Rheological properties of mono- and polydomain liquid crystalline elastomers exhibiting a broad smectic A phase

We investigate the rheological properties of polydomain smectic A Side-Chain Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (SCLCE) by dynamic shear and compression measurements and find a very similar behavior for both experiments. We show that the dynamic shear modulus G' is independent of a precompression applied to the sample. In addition, we present the first dynamic measurements of the anisotropy of G' observed for the corresponding Liquid Single Crystal Elastomers (LSCE). We find that these monodomains show dynamically a dramatic difference depending on whether the shear is in a plane parallel or perpendicular to the layer normal, demonstrating the in-plane fluidity of the smectic layering

The Impact of Mitochondrial Dysfunction on Dopaminergic Neurons in the Olfactory Bulb and Odor Detection

Understanding non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease is important in order to unravel the underlying molecular mechanisms of the disease. Olfactory dysfunction is an early stage, non-motor symptom which occurs in 95% of Parkinson's disease patients. Mitochondrial dysfunction is a key feature in Parkinson's disease and importantly contributes to the selective loss of dopaminergic neurons thesubstantia nigra pars compacta. The olfactory bulb, the first olfactory processing station, also contains dopaminergic neurons, which modulate odor information and thereby enable odor detection as well as odor discrimination. MitoPark mice are a genetic model for Parkinson's disease with severe mitochondrial dysfunction, reproducing the differential vulnerability of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain. These animals were used to investigate the impact of mitochondrial dysfunction on olfactory-related behavior and olfactory bulb dopaminergic neuron survival. Odor detection was severely impaired in MitoPark mice. Interestingly, only the small anaxonic dopaminergic subpopulation, which is continuously replenished by neurogenesis, was moderately reduced in number, much less compared with dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain. As a potential compensatory response, an enhanced mobilization of progenitor cells was found in the subventricular zone. These results reveal a high robustness of dopaminergic neurons located in the olfactory bulb towards mitochondrial impairment, in striking contrast to their midbrain counterparts

Towards building a knowledge base for research on Andean weaving

We are working on a knowledge base to store 3D Andean textile patterns together with rich cultural and historic context information. This will allow ontological studies in museum collections as well as on ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork. We build on an existing ontology, extending it to incorporate more content and make it more accessible. This goes well beyond storing and retrieving textile patterns and enables us to capture the semantics and wider context of these patterns