Carbohydrate response element binding protein, ChREBP, a transcription factor coupling hepatic glucose utilization and lipid synthesis

The ability of an organism to sense and store nutrients is vital to survival. The liver is the major organ responsible for converting excess dietary carbohydrate to lipid for storage. An elegant molecular pathway has evolved that allows increased glucose flux into hepatocytes to generate a signaling molecule, xylulose 5-phosphate, that triggers rapid changes in glycolytic enzyme activities and nuclear import of a transcription factor, ChREBP, which coordinates the transcriptional regulation of enzymes that channel the glycolytic end-products into lipogenesis. Further understanding of this metabolic cascade should provide insights on conditions such as fatty liver, obesity, and the metabolic syndrome

Surface Instabilities on Liquid Oxygen in an Inhomogeneous Magnetic Field

Liquid oxygen exhibits surface instabilities when subjected to a sufficiently strong magnetic field. A vertically oriented magnetic field gradient both increases the magnetic field value at which the pattern forms and shrinks the length scale of the surface patterning. We show that these effects of the field gradient may be described in terms of an ``effective gravity'', which in our experiments may be varied from 1g to 360g.Comment: 4 pages, 5 embedded figures in eps forma

Human engineering design criteria study Final report

Human engineering design criteria for use in designing earth launch vehicle systems and equipmen

Posterior Approach To Kidney Dissection: An Old Surgical Approach For Integrated Medical Curricula

Integrated medical curricular changes are altering the historical regional anatomy approach to abdominal dissection. The renal system is linked physiologically and biochemically to the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, yet anatomist often approach the urinary system as part of the abdomen and pelvic regions. As part of an integrated curriculum, the renal system must be covered relatively quickly after the thorax in the cadaver lab, often without the opportunity to fully appreciate the rest of the abdominal contents. This paper provides dissection instructions that follow the one of the historical surgical approaches for nephrectomy, including preservation of the posterior abdominal wall neurovasclature. Dissection procedures were developed for first year medical students, intending this posterior approach to the kidneys to be their first introduction to the renal system. It has been successfully implemented with first year medical students at the University of New England, College of Osteopathic Medicine. Utilizing this posterior approach to the kidney enabled the study of the anatomy of the kidneys, suprarenal glands and renal vessels, as well as the muscles of the lumbar spine, while maintaining the integrity of the anterior abdominal wall and peritoneal cavity for future gastrointestinal and reproductive system-based dissections

Critical features in electromagnetic anomalies detected prior to the L'Aquila earthquake

Electromagnetic (EM) emissions in a wide frequency spectrum ranging from kHz to MHz are produced by opening cracks, which can be considered as the so-called precursors of general fracture. We emphasize that the MHz radiation appears earlier than the kHz in both laboratory and geophysical scale. An important challenge in this field of research is to distinguish characteristic epochs in the evolution of precursory EM activity and identify them with the equivalent last stages in the earthquake (EQ) preparation process. Recently, we proposed the following two epochs/stages model: (i) The second epoch, which includes the finally emerged strong impulsive kHz EM emission is due to the fracture of the high strength large asperities that are distributed along the activated fault sustaining the system. (ii) The first epoch, which includes the initially emerged MHz EM radiation is thought to be due to the fracture of a highly heterogeneous system that surrounds the family of asperities. A catastrophic EQ of magnitude Mw = 6.3 occurred on 06/04/2009 in central Italy. The majority of the damage occurred in the city of L'Aquila. Clear kHz - MHz EM anomalies have been detected prior to the L'Aquila EQ. Herein, we investigate the seismogenic origin of the detected MHz anomaly. The analysis in terms of intermittent dynamics of critical fluctuations reveals that the candidate EM precursor: (i) can be described in analogy with a thermal continuous phase transition; (ii) has anti-persistent behaviour. These features suggest that the emerged candidate precursor could be triggered by microfractures in the highly disordered system that surrounded the backbone of asperities of the activated fault. We introduce a criterion for an underlying strong critical behavior.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Negative activation volume for dielectric relaxation in hydrated rocks

Negative defect activation volumes are extremely rare in solids. Here, we report for the first time that this holds in a couple of hydrated rocks for dielectric relaxation by exploring the complex impedance spectra at various pressures and temperatures. The present findings mean that the relaxation time of the relevant relaxation mechanisms decreases upon increasing pressure, thus it may become too short at higher pressure and hence lead to the emission of transient electric signals before fracture. This may constitute the long-standing laboratory confirmation for the explanation of the generation of electric signals prior to an earthquake, as recently pointed out by Uyeda et al [Tectonophysics 470 (2009) 205-213]

