Impaired Tactile Temporal Discrimination in Patients With Hepatic Encephalopathy

The sensory system constantly receives stimuli from the external world. To discriminate two stimuli correctly as two temporally distinct events, the temporal distance or stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the two stimuli has to exceed a specific threshold. If the SOA between two stimuli is shorter than this specific threshold, the two stimuli will be perceptually fused and perceived as one single stimulus. Patients with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) are known to show manifold perceptual impairments, including slowed visual temporal discrimination abilities as measured by the critical flicker frequency (CFF). Here, we hypothesized that HE patients are also impaired in their tactile temporal discrimination abilities and, thus, require a longer SOA between two tactile stimuli to perceive the stimuli as two temporally distinct events. To test this hypothesis, patients with varying grades of HE and age-matched healthy individuals performed a tactile temporal discrimination task. All participants received two tactile stimuli with varying SOA applied to their left index finger and reported how many distinct stimuli they perceived (“1” vs. “2”). HE patients needed a significantly longer SOA (138.0 ± 11.3 ms) between two tactile stimuli to perceive the stimuli as two temporally distinct events than healthy controls (78.6 ± 13.1 ms; p < 0.01). In addition, we found that the temporal discrimination ability in the tactile modality correlated positively with the temporal discrimination ability in the visual domain across all participants (i.e., negative correlation between tactile SOA and visual CFF: r = −0.37, p = 0.033). Our findings provide evidence that temporal tactile perception is substantially impaired in HE patients. In addition, the results suggest that tactile and visual discrimination abilities are affected in HE in parallel. This finding might argue for a common underlying pathophysiological mechanism. We argue that the known global slowing of neuronal oscillations in HE might represent such a common mechanism

Isolation and characterization of the E. coli membrane protein production strain Mutant56(DE3)

Membrane protein production is usually toxic to E. coli. However, using genetic screens strains can be isolated in which the toxicity of membrane protein production is reduced, thereby improving production yields. Best known examples are the C41(DE3) and C43(DE3) strains, which are both derived from the T7 RNA polymerase (P)-based BL21(DE3) protein production strain. In C41(DE3) and C43(DE3) mutations lowering t7rnap expression levels result in strongly reduced T7 RNAP accumulation levels. As a consequence membrane protein production stress is alleviated in the C41(DE3) and C43(DE3) strains, thereby increasing membrane protein yields. Here, we isolated Mutant56(DE3) from BL21(DE3) using a genetic screen designed to isolate BL21(DE3)-derived strains with mutations alleviating membrane protein production stress other than the ones in C41(DE3) and C43(DE3). The defining mutation of Mutant56(DE3) changes one amino acid in its T7 RNAP, which weakens the binding of the T7 RNAP to the T7 promoter governing target gene expression rather than lowering T7 RNAP levels. For most membrane proteins tested yields in Mutant56(DE3) were considerably higher than in C41(DE3) and C43(DE3). Thus, the isolation of Mutant56(DE3) shows that the evolution of BL21(DE3) can be promoted towards further enhanced membrane protein production

Sedimentological processes and environmental variability at Lake Ohrid (Macedonia, Albania) between 637 ka and the present

Lake Ohrid (Macedonia, Albania) is thought to be more than 1.2 million years old and host more than 300 endemic species. As a target of the International Continental scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), a successful deep drilling campaign was carried out within the scope of the Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid (SCOPSCO) project in 2013. Here, we present lithological, sedimentological, and (bio-)geochemical data from the upper 247.8 m composite depth of the overall 569 m long DEEP site sediment succession from the central part of the lake. According to an age model, which is based on 11 tephra layers (first-order tie points) and on tuning of bio-geochemical proxy data to orbital parameters (second-order tie points), the analyzed sediment sequence covers the last 637 kyr. The DEEP site sediment succession consists of hemipelagic sediments, which are interspersed by several tephra layers and infrequent, thin (< 5 cm) mass wasting deposits. The hemipelagic sediments can be classified into three different lithotypes. Lithotype 1 and 2 deposits comprise calcareous and slightly calcareous silty clay and are predominantly attributed to interglacial periods with high primary productivity in the lake during summer and reduced mixing during winter. The data suggest that high ion and nutrient concentrations in the lake water promoted calcite precipitation and diatom growth in the epilimnion during MIS15, 13, and 5. Following a strong primary productivity, highest interglacial temperatures can be reported for marine isotope stages (MIS) 11 and 5, whereas MIS15, 13, 9, and 7 were comparably cooler. Lithotype 3 deposits consist of clastic, silty clayey material and predominantly represent glacial periods with low primary productivity during summer and longer and intensified mixing during winter. The data imply that the most severe glacial conditions at Lake Ohrid persisted during MIS16, 12, 10, and 6, whereas somewhat warmer temperatures can be inferred for MIS14, 8, 4, and 2. Interglacial-like conditions occurred during parts of MIS14 and 8

