12,146 research outputs found
Expression and function of ATP-dependent potassium channels in zebrafish islet β-cells
ATP-sensitive potassium channels (K(ATP) channels) are critical nutrient sensors in many mammalian tissues. In the pancreas, K(ATP) channels are essential for coupling glucose metabolism to insulin secretion. While orthologous genes for many components of metabolism–secretion coupling in mammals are present in lower vertebrates, their expression, functionality and ultimate impact on body glucose homeostasis are unclear. In this paper, we demonstrate that zebrafish islet β-cells express functional K(ATP) channels of similar subunit composition, structure and metabolic sensitivity to their mammalian counterparts. We further show that pharmacological activation of native zebrafish K(ATP) using diazoxide, a specific K(ATP) channel opener, is sufficient to disturb glucose tolerance in adult zebrafish. That β-cell K(ATP) channel expression and function are conserved between zebrafish and mammals illustrates the evolutionary conservation of islet metabolic sensing from fish to humans, and lends relevance to the use of zebrafish to model islet glucose sensing and diseases of membrane excitability such as neonatal diabetes
DEMAND FOR NUTRIENTS: THE HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION APPROACH
The household production approach is used to characterize the household's preference toward nutrients in food consumption. Elasticities of substitution and Hicksian price elasticities are estimated, price- and expenditure-nutrient elasticities are calculated. Results show that protein is the most expensive nutrient, and that nutrients played an important role in determining households' food consumption.Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,
Enhanced Pauli blocking of light scattering in a trapped Fermi gas
Pauli blocking of spontaneous emission by a single excited-state atom has
been predicted to be dramatic at low temperature when the Fermi energy
exceeds the recoil energy . The photon scattering
rate of a ground-state Fermi gas can also be suppressed by occupation of the
final states accessible to a recoiling atom, however suppression is diminished
by scattering events near the Fermi edge. We analyze two new approaches to
improve the visibility of Pauli blocking in a trapped Fermi gas. Focusing the
incident light to excite preferentially the high-density region of the cloud
can increase the blocking signature by 14%, and is most effective at
intermediate temperature. Spontaneous Raman scattering between imbalanced
internal states can be strongly suppressed at low temperature, and is
completely blocked for a final-state in the
high imbalance limit.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. v4: to appear in Journal of Physics B: Atomic,
Molecular, and Optical Physic
Memory, space and time: Researching children's lives
This article discusses the research approach in 'Pathways through Childhood', a small qualitative study drawing on memories of childhood. The research explores how wider social arrangements and social change influence children's everyday lives.The article discusses the way that the concepts of social memory, space and time have been drawn on to access and analyse children's experiences, arguing that attention to the temporal and spatial complexity of childhood reveals less visible yet formative influences and connections. Children's everyday engagements involve connections between past and present time, between children, families, communities and nations, and between different places. Children carve out space and time for themselves from these complex relations. © The Author(s) 2010
Gravitational waves about curved backgrounds: a consistency analysis in de Sitter spacetime
Gravitational waves are considered as metric perturbations about a curved
background metric, rather than the flat Minkowski metric since several
situations of physical interest can be discussed by this generalization. In
this case, when the de Donder gauge is imposed, its preservation under
infinitesimal spacetime diffeomorphisms is guaranteed if and only if the
associated covector is ruled by a second-order hyperbolic operator which is the
classical counterpart of the ghost operator in quantum gravity. In such a wave
equation, the Ricci term has opposite sign with respect to the wave equation
for Maxwell theory in the Lorenz gauge. We are, nevertheless, able to relate
the solutions of the two problems, and the algorithm is applied to the case
when the curved background geometry is the de Sitter spacetime. Such vector
wave equations are studied in two different ways: i) an integral
representation, ii) through a solution by factorization of the hyperbolic
equation. The latter method is extended to the wave equation of metric
perturbations in the de Sitter spacetime. This approach is a step towards a
general discussion of gravitational waves in the de Sitter spacetime and might
assume relevance in cosmology in order to study the stochastic background
emerging from inflation.Comment: 17 pages. Misprints amended in Eqs. 50, 54, 55, 75, 7
Catastrophic senescence and semelparity in the Penna aging model
The catastrophic senescence of the Pacific salmon is among the initial tests
used to validate the Penna aging model. Based on the mutation accumulation
theory, the sudden decrease in fitness following reproduction may be solely
attributed to the semelparity of the species. In this work, we report other
consequences of mutation accumulation. Contrary to earlier findings, such
dramatic manifestation of aging depends not only on the choice of breeding
strategy but also on the value of the reproduction age, R, and the mutation
threshold, T. Senescence is catastrophic when . As the organism's
tolerance for harmful genetic mutations increases, the aging process becomes
more gradual. We observe senescence that is threshold dependent whenever T>R.
That is, the sudden drop in survival rate occurs at age equal to the mutation
threshold value
A simple method to assess the oxidative susceptibility of low density lipoproteins
BACKGROUND: Oxidative modification of low density lipoproteins (LDL) is recognized as one of the major processes involved in atherogenesis. The in vitro standardized measurement of LDL oxidative susceptibility could thus be of clinical significance. The aim of the present study was to establish a method which would allow the evaluation of oxidative susceptibility of LDL in the general clinical laboratory. RESULTS: LDL was isolated from human plasma by selective precipitation with amphipathic polymers. The ability of LDL to form peroxides was assessed by measuring thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) after incubation with Cu(2+) and H(2)O(2). Reaction kinetics showed a three-phase pattern (latency, propagation and decomposition phases) which allowed us to select 150 min as the time point to stop the incubation by cooling and EDTA addition. The mixture Cu(2+)/H(2)O(2) yielded more lipoperoxides than each one on its own at the same time end-point. Induced peroxidation was measured in normal subjects and in type 2 diabetic patients. In the control group, results were 21.7 ± 1.5 nmol MDA/mg LDL protein, while in the diabetic group results were significantly increased (39.0 ± 3.0 nmol MDA/mg LDL protein; p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: a simple and useful method is presented for the routine determination of LDL susceptibility to peroxidation in a clinical laboratory
Large deviations in boundary-driven systems: Numerical evaluation and effective large-scale behavior
We study rare events in systems of diffusive fields driven out of equilibrium
by the boundaries. We present a numerical technique and use it to calculate the
probabilities of rare events in one and two dimensions. Using this technique,
we show that the probability density of a slowly varying configuration can be
captured with a small number of long wave-length modes. For a configuration
which varies rapidly in space this description can be complemented by a local
equilibrium assumption
Modelling the overdiagnosis of breast cancer due to mammography screening in women aged 40 to 49 in the United Kingdom
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, andreproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited
The Sound of Sonoluminescence
We consider an air bubble in water under conditions of single bubble
sonoluminescence (SBSL) and evaluate the emitted sound field nonperturbatively
for subsonic gas-liquid interface motion. Sound emission being the dominant
damping mechanism, we also implement the nonperturbative sound damping in the
Rayleigh-Plesset equation for the interface motion. We evaluate numerically the
sound pulse emitted during bubble collapse and compare the nonperturbative and
perturbative results, showing that the usual perturbative description leads to
an overestimate of the maximal surface velocity and maximal sound pressure. The
radius vs. time relation for a full SBSL cycle remains deceptively unaffected.Comment: 25 pages; LaTex and 6 attached ps figure files. Accepted for
publication in Physical Review
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