Isolation and folk physics

There is a huge chasm between the notion of lawful determination that figures in fundamental physics, and the notion of causal determination that figures in the "folk physics" of everyday objects. In everyday life, we think of the behavior of an ordinary object as being determined by a small set of simple conditions. But in fundamental physics, no such conditions suffice to determine an ordinary object's behavior. What bridges the chasm is that fundamental physical laws make the folk picture of the world approximately true in certain domains. How? In part, by entailing that many objects are approximately isolated from most of their environments. Dynamical laws yield this result only in conjunction with appropriate statistical assumptions about initial conditions

Isolation and social instigation in animal models of aggression: effects of an mGLU1 receptor antagonist administration

Isolate-induced aggression in male mice is a model widely used in psychoparmacology of aggression. Animals are usually isolated for 30 days and subsequently treated and confronted with an anosmic opponent in a neutral area. For 10 min, the complete agonistic repertoire exhibited by the experimental animals is examined, allowing a detailed analysis of aggressive behaviors and other exploratory and motor behaviors. We have recently investigated the role of glutamate metabotropic receptors (mGluR) in this experimental model. Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain and it acts both at ionotropic (NMDA, AMPA and kainate receptors) and mGluRs, which are members of the G-protein-coupled receptor family. Eight mGluRs have been characterized and grouped into three classes: group I (mGlu1 and 5), group II (mGlu2 and 3) and group III (mGlu4, 6, 7 and 8). We have tested selective ligands available for the subtypes of mGluRs. Group I antagonists were the most effective ones reducing aggression, being especially remarkable the antiaggressive action observed after the administration of JNJ16259685 (an mGlu1 selective antagonist; 0.125-8 mg/kg i.p.), that produced a strong reduction of offensive behaviors (threat and attack), without affecting immobility with all doses. In this context, we wonder whether this drug could also reduce forms of intensified-heightened aggression. In recent years there is an increasing interest in studying excessive-abnormal forms of aggression in rodents, with the aim of providing a higher translational value to the observed violence in humans, in which aggression becomes intense, disproportionate and dysfunctional. We select a social instigation model, where mice are exposed to a brief territory intrusion of an adult male mice physically inaccessible. After this social provocation mice are exposed to a second opponent which now is unprotected. Social instigation dramatically increases aggressive behaviors, which renders this model appropriate for investigating the neurobiological mechanisms of excessive aggressive behavior. Therefore, we implemented a social instigation procedure in the isolation-induced aggression model with a double objective: first, to examine whether “instigation” could increase the aggression obtained by social isolation; and second, to evaluate the antiaggressive effect of an mGlu1 antagonist in heightened aggression. For this purpose, an acute dose of JNJ16259685 (0.5 mg/kg) was administrated to socially instigated animals after isolation, as well as to animals only isolated. Our results revealed that social instigation reduced latency of attack and increased the frequency and duration of attacks against not instigated animals, without affecting motor behaviors. Likewise, JNJ16259685 (0.5 mg/kg) administration significantly reduced aggressive behaviors in both cases. Taken together, this study shows that social instigation is an useful experimental procedure that increases significantly the levels of aggression observed in an isolated-induced aggression model, also demonstrating the involvement of mGlu1 receptors in the modulation of normal and heightened aggression in male mice.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Microbial Isolation

The importance of isolating a microbe from the environment, such as food (solid substrate), drinks (liquid substrate), and yourself because of the many microbes that are difficult to observe or distinguish directly using the five senses. A sample can contain bacteria or fungi. By isolating, the shape of the colonies and the contents in a sample can be observed. Bacteria from the air and normal flora form colonies with lobate-shaped edges, whereas bacteria found in well water samples form colonies with irregular edges and there are also fungi found in the well water samples

The first total synthesis of N1999-A2: absolute stereochemistry and stereochemical implications into DNA cleavage

Enediyne antitumor antibiotics have attracted immense attention among chemists and biologists alike because of their unique chemical structures, potent antitumor activities, and fascinating biological modes of action. As a novel addition to this family, the nonprotein and extremely strained nine-membered enediyne antibiotic N1999-A2 strongly inhibits the growth of various tumor cell lines and bacteria, and cleaves DNA in a base-specific manner. The attractive features of this molecule lie not only within the chemical structure being analogous to the neocarzinostatin chromophore, itself a potent anticancer agent, but also in that it can invoke remarkably strong biological activities even without a stabilizing apoprotein carrier and a glycoside functionality that can accelerate the rate of DNA cleavage. In this regard, N1999-A2 serves as a leading enediyne-based antitumor agent with minimal functionality that is able to act on DNA selectively. We therefore focused on this unique, unstable, and stereochemically unknown compound and undertook the formidable challenge of devising an efficient strategy that would be flexible enough to ultimately construct a series of related highly strained systems

Ageing in place and social isolation in rural dwelling older adults : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Health Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

This research set out to answer three related research questions. Firstly, if and how rural dwelling older adults experience social isolation; secondly, what aspects of community were seen as contributing to or buffering against social isolation; and thirdly, how these aspects affected older adults’ ability to age in place in their rural communities. This research used a social constructionist informed thematic analysis to analyse the interviews from seven participants over the age of 65 who lived in rural areas of the Manawatu-Whanganui Region classed as ‘rural with low urban influence’ under Statistics New Zealand’s Urban/Rural Profile (2004). The findings from this research revealed that the participants did not experience social isolation from surrounding urban centres due to increased accessibility but did experience some social isolation within their rural communities due to social, demographic and economic changes in their localities. These changes had significant implications for possible social interactions and the participant’s ability to age in place and was influenced by whether a participant felt included or excluded in their rural community. The participants formed two definitions of social isolation based on their experiences. One, based on travel time relative to distance; and the other based on expectations of social interaction frequency when living a ‘rural lifestyle’ in a ‘rural community’. These findings contribute to the literature on social isolation, ageing in place, and age friendly rural communities within a New Zealand context, by drawing attention to the nuanced ways in which social isolation might be experienced, and by reflecting on the significance of the connections between people and places in the construction of ‘communities’

Vibration isolation

Viewgraphs on vibration isolation are presented. Techniques to control and isolate centrifuge disturbances were identified. Topics covered include: disturbance sources in the microgravity environment; microgravity assessment criteria; life sciences centrifuge; flight support equipment for launch; active vibration isolation system; active balancing system; and fuzzy logic control

A robust subspace based approach to feedforward control of broadband disturbances on a six-degrees-of-freedom vibration isolation set-up

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the paper introduces a novel hybrid vibration isolation approach which uses a combination of passive and active vibration control techniques to provide additional design freedom. The approach can be used to meet higher design requirements with respect to vibration isolation. To illustrate the feasibility of the approach, a stiff hybrid sixdegrees-of-freedom vibration isolation set-up will be presented. The objective of the set-up is to investigate if the receiver structure can be isolated from the source structure by six hybrid vibration isolation mounts, such that disturbances induced by the source structure are isolated from the receiver structure. Vibration isolation is established by minimizing signals from six acceleration sensor outputs and by steering six piezo-electric actuator inputs. Our second contribution is that a state space based fixed gain H2 controller is designed, implemented and validated. Real-time broadband feedforward control results are presented (between 0 - 1 kHz) which show that an average reduction of 8.0 dB is achieved in the error sensor outputs in real-time