597 research outputs found
Cortical plasticity as a new endpoint measurement for chronic pain
Animal models of chronic pain are widely used to investigate basic mechanisms of chronic pain and to evaluate potential novel drugs for treating chronic pain. Among the different criteria used to measure chronic pain, behavioral responses are commonly used as the end point measurements. However, not all chronic pain conditions can be easily measured by behavioral responses such as the headache, phantom pain and pain related to spinal cord injury. Here I propose that cortical indexes, that indicate neuronal plastic changes in pain-related cortical areas, can be used as endpoint measurements for chronic pain. Such cortical indexes are not only useful for those chronic pain conditions where a suitable animal model is lacking, but also serve as additional screening methods for potential drugs to treat chronic pain in humans. These cortical indexes are activity-dependent immediate early genes, electrophysiological identified plastic changes and biochemical assays of signaling proteins. It can be used to evaluate novel analgesic compounds that may act at peripheral or spinal sites. I hope that these new cortical endpoint measurements will facilitate our search for new, and more effective, pain medicines, and help to reduce false lead drug targets
Extrapolation of neutron-rich isotope cross-sections from projectile fragmentation
Using the measured fragmentation cross sections produced from the 48Ca and
64Ni beams at 140 MeV per nucleon on 9Be and 181Ta targets, we find that the
cross sections of unmeasured neutron rich nuclei can be extrapolated using a
systematic trend involving the average binding energy. The extrapolated
cross-sections will be very useful in planning experiments with neutron rich
isotopes produced from projectile fragmentation. The proposed method is general
and could be applied to other fragmentation systems including those used in
other radioactive ion beam facilities.Comment: accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter
The Hyper Suprime-Cam SSP Survey: Overview and Survey Design
Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a wide-field imaging camera on the prime focus of
the 8.2m Subaru telescope on the summit of Maunakea in Hawaii. A team of
scientists from Japan, Taiwan and Princeton University is using HSC to carry
out a 300-night multi-band imaging survey of the high-latitude sky. The survey
includes three layers: the Wide layer will cover 1400 deg in five broad
bands (), with a point-source depth of . The
Deep layer covers a total of 26~deg in four fields, going roughly a
magnitude fainter, while the UltraDeep layer goes almost a magnitude fainter
still in two pointings of HSC (a total of 3.5 deg). Here we describe the
instrument, the science goals of the survey, and the survey strategy and data
processing. This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue of the
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, which includes a large
number of technical and scientific papers describing results from the early
phases of this survey.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables. Corrected for a typo in the
coordinates of HSC-Wide spring equatorial field in Table
- …