Increasing the Availability and Consumption of Drinking Water in Middle Schools: A Pilot Study

Introduction: Although several studies suggest that drinking water may help prevent obesity, no US studies have examined the effect of school drinking water provision and promotion on student beverage intake. We assessed the acceptability, feasibility, and outcomes of a school-based intervention to improve drinking water consumption among adolescents. Methods: The 5-week program, conducted in a Los Angeles middle school in 2008, consisted of providing cold, filtered drinking water in cafeterias; distributing reusable water bottles to students and staff; conducting school promotional activities; and providing education. Self-reported consumption of water, nondiet soda, sports drinks, and 100% fruit juice was assessed by conducting surveys among students (n = 876), preintervention and at 1 week and 2 months postintervention, from the intervention school and the comparison school. Daily water (in gallons) distributed in the cafeteria during the intervention was recorded. Results: After adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and baseline intake of water at school, the odds of drinking water at school were higher for students at the intervention school than students at the comparison school. Students from the intervention school had higher adjusted odds of drinking water from fountains and from reusable water bottles at school than students from the comparison school. Intervention effects for other beverages were not significant. Conclusion: Provision of filtered, chilled drinking water in school cafeterias coupled with promotion and education is associated with increased consumption of drinking water at school. A randomized controlled trial is necessary to assess the intervention's influence on students' consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages, as well as obesity-related outcomes

Cortical Factor Feedback Model for Cellular Locomotion and Cytofission

Eukaryotic cells can move spontaneously without being guided by external cues. For such spontaneous movements, a variety of different modes have been observed, including the amoeboid-like locomotion with protrusion of multiple pseudopods, the keratocyte-like locomotion with a widely spread lamellipodium, cell division with two daughter cells crawling in opposite directions, and fragmentations of a cell to multiple pieces. Mutagenesis studies have revealed that cells exhibit these modes depending on which genes are deficient, suggesting that seemingly different modes are the manifestation of a common mechanism to regulate cell motion. In this paper, we propose a hypothesis that the positive feedback mechanism working through the inhomogeneous distribution of regulatory proteins underlies this variety of cell locomotion and cytofission. In this hypothesis, a set of regulatory proteins, which we call cortical factors, suppress actin polymerization. These suppressing factors are diluted at the extending front and accumulated at the retracting rear of cell, which establishes a cellular polarity and enhances the cell motility, leading to the further accumulation of cortical factors at the rear. Stochastic simulation of cell movement shows that the positive feedback mechanism of cortical factors stabilizes or destabilizes modes of movement and determines the cell migration pattern. The model predicts that the pattern is selected by changing the rate of formation of the actin-filament network or the threshold to initiate the network formation

Flexibility within the Heads of Muscle Myosin-2 Molecules

We show that negative-stain electron microscopy and image processing of nucleotide-free (apo) striated muscle myosin-2 subfragment-1 (S1), possessing one light chain or both light chains, is capable of resolving significant amounts of structural detail. The overall appearance of the motor and the lever is similar in rabbit, scallop and chicken S1. Projection matching of class averages of the different S1 types to projection views of two different crystal structures of apo S1 shows that all types most commonly closely resemble the appearance of the scallop S1 structure rather than the methylated chicken S1 structure. Methylation of chicken S1 has no effect on the structure of the molecule at this resolution: it too resembles the scallop S1 crystal structure. The lever is found to vary in its angle of attachment to the motor domain, with a hinge point located in the so-called pliant region between the converter and the essential light chain. The chicken S1 crystal structure lies near one end of the range of flexion observed. The Gaussian spread of angles of flexion suggests that flexibility is driven thermally, from which a torsional spring constant of ~ 23 pN·nm/rad2 is estimated on average for all S1 types, similar to myosin-5. This translates to apparent cantilever-type stiffness at the tip of the lever of 0.37 pN/nm. Because this stiffness is lower than recent estimates from myosin-2 heads attached to actin, we suggest that binding to actin leads to an allosteric stiffening of the motor–lever junction

Sudden drop of fractal dimension of electromagnetic emissions recorded prior to significant earthquake

The variation of fractal dimension and entropy during a damage evolution process, especially approaching critical failure, has been recently investigated. A sudden drop of fractal dimension has been proposed as a quantitative indicator of damage localization or a likely precursor of an impending catastrophic failure. In this contribution, electromagnetic emissions recorded prior to significant earthquake are analysed to investigate whether they also present such sudden fractal dimension and entropy drops as the main catastrophic event is approaching. The pre-earthquake electromagnetic time series analysis results reveal a good agreement to the theoretically expected ones indicating that the critical fracture is approaching