Distribution of interstitial stem cells in Hydra

The distribution of interstitial stem cells along the Hydra body column was determined using a simplified cloning assay. The assay measures stem cells as clone-forming units (CFU) in aggregates of nitrogen mustard inactivated Hydra tissue. The concentration of stem cells in the gastric region was uniform at about 0.02 CFU/epithelial cell. In both the hypostome and basal disk the concentration was 20-fold lower. A decrease in the ratio of stem cells to committed nerve and nematocyte precursors was correlated with the decrease in stem cell concentration in both hypostome and basal disk. The ratio of stem cells to committed precursors is a sensitive indicator of the rate of self-renewal in the stem cell population. From the ratio it can be estimated that <10% of stem cells self-renew in the hypostome and basal disk compared to 60% in the gastric region. Thus, the results provide an explanation for the observed depletion of stem cells in these regions. The results also suggest that differentiation and self-renewal compete for the same stem cell population

Chiral separation and twin-beam photonics

It is well-known that, in a homogeneous fluid medium, most optical means that afford discrimination between molecules of opposite handedness are intrinsically weak effects. The reason is simple: the wide variety of origins for differential response commonly feature real or virtual electronic transitions that break a parity condition. Despite being electric dipole allowed, they manifest the chirality of the material in which they occur by breaking a selection rule that would otherwise preclude the simultaneous involvement of magnetic dipole or electric quadrupole forms of coupling. Although the latter are typically weaker than electric dipole effects by several orders of magnitude, it is the involvement of these weak forms of interaction that are responsible for chiral sensitivity. There have been a number of attempts to cleverly exploit novel optical configurations to enhance the relative magnitude – and hence potentially the efficiency – of chiral discrimination. The prospect of success in any such venture is enticing, because of the huge impact that such an advance might be expected to have in the health, food and medical sectors. Some of these proposals have utilized mirror reflection, and others surface plasmon coupling, or optical binding methods. Several recent works in the literature have drawn attention to a further possibility: the deployment of optical beam interference as a means to achieve chiral separations of sizeable extent. In this paper the underlying theory is fully developed to identify the true scope and limitations of such an approach

Spatial pattern of nerve differentiation in Hydra is due to a pattern of nerve commitment

The pattern of nerve differentiation along the body column of Hydra was investigated. Nerve precursors in late S phase were labeled with [3H]thymidine and their distribution compared with that of newly differentiated nerves. The two distributions were found to be the same. Based on independent evidence that nerve commitment occurs in mid-to late S phase (G. Venugopal and C. David, 1981, Develop. Biol.83, 361–365) it was concluded that the pattern of nerve differentiation along the body column of Hydra is due to differences in nerve commitment in different body regions. Furthermore, the level of nerve commitment in head and foot tissue is sufficiently high to deplete stem cells in these regions as is observed

Bibliography of Life: comprehensive services for biodiversity bibliographic references

The underlying principle of the Bibliography of Life is to provide taxonomists and others with a freely accessible bibliography covering the whole of life. Such a bibliography has been achieved for specific study areas within taxonomy, but not for “life” as a whole. Now the ViBRANT project has produced the two components needed to realize the concept of a Bibliography of Life: RefBank and ReFinder. RefBank is a network of servers that store, identify duplicates, and parse the components of bibliographic references. ReFinder is designed to discover and download references from a wide range of open access online bibliographies, such as CrossRef, PubMed, Mendeley, Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), RefBank, BioStor, BioNames and others

Parallel integer relation detection: techniques and applications

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