Textured Surfaces for Ultrasound Haptic Displays

We demonstrate a technique for rendering textured haptic surfaces in mid-air, using an ultrasound haptic display. Our technique renders tessellated 3D `haptic' shapes with different waveform properties, creating surfaces with distinct perceptions

Remarks on evolution of space-times in 3+1 and 4+1 dimensions

A large class of vacuum space-times is constructed in dimension 4+1 from hyperboloidal initial data sets which are not small perturbations of empty space data. These space-times are future geodesically complete, smooth up to their future null infinity, and extend as vacuum space-times through their Cauchy horizon. Dimensional reduction gives non-vacuum space-times with the same properties in 3+1 dimensions.Comment: 10pp, exposition improved; final versio

Post-prandial changes in salivary glucocorticoids: Effects of dietary cholesterol and associations with bile acid excretion

Mechanisms to explain post-prandial increases in circulating glucocorticoids are not well understood and may involve increased adrenal secretion and/or altered steroid metabolism. We have compared salivary levels of cortisol and cortisone levels in healthy male and female volunteers fed either a low or cholesterol-rich midday meal. Urinary levels of steroids, bile acids and markers of lipid peroxidation were also measured. Males and females showed expected circadian changes in salivary steroids and postprandial peaks within 1h of feeding. After a high-cholesterol meal, postprandial cortisol increases were higher in males whereas post-prandial cortisone levels were higher in females. Urinary cortisol but not cortisone levels were higher on the day when males and females ate a high-cholesterol meal. Urinary bile acid excretion and anti-oxidant markers of lipid peroxidation, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), and total phenol content were not affected by dietary cholesterol but tended to be higher in males. Cross-tabulation of correlation coefficients indicated positive associations between urinary markers of peroxidation, bile acids, and cortisol:cortisone ratios. We conclude that dietary cholesterol (a substrate for steroidogenesis) does not have an acute effect on adrenal glucocorticoid synthesis and that gender but not a high-cholesterol meal may influence the interconversion of cortisol and cortisone. Longer term studies of the effects of dietary cholesterol are needed to analyze the associations between bile acids, steroid metabolism, and secretion and lipid peroxidation.11pubpub

Strategic priorities for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine development

AbstractAlthough RSV has been a high priority for vaccine development, efforts to develop a safe and effective vaccine have yet to lead to a licensed product. Clinical and epidemiologic features of RSV disease suggest there are at least 4 distinct target populations for vaccines, the RSV naïve young infant, the RSV naïve child ≥6 months of age, pregnant women (to provide passive protection to newborns), and the elderly. These target populations raise different safety and efficacy concerns and may require different vaccination strategies. The highest priority target population is the RSV naïve child. The occurrence of serious adverse events associated with the first vaccine candidate for young children, formalin inactivated RSV (FI-RSV), has focused vaccine development for the young RSV naïve child on live virus vaccines. Enhanced disease is not a concern for persons previously primed by a live virus infection. A variety of live-attenuated viruses have been developed with none yet achieving licensure. New live-attenuated RSV vaccines are being developed and evaluated that maybe sufficiently safe and efficacious to move to licensure. A variety of subunit vaccines are being developed and evaluated primarily for adults in whom enhanced disease is not a concern. An attenuated parainfluenza virus 3 vector expressing the RSV F protein was evaluated in RSV naïve children. Most of these candidate vaccines have used the RSV F protein in various vaccine platforms including virus-like particles, nanoparticles, formulated with adjuvants, and expressed by DNA or virus vectors. The other surface glycoprotein, the G protein, has also been used in candidate vaccines.We now have tools to make and evaluate a wide range of promising vaccines. Costly clinical trials in the target population are needed to evaluate and select candidate vaccines for advancement to efficacy trials. Better data on RSV-associated mortality in developing countries, better estimates of the risk of long term sequelae such as wheezing after infection, better measures of protection in target populations, and data on the costs and benefits of vaccines for target populations are needed to support and justify funding this process. Addressing these challenges and needs should improve the efficiency and speed of achieving a safe and effective, licensed RSV vaccine

