It was very good to hear from you again…

Handwritten letter from G. H. Edgell to Margaret Talbot Jackson regarding Venturi\u27s discovery and Edgell\u27s PhD examinations.https://dune.une.edu/jackson_cor/1011/thumbnail.jp

Central Versus Peripheral Cardiovascular Risk in Metabolic Syndrome

Individuals with metabolic syndrome (MetS; i.e., three of five of the following risk factors (RFs): elevated blood pressure, waist circumference, triglycerides, blood glucose, or reduced HDL) are thought to be prone to serious cardiovascular disease and there is debate as to whether the disease begins in the peripheral vasculature or centrally. This study investigates hemodynamics, cardiac function/morphology, and mechanical properties of the central (heart, carotid artery) or peripheral [total peripheral resistance (TPR), forearm vascular bed] vasculature in individuals without (1–2 RFs: n = 28), or with (≥3 RFs: n = 46) MetS. After adjustments for statin and blood pressure medication use, those with MetS had lower mitral valve E/A ratios (<3 RFs: 1.24 ± 0.07; ≥3 RFs: 1.01 ± 0.04; P = 0.025), and higher TPR index (<3 RFs: 48 ± 2 mmHg/L/min/m2; ≥3 RFs: 53 ± 2 mmHg/L/min/m2; P = 0.04). There were no differences in heart size, carotid artery measurements, cardiovagal baroreflex, pulse-wave velocity, stroke volume index, or cardiac output index due to MetS after adjustments for statin and blood pressure medication use. The use of statins was associated with increased inertia in the brachial vascular bed, increased HbA1c and decreased LDL cholesterol. The independent use of anti-hypertensive medication was associated with decreased predicted VO2max, triglycerides, diastolic blood pressure, interventricular septum thickness, calculated left ventricle mass, left ventricle posterior wall thickness, and left ventricle pre-ejection period, but increased carotid stiffness, HDL cholesterol, and heart rate. These data imply that both a central cardiac effect and a peripheral effect of vascular resistance are expressed in MetS. These data also indicate that variance in between-group responses due to pharmacological treatments are important factors to consider in studying cardiovascular changes in these individuals

WISE 2005: responses of women to sublingual nitroglycerin before and after 56 days of 6 degrees head-down bed rest

This study tested the hypothesis that cardiovascular effects of sublingual nitroglycerin (NG) would be exaggerated after 56 days of 6 degrees head-down bed rest (HDBR) in women, and that an aerobic and resistive exercise countermeasure (EX, n = 8) would reduce the effect compared with HDBR without exercise (CON, n = 7). Middle cerebral artery maximal blood flow velocity (CBFV), cardiac stroke volume (SV), and superficial femoral artery blood flow (Doppler ultrasound) were recorded at baseline rest and for 5 min following 0.3 mg sublingual NG. Post-HDBR, NG caused greater increases in heart rate (HR) in CON compared with EX (+24.9 +/- 7.7 and +18.8 +/- 6.6 beats/min, respectively, P &lt; 0.0001). The increase in HR combined with reductions in SV to maintain cardiac output. Systolic, mean, and pulse pressures were reduced 5-10 mmHg by NG, but total peripheral resistance was only slightly reduced at 3 min after NG. Reductions in CBFV of -12.5 +/- 3.8 cm/s were seen after NG, but a reduction in the Doppler resistance index suggested dilation of the middle cerebral artery with no differences after HDBR. The femoral artery dilated with NG and blood flow was reduced approximately 50% with the appearance of large negative waves suggesting a marked increase in downstream resistance, but there were no effects of HDBR. In general, responses of women to NG were not altered by HDBR; the greater increase in HR in CON but not EX was probably a consequence of cardiovascular deconditioning. These results contrast with the hypothesis and a previous investigation of men after HDBR by revealing no change in cardiovascular responses to exogenous nitric oxide

Cross-beam energy transfer in conditions relevant to direct-drive implosions on OMEGA

In cross-beam energy transfer (CBET), the interference of two laser beams ponderomotively drives an ion-acoustic wave that coherently scatters light from one beam into the other. This redirection of laser beam energy can severely inhibit the performance of direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions. To assess the role of nonlinear and kinetic processes in direct-drive-relevant CBET, the energy transfer between two laser beams in the plasma conditions of an ICF implosion at the OMEGA laser facility was modeled using particle-in-cell simulations. For typical laser beam intensities, the simulations are in excellent agreement with linear kinetic theory, indicating that nonlinear processes do not play a role in direct-drive implosions. At higher intensities, CBET can be modified by pump depletion, backward stimulated Raman scattering, or ion trapping, depending on the plasma density

The F-type 5′ motif of mouse L1 elements: a major class of L1 termini similar to the A-type in organization but unrelated in sequence

It has previously been shown that the L1 family in the mouse (L1Md) contains two alternative 5' ends called the A- and F-type sequences (1,2). We show here that the F-type element is a major class of murine L1 elements and report on the details of organization of the 5' motif of these F-type elements. Although the A- and F-type 5' sequences share no detectable sequence homology the organization of an F-type 5' end is strikingly similar to that of an A-type. That is, the F-type 5' sequences consist of a tandem array of a small number of 206 bp monomers while the A-type 5' motif consists of a tandem array of 208 bp monomers. All of the A-type elements characterized to date have a truncated monomer at the 5' end of the array. Many of the F-type elements are also terminated at the 5' end by a truncated copy but unlike the A-type elements some F-type elements terminate with a monomer which is within a few nucleotides of being complete. In addition the F-type consensus sequence, in contrast to the A-type sequence, shows homology (70%) to the body of the L1Md starting at the position where the monomer joins the rest of the L1 element

The diagonal-traverse homology search algorithm for locating similarities between two sequences

We present a fast computer algorithm for finding homology between two DNA sequences. It generates a two-dimensional display in which a diagonal string of dots represents a stretch of homology between the two sequences. Our algorithm performs the search very rapidly, and has no internal data storage requirement except for the sequences themselves. These characteristics make it particularly well suited for execution on microcomputers. Without slowing execution, the matching criterion can be that a specified fraction of contiguous bases must be identical. Even with gapped sequences, we have found large search windows to be surprisingly good for detecting poor homologies with nearly complete background suppression. A diagonal search pattern is used that reports the finds in a compact and logically ordered form. A simple and rapid plotting algorithm for unsophisticated printers is also reported

Locations of three repetitive sequence families found in BALB/c adult β-globin clones

Three different repeat sequences have been mapped within the cloned EcoRI fragments that Contain the adult β-globin genes from the BALB/c (Hd

Measuring individual overpotentials in an operating solid-oxide electrochemical cell

We use photo-electrons as a non-contact probe to measure local electrical potentials in a solid-oxide electrochemical cell. We characterize the cell in operando at near-ambient pressure using spatially-resolved X-ray photoemission spectroscopy. The overpotentials at the interfaces between the Ni and Pt electrodes and the yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) electrolyte are directly measured. The method is validated using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Using the overpotentials, which characterize the cell's inefficiencies, we compare without ambiguity the electro-catalytic efficiencies of Ni and Pt, finding that on Ni H_2O splitting proceeds more rapidly than H2 oxidation, while on Pt, H2 oxidation proceeds more rapidly than H2O splitting.Comment: corrected; Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 201

Dynamic Coupling and Allosteric Behavior in a Nonallosteric Protein †

Long-range intraprotein interactions give rise to many important protein behaviors. Understanding how energy is transduced through protein structures to either transmit a signal or elicit conformational changes is therefore a current challenge in structural biology. In an effort to understand such linkages, multiple V→A mutations were made in the small globular protein eglin c. The physical responses, as mapped by NMR spin relaxation, residual dipolar couplings (RDCs), and scalar couplings, illustrate that the interior of this non-allosteric protein forms a dynamic network and that local perturbations are transmitted as dynamic and structural changes to distal sites as far as 16 Å away. Two basic types of propagation responses were observed: contiguous pathways of enhanced (attenuated) dynamics with no change in structure; and dispersed (non-contiguous) changes in methyl rotation rates that appear to result from subtle deformation of backbone structure. In addition, energy transmission is found to be unidirectional. In one mutant, an allosteric conformational change of a side chain is seen in the context of a pathway of propagated changes in ps-ns dynamics. The observation of so many long-range interactions in a small, rigid system lends experimental weight to the idea that all well-folded proteins inherently possess allosteric features [Gunasekaran et al. (2004) Proteins 57, 433−443], and that dynamics are a rich source of information for mapping and gaining mechanistic insight into communication pathways in individual proteins