The Earth: Plasma Sources, Losses, and Transport Processes

This paper reviews the state of knowledge concerning the source of magnetospheric plasma at Earth. Source of plasma, its acceleration and transport throughout the system, its consequences on system dynamics, and its loss are all discussed. Both observational and modeling advances since the last time this subject was covered in detail (Hultqvist et al., Magnetospheric Plasma Sources and Losses, 1999) are addressed

Overexpression of alpha-synuclein following methamphetamine: is it good or bad?

alpha-Synuclein is a presynaptic protein involved in various degenerative disorders now defined as synucleinopathies. These include neurological diseases that share a few pathological features consisting of aggregates of both normal and altered alpha-synuclein within specific neuronal populations and/or glial cells. The prototype of synucleinopathies is represented by Parkinson's disease (PD) in which alpha-synuclein is identified as a constant component of neuronal pale eosinophilic inclusions: "the Lewy Bodies." In the present article, we discuss the potential significance of amphetamine-induced overexpression of alpha-synuclein in light of clinical findings showing neurodegeneration following overexpression of alpha-synuclein and recent experimental studies that measured increased expression of alpha-synuclein following amphetamine derivatives