://developer.apple.com/l
 
 > **NOTE**: The `nupic.bindings` binary distribution is not stored on [PyPi](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/nupic) along with the OS X distribution. NuPIC uses the [wheel](http://pythonwheels.com) binary format, and PyPi does not support hosting Linux wheel files. So we are forced to host our own.
 
-    pip install https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/artifacts.numenta.org/numenta/nupic.core/releases/nupic.bindings/nupic.bindings-0.4.2-cp27-none-linux_x86_64.whl
+    pip install https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/artifacts.numenta.org/numenta/nupic.core/releases/nupic.bindings/nupic.bindings-0.4.3-cp27-none-linux_x86_64.whl
     pip install nupic
 
 ### Install Windows
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 0c3c98be6f..be14282b7f 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.5.3.dev0
+0.5.3
diff --git a/docs/Doxyfile b/docs/Doxyfile
index 102f52f41b..e8f86160fe 100644
--- a/docs/Doxyfile
+++ b/docs/Doxyfile
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ PROJECT_NAME           = NuPIC
 # could be handy for archiving the generated documentation or if some version
 # control system is used.
 
-PROJECT_NUMBER         = 0.5.3.dev0
+PROJECT_NUMBER         = 0.5.3
 
 # Using the PROJECT_BRIEF tag one can provide an optional one line description
 # for a project that appears at the top of each page and should give viewer a
diff --git a/external/common/requirements.txt b/external/common/requirements.txt
index e5562be126..cd69f8b950 100644
--- a/external/common/requirements.txt
+++ b/external/common/requirements.txt
@@ -17,5 +17,5 @@ pyproj==1.9.3
 prettytable==0.7.2
 # When updating nupic.bindings, also update any shared dependencies to keep
 # versions in sync.
-nupic.bindings==0.4.3.dev0
+nupic.bindings==0.4.3
 numpy==1.9.2