Sedimentological processes and environmental variability at Lake Ohrid (Macedonia, Albania) between 637 ka and the present

Lake Ohrid (Macedonia, Albania) is thought to be more than 1.2 million years old and host more than 300 endemic species. As a target of the International Continental scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), a successful deep drilling campaign was carried out within the scope of the Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid (SCOPSCO) project in 2013. Here, we present lithological, sedimentological, and (bio-)geochemical data from the upper 247.8 m composite depth of the overall 569 m long DEEP site sediment succession from the central part of the lake. According to an age model, which is based on 11 tephra layers (first-order tie points) and on tuning of bio-geochemical proxy data to orbital parameters (second-order tie points), the analyzed sediment sequence covers the last 637 kyr. The DEEP site sediment succession consists of hemipelagic sediments, which are interspersed by several tephra layers and infrequent, thin (< 5 cm) mass wasting deposits. The hemipelagic sediments can be classified into three different lithotypes. Lithotype 1 and 2 deposits comprise calcareous and slightly calcareous silty clay and are predominantly attributed to interglacial periods with high primary productivity in the lake during summer and reduced mixing during winter. The data suggest that high ion and nutrient concentrations in the lake water promoted calcite precipitation and diatom growth in the epilimnion during MIS15, 13, and 5. Following a strong primary productivity, highest interglacial temperatures can be reported for marine isotope stages (MIS) 11 and 5, whereas MIS15, 13, 9, and 7 were comparably cooler. Lithotype 3 deposits consist of clastic, silty clayey material and predominantly represent glacial periods with low primary productivity during summer and longer and intensified mixing during winter. The data imply that the most severe glacial conditions at Lake Ohrid persisted during MIS16, 12, 10, and 6, whereas somewhat warmer temperatures can be inferred for MIS14, 8, 4, and 2. Interglacial-like conditions occurred during parts of MIS14 and 8. © Author(s) 2016

Bright polar mesospheric clouds formed by main engine exhaust from the space shuttle's final launch

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94747/1/jgrd18009.pd

The Lake Ohrid SCOPSCO project

The ICDP SCOPSCO project at Lake Ohrid in Macedonia and Albania was one of the most successful lake drilling campaigns worldwide. Drilling took place from April to June 2013 and yielded more than 2000 m of sediments from four different sites in the lake. The maximum penetration was 569 m below lake floor and the overall recovery at all drill sites was > 95 %. Almost two years after the drilling operation, core opening and processing as well as biological and geological analyses are still ongoing

Observation of a Single-Spin Azimuthal Asymmetry in Semi-Inclusive Pion Electro-Production

Single-spin asymmetries for semi-inclusive pion production in deep-inelastic scattering have been measured for the first time. A significant target-spin asymmetry of the distribution in the azimuthal angle phi of the pion relative to the lepton scattering plane was observed for pi+ electro-production on a longitudinally polarized hydrogen target. The corresponding analyzing power in the sin(phi) moment of the cross section is 0.022 +/- 0.005 +/- 0.003. This result can be interpreted as the effect of terms in the cross section involving chiral-odd spin distribution functions in combination with a time-reversal-odd fragmentation function that is sensitive to the transverse polarization of the fragmenting quark.Comment: 5 pages of RevTex, 3 ps figures, 2 table

Evidence for Quark-Hadron Duality in the Proton Spin Asymmetry A1A_1

Spin-dependent lepton-nucleon scattering data have been used to investigate the validity of the concept of quark-hadron duality for the spin asymmetry $A_1$. Longitudinally polarised positrons were scattered off a longitudinally polarised hydrogen target for values of $Q^2$ between 1.2 and 12 GeV$^2$ and values of $W^2$ between 1 and 4 GeV$^2$. The average double-spin asymmetry in the nucleon resonance region is found to agree with that measured in deep-inelastic scattering at the same values of the Bjorken scaling variable $x$. This finding implies that the description of $A_1$ in terms of quark degrees of freedom is valid also in the nucleon resonance region for values of $Q^2$ above 1.6 GeV$^2$.Comment: 5 pages, 1 eps figure, table added, new references added, in print in Phys. Rev. Let

Flavor decomposition of the sea quark helicity distributions in the nucleon from semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering

Double-spin asymmetries of semi-inclusive cross sections for the production of identified pions and kaons have been measured in deep-inelastic scattering of polarized positrons on a polarized deuterium target. Five helicity distributions including those for three sea quark flavors were extracted from these data together with re-analyzed previous data for identified pions from a hydrogen target. These distributions are consistent with zero for all three sea flavors. A recently predicted flavor asymmetry in the polarization of the light quark sea appears to be disfavored by the data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure