Survey and Experimental Testing of Nongravimetric Mass Measurement Devices

Documentation presented describes the design, testing, and evaluation of an accelerated gravimetric balance, a low mass air bearing oscillator of the spring-mass type, and a centrifugal device for liquid mass measurement. A direct mass readout method was developed to replace the oscillation period readout method which required manual calculations to determine mass. A protoype 25 gram capacity micro mass measurement device was developed and tested

Electrical termination techniques

A technical review of high reliability electrical terminations for electronic equipment was made. Seven techniques were selected from this review for further investigation, experimental work, and preliminary testing. From the preliminary test results, four techniques were selected for final testing and evaluation. These four were: (1) induction soldering, (2) wire wrap, (3) percussive arc welding, and (4) resistance welding. Of these four, induction soldering was selected as the best technique in terms of minimizing operator errors, controlling temperature and time, minimizing joint contamination, and ultimately producing a reliable, uniform, and reusable electrical termination

Equipment Development for Automatic Anthropometric Measurements

An automated procedure for measuring and recording the anthropometric active angles is presented. The small portable system consists of a microprocessor controlled video data acquisition system which measures single plane active angles using television video techniques and provides the measured data on sponsored-specified preformatted data sheets. This system, using only a single video camera, observes the end limits of the movement of a pair of separated lamps and calculates the vector angle between the extreme positions

Intracellular connections between basal bodies promote the coordinated behavior of motile cilia

Hydrodynamic flow produced by multiciliated cells is critical for fluid circulation and cell motility. Hundreds of cilia beat with metachronal synchrony for fluid flow. Cilia-driven fluid flow produces extracellular hydrodynamic forces that cause neighboring cilia to beat in a synchronized manner. However, hydrodynamic coupling between neighboring cilia is not the sole mechanism that drives cilia synchrony. Cilia are nucleated by basal bodies (BBs) that link to each other and to the cell\u27s cortex via BB-associated appendages. The intracellular BB and cortical network is hypothesized to synchronize ciliary beating by transmitting cilia coordination cues. The extent of intracellular ciliary connections and the nature of these stimuli remain unclear. Moreover, how BB connections influence the dynamics of individual cilia has not been established. We show by focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy imaging that cilia are coupled both longitudinally and laterally in the ciliat

An Application of Molecular Genotyping in Mice

Microsatellite markers are simple sequence repeats within the mammalian genome that can be used for identifying disease loci, mapping genes of interest as well as studying segregation patterns related to meiotic nondisjunction. Different strains of mice have variable CA repeat lengths and PCR based methods can be used to identify them, thus allowing for specific genotypes to be assigned. Molecular genotyping offers such identification at any developmental stage, which allows for a broad range of anomalies to be studied. We studied chromosomal segregation in relation to nondisjunction in early-gestation mouse embryos using molecular genotyping. Information on the parental origin as well as the number of chromosomes a given progeny carried was obtained in our analysis

Turbulence and Fossil Turbulence in Oceans and Lakes

Turbulence is defined as an eddy-like state of fluid motion where the inertial-vortex forces of the eddies are larger than any of the other forces that tend to damp the eddies out. Energy cascades of irrotational flows from large scales to small are non-turbulent, even if they supply energy to turbulence. Turbulent flows are rotational and cascade from small scales to large, with feedback. Viscous forces limit the smallest turbulent eddy size to the Kolmogorov scale. In stratified fluids, buoyancy forces limit large vertical overturns to the Ozmidov scale and convert the largest turbulent eddies into a unique class of saturated, non-propagating, internal waves, termed fossil-vorticity-turbulence. These waves have the same energy but different properties and spectral forms than the original turbulence patch. The Gibson (1980, 1986) theory of fossil turbulence applies universal similarity theories of turbulence and turbulent mixing to the vertical evolution of an isolated patch of turbulence in a stratified fluid as its growth is constrained and fossilized by buoyancy forces. These theories apply to the dynamics of atmospheric, astrophysical and cosmological turbulence.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, see http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~ir118 Accepted for publication by the Chinese Journal of Oceanology and Limnolog

Lysyl oxidase ( Lox ) maps between Grl-1 and Adrb-2 on mouse Chromosome 18

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47002/1/335_2004_Article_BF00352234.pd

Short Interspersed Element (SINE) Depletion and Long Interspersed Element (LINE) Abundance Are Not Features Universally Required for Imprinting

Genomic imprinting is a form of gene dosage regulation in which a gene is expressed from only one of the alleles, in a manner dependent on the parent of origin. The mechanisms governing imprinted gene expression have been investigated in detail and have greatly contributed to our understanding of genome regulation in general. Both DNA sequence features, such as CpG islands, and epigenetic features, such as DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs, play important roles in achieving imprinted expression. However, the relative importance of these factors varies depending on the locus in question. Defining the minimal features that are absolutely required for imprinting would help us to understand how imprinting has evolved mechanistically. Imprinted retrogenes are a subset of imprinted loci that are relatively simple in their genomic organisation, being distinct from large imprinting clusters, and have the potential to be used as tools to address this question. Here, we compare the repeat element content of imprinted retrogene loci with non-imprinted controls that have a similar locus organisation. We observe no significant differences that are conserved between mouse and human, suggesting that the paucity of SINEs and relative abundance of LINEs at imprinted loci reported by others is not a sequence feature universally required for imprinting