Ultrastructural Analysis of the Digestive Gland Secretory and Absorptive Processes in Nepenthes glandulifera

Nepenthes glandulifera is a carnivorous pitcher plant native to tropical environments, of which the majority live on the islands in the Malay Archipelago where sunlight and water are abundant. The pitcher trap style contains a modified pitfall trap that attracts insects and other small invertebrates through various attractive mechanisms. These plants also contain digestive glands that secrete digestive fluid to break down prey into nutrients for the plant. The digestive fluid, with remarkably unique properties, has been analyzed in relation to multiple areas of study including the development of an enzyme-supplementation strategy for the treatment of celiac disease and the synthesis of gold nanoparticles for tumor imaging and targeting. Although the composition of the digestive fluid has been studied, there is limited data on the ultrastructural components of the digestive glands. In this study, electron and light microscopy were used to analyze the digestive glands in relation to the secretory and absorptive processes in Nepenthes glandulifera. Electron and light microscopy data suggest that Nepenthes use limited symplastic and apoplastic transport, requiring transmembrane transporters for nutrient uptake. A novel structure in the nucleus of multiple cells suggests an evolved mechanism for the continuous acidification of pitcher fluid and intracellular communication for rapid and efficient nutrient uptake

Thinking Like a Lawyer: The Heuristics of Case Synthesis

In a common law system where cases play such an important role in legal problem-solving, lawyers must be able to synthesize ideas from groups of cases to figure out a jurisdiction’s law at a particular point in time; in reality, however, many lawyers aren’t able to do so well enough for sophisticated law practice. Some lawyers understand and use this skill intuitively, but do not consciously think about the steps they actually take. Those in this group often do not sufficiently value case synthesis because it seems so obvious, with the result that they don’t necessarily use this skill to its full potential. Others don’t intuitively understand how to synthesize cases and have never learned a methodology to do so. Lawyers in this situation simply are not able to manipulate case law adequately and consequently fail to produce the necessary depth of analysis to represent clients effectively. This article’s goal is to ensure that lawyers in practice—and teachers in law schools who train future lawyers—have a sufficient understanding of synthesizing cases. To achieve this, the article begins by describing the theory behind this skill as well as a methodology that will generate the subtle nuances of analysis necessary for sophisticated law practice. The article then proceeds to apply this methodology to a group of hypothetical cases that have been designed to demonstrate the complex permutations of actually working with a group of cases to solve a client’s problem

Generation of Whole-Body Expressive Movement Based on Somatical Theories

An automatic choreography method to generate lifelike body movements is proposed. This method is based on somatics theories that are conventionally used to evaluate human’s psychological and developmental states by analyzing the body movement. The idea of this paper is to use the theories in the inverse way: to facilitate generation of artificial body movements that are plausible regarding evolutionary, developmental and emotional states of robots or other non-living movers. This paper reviews somatic theories and describes a strategy for implementations of automatic body movement generation. In addition, a psychological experiment is reported to verify expression ability on body movement rhythm. This method facilitates to choreographing body movement of humanoids, animal-shaped robots, and computer graphics characters in video games

Embodied Robot Models for Interdisciplinary Emotion Research

Due to their complex nature, emotions cannot be properly understood from the perspective of a single discipline. In this paper, I discuss how the use of robots as models is beneficial for interdisciplinary emotion research. Addressing this issue through the lens of my own research, I focus on a critical analysis of embodied robots models of different aspects of emotion, relate them to theories in psychology and neuroscience, and provide representative examples. I discuss concrete ways in which embodied robot models can be used to carry out interdisciplinary emotion research, assessing their contributions: as hypothetical models, and as operational models of specific emotional phenomena, of general emotion principles, and of specific emotion ``dimensions''. I conclude by discussing the advantages of using embodied robot models over other models.Peer reviewe

Genomics and proteomics: a signal processor's tour

The theory and methods of signal processing are becoming increasingly important in molecular biology. Digital filtering techniques, transform domain methods, and Markov models have played important roles in gene identification, biological sequence analysis, and alignment. This paper contains a brief review of molecular biology, followed by a review of the applications of signal processing theory. This includes the problem of gene finding using digital filtering, and the use of transform domain methods in the study of protein binding spots. The relatively new topic of noncoding genes, and the associated problem of identifying ncRNA buried in DNA sequences are also described. This includes a discussion of hidden Markov models and context free grammars. Several new directions in genomic signal processing are briefly outlined in the end

Paying for Quality: Understanding and Assessing Physician Pay-for-Performance Initiatives

Reviews the structure, prevalence, measurement issues, perception, and impact of current quality incentive programs, and discusses how much and under what circumstances they will improve quality of care. Includes descriptions of select programs

Medical Device Design Education: Identifying Problems Through Observation and Hands-On Training

Experiential learning, which may include hands-on learning paired with observation and reflection, has been applied in several industries; however, the impact of experiential learning in design education is not well known. We investigated how the type of simulation-based learning could affect the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to synthesize that understanding into insights for medical design innovation. One workshop included observational learning and the other experiential learning with hands-on training. Each course included 14-16 multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate students. During both workshops, we measured student comprehension of two procedures— infant resuscitation and management of maternal hemorrhage. We focused on the first two phases of design thinking: “Understanding” and “Defining the Problems”. Although the course focused on “medical device design”, we encouraged students to look beyond the tool to imagine how their design change could impact the entire system. We did not find a significant difference between the scores given to students in the two courses by industry experts. Although the quality of the ideas and execution were similar between both workshops, the instructors noticed that the integration of hands-on training into the second workshop created a higher level of excitement in the class. The methodology and the approach adopted may be relevant to many design problems. In order to better understand the impact of observational learning versus hands-on training, both workshops could be expanded into full quarter classes that allow students to expand their design thinking skills to prototype and test their ideas in the real world