Effect of knocking down the insulin receptor on mouse rod responses.

Previous experiments have shown that the insulin receptor (IR) is expressed in mammalian rods and contributes to the protection of photoreceptors during bright-light exposure. The role of the insulin receptor in the production of the light response is however unknown. We have used suction-electrode recording to examine the responses of rods after conditionally knocking down the insulin receptor. Our results show that these IR knock-down rods have an accelerated decay of the light response and a small decrease in sensitivity by comparison to littermate WT rods. Our results indicate that the insulin receptor may have some role in controlling the rate of rod response decay, but they exclude a major role of the insulin receptor pathway in phototransduction

DCU@TRECMed 2012: Using ad-hoc baselines for domain-specific retrieval

This paper describes the first participation of DCU in the TREC Medical Records Track (TRECMed). We performed some initial experiments on the 2011 TRECMed data based on the BM25 retrieval model. Surprisingly, we found that the standard BM25 model with default parameters, performs comparable to the best automatic runs submitted to TRECMed 2011 and would have resulted in rank four out of 29 participating groups. We expected that some form of domain adaptation would increase performance. However, results on the 2011 data proved otherwise: concept-based query expansion decreased performance, and filtering and reranking by term proximity also decreased performance slightly. We submitted four runs based on the BM25 retrieval model to TRECMed 2012 using standard BM25, standard query expansion, result filtering, and concept-based query expansion. Official results for 2012 confirm that domain-specific knowledge does not increase performance compared to the BM25 baseline as applied by us

Extracellular Hsp72 concentration relates to a minimum endogenous criteria during acute exercise-heat exposure

Extracellular heat-shock protein 72 (eHsp72) concentration increases during exercise-heat stress when conditions elicit physiological strain. Differences in severity of environmental and exercise stimuli have elicited varied response to stress. The present study aimed to quantify the extent of increased eHsp72 with increased exogenous heat stress, and determine related endogenous markers of strain in an exercise-heat model. Ten males cycled for 90 min at 50% O2peak in three conditions (TEMP, 20°C/63% RH; HOT, 30.2°C/51%RH; VHOT, 40.0°C/37%RH). Plasma was analysed for eHsp72 pre, immediately post and 24-h post each trial utilising a commercially available ELISA. Increased eHsp72 concentration was observed post VHOT trial (+172.4%) (P<0.05), but not TEMP (-1.9%) or HOT (+25.7%) conditions. eHsp72 returned to baseline values within 24hrs in all conditions. Changes were observed in rectal temperature (Trec), rate of Trec increase, area under the curve for Trec of 38.5°C and 39.0°C, duration Trec ≥ 38.5°C and ≥ 39.0°C, and change in muscle temperature, between VHOT, and TEMP and HOT, but not between TEMP and HOT. Each condition also elicited significantly increasing physiological strain, described by sweat rate, heart rate, physiological strain index, rating of perceived exertion and thermal sensation. Stepwise multiple regression reported rate of Trec increase and change in Trec to be predictors of increased eHsp72 concentration. Data suggests eHsp72 concentration increases once systemic temperature and sympathetic activity exceeds a minimum endogenous criteria elicited during VHOT conditions and is likely to be modulated by large, rapid changes in core temperature

Paper Based Pressure Sensor for Green Electronics

This work reports a resistive paper-based disposable pressure sensor based on porous 3D conductive cellulose micro-fiber network. The conductivity in microfibers was achieved by subjecting the network to graphene oxide (GO) - poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) solution. The modified cellulose matrix is sandwiched between graphite paper electrodes so that overall structure is flexible. The device tested in 32-386 Pa range detected a minimum of 34 Pa and exhibited fast dynamic response (in tenths of seconds) with excellent repeatability. The proposed approach for disposable sensors is a step towards green electronics and holds promise for wide range of wearable applications

Intrinsic response time of graphene photodetectors

Graphene-based photodetectors are promising new devices for high-speed optoelectronic applications. However, despite recent efforts, it is not clear what determines the ultimate speed limit of these devices. Here, we present measurements of the intrinsic response time of metal-graphene-metal photodetectors with monolayer graphene using an optical correlation technique with ultrashort laser pulses. We obtain a response time of 2.1 ps that is mainly given by the short lifetime of the photogenerated carriers. This time translates into a bandwidth of ~262 GHz. Moreover, we investigate the dependence of the response time on gate voltage and illumination laser power

Configurational entropy measurements in extremely supercooled liquids that break the glass ceiling

Liquids relax extremely slowly upon approaching the glass state. One explanation is that an entropy crisis, due to the rarefaction of available states, makes it increasingly arduous to reach equilibrium in that regime. Validating this scenario is challenging, because experiments offer limited resolution, while numerical studies lag more than eight orders of magnitude behind experimentally-relevant timescales. In this work we not only close the colossal gap between experiments and simulations but manage to create in-silico configurations that have no experimental analog yet. Deploying a range of computational tools, we obtain four estimates of their configurational entropy. These measurements consistently confirm that the steep entropy decrease observed in experiments is also found in simulations, even beyond the experimental glass transition. Our numerical results thus extend the new observational window into the physics of glasses and reinforce the relevance of an entropy crisis for understanding their formation.Comment: 4+23 pages, 3+12 figures; v2: final version, with various changes made. Data relevant to this work can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.7924/G8ZG6Q9

Tackling the stacking disorder of melon—structure elucidation in a semicrystalline material

In this work we tackle the stacking disorder of melon, a layered carbon imide amide polymer with the ideal composition (C6N7(NH)(NH2)). Although its existence has been postulated since 1834 the structure of individual melon layers could only recently be solved via electron diffraction and high-resolution 15N solid-state NMR spectroscopy. With only weak van der Waals interactions between neighboring layers its long range stacking order is poorly defined preventing an efficient use of diffraction techniques. We, therefore, rely on a combination of solid-sate NMR experiments and force field calculations. The key information is obtained based on heteronuclear (1H–13C) and homonuclear (1H–1H) second moments M2 acquired from 1H–13C cross polarization experiments. To allow for an interpretation of the polarization transfer rates the resonances in the 13C MAS spectra have to be assigned and the hydrogen atoms have to be located. The assignment was performed using a two-dimensional 15N–13C iDCP experiment. For the determination of the position of the hydrogen atoms NH and HH distances were measured via 1H–15N Lee–Goldburg CP and 1H–1H double-quantum build-up curves, respectively. Furthermore, the homogeneity of the material under examination was investigated exploiting 15N spin-diffusion. Based on force field methods 256 structure models with varying lateral arrangements between neighboring layers were created. For each model the M2 were calculated allowing them to be ranked by comparing calculated and measured M2 as well as via their force field energies. This allows the creation of markedly structured hypersurfaces with two distinctly favored shift vectors for the displacement of neighboring layers

Slingshot non-sequential double ionization as a gate to anti-correlated two electron escape

At intensities below-the-recollision threshold, we show that re-collision-induced excitation with one electron escaping fast after re-collision and the other electron escaping with a time delay via a Coulomb slingshot motion is one of the most important mechanisms of non-sequential double ionization, for strongly-driven He at 400 nm. Slingshot-NSDI is a general mechanism present for a wide range of low intensities and pulse durations. Anti-correlated two-electron escape is its striking hallmark. This mechanism offers an alternative explanation of anti-correlated two-electron escape obtained in previous studies.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure