1,932 research outputs found
Leydig cells express neural cell adhesion molecules in vivo and in vitro
The neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) polypeptides are expressed by numerous tissues during embryonic development, where they are involved in cell-cell interactions. In the adult, NCAM expression is confined to a few cell types, including neurons and peptide-hormone-producing cells. Here we demonstrate that the Leydig cells of the adult rat, mouse, and hamster testes express NCAM as well. Western blotting showed that an NCAM of approximately 120 kDa was present in the adult testes of all three species investigated. This form was also found in freshly isolated mouse Leydig cells and in Leydig cells after 2 days in culture. After 4 days in culture, mouse Leydig cells expressed additional NCAM isoforms of approximately 140 and 180 kDa, indicating changes in alternative splicing of NCAM primary transcripts. Also, NCAM mRNA of all isoforms, as detected by S1-nuclease protection assays, increased with time in culture. The expression of the cell adhesion molecule NCAM by adult Leydig cells may explain the aggregation of Leydig cells in clusters in rodent testes, which could be a prerequisite for functional coordination of groups of Leydig cells. Furthermore, the presence of this neural and endocrine marker may indicate a closer relationship between Leydig cells and neural and peptide-hormone-producing cells than is considered to exist at the present time
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Hyperfine Structure
Contains research objectives and reports on three research projects
Communicative competence and psychological aspects when interacting with client in tourism
The article deals with the role of psychological preparation of specialists in service and tourism to building relationships with clients of travel agencies. Attention is paid to what is important in psychological preparation of the expert assigned to the speech skill, because the possession of speech skills influences the formation of the motives and interests of the client, speed, completeness and the strength of assimilation of advertising materials, economy, recall; accuracy, consistency and brightness of managerial playback of the advertised materia
Automated operation of a home made torque magnetometer using LabVIEW
In order to simplify and optimize the operation of our home made torque
magnetometer we created a new software system. The architecture is based on
parallel, independently running instrument handlers communicating with a main
control program. All programs are designed as command driven state machines
which greatly simplifies their maintenance and expansion. Moreover, as the main
program may receive commands not only from the user interface, but also from
other parallel running programs, an easy way of automation is achieved. A
program working through a text file containing a sequence of commands and
sending them to the main program suffices to automatically have the system
conduct a complex set of measurements. In this paper we describe the system's
architecture and its implementation in LabVIEW.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Rev. Sci. Inst
Coherent Ro-vibrational Revivals in a Thermal Molecular Ensemble
We report an experimental and theoretical study of the evolution of
vibrational coherence in a thermal ensemble of nitrogen molecules. Rotational
dephasing and rephasing of the vibrational coherence is detected by coherent
anti-Stokes Raman scattering. The existence of ro-vibrational coupling and the
discrete energy spectrum of the rotational bath lead to a whole new class of
full and fractional ro-vibrational revivals. Following the rich ro-vibrational
dynamics on a nanosecond time scale with sub-picosecond time resolution enables
us to determine the second-order ro-vibrational constant and assess
new possibilities of controlling decoherence.Comment: submitted at Physical Review
On the characterisation of a Bragg spectrometer with X-rays from an ECR source
Narrow X-ray lines from helium-like argon emitted from a dedicated ECR source
have been used to determine the response function of a Bragg crystal
spectrometer equipped with large area spherically bent silicon (111) or quartz
(10) crystals. The measured spectra are compared with simulated ones
created by a ray-tracing code based on the expected theoretical crystal's
rocking curve and the geometry of the experimental set-up.Comment: Version acceptee (NIM
Enhancing strong-field induced molecular vibration with femtosecond pulse shaping
This work investigates the utility of femtosecond pulse shaping in increasing
the efficiency of Raman excitation of molecules in the strong-field interaction
regime. We study experimentally and theoretically the effect of pulse shaping
on the strength of non-resonant coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering in iodine
vapor at laser intensities exceeding W/cm. We show that unlike
the perturbative case, shaping strong non-resonant laser pulses can increase
the signal strength beyond that observed with the transform-limited excitation.
Both adiabatic and non-adiabatic schemes of excitation are explored, and the
differences of their potential in increasing the excitation efficiency are
discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, experimental and theoretical stud
The intercontinental schizophrenia outpatient health outcomes (IC-SOHO) study: baseline clinical and functional characteristics and antipsychotic use patterns in the North Africa and Middle Eastern (AMEA) region: original article
Objective: To describe the baseline findings of the Intercontinental Schizophrenia Outpatient Health Outcomes (IC-SOHO) study in the North Africa and Middle Eastern sub-region (AMEA-SOHO)
Method: The IC-SOHO study is an ongoing prospective, three-year, non-interventional observational study of schizophrenia treatment, clinical characteristics and mental health services utilization in two North African and two Middle Eastern countries. The study population consists of non-hospitalised patients who had initiated treatment with or changed to a new antipsychotic.
Results: The baseline findings of the IC-SOHO study (AMEA Subset) appear to reflect clinical practice in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Algeria (N=1, 398). Overall, the patients were moderately to markedly ill and either overweight (46%) or obese (8%) when they entered the study. Functionally, the majority of patients were not involved in social activities, could not care for themselves and were unemployed. Substance and alcohol dependency/abuse was not a problem in this study population. At baseline the majority of patients were treated with typical antipsychotics (oral and depot); and anticholinergics were the most commonly prescribed concomitant medication. Sexual side effects were most frequently reported among the surveyed adverse events. Overall compliance/adherence to medication was good.
Conclusion: The baseline IC-SOHO data highlighted various clinical and functional characteristics and antipsychotic use patterns in a group of outpatients with schizophrenia in a naturalistic setting. Once completed, the IC-SOHO study will add further to this knowledge base.
SA Psychiatry Rev. Vol.7(3) 2004: 27-3
Measuring Pancharatnam's relative phase for SO(3) evolutions using spin polarimetry
In polarimetry, a superposition of internal quantal states is exposed to a
single Hamiltonian and information about the evolution of the quantal states is
inferred from projection measurements on the final superposition. In this
framework, we here extend the polarimetric test of Pancharatnam's relative
phase for spin proposed by Wagh and Rakhecha [Phys. Lett. A {\bf 197},
112 (1995)] to spin undergoing noncyclic SO(3) evolution. We
demonstrate that the output intensity for higher spin values is a polynomial
function of the corresponding spin intensity. We further propose a
general method to extract the noncyclic SO(3) phase and visibility by rigid
translation of two spin flippers. Polarimetry on higher spin states
may in practice be done with spin polarized atomic beams.Comment: New title, minor corrections, journal reference adde
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