Microbial populations are shaped by dispersal and recombination in a low biomass subseafloor habitat

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Anderson, R., Graham, E., Huber, J., & Tully, B. Microbial populations are shaped by dispersal and recombination in a low biomass subseafloor habitat. MBio, 13(4), (2022): e0035422, https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.00354-22.The subseafloor is a vast habitat that supports microorganisms that have a global scale impact on geochemical cycles. Many of the endemic microbial communities inhabiting the subseafloor consist of small populations under growth-limited conditions. For small populations, stochastic evolutionary events can have large impacts on intraspecific population dynamics and allele frequencies. These conditions are fundamentally different from those experienced by most microorganisms in surface environments, and it is unknown how small population sizes and growth-limiting conditions influence evolution and population structure in the subsurface. Using a 2-year, high-resolution environmental time series, we examine the dynamics of microbial populations from cold, oxic crustal fluids collected from the subseafloor site North Pond, located near the mid-Atlantic ridge. Our results reveal rapid shifts in overall abundance, allele frequency, and strain abundance across the time points observed, with evidence for homologous recombination between coexisting lineages. We show that the subseafloor aquifer is a dynamic habitat that hosts microbial metapopulations that disperse frequently through the crustal fluids, enabling gene flow and recombination between microbial populations. The dynamism and stochasticity of microbial population dynamics in North Pond suggest that these forces are important drivers in the evolution of microbial populations in the vast subseafloor habitat.This work was supported by NSF OCE-1062006, OCE-1745589, and OCE-1635208 to J.A.H. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation sponsored observatory components at North Pond through grant GBMF1609. The Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI) (OCE-0939564) supported J.A.H. and B.J.T. This is C-DEBI contribution 598

Isolating the effects of visual imagery on prospective memory

Two experiments investigated the role of visual imagery in prospective memory (PM). In experiment 1, 140 participants completed a general knowledge quiz which included a PM task of writing a letter ‘X’ next to any questions that referred to space. Participants either visualised themselves performing this task, verbalised an implementation intention about the task, did both, or did neither. Performance on the PM task was enhanced in both conditions involving visual imagery but not by implementation intentions alone. In experiment 2, 120 participants imagined themselves writing a letter ‘X’ next to questions about space, or in a bizarre imagery condition imagined themselves drawing an alien next to those questions. Relative to the control condition, PM was significantly enhanced when participants imagined writing a letter ‘X’ next to the target questions, but not by the bizarre imagery task. The findings indicate that the robust effects of imagery observed in retrospective memory also extend to PM

Semiclassical wave functions and energy levels of Bose-condensed gases in spherically symmetric traps

The WKB-approximation for the Bogoliubov-equations of the quasi-particle excitations in Bose-gases with condensate is worked out in the case of spherically symmetric trap potentials on the basis of the resulting quantization rule. The excitation spectrum is calculated numerically and also analytically in certain limiting cases. It is found that the energy levels of a Bohr-Sommerfeld type quantization may be considerably shifted when the classical turning point gets close to the surface of the condensate.Comment: 4 pages Latex, 1 ps-fil

Circulating gastrin is increased in hemochromatosis

AbstractGastric acid production is important in intestinal iron absorption. The peptide hormone gastrin exists in both amidated and non-amidated forms, which stimulate and potentiate gastric acid secretion, respectively. Since non-amidated gastrins require ferric ions for biological activity in vitro, this study investigated the connection between iron status and gastrin by measurement of circulating gastrin concentrations in mice and humans with hemochromatosis. Gastrin concentrations are increased in the plasma and gastric mucosa of Hfe−/− mice, and in the sera of humans with HFE-related hemochromatosis. The discovery of a relationship between iron status and circulating gastrin concentrations opens a new perspective on the mechanisms of iron homeostasis